Grounds For Gratitude
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Philippians 1 (830)
Sometimes, we have a way of forgetting Thanksgiving as soon as the turkey is cold, and we start looking forward to Christmas. Let’s hold onto this thanksgiving idea at least twenty minutes longer. In searching for a thanksgiving statement in God’s Word, I made one of those discoveries that people who read the Bible regularly know about. So often we read a certain passage, and we may read it over and over again, and yet one day find some truth never before noticed, a diamond never before discovered in those oft-traveled pages of God’s Word. This is it:
The whole New Testament is bathed in an atmosphere of thanksgiving and gratitude.
The story begins in thanksgiving. The first chapter of Luke records the praise song of Mary when she learns that she is chosen of God to bear the Christ child.
This praise to God is offered in an attitude of joyous thanksgiving.
The life of Christ was savored in gratitude. Often the Master would begin His prayers saying, "I thank You, Father." Even the cross, with all its injustice and agony, was borne by a Savior who was grateful to have the privilege to save our souls. The Bible states, "...Jesus...who for the joy set before him endured the cross..." (Hebrews 12:2).
The thanksgiving theme in the New Testament does not end with the earthly life of Jesus. It continues through the Acts of the Apostles. The gratitude that radiated from the lives of these people of action was amazing. Acts 5 is an example. The closing verses record that God’s men were captured, beaten, imprisoned, brought before the highest Jewish court, and threatened with their lives if they continued to preach about Christ. Upon their release, they did not hide or leave town. They went back to the same place they were first arrested and told the same people the same story about Jesus Christ who could save their souls. The Word states, "The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name" (Acts 5:41).
In the writings of the apostle Paul, there are statements of constant gratitude to God for His grace, His peace, His power, and His people. He constantly expressed thanks for friends whom God had used to bless his life.
It is the same with all of us. Whatever we have done and whatever we are it is because of others who have paved the way for our liberty and our usefulness, and God has used them to help us. Whatever we do today, we do because of friends who stand by our side in the task.
One of the choicest of all possessions is friendship. We can be thankful for that. Paul reminds us that we can be grateful for our church. In Philippians 1:3-6, he says to the church at Philippi: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."
The sweet fellowship of Christian service is a strategic part of Christian growth. The church is the gift of Christ to you and to me as an outlet to express through deeds of service our gratitude and love to God and our fellow Christians.
To the church at Philippi, Paul says, "I am grateful for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now." The word is fellowship, the very heart of the meaning of a New Testament church ... a fellowship of Christians in love with Christ and with each other.
Paul expresses the thanksgiving of an humble man. They had needed him, and he had needed them. Theirs had been a fellowship. This is the most precious possession of a church. Be so grateful for it that it would be as unthinkable to disturb it as it would be to carve your initials on the pulpit. Because of it, have gratitude in your heart. You and I are sustained by Christian friends and by the church.
Another ground for Christian gratitude is the trials of life. In Philippians 1:12, 18, Paul says: "Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense of in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice."
Paul is actually thankful for the privilege of suffering for Christ. James said quite emphatically, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials..." (James 1:2). We can hardly believe our ears. Thankful for troubles? How this statement cuts deep and exposes the shallowness of our present-day brand of Christianity.
I believe we do know how to be thankful. How blessed we are in this nation, materially speaking. There are people in this world, millions of them, who have never known what it is to go to bed at night without being hungry while most of us worry about how to lose weight. Ours is a multi-horsepowered, chrome-plated,
air-conditioned, frost-free society. It would be a sin not to be thankful because these are indeed gifts of God. If your payment book shows that you still have thirty months to pay on some item of creature comfort, you may feel tempted to say, "Gift of God? Why, I worked hard for all I have!"
Let me remind you that if God ever decided to start charging for the oxygen you consume and the health which allows you to make those hard-earned dollars, you would probably make prompt remittance. Yes, we need to thank God for every material blessing.
When people teach their children to pray, the bedtime prayer usually goes something like this,
"Thank You for the world so sweet.
Thank You for the food we eat.
Thank You for the birds that sing.
Thank You, God, for everything."
The words may seem light, trite, and general, but that little prayer touches on what Paul is telling us here. How many have reached the spiritual maturity to thank God for everything? This is definitely a New Testament admonition. The Word says, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." The Lord says if we are Christians, everything that happens to us is good, and we can be thankful for it.
Hidden behind these words of thankfulness for trials is this unstated truth: People are made in trials. When God is about make preeminent use of a person, He usually puts him in the fire to refine him. Paul is saying, "Be thankful for your trials because they can help you to become a better follower of Christ."
What in two worlds is more important than that? It isn’t what happens to you that is so vastly important but how you take it. Be grateful when you face the trials of life.
It occurs to me that most of our trials come about because of circumstance or accident. Someone gets sick, or there is an accident, or a loved one passes away. Now nearly all of us have faced those moments of heartbreak and know that they really are hard to bear and constitute great trials in personal lives.
May I, in all earnestness, contrast the trials that Paul and many like him bore with our trials? Theirs did not come unexpectedly. You might say the early Christians asked for them for the most part. Those pains of suffering, those heartbreaks, those trials came because they deliberately lived for Jesus. There is so little of that today.
Think back to hundreds of years people who followed Christ. In history, we are told of Polycarp who was slaughtered along with many in the church because he had committed the hideous crime of living for Christ. I remember Barnabas, the wealthy man in the New Testament who sold all that he had and gave the money to the church so that all may hear of the Christ who so blessed his life. In Fox’s book of martyrs, there’s a little story of a mother who was tied to a stake on a beach and soon the tide came in. The water crept up higher and higher until she drowned. This was her punishment for the crime of commitment to Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, we praise people for coming to church in bad weather. We say, "How wonderful that dedicated Christians would brave the cold or the rain to come to church." Then the contrast becomes vividly real. Here is the present-day Polycarp with raincoat and umbrella, bundled up in warm clothing, coming out of his well-heated home, getting into his well-heated automobile to come to church.
What an inspiring sacrifice!
Perhaps, we can picture other martyrs. What about the present-day Barnabas who gives almost as much to his church as he spends on cigarettes? I see the modern-day mothers who make certain their children would not miss a day of school or fail to show up at the game of the week, but they are quite content to let them sleep through the hour for Bible study and worship to God.
There are the modern day Lydia and Andrew who never fail to be in church on Sunday morning, but even the Lord wouldn’t expect them to come on Sunday night.
After all, they don’t want to be fanatics! That is, they never fail to be in church on Sunday morning "if they wake up," "if they are in town," and "if they don’t have company." In short, these twenty-century martyrs will come to God’s house if there is nothing better to do.
Oh I know, forgive me for being so sarcastic. I wanted to point out that Paul was telling these people that they were to be thankful for anything, even martyrdom, that their devotion to Christ may bring. They were thanking God for the privilege to have a life to give totally to Him, no matter what the outcome. So often, we fail to even offer thanks in lip service, much less in life service. Never forget, thanksgiving is always thanks-living.
A third ground for Christian gratitude is the grace of God. Like a recurring theme of a symphony, this joy of the grace of God saturates Paul’s letter of thanksgiving. It is the grace of God which he shared with the church.
It is the grace of God which has moved his life. It is the grace of God which gives climaxing joy to his heart ... "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). It is the grace of God with which he bathes his benediction...."And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19). Thus it is that the grand old soldier of the cross expresses the grandest joy and gratitude of all. It is his thanksgiving of another book and another place..."Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift." (II Cor. 9:15).
Who is the Christian who is not thrilled and amazed at the fact that Jesus Christ would die to save our own dirty souls? How can we but sing from the gratitude of our hearts:
Thank You, Lord for saving my soul.
Thank You, Lord for making me whole.
Thank You, Lord, for giving to me
Thy great salvation so full and free.
Once more, we need the triumphant music of Paul. We face moral struggle, temptation, and opposition. It was Paul who had tasted all of this, battled all of this, and yet from the top of the battle, he shouted, "But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:57).
You can have that magnificent gratitude for fellowship, for suffering, for grace, and thus learn to live and to serve at your fullest for Christ.
