Reasons To Be Thankful
2 Corinthians 4:6-18
* Americans are, seemingly, the most blessed people on the globe. Things we take for granted are considered to be luxuries by the many on the globe. For instance, electricity is one of those things we expect to enjoy. To my generation and younger, a life without electricity is inconceivable. Yet, life is possible without electricity. Think about all the luxuries we have, motor cars, computers, health care, restaurants, etc. We are very blessed. Were I to ask this crowd, the answers for our thankfulness would be many & varied. Yet, could it be that we have been blessed for so long that we take our greatest blessing for granted? And could it be that we have become anesthetized to the blessings we enjoy? Let’s do a little personal inventory this morning about our reason’s to be thankful. (READ TEXT)
* The Apostle Paul gives us a keen reminder of our greatest reasons.
1. God’s Perfect Gift – All of us love to receive gifts. We may not like to be reminded of birthday (a sign of old age), but we like the gifts. Christmas time comes; and we like to get gifts. In fact; just about ‘anytime’ we love gifts. But how often do we receive that ‘perfect gift.’ This past Father’s day my girls put their heads together and got the perfect gift for me. It was one gift and it was perfect for where I am in life.
a. Please notice what I did NOT say. I did not say, “God’s perfect ‘gifts’. It is true that God gives us spiritual gift(s) (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, etc) when we are saved. They come from God (not our request) to empower us to perform ministry for others. The way a true believer in Christ becomes Christ-like is by serving others. It is equally true that God expects us to discover, develop, and deploy this or these gifts to find fulfillment and joy in our Christian walk. These constitute the “spiritual gifts.” In fact, my personal belief is that the reason ‘so many are so miserable’ (even to the point of walking away from the church) is they have never discover their giftedness. The result is that they miss this joy & fulfillment in Christ. It is further true that God knows best. But here is a needed warning; many believers today seem to be more taken with the spiritual gift(s) which come after salvation than they are with “THE PERFECT GIFT” (of salvation), which is, the gift of Jesus.
b. Verse 6 begins with “God said” which is a pretty strong way to begin a thought. God said, “Light shall shine out of darkness”. In Isaiah 9:2 the prophet wrote, “The people walking in darkness.” For the person in darkness, light is a very desired & needed commodity. Walking in darkness is symbolic of being lost. Because of the number of places I have lived, as a general rule, I find it easy to go to a new community, drive around (within reason), keep my bearings and not get lost; if it is daylight. HOWEVER if it is dark, that is a different matter altogether.
* Without light to see, it is very easy to get lost. In flight training, I remember my first night-time cross country flight. Even following our instruments, it took a while to find our destination. And being in a plane with a plan, even having a general idea of the location we were in, still gave the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Being lost in darkness is scary.
* Your world & my world live in a state of perpetual darkness. Sad to say, but many do not understand this. In fact, nothing is more dangerous than walking in darkness & does not know it. To continue that Isaiah 9 passage is to read, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” Jesus responds, “I am the light of the world.”
* Our first reason to be thankful is God’s perfect gift of Jesus, who is the light of the world. In our lost condition, He lights out way. We don’t care to think we are lost without Jesus, but we are. We don’t care to think we need to lean on anyone, but we do. We don’t care to think we need a savior, but it’s true – we desperately need one. We don’t care to think that apart from a relationship with God through Jesus, we’ll spend eternity in hell, but we will. Jesus was and is God doing His perfect work in a perfect way. Without a personal relationship with God’s perfect gift, you are hopeless, helpless, and doomed because you cannot do it on your own.
* God’s perfect gift was given when we were helpless. (Rom. 5:6) It was given when we hopeless. Eph 2 reminds believers that there was a time when we were without a Messiah, were excluded from citizenship in the Kingdom, & foreigners to the covenants of promise, which resulted in us having no hope and living without God. But NOW, writes Paul, “In Christ Jesus (this is God’s perfect gift in its perfect form) and from this position we are saved from hell, saved to heaven, and saved for eternity. You want a reason to be thankful? Receive God’s perfect Gift.
2. God’s Personal Grace – We love to sing & talk about God’s grace. “Amazing Grace” has long been the favorite of young & old alike. We have sung the lyrics to many different melodies & in many different style for several generations. Even the contemporary musicians have taken the words to Amazing Grace and inserted them into high impact choruses which speak and teach of God’s grace for mankind. Very little stirs the heart like singing a verse or two of Amazing Grace & then bursting forth into MY CHAINS ARE GONE, I’VE BEEN SET FREE.” One of the reasons this is such an emotional song for so many is because they have known the prison of drugs, sin, and addiction, and NOW PRAISE GOD, because of HIS GRACE, they know what it means to be set free. God’s grace is so precious to the one who remembers what bondage was like that he sings, “IT covers me.” For years we have sung “Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus,” “Grace that is greater than all our sin,” & even “no other word for grace.”
a. Never forget GRACE IS PERSONAL! God give YOU the GRACE “YOU” need. It is not a ‘one size fits all’, rather, “He gives more grace when the burdens grow greater, He adds more strength when the labors increase, to added affliction He adds His mercy, and to multiplied trials He gives multiplied peace. His love has no limits; His grace has no measure, His power, no boundary known unto man. For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again.” Mercy is us NOT receiving what we deserve while Grace is our receiving what we don’t deserve (talk about a reason to be thankful!)
b. In verse 6 Paul speaks of the salvation (God’s perfect gift) coming in the heart and life and then follows with reminding us that, as believers, we have Jesus in our hearts (the clay jars). What a reason to give thanks! Then he reminds us that whatever comes our way (I.E trouble, sorrow, pain, or more) does not come to us without the support of the Father and His grace. Verses 8 and following tells us that we may be pressured, perplexed, persecuted, and even struck down, but don’t display because you will not be crushed, in despair, abandoned, or DESTROYED. Why? Because in Christ you and I carry everything Jesus did in HIS life that we may be ‘receivers’ and ‘purveyors’ of God Grace. Verse 15 says that ‘all of this stuff comes your way that “GRACE” may overflow to others.
c. God not only gives us grace for us to enjoy, but like everything else He does for us, He gives it to us that we might share it with others. Chapter 1 of this very letter says, “The reason you are comforted in your trouble is so that you can comfort OTHERS.” “Others, Lord yes OTHERS, let this my motto be. Help me to live for OTHERS, that I might live like THEE.”
d. God’s personal gift of grace to you is a gift that is to be shared, not hoarded and it overflows rather than indwelt. Offer His grace through YOUR life! When we become purveyors of grace, we are like Jesus.
3. God’s Priceless Glory – This may be the most missed truth in today’s church. (Read verses 15-18) What a powerful passage of scripture to encourage us and give us cause to be thankful, but it requires that we change our focus from the temporary to the eternal. The perfect gift of God and the personal grace of God are partners in our lives leading us to focus on the “PRICELESS GLORY” of our father. I submit that, in large measure, we have lost a concept of the “GLORY OF GOD.” We have trouble viewing God in Bible terms. Think about God’s Glory in Exodus 33 around the Tent of Meeting. Moses would go in, the cloud would engulf the tent, the people would watch, then stand up, then bow in worship, and they would do this FROM THEIR OWN TENT. Consider Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the two rewritten tablets and His face ‘shone as a result of speak with God’ so that He had to veil His face.
a. Consider Isaiah’s response upon ‘seeing the Lord.’ He fell down and declared Himself to be ‘unworthy, unclean, and undone.’ Consider the Mount of Transfiguration when Peter, James, & John, fell down in awe of the sights. Consider the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. God’s presence was so bright that Saul was rendered sightless. The list goes on and on and on.
b. Paul tells us that the life of a believer should be filled to overflow of God’s glory (and the overflow should touch the non-believer). Here is the ‘take-away’ for us today; no matter how bad it has gotten in your life, it is only a momentary, light, affliction which has a divine purpose for you. It is producing in you an “absolutely (no questions)”, incomparable (nothing can compare), eternal (this is ‘lots’ better than temporary), weight (notice that our present life’s afflictions are ‘momentary & light’ compared to the ‘weight’
c. The reasons to be thankful are many (we couldn’t cover them all), but what we find in 2 Corinthians 4 gives us spiritual & eternal reasons to be thankful. However, there is a catch. Without receiving God’s perfect gift you will never, never have any reason, ever, to be thankful. I ask you to refocus your gaze from time to eternity. Everyone in this room will be dead in 100 years (if Christ tarries). That means we will be in eternity. Over there we reside in one of two places. God gives you the choice today; when your time becomes eternity, where will you be? Jesus is your reason to be thankful.
