Living In Thanksgiving
11/27/05
Colossians 2.6-7
Intro: Scottish Minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to himself, “Certainly the preacher won’t think of anything for which to thank the Lord on a wretched day like this. “Much to his surpise, however, Whyte began by praying, “We thank Thee, O God, that it it is not always like this.”
What a heavenly perspective. Bro Whyte must have had his treasures laid up in heaven.
We will see this morning that the Apostle Paul did as well.
Every one of Paul’s letters except Galatians begins with thanksgiving. In the letter to the Colossians He mentions giving thanks seven times.
There is a great importance to the number seven. The number seven in the Bible it stands for completion and perfection. Seven can also be connected to oaths or swearing.
God’s Word in this letter tells us how to have a complete life. A key ingredient to a complete life is a life full of thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is not simply a day we acknowledge with celebration. Thanksgiving is instead an attitude we should receive at salvation.
It has been said many times that Christianity is not a religion it is a realtionship. Out of the relationship with Jesus should come a Christian lifestyle.
Those that live as Christians should be living in thanksgiving.
Let’s examine what the Bible says about living in Thanks giving.
Biblical reasons for living in thanksgiving.
Read: Colossians 2.6-7
The passage shows us that there should be a Biblical attitude of gratitude. An outward overflow of the inward working of Jesus.
Due to:
I. Completeness of your salavation. (Notice the have been (accomplished reality) (it is finished)
A) Complete Access to God (Ephesians 3.12, Hebrews 4.16)
B) Complete Forgiveness of sin (Colossian 2.12-13)
Preacher’s Commentary “in Colossians Paul paints a grahic picture of Jesus’ work of forgivness.”
1) Cirumcised by Christ (2.11-12)
2) Nailed our sin to the cross (2.14)
3) Disarmed principalities and powers (2.15)
Notice that all these are were, have been, etc. .
They are present realities in the Christians life.
C) Complete working out of our salvation
Preachers commentary, “Conversion, passing from life to death, may be the miracle of the moment, but the making of a saint – presenting oneself perfect in christ -- is the task of a lifetime.”
If Christ is working in you thankfulness should be coming out of you.
WA Criswell The Christian faith is that – always reflectig our gratitude to God for His wonderful goodnesses to us.
II. Compelling of God’s command
A) Offering of Thanks (Col 1.12)
1 Thessalonians 5.18 “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”
In this way we Christians are different from the natural man
a) Continual offering of thanks no matter the situation
b) Cituations we think are unbearable may have been placed for our good.
Corrie Ten Boom in The Hiding Place relates an incident that taught her always to be thankful. She and her sister, Betsy had just been transferred to the worst German prison camp they had seen yet, Ravensbruck. On entering the barracks, they found them extremely overcrowded and flea-infested.
That morning, their Scipture reading in 1 Thesolonians had reminded them to rejoice always, pray constantly, and give thanks in all circumstances. Betsy told Corrie to stop and thank the Lord for every detail of their new living quarters. Corrie at first flatly refusedto give thanks for the fleas, but Betsy persisted, and corrie finally succumbed to her pleadings. During the months spent at the camp, they were surprised to find how openly they could hold Bible study and prayer meetings without guard interference. It was not until several monts later that they learned the reason the guards would not enter the barracks was because of the fleas.
Many think they are in prision today because things don’t go their own way. So instead of being thankful they are ungrateful.
What really happens is you build a prison cell of you own attitude.
So what fleas do you have in your life that you are unthankful for.
Let’s do this
Before this message is over recognize your fleas, and thank God almighty for the great things he has done.
B) Outlook of Thanks (Col 4.2 attitude of grattitude)
Important Question: Do you have a rosey outlook or a rotten outlook?
If you have a rotten outlook then you, as Zig Ziggler says, have stinking thinking.
1) Many people including Christians live in a platitude of gratitude.
A platitude is an empty unoriginal or redundant comment.
2) We often the words but they are empty. Our thanksgiving does not have the thrust of a heart beating for God. We just want check off our Christian Check list, never truly giving thanks to God.
Our Christian duty is done.
An evergreen tree is a great example for us. An evergreen is always green despite the changes in weatheraround it. It is green in the heat of summer as well as the cold I of winter. So our lives are to be characterized by an enduring thankfulnessthat is unaffected by the changes around us. When the heat of a pressured week or deadly cold of pain strikes us, we should stand “ever green,” always thankful, regarless of that which surrounds us.”
An outlook of thanks giving centered on Christ.
III. Center of your attention
3.2 “Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on the earth.”
A mind set on God and the things of God.
A) Christ the center
“set” make a personal intentional decision to focus on Christ.
Christ who is seated at the right hand of God should be at the forefront of our mind.
1) Our thoughts should be on our master
“Keep on thinking about” Robertson’s word Pictures.
a) What thoughts control your mind during the day?
Anxiety about jobs, kids, money, Christmas?
b) What time do you give to meditating on the things of God?
1) Where do we find the things of God?
2) We find them in His Word.
Psalms 1 and Joshua 1.8 tell us to meditate on God’s word day and night.
A heart and mind that is not consumed with the material things of the world will be thankful.
It is necessary to have a Godly perspective to be truly thankful.
The main key to living in thanksgiving is a daily walk with Christ.
Proverbs tells us as a man thinks so he is
B) Hope of Heaven Col 1.5, Titus 1.2
Hebrews 11.8-11 Remember the roll call of the Heroes of faith.
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.
For he was looking for the city which has foundatios wohos architect and builder is God”
Lot his nephew looked out and saw green lands.
Gensis 13.10
“Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere – this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – like the garden of the Lord, like the land of egypt as you go to Zoar”
Lot set his mind on the things of earth. Letting his sight and desirest control his thoughts.
The things of this earth will eventually be destroyed, when God makes a new heaven and a new earth.
A life of joy and thankfulness is not found in what we can hold here on earth.
It is instead in what we have laid up in heaven.
1) Life
2) Inheritance
a) Riches
b) Honor
Story of gratitude “The old man and the gulls”, Paul Harvey’s the rest of the story.
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit a broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942 Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour which woul hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.
Somwhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean. . For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark. . . ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B-17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”
Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking. . . “Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food. .. if I could catch it.”
And the rest as they say is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it.
And now you also know. . . that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset. . . on a loney stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast. . . you could see an old man walking. . . white haired, bushy eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed to the gulls. . . to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle. . . like manna in the wilderness.
Those that are truly thankful never forget what they have received.
Conclusion: Living a life without the inner attitude of gratitude is sinful before God. (Romans 1.21, 2 Tim 3:1-2)
1) Count your blessing – find one thing in your life each day to” thank God for, if you are a Christian at least one thing should come to mind.
2) Count on your blesser – All good and perfect Gifts come from God the Father through God the son.
3) Cast your blessing to others.
