In Everything Give Thanks - 1 Thess Lesson 39

1 Thessalonians 5:18

In Everything Give Thanks

 Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5 again this morning. Let’s stand and read verses 12-22. We have slowed to a snail’s pace in our study through this important letter. Our pace has been dictated by the weight of the words we encounter. You can’t just read through these imperatives and not give deep consideration to what we are being instructed to do.

 Taking the time to give careful and deep consideration of these imperatives leads us to understand just how challenging these imperatives are to obey in real life. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

 Is it importance for us to understand and obey these imperatives? I would contend that it is. Paul wrote these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t just giving some helpful suggestions on how to make life better. He is telling us what is necessary to please God. He states clearly, “for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” I think it is helpful for us to remember the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus warns us to be like the wise builder, whose house was built upon the rock. His house withstood the rain, floods and wind because the builder was a man who heard the words of Jesus and acted on them. The foundation of this man’s spiritual house was the foundation of obedience. Great was the fall of the man whose house was built on the sand because he heard the words of Jesus and did not act on them. We need to obey these imperative commands.

 In the interest of complete honesty, I must admit that obedience to the command of 1 Thess. 5:18 is not easy. In fact, it is one I fail at far too often. I suspect we all fail at this. Today I don’t want to just make us all feel guitly about how badly we do at this. I want to try to equip us to be able to begin to obey this important imperative.

 Let’s make sure we understand exactly what Paul is commanding in this verse. He says, in giving us another in a succession of rapid fire imperatives, “in everything give thanks.”  It is an imperative, and thus a command. It is in the active voice, so we are responsible for the action of the verb. It is a present tense verb, meaning that we are to always, in the present time, to be giving thanks in everything.

 Some have taken special note of the preposition “in.” I’ve heard preachers, and other uninformed Christians say that Paul says we are to be thankful “in” everything. He doesn’t say we are to be thankful “for” everything. This does not stand up against the scrutiny of God’s word. Ephesians 5:20 says that we are to be “always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.” We are commanded to be thankful both “in” everything and “for” all things. In our verse today we are clearly told that this is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus. In the context of Ephesians 5:20, in verse 17 of Ephesians 5 Paul said, “So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” After telling us not to be foolish, but to understand the will of the Lord, he says that we are to always be giving thanks for all things.

 The use of those words like “always” and “everything” don’t give us much wiggle room. We are to always be giving thanks for all things. We are to give thanks in everything. Paul forgot to write “except” and identify at least a few things for which it would be “ok” to leave out. Paul didn’t actually forget anything. He tells us that the will of God is that we always give thanks for all things and in everything we are to give thanks. Thanks Paul. And thank you Lord for making Your perfect will so clear.

 I think it is safe to assume that this is something with which we all struggle. Just because it is a struggle for us does not mean that we get a pass on it. We are never commanded to do something it isn’t important to do. When God tells us to do something, while it may not be easy, it will be possible. Many of the things we are commanded to do are impossible in the power of our own strength. But everything we are commanded to do is possible in His strength. This is one of those things that we can do if we are drawing on the strength He provides. I am confident this is true because Paul himself appears to be an example of one who always gives thanks for everything, and in everything he gave thanks. Paul was a tremendously gifted Apostle, but he was a man like us. If he could obey, we can obey. If he could glorify God in this, we can glorify God in this.

 In order for us to be a person who is thankful according to the will of God, we must know some things and we must be some things. The things we must know are critical to us becoming what we must be. I hope that makes sense. In order for us to be thankful people, there are some things we must know. There are concrete truths upon which our faith stands. We must know these truths. So let’s begin with the things we must know.

First, we must know some things. I have heard Craig say many times that the Christian faith is a cerebral faith. It requires the use of our intellect. We don’t have to be brilliant, but we must understand truth. Faith always involves an understanding of truth. If we say we have faith, but don’t understand the truth we say we believe, we do not have a secure faith. Jesus said that we are to know the truth and the truth would set us free. When I say we must know some things, I am talking about the fundamental, foundational biblical truth we must know before we will authentically give thanks in everything. I doubt I will say anything in this part of the message that I haven’t said before and that most of you don’t already understand. 

 The desire to give thanks, the ability to give thanks, the willingness to give thanks is related to, and dependent upon our understanding of the nature and character of God. I would say that the first thing we must know about God is that He is Sovereign and providentially in control of everything that happens to us in life. This means that He is responsible for the “everything” for which we give thanks. Everything that happens to us, everything that befalls us, everything good, everything we consider bad, everything we face in life has come to us because it has been ordained of God.

 You might say, “Wait a minute!” “Doesn’t Satan attack us?” He might. But not without God’s permission. Remember the words of Jesus to Peter? Satan had to be granted permission to sift Peter like wheat. Even the suffering of Job at the hands of Satan couldn’t happen until God granted permission. We really do need to understand that God is the only Sovereign. Anything that comes into our lives, good or bad, comes to us ultimately from Him. We do well to remember that He is God, and He alone is God. We are not. Satan is not God’s equal, with freedom to act as he pleases. God has not set the world in motion and then lets it run the course on its own. God is in absolute control of everything. The “everything” for which we are to give thanks is everything that God is bringing into our lives.

 If we are Christians, and we truly belong to Him, then we know that we are the objects of His affection, the recipients of His grace, and His children by adoption. If this is what we are, we understand that the only reason for our existence is to glorify Him in our lives. Since we know that He is sovereign, and that He is perfect in wisdom, and that His first mistake has yet to be made, we can trust that He does all things well. He works everything according to the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11). He alone is infinitely wise, with perfect understanding of what it takes for His purposes to be fulfilled. His purpose is His own glory. This means that from before the creation He chose us, and He predestined us to become conformed to the image of His Son. All His work has one objective. He is working to conform us to the image of Jesus so that we glorify Him in our lives.

 We must know that His primary interest is not in making us happy, comfortable, and satisfied. He does not save us to make us successful. He doesn’t save us to give us a rich and full and meaningful life. He hasn’t saved us from futility and vanity. He has saved us from our sin. He saves us to make us holy. His work is to make us holy like His Son. He alone knows what it will take for this to be accomplished. So while we may not see how it all works together, the “everything” that God brings into our life is for the purpose of His glory.

 The God whom we trust and obey is eternal, and omniscient. He sees the beginning from the end. If He brings something for which we struggle to give thanks, we look not at the event, but at the eventual. The things that happen to us are events. The event may not be fun. The event may be painful. The event may be the cause of great sorrow. Can we give thanks in these things? Yes we can. We must, because we are commanded to do so. How do we do this? By looking past the event to the eventual. The event is here and now. The eventual is what the Bible always points us to. Peter told us to rejoice greatly because of the reward that is reserved for us in heaven. Paul tells us that God is working all things together for good, and His glory.

 We can give thanks in everything because “everything” is included in the stuff God is working together for our good and His glory. We can give thanks for the event because of the eventual. Know that whatever we encounter in this life, when we arrive in eternity it will all be worth it. It is momentary light affliction that is producing an eternal weight of glory. The momentary light affliction is the event – the eternal weight of glory is the eventual.

 These are things we must know. There are many other things we could include in the things we must know. But there are also some things we must be. By the way, the becoming of the things we must be, this too is God’s work. You are not going to become what you must be to be able to give thanks in everything by your own effort. It is the result of God’s work in you.

 I’m going to cover three things you must be if you are to give thanks in everything and do the will of God as a giver of thanks. These three are the most important. There are other qualities and characteristics that will mark the life of the genuinely thankful person.

 The first thing we must be if we are to be able to give thanks in everything is genuinely converted. Without the work of the Holy Spirit to bring spiritual life to the spiritually dead person, there will never be any capacity for supernatural living. Giving thanks in everything is one of the manifestations of a life transformed by the power of the gospel. While the genuine convert may not always get it right, the unregenerate is completely without the capacity to give thanks in everything. The unregenerate can express some degree of thanksgiving for the things that make them happy. But they will never be thankful for everything or in everything.

 Sometimes it takes the genuine convert a little time to reach the point where they are can be truly thankful in everything. It isn’t easy to rejoice and give thanks while we are in the middle of great trials and tribulation. This is what we are told to do, but being honest we must admit that in the middle of the fire we sometimes are looking for some water to pour on the flames. The genuine convert will eventually reach the point of authentic thankfulness in everything. The one in whom the Spirit of God lives, will come to the place of thankfulness because the true child of God will be able to look back and recognize the good that God caused to work together. The true child of God will come to see the trial as a treasure because of how God used it to conform him or her to the image of Christ. The trial becomes a treasure for the child of God because the trial drove the child into the arms of his or her heavenly Father.

 The unregenerate will never be truly thankful in everything because the hard things in life just make them unhappy. Their unhappiness turns to bitterness and resentment, which just leads to further sorrow. 

 I think this might be a valid test of genuine conversion. If we are completely honest we would all admit that it is a challenge to give thanks in everything in the present. This is what we are told to do, but in the middle of our trials and difficulties, we often fail to give the thanks we should. Those who don’t struggle with this are the spiritual giants among us. I don’t see many of those among us. I certainly don’t see one when I look in the mirror. But I can honestly say that by the grace of God, and by the grace of God alone, I can look back on every challenge, every problem I ever encountered, every trial, every difficult circumstance in life, and I am now thankful for it. I can currently give thanks in everything because I can look back and see how God has used it all for my good, to work His purposes in my life.

 Those who have not experienced the work of salvation in Christ cannot be genuinely thankful in everything because they never see the purpose of God in their difficulties. They won’t even be thankful in the good things because they take all the credit for themselves for making the good things happen. They fail to see even the common grace of God that blesses both the evil and the righteous with blessings in life. Because they refuse to acknowledge God they will never be thankful.

 There is so much more we could say about the necessity of being a genuine convert to be able to give thanks, but we need to move on. I do hope that I am preaching to genuine converts today. I would encourage you to look in your heart and be honest with yourself and the Lord about your true attitude concerning the hard things you have faced in life. Are you genuinely thankful now for those things in the past? It may have been hard to be thankful at the time, and you may have failed in the moment. But what is your attitude toward those things now? Are you giving thanks for those things because of the good God worked through them?

 The next thing we must be if we are going to give thanks in everything is content. If you look back at those past experiences when you struggled to give thanks in everything, if we are honest, we must admit that our struggle to give thanks in everything was the product of discontent. Contentment is the essential characteristic of a follower of Christ who is able to give thanks in everything. Any time we are not giving thanks, we must confess that we are losing a battle with discontentment. There will never be a truly thankful follower of Christ who is not first a contented follower of Christ. Let me take you to Philippians 4 for a few minutes and let’s learn something about contentment. Read verses 10-11.

For Paul, his level of contentment had nothing to do with how much he had. His contentment had nothing to do with his circumstances at all. Paul says clearly, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” Paul’s circumstances at the time he wrote this were not good. He had spent 5 years plus in custody of the Romans. He was taken into custody in Jerusalem for his own protection. He spent about two years in Caesarea in Roman custody. He was transported by the Romans to Rome because he appealed to Caesar. This trip took the better part of a year. He had been in Rome, under house arrest for two years. In confinement he could not freely minister the way he wanted. He survived on a bare minimum of food. He enjoyed no personal freedoms or privacy. He was chained to a Roman guard constantly. His fate was uncertain because a madman named Nero was Emperor of Rome. He could meet with the mouth of lions or the executioner’s sword based on Nero’s decision. This was the lowest point in Paul’s life. His was a miserable lot. Yet, in the midst of this he has learned contentment.

It had been ten years since he had received anything from the Philippians by way of support. They had supported him regularly after the founding of the church at Philippi. But for some reason, we don’t know, it is about 10 years with nothing. The occasion of this letter was the gift to thank them for the gift delivered at the hand of Epaphroditus. This was the first support in ten years. Yet, in the absence of any financial support, Paul had learned to be content.

The contentment Paul had learned had no connection to his circumstances at all. He was content regardless of how much or how little he had. If it had nothing to do with his circumstances, then what was the basis of his contentment? We must understand this because without this we will never be able to say I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

While being perhaps the most contented man in the world at the time, Paul was also the most unsatisfied man in the world. Paul was perfectly content with whatever material possessions God provided. If it was an abundance, he knew how to deal with that. If it was the bare minimum, he knew how to deal with that. He was the most contented person in the world when it came to material things. He was the most dissatisfied person alive when it came to spiritual riches. Paul knew that the more he had of God, the less he would want from this world. The more he was conformed to the image of Christ, the less the things of this world would matter.

This is one of the keys we must learn. The more we want of the things of this world, the less we want of God. The more we want of God, the less we will want of the things of this world. The more we want of happiness, comfort, and satisfaction from the world, the less we will want of the work that conforms us to the image of Jesus. If we want more of God, and less from the world, we will find ourselves content with the things that conform us to the image of Jesus, and we will give thanks in everything.

Paul understood that contentment comes not by way of addition, but by way of subtraction. This is an easy first step many of us can take. Subtract from the wants and reduce the things you desire, and you immediately move in the direction of contentment. If you continue to reduce the desires until they are below the level of your supply, you reach the point of contentment. Contentment does not come by way of addition of stuff. It comes by way of subtraction from your wants and desires. If we would subtract from our lives our selfish desire to be happy, comfortable, and satisfied, and we set our affections on being like Christ, we would be taking a major step toward contentment.

Andrew Murray put it like this. If his name sounds familiar it should. We have talked extensively about his book on humility over the last few years. Murray wrote, “Number one. God brought me here. It is by His will that I am in this place. In that fact I will rest. Number Two, He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child. Number three, He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn and working in me the grace He means to bestow. Number four, in His good time He can bring me out again. How and when, He knows. So let me say I am here.” That sounds like contentment to me. It is from that foundation of contentment that thanks can be given in everything.

Contentment results from learning to see the value in an affliction. Let me ask you to seriously consider this reality. We experience much more good from problems than we do prosperity. If you think you can grow more like Christ in wealth and comfort and luxury than you can in the midst of abject need, you don’t really understand how God works to conform you to the image of Jesus.

Jeremiah Burroughs makes this point. He was a Puritan preacher who wrote a book entitled, “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.” The mystery of contentment consists not in bringing anything from the outside to make my condition more comfortable, but in purging out something that is within. Discontentment results from a pride that says I deserve more than I have. It results from greed that wants more than what God has provided. Discontent results from a desire for more comfort than we currently experience. Discontentment causes us to look for the easy way out of a trial rather than to look for God’s lessons in the trial.

Until we learn to value what God is doing in the difficult part of the “everything” more than we value happiness, comfort, and satisfaction, we will not be content and if we are not content in “everything” we will not give thanks in everything.

One more thing we must be – humble. We are out of time, and we have a guest speaker next week, or we would probably come back and camp out on this one for a while. If we are not humble, we have a problem with pride. If you want to check for the presence of pride in your life, look at how you respond when difficult things happen. If we are proud, we look at those difficult things as something we don’t deserve. The very moment we see that attitude surfacing in our hearts and minds we can be certain that there is an ugly, noxious, offensive, God-opposing root of pride that runs deep in our hearts.

We are going to share the elements of the Lord’s table. This is the Eucharist. The Greek word for “give thanks” in 1 Thess. 5:18 is “eucharisteo.” This word embodies the highest act of thanksgiving for the greatest gift received from God, the sacrifice of Jesus.