Allen Jackson - Give Thanks - Part 1
As a nation, we have a heritage of the Christian faith. We’ve never been uniquely Christian in that everybody here was Christian. But the values that have shaped our nation, our legal system, our founding documents, our educational systems, our most revered academic institutions, all emerged from the Christian faith and a desire to train young people to be Christian leaders.
Now we’ve drifted a bit, but that is our heritage. And there are loud voices that tell us we shouldn’t celebrate it. I think that is reprehensible, and that’s my kind church word for me, and I very strongly disagree with that. We wouldn’t say to any other subset of our culture that their heritage should be denied, should be removed from our academic institutions, that they should be stripped out of our public learning or the public square. And I’m not certain why we’ve allowed it. I don’t believe it should be tolerated. We’ve never been uniquely Christian, but we’ve always been shaped by those Christian values.
That’s why we have been a diverse nation and a tolerant place. That’s why there’s been a consistent trajectory towards better. It’s why we’ve overcome expressions of evil that have defined chapters and seasons of our life. It’s why we have hope for our future. And if the church steps back and remains silent, evil will prevail. There are many, many expressions of that through history. So, the question I’m asked more than any other single question, whether I’m in Middle Tennessee or I’m somewhere someplace else, is «What can we do»? You know, «We hear you,» they’ll say. «We read our Bibles. We understand there’s some problems, but my voice is small. I don’t have much influence. What can we do»?
Well, I brought today my best answer, my most honest answer. I’m making some assumptions in this, if you’re a Christ follower, that you’re walking in obedience to the truth that you know. If you’re not, stop then repent. Right? We got the fundamentals, but I think we’re stymied sometimes because the expressions of evil seem to be so loud and so prevalent and so unashamed. So, the title for the session we’re gonna do, and you should have received an outline when you came in. If you’re joining us digitally, you can download it is «Give Thanks». I think, a lot of times, we think of gratitude as being kind of a squishy response. It’s soft. I could not disagree more fully. Or maybe we think, you know, we teach the children to say thank you, but we outgrow that.
We don’t outgrow that, folks. I think one of the most powerful expressions of spiritual authority that you can demonstrate is to be thankful. I meet Christians a lot. And, you know, if there’s some segments of the church, if you’re exposed to them or they have a fuller attitude towards the involvement of the Holy Spirit and the engagement of the spirit of God, and I’m grateful for that segment of the church. You know, we’ll talk about spiritual warfare or spiritual gifts or manifestations of the Spirit, and all of that’s legitimate. I’m all in. But, folks, I don’t think we understand: One of the most profound things you can do spiritually is to be thankful.
So, I wanna walk through some Scriptures with you and see if we can give that a little bit of deeper root in our hearts. The goal… I’ll confess. If you’re gonna go to sleep, you go to sleep right after this, but I’m gonna encourage you to give expressions to gratitude with greater enthusiasm and more persistence than you ever had, okay? Now, you can take a nap or you can hear the rest of the story. Thankfulness and grace, they really have a relationship that I think we walk past a great deal. It’s the same verse I put in your notes, but it’s from two different translations. You know, people often ask me, «What’s the best translation of the Bible»?
Don’t get ahead of me. It’s the one you’ll read 'cause if you’re not reading it, it doesn’t matter how outstanding the nomenclature. I mean, it doesn’t matter, so. The one that you’ll read. But there’s a fullness that comes from more than one translation. So, don’t ever build your theology off a single word. But in Hebrews 12:28 in the NIV, it says, «Therefore, since we’re receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken», you know there’s a kingdom coming to this earth that will never be shaken. There’ll be no end to it. Then the King will reign in righteousness and justice. I’ve been learning a bit about that lately. I’ve been doing a study. I’ll share it with you at some point, but there’s a kingdom coming that cannot be shaken.
«Let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe». The author of Hebrews in this verse is suggesting to us that the appropriate response to an unshakeable kingdom is that we should be thankful. Same verse in the New King James says this: «Therefore, since we’re receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear». I don’t wanna overstate it, but I think there is a subtle connection between the words of «grace» and «thankfulness». Grace, you’ll remember the simplest definition, I know, is just the unmerited, the undeserved mercy of God: when God shows you something of kindness, of his character that’s not in any way connected to merit. It’s not what you deserve, it’s not what you earn, it’s not what you have a right to.
So that the appropriate expression to the recognition of grace would be «Thank you,» gratitude. If you don’t express gratitude, you’re suggesting you think you earned it, and it can’t be grace. So, there really is a connection. To fully live in the grace of God, you have to cultivate gratitude. You have to be a thankful person. Even linguistically, there’s some links. The Greek word for grace is «charis». I’m not a linguistic expert, but I’m still working on English, but I know a handful of words and a handful of languages. In Spanish we say, «Thank you,» with what? «Gracias». You’re a linguists? If you look at it, it’s pretty simple to see that that came from the root of «grace».
In Italian, look at you, bunch of hillbillies. No multiple languages. I’m impressed. «Grazie,» again, pretty clear that it has a connection with «grace». Grace and thankfulness go together. When we’re unthankful, we diminish the grace of God. The Bible talks about nullifying the grace of God. How can you nullify? How can you make inactive the unmerited goodness of God? By not being grateful for it. You diminish it in your life. You see, we can’t enjoy God’s grace without being thankful. We’ve been given some very clear instructions to the church. I just brought you a sample. We’re not gonna explore them in any great detail, but in Colossians 3, verses 15 and 17, it says, «Let the peace of God rule in your hearts».
I would like that to happen in my heart. We live in a turbulent world. I mean, about any place you put your finger on the globe, there’s been a conflict, and but we’ve been just a hair’s breadth away from being engaged in multiple conflicts in recent weeks. It’s not an easy time to be peaceful. There’s loud voices saying the economy is going to crater, I mean, all sorts of dire predictions. How do you let peace rule in your hearts? Well, biblical peace isn’t an absence of conflict. Jesus said, «My peace I give to you». Jesus did not live a conflict-free life. Most places he went, he caused trouble. They hated him. They ultimately tortured him to death. «My peace I give to you». «Well…»
What you see in Jesus is a complete confidence of God’s abiding presence and his unlimited power. He’s standing before a Roman governor who has the authority to have him tortured to death, and the governor’s not impressed with Jesus’s responses, and Jesus finally looks at him. He said, «You would have no power if my Dad didn’t give it to you». And he didn’t do it in an arrogant way. He wasn’t taunting him. They were having a pretty significant truth encounter. «My peace I give to you». You may stand in front of people who think they have much more authority than you do, they have far more financial resources than you do, have great power, or what they would imagine, all sorts of achievements and accomplishments. If you’re a child of the King, there is a Spirit within you that can bring peace no matter the circumstances in which you find yourself. Amen.
Folks, the church has been inert for too long. We’ve imagined ourselves inept. We have not been aware of the Spirit that is within us or the price that’s been paid that we could be ambassadors in this season. «Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body; and be thankful. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him». How do we stand in that peace? How does it rule in our hearts? By being thankful.
See, most of us know intuitively, if not consciously, there’s a battle that takes place in our mind, in our thoughts. And there’s a corresponding battle that takes place in our will and our emotions, tensions. It’s not so often that we don’t know the right thing. We don’t wanna do the right thing. Oh, me too. It’s okay. Everybody gets really stiff and looks forward… «I don’t know who he’s talking to, couldn’t be me». Maybe you know somebody. I’m gonna guess somebody in your acquaintance sphere that has a difficult time doing the right thing. Still not gonna bite, huh? «Don’t even have a friend that does that». That battle lives within us, and it’s not about tenure in the body of Christ. You may have been born-again, Spirit-filled, Bible-reading, demon-chasing Christian for a long time. We still battle that, have that conflict in our mind. Jesus had that turmoil in his own mind in Gethsemane. «God, I don’t wanna do this. Nevertheless, I’ll do what you ask».
So, how do we engage that? How do we overcome that? How do we turn that back? Well, we have some choices at that point. We can recalibrate. We can use secular definitions. Or we’ll extrapolate. We’ll kind of extend ourselves some personal grace and liberty, and we’ll cheat around the edges. Those are all options. Or we can take the biblical prescription and say, you know, one of the ways to turn down the volume on those dissenting voices is to begin to give expression to gratitude. «God, I thank you today».
The voice says, «You know, you can’t believe your Bible. It’s hard to understand». «God, I thank you for your Word. Thank you that it’s available to me, that I can read it, that it’s in a language I can understand, that I can get a translation that’s at grade level I can get. God, I thank you, and I’ll begin to use my thoughts and my words to address that battle that’s taking place inside of me. God, I wanna honor you. God, I wanna do what’s right before you. I wanna walk uprightly before you. I choose you today. I want the thoughts of my heart, the meditations, I want the things I think about and the things I do to be pleasing in your sight. I’ll begin to say it out loud. I gotta push back on that junk».
Why? Because I need the peace of God to rule in my heart. I intend to follow a different compass. My future is not charted by the strength of the US dollar. My hope doesn’t depend upon who happens to occupy Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh, I understand all of those things make a difference, they have influences in my life, but they aren’t gonna steal my peace. The Bible says we have a peace which passes understanding. See, we’ve tried to self-insure. You know the phrase: not to be dependent on an outside provider. You don’t wanna have to use an outside lender. You don’t wanna have to use an outside safety net. You wanna self-insure your life. You wanna be able to deal with whatever tragedy might come, whatever you wanna have the ability to offset the negative impact, be independent.
You know that’s not a new idea. That’s not a 21st-century great idea from very astute planners. That’s an idea from the pit of hell. It goes back to the opening chapters of Genesis. I’m not opposed to affluence, folks. I don’t mean that. But the great temptation way back in the garden, back in those opening chapters of your Bible, you know, all the times you said you were gonna read your Bible, you got through this part of the story. Usually, we made it to at least Genesis 5. And what did Satan say? «You can be like God. You can be like God».
See, the reality is we’re dependent upon our Creator. We can’t save ourselves. We can’t deliver ourselves. We can’t. Life is filled with things that we can’t resolve. I like good planning. I like good preparation. I’m a planner. I’m all for that stuff, but I wanna live in a place where my planning and my preparation is inadequate. The purposes of God are greater than what I can do on my own. I wanna follow him. I wanna serve him. I want to be a greater purpose in his life. So, I need to know how to live in the peace of God. And it’s unleashed by thankfulness.
1 Thessalonians 5:16, «Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you». Doesn’t say that everything that happens to you is God’s will for you. It says, «No matter what happens to you, you can be thankful». You can be thankful to the Lord, doesn’t mean you have to be thankful for every outcome. But in the midst of everything that’s happening, you go, «God, I know that you love me». In the darkest times of my life, when I felt like my faith really was hanging by a thread and I couldn’t conceive of anything that I could really give thanks to God for, I would stand in the fields at night and thank him for the attributes of his character that I was conscious of.
«God, I thank you that you’re a faithful God. I don’t feel it right now, but I know you are. God, I know you’re a merciful God. It doesn’t feel that way to me right now, but I know you’re a merciful God». And I would, verbally, out loud so I could hear it, I would take the attributes of God’s character and I would thank him for that. At the moment, it was all I had. Paul’s writing to the church at Thessalonica, and he’s saying, «Rejoice always, pray without ceasing». «Okay, well, how do you do that? How do I do my job and never stop praying»?
I read something that’s along that line that was intriguing to me. It says, «Never come to the end of praying». Never come to the end of praying. You know, there’s a segment within the church that’s just like, «Well, I prayed once and I believe. So, I don’t pray anymore». Oh, stop it. Never come to the end of praying. Never pray for more than 30 minutes, but never go 30 minutes without praying. That’s a pretty good rule of thumb. It kind of gets us out of the middle of «You know, well, I prayed for 11 hours». Well, that’s good. I’m an advocate for prayer. But I can live with that little formula, kind of a 30-minute limit. Thirty minutes, I’ll take a break. But I’m not going more than 30 minutes without re-engaging.
There’s a third instruction given to the church in Philippians 4. It says, «Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God». Thankfulness dispels anxiety. Some of us have the spiritual gift of worry. I didn’t say what spirit it was a gift of, but some of us have the spiritual gift of worry. And then, you know, we know that Jesus said not to worry. I mean, he said it multiple times in the Sermon on the Mount: «Do not worry». And we kind of know that, and so we don’t really wanna say, «I’m worried». So, we put it in spiritual language. You know, we’re really good at that in the church. We don’t very often walk in here, «Oh, I’m having a real struggle with sin». We’ll come and say, «You know, I have a burden». Oh, you mean you’re worried? «No! I’m not worried».
We kind of expand our vocabulary words. But worry will paralyze you. The Old English word for worry means to choke. Worry will choke off your air, it’ll shrink your capacity, it’ll force you into delay. And thankfulness will dispel anxiety. Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, get your request to God. See, the simple act of saying thank you to the Lord will diminish the influence of worry in your thoughts and your emotions. So, you need, on a regular basis, like, every day, like, you take medicine morning, noon, and night, or morning and evening or whatever schedule you may have ever been familiar every 4 hours. You know, if you’re in the hospital and you have pain issues, it’s very, they’ll come in and ask you about your pain.
«You know, on a scale of one to ten, how are you doing»? And then their response to you is gonna be based on how you respond to your pain threshold, what kind of meds you get, the good stuff or not so much. Well, start to live your life with that «To what extent is anxiety a presence in my heart? To what extent am I carrying that»? And I’m not talking about your ignoring it. I meet a whole group of people that have taken the ostrich approach. «You know, I just don’t think about that. I don’t pay any attention. I don’t watch the news. I don’t like to talk about that. Oh, God will deal with that». Folks, if you take the clear teaching of Scripture and you ignore it, all you’ve done is raised your hand and say, «I vote for judgment».
I’m not talking about ignoring the truth as a pattern to peace. I’m talking about recognizing fully what’s happening in the world around us, and, in spite of that, «I’m going to choose on a very regular basis to pause and say, 'God, I wanna thank you. You gave me breath this morning. God, I thank you that you’ve given me the strength to me today. God, I thank you that there are places I can go and worship you. God, I thank you that I’ve got a Bible to read. God, I thank you that your Spirit lives within me. I’ve got food to eat today, God. Lord, you have been so good to me. I wanna praise you. I wanna give thank you. I want it to come out of me. I don’t want it just to bounce around inside of me, 'cause I need to push back on all that other stuff.'»
And then if you’ll gain a little momentum in that, you start to read the Psalms, and the psalmist said that «the rulers of the earth gather together with their plots against our king, and the Lord looks from heaven and he laughs». And I’ll start to laugh, and I’ll go, «Well, God, if you’re laughing, I’m gonna laugh. I hear the Ayatollahs, and I hear this and I hear that. But, God, if you’re laughing, I’m gonna chuckle. God, I thank you». You see, I think we’ve been way too passive because we haven’t really trusted the Lord.
Say, «Well, Pastor, you know, I did that for two days». I understand. I’ve been on that diet before. You know, somebody told me about some great weight loss plan they were on, you know, intermittent fasting. We’re gonna eat for 4 hours and fast for 20. I tried it. I ate for the four hours, and then I got about six hours into it, and I thought, «Nah, it’s not for me». But I still weighed, you know what? I didn’t lose a pound. And, you know, it’s like we try this stuff for a moment or two. We go, «Well, nothing happened».
Folks, significant change in our lives comes from the discipline to apply truth over a bit of a period of time. And my dad was a veterinarian. You know that I said we grew up in the vet clinic, and we used to dispense medication, and we were usually working the desk, and we were the ones that took the calls, and people would call and say, «You know, the medicine the doctor gave me for my puppy». We’d pull up the file. «Yes, I got that here». And he said, «Well, I was supposed to give one tablet every four hours for six days». He said, «I gave him three tablets, and he was doing so well. I wanted him to get better faster. So, I gave him all the tablets». I groaned on the phone. But we get impatient. We wanna microwave the answer. And if I tell you about that, a puppy and pills, you’ll groan. But we do it with the Lord. «Lord, you know, I’ve been grateful for two days. I knew that pastor was just trying to mess me up».
Let’s talk about some of the functions of thankfulness for a minute. If I go down that rabbit trail, we’ll never come back. Thankfulness provides access to God. I want you to, for a moment, thankfulness provides access to God, to God. Psalm 100, it’s a familiar passage: «Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It’s he who made us, and we’re his». There’s so much in this. Know that the Lord is God. He made us. Do you understand how many voices shout at you every day that «God’s not the Creator»? You need to shout back with the Word of God. «God, I thank you that you made us. We’re yours, we’re your people, we’re the sheep of your pasture».
Verse 4, we enter in your gates with thanksgiving and your courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever, and his faithfulness continues through all generations. Verse 5 gives us three very specific reasons for this thankfulness that brings us into the presence of God. And these are true even if circumstances are difficult. It said, «The Lord is good, his love endures forever, and his faithfulness continues through all generations».
Doesn’t mean we don’t go through difficult places. Doesn’t mean we don’t have challenges. But in the midst of all of those, I can be thankful that the Lord is good. If he was vengeful, I’d be dust. If he wasn’t graceful, I wouldn’t exist. If he wasn’t merciful, I wouldn’t be here. But the Lord is good. You know, you can spend the entire day saying, «Lord, I wanna thank you for your goodness». Start a goodness list. Your first dozen or so entries will be kind of difficult, but if you’ll do that and spend the day saying, «Lord, I wanna thank you for your goodness,» you’ll be amazed at how it will break through. The goodness of God in our lives. His love endures. It doesn’t diminish. And his faithfulness continues through every generation.