Thanksgiving at Thanskgiving (Sermon for the Day)

Philippians 1:1-8

Take your Bibles, Please…

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. (Philippians 1:1-7 ESV).

Some Introduction

Thanksgiving at Thanksgiving is a strange title for a sermon. However, I find it very easy to be thankful for many things while not being thankful. In fact, since November 1st I have been listing a different thing I am thankful about each day I send out the Morning Devotionals. It has been a wonderful exercise in remembering the incredible fashion God has blessed my life. One of the strange things I noticed when I reviewed the list was there was nothing on it that was even remotely negative! Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to be thankful for good things while we at best ignore the bad things? That’s what I want us to look at today. Some have called it an “attitude of gratitude.” I just want us to focus on the character of thanksgiving.

It is a wonderful testimony to that kind of Christian faith that says, “We have a national holiday where, once a year, we focus all of our attention on God, his goodness and his graciousness to us and we say, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

We know the origin of Thanksgiving, the story of how our Pilgrim Fathers living in England under an oppressive king sought religious liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom to worship God according to the dictates of their own hearts. They could not get it under that oppressive government so they moved to Holland for a while. There they were just strangers in the land under a government that only gave them concessions to worship, but it was really not a government of freedom and equality and liberty. They had a dream of finding a new land where they could establish a government and a society where all people would be equal; where all could stand equal before God and worship him according to the dictates of their hearts.

So they set sail across the harsh Atlantic. They made that journey in a little ship. Let me graphically portray it. The ship was just 28 feet wide. And it was just 113 feet long! About the same size as our sanctuary! There were 120 people, 12 of them children, and about 30 crew members on that small ship. And they set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. For thirteen weeks they battled the storms, the waves, the dangers, sickness, hardship, and finally, they landed on that Plymouth coast. On that rocky shore they fell to their knees and thanked God for bringing them to this wonderful land of promise.

Yet, it was a land that repulsed them with enemies, with unfriendly Indians who killed them. It was a land of hostile environment, of snow and storm and hunger. They built their little fortress and, during that winter, they literally starved to death. Before the winter was over, there were more crosses on the hillside than there were living people inside the barricade. But when spring came, these wonderful forefathers of ours plowed the soil and planted the seed and cultivated the crops and built a new life. When fall came, they brought in the harvest for their first year. They said, “Let us have a feast of thanksgiving to God, bringing our first fruits to him to honor him for his goodness.”

And it is well, that we, as American people, with this history and tradition and foundation of faith in God, have this as a national holiday of thanksgiving. But, there are 364 days of the rest of the year. Thanksgiving is one day, what about the other days? What about perpetual thanksgiving? That is what it ought to be. Every day should be a beautiful day! Every day is a good day when we understand it is a gift from God to us.

Thanksgiving should be every day. This attitude can change our lives. We choose the kind of attitude we are going to have. Not everyone has this attitude. I’ve met some really pessimistic people in my life of ministry. One man stood out though. He came in to see me one blustery winter day, much like we have had this past week, and when asked how he was doing, he said, “Well, some days are better and some days are worse. Today is better than tomorrow is going to be; but today is worse than yesterday.”

Think that through. I don’t believe I could deal with any circumstance if I said that today is worse than yesterday and I know that today is better than tomorrow will be. But, I know a lot of people who believe yesterday was always the best and tomorrow is always going to be the worst. Now, remember, we choose our attitude in life. To do the same we must look to some of the examples of people who lived life "at this crest of the hill” all the time; the people who lived with an attitude of thanksgiving in good times and bad times, in all the yesterdays and tomorrows, in all kinds of circumstances. I have chosen such a man this morning, the Apostle Paul.

The great Apostle Paul's life was characterized by perpetual thanksgiving. He understood that thanksgiving was an attitude that conditioned everything that happened to him. As a result, he could say again and again and again, I am so thankful. He thanked God throughout his epistles. Writing to the Christians at Rome he said: “I thank God through Jesus Christ for you all, for all the circumstances related to my life as I am trying to come and visit you, I thank God.”

Paul had not even seen the people in Rome when he wrote this to them. But he was thanking God for them and for their prayers. And then he wrote to the church at Corinth where he had established a church, and suffered all kinds of difficulties and misunderstanding. The church was filled with trouble of all kinds. He writes: “I thank my God always on your behalf. I thank God for you all.” I could easily imagine him thinking, “You are a sorry bunch down there; you cause me all kinds of heartache. But I thank God for you, you are a great people.” He continued to say, “I thank God who enables us to walk triumphantly through all the circumstances of life. Listen carefully. He thanks God. And he is correct to do so. God is the one who enables me to be victorious always in everything that challenges me in life.

Then Paul writes to the little church at Ephesus. Giving thanks always for all things. He writes to Timothy, his son in the ministry. He writes, “I thank the God whom I serve and you serve. I thank God for our calling as a minister of the gospel.” I read to you his thanksgiving passage to the church at Philippi. That gives us the key. In these words, he gives us the secret of the thankful life, perpetual thanksgiving, the attitude of thanksgiving. And he tells us it is the key in three things. Paul says, I thank God for the fellowship we had; and he describes three areas in which they had fellowship. Paul focuses on their fellowship together. He is reminding them they are all in this life together. We have fellowship with one another and that rises up in this attitude of thanksgiving. This provides the clear focus for us today.

First, Paul thanks God for the fellowship of imprisonment (7a).

Paul is writing from the Mamertine Prison in Rome. If you go to Rome today, you can see the excavations of the Roman Forum and all the public buildings. Then, over to the side, another area has been excavated and you can see Mamertine Prison where political prisoners were kept. You can go down into that dungeon, about ten feet below ground, carved out of solid rock. I am told you can almost feel the presence of the Apostle Paul as he was chained there. There were no steps when Paul was there; they have cut steps to enable you to walk down to the cells now. In Paul's day it was just a big hole carved from the rock with an opening at the top where they dropped the prisoners into that hole, and then pitched food down to them. That is where Paul was in chains. He was not just in that hole, but he was in chains. Can you imagine Paul as he dictates this letter, perhaps pacing the small area, chains rattling, and thinking of the fellowship he has with the saints in Philippi. Paul is going to be executed soon. It will not be an easy, humanitarian form of execution. He will have his head cut from his body to entertain the bloodthirsty pagans of the Roman Empire.

Paul reminds us that we all wear chains. We have a fellowship of suffering together. Hardship comes to all of us in life. Pain and suffering comes to everybody, it is the common denominator of life. Death is going to come and break every family circle, sooner or later. You will not escape. We have a fellowship in this. Pain is going to come to your body, sooner or later. It comes to all. We have a fellowship in this. People are going to disappoint us and break our hearts. It comes to all of us. We have a fellowship in this. Paul says elsewhere that we have this fellowship of suffering even with Jesus Christ for he suffered on the cross, and he shares in our suffering. This is the reason we may find joy and victory in our suffering. It is through Jesus Christ! So I can thank God that, even in chains, every day is a good day and a beautiful day. He is working all of our pain to our good.

Mary and I have visited both the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and Washington D.C. They are dedicated to the memory of the millions of Jews who were killed by the Nazis in World War II. In both you can see the horrible pictures and read the accounts of the ghettos and the concentration camps. But in the midst of all the dark tales of suffering, there is one amazing story of how God can transform horror into hope. In one of the German concentration camps there was a young lady named Rachel. She endured great hardship from being made to work in the snow with inadequate clothing . She watched in horror as many of her friends and family members were killed. Then one day, the guards left unexpectedly. She didn't know the war was over. Later that day some American soldiers arrived to set the prisoners free. One young American soldier told Rachel he had come to rescue her and for her to gather her few possessions. Then he held the door for her and said, "After you, ma'am." Rachel started to cry. He asked, "What's wrong, ma'am?" She said, "I can't remember the last time someone held a door open for me. It's the nicest thing anyone has done for me in a long time." The soldier stayed in touch with Rachel after she was relocated, and they became friends. Later they fell in love and were married.

That's what God can do. He can take the most terrible situation imaginable and make something beautiful out of it. Our God is still in control. Whenever you go through tough times, you can either look for the junk or you can look for the joy. That is what Paul is talking about when he mentions the fellowship of chains. It is the fellowship of suffering that we all have together. I find joy in it as you find joy in it, because Jesus Christ is in it. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory to be triumphant over all the circumstances of life.

Second, Paul thanks God for the fellowship of the Gospel (v. 7b).

He says, It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. (Philippians 1:7 ESV).

In one particularly wintry fall a young woman named Linda was traveling alone up the rutted and rugged highway from Alberta to the Yukon. Linda didn't know you don't travel to Whitehorse alone in a rundown Honda Civic, so she set off where only four-wheel drives normally venture. The first evening she found a room in the mountains near a summit and asked for a 5 am wakeup call so she could get an early start. She couldn't understand why the clerk looked surprised at that request, but as she awoke to early morning fog shrouding the mountain tops, she understood. Not wanting to look foolish, she got up and went to breakfast. Two truckers invited Linda to join them, and since the place was so small, she felt obliged. "Where are you headed?" one of the truckers asked. “Whitehorse.” "In that little Civic? No way! This pass is dangerous in weather like this." "Well, I'm determined to try," was Linda's gutsy, if not very informed, response. "Then I guess we're just going to have to hug you," the trucker suggested. Linda drew back. "There's no way I'm going to let you touch me!" "Not like THAT!" the truckers chuckled. "We'll put one truck in front of you and one in the rear. In that way, we'll get you through the mountains." All that foggy morning Linda followed the two red dots of the tail lights in front of her and had the reassurance of a big escort behind as they made their way safely through the mountains.

Caught in the fog in our dangerous passage through life, we need to be "hugged" with fellow Christians who know the way and can lead safely ahead of us, and with others behind, gently encouraging us along. So Paul says that is why I can be thankful all the time. He is thankful for the fellowship that they have together in the gospel. We, too, may be thankful for that fellowship in our church. We should remind ourselves how blessed we are to have people around us who will “hug” us through the journey ahead!

Third, Paul thanks God for the fellowship of grace (v. 7).

One of the incredible truths about a community of faith is that we have all experienced grace. I am afraid many of us are guilty of judging people based on what we appear to be on the surface. I have found that it is easy to forget that the real evidence of fellowship is not what we see on the outside of a person, but what abides in the heart. It is the core of grace working within us to do the good will of our Father that makes us all brothers and sisters.

The lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston and walked timidly, without an appointment, into the president of Harvard’s outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge. She frowned. "We want to see the president", the man said softly. "He’ll be busy all day", the secretary snapped. "We’ll wait", the lady replied. For hours, the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t. The secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted doing. "Maybe if they just see you for a few minutes, they’ll leave", she told him. He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president, stern-faced with dignity, strutted toward the couple. The lady told him, "We had a son that attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus". The president wasn’t touched, he was shocked. "Madam", he said gruffly. "We can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery". "Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard". The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical property at Harvard". For a moment, the lady was silent. The president was pleased. He could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?" Her husband nodded. The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.

Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California, where they established the University that bears their name, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about. You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.

A Final Thought

We come to the end of the message… but the beginning of the challenge. Will you put thanksgiving in your Thanksgiving?