Sermons
Lips That Give Thanks
LIPS THAT GIVE THANKS
Sermon By Terry Siverd
Cortland Church of Christ / November 18, 2018
Present Annual Thanksgiving Placard to Lois Arnold.
Promote this evening's ThankSinging.
For this morning's sermon I want to borrow a catch word from the book of Hebrews.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews (I think it is Paul) is trying to pull his compatriots over the finish line.
We normally (and correctly) emphasize that Paul was a missionary to the Gentiles.
But in emphasizing such we cannot dismiss Paul's great love for his Jewish brethren.
Everywhere Paul went preaching the gospel, his methodology was to go to the Jews first (Rom.1:16).
Rom.10:1 / Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for THEM is for their salvation.
Rom.9:1-5 / I am telling the truth, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great
sorrow and unceasing grief in m heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake
of MY BRETHREN, MY KINSMEN ACCORDING TO THE FLESH, who are ISRAELITES, to whom belongs the adoption
as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises.
The Hebrews were living in the last days of the Old Covenant, which according to Heb.8:13, was about to fade away
and in its place the new and living way, inaugurated by Jesus (Heb.10:20), was coming to be firmly established.
The Jewish nation was faced with a life and death decision: stay with the old and die, or go with the new and live.
Paul uses a catch word - - actually a two-word catch phrase, “Let us...”.
Paul is trying his best to promote the unity of the body of Christ.
He is urging his readers to band together in persevering as they near the goal line.
Notice how often this little but big catch phrase, “Let us”, appears in the epistle to the Hebrews.
7
2:1 / let us pay closer attention
4:1 / let us fear...lest any come short
4:11 / let us be diligent to enter that rest
4:14 / let us hold fast our confession
4:16 / let us draw near with confidence
10:22 / let us draw near with a sincere heart
10:23 / let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering
10:24 / let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds
10:25 / let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together
12:1 /a let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles us (i.e., returning to the old)
12:1b / let us run with endurance the race that is set before us fixing our eyes on Jesus
12:28 / let us show gratitude
13:13 / let us go out to Him outside the camp
13:15 / let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God
One reason I contend that Paul authored Hebrews is because we see this same phrase elsewhere in his other epistles.
The apostle John uses it a couple of times .
1Jn.3:18 / little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth
1Jn. 4:17 / beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God...
But, in case you have not noticed, this catch phrase, “let us”, is sprinkled throughout Paul's writings.
Rom.13:12-13 / let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light
Rom.14:13 / let us not judge one another
1Cor.5:8 / let us celebrate the feast
Gal.5:25 / if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit
Gal.6:9-10 / let us not lose heart in doing good
Gal.6:10 / let us do good to all men, especially the household of faith
Phil.3:15 / let us...have this attitude
1Thess.5:5 / let us not sleep...let us be alert and sober
1Tim.6:8 / if we have food and clothing, let us be content
On this Sunday before Thanksgiving I want us to zero in on two of Paul's “let us” exhortations.
These two admonitions both appear in the epistle to the Hebrews.
(1) First consider Heb.12:28 / Therefore, since we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude,
by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
As Christians, we are citizens of God's heavenly kingdom (Heb.11:16 & 12:22).
In Eph.1:7, Paul writes, In Him (Christ Jesus) we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us.
As children of God and disciples of Jesus we are so richly blessed.
One song-writer has tried to express the depth of our gratitude titling his song, ten-thousand reasons.
Ten is a number that symbolizes totality (as in ten commandments and ten plagues and ten virgins).
I don't think the song writer was saying that we literally have 10,000 reasons,
rather he is using 10,000 in a symbolic sense - - “ten times ten times ten times ten”.
A failure on our part to show gratitude to God for His never-ending blessings
is a failure on our part to present to our Heavenly Father a life of acceptable service.
We must show our gratitude, but our gratitude must not be “for show”.
A fake smile plastered on just to give the appearance of a grateful heart will not cut it.
It must be heart-felt , originating from the deepest recesses our heart, mind and soul.
It cannot be phony. It must be real and genuine.
And it must be constant and steady.
It must be live-streaming.
We cannot grumble most of the time and be grateful every once in a while and still be pleasing to God.
In Col.4:2, Paul speaks of having “an attitude of gratitude”.
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving
This attitude of gratitude needs to become in us a predominate and permanent disposition of our heart.
We may have some slippage from time to time (days when we feel down),
but we need to grow to the point where a heart of thanksgiving becomes our “default setting.”
No matter what channel my cable TV is on when we turn it off at night, when you turn the TV on to
catch the news the next morning, it has reverted to the same pre-programmed Spectrum channel (channel 1).
(2) The second and final “Let Us” text we want to visit this morning is found in Heb.13:15 - - Through (Jesus) then,
let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruits of lips that give thanks to His name.
From this verse we are again reminded that our expression of praise to God (thanksgiving) needs to be continual.
Not once in a blue moon; not once in a full moon; not even once a week.
Our sacrifice of praise to God must be “steady as she goes” - - ever present.
I want to challenge us all to work diligently at learning to re-frame our trials and troubles.
To intentionally look for “the good” in the midst of “the bad”.
This is precisely what James was admonishing when he wrote,
consider it all JOY...when you encounter various trials (Js.1:2).
It is not that we enjoy pain. Neither is it that we are gluttons for punishment.
And this is not an instance of “spinning the text”.
James tells us precisely how we come to view trials with JOY - -
knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (Js.1:3).
This re-framing is what empowered Paul & Silas, in the immediate aftermath of having been
beaten with rods while preaching the gospel in Philippi, to pray and sing hymns of praises to God
while still in chains in dark, dank, dreadful, vermin-infested dungeon (Acts 16:23-25).
This is what strengthened the early disciples on the heels of such great sorrow.
Acts 12:2 records that James, the son of Zebedee, was put to death with a sword (beheaded).
Yet two chapters later, Luke notes in Acts 13:53 - -
the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
We modern-day Christians need to toughen up.
We tend to be too brittle; too easily shaken; too apt to wallow in self-pity; too prone to anxiety and depression.
When things don't go as we think they should we go into a tailspin and are often quite slow to rebound.
The antidote to all of this is GRATITUDE:
counting our blessings rather than focusing and fixating on our woes.
This is my sermon for today.
It is a short and to the point message, but challenging nonetheless.
LET US rise up and meet this sometimes daunting daily assignment.
We are “saints” - - ones who have been set apart to be God's people.
By virtue of our adoption as sons of God we are called to be a peculiar people (1Pet.2:9) - -
a people for God's own possession.
Not because of our own DNA, but as a result of the life-blood of the precious Lamb of God
that was poured forth on our behalf, we are called to be and enabled to be a different breed.
If we continually gripe, grouse and grumbling how are we any different that the world around us??
In the words of a hymn written by John Milton in the year 1624 - -
Let us with a GLADSOME MIND, praise the Lord for He is kind;
For His mercies aye endure, ever faithful, ever sure.
