1 Thessalonians 5 v12-28 - Give Thanks

Introduction.

Have you ever experienced a moment when you caught a glimpse of the price tag for some of the privileges we enjoy today?

Some years ago, I went out to France to visit the Somme battlefield. Most of us are aware of the terrible loss of life in that battle which took place between July and November 1916. As you would expect there are numerous cemeteries and memorials in that area but one above all dominates all of them. It is the Thiepval memorial to the missing. It stands a total of 160ft high inscribed with the 72,246 names of all those who were killed on this battlefield between 1915 and 1918 and have no known grave – and that is just the British side. To put that into some context the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff holds 74,500.

One of the thoughts that hit me was each one of those names were all some mother’s son, they all ate, slept, laughed, and cried just like the rest of us. I am not ashamed to say that the enormity of this sight moved me to tears and from time to time it still does, and I hope that this is always the case.

In a way most of us can relate to this as we all know of somebody in our family who has fought in a war. Some of us even may have seen action – I’d just like to say, “thank you”.

Every November we take time to remember those that gave their lives for the things we enjoy today. It is good and proper that we do so.

There was only one way to defeat the enemy.

The sad thing is that throughout history tyrants and bullies only understand one sort of language and that tragically is the one of force. Looking back do we think that any debate or argument would have persuaded somebody like Hitler that he was wrong? It was tried and I believe that those who sought peace were sincere in their attempts, but ultimately wrong. I only learned the other day that the signatures on the Treaty of Versailles were barely dry when German generals started planning another invasion of Europe and that was before anyone had heard of Corporal Adolf Hitler.

Every one of us has a mortal enemy that wages war on us daily and that comes to us in the form of our fallen nature from birth. You might ask ‘Just how can a small innocent baby be born at odds with God?’ I openly admit I am not a parent, but I have some experience of having been a child and if you were to ask my parents which was the easier to get me to do something that was right or wrong, I know that they would confirm the latter was true. As probably most parents would.

This is how the fallen nature expresses itself and none of us are any different. We try to make amends for what we do wrong by good works, but even a life wholly spent doing such things cannot remove the stain of the sinful nature which is the sworn enemy of our souls.

There is good news – God knew from even before the time of the garden of Eden that He would have to intervene directly in the story of humanity to restore that broken relationship. So, He sent Jesus, this was not to just to give us an example of how we should live life. No, God sent Him to partake in the experience of humanity – but without sin and then to suffer and die on a cross an innocent. Fulfilling the part of the lamb without spot or blemish that had been sacrificed year after year by the priests of Israel.

In the sacrifice of this one perfect man Jesus, all those that now have trusted in Him for forgiveness of the terminal tyranny of sin. The cruel irony of history is that in war the lives of millions are sacrificed to liberate those oppressed by one tyrant or other. God accomplishes this liberation of our souls by His Son.

1 Corinthians c15 v21: By one man came death into the world but by Christ came eternal life.

1 Timothy 1v15: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

When we consider the last world war we see D-Day as the beginning of the liberation of Europe. Well, the war did not end on 6^th June 1944, far from it, the final surrender of Germany didn’t come until nearly a year later. The enemy that held sway over most of mainland Europe was not going to give up without a fight with counterattack after counterattack. Once Jesus was born in Bethlehem that was not mission accomplished and we see that Satan threw every possible means to stop Jesus going to the cross, the homicidal actions of Herod, mobs trying to stone Jesus to death or throw him from a cliff that wasn’t the end of it, as the sovereignty of God was not to be thwarted.

As an aside I would like to encourage you if you have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour you might be wondering why you wrestle daily with the old fallen nature and its habits? Well just like D-Day wasn’t the end of the war neither was the day you accepted Jesus the day you became sinless perfection. For some people to vainly declare they no longer sin is a contradiction as they are lying! The ultimate victory in this spiritual war has been won, what we are living in at present is a mopping up mission in a fallen and corrupt world.

We are liberated from a tyranny.

So, what does liberation mean? It is the act of being set free. Rarely do you see people miserable in victory parades at the end of any conflict. I recall one news clip during the invasion of Iraq that showed an Iraqi and his family singing and dancing as a convoy of coalition forces drove past his home. For this man and his family, the fear of living in a part of the world that was in the control of Saddam Hussein was over.

When I was a teenager, I was a member of the Sea Cadets, and we visited a Royal Marine base in Devon for a day and were shown around and shown various pieces of equipment and even got to fire real guns with real bullets. One of the of the things we were shown were infra-red night sights. Of course, this had to be done in complete darkness and we lined up to take our turn to look through them. It was only after I had done this did the trouble start as I tried to make it back to where the rest of our group was gathered. I headed off in the direction I could hear people and then BANG as I walked straight into a wall, I moved a bit to one side, tried again and BANG, after three more collisions with the wall I managed to get to where I was meant to be.

Without the light of Christ in our lives we are just like that, crashing endlessly around in the darkness of sin, repeating the same mistakes no matter how hard we try in our strength to set things right. It results in nothing more than hurt and separation from God.

Through accepting Christ into our lives, it is He alone that sets us free from the penalty of sin, which is an eternity in hell, which is separation from God. You might well think that is nothing more than a religious fire insurance, what about the here and now (you may be thinking that as I am writing this) I really don’t know the sort of life you have led. The thing that God wants you to know is that even though what you have done in the past still haunts you God will forgive you and not only that He forgets it too.

Hebrews 8 v12: For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

It doesn’t end there with the forgiveness of sins past and present, the reassurance that our eternity in heaven is secure. We are set free to worship God, we are free to speak to Him directly and not go through some third party. Through God’s spirit living in us makes us see the word of the Bible in a wholly new and living way and not just words on a page. We will be able to discern His hand guiding us, His voice speaking to us – if we care to listen! These are just some of the blessings and He promises NEVER to leave us.

Ephesians 2v6&7: And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Give Thanks.

So, what should be our response to this? If I am honest, it is at odds with the world we live in, and this has probably been the case since time immemorial. We live in a society that by and large is an ungrateful one. It expresses itself in so many ways, ingratitude for holding a door open, ingratitude for letting somebody pull out, ingratitude for providing food, education, healthcare, housing. Ingratitude for the sacrifices made by previous generations, the list would appear quite long. They say many a true word is spoke in jest, but this really hit home the other day when somebody joked to me by saying ‘You can always tell you are an essential worker when you are on low wages and most people treat you like dirt.’ I imagine that there are a multitude of essential workers who would agree with that.

Yes, these things are all sad and we can shake our heads with everyone else. If we take time to study God’s word all these things are ultimately gifts from Him for us in the here and now. Although these fade to nothing when compared to the ingratitude for God’s provision of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection. To vainly think that good works and mere religious ritual will suffice, they won’t as our best efforts are but filthy rags before God without accepting the gift of Jesus into your life.

You may well be reading this thinking how can I be grateful to God when my life seems to be just one bad thing after another happening to me. I can’t give you an easy answer for that especially as it is a question, I have asked it myself, and still, I have no answer for. I would say this to you though, something led you to read this here, maybe it was because I asked you to or maybe it is the result of a random internet search.

Over he past three years my wife and I have been through a particularly trying time. We have cried out to God, even shouted, and screamed at Him asking just what is/was going on, why has this happened? We still don’t know what the answer is yet, but we are further along the road and away from the toxic environment that was at the root of the problem. We have just had to trust in this verse:

Romans 8v28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of all those who love Him.

Being put in a situation where I have had to do this is probably one of the hardest things I have ever lived through. What I can say is by looking back from this point is that God has proved Himself faithful in so many ways, many of them quite unexpected. Without it I would not be writing this, this message would have just remained a collection of notes and references filed somewhere on a computer. The time has also caused me to discover a deeper relationship with Jesus. In addition to this God has brought people into my life who have now become very much part of it, and who have journeyed with us both during this time. I could go through this at length, but this is now not the time, but I would say just this, I would not choose to go through such an experience to get me closer to God, but I thank Him for the circumstances for getting me this close.

Irrespective of all that has happened I have come to understand at a far deeper level than before the following verse:

Romans 8 v35: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

For the believer in Christ, it has all been done, the price of our salvation, His payment of the penalty of sin was paid at the cross and God’s power demonstrated through the resurrection. I have been compelled by recent circumstances to come to this undeniable fact that everything in this life is transient and even when I was at my lowest point and felt that life held no hope at all He was still there alongside me irrespective of how I felt or how I was behaving. It will always be the case that irrespective of my mood and circumstances changing the living God never does.