You're listening to Mountain View Church Audio, Christ-centered teaching from the Wilderness City, Whitehorse, UConn. Here's this week's message. I am reading from Philippians 4, verses 4-7. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious for anything, and in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the God of peace, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mountain View Church Online.
My name is Elijah, and I am so glad that you're with us today. And you know what time of the year it is, don't you? It's Thanksgiving weekend. For so many of us, we're looking forward to the standard, hearty, picture-perfect Sunday, filled with three of our favorite things. Family, friends, and food.
That's what Thanksgiving is all about, isn't it? This holiday, we're told, is a day where we're supposed to pause for a time and surround ourselves with the things that matter the most. It's time to turn the cell phones off and have some face-to-face conversations. And we all generally agree that Thanksgiving is, like the name kind of suggests, an important time for us to recognize all the things we have to be thankful for. As I was getting ready for today's sermon and really dwelling on the idea of Thanksgiving, an interesting question started to form in my mind. And well, to be honest, I just can't shake it.
The question is this, okay? For Christians, should Thanksgiving Day actually be a day for giving thanks? Now, hold on, hold on, let me explain. I think it is a wonderful thing to count our blessings and to spend time with loved ones, okay? It's great. But I'm wondering, okay, if today is the day for giving thanks, what are we supposed to be doing for the other 364 days of the year? Do we save up all our gratitude for this moment? Do we stop being thankful as we move away from this weekend because thankfulness isn't on our calendar anymore? And for that matter, what changes on Thanksgiving Day itself? What makes the day so special?
Okay. Okay. So you're probably listening to this thinking, stop it, Elijah. You're ruining Thanksgiving. Just let us have this. Okay. Just, just leave it alone. Don't be so weird all the time. And I promise. Okay. I promise guys, I'm not trying to ruin Thanksgiving. I pinky swear. What I'm trying to do now is take you on the same journey I went on as I read what the Bible has to say about gratitude. So we're going to look at four short passages written by a man named Paul. Now, Paul was a big deal, like a super big deal.
In the first century, Paul wrote a pile of letters to different churches and even to different individuals. In his letters, he had a lot to say about how Christians were supposed to do life as followers of Jesus, how churches should operate, and he also explained to his readers who God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit really were. And if you read his letters, you'll notice that in most of his opening statements, he addresses his audience and expresses gratitude for them. He'll continually say things like, we give thanks to God always for you, or I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, or I do not cease to give thanks for you. Paul was a grateful guy. But it doesn't stop there. In Paul's teaching, he emphasizes the importance of giving thanks. Not just giving thanks as a nice thing to do, but giving thanks as a foundational part of being a follower of Jesus. In Paul's mind, being grateful and being a Christian went hand in hand.
Kind of like turkey with cranberry sauce. I'm sorry. Okay, I couldn't help that one. As we look at the following passages, we will see a picture of the purpose of Thanksgiving start to appear. And so let's start off by looking at a letter he wrote to the church in Ephesus. If you have a Bible or a Bible app, go ahead and open up to Ephesians chapter 5. We're going to look at verses 18 through 20. If you don't have either, you can hit pause on this video and just download a Bible app or Google the passage that I mentioned. It'll also appear on the screen over my silly face. And hey, also, if you want your very own Bible, go ahead and contact us here at Mountain View Church and we will send you one.
Free of charge. It's our gift to you. Okay, so Ephesians chapter five. Paul is giving all sorts of instructions to the church. And here he says, quote, be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right, how does that sound? Give thanks always and for everything. Wow, that actually sounds really hard.
I know that I don't do either of those things consistently. It's easy to give thanks when things are good. And it's easy to be grateful when you receive good gifts. But what about when things are hard? What about when awful stuff happens in your life? How are you supposed to be thankful then? Is it even possible? We'll keep reading and we'll see what else Paul has to say.
In the next letter we're going to look at, Paul is writing to a young man named Timothy. At this point, Timothy has already learned a lot from Paul and has apprenticed under him for several years. But now Timothy has been sent out to become a church leader. The letter Paul writes to him is really personal and it's packed with a ton of instruction. If you head over to 1 Timothy chapter 2, we're going to start by reading verses 1 and 2. It says, First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
What I find so interesting here is that Paul, who has now released Timothy into the big wide world of spiritual leadership and would have so much to teach him and remind him of, starts things off this way. He says, first of all, okay, first of all, Timothy, your prayer life needs to be healthy and consistent. And your prayer life needs to include, among a bunch of other things, thanksgiving for all people. Okay, so for us, if we're going to see that as instruction for us, that means, yes, we are called to be thankful for people that we don't like. We're called to be thankful for people who annoy us. So you might be wondering, like, Elijah, am I really supposed to be thankful for my crazy, weird uncle who lives in the bush and always finds a way to start a fight when we have family meals together? Yes. Yes, you are. You are supposed to be thankful for that crazy uncle. But not just that, okay? We're supposed to be finding ways to be thankful for our political leaders, too. Even the ones that we believe are making terrible decisions. Understand that for Timothy, quote, kings and all who are in high positions included the current Roman emperor at that time, Emperor Nero.
Emperor Nero, who was making a habit of killing Christians by feeding them to animals or lighting them on fire. Okay, so before you ask, yes, we're called to pray for our leaders too and to find ways to give thanks for their leadership. And no matter how offensive it might sound, yes, we are supposed to thank God for Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden, even Vladimir Putin. Yikes. Okay, okay, before we move on, hopefully I haven't lost you yet. I promised, okay, I promised that I'm not trying to ruin Thanksgiving and I'm going to keep that promise. You got to stick with me. At this point, we do need to answer a pretty hard question.
which is simply this. How can followers of Jesus give thanks, not just when horrible things happen, but because horrible things have happened? Look guys, that is a crazy hard idea to swallow. And I'll be honest with you, there is no simple answer to that question. Situations are all different and a kind of one size fits all piece of advice on Thanksgiving in the midst of suffering, it doesn't exist. But one thing I can say though, is this, though suffering is awful, something unique happens to you when you suffer. Suffering has the power to change you in the most incredible ways.
When you suffer a certain way, for example, due to the loss of a loved one or the loss of a home due to fire or flood, you learn something about that kind of suffering. You become, in some ways, an expert on that world of sorrow. And if we're followers of Jesus, the sole mission of our lives is to share Jesus with others. So through our suffering, God uniquely positions us to be able to love and care for others who will one day suffer as we have. And what do we have to give them? What do Christians have to give to suffering people?
Well, we have a beautiful story of a loving God who cares deeply for us. The story of God's own son, Jesus, who came down and suffered with us. The son of God who chose to step into a broken world and allow that broken world to break him too. We get to share the story of a God who can empathize with our every sorrow and carry us through it. So for me, like when I lost my dad last year, I learned a great deal about what it means to value the time that we have with those that we love. I learned how to open my heart up to people who are grieving in a way that I had just never known before.
And so though my dad's gone now to be with Jesus, I can truly thank God for that experience because that experience made me more compassionate. It made me more like Jesus. But we got to move on, okay? A question some of you might still have is, is constant thanksgiving really what God wants? Are we sure? We're going to turn now to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and we're going to look at verses 16 through 18. As Paul closes this letter to the church in Thessalonica out, he has this to say.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Did you catch that? Again, Paul emphasizes that thanks should be given in all circumstances, but not only to always give thanks, but to always rejoice. So that's the instruction, right? That's what he's telling us to do. But Paul gives us the why here as well. He says, this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
This is God's will for you. God's desire for his people is for them to be in a constant state of joy, a constant state of prayer and a constant state of gratitude. When God sees you, that's what he desires for your life. Constant joy, prayer and gratitude. And all of these things are intimately linked. And now I have to emphasize something here just to be absolutely clear. God does not want people to be giving thanks to him constantly because he's got like a big ego. OK, he's not like us who have a habit of doing nice things for others, but then getting super annoyed when no one recognizes that we're doing nice things.
He's God. He's not like us. He's perfect. He doesn't need our approval. Rather, because God made us, he knows what we need. In a world that is filled with complaining and grumbling, gratitude is actually a balm for the soul. Gratitude is good for us. And so we have one last passage to look at, which I hope at the end of all this will fit the final piece in the puzzle and give us the best picture of Thanksgiving that we could hope for. We'll look at Paul's letter to the Philippians in chapter 4, verses 4 through 7. And he writes this.
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Again, with the rejoicing, with the praying, with the giving thanks, this is a common theme in Paul's instruction. Paul writes the words, let your requests be made known to God, not because God won't know what we need unless we tell him, but because Paul wants to see God's people pursue the deepest, fullest, and most satisfying relationship with God as possible. This is about relationship building. And he starts this statement off by saying, the Lord is at hand. Jesus is here. He is alive. He is the bridge between fallen humanity and their God. And hey, if that's true, there is nothing in this life worth being anxious about.
And Paul finishes this thought off by making a promise. Look, if we can be a people who are marked by joy, if we can be a people marked by prayer for our own needs and the needs of others, if we can be a people marked by gratitude, well, the promise is that a supernatural peace will shield our hearts and our minds from the worst of what the world, what Satan, what sin can throw at us. What a promise. So like Thanksgiving isn't just a gift for God from us. It's a precious gift for us from him.
And real talk, at the end of the day, ingratitude is a sin. It really is. It is an unwillingness to adopt a heavenly perspective as we live our mortal lives. It's us putting how we feel about things like mortgage payments, grocery bills, gas prices, taxes, problems at work, health issues, natural disasters, all these things, the way we feel about all these things in front of God until those things are so big, we can't see God's goodness anymore. But the great news, I believe, is that though our lack of gratitude is sinful, it's something that each one of us can walk away from in an instant.
Leaving ingratitude behind is absolutely free. It doesn't cost a cent. I'm actually personally convinced that it is the easiest sin in your life to overcome. In this moment, each one of us can be confronted with an idea, just an idea that can instill profound gratitude in us. There's a motivational speaker online. His name's Bradley. Okay, look, guys, I don't recommend following him. He promotes wealth, health, and power as the ultimate goals in life. There's all sorts of problems there. Okay, so, you know, put your phones down. Don't look them up right now. But that being said, there was a short clip I saw of him online a few years ago. And this clip has always stuck with me. Maybe you've heard it before. And if you have, just bear with me for a moment. But it goes something like this. Okay, guys, consider this. Let's say I'm a super rich guy, okay? And it is well within my power to hand each one of you a million dollars. And I do. I just hand you a million dollars. Like, I'm Oprah.
You get a million dollars, and everyone gets a million dollars. Look under your seat. Yay! If I gave you that money, how would you feel? You'd be grateful. You're probably already thinking about how you'd spend it. You'd be happy, and there wouldn't be much in this life that could get you down. Okay. Next thought. Let's say I took that away. Boom. It's gone. Okay? Oprah can giveth. Oprah can taketh away. Oprah's taking the money back. But then, I offer you 10 million. Instead of a million dollars, 10 million. Yeah. But here's the catch. You're not going to wake up tomorrow morning. If you take the money, this is your last day on Earth. What do you think?
Do you take it? Do you take the money? Most people would say no way. I'd say no way. It isn't worth it. Not if you don't get another day. What's the point of all that money if you don't have another day? But now hold on. Let's just think about that for a second. Though you didn't choose the words on your own, you're basically saying that one more day, just the chance at one more day, because none of us actually knows how tomorrow ends, that one day is worth more to you than $10 million. That's what your life is worth to you. Crazy. Yet, is that how you felt this morning when you woke up?
See guys, as soon as we start talking about the value of our lives, gratitude comes to us pretty naturally. It becomes way easier to grasp. Consider for a moment that God is the very breath in your lungs and that every single day you've ever lived is a free gift from this loving God. You didn't earn it or even ask for it. I'm 32 years old, okay? So I've been given nearly 12,000 days. And in those days, I've experienced a lot of ups and downs. But I simply can't get away from the fact that every special moment I've had, every ounce of joy I've felt, every loving relationship I've known,
It was all given to me. God is so open-handed with his goodness. Just take a moment to consider the things in life that have filled your heart with joy. Honestly, you can't even put a dollar value on those things or the chance to experience them. So that's your life. That's the life God gave you. And what a great and precious gift it is. And when we're faced with the reality of losing our lives or maybe the lives of those we care about, we see how valuable the gift of life truly is.
So just imagine, bear with me for a minute, just imagine how grateful you would be if someone else gave up everything they had to save your life. Imagine if this person possessed all the riches of the universe itself, right? He was the sole owner of everything that exists, but chose to pay an even greater price to save you. That this man chose to lay down his life for you, even though you hated him. And that the sacrifice this man made for you wouldn't just purchase you one more day, but an eternity in paradise. This is our Thanksgiving weekend wake-up call.
Jesus has already given everything to save you, to save humanity. He came to this earth with one primary purpose. And though he was completely divine and God's own son, he lived as a fully human man. He lived a life of absolute sinless perfection. But at the end of his short life here, he was condemned as a criminal and put to death on a cross. This was the life of Jesus. And in that moment, when Jesus was on the cross, he bore the weight of our sin upon himself. He hung on that cross on behalf of a fallen, sinful humanity who rejected the very God who gave them life.
Due to our sin, we can't approach God. We can't get anywhere near him. He's holy and we're not. There's distance between us and between God because of our sin. And if we don't solve that problem in this life, that distance between us will be fixed forever. That's hell. That's eternal separation from God. But because of Jesus' death on the cross, that distance has been closed. Former rejecters of God can become children of God, sharing an eternal dwelling place with their heavenly father.
See, though Jesus died, he didn't stay dead. Three days after he died, God brought him back to life by the power of the Holy Spirit, delivering a final blow to the forces of sin and death in the world. And then Jesus appeared to many witnesses before ascending to heaven to prepare a place for those who have placed their faith in him and his sacrifice on their account. I mean, just imagine finding out that God did this for you, that you didn't have to lift a finger. You didn't even have to ask for it. See, that's the gospel. It's the good news of Jesus Christ in God's kingdom.
And if that isn't enough to fill your heart with gratitude, consider why God did this. Now, there are a lot of deeply theological answers to the question, why did God choose to save us through Jesus' death and resurrection? There's lots of answers to that. You could say, you know, God made promises to humanity that he would save them and God keeps his word. That's true. Yeah. You can say that God's power and his glory is most revealed in the work of the cross. Also true.
You can say that when a sinner is redeemed and falls into eternal love with the very God he or she has hated their whole life, that that is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe itself. And I tend to believe it is. But I just don't think those answers shine a light on God's heart and on his motivation. Jesus was once explaining to a man named Nicodemus that God was going to use him to save the world, bring all kinds of people into his kingdom. And as he was explaining to Nicodemus how all this would work, he also answered the question of why God chose to send him. He says this.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John's Gospel account, chapter 3, verse 16, John 3, 16. It was love that moved God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, together motivated to redeem humanity by their love. A love that was powerful enough to change eternity for you. A love that's sealed and signed in the lifeblood of our Savior.
So this Thanksgiving, so we all take a moment to consider the things that we have to be grateful for. So many things. I'd ask that we just go one step further and ask ourselves a question. How grateful have I been lately? Let this Thanksgiving be a moment to evaluate ourselves and ask, am I a grateful person? Is Thanksgiving a way of life for me? Or is Thanksgiving a day on the calendar that I just look forward to? Let's be the people Paul is calling us to be. In light of the gospel and God's great love, let us give thanks always and for everything. Let's pray.
God, thank you for who you are and all of the work that you're doing. Thank you that you never rest, that you don't grow weary, that you're at work even when we don't see it. Father, forgive us that we fail to recognize how good you are. Father, forgive me for putting all of the small things in my life that tire me out in front of you. to the point that I actually let you be obscured by small momentary problems. And God, I pray for people who might be hearing this, who are dealing with some big problems, who are facing some hard challenges in life. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to them in a powerful way, that they'd see your full goodness, your full glory, that they'd understand the love that you have for them, that Jesus, you would meet them in their suffering, in their frustration, in their disappointment, and you carry them through. I pray, God, that our church be a church of grateful people who are filled with thanksgiving always and for everything. And I pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thank you for joining us at Mountain View Church. If you gave your life to Jesus today, or if you would like to submit a prayer request, please click the Connect link, text Connect to the number on the screen, or fill out a Connect card. Before you go, we have a few updates followed by this week's discussion questions and prayer focus. This thing on? Yeah. Oh, hey. Hey, what's up, my little junior youth? I hear you guys were really good when I was up in Dawson. I was fully prepared to have to come back and punish you and take all of your fun things away. But I heard that you behaved yourselves, so we won't have to do that. So good news for you. Good news for me. Everybody gets to be happy. This week, when we meet up, we're going to be bringing back an old favorite. I'm going to blow the dust off the old air compressor, and we're going to fill up a bunch of balloons for a balloon stomp. Very cool. Very fun. Very, very loud. And then for our lesson, it's kind of a cool one. We're going to be talking about our identity. Who are we? Here's a question for you. What makes you you? Is it your hair? The way you do your hair?
Is it the hobbies you like? Maybe it's the hobbies you like. It's definitely no. Hmm. What about the clothes you wear? The people you hang out with? See, those are a bunch of things about you. But who you are is something entirely different. Who you are way down deep at the core of who you are is something that only God can show you. And we're going to be talking about that when we start a new series with the Loop Show this week. So you won't want to miss it. See you guys soon. Now let's bring Elijah back for this week's discussion questions and prayer focus.
Hey guys, I'm back and I have your discussion question and prayer focus. So I hope you're in some small groups and you can kind of work through this stuff. I have a question for you that will help you interact with a bit of what we talked about today. So for that, I want you to recall a specific moment in your life when you experienced a profound sense of gratitude, perhaps in response to a particular event or circumstance. How did that experience impact you? And once you're done talking about that in your groups, I want you to share one reason that you're currently struggling with heartfelt Thanksgiving today. And once you've shared that, pray for each other in your groups. Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
If you prayed to receive Jesus today or would like to connect with our church community, visit mountainview.church and click the connect link. If this podcast and radio ministry has been a blessing to you, please consider partnering with us or making a tax-deductible donation at mountainview.church. Thanks for listening to Mountain View Church Audio. Join us next week for more Christ-centered teaching from the Wilderness City of Whitehorse UConn.