This morning I'm going to read a single verse, Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 20. Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I have a friend named Daryl and I actually talked with him on the phone this week. Daryl's a wonderful Christian man and a great encouragement to me. And as I was thinking about Thanksgiving and thinking about even the message this morning, my mind was drawn back to the conversation that I had with him this past week and even other conversations that we've had in the past and reminded of how often Daryl expresses praise and thankfulness for what God has done in his life. I was just even thinking recently of the things that he has expressed gratitude for. Darryl expressed gratitude for sermons that he had heard preached, both online and through his own church, listening online to the messages of his church. He expressed thankfulness for his grandchildren. He expressed thankfulness for his wife. And he expressed thankfulness even for a renovation that's being done at his house. This morning I want us to think about the matter of thankfulness. The title of the message, if you want to put this down, is Always Thankful for Everything. Always Thankful for Everything. And I want you this morning, the time and the Lord being willing, to talk about the precept profitability and practice of gratitude. The precept profitability and practice of gratitude. First of all think with me about the precept of gratitude which is simply to say we must always be thankful to God for everything. And this is really what our text tells us in chapter five, verse 20 of Ephesians, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we look at this passage in its wider context and go back to verse 18, you will see that Paul tells the Ephesians that they're not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the spirit. And having told them that they are to be filled with the Spirit, he then gives four things that are really characteristics of a person who is filled with the Spirit of God. He says, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. He says, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. Then, in our text, giving thanks always. And then, fourthly, submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord. But it's important that we realize, yes, these are descriptions, they are characteristics of a person who is filled with the Spirit, but they are also not just characteristics, but they're commands. They're not just descriptions, they're duties. Paul says, be filled with the Spirit, and then goes on to list these four things. It'd almost be like if I told my son, John, John, I want you to go do the lawn. Mowing all the way to the back fence, trimming the front and backyard, and sweeping up all the grass clippings. Those three things are particulars that fall under the main command, but when John has done that job right, those tasks will be finished, but he has a responsibility to perform those tasks. All of this to say, brothers and sisters, chapter 5 verse 20, giving thanks always for all things, is not just a characteristic, but it's a command. It's not just a description, but a duty. So let's think about briefly what this verse tells us to do. We can divide it up in three ways. First of all, it tells us always to give thanks to God. Now we know by what God's word has told us, and what God has done in the past, that God is continually worthy of thanks. The author of Hebrews, for example, tells us that we are to offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But we know this truth, that God is worthy of our thanks, not only by the word of God, but by our own experience of what God has done in our lives. A psalmist said many times in the book of Psalms, oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. We are to always give thanks to God because God is always worthy of our thanks. Second, not only are we to always give thanks to God, but we are to give God thanks for everything. Everything. So some of you saw me running around this morning like a chicken with my head cut off. I actually woke up early this morning. I woke up at five o'clock and you know, you'd think that gives you a good start to the day. You get all things in line and well, as it turned out, everything wasn't quite all in line as I intended it. And so I was scrambling and running around trying to get things done right down to the last minute. It's not really a struggle for us to thank God when everything seems to be going smoothly. But to thank God in the hiccups of life? That's another matter, isn't it? When we think about thanking God for everything, we could divide that up. What are some categories of things that we have to be thankful to God for while we can thank God for things that are spiritual and eternal that God has given to us? Those of us who know Christ, would cry out from the heart with the Apostle Paul, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. If we have Jesus and all that comes with Jesus, in the sense of all of the blessings and spiritual places and heavenly places in Christ, we have something to be grateful for. I think about our election of God, chosen by the Father, We think about redemption that we have through the blood of Christ. We think of the fact that we who have called upon Christ for salvation are adopted. We think about the grace of sanctification that the spirit is even now at work in us to make us more and more like Christ. Think about the certainty of what awaits us in glorification that heaven is our destination. We think about the present graces that we have, such as the presence of the Spirit that Jesus promised that he would leave with us and would not depart from us. We think about the blessing of the Word of God. We have many, many things to be grateful for spiritually. Furthermore, we have many things to be thankful for in terms of our physical blessings. We can thank God during pleasant circumstances. I think of Psalm 103, where David said, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. And he continues that Psalm by saying, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And then as Psalm 103 unfolds, we see David blessing God, thanking God for a mix of physical blessings and spiritual blessings. Friends, we can thank God for the physical blessings that he has given to us. We can thank God simply for the life that he has given to us. The measure of health that he has given to us. We can thank God for the family that he's given to us, the friends that he's given to us. We can thank God, and I think perhaps even particularly at this time of year, thank God for the beauty of the earth. We see an awful lot of beauty here in Canada where we get to experience all four seasons. We thank God for that. We can thank God for the legitimate joys and pleasures that he gives in this life, things that we can enjoy. We can thank God for those of us that have employment. We can thank God for food that God provides. We can thank God for clothing that God provides. And we can thank God for shelter that he provides. God truly is good to us. We can thank God not only during the good times and for pleasant circumstances, but we can thank God also for what we have called in the last week, painful providences. I think about Paul and Silas, and I think they're such a great example of this. Paul and Silas, remember, they're preaching, and they get arrested for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as if that weren't bad enough, they get beaten, and then they get put in prison, and they're not just in prison, they're put in stocks in prison. Most uncomfortable position that they could possibly be in. But what happens? At midnight, what are they doing? Man, that stupid jailer. He's a wreck, isn't he? I wonder who made these stocks. Wish they'd sanded them a little bit. Not only are we uncomfortable, we're getting splinters too. What they're doing is not complaining, but they're actually singing hymns and praising God. Friends, we can give thanks to God even in the midst of painful providences. The physical works of God, the crooked works of God come and our body is injured or faces decline or doesn't work in some way that we wished it might. We can thank God even in the midst of mental and emotional turmoil and struggle. We can thank God in the midst of relational struggle and turmoil. Even when friendships seem to fail and it seems that the things that the people that we were most connected to are departing from us or leaving us, we can still be thankful to God. We can be thankful to God when we face that crooked work of God as it relates to our vocation. If we lose a job or if we have a job that is Unbearable, it seems, or a job that we thought would give us fulfillment and doesn't give us fulfillment. We can be grateful even in painful providences. We can, as the verse tells us, give thanks always for all things to God. We can and ought to be grateful for these things because we remember that God is sovereign. that he is in control, that these things are not happening by chance. God never snoozes off and looks up at the way the world has gone and says, oops. He sits upon the throne of heaven. The one who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. God is sovereign. He's in control. He, in the words of Ephesians 1, verse 11, works all things after the counsel of his own will. And we can be grateful even in the midst of the most painful circumstances, as well as pleasant circumstances, because God is in control. We can be grateful in the pleasant and the painful because God is wise. 1 Timothy 1, verse 17, speaks of God as the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise. God only wise. God is too wise to make a mistake. We may make many mistakes, but God will never make a mistake. God is too wise to do so. And friends, not only is God sovereign and wise, He's in control and He's wise in how He conducts the affairs of life, including our lives. God is also good. No matter how painful the providence may seem, God is good. Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good. for His mercy endureth forever." So when those pleasant and painful times come in your life, know that God is working out His plan, and that it is a wise plan, and it is a good plan. We all remember, I think, Romans 8 and verse 28. We know, we know, It's not just a guess. This is not just a vain supposition. This is not some kind of a vain hope, like I hope it's gonna happen. We know that all things work together for good. To them that love God, them that are called according to his purpose. Who is it that's working all things together for good? Is it just like you toss them up in the air and it's all gonna land perfectly? No. We know that these things are working together for good because God is the one who is working them together for good. Now listen, I am not here claiming that every single thing you experience in life is good. There are many things that we experience in life that are not good. People sin against us and we sin against people. We experience all kinds of things that in themselves are not good, but here's the thing, God works them together for good. Think about the life of Joseph. Was it good that his brothers hated him? No. Was it good that they threw him into a pit? No. Was it good that they sold him into slavery? No. Was it good that when he got to Egypt, he was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife? No, that wasn't good. Was it good that when he went to prison, that he was forgotten? No. Those things in themselves were not good, but God is good and God was working out his good plan. Now friends, this is the promise that we have for those who have trusted in Jesus. I can't make this kind of claim for people who have not yet trusted Jesus. I can't make that claim. Because on the other side of things, for those that remain impenitent and who do not trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior, even the best of things are working to their ultimate doom and judgment. But for those who know Christ, For those who have turned from their sins to trust in Jesus, everything that happens in your life is happening by God's appointment, by God's wise design, and for God's good purpose. As I've said many times before, none of us are going to get to heaven one day and second guess God. Say, well, Lord, I know you did your best, but there's a few things I think you should have changed. in my life to make it better. None of us are going to do that. We will bow at his feet in eternal gratitude for all that he has brought us to and all that he's brought us through. So friends, we need to always give thanks to God and we need to give thanks to God for everything. The third thing that our passage tells us is that we need to give thanks to God in the name of Jesus. Giving thanks to God in the name of Jesus. Now let me say first of all what this doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that every time you thank God you have to mention Jesus' name. It's not wrong for you to do that. but you don't have to mention Jesus' name every time you thank God. What does it mean then, in the name of Jesus? Well, sometimes in scripture, in the name of Jesus means by his authority. But in this passage that we're looking at, it has the idea of identification with Christ and access through Christ. In other words, those who are in Christ, have the access and have the identity of Christians that then allows them to come to the very throne room of God and offer thanks that are acceptable in God's sight. The author John Gill, a pastor of years gone by, said, for all the mercies of God's people, both temporal, or that is in this life, and spiritual, come through Him and for His sake, and thanksgivings for them are only acceptable to God as they are offered up by Him. Nor is there any way of bringing them to God but through Him." You know, as we come to God in any kind of prayer, we come if we are truly believers in the name of Jesus. This idea of being identified with Christ and then having access to the Father because of our union with Christ is very important because it reminds us that the only people who can participate in true thanks that is acceptable to God, the only people that can do that are actually believers in Christ. Those that identify with Christ. Only true believers can offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving which is acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. There's a sense as well as we think about giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even that statement restricts somewhat the very things that we engage in and are thankful for. Let me give you an example of this. I have a friend and former student who once was talking to me on the phone about how grateful she was for the relationship that she was in and how she was so grateful to God for that relationship. Well, the way that she entered into that relationship was that she, by her own admission, seduced every person at her workplace but there was one guy that held out, and she finally was able to seduce him, and she knew that he was the one for her, even though at that time he was married. And she was so thankful that she finally hooked him. If we are giving thanks in the name of Jesus, identifying with Christ, as those people who have access to him, can we give thanks for our participation in and enjoyment of sin? Can we seriously say, in Jesus' name, I thank you that I'm about to commit this crime? God, in Jesus' name, I thank you for this sinful and immoral pleasure that I'm about to enjoy. Lord, I thank you for the joy that I had in that moment of wicked and fleeting pleasure. Of course not. So we think about our requests And we remember that we are offering these thanks to God by, in the name of Jesus Christ. So this is a very plain command, is it not? And every Thanksgiving, we hear this kind of message preached. Be thankful, be thankful, be thankful. And we're even told, as I talked about, we have all kinds of things to be thankful for. I wanna talk a little bit to you, go a little bit deeper if you will, about not only the precept, you must be thankful and here's why and what for, but the profitability of thankfulness. So in other words, gratitude is not only commanded, it's actually for our good. Have you ever thought about that? that the command to be grateful to God is actually for our good? Let me give you three ways, just think with me about three ways that gratitude is good for us, three ways that gratitude profits us. And let's think first of all about the general truth that when God gives us a command, it's for our good. John states it negatively, if you will, in 1 John 5, 3, he says, his commandments are not burdensome, or his commandments are not grievous. We have a tendency sometimes to look at God's commands and think that they're a great burden, a great grief to us. That's not the truth. In fact, as God spoke to Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 10, and had his prophet speak to Israel on his behalf, Moses told them the words of God, and these are the words of God, that God had commanded them to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command you today for your good. The commands that God gives us are for our good. So let's think about three ways in which thankfulness profits us. First of all, it's profitable for your joy. It's profitable for your joy. Psalm 95, verses one and two, oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms. You notice this interplay between joy, praise, and thanks. William Secker, the Puritan, would say, He enjoys much who is thankful for little. He enjoys much who is thankful for little. We are thankful to God for the little things. There is a great enjoyment that comes as a result of it. You see, when we thank God, we are reminded just how good God is. That things may be dark indeed, but God is still good to us. God's mercies endure forever. In the little book, The Valley of Vision, one of the prayers and meditations, the Puritans of years gone by said, my trials have been fewer than my sins. And isn't that the truth? No matter how difficult we might find our state in life, God has given to us so much more than we deserve. And as we meditate on those things and thank God for those things, our heart is moved to joy. Have you not noticed it, that the more that you focus on the painful providences alone, not thinking about what God may do through them, not thinking about the grace of God, just thinking about the difficulties, how quickly you may be robbed of joy. But when your heart is motivated to thank God, to count your blessings and remember what God has done to you, how joy can bloom in the heart, even the heart that is going through the most difficult of trials. So, gratitude is profitable for your joy. It's also profitable for your faith. It's profitable for your faith. Thomas Manton, in his, well, his 70th sermon on Psalm 119, he would end up preaching, I think, 190 some sermons on Psalm 119. In his 70th sermon on Psalm 119, he said, Faith and praise live and die together. If there be faith, there will be praise. And if there be praise, there will be faith. Thanking God for who He is and thanking God for what He has done serves to anchor us into the truth of God's goodness. Continual praise and continual thanks to God are continual reminders to us, God can be trusted. And this is why I think in Psalm 48, the sons of Korah will praise and thank God throughout the Psalm as they reflect upon the care and the power of God in the way that he has dealt with Zion, the way that he has dealt with Jerusalem. And their heart is filled with praise about what God has done in and to Jerusalem. And this is how they end that psalm. Having thought about God's goodness and his grace, they say, for this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even until death. Notice, here they are praising and thanking God for what he's done, and at the end of that Psalm, they say, listen, we can trust him all the way to death. This is what gratitude will do. This is what thankfulness will do. It will anchor you into the truth of God, and it will cause you, by God's grace, to trust him more. There's a third thing that I think We need to point out about the profitability of thankfulness, and that is, it is profitable for your obedience. It's profitable for your obedience. And I'm not simply speaking here about the obedience to the command to be thankful. I'm thinking a bigger picture. As we remember God's love and God's mercy, we're motivated to shun sin and follow Christ. Think about it, you know these verses, Romans chapter 12 verse one, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. Thinking about God's mercy should motivate us to becoming living sacrifices, devoting ourselves entirely to God. Second Corinthians chapter five and verse 14, the apostle Paul says, the love of Christ constraineth us. Now here's the connection. As we thank God for His grace and goodness to us, we are reminded of those mercies, and we are reminded of that love. And the memory and the knowledge of His mercy motivates us to serve Him. The remembrance and knowledge of His love motivates us to give our lives as a witness for Him. Once again, Thomas Manton would say, And therefore, praise and thanksgiving is a greater help to the spiritual life than we are usually aware of. Four, working in us a sense of God's love and an actual remembrance of His benefits, as it will do if rightly performed, it doth make us shy of sin and more careful and solicitous to do His will. for shall we offend so good a God? So thankfulness motivates us to obedience and motivates us to shun sin and pursue righteousness. And so the precept is that we need to give thanks to God always for everything. The profitability is that gratitude is profitable for us. It's good for us. Some of us might wonder, I say I struggle in this grace and duty. And I would say that I would place myself in that number. That I struggle with gratitude to God. How can I grow in this grace? Let me give you three simple, but not necessarily easy ways to be thankful and to grow in gratitude. First, record, make note of God's goodness to you. You might remember when we had our series on the book of Joshua, how often Joshua would do something that would particularly commemorate something that God had done on behalf of Israel. An example of that would be after they had gone through the Jordan, It said, cross over before the Ark of the Lord, this is in Joshua chapter four and verse five, cross over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you, when your children ask in time to come, saying, what do these stones mean to you? Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and these stones shall be a memorial to the children of Israel forever. Something as simple as having a notebook, and when you have experienced God's grace and goodness, simply making a note of what God has done for you the date that he did it, can be an incredible help to gratitude. Because sometimes when we go through the difficult times of life, It's hard for us to see God's goodness in the present. But we look back at the record of what God has done for us in the past, and we are reminded that He is good, and He is with us, and He is for us. So keeping some kind of a journal or a record of God's grace in your life can be an incredible help in thanksgiving. The second is simply to consider or deliberately think about God's goodness. So we have a tendency, right, to go on autopilot through life and we just think about the things that we experience as we experience them. And sometimes the most painful things in life are what dominates our attention and our focus. And yet over and over again in scripture, God's people are called to remember what God had done for them. We're so quick to forget. 1 Samuel chapter 12, verse 24, which I preached on a couple months ago, Samuel said, only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart. Four, consider what great things he has done for you. Considering what God has done. Once again, Psalm 103, I think is a great example of this. I mentioned it earlier. The psalmist begins out by saying, bless the Lord, all that is within me, bless his holy name. And then he goes on to think and list specific ways in which God had been good to him. How wise it is for us to record what God has done for us, but then to specifically think about not only what God has done in the past, but what God is doing in the present. What graces are ours in the present, particularly because of our union with Christ. And then finally, simply communicate. And what I mean by that is give thanks. It's a simple matter of actually doing it. See, we can record the ways that God has been good to us and we can even think back on what God has done for us or think about what God is doing for us in the present without actually thanking him. How helpful it is for us, having noted and remembered these things that God has been doing for us, to then actually give thanks to Him. Some of you know, I've mentioned this several times, I am wary of technology taking over our lives, but there's one app that I recommend heartily for those of you that are into that sort of thing. It's called the Prayer Mate app. And what it does is you download this app and then you load in your requests, and then you simply go to that app and it curates a list for you of the things that you have entered in. So you could say, I wanna pray for 25 things today, and it'll give you 25 of the things on your list. So it takes a little while to set up, But then once you've done it, it's not that hard to continue using it. You can always add things or even take things out. But when I set this up, one of the things that I made certain to do was to include a section of thankfulness. That every time I go to God, I want to express gratitude to God for something that he has done in my life. Thank God for what he's done. And then there's also another thing that helps us, under this category of communicate, telling others about what God has done for us can be incredibly helpful for our attitude of gratitude, for our thankfulness. As we tell others, not just the difficult things that are going on in our lives, but what good things God has done for us, that can help us. See, like everything else, this is like a spiritual muscle, and the more that we use it, the stronger that it gets. If we find ourselves having been people who have not been thankful for an extended period of time, It may seem difficult to put these things into practice, but the more that we do them, the more it strengthens us to do it more. And so friends, let's be a thankful people. Now remember Daryl? I mentioned him at the beginning of the message. Some of you might have been thinking as I gave that illustration, well, if I had the life Daryl had, I'd be grateful too. Thankful for his church. Thankful for his grandkids. I don't even have any, let alone a relationship. Thankful for his wife. I don't even have a girlfriend. Thankful for a renovation on his house. I don't even have a house. How can I, I'd be grateful if I had Daryl's life too. Well, let me tell you a little bit more about Daryl. Darryl was listening to services online because his health prevented him from making it out to church. Darryl, thankful for his grandchildren, has one granddaughter that has such life-threatening seizures that for a time they thought she wouldn't even live. Darryl being grateful for his wife, the context of that was how she had helped him and supported him over the last number of years because about 15 plus years ago, Darryl was in a horrible car accident that nearly took his life and leaves him today only semi-mobile. And that house, those house rentals, well, Part of the reason why he needs those renovations is because of his physical disabilities. And partly because he intends to use them for the good of helping and ministering to others. Now, my point is not just to point you to Daryl. Because I think even if Daryl hears this message, he'd probably be a little bit embarrassed and he would not want me talking about him like this. But I know that It's not just about pointing you to Daryl, but if Daryl were here, Daryl would say, this is all about God and his grace in Christ. I was thankful to God for God's grace. And Daryl would want us not to look at him, but at the one that he is grateful to. The one that we also ought to be grateful to. So friends, Let's always be grateful to God for everything. It's for our profit. As we do so, we will find ourselves growing in joy, in faith, and in obedience. Let's be a thankful people by the grace of God. Amen.