Joyful, prayerful and thankful. The Word of the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 16 to 18 declares, Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. This is the Word of God. This is the will of God. What is God's will? People say, I want to know God's will. Well, here it is in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16-18. Be joyful, prayerful, thankful in all circumstances. That is God's will for us. Dr. Martin Luther observed that we express our degree of thankfulness in life in reverse proportion to the amount of blessings we've received. In table talk, Dr. Martin Luther declared, the greater God's gifts and works, the less they are appreciated. The blessings of life and health and freedom and food are not really appreciated until they're lost or threatened. Because sunrises and sunsets occur daily, they're taken for granted. And some of us, it might have been a long time since we last saw a sunrise or a sunset. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, if the constellations of stars appeared only once in a thousand years, imagine what an exciting event it would be. Everyone gathered to see them. But every night they're there and so most people miss it. And if you haven't been outside the city in a farm or in a game reserve or far from the lights of the city, you have never really had a chance to even see what a magnificent constellation of stars we are because the lights of the city, in principle, we see such a little part. But when you're up in South-West Africa, right up in the Toshia pan, and you're looking up, it's just incredible, the spread of the stars in the sky, and you can just imagine Abraham looking up and God saying, your descendants will be as the stars of the sky. And how could Abraham even believe that when he was past the age of bearing children, when he was so old, when his wife Sarah was in her late 80s? I mean, how could they think this was even possible? And yet, God has given Abraham descendants as the stars of the sky. Similarly, the blessings of rain are barely appreciated unless you've been through a drought. Until we in Cape Town experienced severe water restrictions, we didn't really appreciate the rain. The rain was often an inconvenience. It's raining and it's spoiling my plans for whatever we wanted to do, the braai or the sports. And yet now we're grateful for the rain because we've experienced shortages. After all the deforestation that the government has done and the municipality has done in the Cape Peninsula, obviously you should expect less rain because deforestation leads to drought. And yet we in Cape Town haven't really appreciated water until we came to be short of it. A hungry person is more grateful for a morsel of food than a rich person for a heavy laden table. A lonely person in a nursing home will more appreciate a visit than a popular person who has a whole party thrown in their honor. A Christian who has suffered under persecution for decades and receives his first copy of the Holy Scriptures will be more grateful and thankful for that one book than we are for entire libraries within our reach. And we know that's true. I've seen people dancing for joy in Mozambique and Angola during the communist persecution years during the war. dancing and crying and kissing the Bible and falling on their knees and raising their hands towards heaven, and thanking God, saying, this is the greatest gift anyone could have asked for, the Word of God in my own language. People in Russia, in Eastern Europe, during the persecution years, would come to church and swap a page of the scripture with others, and they would take their turns, because they might only have a page at a time. They didn't have enough for the whole congregation. There were times when they'd divide up the Bible, so that you would have this week, you'd have this page, and you could swap. And during that week, the people would be writing it down by hand, that they could build up. And we had people show us huge piles of paper of the Scripture, sometimes the whole Bible, that they'd written out by hand, because they didn't have their own printed copy of the Word of God. You can imagine how the people in Nuba Mountains are responding right now to John and to Ben's visit. delivering things that they're desperate for. They appreciate a visit more than any of us would because they don't get visitors that often. They're in a war. They're an island of Christianity in the Sea of Islam. They're being bombed by the Arabs. They don't take the freedom for granted because they know what it is to be persecuted. Helen Keller said, I've often thought it would be a blessing if every human being were stricken blind and dead for a few days sometime in early adult life. It would then make them more appreciative of sight and of joys of sound. I don't know how many of us have appreciated our eyes until we've had a friend who's blind. And to direct them, I remember this friend Brent Noble up in the States. He is blind from age 21. He had experimental laser surgery on his eyes. He had sight problems and they managed to make him totally blind. And so this poor man who knew what sight was, at least imperfectly earlier, was suddenly in total darkness. And we even did shooting in combat ranges together. Of course, I'd have to direct them according to the clock, you know, 11 o'clock high, 6 o'clock low, and we'd work our way through a shooting range. I mean, he wanted to enjoy everything, but I think he enjoyed life more than most people who don't even have their eyes. And his favorite song was Amazing Grace. I once was blind, but now I see." He's looking forward to the fact that the first thing he will see will be the Lord Jesus Christ. I was taking him out one night. He decided to leave his guide dog behind, what we call a blind dog, but of course the dog's not blind. As we were walking along, next thing whack, he staggered under. I led him straight into a branch of a tree. I mean, I wasn't as clever as the dog, the seeing eye dog, because the dog thinks for the person there's steps coming or there's something that's going to bang the person's head over there. And I felt absolutely humiliated and such a total failure that I couldn't even lead a blind man as effectively as his dog did. But it's times like that that you suddenly realize what a great privilege it is to have good eyesight. To have any eyesight at all. To be able to hear a person who's deaf. Can you imagine a person who can never hear handles Messiah? Every communication can only be by sight, not by hearing. It would actually be helpful if we were deprived of something for a while that we would appreciate. In my experience, imprisonment in Zambia and Mozambique and Sudan immeasurably increased my appreciation for basic things of life. I appreciate running water, clean water, hot water, clean sheets, a pillow, a clean pillowcase, far more than most people would because I know what it is to be without it. And having spent many years sleeping in sleeping bags or not even with that sometimes, sometimes just a space blanket or another blanket on the ground, in a park, in a phone booth. in a petrol station, in toilets, at night just pouring out rain, in a police station, in a cell, because it was raining outside and they kindly gave me space, in mud huts, on the floor, under thatched roofs, and in prisons. I mean, many years that I've spent sleeping, I've spent, if I was to calculate how many times I didn't have a bed to sleep in, it might come up to about five or six years of my life. So I appreciate a bed more than most would, and some people haven't had as much opportunity to sleep in a good bed as I have. I think I appreciate warm showers and clean sheets more than most. It helps when you've slept in a cave in Nuba Mountains and had rats climbing over you to appreciate what it's like to have a clean, safe home with cats patrolling and keeping you safe from the bubonic plague and rats. There are at least 138 passages of scripture that deal with the subject of thanksgiving and gratitude. We are commanded, as we began the service with Psalm 100, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. And yet most people enter the courts of God with complaints and demands and requests and, in fact, If you think about it, we don't like it when somebody comes and the first thing that God has to say to us is complaints. How much less would God the Creator, the only perfect person in the universe, enter his gates of thanksgiving and his courts of praise. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and all for his wonderful works to the children of men. Give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful. Colossians 3.15, Colossians 1.12, all throughout the scripture you see this emphasis on thanksgiving and gratitude. Philippians 4 verse 6-7, Do not be anxious about anything. In other words, don't worry about anything. But in everything, by prayer and petition, With thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This is how to be joyful, prayerful, and thankful. To not worry about everything, but to pray about everything, with thanksgiving, presenting our requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, a peace that the world doesn't know. We will experience God's peace which comes upon His children who trust Him and intercede to Him and who bring their requests and their needs to Him. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So it's not a mystery what God's will is. Many people are confused about God's will thinking it's all about location and vocation. Most people think of Guidance is, who should I marry, what work should I do, and where should I live? Vocation, location. And yet, God's will is not so much where, and when, and who, but what type of person I should be, what kind of attitude I should have. I should be joyful, prayerful, and thankful. If I concentrate on being the person God calls me to be, then wherever I am, and whatever I do, will be done to the glory of God, and will be a blessing to advance His kingdom. Hebrews 13, 15, Therefore by him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. The sacrifice of praise. Sometimes it is a sacrifice of praise when everything's going wrong, when one has problems. It's a sacrifice of praise for Joni Erikson who's been paralyzed since a teenager from diving into a pool and hitting her neck so badly she's been a paraplegic. And yet, when she sings praises, when she paints with a paintbrush with her mouth, she is giving a sacrifice of praise because it's not easy. Easy to praise God when we are healthy and well and everything's going our way, but to praise God in times of need and suffering, in times of sickness, in times of fear and problems, well that's a sacrifice. And that means a lot. And so, That's him. Count your blessings, name them two by two. Count your blessings, name them four by four. Count your blessings, name them by the score, and it will surprise you. But there are millions more. And if you think that's an exaggeration, doctors point out to us that there are millions of rods in your eyes. that all have to connect with the right nerve endings for you to be able to see at all. Millions, actually. I believe it's something in the region of 400 million different things have to connect up just right for your eyes to work at all. When I asked how it was that Chris was born with kidney failure, the doctor said to me, asking the wrong questions. It only takes one thing to go wrong for anyone to be sick, but it takes millions of things to be right for anyone to be born alive at all. Millions. And that's true, there's millions of cells in your body and, well, if there's 400 million cells and rods in your eyes, then you can imagine how complex the whole thing gets. Ambrose said, no duty is more urgent than the giving of thanks. Charles Spurgeon said, it ought to be as habitual for us to thank God as to ask God. We probably ask God for more than we thank Him for. It's been said that a thankful heart is the parent of all virtues. It's also true that a lack of gratitude is a root sin. A root sin. It really, at the very core, causes all the problems. Take Romans 1. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, but their thinking became futile and the foolish hearts were darkened. Here, failure to give thanks to the Lord is the root sin that leads to futile thinking and foolish, darkened hearts. Charles Dickens' historic novel A Tale of Two Cities and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's many books documenting the Bolshevik Revolution and its results show how foolish and darkened hearts can immeasurably worsen their lives and the lives of millions of others and destroy the lives of tens of millions of people through futile revolutions that begin with a lack of gratitude to God first and foremost and an attitude of entitlement. The attitude of entitlement and lack of gratitude leads to the greatest destruction of life, nature, the environment in Luke 17 verse 7-19 we read of the 10 lepers who were healed by the Lord Jesus when one of them, a Samaritan, returned through himself at Jesus' feet and thanked Him for healing him the Lord Jesus asked, were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other 9? Was only one found to return and give thanks to God? This foreigner alone? The Samaritan, the despised, hated Samaritan, he's the only one who showed gratitude? But not one other Hebrew showed near gratitude? Now, in our mission's experience, we've also found that barely 1 in 10 of those we help or sponsor, maybe a 1 in 100 sometimes, will bother to express their gratitude either verbally or in writing. on a letter or card. Gratitude is something of a rarity. The amount of people sponsored, helped, benefited by our mission, and yet many just take it as it's their due, they've got a sense of entitlement. And it's a joy to go, like this week, ministered on Wednesday at a Congolese congregation downtown, to see the gratitude. And very rare, because most churches we minister to, the vast majority, never think of making any kind of love offering to the mission. In the early days in Mozambique, when I was the first visitor since the revolution, the people often give like an egg or two, a chicken sometimes, and what do you do with that? Give it to the next village. When you're going on a motorbike, that's pretty hard. I've transported chickens on the back of my motorbike before. And they give you sometimes a mini or a potato. But they were showing some gratitude, and that enabled us to have a gift to give to the next people who are our hosts. But to get a love offering from a black church in South Africa is so rare. In fact, I can say the only time it's ever happened is from Congolese and Angolan and Sudanese churches, especially up in Nigeria. I think the Nigerians and Congolese are the more likely, but South African? Zambia is extremely rare, Zimbabwe not as rare lately, but it was when they had a sense of entitlement. Nothing like having a country destroyed economically to make people appreciate things a bit more though. But this is what the scriptures deal with. In 1 Timothy 3, 1 to 5, the Apostle Paul gives a list of some of the most terrible sins, including people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, Traitorous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its real power. So here in 1 Timothy 3, in the middle of the list of the most horrible litany of sins, is ingratitude. That was the first sin that God guided me to repent of. The night has converted, the 3rd of April 1977. The first thing that struck me, the first thing I repented of was ingratitude. Because Rex Matthey had laid out what Jesus had suffered for me. And then he said, what have you ever done for Christ? And the first thing I thought, I've never so much as thanked God for my life or even the life of my parents. My mother had told me how she had gone through over 60 aerial bombardments in Berlin, come up seeing whole suburbs destroyed, thousand bomber raids. If she had died in the war, Obviously I would not be alive and neither would my children or grandchild. But I've never thought to thank God for that. My father explained when he was being bombarded by a hunk of bombers in the desert and when he saw his whole barracks splintered up and he's lying on the parade ground, tilted his helmet to cover his neck because everything that goes up comes down. And my parents telling me how I should have been aborted because of the linomide tablets and they were in such a panic and frenzy at the time of the thalidomide scandal in 1959 to January 1960 and I was born January 1960 at what today is Vincent Pilotti but then was St. Joseph's Hospital and the Salafi government allowed abortions in that case because they were so panic stricken over all these children born without arms and hands and legs and they said you can have abortions, in fact the doctor came to my mother and said you must have an abortion, this child will be deformed and my mother was not willing to consider it and she called for a chaplain to pray and she told me the story several times but I'd never even thanked God for answering that chaplain's prayer that I was born with arms and legs and able to live healthy. I saw a series of pictures recently of a German horse rider, what they call it when they do the special riding horses sort of dressage type and she is a thalidomide baby so she has no arms. She has to ride and do everything with her feet, including, she feeds herself with her feet, she's obviously more dexterous and flexible than I am, I have trouble even touching my toes, but here she'd do everything from brushing a horse, washing, with her feet, bouncing on one foot, and thinking, she's the same age as me, and I could have easily been born without arms. But I'd never thank God for that. My mother said how I spent the first several years of my life in and out of hospitals, just about anything that could go wrong from collapsed lungs, chicken pox, you name it, I had it all. And also how she had not realised at the time how bad it was to be smoking while pregnant. Because it was even being advertised as something healthy, you must smoke. In the 1950s and 60s doctors were advertising smoking as good for your lungs. Can you believe it? But they were smoking, as just about everyone was, and of course that doesn't exactly help the children. Even secondhand smoke damages children's upbringing. But in gratitude, so many things have just came to me. The fact that I had never given thanks to God for anything before the 3rd of April 1977. And that's sin alone. I remember kneeling there, convinced I'm a hell-deserving sinner. If God was to cast me into hell for eternity right now, that's all I deserve. And that was my first thoughts of repentance and prayer on that night as I was confronted with the Gospel. One of the first lessons good parents seek to teach their children is gratitude, saying thank you, the two most important words in English language. It takes character and courage to admit to being in debt to others. It's humbling. However, those who cannot admit their indebtedness to others cannot learn, and nor will they seek forgiveness. Count your obligations, name them one by one. It will surprise you what the Lord wants done. Failure to express gratitude is more than immaturity and rudeness. It's ungodly. And parents excuse their children and say, say thank you, and they don't say, oh, they're just shy. No, they're actually being deliberately, stubbornly wicked. To refuse to give thanks and to refuse to obey your parents is very ungodly. We are commanded to honor our parents, to honor our elders, to honor our teachers, to honor our leaders. It is a sign of maturity to acknowledge our indebtedness, first and foremost to God. Anyone who has learned anything is indebted to someone else. We're all indebted, firstly and mostly to God, our Creator, for our life, our health, our food, our talents, family, friends, opportunities, and for salvation itself. But we also indebted past generations of people who sacrificed for the freedoms we enjoy. Inventors who invented things that are making our life easier or even possible. I mean, what would we have done if someone hadn't invented penicillin? How many of us would be alive today if it wasn't for penicillin and so many other things? Or pasteurizing milk? And you can think of a whole host of inventions that have blessed us. And for reformers, and martyrs, and pioneers, and missionaries, and soldiers, and parents, teachers, pastors and so many others who sacrificed for our benefit. Only once we experienced the incredible responsibility and privilege of parenting do we even begin to appreciate what our parents sacrificed for us that we could be cared for and brought up. I don't think I really appreciated my parents at all until I became a parent myself and I was, oh is this what my parents had to do for me? And then suddenly it all makes more sense. It's only when I started to venture into the mission fields of Africa that I began to really appreciate something of what great missionaries like Robert Moffat, David Livingston, Mary Schleser, C.T. Studd and others did in opening up this continent of Africa. And they worked in a far more savage situation than we do. And now I begin to appreciate more as I see the people breaking down civilization. Now we begin to appreciate those pioneers. who sacrificed and created respect for law and property in a wild and savage land. What an incredible achievement. They are being denigrated by people who know nothing. Only once we've witnessed the compromise and the cowardice of so many church leaders have we come to appreciate the conviction and courage of reformers like Professor Martin Luther. who could defy both Pope and Emperor and all the peer pressure of his age to make his bold and biblical stand on the unchangeable word of Almighty God. Those people who do not take advice think they have nothing to learn. They are often the same people who have a problem expressing heartfelt gratitude to others. It's a sign of pride to be ungrateful. The middle edge of pride is I. It reveals an unwillingness to acknowledge a debt to others. That's why it's so important to sing the great hymns of the faith. The modern Hillsong-type ditties are all about me and my experience and my blessing and all very self-centred and stunningly shallow. But the great hymns of the faith elevate our thinking and lift our hearts and our minds to think of the great doctrines and the great achievements in salvation history, and it lifts us from ourselves and it humbles us to realise some of these hymns were written hundreds of years ago. In the case of the one that we'll end with, the Battle Hymn of King Alfred, a thousand one hundred years ago, and to prepare our shamefully shallow attempts at musical creation in the 20th century with that of people, it puts things into perspective. It helps us to realize we are not the greatest generation in history. In fact, we are maybe one of the most ungrateful and maybe one of the shallowest generations in history. So to sing the great hymns of the faith lifts us up and reminds us that we're indebted to previous generations of artists. Instead of Christian character of gratitude. Our present culture prefers to encourage an attitude of entitlement. I think that's the key word of this age, entitlement. That is the very opposite of gratitude. It builds on pride and covetousness, envy, jealousy and hatred. It is fuelled by bitterness, greed and envy. All too many in this present humanistic society take things for granted, demand to get rather than being seeking to give. The roads must fall, the fees must fall, riotous mobs of agitators, evidence, an evil heart and an ignorant mind, a foolish character that they can be so dismissive of all the great heritage and many benefits that they have received from those in the past, those that they so ignorantly dismiss and slander and attack. Higher education is not a right, it's a privilege. And those who show no respect for the lives and properties of others forfeit their own rights. Civilization requires respect for life, respect for property. And those who riot and burn and disrupt and destroy have no place in any civilized society. They're like a cancer which contributes nothing to the health of the body but only break it down. And that's why the middle letter of cancer is A-N-C. What a destructive group of vile, foolish, arrogant, ignorant people who are trying to break down what centuries of civilization have built up without any gratitude, without contributing one single thing to the society. They just want to get and loot and pillage You take how, not that Cecil Rhodes is in my top 100 list of people that I admire, but Cecil Rhodes never took a salary when he was Prime Minister of the Cape. He in fact built Credit Secure and donated that estate and the estate for the Kirstenbosch Gardens and the estate for Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town and so much else. And he provided for the education of tens of millions of people after his death. And so, while we may not like Cecil John Rhodes, we've got to admire so much what he's done, and we certainly should be grateful. Because he did provide. He left the country better off than he found it. Which is not what the Zumas and Mandelas of this world can say. We need to have an attitude of gratitude, not an attitude of entitlement. One man gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. That's Proverbs 11, 24. What we sow is what we will reap. The ungrateful and the ungodly will reap ruin. And Zimbabwe stands as a vivid, tragic example of the national destruction, the national suicide that has come from an arrogant and deceitful man. and his futile thoughts, his foolish heart, his sense of entitlement, that everything Mugabe has done has been to enrich himself and to keep himself in power without any regard to the destruction caused to the people, the country, the ecology. Entire herds of elephants have been wiped out by his helicopter gunships and fighter bomber jets. He has allowed the Red Chinese to loot the country of its resources until a full half of the total population have fled the country. He has taken a currency that was stronger than the British pound and the American dollar in the 70s and turned it into the most debased currency on the planet. A government that does not even want their own currency is a failure on every level that you can imagine. When a hundred trillion dollar note in 2008, could not buy a quarter millimetre grid. And that's after they'd knocked 16 zeros off it. In 2006 it was calculated that one brick cost more than all the properties, farms and factories of Rhodesia at Independence in 1980. One brick. We've got way past that now. One grain of the brick cost more. And can you imagine how this destroyed the savings, the earnings the pensions of generations of people. Wipe them out. Why? Because an attitude of entitlement, a selfish, ungrateful attitude, a man who is just full of himself, is empty. A grateful mind is a great mind. Be thankful therefore for the least benefit and you will be worthy to receive greater. It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. Give thanks to the Lord. Call on his name. Make known among the nations what he has done. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you and praise you for the people who have invested in our lives, We praise you, Lord God, for your undeserved favor that you've poured out upon us, for the many answers to prayer that we even forgot to thank you for. We thank you, Lord God, for your provisions, for your protections from so many dangers, for your guidance, for your gracious overruling, for your forgiveness, most of all. Thank you, Lord God, that you died for us sinners. Thank you for your mercies in answering our undeserving prayers. We pray, Lord God, that you'd deepen our gratitude, that you'd widen our vision, that you'd make us more thankful, more joyful, and more prayerful. For we pray this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen.