Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

Brothers and sisters in the Lord, I want to share with you from this passage that we've
read together, something of a biblical explanation why society goes in the direction that it
goes.
It's no secret that we live in a world that has values that are turned upside down.
Things that only a few years ago were taboo, today have become very popular.
Values which once were noble are now considered by many people ignoble, and things that we
shutter to even consider some years ago are blatantly portrayed within our society as being
a very natural kind of a thing.
And if you're a thinking person at all, you cannot help but ask yourself the question,
what is happening that is making a society like Western civilization go down the tube
in that particular direction in such a relatively short order?
Paul here in Romans chapter 1 gives us, I believe, one of the most concise biblical explanations
for why people not only begin to do evil, but they begin to consider evil as a normality,
something to be chosen over good.
And the starting point, he says most interestingly, lies in a refusal to honor God as God or give
him the kind of thanks that he deserves.
He says he, in verse 20, ever since the creation of the world, he is, that is, God's invisible
nature, namely his eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that
have been seen so they are without, excuse, and what he really means there is this.
Every man, woman, boy or girl that has ever lived anywhere in the world, no matter how
deeply pagan they may have been, should by studying nature know two things about God.
Number one that he is, and number two that he is all powerful.
And God therefore rightly demands from everybody that has ever been created that if they are
at all honestly interested in truth that they must search after God with everything that
is within their hearts.
Now the problem with the human race is that because of sin we don't want to do that.
Paul here talks about people deliberately by their wickedness suppressing the truth.
The human race knows intuitively that if God is really God and if he really exists that
means my life is to be lived by his terms and by his dictates and the rebellious heart
of man doesn't want to do that.
And because mankind doesn't want to do that they try to find reasons to get rid of God
so they don't have to honor him as God and they don't have to give thanks to him and
acknowledge that it is from him that they receive all the gifts of his grace.
And so Western civilization ever since the age of modernity began which was around the
time of the French Revolution has been systematically at work getting rid of God from the scientific
disciplines of life.
It's been observed that Darwin succeeded in doing that in formulating the theory of evolution.
Part of the reasoning behind the development of the theory of evolution originally regardless
of how you may view it today.
Must to get rid of an explanation that said there is a creation therefore there must be
an intelligent being that stands behind that creation and so therefore God must exist.
Darwin came along and with his theories of natural selection and everything else gave
an explanation that appealed to the human heart that said we can have a creation without
having a creator that made it and you can go to any public school or you can go to many
universities today and they will teach you as fact that somehow or another the world came
out of nothing and that God had nothing to do with it.
By their wickedness they suppress the truth that the Bible says ought to be self evident.
Some years later Sigmund Freud came along, did the same thing for the mind of man what
Darwin had done for the biology of man.
Analyzed the soul of man and laid bare the philosophy that religious experience and the
way that people behave are not part of the mystery of life and the spirit of God but
as all the natural product of how you got along with your parents and whether you were
toilet trained properly or not and I'm not minimizing the importance of Freud or the
importance of psychoanalysis but what Freud did and what the disciples of Freud have
done within our culture is they have gotten rid of the divine component out of the psychology
of man and you see life now becomes relative.
There are no moral absolutes about what you can do or what you cannot do.
You can do whatever it is that you want to do because you are God.
There is no God who tells you what to love and what to hate.
It's all part of an actual process.
Then somebody else and I forget his name, he came along, he did the same thing in the
field of sociology and the development of human society and development of human relationship
was no longer the product of a divine creation to be governed by divine principles.
It was merely the invention of mankind and therefore the structures in the society that
we live in can be modified to suit our own convenience.
They refused to acknowledge God as God.
And then within our own century and the last Karl Marx and all of his followers came
along and they tried to do the same thing to the political system.
By their wickedness men suppress the knowledge of truth you cannot understand what happens
in today's society unless you understand that there is something within the human heart
that is offended at having to acknowledge God as God and that is offended at having
to honor God as God people want to be gods themselves.
And they very deliberately go to work to get rid of what they think is the evidence of
who God is and evidence that Paul says every pagan ought to be able to recognize simply
by studying the order of creation.
Now what happens when people refuse to honor God as God when they refuse to give thanks
to him and when by their wickedness they suppress the truth?
Well Paul says an interesting chain of events begins to develop.
The starting point of which is that God gives them up to their sin.
Verse 24 therefore in light of all the preceding God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts
to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.
There comes a point in God's dealings with the human race whereby God's grace, what
in our tradition we have called common grace whereby he restrains evil, is lifted.
And while God is very gracious to those who don't know any better and is infinitely
patient to those who are seeking to find him with all of their hard willing to reveal
himself to them, there's something in the heart of God that gets very angry with people
who deliberately refuse to acknowledge the truth because you see that kind of a person
doesn't have an honest heart.
That kind of a person isn't really honestly searching for reality, that kind of a person
is just trying to find excuses so that he can do what he wants to do when he wants to
do it and how he wants to do it.
And because there isn't an honest searching and that kind of a person's heart, there
is really nothing that can happen for truth to break through into that person's life.
And so the Bible says when mankind knowingly and deliberately rejects the revelation that
God gives and refuses to hear his word, whether in general or specific revelation, there
comes a point whereby God gives them up whereby God removes from them that protection.
They take leave of common sense and everything that is within their heart that they have
now chosen to cater to, God allows it to flow and to grow until it comes to full maturity
at which point his judgment falls.
And when you go through Romans chapter 1 here and you discover that when God gives people
up to their sin, there are two things that become evident in that kind of society.
Number 1, homosexuality becomes rampant.
Verse 26 for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, their women exchange
natural relations for unnatural.
The men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion
for one another.
Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons, they do penalty
for their error.
But of course in the beginning of Scripture made us male and female as part of a manifestation
of his image and his likeness.
Part of acknowledging God as God is that you accept the way God has made you, whether
it's male or female.
When you begin to reject the very reality of God, which is the most foundational of all
truth, God gives you up to the lie, part of the lie becomes a confusion of your sexual
identity.
You no longer know whether you're a man or whether you're a woman.
And you begin to exchange the natural relationship and the natural affection for the unnatural.
It's important for God's people to understand that the rise of homosexuality within our
culture, and the widespread acceptance with which it is being foisted upon a human race,
is the result biblically speaking of our rejection of who God is that leads to a justification
of things that God says are not to be that way.
It's important to understand that because we live in a day and age that would cause us
to believe it is an alternate lifestyle.
While it is an alternate lifestyle, but it's not a biblical one, it's not one that is
being sanctioned by God, and the grace of Jesus came to deliver us from that as well as
all our other sins.
So number one, when people reject God, God gives them up to homosexuality.
They exchange their natural relations for the unnatural, and then the second thing that
he goes on to say in this passage is that God gives them up to every form of sin.
Verse 28, since they did not fit to acknowledge God, notice it again, they didn't see fit
to acknowledge God. God gave them up to a baseline.
To improper conduct, they were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness,
malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity.
They are gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of
evil, disobedient appearance, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
What is it that restrains evil within the human heart?
How do you maintain law and order?
By having an understanding that there is a God, overall, who watches your every action
to whom you are accountable even in the moments when nobody else is watching you?
And this is success of a society is based upon the philosophy that we are willing to abide
by moral laws and honest precepts because we depend upon trust in order for a society
to function.
Now you take God out of the equation.
To refuse to acknowledge there is a God whom you must honor and to whom you must give
things and there is no reason to restrain the impulses of the human heart.
And so when people refuse to acknowledge God as God, He'll give them up.
And God says, "If that's the way that you want to live, then go ahead and live that
way."
He pulls back the restrains at all the evil and all the murder but all the self-centeredness
and all the foolishness that is within the human heart now begins to grow and grow and
so it's despair and its foolishness until a whole society begins to collapse under the
weight of it.
That's what happened with Communism.
Communism was a grand attempt at starting a new society and ruling God out of the equation.
The whole thing has bogged down in every possible level because they discovered the one thing
they cannot do by legislation is change the human heart.
And people have become selfish and people have become self-centered and they've become
a self-serving under Communism as they have under every other kind of world, the form
of government in the world.
The Bible here says, "The end of the process is a total reversion of values whereby God,
whereby good becomes evil and evil becomes good."
Notice the concluding verse of this chapter though, "They know God's decree that those
who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they approve those who
practice them.
They not only do them, but they approve those."
Who do them?
Do you catch the difference?
It took me and my own life a long time to catch what it was that he was getting at.
What he is saying is you see it's one thing to do something that's bad and you know that
what you're doing is bad.
I mean that's bad.
But that's not half as bad as doing something bad and thinking you're doing something good.
And when God gives you over to sin, then you no longer think of sin as bad.
You think of sin as good and you've gone as far as you can go because as long as you
think you're doing okay, you cannot come back.
You see that's why God's judgment comes at that point in a society because rejecting
God, they have embraced a form of evil.
Now why do I share all that with you one of things, giving day when you don't want
to think too deep?
For this reason, the antidote to the decline within our society and the answer to the
human dilemma isn't simply to rouse all kinds of campaigns to try to turn around the values
of our society because most of the time in and of itself that won't do with them.
The tool that God has given to the church and one of the most powerful ways in which
we can witness to the world is to do the very thing that the world refuses to do and
that is to honor God as God and to give thanks to Him for every blessing of His grace.
Because you see when you begin to honor God as God, when you acknowledge that He is the
Lord of your life and that you want to live your life the way that He wants you to live
in.
And when you begin to give thanks to Him for every blessing that flows from His hand,
the cycle gets to be reversed because in Christ Jesus, to Him who has will more be given.
Just as to Him who has not even a little bit He has, we'll be taken away from Him.
And that's why we're here today in a time when Thanksgiving for most people is strictly
on a horizontal level, sharing family joys and taking a holiday and perhaps indulging themselves
in a variety of different ways.
We're here this morning because we've heard the call of God upon our lives.
And we've come to see by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy
Spirit that there is a God.
This whole universe did not simply spring in to being out of nothing.
It was made by our God and by our Father.
And whatever the process is might have been that He may have used in the process of making
that one thing we know, we confess Him as the Creator of all, the Almighty God, Maker
of Heaven and Earth.
We confess this same God sustains it daily by His Word of power.
And we know that if God were to take His hand off the world and off your life and off
my life, the whole world would disappear because it is held together, says Colossians chapter
one by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
We know that when we sit down at our Thanksgiving dinner and when we watch with joy and amazement
to crops that grow in the field, that doesn't just happen.
That only happens because there is a God in Heaven above who pours out His life and
who pours out His blessing, who causes season to change the season, rain to fall when it
needs to fall in the sun to shine when it needs to shine and who can take the mystery
of a seed and produce life and cause it to produce fruit that you and I can sit down
and enjoy.
When we go about our life and we enjoy the relationships that God gives us and when
we sit down and we enjoy our family experiences many of us and we sit down and we take stock
of everything that we have that makes life so meaningful and so full of purpose.
We acknowledge it didn't just happen and we acknowledge it didn't just happen because
we're so smart and clever and capable.
It happened because God saw fit to bless the labor of our hands.
And so in a world that wants nothing to do with Him.
That lives daily as if there is no God.
We're here today to honor.
God is God.
We confess that He is our Creator.
We confess that He is our Redeemer.
We confess that every blessing that we receive from His hand is a blessing that He gives
us in love for us to receive and joy and in response we offer to Him our sacrifices
of joy and our sacrifices of Thanksgiving.
And I believe there is something in the heart of God that is glad when He sees the people
like us, renewed by His Spirit and redeemed by the blood of Jesus, being restored in some
small way to giving things to God.
Can you imagine how it feels to God?
And I know we don't often think in those terms, but can you imagine how it feels to God
on the vast majority of people that live in the face of this earth?
Act as if He isn't there.
Act as if all the things that He's done for them, He hasn't done for them.
And worst in that act as if it's their own wisdom, their own strength, their own ability
that brings it all into reality.
There is a cry of anguish in the heart of God that people should embrace the lie rather
than the truth.
Can you therefore imagine the joy in the heart of God?
And there is a people that has come to see the reality of life that really agree that
all things come from God and that out of the depths of their being want to take time
out to the busy day and in a busy schedule and in a busy weekend and just be together
in the presence of God and say, "God, we love you.
We appreciate you for who you are and for what you've done."
And Lord, we want all of our lives to be to You a sacrifice of praise and a sacrifice
of thanksgiving I believe Heaven rejoices at such a people.
Maybe you say to yourself, "Well, I don't really feel very thankful."
I mean, it's been a rough year.
Things haven't gone the way that I thought they should go, and I don't know if I've had
a fair shake in life and I don't know why I should be grateful because God says so.
And the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving that comes from a heart that
doesn't understand everything that is happening, that isn't always able to lay hold in a concrete
way of the reality of God, but that still says, "With Joe God, I love you, I serve you,
I acknowledge you as God."
That is a heart that has been touched by the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ and I want
to encourage you today, the best way out of the slumps of life, the best way to solve
all the things that don't make sense, is to get your eyes off the trouble and off the
circumstances and off the difficulties and on to God and say, "God, I love you.
God, I worship you.
I adore you.
I praise you.
I thank you even for the gift of pain because the gift of pain in the final analysis is
going to work together for good in my life."
You'll discover that as you do that.
God takes our sorrow, God takes our hurt, God takes our disappointment.
He turns it around into a song of thanksgiving, into a song of joy.
And as God has exalted in our lives and as God has exalted in our midst, God pours out
his love, God pours out his gratitude and our lives begin to come together because you
see we are embracing the most fundamental truth of the universe, namely that God is and
that He is holy and that He is perfect and that He is just and that all His actions toward
us are actions of thanksgiving and kindness because He loves us with never-lasting love in
Jesus Christ.
But ask the ladies to come up now.
They're going to lead us in another medley of praise.
They're going to start with us, with a song, give thanks, with a grateful heart.
If thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because He's given Jesus Christ, His Son.
Now let the weak say, "I am strong," let the poor say, "I am rich," because of what
the Lord has done for us.
They'll sing it for us.
I believe one time first and then they'll bring us into it and they will lead us in the
rest of the praise medley.
And as they lead us, just give your heart to the Father.
Not Him among us for He is worthy to be praised because He alone is God and He is God eternally.
God bless you.