Give Thanks

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. It’s not just another Thursday, it’s a day when most of us won’t go to work and for many of us it is a paid day off. Most of us will gather with family and friends for a special meal and time together. Many will watch football and some will play football in parks and fields.
We eat a meal to remember a time of thanksgiving celebrated in 1621 by some of the first European immigrants and their indigenous neighbors. They had fled religious persecution in England, moving first to Holland and then to the new world. They were heading for Virginia but a storm pushed them to land off the coast of what is now Massachusetts. What might be seen as a problem was – in their worldview – seen as providence, God working in their circumstances. The pictures we see of the Pilgrims do not accurately convey the hardship they had suffered. Death had come to nearly every home, and many of the families that gathered were made up of a man who had lost his wife married to a woman who had lost her husband and their combined surviving children. In their hardship they gave thanks for God’s care and provision for them.
On October 3, 1789 George Washington called for a day of national thanksgiving in his Thanksgiving Proclamation. It says in part:
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced . . .
How far we have come.
As we gather on Thanksgiving Day we might think or even talk about what we are thankful for, but how much thinking or talking will be about who we are thankful to?
Romans 8:28 says: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
I know I’ve ripped this text from its massively rich context, but I do so to remind us that God is working. God is working in all things. God is working in all things for the good of those who are called by Him.
The Pilgrims knew this as they went through hardship from persecution by a state controlled church to travel across a very large ocean in a very small boat and faced the New England winters. Our founding fathers – not all of whom were Christians – knew this as they declared independence from England and established that independence with blood.
Here we are the beneficiaries of the sacrifice of the Pilgrims and those who gave everything for liberty. Here we are the beneficiaries of the sacrifice of our families for us. In all of this, God is working and if you are called by Him He is working for your good.
We have been going through hard times. We all know someone who is unemployed or underemployed. In this God is working. We all experience disease, either personally or in those we love. In this God is working. We all experience strained relationships. In this God is working. I could go on but I think you get what I am saying. In this world we will hardship and suffering, and God is working.
Is hardship and suffering all we experience? Absolutely not, though sometimes it feels that way. We also experience great joy and satisfaction, but if our joy and satisfaction is only in our experience it is misplaced. Our greatest joy and satisfaction is in Christ.
We don’t hear the word providence much anymore, but just because we quit talking about it doesn’t mean that God quit. He is working. God is not only our Creator, He is our Sustainer. In Christ God holds the universe together. Colossians 1:15-17 tells us that by Christ all things were created and in Him all things hold together. If He stopped, the universe would fly apart. That’s providence on a big scale, but that’s not where providence stops.
God’s providence affects every part of life. It is by common grace, grace given to all mankind, that the sun shines and the rain falls and food grows. Whether it is recognized or not it is by God’s grace that we have people to love and work to do and homes to live in. But what if we don’t have people to love or work to do or homes to live in? God is still sovereign and He is still good and He is still working.
Are you OK with that? Or do you think that if things aren’t “good” God must not be working? I’m afraid that many have an entitlement mentality about God. Many believe that because they are Christians God is obligated to make life easy. That’s not what Scripture teaches.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
God works all things together for good. That doesn’t mean that everything we experience will be good. When we are born again we receive a new heart, a new nature, but we continue to live in bodies corrupted by sin in a world corrupted by sin. We live with the effects of our sin and the sin of those around us; in this God is working all things together for good.
This Thanksgiving and always I encourage you to remember the One to whom you give thanks. God is good and is working all things together for the ultimate good, redeeming a people for himself who will be resurrected in sinless bodies and worship Him in the new earth where there will be no sin. Give thanks in your circumstances. Be thankful for what you have and what you don’t have. God is good and working all things together for good. If you are in Christ God is caring for you, but His work to conform you to the likeness of Christ does not guarantee ease and comfort in this life. He does guarantee that we will see Christ as He is because we will be made like Him in the resurrection.
Life can be hard, but God is always good. Have a blessed Thanksgiving. Ray

Seventy Times Seven

In Matthew chapter 18 we read the account of Peter coming to Jesus and asking how many times he should forgive his brother when he sins against him. “As many as seven times?” Peter asks.
I suspect this is not a hypothetical question for Peter. He not thinking that someday some brother might sin against him repeatedly and he should be ready. No, I think Peter is living with a brother sinning against him. He is living with forgiving the same guy for the same thing over and over again.
Jesus replies; “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
Imagine Peter’s thinking; “Seventy times seven? I have to forgive this guy 490 times?”
Jesus, knowing what Peter was thinking when we can only imagine, explains by telling a parable, a story made up to make a point. The story was about a king who came to settle accounts with his people. A servant was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. A talent was about twenty year’s wages for this man. To convert it to our thinking, if you make $50,000 a year that would be $1,000,000. This was an impossible debt.
Unable to pay, the king ordered that this man, his wife, his children, and everything he owned be sold to pay the debt. The man begged his master to give him more time and he would pay him. Does this sound realistic? Does this seem like a good risk? I don’t think so. I think his master would have been ahead to take what he could get and move on.
But the king had pity on the man. He had mercy, not giving the man what he deserved or even the extension he asked for; he forgave the debt.
I don’t think we really understand how huge this was. Our possessions might be seized to pay our debt, but we wouldn’t be sold into slavery. This man received mercy beyond calculation in the debt being forgiven.
This should have changed his life. He should have never looked at anyone who owed him anything without thinking of the debt he was forgiven. But that’s not what happened.
The man found another man who owed him 100 denarii. A denarius was about a day’s wages. At $50,000 a year for six days a week that is just under $160.00. When he could not pay, the man had him put in prison.
This man would not forgive $160.00 even though he had been forgiven 6,250 times more.
What do you think? I think that what this man was despicable. Sadly, I have acted every bit as despicably.
Apart from Christ I owed an impossible debt, a debt I could not pay. Unlike the king in our parable, God didn’t just forgive my debt, He paid it in full. The debt I owed, the penalty for my sin, was eternal death. God paid my debt as His eternal Son took on himself the penalty I deserved.
If you are a Christian, if you are in Christ by grace through faith, your sin, past present and future, has been forgiven because the penalty for your sin has been paid.
Having received this great forgiveness from the One I sinned against, how can I not forgive those who sin against me? Jesus humbled himself in His incarnation and was humiliated in His crucifixion and yet, as he hung beaten and bloodied dying the most agonizing and painful death ever conceived by mankind, asked God the father to forgive those who unjustly convicted Him, mocked Him, beat Him, and nailed Him to a cross to die.
Our parable continues as some of the other servants went to their master and told him what the unforgiving servant had done.
The king called in this servant and said to him; “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” Then he threw the servant into prison until he could pay.
Jesus concludes the parable with; “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Jesus is not saying that God will condemn us for unforgiveness, He is saying our unforgiveness condemns us. Salvation is not based on anything we do, nor is condemnation. Salvation is by grace – the freely given unmerited gift of God – alone. What Jesus is saying is that if we are unforgiving we are not forgiven. Unforgiveness is a sign of one who has not been reconciled to God.
Don’t misunderstand, we get hurt by others and we get angry at others and we may struggle with unforgiveness, but if we are in Christ His Spirit is in us and we will be convicted of our sin and come to forgive those who have hurt us and those we are angry with. Those who do not are not in Christ.
I find the way to forgiveness is to consider what forgiveness cost God the Father. I find the way to let go of an offense is to consider the offense of the mocking and beating and crucifixion of the Son of God. Considering this, how can I hold on to an offense? Considering this, how can I not forgive? Considering this, I should gladly forgive my brother more than seventy times seven times.

Walk Worthy

The apostle Paul exhorted the Christians in Ephesus, Colosse, and Thessalonica to walk worthy of their calling and worthy of the Lord who called them. He exhorted them to live in a manner that reflected who they were in Christ. I believe the exhortation given by the apostle to particular churches in his day is for the Church universal and so is for Christians today. We are to live in a manner worthy of our calling and of the Lord who called us. We are to die to self and live for Christ. We are to boldly proclaim the Gospel. We are to sacrificially love.
I think most of us who know Christ as Savior agree that this is what we are to do; indeed most of us would say this is what we want to do, but many of us aren’t doing it – or aren’t doing it very well – because we seem to have little power against our sinful attitudes and behavior. Some of us have given up, thinking that we are “just sinners saved by grace” and we can’t hope to have real or lasting victory. Some of us categorize, believing that as long as we stay away from the “big” sins we are OK. We can live with a little lust as long as we don’t fall in to adultery. We can live with a little anger as long as we don’t punch anyone in the nose.
We aren’t called to give up. We aren’t called to defeat. We aren’t given the liberty to be OK with the “little” sins. We are called to walk – to live – in a manner worthy of our call and the One who called us.
I think most of us aren’t doing this – dying to self and boldly proclaiming the Gospel and sacrificially loving – because we misunderstand the concept. We think we are called to do when in fact we are called to be. We make walking worthy of Christ a matter of doing.
I don’t think this is what Paul is calling us to. Throughout his epistles Paul declares this is who Christ is and this is who the Christian is in Christ. He never says go do this and you will be this, he always points us to who we are in Christ and tells us to be who we are in Christ.
If you are a Christian you are in Christ. You have been born of the Holy Spirit and you are indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Paul writes; “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is an inspiring thought, but many days this is not our experience. I don’t think Paul wrote this to inspire, I think he wrote it to describe. He wrote it to describe the reality of who we are in Christ.
Paul wrote to declare the truth about those who are in Christ. All who are in Christ have been changed. The old nature has been replaced with the new. We were by nature children of wrath. We were dead in sin, but we have been made alive in Christ.
So, if the reality is that we are new in Christ why is it our experience that so often we don’t live that way?
We don’t live that way because we live in corrupted flesh – flesh that will not be completely redeemed until the resurrection – and we live in a corrupted world. I think most of us get that. That’s why we say we’re just sinners saved by grace.
We don’t live that way because we aren’t being who we are in Christ. We experience defeat by our sin instead of victory over our sin because we aren’t walking in the Spirit. Paul wrote that if we walk by the Spirit we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. What leads us, our corrupted flesh or the Holy Spirit in us? Are we looking to our experience to define our reality and inform our thinking and our living or is the true reality of who we are in Christ taught in Scripture and validated by the Spirit in us informing our thinking and our living?
We live in our experience, and we can live nowhere else, but our experience should not define us. What should define us is who we are in Christ, and I’m convinced that as we understand who we are in Christ our experience will change. We will walk in the Spirit and not pander to the desires of the flesh.
To do this we need a correct understanding of who Christ is, what He has done, and who we are in Him.
Imagine going downtown and seeing a man living on the street and sleeping in doorways. You comment to your friend who is walking with you how sad it is that people live that way. Your friend looks at you incredulously and asks; “Do you know who this man is?” When you say no, your friend says; “He is the son of Mr. Jones, the richest man in town, and heir to the Jones business and financial empire!”
Why would the son of the richest man in town live on the street and sleep in doorways? I don’t know, but I have a question closer to home. Why do we who are in Christ, born of the Spirit, by grace though faith redeemed from the penalty for our sin, reconciled to God, adopted as His children, indwelled and empowered by the Spirit, dead to sin and alive in Christ, live like the only part of this we get is that we are saved by grace through faith (we hope).
Christians who live this way are like the man living on the street while the heir to the richest man in town. They live with a false identity. They live with a false understanding of who they are. I believe that if we live in our true identity – which we can only do if we understand who we are – we will live in a manner worthy of our calling and the One who called us. We will walk in the Spirit and not indulge our flesh. We will walk in victory, putting sin to death.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not talking about becoming sinless – as long as we live in flesh corrupted by sin in a world corrupted by sin we will sin – but we are no longer sinners by nature. We have been made new in Christ.
Many Christians live with a deficient understanding of their true identity. Many of us have a deficient understanding of who we are in Christ.