"The Difference Gratitude Makes"

28-Nov-2010

“The Difference Gratitude Makes”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

Gratitude means I stop comparing with what others do, not just what they have.

Romans 14:1-8
November 28, 2010

Thanksgiving to Advent

I am aware today the first Sunday of Advent, in honor of the coming of King Jesus. You’ve seen the purple cloths on the altar and podiums. I even have a purple tie on. We have lit the first candle on the Advent wreath. Your bulletin is an Advent bulletin.

But I am not quite done with Thanksgiving yet. I don’t just mean the leftovers – though there’s plenty of turkey still in our refrigerator. I mean that the subject of giving thanks has been more on my mind this week than the season ahead.

If you were at our Community Thanksgiving Service on Thanksgiving Day, you know I had the privilege of preaching at the service. The theme of the Thanksgiving Day sermon was that we have to be careful when we give thanks for our blessings that we are not more focused on the blessings than we are on the Blesser. Giving thanks for food and prosperity and even family can turn the blessings themselves into idols. We can convince ourselves that God’s greatest joy is our prosperity and happiness. If thanksgiving doesn’t turn into praise and adoration, we miss the point.

Maybe part of my problem today is that I gathered more material for that sermon than I was able to use in one sermon! In Os Guinness’ marvelous, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, he has a chapter on giving thanks titled, “Let all your thinks be thanks.” That’s a quote from W. H. Auden.

Guinness has some other great quotes as well in this chapter –

Dostoevsky: “I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.”
Oswald Chambers: “I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.”
St. Augustine: The Christian is “alleluia from head to foot.”
G. K. Chesterton: The “chief idea of my life” is the practice of “taking things with gratitude and not taking things for granted.”
Dante Gabriel Rosetti: “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is genuinely thankful, but has nobody to thank.”

He also quotes from the Apostle Paul as he wrote to the church at Corinth: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (reference)

I believe Paul is one of the most grateful thinkers and writers who ever lived. He was so aware of his own lostness apart from Christ, so aware how his arrogance and self-righteousness, though sincere, had blinded him from truth, from God, from eternal life. He is so thankful for his friends and the churches he established and writes to. He exhorts them to be thankful.

What I love about Paul is how thankfulness weaves in and out of what he’s saying about other topics. Take, for example, Romans 14. This chapter is about preserving the unity of the Body of Christ by allowing grace in what Paul calls “disputable matters.” But right in the middle of the passage, Paul weaves in the subject of being thankful.

What I’m suggesting is that gratitude is never found in isolation. Gratitude is like turkey, in other words. You hardly ever find turkey except in the company of mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. So what does the Apostle Paul tell us belongs at the feast of Christian graces along with gratitude?

Kindness (vv. 1-4)

Paul begins this remarkable text by saying that we should “accept him whose faith is weak” (v. 1). The one word “accept” is the key to this whole passage. It’s a compound word in Greek – proslambano, “to” or “toward” plus “receive.” In other words “to take to” something, especially “to take to oneself.”

Thayer’s Greek dictionary says it means to take as a companion, to give access to your heart, to receive as a friend, to take into your home for the purpose of kindness.

Grateful people are kind, friendly, open, and hospitable. They are accepting and gracious toward those who differ with them.

The Apostle Paul has a particular situation in mind when he asks the Roman Christians to be accepting. They are to accept the one “whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters” (1).

There are, by inference, “indisputable matters,” essentials of the Christian faith on which we should agree in the body of Christ. With the consent of the Board of Elders, I have just revised my essay on “Essentials and Non-essentials” which is in our welcome packet for guests at Corinth and is also on our web site under “What We Believe.” Some matters are essential to call yourself Christian. The Nicene Creed is a good summary statement of our essentials.

But so many issues are non-essential, including those about which Christians strongly disagree. In every age, those areas of disagreement have included scruples, taboos, do’s and don’ts.

In Paul’s day, those scruples included eating meat (2). Also on his mind are scruples about observing the Sabbath (5) and drinking wine (21). It fascinates me that twenty centuries later these same issues are, for at least some Christians, sources of contention.

Probably at issue in Paul’s day was that some Christians who had converted from Judaism were still holding on to ceremonial laws and behavioral standards from what we now call the Old Testament. It wasn’t that they were saying you have to obey the Law in order to please God, because Paul would not have considered that point “disputable.” Rather they believed the best way to honor God, even if you are saved through the grace of Christ, is to keep those same rules since they came from God in the first place.

Paul calls these brothers and sisters “weak” because their oversensitive consciences still need tight boundaries. They don’t feel good about the validity of their faith if it’s not fenced in by measurable rules. They need small fences.

Paul considers himself free of such boundaries. Completely free. In fact, he is so free that he is not even a slave to his freedom. In 2 Corinthians Paul will make a similar point about “rights.” He has rights, including the right not to insist on his rights. Gratitude gives a person that kind of countercultural freedom.

From a position of spiritual strength, Paul can accept the person who is weak. Later in this chapter he will even say that he can accept the scruples of the weak and be bound by them for the sake of “peace” and “mutual edification” (19). He can eat or not eat, drink or not drink.

The fleshly response to a weaker brother is condescension – Paul calls it “looking down on him” in verse 3. The fleshly response to a stronger brother is judgmentalism – “condemning,” also in verse 3. But neither condescension nor judgmentalism leaves room for the fact that my brother or sister is “someone else’s servant” (v. 4). I’m not in charge of him. “God has accepted him,” Paul plainly says in verse 3.

One of my mentors, the late Dr. Ken Mulholland, used to say that he didn’t want to reject someone God has accepted. God accepts people by faith in Jesus Christ. Stronger or weaker than I am, if you’re good enough for God you’re good enough for me.

Why? Because I’m so grateful. I’m thankful that he accepted me, and that gratitude makes me want to accept others.

Contentment (vv. 5-8)

Beginning in verse 5, Paul brings up the question of Sabbath-keeping. At least that’s what I think he’s talking about. I could be wrong.

I wrestle with the biblical approach to Sabbath. The Sabbath principle is SO central in the Old Testament, even before Moses and the “Big Ten” (commandments) – all the way back to the creation account in Genesis. Sabbath-keeping continues to be an important test of faith and obedience in the Old Testament prophets – centuries after Moses. It’s a biggie, from a Jewish perspective.

But in the New Testament, the least that can be said is that keeping the Sabbath is not a biggie. Jesus and the apostles either downplay the Sabbath or spiritualize it. The early church seems to prefer worshiping together on “the Lord’s Day,” Sunday. There’s enough ambiguity in the New Testament that Christians have often debated the right way to honor God with one day in seven.

Not everyone is even convinced that Romans 12:5 is about the Sabbath. Paul writes, “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike.” Verse 6 adds that some Christians “regard one day as special.”

If Paul is not talking about the Sabbath, he may be talking about Jewish Christians keeping various festival days proscribed in the Old Testament.

Here is where gratitude comes most explicitly into Paul’s argument. He switches from the Sabbath issue back to the food debate. “He who eats meat,” he says in verse 6, “eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.”

That’s contentment. I’m not obsessed with meat or no meat. I can go either way. I’m just obsessed with God and how good he’s been to me, whether I eat meat or don’t. I’m satisfied with him.

What’s important, Paul says in verse 5, is that “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

Paul is not saying your decisions on these matters don’t matter. John Calvin said about this verse, “There ought to be in Christians such a care for obedience, that they do nothing, except what they think, or rather feel assured, is pleasing to God.” There is no hint here of a “whatever” mindset toward right and wrong.

As Paul goes on to say in vv. 7-8, “None of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”

Am I able, in the scruples I adopt or reject, to live them out with thanksgiving? “God, I give you thanks for this meat, this wine, this day of freedom” or “God, I give you thanks for these vegetables, this water, this day of worship and rest”? If in my heart I can make my choices out of a desire to please him, and out of thankfulness for his gifts, I will live with contentment, secure in this life and the next. Part of my contentment is not having to force my decisions about “disputable matters” on others.

I told you that I had too much sermon material for my Thanksgiving Day sermon and I wanted to carry over some of it for today. I was listening to a radio preacher named Alistair Begg this week. I don’t listen to radio preaching that much – some of that is because I’m usually not in the car when they are on. But I was in the car last Monday night on the way home from the Outer Banks, where I had been to play golf with my brothers and see the Thompson side of the family. I had been talking on the phone with my friend John Armstrong, and he had mentioned Alistair Begg as a friend of his.

So when Begg came on, I listened. Besides, it was his Thanksgiving sermon, and I thought he might help me with my own preparation. He also speaks with a marvelous Scottish brogue that I wish I could mimic. It’s so much more interesting than my rather non-descript accent. But since Begg’s sermon was on contentment, I won’t covet.

Begg quoted a poem by Jason Lehman in his Thanksgiving sermon. Jason Lehman was fourteen years old when he penned these words –

Present Tense

It was spring, but it was summer I wanted,
The warm days, and the great outdoors.
It was summer, but it was fall I wanted,
The colorful leaves, and the cool, dry air.
It was fall, but it was winter I wanted,
The beautiful snow, and the joy of the holiday season.
It was winter, but it was spring I wanted,
The warmth and the blossoming of nature.
I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted,
The freedom and respect.
I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted,
To be mature, and sophisticated.
I was middle-aged, but it was 20 I wanted,
The youth and the free spirit.
I was retired, but it was middle-age I wanted,
The presence of mind without limitations.
My life was over, and I never got what I wanted.

I don’t know where Jason Lehman is today or what he’s up to, but if he learned that lesson about contentment at age 14, he was far ahead of most of us.

Contentment is closely linked to gratitude. When I am grateful for all the blessings I have received and see them as gifts from God, I don’t need to keep grabbing for more. Perhaps that’s our link to Advent. Let’s allow the spirit of gratitude to carry over into a deep and abiding satisfaction with what we have – not just money but circumstances, people, and progress in life.

Gratitude means I stop comparing myself with what others do, not just what they have. I don’t have to be better than they are, resorting either to condescension toward those I see as weaker or judgmentalism toward those who don’t share my scruples. I am content to be fully convinced in my own mind.

Like turkey with gravy and stuffing, grateful contentment will be accompanied by humility, wisdom, faith, generosity, and grace. That’s what I want Advent to look like. Amen.