Darren Tappouras - Class 1: Gratitude and Thankfulness

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   Thanks, Andy, and my dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, my dear young people. Tonight's study is not one of my studies for the judgment seat, but as we go through tonight's study, you'll see that it is somewhat related. So I'll make a few comments about that as we look at this particular subject tonight, which is all about gratitude and thankfulness.

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   Now, a couple of years ago, what started me thinking about this subject was a couple of years ago I came across a research paper. It was put out by Professor Robert Emmons from the University of California. I've actually downloaded the extract from the paper, if anyone's interested, and you can actually download it from the university's website.

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   And it was a long-term research project looking at the effect of gratitude and thankfulness using empirical sort of analysis and methodologies. And what they did, just to go through the background of the study very briefly, was that they carried out the study on about 200 undergraduate students, divide them up into three different clusters, and the students did not know what really the study was all about, so they used all the different sort of mechanisms that they often apply in these sort of science research projects, and they had data reduction and different sorts of methodologies that they employ, and they had each group focus on a different thing.

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   And one of the groups, one of the clusters, was called the Gratitude Cluster. And one thing this Gratitude Cluster had to do was that to sort of come together every week with the people that were carrying out the study, and they had to then list five things that they were grateful for in the week that had passed.

5. 1:52

   So that's all they really had to do, that particular group. That's all they had to do, all they had to focus on was five things, and they kept sort of a gratitude journal as they went through the week. Now, I don't want to waste a lot of time looking at the study, but they looked at things like, is gratitude and wellbeing a correlation or a causity?

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   Is it just that grateful people have this extra wellbeing factor, or does being grateful actually cause a sense of wellbeing? So they looked at all these different things. As I said, data reduction, manipulation checks, and there's all the tables and the studies that were sort of carried out as part of the research project.

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   It was really quite interesting. And they had to look at all the things like alternative explanations, and was there sort of a placebo effect, and all those sort of things had to be taken into account. But one of the groups, as I said, had to come together and put together five things that they were grateful for.

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   Just trying to find the page that had the list of... Here are some of the examples of some of the things that they were grateful for. Just in the last week, people expressed things... It's not a religious study at all, but because it's in America, there's sort of a religious aspect that a lot of people were thankful for God and all those sorts of things as well.

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   But things like the generosity of friends that they'd experienced. People even put things, let's say trivial, things that you might consider trivial, like just waking up in the morning was one of the things that featured in the gratitude list. Wonderful parents. One of them even is thankful for the Rolling Stones. I don't know how that all works.

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    So there you go. So, well, the interesting thing was, when the study was put together, the results were quite amazing, and this is what really attracted me to the subject. I might just read off the screen. I hope you don't mind me having my back to you. Is that all right, Dean? The gratitude cluster reported higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm and attentiveness.

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    So that's sort of a subjective type of thing, but it's interesting that that was one of the things that came through from that gratitude group. I was interested in some of these other factors. The gratitude cluster of people were more likely to have helped someone else in that week or in the subsequent weeks.

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    The gratitude cluster had a greater sense of feeling connected to other people. This is really interesting too. The gratitude cluster placed less importance on material things than the other clusters that they were compared to. Even right down to sort of quite interesting things, the gratitude cluster experienced better sleep, both in terms of duration and quality of their sleep.

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    Remember, all they've done different than the other clusters is they've recorded five things a week, that they were grateful for. And look at the results that are coming out of that. The gratitude cluster made more progress towards personal goals. Look at this. They reported better health and fewer physical symptoms than the other clusters.

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    They felt better about their life as a whole. Now that is pretty amazing, isn't it? Pretty amazing outcomes. As I said, you can download this study and read it yourself. But you have to admit, that's quite an incredible result, isn't it? From simply recording and having to think about and crystallise, I suppose, and bring to your consciousness.

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    But writing down five things that you are grateful for that you've experienced that week. And the results, as I said, speak for themselves. So when I read through that and thought about it, I started to think about gratitude and thankfulness from a biblical perspective. And that's what I'm going to talk a little bit about tonight.

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    Does the Bible indicate a benefit for gratitude and thankfulness? Are they things that God values? Are they things that God thinks are important for us to have and to develop? And are they things that we should talk about more and try and achieve more in our life? And so I want to think about this this morning.

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    This morning. Tonight, sorry. It's an interesting, I suppose, conundrum or circumstance that people in third world countries who don't have the material blessings that we have often feature higher in studies on gratitude and thankfulness, which is sort of an interesting concept, isn't it? Just taking sort of, I suppose, our epoch in history, say, following World War II, and look at the material benefits we experience and the things that we have by virtue of living in this particular period of time, you think we should be really the happiest people that have ever lived on the planet.

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    Here's some statistics about those who lived post-World War II. Real income, the power of the dollar that you have and you receive, real income per capita has doubled since the 1960s. So we can buy more, double what we could buy in the 1960s. Life expectancy for us has nearly doubled in the past century.

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    So people that would expect to live in their 40s, now we can expect to live in our 80s and 90s and take that for granted. Average house sizes, the floor space of the average house has doubled since World War II. And look at this stat here, I find this just staggering. The average Westerner, that's those who live in the Western world, I suppose the US and England and here in Australia, for example, the average Westerner is more prosperous than 99.4% of everyone in the world?

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    No. Of anyone who has ever lived ever. I mean, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? We, just us here, are amongst 99.4% of the most wealthiest people that have ever lived in history. So that's quite amazing. Yet, the results are the percentage of those who describe themselves as happy, so if you were asked, do you feel happiness in your life, is less than would have been experienced before World War II.

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    And then 25% of all those living in the Western world will suffer bouts of depression in their life. So there's this interesting sort of correlation as material things have actually got better, we've started to feel worse. So the materialism and things that we have don't necessarily correlate to well-being and a sense of happiness in our life.

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    And we're going to see if the Bible sort of supports those concepts as well. That's just from Wikipedia, just talking about the empirical connection, that there's many studies, not just the one I mentioned, there's many studies out there that show the connection between experiencing well-being, both physical and emotional well-being, with gratefulness, and the links are quite powerful.

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    We won't go through all that tonight. Now, I just want to make a little caveat, I suppose, or a little statement. I'm not trying to trivialise someone who is suffering clinical depression in your life, if you are suffering that or going through that. That is a medical condition and you need to see and be dealt with by a medical professional.

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    I'm talking about general sense of anxiety that we suffer in our life, general melancholy and stress and those things that we suffer as a result of living that we experience. And I just want to talk about what the Bible says about those things. Now, this is one of the, I suppose, the key verses that our mind goes to when someone raises this issue of thankfulness.

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    I just want to read this. I put most of tonight's slides up on the screen because tonight's supposed to be a lighter evening, so I'm not going to sort of get into exposition or anything. We're just going to throw some ideas out there for us to think about. This is a well-known passage from Philippians 4 and Paul writes, Now, just in the space of those two verses, from verses 6 to 7, we've travelled a huge sort of emotional road, haven't we?

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    A huge distance emotionally. We've gone from anxiety and being over-anxious and feeling the stress of that anxiety to verse 7, just a couple of lines on in the Bible, to experiencing the peace of God that passes understanding. Something that I'm sure all of us would love to experience and all of us would sort of look towards as sort of an ultimate outcome.

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    The peace of God in our life. In the Greek, it's the word ireni, which has the idea of tranquility and unity and all these beautiful concepts that are tied up in that idea of the peace of God. It's probably equivalent to the shalom from the Old Testament, which we'll talk about. So the peace of God is something we can experience.

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    And here we go from anxiety to the peace of God. And I ask the question, what is the... And this is what I'm going to ask in all the verses we're going to look at. What's the connection? What's the fulcrum or the tipping point from anxiety in our life to experiencing the peace of God?

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    And you'll see this concept pop up right through. The thing that links the two concepts together from moving emotionally from anxiety to the peace of God is thanksgiving. And there's the power of thanksgiving that helps change that mindset, if you like. And that's what we're going to think about tonight as we go through these verses.

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    So as I said, we start off feeling the burden of anxiety. And then, as I said, the next verse, verse 7, changes to feeling the peace of God, passes all understanding. And the fulcrum there, the tipping point is thankfulness. And we'll see that as a concept come up again and again. Here's another well-known verse on the peace of God.

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    Colossians 3. And again, the juxtaposition of these ideas in the verse here. Here we've got the peace of God, letting the peace of God rule in your heart. So control your hearts and your emotions and your thoughts and your outlook. The peace of God as the ruling sentiment in your hearts. And be ye thankful.

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    So you see the link of those two ideas again. Thankfulness and experiencing the peace of God. It's very powerful. And I thought about this on sort of a doctrinal level as well, I suppose. And this is something that's going to come out a little bit in our studies on the judgment seat and salvation and those issues we're going to talk about this week.

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    I believe thankfulness and gratitude to God are the active ingredients in the atonement. They're really the underlying power of the atonement. And there's so many verses that support that. You know, we love God because he first loved us. There's this reciprocal thing that's taking place if we really appreciate all those emotional realities that are built into our salvation.

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    Even the word salvation. When we say it's salvation, salvation, and it's such a sort of a theological word that we just rattle, but save. You know, think about what save means on an emotional level. We are saved. Salvation, redemption, these beautiful words that talk about a change of a dire situation and being delivered out of that and all these wonderful concepts.

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    And, you know, God always wanted, even the children of Israel, to look back to where they'd come from, to go back and think about what they were in Egypt and how they were slaves and how they groaned and they felt the oppression to what they had now, that they'd been delivered from that and saved from that.

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    And that becomes a metaphor for our salvation in the New Testament, doesn't it? All those words of groaning and redemption and all those words from the Old Testament become, you know, descriptive of what God has done for us in Christ. And the same emotional response is expected from God. You know, Paul uses this schema where he says, you know, there's a number of places, but probably in Ephesians it's really clear.

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    He says, you know, remember what you were without God in the world. So you were without God. You were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. You were this. You were that. And now you're being brought nigh. And he uses that schema of then and now to make us think about that and to crystallise this in our mind and to generate gratitude and thankfulness.

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    And I think that's really the power of the atonement. It's really about being grateful to God. And hopefully that'll come through in our other studies, our main studies as well. Now here's, you know, just going to the book of Romans and we'll talk about these concepts as well during the week. But, you know, Romans is very doctrinal and very, I suppose, expositional.

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    A lot of our dealings with the book of Romans. But let's try and get the emotional power of the book of Romans as well. And, for example, we've got this description in Romans 7 where Paul describes himself in Romans 7 and uses these terms to describe his feelings when he fails God. And he says in Romans 7, I'm sure you're all aware of it, you know, there are things that he knows he should do and he doesn't and he fails to do and there are things that he doesn't want to do but he does and he knows that they're wrong.

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    And he feels the wretchedness of that. He feels the burden and the guilt of that. And it's real to him. He feels the pain. And he says these words in Romans 7, I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me to captivity. And there again, captivity is, as I said, a metaphor based on the experience of the children of Israel in Egypt, isn't it?

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    Coming out time and time again in the story of redemption. And he feels he's captive to this body. He says this body of death, he mentions in verse 24. And a lot of expositors, you know, Brother Carter included, see this word picture there that Paul's using, that he's describing, he's using this torture method that the Romans used to use where they'd get a dead body and they'd tie a living person to a dead body and the dead body decayed and rotted and putrefied.

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    The rot would creep into the living person. It was a form of torture. And a lot of people see that Paul is using that sort of metaphor in these words. So we're linked to this body that's wretched. And you feel the power of Paul's words, this wretched man that I am. So there he is describing himself as captive, as a tortured captive.

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    And that's Romans 7. But then you go to Romans 8, just flip over the page or a couple of verses on, and the whole tone changes dramatically, doesn't it? And then you get to the end of Romans 8. And instead of using the term of a captive, now he's using the term of a conqueror.

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    Not just a conqueror, more than a conqueror. So a super conqueror. And he says, Nain, all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. You think, but Paul, only a few minutes ago, you were wretched. And you were saying that you failed God. And you were admitting that you failed God.

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    But now you're saying you're a conqueror. Really? And he says, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor death, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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    And again, we ask the question, there's a big, emotional distance traveled there, isn't it? From this wretchedness to this conquering expression that he uses. And again, we ask the question, where's the fulcrum here? Where's the link between the change that we experience in Romans 7 and Romans 8 that all of us experience as well in our own life?

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    And I think the fulcrum there is in verse 25. Right at the end of chapter 7, before the tone changes, and you get to chapter 8, verse 1, that says, there is therefore no condemnation, no judgment to them and the tone changes from verse 25 where he says, I thank God. And as I said, that is why I believe it's the active ingredient in the atonement.

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    I thank God. It's the sense of appreciation and a comprehension of the appreciation of what God has done for us and our position, our position as a result of that. But you've got to appreciate it and understand it and believe it and comprehend it in order for that to be powerful. So hopefully that makes some sense as well.

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    Now another really important verse on the subject of thankfulness is in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 18. And you've probably all heard this verse before and I'll just read that out. It says, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ concerning you. A couple of interesting things built into that verse.

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    It's actually, it's the will of God that we should give thanks. Can you see that's, that's what God's trying to evoke in us. That's really, at the end of the day, God sends his son, he calls us and what's the response he wants from us to sort of keep a list of rules and to do this and do that.

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    Not necessarily. The response, the underlying response is one of gratitude. That's the will of God concerning us. He wants us to feel the power of redemption and salvation. But I just want to focus on this little word that starts off that verse. He says there, in, in everything, give thanks. So giving thanks is not like something we just do in retrospect.

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    We make up a shopping list later on and we say, well, let's thank God for all these things he's done for us in the previous week. And that's what the, you know, the guys in that research project did. The Bible's taking it one step further and says, in everything, give thanks. While you are experiencing things, give thanks.

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    In the middle of either the blessing or as it might be the negative situation you're experiencing while it's taking place, give thanks. And there's an immediacy about that. And it puts us right into the heart of what we're experiencing and brings God into it at the same time. So in these things, while they're taking place, he says, give thanks.

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    And that's really, you know, it's really hard to do but it's really the power of thankfulness. When we're feeling the emotions of things, good or bad, bring God into it straight away and give thanks for that particular experience that we're going through. You know, some of us in our life for one reason or other might have to see a counsellor or a psychologist or someone like that if we're, you know, suffering or going through some sort of problem.

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    and one of the things that the psychologist will try and do for many of us is to get us to live or to think in the moment, in the present because so many anxieties and problems are caused by either fear of the future and fear of what's going to happen or regret about things that have already happened in the past and we can either get fixated on both of those sort of directions.

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    and so we have to talk through those issues and try and focus on the here and the now and nothing anchors us to the present more than thankfulness and gratitude for what we are experiencing right now in our life and that's one of the things we're going to make some lists in a moment about things but try and thank God for things that you experience as you experience them as you're driving down the road and you see a beautiful sunset or you see an eagle soaring through the sky and circling just thank God for the beauty of nature thank God for all the wonderful things that you have experienced someone shows you kindness or friendship but even when negative things happen and things challenge you then you thank God for those things while you're in the storm thank God for those things as well now as I said we're trying to bring thankfulness into everyday life not just when big ticket items happen but also when everyday life happens to bring God into it I just made a list of a couple of things that we can thank God for every second of the day what about thanking God for your eyesight what a miracle is taking place in your head right now the fact you're looking at me is pretty much the beautiful thing isn't it but there are times you get to look at much more beautiful things you know the richest man in the world I don't know whoever he is I was going to say Kerry Packer but we'll use him later on as another example the richest man in the

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    world would give up his entire wealth to get his eyesight back wouldn't he if that's what it took he would do anything you have a priceless thing happening in your head right now that God has in his genius designed and given us and we just take it for granted in fact now I've got to wear glasses all the time I start to take it less for granted than I probably did when I was younger you know even more sort of substantial than that is our very life we are sentient living things and we can experience things around us we have consciousness you know we just take that for granted because it's just sort of so normal to us think about what a miracle is that we are living and interacting with other things it's a miracle in itself they have the ruach of God that sort of gives us life it's sort of an amazing thing that we experience what about your legs now legs are miracles too they carry us through life and again if you're a quadriplegic or someone who was lame you'd give anything you'd give all your wealth up you'd give anything to be able to walk again and experience the movement that you don't have so these things are priceless and they're ours and God's given them to us as a gift just your general health that we take for granted just the fact that you're sitting here now and you're not experiencing pain you know there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this world who'd swap places with you on that basis alone right now that you're

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    not experiencing pain right now and there are probably some of you that are but those of us who aren't experiencing pain right now just think of the power of that and all the little things as we said the sunsets the eagle soaring the beautiful coastline all those things that we just see and we take for granted we should bring God into our consciousness and thank God for those things and generate this present benefit right here and now and the list could go on and on our family our spouse our employment those are on the pension they just get the pension that turns up every fortnight all these things that we experience but as I said not just the positive things but the things that challenge us in life things that we find hard I know it's easy for me to say it from the platform like this but I've got to try and live this in my life as well and to thank God when we go through those experiences and experience problems and difficulty I'm just going to make a few comments about the law and I know when people talk about the law of Moses most of the audience will sort of glaze over and switch off but this is really interesting so try and keep awake for this if you can just this link between that we saw in Thessalonians and Colossians this link between peace and thankfulness is a link that wasn't just invented in the New Testament it goes right back into the law of Moses itself and probably beyond that but this links there in a number of places

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    but one of really interesting manifestations of this link between peace and thankfulness is the sacrifices if you remember the sacrifices are listed in Leviticus chapter 1 and Leviticus 5 and 6 I think as well and there's six sacrifices all up and you've got the first three are the really well known ones or the biggies if you like we've all heard of the burnt offering and the sin offering and the trespass offering they're the big sacrifices that we hear about a lot but in all the lists of the sacrifices number four on all the lists is this really really fascinating one called the peace offering now it's a celebration offering it's celebrating peace with God it's not an offering in itself that represents the achievement of peace with God because they came through the first three sacrifices if that makes sense so these first three represent God's work in Christ the burnt offering the sin offering the trespass offering what what you know and Hebrews we'll talk about in a moment Hebrews says these things were all fulfilled in Jesus however the fourth one that gets put in next is this peace offering that celebrates what it means to have peace with God or shalom with God the idea of shalom we're just going to think about this peace offering for a moment it's really detailed if you want to read about it in Leviticus 7 we haven't got time tonight to go through that in any great detail as I said it celebrates this fellowship this shalom that we have with God and shalom has the idea of agreement tranquility welfare joy happiness if you look

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    up shalom it's got all these ideas built into it and we have this shalom with God and think well that in itself is quite amazing quite wonderful but there's one extra little thing in the sacrifices that links the peace offering to thankfulness and the peace offering had these little optional extras you could do you didn't have to I'm trying to explain how the optional extras work and the closest I can come to it is a McDonald's meal deal but you'll see it is relevant in a moment you could add some extra things to the package and change the peace offering into another sort of offering so it starts off as a peace offering and you added in some bread and oil so that's why I went the McDonald's route so you added in some bread and some fried in a bit of oil and there you go you've got a different sort of offering it's called the trespass offering so it is a peace offering not a trespass sorry a Thanksgiving offering totally ruined that didn't I so it starts off as a peace offering you can apply the options add the extra things in the little cakes and the oil and it becomes a Thanksgiving offering to God now this again links the two ideas peace and Thanksgiving giving linked together in this very intricate way now just a couple of facts about this very special offering it appears all the way through the Old Testament you can find that in Jonah says I will offer to you a Thanksgiving offering and pay my vows unto God when he's in the belly of the fish

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    it pops up in the Psalms and the sons of Korah and it's mentioned time and time again this Thanksgiving offering and it's sort of almost a throwaway little offering here in Leviticus it's just sort of tacked on to the end of the peace offering and yet it features so prominently as you go through the rest of the Old Testament it's quite an amazing little sacrifice little offering now just a couple of facts about it and hopefully these facts tie in with what we're trying to talk about tonight the thing about I think the crucial thing about the offering was it was a free will offering all the other offerings are stipulated that if you touch a dead body you had to do this and the day you had to do it stipulated and it's very much a regimented prescribed type of thing there was no commandment to keep a thanksgiving offering it was something you did out of free will out of spontaneous response to God you offered this free will offering I haven't got on the slide there but also that offering out of all the other ones had to be eaten on the day it was made it couldn't be held over that's sort of unique and that makes it most commentators say that that seems to indicate that God held it in a very special way that was very important to God this particular sacrifice and I think that is linked in with the fact it was a free will offering it wasn't something you had to do under the law so it's quite incredible another thing about it as well as

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    being spontaneous and voluntary you it was the only one of the sacrifices that the average Joe the average punter like you and me got to eat the other ones were eaten by the priest and the priest's family etc this sacrifice you got to eat as well and I thought about that I thought you know there is again evidence of this present benefit that thankfulness brings you know we talked about that university study the benefits of thankfulness and here God is showing us in symbol you can eat this you can taste the sweetness of this flesh and experience it and there's a benefit that comes out of being thankful and I think that is sort of built into that symbol and also the remains of that sacrifice were burnt with what was called the daily or the continual burnt offering that was offered every day and to me that again is symbolic of the fact that thankfulness is something that's associated with the daily sacrifice to God yes it's spontaneous yes it's voluntary but it's something we should be doing every day of our life and bringing into our everyday experience and linking the two together and that's a very I think a very powerful little thing to keep in mind so sometimes the things in the law of Moses might seem a bit weird but they're good little memory prompters aren't they to remember the idea of a thanksgiving sacrifice to God that you voluntarily make and you know Hebrews Hebrews 10 for example makes this big point and that's really one of the basic messages of the book of Hebrews that the sacrifices are finished

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    and that was one of the underlying points that the writer of the Hebrews was trying to make that sacrifices were not effective they didn't make the offerer perfect they didn't achieve anything in themselves and he says they're all being superseded in Christ and then you get the chapter 13 of Hebrews the very end of the book and the writer says you know he said the sacrifices are all over red rover it's all gone and you think well that's good and then he starts bringing them up again and you get the chapter 13 he says by him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God now if you look that word praise up in Strong's Concordance it's the thanksgiving offering this is going back to the thanksgiving let us offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and some of your margins might have Leviticus 7 there if you've got the Bible with the centre column margin Leviticus 7 is what it's talking about it's talking about the McDonald's cakes you add them into your peace offering and you offer to God a thanksgiving offering now he's not talking about the literal offering there is he because he's already told us in chapter 10 the literal offering's over it's finished don't even get bogged down in it but now we offer to God not the burnt offering not the trespass not the sin offering they're all fulfilled in Christ but our response is not fulfilled in Christ that's us that's what we bring to the equation that's the active ingredient that we contribute to the atonement we can't do anything but we bring gratitude and thankfulness to God

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    and that is how it all works and notice he says continually and that's a little play on the burn offering was often called the continual burn offering we do this continually and we add it to our daily experience and our daily life and then he defines it a bit more that is the fruit of our lips so it's a praise thing it's a gratitude expressed to God in praise and not just praise which can sometimes just be theoretical if it's just spoken or son but to do good and to fellowship don't ignore those things as well because they're part of the sacrifices that give pleasure to God and this idea of sacrifices giving pleasure to God is is you know is built into the whole terminology of sacrifice as a you know it says that the smoke of the sacrifice that went up as a sweet smelling savour and God takes pleasure in it so it uses these sort of human terms that I'm trying to think of an example but you know if I come home from work and I smell a curry when I come in the door it's a nice beautiful smell I take pleasure in it or the neighbours have got a barbie on in a sense when we when we do things and we fellowship and we do good it's it's something that God breathes in it smells it like it's a beautiful fragrant and smell and God God likes it and gives pleasure to him in that sense so so sacrifices are still around yes they're fulfilled in Christ the ones that relate to that but our response is

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    still there and we still keep those things so if it's something that we should be doing daily if it should be linked to the daily burnt sacrifice what are some practical things that we can try and do to build thankfulness into our life I mean of course it's an attitude we're trying to develop but like all attitudes it takes us to sort of try and prompt ourselves and to sort of develop those things in our life as well isn't it and so this little idea it's interesting I think somebody mentioned the other night that last time I was here I gave out those little little pads that had seven minutes with God and I've actually modified that now I've got three extra spaces on the bottom of that pad that says list three things that you're thankful for in the morning before you start work or during the day so try to bring into your life and try to bring into your conscious plane your consciousness things that you're thankful for it's a power that works in your life the power of gratitude and it doesn't have to be grand lofty things either as I said it can be everyday things that make you just thank God things that we sometimes take for granted just to try and make that real and bring us into the present and bring God into our present it's something we should try and do every day so let's make it a daily thing as Hebrews 13 says continually link it to the daily sacrifice I'm not going to go into this in much detail but I just try to

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    catalogue some things that are barriers to gratitude and thankfulness and probably the biggest one is selfishness or this idea of I deserve things because this sense of entitlement that we have we expect that we're going to have a good life we expect we're going to have three meals a day we expect we're going to have good friends we expect we're going to be looked after in hospital if something happens to our health we expect that these things are sort of us in the western world expect these things as a matter of course we feel there's almost a sense of entitlement to them and so when they don't happen as we feel they should we feel depression from that we feel anxiety from that and it's because we have this expectation people in other cultures even today or people who've lived in times past don't expect these things as a matter of course and when they happen to them when they get three meals in a day it's something that they are thankful for and they feel this gratitude for those things that we just take for granted and I think that's probably the biggest barrier to gratitude murmuring and complaining isn't sort of a negative thing that sort of strips away gratitude if you've got a complaining mentality that murmurs and complains about things rather than seeing the good that other people are doing you sort of see the negative pride self-reliance all these things are barriers to gratitude as I mentioned the sense of entitlement is something we have and there's actually a sort of a mental disorder called narcissism that is sort of

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    an extreme case that gets to a clinical stage of sense of entitlement where people think they're entitled to particular recognition or people doing what they say I've actually downloaded the diagnostic criteria for narcissism and one of the criteria here is a sense of entitlement expectation of favorable treatment automatic compliance with what you want and so that can we've all got it to a degree but when it reaches those extreme levels it's part of a mental disorder that we can suffer you know it's interesting when we talk about we come together every Sunday usually on a Sunday in our western world to break bread as we call it and we use these different terms to describe that meeting that we call it our way it's called the memorial meeting and we call it the breaking of bread or fellowship or the love feast I've heard all these different terms that we use do you know what the early Christians used to call the breaking of bread do you know the term they used anyone might know heard of the eucharist ever heard that term the eucharist it's actually in the Greek Orthodox Church they still call it the eucharist today but they've totally made it all weird with people wafting incense and all sorts of things so it's not anything like the simplicity of the early Christians but they call it the eucharist does anyone know what eucharist means?

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    good grace good gift oh thankfulness it's actually the stock standard word for thankfulness in the New Testament and it's probably taken because of all those sections of scripture that our chairman reads on a Sunday he took the bread and gave thanks eucharist eucharisto is the actual word instead of calling ourselves just christadelphians we should be eucharistadelphians but being thankful is at the very heart so the early Christians when they went to the meeting they didn't call it the meeting but what was the overriding sentiment that they felt when they took bread and wine is shown by that term they saw it as something of thankfulness it was a thankfulness feast a eucharist and thankfulness is at the very core of it the very heart of it and something maybe we've lost sight of I'm not saying everyone has but maybe me you lose sight of that underlying importance in the memorial emblems or whatever we use to call it so let's think of it as the thankfulness feast that should be a generator of thankfulness and that's why we have it on a regular basis because we get caught up in life and the problems and trials and all those things that we experience in life and we come along every Sunday and it re-energises our thankfulness and puts us back into perspective and refocuses our lives that's quite a very telling thing the first Christians called it that just a couple of points before we close actually if you've got a Bible have a look in Luke 17 very very quickly we're nearly finished because if I go over time my wife see this

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    camp and I get in big trouble so I can't get away with that Luke 17 just a just a I think it's a little telling little picture of what Jesus thinks about gratitude here's a story where Jesus healed these ten lepers it says in verse 11 it came to pass he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee and verse 12 as he entered into a certain village there met him ten men that were lepers and notice their stance initially it says they stood afar off so they're separated there's a barrier between them and Jesus in a way a big distance and they lifted up their voices and they said Jesus master have mercy on us so they're separated from Jesus and they're desiring mercy you can see the little word picture even in there emerging can't you as you read those things and Jesus saw them and says to them show yourself to the priests and as they turned to do that they were healed so they're actually healed and so the other nine nine of the guys who were sort of keep walking and heading off to see the priest one of them says he's a Samaritan turns back and he goes back to Jesus in verse 15 when he saw that he was healed and with a loud voice he glorified God and Jesus is impressed with this and Jesus says to him he fell down on his face at Jesus feet giving him thanks there's the Eucharist there's the thankfulness to Jesus for what he done and it says he was a Samaritan to boot Jesus

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    said to him weren't there not ten cleaned or cleansed where are the other nine now interestingly the other nine would obey Jesus Jesus said go and see the priest so they were actually doing what Jesus had said they were obeying him they were off to see the priest but you see how thankfulness transcends obedience doesn't it just obeying Jesus it it's something voluntarily that he did beyond what he was told to do this is the !

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    He didn't have to do that and he says he gave Jesus thanks and Jesus says what about the other nine verse 18 says they are not found to return to give glory to God save this stranger and Jesus says to him arise go your way your faith has made you whole now that's interesting isn't it that little statement now he's been made whole he was once a far off he comes to Jesus in thanks and Jesus says you're now made whole well the other nine he was already made whole really when he got healed the first time and the other nine were also made whole you although healed anyway but this man came back and Jesus says your faith has made you whole there was a there was something more powerful about his change than just the physical cleansing of his leprosy he was made whole you know he was it was a holistic miracle that Jesus performed spirit and mind and sorry body and mind in that in that instance but just the the attitude of thankfulness that Jesus sort of loved and responded to in that in that in that man's experience there I won't look up these verses but I might get everyone to just yell yell out the missing word because as well as loving thankfulness God also hates the opposite of which is unthankfulness and just two verses I'm sure you'll know them so you can yell these out with me you know Romans 1 is this really interesting chapter but it's got this real awful list of I suppose the debauchery of human nature in that in that list where where the where human nature has

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    reached its lowest it mentions all these horrible things debauchery and and lust and homosexuality and vile affections and all these all these things and it lists it all there in Romans chapter 1 to show how the world without God has fallen so far below God's principles and God's values and then you get to verse 21 in that list and it says because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were they thankful excellent so thankfulness is listed in this you know all these horrible things and we could all go yeah yeah that's that's that's horrible that's horrible that's horrible neither were they thankful it's it's a it's an indication that that there's no response to God whatsoever is there's no thankfulness it's just it's totally missing yeah yeah exactly exactly that's that's exactly right and see if you know this one as well second Timothy 3 verse 2 in the last days again it's sort of picturing a last day situation whether it's the last days of Judas you know existence under the mosaic system or whether it's the last days in the future in the last days perilous times shall come and what's going to be the feature of last days men should be lovers of their own selves covetous boasters proud blasphemers disobedient appearance unthankful exactly so you can see that it's it's it's not what you would put on a normal list we had to list all the terrible things that we see in the world it's probably we'd put all these other things murderers etc and all these other things and but God has inserted there in those lists

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    unthankful it's sort of indicative of of where ungodliness reigns and where um God's ways are just totally ignored and so the opposite is if we're thankful and we bring that thankfulness into our hearts it's the opposite isn't it where God is reigning supreme in us and uh and uh we are we are you know in a sense living the kingdom that we want to see established on this earth we're living it in our in our lives because thankfulness continues on into immortality as as we know all right might just finish up there she'll just made another quick list of things to be thankful for thankful that you're actually breathing that's the interesting one thankful for your eyes we've talked about that and the beauties of the beauty of the day thankful that you can walk thankful for the break simple breakfast you might have had thankful that you can read how about that one hey thankful for the person sitting next to you ah thankful that you've got fingers and hands thankful for the bird you saw flying thank you for your children that's not always that easy is it no i i kid i kid thank you for your grandchildren if you're at that stage of life thank god for the bible sitting on your lap that's a miracle isn't it that not everyone's experienced thankful be thankful for the job you've got to go to next week even though you may not love it it's a it's a blessing isn't it um be thankful for the problems you're experiencing right now in your life whether it's a relationship problem or a uh ecclesial

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    problem in in some way god's working in your life right now and it's as hebrews 12 says god you know we're not we're not we're not bastards are we we we god is he's working our life and chastising us and developing us and molding us for for the future thank god for the hope of the kingdom thank god for his grace and mercy thank god for his only begotten son thank god thank god thank god and and just let's keep thankfulness in our in our hearts all the time well just to finish off um a group we didn't have a reading as andy said so we're gonna we're gonna do something else instead i just i think thankfulness is something we can express in so many ways and of course it's an internal attitude but to me i find thankfulness um heightened and accentuated when i can praise god and and music and singing a powerful ways to express thankfulness and britain and what singing and praise to god does is bring god into my present that's what it does not in the car i i listen to like sons of i don't know if you heard of sons of cora and some things like that instead of listening to you know triple m or whatever radio stations you got all the abc or talkback radio everyone's grumbling about the you know the garbage man not coming on time whatever it is like listen to something powerful so you know good good talk or a good study or or some good spiritual music and i'm just going to give you an example from the old

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    testament of how spiritual music can be used to to bring god into our consciousness and this is a i don't know if you've ever heard of antiphonal singing it's where they do it a lot in the eastern religions and uh in the the church my my dad's family are part of it's how they do everything it's got it's really weird you go to an orthodox church and there's a guy sitting up in sitting up that side and there's another guy up there and they just sing to each other the whole time in greek it's all pretty exciting but it's this sort of back and forward singing that goes on and it was very much as i said part of the eastern tradition and it's it's there in the old testament and it's also called uh responsorial singing where you two people respond to each other now you'll recognize it once i give you some examples but in some big big items in the new tell big events in the new testament um we see this concept of responsive singing or an antiphorial singing in ezra where they when they built the you know they built the second temple as it's called the the the the temple they built when they came back out of captivity it says they sung together by course in the authorized version by course if you look up the esv says responsively this means this idea of back and forward singing in praising and giving thanks unto the lord so see the idea of praising and giving thanks sort of linked together because he is good for his mercy endures to ever forever towards israel and all the people shouted

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    with a great shout and they praised the lord because the foundation of the house of the lord was laid so you can see this this this responsive singing and how it would work was the the leaders you know the the the priests of the levites would lead with a statement and the people would respond the lord is good for his mercy endures forever and it's just reinforcing the concept of gratitude to god for his mercy in our minds and our hearts here's the the dedication of the temple the the first temple and all the children of israel saw how fire came down the glory of the lord upon the house they bow themselves with their faces the ground their pavement they worship and praise the lord saying for he is good for his mercy endures forever and the priests waited on their officers the levites also with the instruments of music of the lord which david the king had made to praise the lord because his mercy endures forever you see this this sort of refrain that comes up over and over again it's just quite beautiful and then this whole idea is sort of captured in psalm 136 this is what we'll finish on um to close our night as i said instead of a reading we'll do a reading at the end but i'm going to get everyone to join in with me as we go through this so i'm going to pretend to be the the priest if you like always wanted to be a priest how awesome is that um i'm going to say the first phrase and then everyone's going to join in and go say for his mercy endures forever so we're all up for

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    it and just to try and bring bring god into our minds and praise and gratitude into our into our thoughts so let's give it a go i'll put i'll get sorry if i'll be blocking you guys all night but i'll try and get out of your way let's go oh give thanks unto the lord for he is good oh give thanks unto the god of gods oh give thanks to the lord of lords to him who alone doth great wonders to him that by wisdom made the heavens to him that stretched out the earth above the waters to him that made great lights the sun to rule by day the moon and stars to rule by night to him that smote egypt in their firstborn and brought out israel from among them with a strong hand with a stretched out arm to him which divided the red sea into parts and made israel to pass through the midst of it but overthrew pharaoh and his host in the red sea to him which led his people through the wilderness to him which smote the great kings and slew the famous kings siho king of the amorites and o the king of bashan and gave their land for a heritage even a heritage under israel his servant who remembered us in our lowest state and hath redeemed us from our enemies who give of food to all flesh oh give thanks unto the god of heaven for his mercy endures forever you just feel the power of that can't you that the refrain built into that that beautiful psalm that reminds us to always thank god in our life

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    thank you andy for the fail fail Thank you.