Dennis Tuuri

Today marks the beginning of an extended holiday season in our particular culture and it’s a wonderful way to start that season preparing for the celebration of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ and his birth and the new year established on what he has done in bringing about the new creation. It’s wonderful to start that season really with thanksgiving. Today I decided to use the six or seven references in Colossians scattered throughout the four chapters to be the basis for a sermon, a topical sermon on thanksgiving in Colossians.

So the verses on your handout are there. There are chapter 1:3 and 1:12, chapter 2:7, chapter 3:15-17, and chapter 4:2. And we’ll be looking at all of these particular texts. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Colossians 1:3, we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you. Colossians 1:12, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

Colossians 2:7, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 3:15-17. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. And finally, Colossians 4:2, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. Let’s pray. Lord God, prepare our hearts not just for this coming Thursday, but for lives that are filled and overflowing with thanksgiving. Bless us by your word, Lord God. We know you preach to our weaknesses.

And so we know that it’s difficult to give thanks, but we pray that you would help us, Father, to see all the different aspects of thanksgiving that are portrayed for us in this epistle to the Colossians. Bless us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. Help us to understand this word and to be transformed by it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving movies is a movie called Avalon. And yes, it’s another old cultural reference. It was, I think, released in 1990. And I’ve got on your handout the particular actor Armin Mueller-Stahl who I think is one of my favorite actors who plays the lead. Avalon’s about a Polish Jewish immigrant family to America and it takes place in the 1950s, although this particular guy has come a little earlier and so the family immigrates over from Poland in stages and finally the dad comes over and so the whole family’s complete. The movie, so Avalon—you know, is the resting place of King Arthur, right, in the west—so I suppose America is Avalon. Beautifully done, humor, etc., but the basic theme of the movie, or at least one of the basic themes, is the disintegration of this family that immigrated over time.

And that disintegration is sort of linked to the cultural changes in America and what’s going on. But it’s delightful that the movie takes dining scenes as an evidence of this deterioration. So beginning with nice full dining scenes, everybody talking, then less talk, people not wanting to talk, moving to everybody sharing a TV table—or what do you call those? A TV dinner table, I guess—in front of television. So they’re eating and watching TV now. So no conversation. And at the end, totally alone.

So it’s okay. So it’s a little depressing but it’s well done. And one of the central themes occurs at Thanksgiving. So they get together for Thanksgiving and at this Thanksgiving their family is going to be dealt kind of a crushing blow because they’re not going to want to wait for one of the uncles and his wife, the aunt, who always comes late to everything. And you probably have people like this in some of your families. I know I do. And so you’re sitting there and you’re waiting, waiting, and finally Armin, the guy who plays the lead in this, says, “Let’s cut the turkey without him.” So he cuts the turkey. The kids are happy and in comes the uncle and aunt, and they are so offended that they didn’t wait for them. That’s it. They stomp out and it’s really a symbolic kind of breaking of the whole extended family structure.

What’s interesting about the scene is that before that, and just sort of a little thing you may not even pay attention to, the woman who’s preparing the turkey and everything—they’re all yakking. “Oh, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Who do we give thanks to? We don’t know. But we eat turkey. We eat once a year. I have to eat turkey. Okay.” So they don’t know. The film wants us to realize they don’t know who they’re giving thanks to.

What we have is a family tradition that they’re entering into in America, but it’s not a religious observance. And because of that the family will—I shouldn’t say will, but as a result, really, of not knowing who to give thanks to—the family falls apart. God brooks no rivals and the family can be and frequently is a tremendous rival to God. So what I want, what I would like, what I’m praying for is that our celebration of Thanksgiving this coming Thursday is really tied to our whole lives of thanksgiving as we’ll see in the text today. But that Thanksgiving is not just a family tradition. As fun as that might be, family traditions change when you know it—families become extended. One of our kids and their spouse go every other year to his parents and then to our parents. So things are going to change in the tradition. But the heart of what happens on Thursday doesn’t change. It’s a religious observance of thanksgiving.

It’s the giving of thanks to the God who created us and redeemed us. You know, America has lost that. Well, frequently in many homes, that sense is gone and families are disintegrating just like in Avalon. Isolation is happening. And I think that one of the main reasons for this judgment from God is a failure to give thanks. That is, giving of thanks is the foundation. A giving of thanks to God the Father through Christ.

That’s the foundation of stability in families, which then provide the stability of our cultures and that’s what’s going away.

There’s a new album out by a guy named Guy Garvey. He’s the front man, lead singer, songwriter for Elbow, very well known in England, lots of music awards. And he’s got a new album out. It’s called—and it’s his first solo album—and it’s called Courting the Squall. And I heard a song off it this last week called Belly of the Whale. So here’s the lyrics. They’re not real deep, but okay.

That house, that house broke my back. That house I built skinned my knuckles. That house I built picked my pockets and buckled every joint. It pointed from youth and any truth I knew towards a painted sundial breaking the horizon. It isn’t mine. That house that house I built real—I realized turned my eyes to barnacles beneath eleven hearts of daily shame.

And then the chorus is, I cannot speak its name, but I would walk into its mouth and I would breakfast in the belly of the whale.

Well, from one perspective, that’s what we’ll be doing at Thanksgiving. We’ll be feasting in the belly of the whale. The country is falling apart because it’s lost its faith in Jesus, expressed by no longer really knowing who we’re supposed to give thanks to. And because of that, I think our culture is disintegrating, isolating, breaking apart in conflicts, isolation.

But we as Christians recognize that God’s judgments are always redemptive. And so when we give thanks in the context of this, yes, we know that in one sense, the house, you know, a house is your life. Is your house in order? Is your life in order? There’s a house this country has been built. You think of country as a house and this house is skinning our knuckles and making us go broke, stealing, picking our pockets. It’s falling apart. But we can embrace the providence of God in bringing any idol crashing down. And so we can enter into thanksgiving and feasting and joy even if in one sense we’re sort of in the belly of the whale. Remember the whale was salvation to Jonah. And the whale, brothers and sisters, was salvation as well to Nineveh, right? That’s how it all turned around. That’s what God used to bring massive revival and evangelism.

So, okay, that’s sort of the introduction. So what I want is hopefully to talk about five things on your outline about thanksgiving in the book of Colossians. And the first one is thanksgiving in prayer. So we see this and we see it in the verses we just read in verses 3 and 12 and also in this section the last reference to thanksgiving also is in the context of prayer, right? So verse 3: we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and in verse 12 giving thanks to the Father.

And you remember if you were here when we preached on this particular first section of the book—so the book has, it’s got an introduction, right, so hello, greetings, salutation—and it’s got at the end, you know, it starts mentioning specific people and stuff. So those are kind of the bookends. So the main content starts in this section where Paul is praying and giving thanks that he recognizes, or he wants them to recognize he’s giving thanks for the Colossians. So this is really the beginning of the main content of the book.

And if we were to jump down to chapter 4:2, we’d see that at the end of the main content of the book, we see thanksgiving and prayer. Paul is giving thanksgiving by means of praying to God. So the bookends of Colossians is it emphasizes to us the significance of thanksgiving and specifically thanksgiving in the context of prayer and you’ll remember some of you will probably most of you won’t—but that beginning section of the book, okay, actually begins and ends with these verses I just read in verse 3. Paul is talking about him giving thanks to God, the God and Father. And in verse 12, he’s talking about them giving thanks to the Father.

So the movement of that second section of Colossians, the first main content section—the entire movement of that section is from praying with thanksgiving on the part of Paul to praying with thanksgiving on the part of the Colossians. So really the beginning section as well as the entire book has these double bookends of thanksgiving in the context of prayer.

So one of the obvious “biggies on the eye chart” here is that our thanksgiving happens—at least a frequent amount of it—in the context of prayer. Now, you can’t do that if you don’t pray. I said 4:7, I meant 4:2. Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. So you can’t do that if you don’t pray.

So Colossians first of all is telling us that thanksgiving is to be performed in prayer. Now you can’t do that if you don’t pray. And if the whole point of the opening section of Paul’s epistle is for him to look at it as an example and then for them to become people of prayer—and not just people of prayer but people of thanksgiving—you see, if we don’t get that much at least out of this book, we’ve kind of missed one of the main themes of the book. This word thanksgiving is used six or seven times in just four chapters. It’s a big deal. And it’s a big deal because, as I said, the bookends of the main section are—you know that they are the bookends of prayer and thanksgiving and the introductory section—that Paul will, kind of, everything else will come out of—again bookends him praying and them praying.

Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you see the emphasis here? We’re to be people, as Christians, of prayer and very specifically we’re to be people of prayers of thanksgiving.

You know, Matthew Henry developed this acronym, or at least it was developed after his book called A Method of Prayer, ACTS, right? ACTS. And I don’t know if it’s even used anymore by younger people, but a lot of in my generation a lot of people would use this acronym to remember how to pray. So it stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, right? So adoration of God, praising him, and then confession of our sins, and then thanksgiving to God, right, for his forgiveness of our sins and everything else, and then supplication. So supplication comes last.

So often if we are people of prayer, our prayers are all S’s. It’s all supplications, right? And we’ve talked about this. Paul doesn’t pray very often for a change in his conditions. He prays for a change in his attitude, in how his character functions. That’s what prayer is typically about. And related to that is thanksgiving, right? Because if you’re going to give thanks in everything and you’re going to do that in your prayers, then you’re not going to be wanting for everything in your life to be changed or worked out by God. Supplication, yes, it has its place. Sometimes it has its place to ask for a change in conditions. But brothers and sisters, if that’s the primary thing that our prayer lives are about, we are in gross error. Gross error.

Because here in this epistle, the whole idea of praying is—it’s you could almost say it’s synonymous with the giving of thanks. Now, there’s lots of things—and we’ve talked about this in that opening section—there’s reasons for what is for the content of this thanksgiving. You know, it’s interesting that Paul in almost every one of his epistles, I think except two, has this opening greeting with thanksgiving in all of them. And in a few of them, and this is one of them, he kind of expands the quick short form of giving thanks to the people that he’s writing to God. And he does a little more elaborate expression of this. And that’s what he does here.

If you look at what he says in verse 3, he starts by giving the expression itself: We give thanks. Okay, so there’s the expression. What’s he doing? What’s he expressing? Thanksgiving. And then he says it’s to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who’s the recipient of Paul’s prayers in all three of these verses I just read? Right? Did you notice that in all three? Who’s the recipient? It’s not Jesus. It’s not the Holy Spirit. It’s God the Father through Jesus. Okay? And so if Paul says that three times here at the beginning and end of the book, I think that’s for emphasis to us. And so I think it says that, like him, our normal mode of recipient—I’m not saying it’s wrong to pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It can happen occasionally, but clearly the model here for us as our Savior laid out the model in the Lord’s Prayer. Our model here is that the recipient is the Father.

He goes on from the recipient to talk about the frequency, right? We give thanks to our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you. How does he give thanks? Well, he prays. That’s the method. And he prays always. That’s the frequency. So whenever he prays for them, he’s giving thanks for them. Okay? Now, that’s very significant. I think that’s what this means. It doesn’t mean he’s always praying, but it means every time he prays, he’s giving thanks for them.

Now, it may be, you know, exaggeration for effect. I don’t know. I don’t want to make too big a deal. But I do want to suggest that if we have this extended form of thanksgiving by Paul at the beginning of this epistle that we should try to learn things, glean things from it. And what we glean from it is the significance of it, and we glean more than that: thanksgiving is accompanied—it happens in the context of prayer—and every time he prays for those Colossians he’s thankful to God. Why is he thankful to God? Because they were dead in trespasses and sins. They were the walking dead. They were zombies. Every evidence that he hears about from people that have seen them—all the good deeds, the love that they’re showing toward other people, their faithfulness, they’re putting into effect the words that they had heard taught to them in the Bible—all that fruit is solely because God in his grace and compassion looked down upon these people and granted them life, repentance, and well-being.

So of course he prays with thanksgiving. Now, I think that many of our problems that may surface in our families Thursday—that’s what happens, right? It’s not always a great feast. There can be a great feast and then there’s tensions. It’s almost always tensions. Don’t think you’re unusual in that, folks. That’s what happens in families. There’s tensions. But a lot of those tensions, I think, would be eased if we took this as our example: that whenever we pray for one another, we give thanks to God for each other. It’s a little tougher, I think, to, you know, get a little testy with someone. But if you just gave God thanks for that person and recognize the life that they have and the grant of life from God the Father and that his grace is flowing through that person’s lives—yeah, in you know, broken kind of difficult, shortsighted ways sometimes—but the life of God, the life of Jesus, is flowing through that person. If we remember that at our tables we’ll give thanks to God for each other at the table as well.

So there’s the expression, there’s the recipient the Father, there’s the frequency: Always. The method is prayer. The object of that is “for you.” We pray always for you. And then there’s the basis for that. Since we heard of your faith in Jesus, of faith in Christ, Christ Jesus, and of your love, right? I just mentioned this: because of the hope which is laid up for you. You believe in Jesus and you have deeds in your lives. You might have big problems, but he says, “I know. I’ve heard about your faith in Christ. I’ve heard about your love.” Which means he’s there—there’s evidences, there’s things they’re doing for other people. Going to be a whole lot of love this Thursday—at least from the people that prepare the meal. Whole lot of good deeds going on there. And we should remember that, right? This is the basis for our prayers: the kind of good deeds and love that’s being expressed in people’s lives and their faith in Jesus.

He goes on to say that “your faith”—”the word of God is bringing fruit in yours”—so he thanks them for their fruit. He thanks God for the fruitfulness of the Colossians as well. And then he says, “Who also declared to us your love in the spirit.” So because of his relationship, their love in the spirit—they’d never met—another basis for his giving thanks perpetually for the Colossians because they loved Paul. And then he—so we’ve got that as the basis for his prayer.

And what’s the object then of his prayer? What’s he actually praying for? You see, it’s a long expression here: seven parts to it. And this happens in a couple of other epistles. Most of them are short, but it’s worth taking a little bit of time here and going over this sevenfold giving of thanks by Paul at the beginning of this particular epistle. He says, “I do not cease to pray for you and to ask.” Here it is then. Here’s the purpose of his prayer. “To ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may walk worthy of the Lord.”

So that’s the prayer. That’s the purpose of him praying. He gives thanks to God for them. And he’s praying that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s word and his application to their lives and that their walk might be worthy of the Lord, well pleasing to him. Okay? So their lives can be well pleasing to God and they can walk worthy of the Lord. And that’s what he’s praying for. So in the end he prays that they might be strengthened as well.

And then in verse 12, the last part of this: giving thanks of the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. You’ve heard all these wonderful truths of what Jesus has accomplished. This transference from tyranny into freedom, from darkness into light, from a tyranny and kind of a mess into an actual kingdom, a well-ordered kingdom under Jesus Christ. And there’s order. And because there’s order, there’s freedom. Okay? And you’ve heard about this. We’ve preached about this before. And we’ve preached about how they’re rooted. They’re settled. They’ve been planted by God’s grace and settled in him. All those things, you see, those are all reasons why we give thanks in prayer.

Our thanksgivings should have those kind of things to them. And when we give thanks this Thursday, it would be good to include some of those things, right? To touch on those in our prayers. Okay.

So first of all, the thanksgivings in Colossians are first of all in the context of prayer. Very importantly, threefold repetition—and that helps inform us in terms of what we should do. Verse 10 says that Paul does this. He prays to them with thanksgiving as I just mentioned, so that they would be worthy of the Lord fully pleasing to him. This means that thanksgiving and prayer and actually thanksgiving in all of our lives is a major component of how we walk worthy of the Lord and well pleasing to him.

Now, as I’ve said before when I preached on this text a couple of months ago, that’s worth pause too, brothers and sisters. I know you’re going to sin this week. I will too. I know you sinned last week. But do you understand that God sees you? And he says, “You know what? You can and usually do walk in a way that is worthy of the Lord and well pleasing to him.” Now, how can that be? Well, of course, it’s because of our union with Christ, but it isn’t talking about some abstract idea only.

You can walk worthy of the Lord and you can walk well pleasing to him. I mean, it’s odd enough that we could please Christ in this world, but we can actually well please him. How do we do that? Well, I think in the context of all of this, one way we do that is by thanksgiving. That’s the boundaries. That’s the bookmarks here at this opening section. That’s how we walk in a way worthy of the Lord. And we please him and we thank him for his grace to other people.

When we don’t just pray for our needs or confession or even just adoration, but when we thank God for one another and for the spirit of God that has brought those in our extended church and our families to life in him, I think that’s part of it.

So we have that. We have thanksgiving in prayer. Secondly, we have thanksgiving in our walk. Okay. This is chapter 2:7. We’re to be rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Now, the context for this is verse 6. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Now, you notice the double reference to walk here, right? We just talked about walking in a way that’s worthy and well pleasing to him. How? By thanksgiving and prayer. Now, he’s talking about our walk—not just our prayers. Now we talked about thanksgiving and prayer. Now our walk, which means our lives, right? Everywhere we go, everything we do—it’s kind of a comprehensive term.

In our walk, we’re supposed to be thankful to God. We’re supposed to walk in him. Verse 6 and verse 7: that we’re to—as you have been taught—this is how you’re supposed to walk, abounding in it with thanksgiving. This word abounding, right? You know, if I could pour more water in this glass, it would overflow. It would abound with water. That’s the sense of the particular term in the text here. Our lives, not only are we to be thankful, not only are we to thank God in our prayers for each other and for all kinds of other things. Not only are we supposed to be thankful generally in our lives—our lives are supposed to overflow with thanksgiving. Okay? Our walk, everything that we do is to overflow with thanksgiving.

That’s an amazing thing. I’m going to say more about that toward the end, but we’re supposed to walk in him. And we’re supposed to do that in an overflowing comprehensive sort of way. So when we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, we’re really celebrating something that’s supposed to characterize all of our lives, our walk. When we get up, when we lie down, whatever we do, our lives are to be marked by thankfulness.

Number three, thanksgiving in our heart. This comes from our heart. And now we’ve got a section here, and we’ll move through it in a few verses, but verses 15 to 17. So verse 15: let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you were called in one body and be thankful. Okay. So here thanksgiving in Colossians is related to our heart, to the center of our being. So it’s not just a ritual action we do in prayer. It is that. And whether you feel like it in your heart or not you should give thanks to God in your prayers. And whether you feel like it or not, you don’t wait for the feelings. You go ahead and in your walk have a thankful attitude. But it comes from your heart. So ultimately this thanksgiving comes forth from the middle of our very being. Be thankful.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. So this thanksgiving in Colossians is a matter of heart thanksgiving as well. Notice that it’s commanded, right? And be thankful. You better be thankful today. But that’s what it is. It tells us that we don’t sit around and wait. But our hearts can be actually transformed by what we do, right? You know, we have this kind of almost gnostic kind of intellectual sort of thing. “Well, if it’s not genuine with how I feel, it’s hypocritical.” No, that’s not true. And I have to—it has to all start in here. I got to have the right feelings and emotions. No. God commands us to be thankful. And he says it in the context of our hearts, right? And having this thanksgiving in our hearts.

Thanksgiving, I think, frequently and usually—like all kinds of other things in the Christian faith, brothers and sisters—goes from the outside in, not the inside out. You know, when we baptize little Jack Murray, outside in, right? Water’s placed upon him. He’s put into a new context, this church, his union with Christ, and he’s changed from all of this. If he was abstracted out of this and raised by himself someplace, different deal. I think baptism really reflects this outside-in thing, and paedobaptism, on the other hand, doesn’t have to—but it can kind of fall into the ditch of thinking somehow that it all, you know, is about our hearts with no reference to what happens externally.

So, and I understand—I understand that you got a little bit of trouble with that. You know, you don’t want to push this too far. But look, I think here is a good example of what is all kinds of other things in our lives—whether it’s our relationships with friends, our marriage relationships—act like you’re supposed to act as a spouse and you know what? You’ll start being a spouse in your heart. And I think that’s what this is. So thanksgiving in our hearts—and this thanksgiving in our hearts is actually commanded. And secondly, it’s peace-generating, right?

Let the peace of God rule in your heart. So how do you do that? I want personal peace. I want peace with Jesus, right? And so there’s verses about that and meditate on the positive things and whatsoever is good and that’s all great stuff. And but connected to peace—which is what we all want, right? The world’s disturbed. We want peace. Connected to that peace is thankfulness. To let the peace of God rule in your hearts, be thankful. Okay?

So if we give thanks, if we develop it as a habit, if we force ourselves to do it as something God has commanded us to do, it seems like this text is indicating that it generates a peacefulness to our lives. You have disorder in your life. Try giving thanks. Try doing it regularly. Be thankful. Be thankful in all of your walk. Overflow with this thanksgiving and it’ll become part of what’s happening in your heart. And the peace of God will rule in your heart.

And then notice it’s communal as well because he goes from the peace of God ruling in your hearts to “which you were called in one body.” Okay. So immediately he doesn’t want us to get all focused on individuals apart from anybody else. He immediately puts it into the context of a community setting.

But let me address the overall picture of Thanksgiving in the Christian life for just a bit here. And I want to do that—I’m going to read beginning at verse 8 up to the verse we just read. So in verse 8 we read this: “But now you yourselves are to put off all these—anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language—out of your mouth. See again that’s a put-off thing. That’s not a pray that it might happen thing. That’s a put-off thing. And those are the indicators of the old man, right? That’s the deadly—the death that we incurred through sin. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds. Going to put on the new man. You see the culminating capstone to the old man: he’s a liar. I’ve said this so many times. It’s so true. Lying. Get rid of it. But in any event, so you put off all these things and then you’re going to put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.

Who are we in Jesus Christ? What is this resurrection life about? And he goes on in verse 12: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against one another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, for which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.”

So being thankful is kind of again the culmination. What does it mean to be a Christian? Well, it culminates in being thankful and having peace in your hearts by your thankfulness to God. Putting off by way of volition a bunch of bad habits and putting on a whole new set of how we get along with one another and how we live in life. Read that verse before you begin your Thanksgiving celebration. I think it will go better for you. Maybe not, though. Commitment is always followed by testing.

So this moves into the next point in the outline which is thanksgiving in community. Okay. So thanksgiving in our prayers, thanksgiving in our walk comprehensively, thanksgiving in our hearts and producing peace in our hearts. And then four, thanksgiving in community. And this is when I preached—when I preached several months ago on the affirm, share, serve, right? We preached on these verses from Colossians 3:15-17. And so what he says there in verse 16 is: let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace. Most translations call that thankfulness. It’s a different word but here in the context it means you’re supposed to sing with thanksgiving. Or grace, you know, the word for thanksgiving “eucharisto” is related to the word “charis.” That’s at kind of the center of it. So grace is what produces thanksgiving. And here the word is grace. But the implications—and as a result—the translation in the NIV, the ESV, the New American Standard is that this word is better translated thanksgiving.

So we’re singing with thanksgiving. So what is that talking about? In the first place, it’s talking about what we do every Lord’s Day. We talked about this one and preached in this text before. But this is community. This is what’s going on. This is what you do. You are an encouragement to one another when you stand up and sing songs of praise and thanksgiving to God when you confess your faith in your songs that you sing. Okay, so that’s what’s going on. And so it immediately tells us then that thanksgiving is in the context of community. And so verse 16, it’s implied. In verse 17, it’s said explicitly in terms of this thanksgiving.

And so what we have here is a relationship of thanksgiving in community. Okay, very important. And it’s not just liturgical. I don’t mean to restrict what we just read in Colossians 3 to the worship service. But that sets the pattern for everything else. Okay? So, you know, the Stoppels and the Mayors covenanted into membership and we don’t just formalize that and then disregard it. That sort of changes it, kind of ups the ante in terms of our relationship to them and building community together. It’s a community building activity, but not if we don’t let it influence us. Okay?

So it’s a community—so the same with the liturgy. You can sit here and give thanks in community in the service. But the whole point of that is so you would give thanks in community the rest of the week. Okay? Thanksgiving is a communal activity. If you’re apart from our prayers to God, even there it’s community, right? Because Paul is praying, giving thanks for other people. But when we give thanks apart from our prayers, we’re giving thanks to someone. And that giving of thanks is a bondedness of community.

You know, you go downstairs to the agape. Somebody holds the chair or helps you with your food. You say, “Thank you.” What happened? What happened? The same thing that happens hundreds of times a day, literally. But what is it? Well, you had a need and somebody else provided for your need. And instead of being a grumpus about it, you know, you thanked them for that. You acknowledged your need and you acknowledge them sharing with you. Okay, you built a little bit of community.

Thanksgiving builds community because it breaks down radical independence. I mean, you could say, “I’ve got it myself. You know, I don’t need any help.” But that’s the road toward, you know, isolation. God wants us to be thankful in community. And when we go through things today—this happens every, you know, probably it’ll happen a little more often than normal because I’ve said it—but it happens all the time around here, right? People are always thanking each other. You’re always doing things for other people and them doing it for you. But you’ve never thought about, or probably haven’t very often thought about, the fact of how significant that is as a community bonding event.

That’s one reason why the meal is useful. To stay for the meal is useful to build community here because in the context of a couple hours of a meal together, there’s a lot of thanksgivings being expressed—or maybe just not expressed but there. And those thanksgivings are little tiny covenants. They’re like these guys put in these lines today saying, “Oh, thank you. You know, I need you. You need me. We’re here to provide for each other.” So thanksgiving in Colossians is certainly in our prayers and it’s certainly in our walk—everything that we do. It’s certainly in our hearts and it’s in community together. So very important part. And you get to exercise that, practice that here today.

So you get ready for Thursday so that on Thursday you do a better job than you would have without the practice and without the intentionality that hopefully this verse is providing for you. So we, you know, we used to, actually, at our agape—and I’ve expressed this frustration of mine before—years ago when we were smaller, I suppose we, in our agape, we did other things. We talked about birthdays, anniversaries. And both in the context of that, or sometimes we just say, “Who has something to give thanks to God for publicly? Who wants to share something God has done in your life?” and people would get open mic to do that. We don’t do that in terms of a planned activity. We used to do it as well. We tried doing it at our fest day—we used to call it the festival we have in the fall typically. I don’t think we had it last year—but you know, we would do that. It’d be a celebration. But what we did then for a couple of times is we provided an opportunity to give thanks to God for what’s happening in their lives.

This text emphasizing the encouragement of one another through giving thanks in community, I think, is usefully applied if we can find venues for doing that. Maybe community group, right? Maybe just give a couple of minutes regularly in your community groups to people just to thank God for what he’s done for them. Don’t you find that really encouraging when people do that? I do. It builds that bond of community again.

So community, thanksgiving in community. And then this community building power of giving thanks to people for the smallest of things but has a tremendous impact in the context of our lives.

And then the last reference to community in Colossians is in all we do. So verse 17: whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. We’re back to God the Father one more time.

And so here the idea is, in everything we’re supposed to give thanks. And you know the verses, we give thanks in everything. We give thanks for everything. Our lives are literally to be marked, signified as Christians. If you’re a Christian, I think these texts mean if you’re a Christian, you’re a thankful person. That’s what it’s all about.

And we won’t take the time to look at it, but if you looked at Ephesians 5:19-20, you’d see the demonstration of the fruit of the spirit. And thanksgiving is an evidence of the fruit of the spirit. It’s the spirit-filled life. If you want to be a spirit-filled Christian, you will evidence that filling of the spirit in your life through thanksgiving.

So you’ve got a demo, you got a chance this Thursday to demonstrate a you’re a spirit-filled person by uttering thanksgivings to God in prayer, thanksgivings to each other in community, and to make the day be characterized by a giving of thanks. And so that’s the last point from Colossians: that this is really to be happening in all things and it is an evidence of us as a Christian. It’s also an evidence of the effectiveness in our witness. Thanks-giving is tied to our evangelism. What do I mean? Well, you know the text 1 Peter 3:15: “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that’s in you.”

How would they know about the hope that’s in you? Probably because you’re a thankful person. It’s overflowing. You do it in your prayers. You do it in your life. You do it with people. You’re known as a thankful person to other people. And as a result of that, they’ll ask you for the reason for the thankfulness that produces the hope that’s demonstrable in your life. Thanksgiving is a tremendous engine to drive sharing the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you know that I can’t get through a verse or a sermon on thanksgiving without pointing out that the absence of thanksgiving is what brings the judgment of God, right? Romans 1: you’ve heard us talk about this a lot. What produces the kind of sexual perversity that we’ve got going on in our culture? What produces a person wanting to change their gender? It’s a lack of thankfulness for their gender. It’s a decision to not thank God. And Romans 1 says that is the nature of fallen man. He doesn’t give thanks to God. And so he becomes an idolater, right? Idolatry and unthankfulness are the characteristic marks of the non-Christian. And they’re what bring us where our house is skinning our knuckles and emptying our pockets and breaking down everything around us.

So we have to walk into the belly of the whale and breakfast in that belly of the whale. That’s where we find the judgment of God is coming because people are simply not thankful to him. And thankfulness drives everything else in our Christian lives.

Now I thought about this last night and I thought, well, let’s end it with that good, you know, boy, you better be thankful because if you’re not thankful, you’re just like those people you’re so concerned about in the culture that’s tearing things down. But you know, I thought something else about this. Why does God tell us at least six, maybe seven times in four chapters to be thankful? I think it’s because it’s hard. It’s a very hard thing to do. We hear these sermons and we think, “Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess I should be more thankful.” And but you know, we kind again—it’s like talking about how great marriage is. And then when you get into it, it is great, but it’s sanctifying. It’s difficult work.

God preaches to our weaknesses. He knows that we’re going to be tempted not to be thankful. It’s our fallen nature. The essence of Adam was to not thank God for the regulations on what he did in his walk. That’s how he fell: was unthankfulness. That’s who we’re in the image of: his unthankfulness. The essence of, you know, the devil and his rejection of God and rebellion is unthankfulness for his role. Maybe relative to men, we don’t know. Unthankfulness is at the heart of the fall. And that means that what we go about doing—what we’re asking each other to do today, what we’re hearing from the word of God to do—is to do something that’s very difficult for you and I, brothers and sisters. It is very difficult. It’s impossible apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit. And I think it’s impossible apart from some kind of intentionality.

That’s why God gives us these verses over and over and over—is to urge us as we move toward Thursday to make that not a family tradition but to make it a religious observance that focuses on the nature of the Christian life itself. The evidence of the new man is to put on a thankful heart and to move away from all those evidences of the fall that slide out of an unthankful heart.

The Lord God today, I think, tells us that he’s calling us to do something very difficult. Very difficult. Apart from your fallen nature, but in your nature united to Christ. So it’s not impossible. It is difficult, though. But with the grace of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the encouragement we have from the word, and the encouragement we have from each other, we’re now setting up expectations for how we’re going to conduct our meal downstairs and our meal this coming Thursday.

May the Lord God grant us the grace of the Holy Spirit to empower us to be a thankful people. Let’s pray.

Father, we do ask just that, that you would make us thankful. We thank you, Father, for encouraging us in so many different ways to put this into our prayers, to put this into our heart, to put this into our walk, to put this into everything that we do, and specifically to practice it here in community. Make us a thankful people. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.