There was a time when I thought that if we wanted to change our lives, to start good habits, or to break bad habits, all we had to do was decide to do it. We just had to choose. I come from a family with a lot of will power. But the more I have had to wrestle with my own weaknesses, the more I realize that the choices you make are important, but choice isn’t the whole story. Sometimes it’s just plain really hard. There are times when change us isn’t in us.
Of course, education can really make a difference. Often we can’t change because we just don’t understand. We don’t understand clearly what the Christian life even looks like or the steps to get there or the steps for breaking old habits. And so studying God’s word and discussing it together are very important. If you want to get somewhere, it’s a big help to know what the goal looks like and the steps that others have found useful for getting there. But information still isn’t the whole story.
We are often not free to choose. We may decide to start a self-improvement program, to read our Bibles every day, or something like that, and be able to choose once or twice to do it. But then we forget. We fall back into old habits. And we realize that we aren't as free as we thought. And we feel guilty and discouraged.
In Jesus' time it was the Pharisees who figured it was enough to give people long lists of rules and expect them to just do them. But it just isn't that simple. Jesus criticized them for giving people rules and then not lifting a finger to help them follow them. What we do flows out of who we are. Our behavior flows out of what is deep inside of us and it isn’t easy to change the deep core of our hearts.
Jesus said, “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,” (Matthew 12:34). It is the inclination of our heart that determines what we do. The real battle is down deeper than just this decision or that decision. The battle is to change the whole inclination of our hearts.
This pitcher is full of air. How can I get it out? How can I get leverage on air? If I pull out one handful, the atmosphere that surrounds it will just push more air right back in. How can I get the air out? I can't, directly. I could yell at the air and try to make it feel guilty for not moving, but it wouldn’t do any good. I could post a list of rules for air, but that wouldn’t help. I could take a college course in aer-o-dynamics and get a lot of information about the movements of air, and maybe come up with an air pump or something complicated that would pull the air out, for a time. But that wouldn’t last.
But if I can fill the space with something more substantial, like water, it just pushes the air right out. (Pour water into the pitcher)
The most important thing is to fill the space in your heart with something more substantial, to replace the vices with virtues. And our text today holds up the virtue of thankfulness as something that fills our hearts with good things so that there is no room left for the vices. And a thankful heart, a heart focused on its blessings, sees no end of opportunities to bless others with love and generosity. Thankfulness makes you full inside.
Our text is just two verses, Ephesians 5:3-4. "But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving."
We are surrounded by a world of people with empty hearts. And in their desperation they are turning to one empty thing after another to fill the void.
We don’t like to talk about sex in church, but Paul lists sexual sins first, "fornication and impurity" as things for Christians to avoid. We live in a sex obsessed culture. How does an advertiser make a project sell? Find some way to make people think it will make them more sexy. So sell your car by suggesting that it will help the guy get the cute girl. Sell the perfume or the clothing or the breath mints or soda pop or cigarettes or beer, or pretty much anything we sell, suggest that it will make you sexy and people will buy it.
I once found a package of wood screws in a hardware store with a picture on the package of a man up on a step ladder, screwing something to the wall. And there’s this sexy blond gazing up at him in rapt admiration. I bought them because those were the screws I needed. No sexy blonds followed me home.
There's this message that comes to us again and again: sure you feel inadequate, you need something to make you more sexually attractive.
But has all the sexual focus and freedom of our culture solved our problems? No, it has created a lot of our problems, broken families, sexually transmitted diseases, wounded children. And the people who chase after sex alone for fulfillment are still empty, emptier than ever. People who use other people for their own selfish purposes are empty people.
Next Paul warns against greed. The Greek word that he wrote originally means “always wanting to have more.” Isn't that a good summary of American culture, the race to have more things? We have tons of stuff in our houses, most of it we never use anymore, and sometimes we’re fixated on that one more thing we want to buy. Getting more is one thing our culture really works at. We may ignore our families to work overtime to have more things. We may damage our health in our race to have more things. We may sacrifice our moral integrity and cheat other people, or cheat the government at tax time, to get more things for ourselves. People schedule themselves so many hours of work that they have no time left for God, to attend worship, to pray, to be available to do things for God. Greed is so deeply entrenched around us. It is destroying us. We are losing the ability to be satisfied with what we have. We find no pleasure in it. We just have to have more, and it is driving us into the grave. And you can fill your garage and all your closets with things, stockpiled from floor to ceiling, fill ten garages with things, but they will never make your heart full.
And our addiction to accumulating more things will be really tested in the next month as we will be bombarded with advertising that we need to get things to show our love for our families. You know this is the season when about half our country goes insane. If I granted you all a special dispensation with permission to spend less this Christmas would you take it? Would you invest more time in just being with people you love instead? Would you look for the joy of giving to a program that helps strangers who really do have needs, instead?
A thankful heart can push out even greed. It can help us focus on the things we have rather than the things we don't have. Thankfulness focuses on the giver of the good things we have, pointing us to God. Thankfulness helps us see that our things are much more than just things. They are love gifts from our heavenly Father. A thankful heart has a rich feast of appreciation for the gifts all around us, the free joy of watching a child play, the joy of watching a beautiful sunset, or the sunlight glistening on the snow, enjoying the warmth of the sun shining through the window glass. No amount of things can make us content. Only thankfulness can do that.
And thankfulness leads us to focus back on our God, the source of all truly good things in life. He gave us everything. Not only that, but he loves us. He loves us so much that even when we were in rebellion against him, he died for us. He is reaching out to us every day. He will never let us down. How can you be empty when your heart is filled with God's love?
Thankfulness to God is the virtue that has enough substance, or weight, to it, to push the vices out, to change our heart to make us new persons. It’s a very healthy thing to stop and give thanks. It’s important to be in church every Sunday to remind ourselves of the blessings we have from God and to express our thanks in our singing, in our giving, in our devotion to learn to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Let’s take a few minutes to share with each other things for which we are thankful to God. Thankfulness isn't really complete until it is expressed in some way. And because we are a family here, it’s important for us to share our hearts so that we can really be united as a family.
So I'll invite you to stand up where you are and share briefly your thanks to God. I’ll get us started.
I’m thankful to God that I am surrounded with people with a will to work for God’s Kingdom. That makes beautiful things happen.
A loving wife who is a true partner in the gospel.
The privilege of being a pastor, sharing in people’s lives, being able to study and present God’s word week after week.
