100 People
If we could shrink the earth’s
population to a village of 100 people, what would it look like? It would look
something like the following:[1]
- 31 Christians, 23 Muslims, 16 people who would not be aligned with a religion, 15 Hindus, 7 Buddhists, 8 people who practice other religions
- 86 would be able to read and write; 14 would not
- 40 would have an Internet connection
- 78 people would have a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not
- 91 would have access to safe drinking water; 9 would not
So if you are able to read and
write, and have an internet connection, and have a place to live and access to
clean drinking water, you would probably be in the top 10%. But too often we
don’t feel like we are privileged. Too often we don’t feel like we have that
much to be thankful for. But in today’s scripture the Apostle Paul says, “Give
thanks always and for everything” (20). The question is, “How can we give thanks always and for
everything? Is it really possible?”
Who Am I?
The answer is YES, because of two reasons. First, we can give thanks
always and for everything because of who
we are in Christ. Paul says in verse 8, “For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of
light.” Christians are those who are delivered from darkness and transferred
into light (cf. Isa 9:2; Col 1:13; Acts 26:17-18). The Bible says that we were (completely!)
dead in our sins. We used to follow
the ways of this world and refuse to obey God. We used to follow the passionate
desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. We used to live without power,
without hope, and without God. But in his great mercy God took the initiative.
He first reached out to us, called us, and embraced us. He took our sin and
made us alive in Christ. God did all this on his own, with no help from us!
Christianity is not about self-help. It is not about self-improvement. Some
people think if they stopped doing one or two bad things, and took up two or
three good others, then they would become good Christians. Some think if they became
a little bit better than now, then they would become good Christians. But
that’s not Christianity. Christianity is all about “born-again.” It is all
about new life in Christ.
In Jesus’ time there was a group of
people who were claiming to be righteous in their own opinion. They were called
the Pharisees. On one occasion Jesus healed a man born blind. It happened to be
a Sabbath day when Jesus opened his eyes. That really bothered the Pharisees.
And they grumbled, “This man Jesus is not from God because he does not keep the
Sabbath.” So they interrogated and threatened the man healed to renounce Jesus.
But as he kept explaining what happened to him, the eyes of his heart were
increasingly open. At first, the man said to the Pharisees, “The man called Jesus opened my eyes”
(John 9:11). Then later, he said, “He is a prophet”
(17). Then he said to Jesus at the end, “Lord,
I believe!” and he worshipped Jesus
(38). And Jesus said to the man, “I entered this world to render judgment – to
give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are
blind” (39). The Pharisees overheard this and grumbled, “Surely we are not
blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty
of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
Christians are those who once were blind, but whose eyes now are wide open! This statement exactly describes
who I am. I always grew up in the church as a pastor’s kid. On the outside I
was a good kid, a good student, a good man. But on the inside were full of 3
D’s: Doubt, Darkness, Despair. That was me. In particular, in my early college
years I was constantly wandering and searching. Though I studied hard, worked
hard, deep inside I always felt like something was missing, I was restless, I
was thirsty. I tried to avoid a time for reflection or quietness, because that
did reveal my inner emptiness – a hole inside of me. So I kept myself busy. I
studied. I worked. I travelled. I dated. I joined the military to run away from
God’s presence. But God even was there. Actually, he was waiting for me,
opening his arms to his disobedient son all day long. I fell ill with an
endemic disease, “Dengue Fever” in East Timor and was going through the valley
of the shadow of death. But then I was miraculously healed. Since then,
particularly for the next three years God spoke to me, shaped me, molded me,
gave me a new heart. Finally, I had a feeling of coming home – a sense of
forgiveness and reconciliation with God, with others, with myself; a sense of
purpose, direction and goal; a sense of wholeness. And a sense of restlessness
and hopelessness were gone! God gave me new 3 D’s: Dawn. Deliverance. Delight.
He put a new song in my heart. So I am eternally
grateful.
Jesus said, “Whoever hears my word
and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment,
but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). If we really have passed from
death to life, turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God
because of Jesus, how can we remain silent? We will rejoice and exult in him.
Yes, we can give thanks always for everything when we know who we are in Christ.
Who Is God?
Second, we can also give thanks
always when we know who God is. The
Bible says God made heaven and earth. God made you and me. Because he made us,
God loves us. God cares for us. Jesus said, “And if God cares so wonderfully
for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will
certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?... Surely your
heavenly Father already knows all your needs” (Mt 6:30, NLT). The Bible says, “He
who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not
also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rm 8:32)
We are ungrateful because we don’t
know God. We worry, we fear, we sin because we don’t know God. The Prophet
Hosea cried out to Israel, “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD!” (Hs
6:3) That’s the answer to all questions. When we know God, we trust in him
and we can give thanks to him no
matter what. I think the story of Pastor Sohn Yang Won can be a good example.
After Korea was liberated from Japan, Korean peninsula was very unstable
because of ideological differences. For several weeks Pastor Sohn’s town was
occupied by the communists’ rebels. The rebels arrested Christians, including
Pastor Sohn’s two older sons at their college and killed them. At his sons funeral
he shared “9 things to be thankful for”:[2]
- My Lord, I thank You for having entrusted me, out of countless believers, with such precious treasures.
- Among my three sons and three daughters, I thank You for my blessings through which I could offer You my two most beautiful children, my oldest and second oldest sons.
- I thank You for the martyrdom for two of my children, when the martyrdom of one child in itself is much more precious than I could bear.
- I thank You for the martyrdom of my sons who were shot to death while they were preaching the gospel, when dying peacefully on his deathbed in itself is a tremendous blessing for a believer.
- I thank You for my heart is at peace as my sons, who had been preparing to go and study in America, are now in a place that is much better than America.
- God, I thank You for giving me a heart of love for repentance of the enemy who murdered my sons and compelling me to adopt him as my own son.
- My Father God, I thank you for there will now be countless more sons of heaven through the fruit of the martyrdom of my sons.
- I thank and thank Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given me these eight truths in times of such adversity, the joyful heart seeking faith and love, and the faith that provides me with composure.
Open My Eyes Lord!
Paul’s exhortation, “Give thanks
always for everything” is available to
everyone. But before this exhortation, Paul first prays for the Ephesian
Christians that the eyes of their heart
may be opened and enlightened (cf. 1:18). We need the same prayer: “Lord,
open my eyes that I may see you who died for me. Lord, open my eyes that I may
see you who rose again. Lord, open my eyes that I may see you who are now sitting
at the right hand of the Father!” I love how Charles Spurgeon shares his
spiritual eye-opening experience:[3]
Oh! I looked
until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was
gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could
have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the
precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him!
Friends in Christ, God can make his light penetrate
and turn the darkness of your own life into the brightest day, if you will let him. So look to Jesus,
not to yourself, not to your pains. Look to Jesus, and you will live. Look to
Jesus, and you will eternally give thanks to him and praise his name for ever
and ever! Amen.
[1] “100
People: A World Portrait,” https://www.100people.org/statistics_100stats.php?section=statistics
[2] Sohn
Yang Won, “Love Your Enemies,” https://thelittlelightofmine.wordpress.com/tag/sohn-yang-won/
[3] From
Spurgeon’s Autobiography, “The Great Change- Conversion” http://www.romans45.org/spurgeon/misc/abio011.htm
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