Howard C. Wilkinson - "Thanksgiving Is Dangerous" (November 21, 1965)
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| (soft liturgical music) | 0:04 | |
| - | It is a curious fact that the scriptures inform us | 0:28 |
| that under one condition, | 0:35 | |
| the heavenly father will refuse to look | 0:37 | |
| at the conduct of his children. | 0:42 | |
| I suppose God has to behold | 0:47 | |
| a great deal of sorry performance, | 0:49 | |
| a great deal of disheartening iniquity | 0:52 | |
| on the part of his children. | 0:56 | |
| And you would think that maybe God wouldn't want | 1:00 | |
| to look at us at all, | 1:02 | |
| but on the basis of what we are told in the scripture, | 1:05 | |
| we are led to believe that he does look with kindness, | 1:08 | |
| with forgiveness, with judgment upon the children of men. | 1:13 | |
| But there is one time, when according to the scriptures, | 1:20 | |
| God absolutely refuses to look, | 1:24 | |
| and refuses to listen. | 1:29 | |
| Now what would you think that would be? | 1:32 | |
| Perhaps it would be the time back in history when his son, | 1:36 | |
| our Lord Jesus Christ was being crucified. | 1:41 | |
| In some ways, the most terrible event in history. | 1:46 | |
| We might say that it's when someone is being murdered, | 1:50 | |
| or when a theft is being committed, or a rape | 1:54 | |
| or some terrible crime of this sort. | 1:57 | |
| But that is not it. | 2:01 | |
| None of those qualifies. | 2:03 | |
| The one time that God has promised | 2:06 | |
| that he will hide his eyes and stop his ears, | 2:09 | |
| is when we are offering things to him for blessings. | 2:16 | |
| That's curious, it's arresting, | 2:26 | |
| it rather stabs us wide awake and makes us wonder | 2:30 | |
| about this whole business of thanksgiving | 2:34 | |
| if it can be so offensive to Almighty God | 2:37 | |
| that he will refuse to look and listen. | 2:41 | |
| If we turn from the record of God the father | 2:48 | |
| in the Old Testament, to the record of God the son | 2:51 | |
| in the New Testament, we find the same thing. | 2:54 | |
| In the 18th chapter of Luke's gospel | 2:57 | |
| there is recorded a parable, | 3:00 | |
| which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke | 3:02 | |
| in which he described the conduct of two men. | 3:05 | |
| The conduct of one man was, that he fell down on the ground | 3:09 | |
| when he realized what a horrible sinner he was, | 3:13 | |
| and acknowledged the fact that there was no good in him, | 3:18 | |
| that he was a sinner and threw himself on the mercy of God. | 3:20 | |
| And Jesus said, "This man went down to his house justified | 3:24 | |
| instead of the other man." | 3:29 | |
| And what was the conduct of the other man? | 3:31 | |
| The only behavior which was described | 3:34 | |
| by Jesus in this parable, which he invented, | 3:37 | |
| it was not a real happening, | 3:39 | |
| it was simply a story which he told to make a point. | 3:41 | |
| The only behavior which was described by Jesus | 3:44 | |
| in this parable was that this man | 3:48 | |
| was offering a prayer of thanks. | 3:50 | |
| Apparently thanksgiving is a dangerous thing. | 3:56 | |
| We run great risks when we give thanks. | 4:00 | |
| And if that is the case, | 4:05 | |
| then in a thanksgiving service like this one today, | 4:06 | |
| it would be well to examine our hearts and our practices | 4:10 | |
| to see if we are doing any of the things | 4:14 | |
| that are so offensive to God the father, | 4:19 | |
| and to God the son. | 4:21 | |
| If we are doing any of the things, which God has said, | 4:23 | |
| "He will hide his eyes and will not look at if we do. | 4:26 | |
| Will stop his ears and will not hear if we say." | 4:29 | |
| Now this is a puzzle on the very face of it, | 4:35 | |
| because it raises the question of how this can possibly be | 4:38 | |
| in view of the fact that God has commanded us | 4:41 | |
| to give thanks. | 4:43 | |
| He has said, "Come into my house and give things." | 4:45 | |
| He has said, "I will bless you and you shall thank me." | 4:48 | |
| How can it happen therefore, | 4:53 | |
| that the act of thanksgiving itself | 4:54 | |
| can become offensive in the extreme | 4:58 | |
| and outrage the sensibilities of Almighty God. | 5:01 | |
| I really don't know. | 5:08 | |
| But my guess is that something happens here | 5:10 | |
| similar to what happens with regard to the law. | 5:13 | |
| The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans | 5:17 | |
| in chapters five, six, seven, and eight | 5:20 | |
| describes how the law, which was given by God, | 5:23 | |
| and which was good to teach us the difference | 5:28 | |
| between right and wrong, to tell us the way of God, | 5:31 | |
| how the law, which was good, | 5:35 | |
| is used by sin to become sinful in the extreme. | 5:38 | |
| So that, and this is a direct quote. | 5:46 | |
| "Sin used the good thing to become sinful in the extreme." | 5:49 | |
| What God intended for good we have corrupted. | 5:57 | |
| So he said, "We cannot put our trust in obedience to the law | 6:02 | |
| because this may be the very instrument of sin itself." | 6:10 | |
| Now I wonder if a similar thing does not happen | 6:16 | |
| with regard to thanksgiving. | 6:19 | |
| The act of thanksgiving seems so safely pious. | 6:21 | |
| When you lift your eyes to heaven and fold your hands | 6:27 | |
| and say, "Thank God." | 6:32 | |
| That sounds so safely religious, | 6:35 | |
| so theologically correct, so impeccably right. | 6:37 | |
| Who can criticize that? | 6:42 | |
| What could possibly be wrong with a prayer of thanksgiving | 6:45 | |
| addressed to God, acknowledging that that for which | 6:49 | |
| we are grateful came from him. | 6:53 | |
| And yet, because it is so seemingly safe, | 6:59 | |
| so piously correct, sin which is always looking | 7:04 | |
| for a successful way to have dominion | 7:10 | |
| finds this as its most useful instrument. | 7:13 | |
| When Paul Tillich preached here the last time, | 7:18 | |
| the topic of his sermon was "The Flight From God". | 7:21 | |
| Those of you who heard the sermon will remember that | 7:26 | |
| he told how we human beings tend to run away from God. | 7:29 | |
| We do not want a face-to-face confrontation | 7:34 | |
| with the God of the universe, the God of Jesus Christ. | 7:39 | |
| And we try to run from him | 7:42 | |
| like Thompson's "Hound of Heaven". | 7:45 | |
| God pursues us but we run. | 7:50 | |
| And Tillich said in this sermon, | 7:54 | |
| that the most successful places we find to hide from God | 7:56 | |
| are usually in church. | 8:01 | |
| Because when we are in church, we think this must be safe, | 8:04 | |
| this must be right, and whatever we do in church | 8:09 | |
| cannot be an offense to God. | 8:13 | |
| But God has said in his holy word, | 8:15 | |
| that some of the things which people do in church, | 8:18 | |
| namely, offer prayers of thanksgiving | 8:21 | |
| can be offensive in the extreme. | 8:24 | |
| So I presume that this is how it happens. | 8:28 | |
| Things sometimes do not turn out the way we expect them to. | 8:32 | |
| They sometimes do not turn out | 8:35 | |
| the way we think they ought to. | 8:37 | |
| And illustration of this took place last August | 8:40 | |
| at about the time that some of our students from Duke | 8:42 | |
| were returning from Project Nicaragua, | 8:45 | |
| there was another plane flying | 8:48 | |
| in central America that crashed. | 8:49 | |
| This plane was a Peruvian plane, a DC-4. | 8:51 | |
| And it crashed in the jungles of Panama. | 8:55 | |
| There were seven crew man on board that plane, | 8:59 | |
| and they had a crate full of poisonous snakes, | 9:02 | |
| which had been captured in the jungle | 9:05 | |
| in which they were flying out for some zoos. | 9:06 | |
| When people who live nearby the site of the plane crash, | 9:11 | |
| saw it go down and organized and rescue party. | 9:15 | |
| Went to the plane hoping that they would find | 9:19 | |
| some surviving human beings. | 9:22 | |
| They found that the seven crew members | 9:27 | |
| were all killed in the crash. | 9:29 | |
| The crash had broken open the crate, | 9:33 | |
| and all they found awaiting them | 9:38 | |
| was a plane full of live and liberated snakes. | 9:40 | |
| Now this is what sometimes happens | 9:46 | |
| in an act of thanksgiving, in a prayer of thanksgiving, | 9:49 | |
| in a thank offering, if you please, | 9:53 | |
| in a service of thanksgiving, | 9:56 | |
| that in which we hope to find kept alive | 9:58 | |
| and nourished the things of eternal value | 10:02 | |
| becomes the means by which the poisonous snakes | 10:06 | |
| are liberated spiritually. | 10:10 | |
| And we find the act of thanksgiving, | 10:14 | |
| the attitude of thanksgiving becoming | 10:17 | |
| the instrument of offense to Almighty God. | 10:20 | |
| Well, now what are some of these points of danger | 10:25 | |
| about which we must be very careful? | 10:29 | |
| The first is we must not thank God | 10:33 | |
| for ill gotten gains. | 10:38 | |
| We must not thank God for things which we have, | 10:42 | |
| that we have no business having, | 10:46 | |
| which we took out of the blood of others, | 10:49 | |
| which we honestly acquired. | 10:52 | |
| In the scripture a lesson that was read this morning | 10:57 | |
| this was the particular point that was made. | 11:00 | |
| God said, "When you spread forth your hands, | 11:04 | |
| I will hide my eyes from you. | 11:08 | |
| Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. | 11:10 | |
| Your hands are full of blood. | 11:15 | |
| Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, | 11:18 | |
| remove the evil of your doings | 11:22 | |
| from before my eyes cease to do evil, learn to do good, | 11:24 | |
| seek justice, correct oppression." | 11:28 | |
| God wants no thanks for anything which we have | 11:33 | |
| that we extracted dishonestly, or unjustly from others. | 11:37 | |
| I understand that most of the leaders | 11:45 | |
| of the minority government of Southern Rhodesia | 11:48 | |
| are members of the Christian Church. | 11:51 | |
| If they went to thanksgiving services this morning | 11:54 | |
| and thanked God for their independence from Britain, | 11:58 | |
| and for the power which this minority holds | 12:02 | |
| over the majority of the citizens, | 12:04 | |
| keeping them in subjection, | 12:07 | |
| extracting from them taxes without representation, | 12:09 | |
| and promising to hold them and rejection. | 12:14 | |
| And if they thank them for this power, | 12:17 | |
| which they have and this wealth which they have, | 12:19 | |
| if they thank God for this, | 12:23 | |
| we are encouraged to believe from this passage | 12:26 | |
| that it is a God who is neither looking nor listening, | 12:28 | |
| a God who is not there. | 12:33 | |
| And who says, "Correct oppression, seek justice." | 12:36 | |
| Back in the days, 150 years ago in the United States | 12:43 | |
| when we had slaves and great plantations, | 12:49 | |
| and great holdings by slaveholders. | 12:54 | |
| Many of plantation owner went to church, | 12:57 | |
| and offered thanks not only on Thanksgiving day, | 13:00 | |
| but every Sunday for the bounty, which he enjoyed | 13:03 | |
| and said, "Thanks to God for this." | 13:08 | |
| Now we begin to see why this is such a dangerous thing | 13:13 | |
| and why God would hide his eyes. | 13:17 | |
| It is a subtle way of saying publicly before the world, | 13:20 | |
| God is responsible for this wicked system. | 13:25 | |
| He is the one who gives me this wealth. | 13:28 | |
| It is he who extracts it from these other people | 13:30 | |
| and gives it to me. | 13:33 | |
| And so who am I not to enjoy it | 13:34 | |
| since God has given it to me? | 13:37 | |
| And so by means of this prayer of thanksgiving, | 13:40 | |
| you're seeking to paper over the cracks | 13:43 | |
| in the moral character | 13:46 | |
| of the person who's doing the praying | 13:48 | |
| and to say what I have I have by the act of God | 13:51 | |
| and so of course I will thank him for it. | 13:55 | |
| A prayer of thanksgiving was the main instrument | 13:59 | |
| for the affirmation of the divine right of kings | 14:02 | |
| back when this theory of the divine right of kings | 14:05 | |
| was so prevalent in the world. | 14:09 | |
| Kings thanked God because of the safety of their thrones. | 14:13 | |
| Kings thanked God for all the bounty | 14:18 | |
| which they extracted from their subjects. | 14:20 | |
| And their prayers of thanksgiving, | 14:24 | |
| were the seemingly harmless way they had | 14:26 | |
| of propounding the doctrine of the divine right of kings. | 14:28 | |
| So we begin to see something of why God says | 14:34 | |
| he will hide his eyes and stop his ears | 14:38 | |
| when we begin to offer prayers that are reflecting injustice | 14:40 | |
| and making him responsible for that injustice. | 14:45 | |
| We need to be very very careful | 14:51 | |
| when we start thanking God for ill gotten gain, | 14:54 | |
| for possessions we have that we did not get rightly. | 14:58 | |
| I read the report of a trial that was held | 15:04 | |
| in which it was established that the defendant | 15:06 | |
| had been guilty of murder. | 15:09 | |
| That the defendant had been guilty | 15:11 | |
| of deliberate, premeditated murder, | 15:13 | |
| but because of a legal flaw in the trial, | 15:15 | |
| the man was set free. | 15:19 | |
| And when he heard that he was not going to have to pay | 15:21 | |
| for his crime he said, "Thank God." | 15:24 | |
| God didn't want any thanks for that. | 15:28 | |
| He did not wanna be blamed for that. | 15:31 | |
| God is not in the business of saying. | 15:35 | |
| "Whatsoever a man sows that shall he not reap." | 15:37 | |
| I am sure that whenever people carelessly | 15:42 | |
| and sinfully offer a prayer of thanks to God, | 15:46 | |
| which by implication blames him for a heinous evil, | 15:51 | |
| he is not at all pleased by that prayer. | 15:55 | |
| Well secondly, we run a great risk when we thank God | 16:00 | |
| for things that he has said are not his business, | 16:06 | |
| for things which he does not take a hand in, | 16:10 | |
| for things that he does not want gratitude for. | 16:14 | |
| Even though there is no evil involved, | 16:19 | |
| we sometimes put God in a compromising position | 16:21 | |
| so far as his reputation is concerned, | 16:24 | |
| by thanking him for things | 16:28 | |
| when thanks should go elsewhere. | 16:31 | |
| For instance, the matter of rain, weather, the seasons | 16:34 | |
| God says in his word that he sends the rain on the just | 16:39 | |
| and on the unjust. | 16:43 | |
| Alike, in spite of that, very clear teaching and scripture, | 16:46 | |
| there are people who thank God if their neighbors | 16:52 | |
| do not have any rain on their crops, | 16:57 | |
| but rain comes on the crops of the person | 17:00 | |
| praying the prayer of thanks. | 17:03 | |
| Now it is one thing to be glad, | 17:07 | |
| it is one thing to feel gratitude, | 17:09 | |
| but it is another thing to attach that prayer of gratitude | 17:11 | |
| to Almighty God, | 17:16 | |
| because you have to ask what it is you're saying | 17:19 | |
| when you thank God for rain on your place, | 17:22 | |
| when there is no rain on someone's else. | 17:26 | |
| What you have to ask is does this mean that God | 17:29 | |
| is more interested in you than he is in others? | 17:32 | |
| And conversely, if the other man has rain on his crops | 17:36 | |
| and you have none on yours, | 17:40 | |
| does this mean that God is more interested | 17:41 | |
| in the others than he is in you? | 17:43 | |
| This is not the way God works. | 17:46 | |
| And he does not want any prayers of thanks for rain. | 17:48 | |
| Now to be sure, it is right that we recognize God | 17:52 | |
| is the ultimate provider of all the seasons, | 17:55 | |
| and of rain and of sunshine and everything else | 17:58 | |
| in the natural world. | 18:02 | |
| But in the sense of his making immediate delineation | 18:04 | |
| of these blessings this week rain on yours, | 18:08 | |
| this week rain on mine, | 18:11 | |
| God does not want that kind of thanks. | 18:13 | |
| And there are far more spiritual and theological problems | 18:16 | |
| created when we get in the business of thanking God | 18:19 | |
| for the rain then are solved by any such prayers as that. | 18:22 | |
| And then also let's think about our athletic contests. | 18:27 | |
| Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the stands | 18:33 | |
| on the west side in the Duke stadium, | 18:35 | |
| thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Blue Devils defeat, | 18:37 | |
| the University of North Carolina in football. | 18:41 | |
| And not only did I enjoy that victory, | 18:44 | |
| but I was extremely grateful, | 18:47 | |
| but I did not express my gratitude to God | 18:50 | |
| for the Duke victory over Carolina, | 18:52 | |
| my gratitude went to coach Murray, | 18:55 | |
| and to 35 Duke University students | 18:57 | |
| who were football players. | 19:00 | |
| My gratitude goes to them and to them alone, not to God. | 19:02 | |
| Now I thank God for the virtues of courage, | 19:07 | |
| for the virtues of discipline, and of unselfishness, | 19:11 | |
| and all the other things that sometimes | 19:14 | |
| go into the making of athletic victory, | 19:16 | |
| but in the sense that I think God gave us | 19:20 | |
| the victory yesterday, I don't think he did, | 19:23 | |
| I think the players and the coaches did. | 19:27 | |
| And I don't believe God wants any thanks for that | 19:29 | |
| because I have a feeling that he is just as much interested | 19:32 | |
| in the boys on the Carolina team | 19:36 | |
| as he is in the boys, on the Duke team. | 19:38 | |
| Also, if we begin to thank God for a victory like that, | 19:42 | |
| this raises serious problems about where God was last year | 19:46 | |
| when we lost to Carolina. | 19:49 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 19:51 | |
| And there is another thing that I think | 19:55 | |
| needs to be straightened out in this connection too. | 19:57 | |
| I want you to know that the scripture passages this morning | 20:00 | |
| was selected three weeks ago. | 20:02 | |
| And the sentence in there, | 20:06 | |
| "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams" | 20:09 | |
| has no reference to what happened this week. | 20:12 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 20:15 | |
| The ram was not barbecued. | 20:17 | |
| He was returned intact yesterday afternoon | 20:19 | |
| to the Carolina people. | 20:23 | |
| We need to be careful that we do not offer thanks to God | 20:26 | |
| for blessings which he did not confer, | 20:30 | |
| because this creates serious problems | 20:33 | |
| with which we have to deal. | 20:37 | |
| And I believe at this point, | 20:40 | |
| we need to get our thinking straight about the nature | 20:41 | |
| and the definition of what it is that God | 20:44 | |
| is intending to do for us. | 20:47 | |
| Chester Carlson, who is the inventor of Xerox | 20:51 | |
| was down here on the Duke campus | 20:54 | |
| about a year and a half ago, | 20:56 | |
| and he made a talk to a small group of people on the campus. | 20:57 | |
| And I had the privilege of being present. | 21:00 | |
| He told a story about a college student | 21:03 | |
| whose father had a lot of money. | 21:06 | |
| His father wanted to do something | 21:08 | |
| that would help his son and make him happy. | 21:10 | |
| And so having plenty of money | 21:12 | |
| and knowing that his son was a sports car enthusiast, | 21:14 | |
| he decided to buy him the very finest sports car | 21:17 | |
| that he could buy. | 21:20 | |
| So he bought him an Italian Ferrari. | 21:22 | |
| The son was delighted beyond all expectation, | 21:25 | |
| and he wanted to take care of this sports car, | 21:29 | |
| and he talked with some of his fellow students | 21:32 | |
| about what he might do to take care of it. | 21:34 | |
| One of them suggested to him, | 21:36 | |
| being someone of a superstitious nature, | 21:38 | |
| that he ought to take it to a religious official | 21:40 | |
| and have him put a blessing on it. | 21:42 | |
| So he took it first as the Catholic priest. | 21:45 | |
| He said, "Father, I've just bought a new Ferrari, | 21:48 | |
| and I want you to put a blessing on it." | 21:50 | |
| The priest said, "Well now son, | 21:52 | |
| we don't bless just anything that comes along. | 21:53 | |
| we'll have to think this over. | 21:56 | |
| And you tell me, first of all, what is a Ferrari?" | 21:57 | |
| The boy was very downcast and he said, | 22:02 | |
| "Oh father, if you don't know what a Ferrari is, | 22:03 | |
| a blessing by you wouldn't help it any." | 22:07 | |
| So he went next to the Jewish rabbi, | 22:09 | |
| "The rabbi I've just bought a new Ferrari. | 22:11 | |
| And I wonder if you'd put a blessing on it for me." | 22:14 | |
| He said, "Sure son I'd be glad to put a blessing on it | 22:15 | |
| for you, but first tell me what a Ferrari is?" | 22:18 | |
| "Rabbi," he said, | 22:22 | |
| "If you don't even know what a Ferrari is, | 22:23 | |
| a blessing by you wouldn't help it." | 22:25 | |
| So next to we went to a low church, Unitarian minister. | 22:26 | |
| He said, "Reverend I've just bought a new Ferrari, | 22:32 | |
| and I wonder if you'd put a blessing on it. | 22:35 | |
| "Ah, a new Ferrari," he said, | 22:38 | |
| "what's the RPM and what's the torque? | 22:39 | |
| And tell me about the takeoff speed and the top speed. | 22:41 | |
| And by the way, what is a blessing?" | 22:45 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 22:48 | |
| I think that the Unitarian minister | 22:54 | |
| asked the right question. | 22:56 | |
| We need to ask very seriously | 22:59 | |
| because it has to do with the nature of God. | 23:02 | |
| What is a blessing? | 23:05 | |
| When has God blessed us? | 23:09 | |
| When should we thank him? | 23:11 | |
| And when should we not? | 23:14 | |
| There are times we get God in trouble when we thank him. | 23:16 | |
| And I take this out of the realm of rain and sunshine | 23:20 | |
| and Carolina games, and put it on the very serious point | 23:23 | |
| of whether or not when two boys from the same street | 23:29 | |
| go off to war, and one of them comes back safe | 23:33 | |
| and the other one is killed. | 23:38 | |
| Should the boy who came back safe, thank God for his safety? | 23:41 | |
| If so, what are we saying about that? | 23:48 | |
| That God was interested in him. | 23:53 | |
| God was not interested in the other boy. | 23:56 | |
| That God was looking out for him and protecting him. | 24:00 | |
| And God was careless about the other boy. | 24:03 | |
| What are we saying by our thanksgivings? | 24:08 | |
| Now the last point that I want to mention, | 24:13 | |
| where I think we run a serious risk in giving thanks | 24:18 | |
| is in thanking God for our small blessings | 24:25 | |
| when really what we're thanking God for | 24:30 | |
| was something we did ourselves. | 24:34 | |
| And by implication, we therefore blame him | 24:37 | |
| for the blessing not being greater. | 24:42 | |
| How many times have I heard students say when they received | 24:48 | |
| a grade on a course that was just barely passing, | 24:53 | |
| "Well, thank God I did pass. | 24:57 | |
| I didn't make an A, but thank God I passed." | 25:00 | |
| Why thank God? | 25:06 | |
| Why thank God? | 25:11 | |
| The implication is here that God gave you the D, | 25:13 | |
| but if he had really been interested in you, | 25:17 | |
| he would have given you an A. | 25:19 | |
| It wasn't you who earned the D it was God, and so thank him. | 25:22 | |
| If it wasn't God who earned the D, then why thank him. | 25:27 | |
| No, many times we try to shift our laziness over on God. | 25:32 | |
| We say, "I Know that God hasn't fixed the leaky roof yet, | 25:42 | |
| but we thank God that at least | 25:48 | |
| there is something roof up there." | 25:50 | |
| And thus shift our own lazy slovenly ways onto God. | 25:53 | |
| I believe it is irreverent to thank God for | 26:01 | |
| the minimal things we have as though he was responsible. | 26:05 | |
| And by implication responsible that we did not have | 26:11 | |
| greater affluence than we did | 26:14 | |
| when it was simply a lack of our own effort | 26:18 | |
| that put us in such poor circumstances. | 26:21 | |
| The theology of Karl Barth, | 26:25 | |
| the great European theologian has gone far to correct | 26:27 | |
| some of the inadequacies in American theology | 26:31 | |
| in this past generation. | 26:35 | |
| But there are a great many people who without knowing | 26:37 | |
| Barthian theology in great detail, | 26:40 | |
| have read some of it and have been led far astray. | 26:43 | |
| And we need to be careful as we read Barthian theology, | 26:47 | |
| that we do not go astray at this point, | 26:50 | |
| and say that well since God takes the initiative, | 26:53 | |
| since God is the great actor | 26:57 | |
| spelled with a capital A in history, | 26:59 | |
| it is only for us to sit and wait for God to act. | 27:02 | |
| If the church needs to be renewed, we can't renew it, | 27:08 | |
| God has to renew it, and so we wait for him | 27:12 | |
| to act to renew it. | 27:14 | |
| If righteousness needs to be established, | 27:17 | |
| it will be established only by God. | 27:19 | |
| And so we will wait for God to initiate the action. | 27:21 | |
| This is a distortion perhaps of Barthian theology. | 27:26 | |
| And we need to be very careful that we not only distort | 27:30 | |
| Barthian theology, but outrage Almighty God when we do it. | 27:33 | |
| Because we do not have to wait for God to act | 27:37 | |
| to do the things that he has already acted in us | 27:40 | |
| and stimulated us to do, which only waits for us to do it. | 27:43 | |
| Yes, there is danger in thanksgiving. | 27:49 | |
| There's great peril in it, | 27:53 | |
| but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be thankful | 27:54 | |
| and express our thanks, | 27:57 | |
| but it means that our thanks must be thoughtful thanks. | 27:58 | |
| It must be a serious kind of thanks, | 28:03 | |
| where are we raise questions about it, | 28:06 | |
| and ask ourselves what we're saying | 28:10 | |
| when we say, "Thank God." | 28:12 | |
| What are the implications? | 28:16 | |
| Remembering that if we thank God unworthily, | 28:18 | |
| he will hide his eyes and stop his ears, | 28:22 | |
| he will not listen | 28:25 | |
| Almighty God, our heavenly father, | 28:34 | |
| who has called us to thy house to give thee thanks | 28:37 | |
| and praise thy name. | 28:40 | |
| We pray onto thee for grace and discernment, | 28:43 | |
| that will enable us to thank thee worthily | 28:47 | |
| and that we may live in fellowship with thee, | 28:51 | |
| and with all thy children through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 28:54 | |
| And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, | 28:58 | |
| the love of God, the father and the communion | 29:02 | |
| and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, | 29:04 | |
| rest upon you and abide with you now and evermore. | 29:06 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 29:13 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 29:21 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 29:30 |