Stimulus/Response
Text: Ephesians 5:1-20
November 21, 2004, Dave Philips
The text I’ve chosen to preach on the Sunday before Thanksgiving is Ephesians 5:19-20: "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
That’s a wonderful Thanksgiving text.
The Ephesian letter has been called "the queen of the epistles." It is an amazing piece of work. Paul writes it from prison, and yet there is no hint from Paul that he is feeling sorry for himself. Instead, the letter is full of hope, full of joy, full of grace. Ephesians gives us a rationale for giving thanks to God in the midst of discouraging circumstances.
The stimulus that evokes our response of thanksgiving is God’s grace. From the opening to the concluding sentence of Ephesians, this letter has grace exploding from it like skyrockets on the fourth of July. Paul tells us that God sees us in our misery. He has compassion on us. He sends Jesus Christ with his message of reconciliation. We were dead in our sins, but God made us alive in Christ. It is by grace that we are saved through faith, and this is not our own doing, it is God’s gift, not because of our good works in case anyone is inclined to boast. So, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do great things for God.1
There is the rationale for thanksgiving for our pilgrim fathers who have survived the first year in Massachusetts, for Abraham Lincoln in the midst of our terrible Civil War, and for soldiers and non-combatants trying to make sense out of our current involvement in Iraq.
But that stimulus of God’s grace does not always evoke the response of thanksgiving.
The encyclopedia says that stimulus-response is an obligatory relationship in which the stimulus produces a definite and predictable response.2 Put food in front of your dog, and the dog salivates. And then eats the food.
But not always. Bring your dog into a room where there is a whole side of beef on the floor just waiting for him to tear into it, but if there’s a lion chewing away on that side of beef, the dog’s response will not be to salivate or to run to eat the food. The dog will put his tail between his legs and get away from that lion as fast a possible.
And, as we’ve learned, the response can be interfered with. Pavlov taught us that ringing a bell when a dog is fed will cause the dog to associate the ringing of the bell with food. Eventually, all you need to do to make the dog salivate is to ring the bell.
But our response to God’s grace is not always automatic. It can be interfered with. We can have a negative Pavlovian type of response to the idea of God’s grace, so that every time someone mentions how good God is, we’re inclined to say, "Yeah, right! Well, what about all the hypocrites in the church? And what about Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker? What about the crusades? And what about Ireland?"
You know what I mean? Mention God in some circles, and all you get is a negative response! A knee-jerk response! Cynicism about God is so rampant in today’s world that it’s hard, sometimes, to express any positive thoughts about God. We’re conditioned to negative thinking about God, and many of our fellow citizens won’t listen to anything positive.
Paul faced a similar mind-set in his world. Mention the gods in the world of Paul, and the knee-jerk response was fear. Listen to Paul’s words to the Ephesians: "You [Ephesians] were once darkness."3
We modern people have very little idea of how deep that pagan darkness was, of how hostile to the grace of God was the pagan mind-set. Ancient paganism has a very good press in today’s world. Everything was wonderful in the world, some people are saying, until Jesus came along and ruined it. Before Jesus, the world was a wonderful, spontaneous, happy place. After Jesus came repression, hypocrisy, religious persecution, and the enslavement of women.
Friends, that’s just so much twaddle! It is not true, and no responsible historian who didn’t have an axe to grind would ever tell you that it is true.
The ancient world was in the grip of a superstition that kept them genuinely enslaved. The noble pagans like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were a very small minority, and their thoughts were known only to a very few aristocrats who could afford an education. Most people were in the grip of a superstitious fear that kept them constantly looking over their shoulders and wondering when the gods were going to strike them down by disease, disaster, or famine. The gods were their enemies, not their friends.
Immorality was rampant in Paul’s world. Someone said that sexual purity was a virtue introduced by Christianity to the ancient world that no pagan had ever thought of before. And that would include Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, by the way! The temples of Aphrodite typically had dozens of sacred prostitutes — the money they earned went into the temple treasuries. Cicero, considered to be one of the noblest Romans, once made a speech in which he said, "If there is anyone who thinks that young men should be absolutely forbidden the love of [prostitutes], he is indeed extremely severe. . . . [Such a person] is at variance not only with the license of what our own age allows, but also from the customs . . . of our ancestors. When indeed was [prostitution] not done? When did anyone ever find fault with it?"
Whoa! Hold on just a minute, Mr. Cicero! Did anyone ever ask the girls what they thought of prostitution? Talk about the liberation of women in the ancient world — that’s the sort of thing that Christianity freed women from.
So, Paul says, "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light."
The people who came out of paganism into the Christian Church in the first centuries were genuinely thankful to be freed from the pagan gods. Their gods had been cruel and heartless — now they knew a Savior who was kind and compassionate. Their gods were their enemies — now they knew a Savior who said, "You are my friends."4 Their gods had made them slaves of fear. They had no hope for a life beyond this miserable life. Hades where all souls, good and evil, went after death was a place of misery. But now they knew a Savior who could say to the worst of them who repented and turned to him, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."5
Wow! What a deal! Nothing like this had ever been heard before in paganism. Or even in Judaism which was, until that point, the most hopeful of the ancient religions. But here came Jesus and his apostles proclaiming a way of life that enabled you to cope with the worst that life had to offer and that promised you eternal life in God’s kingdom where there would be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because the old order of things had passed away.6
If you were a pagan who had been in mortal fear of your gods, who had no hope of a good life in this world and only a miserable existence after death, and someone came along offering you freedom from fear, freedom from reprisals from your gods, something worth living for in this life, and an eternal life of joy in the world to come, would you take the deal?
People did by the thousands! They responded to the stimulus of God’s grace with thanksgiving and with thanks-living.
And people still do that today when they can see what the deal means. Some of you here this morning may not believe you’re going to live beyond this life. You believe there is a God, but you don’t believe in Jesus. I am so sorry for you! I have been there when Christians die who have the hope of eternal life, and I’ve been around pagans as they are facing death. Believe me, there is no comparison! Who would trade — just for example — the attitude Billy Graham has about death for the attitude Woody Allen has about death? Did any of you see Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death? Forget Woody Allen’s attitude! Give me Billy Graham’s attitude any day! Woody Allen makes me laugh — but when I’m through laughing, I’m depressed. Billy Graham doesn’t always make me laugh, but the gospel he preaches lifts my spirits and gives me the ability to laugh even when life is really grim.
"You were once darkness, now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light."
How do children of light live? With thanksgiving and with thanks-living.
"Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
One way that a spirit of thanksgiving can be felt in our church is when we give ourselves permission to sing our hymns with joy and enthusiasm. Has Jesus Christ freed you from despair and given you reason to hope? Then express your thanksgiving when you sing in church.
Music has been in the soul of Christianity from the very beginning. And music is one of the biggest causes of controversy in the Christian church. A shame, isn’t it? Some of us like to sing the good old hymns, some of us like the good new ones. There’s no arguing over taste. We like what we like.
But don’t you think we ought to be a little less critical of the other person’s taste in Christian music? Wouldn’t it be a good thing for Grants First Presbyterian if we all tried to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and tried to understand what it is that makes the other person love the kind of music he or she loves? You know these ancient hymns we’ve got in our hymn book are great hymns! The language may be a bit archaic in some of them, but they are great words! It stirs me to think that I’m singing the same words in the 21st century that Bernard of Clairvaux sang in the 12th century when we sing that great hymn, "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts."
And many of the contemporary hymns are terrific! Did you know that a song written by a Roman Catholic priest in the 1980's is the most popular song in the new Presbyterian hymnbook? It’s a fact. It’s called "Here I am, Lord." An outstanding, stirring hymn.
When we think of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and give ourselves permission to cut loose and sing these psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with enthusiasm, the whole tone of our worship service changes. It’s fun to worship with enthusiasm! Give yourself the permission to cut loose and enjoy your worship of God.
Children of light — which is what we are if we’re believers in Jesus Christ — should feel free to worship with enthusiasm. We also should feel free to live our faith with enthusiasm. Thanksgiving produces thanks-living.
In my first congregation one of my members was a guy named Paul. Paul was what I would call a burnout. He was formerly a sailor in the merchant marine. He had tattoos and wore an earring long before it was fashionable. He had returned to his hometown, gotten married, and settled down, but he was not what I would call a happy man.
But then Paul got converted. And the transformation was fantastic. Paul learned to pray out loud in the small group he attended when he met Christ, something he had never done before in his life. I don’t think Paul made A’s in English. His prayers were not models of English grammar. But Oh my goodness! That man knew how to communicate with God. His spoken prayers made chills run up and down my spine, they were so intense, so full of devotion.
When Paul got converted, things began to happen in his life. Let me just tell you in closing how Paul’s thanksgiving translated into thanks-living. Paul was a welder who worked in one of the steel fabricating plants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Like so many of his fellow workers, he stole from his company. He would sneak out equipment and material in his car when he drove home from his plant. He had yards of copper pipe in his basement that he had stolen. He had no use for the pipe — it was just the sport of getting away with something.
But when Paul got converted, he returned the things he had taken to his plant. Paul knew that he was a child of the light. He wasn’t about to continue walking in darkness. He wasn’t going to just give thanks as he worshiped in church, he was going to live thanks every day of his life.
Can you imagine the impact on the American economy if everyone who ever stole from their company, or embezzled from their company, or stole towels from a hotel, got converted and returned what they had stolen? Can you imagine the impact on the American economy if half the people, or a quarter of the people who ever stole got converted and returned what they stole? Can you imagine the impact on the ethics of this country if such a thing were to happen among even ten per cent of our people?
I can imagine the Hallelujah Chorus being sung in corporate headquarters all over the country if such a thing happened. But that sort of thing is what happens when people get the point of the Good News. Thanksgiving and thanks-living erupt from God’s people when the Gospel gets a real grip on our hearts.
So, friends, let’s speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Let’s sing and make music in our hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s give ourselves permission because of what Jesus Christ has done for us to cut loose and praise the Lord as we worship. And let’s live out the thanksgiving we feel in our hearts every day of our lives. God’s grace is the stimulus that produces thanksgiving in the hearts of Christians. And thanksgiving when it produces thanks-living changes the world.