God, I pray that every person here, Lord, would do that; that they would hand over their heart, they would surrender to You all that they are, they would hold nothing back. God, that we could bow to You in thankfulness, show our gratitude for how amazing You are, for how awesome You are, for how incredible You are. That our life would be an offering to You, that it would be more than just words, but it would be our very lives, our very actions, and just who we are. God, as Thanksgiving to You, we thank You for this day. God, I just pray that with the rest of this service, God, just open our hearts to hear what You have to say. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Go ahead and have a seat, everybody. It's so good to see each of you. Thanks for being here on this holiday weekend to gather together and to worship our great God. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I know that a lot of times, pastors will preach their Thanksgiving message before Thanksgiving. I tend to like to do it afterwards because we kind of need it after not just Thanksgiving, but going through Black Friday and sitting at home and shopping and just, you know, punching people in the face when you're trying to get that thing. So, I mean, I hope none of you did that. I didn't read any police reports about that from any of y'all.
But I think it's good for us to go back and kind of go, "Oh yeah, we had Thanksgiving, and now we're going to kind of remember why we had Thanksgiving," right? So we're going to be in Luke chapter 17 today. Luke 17, if you want to go ahead and go there, we'll be there in just a moment. You know, there are some words that just cause me to cringe. Maybe you have some of those words too. Now, I'm not talking about cuss words. I don't necessarily like cuss words. I didn't grow up in that kind of environment where it was just a part of normal everyday language. I don't necessarily say cuss words out loud. So I'm not talking about cuss words. I'm not even talking about Christian cuss words, you know, those words that we use that aren't quite cuss words, but they actually declare the same thing that's in your heart when you want to cuss. You just say the Christian cuss word, and I'm not so sure that it actually works like that, and God goes, "I'm glad they didn't say the real thing," right? Because it's already declaring what's in your heart.
But anyways, that's not the point of the message today. I'm talking about words that just, man, they just make me cringe a little bit when I hear them. One of those words—and I think I've shared this before—but one of the words that I think is one of the ugliest words in all the English language is the word "ungrateful." Ungrateful. It just makes you cringe when you hear that. Now, I know that in this room today, none of us in this room are this, right? But I also know that it's really hard for us to see this in ourselves. I know that none of us wants to be this; none of us wants to be ungrateful. But the truth is, we all start there, don't we? We all start there. This is why when you were little—and if you have littles yourself—this is why you have to teach them to say thank you, teach them to show gratitude, right? If I do something nice for one of my grandkids, occasionally I'll do something nice, and they'll turn and they'll walk away, and their parents will say, "Hey, what do you say to Pops?" They're supposed to say what? They're supposed to say thank you, right? Some of you haven't learned it yet, right?
And so we have to be taught to show gratitude. It's important that we learn to be grateful in life, especially in regards to our series that we're in. We're not going to talk a lot about the whole generosity and giving part today, but if you want to be a generous person, it's important that you first learn to be a person of gratitude because gratitude is the birthplace of generosity in your life. Until you understand all that you have and you are so very grateful and thankful for what you have, you're not very likely to demonstrate generosity in your life. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the message.
You see, when somebody doesn't say thank you or doesn't show gratitude, it makes it kind of hard for you to be persuaded or to be very motivated to actually be generous towards that person, right? If you've ever been generous towards somebody and they don't say thank you, if you've ever helped somebody in a tough time and they don't say thank you, they don't show any gratitude or anything like that, you've ever done that, and it comes around where they need something again and they reach out to you again, you're not quite as motivated the next time to show gratitude to that individual, right? Because that's what ingratitude does.
In our passage today, we're going to look at this idea of gratitude, and the passage doesn't start out talking about gratitude. It's not what we would expect in this story, but that's where it ends up. So let's look at this passage together. Luke 17, let's start in verse 11. It says this: "While traveling to Jerusalem, he passed between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and raised their voices, saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.'"
And we'll stop right there at the introduction of the story. So we see Jesus here. He had just finished a long day of ministry, a long day of teaching, and it says here that Jesus went between Galilee and Samaria. He was like on the border here, and part of the reason for that is because Jesus wanted to be out of the public spotlight. He wanted to kind of get away from people to refresh just a little bit. He wanted to stay out of the public eye, so his route in order to do that took him between Judea and, I'm sorry, Samaria and Galilee.
And out in this particular area happened to be some people who had leprosy. Now, this would be where you would expect to find people that had leprosy. Leprosy was a bad deal for these guys, right? So there's a very, very big problem in their life that they are dealing with, and Jesus comes across these guys who have leprosy, which is a really serious skin disease. And again, it's a bad way for these guys to be, and it meant something honestly really different then than what it does now. There are some treatments and things like that that are available today. It's still a really bad deal, but back then there was nothing that they could actually do.
And so there were some things that it meant for them in their culture that maybe doesn't mean for us. One, there were some social implications, right? So these guys, if you were found to have leprosy, you were taken out of your families, you were taken out of your community, and you were put on the outside of the community. You were no longer allowed to be with those that you loved the very most. You were no longer allowed to make a living, to earn anything for your family at all. You were taken away from being able to gather with your family for special events and all of that stuff. It was a really bad deal for these guys when it came to their community and their families.
It was also something that had some great religious implications to it because if you had leprosy, you were obviously, if you were kind of excommunicated from society, that meant that you couldn't participate in temple worship. You couldn't teach your kids the ways of the Father. You couldn't have any religious input into their lives at all. And so these guys were kind of excommunicated religiously speaking as well, and even some of the most religious would think of these people and tell these people, "Hey, God has abandoned you, and that's why you're in the situation that you are in." So it's really hard on these individuals that had leprosy, and you can imagine hard for their families as well.
So in this story here, in this account, Jesus is walking between Samaria and Galilee, and these guys are out, and from a distance, they yell out. Now, according to the law, they had to be at least 100 paces away from anybody, right? And if people got close, they would actually have to yell out "unclean," and there were certain things that they had to do to make sure that people didn't get near them. In this account here, they are far away from Jesus, and this is why they're yelling out "Master." Now, the word "Master" is kind of interesting. Luke is the only book that uses the word for master here. It means teacher; it means rabbi. So they had great respect for Jesus. Not only have great respect for Jesus—and we don't necessarily know how they heard these stories being, you know, obviously away from society—but they also knew that Jesus would be able to do something for them, and this is what they were counting on.
And so they saw, they yell out to Jesus, they say, "Master, would you show mercy?" Meaning, would you show us an act of kindness? They wanted to be healed, right? Verse 14 says this: "When he saw them, he told them, 'Go and show yourselves to the priests.' And while they were going, they were cleansed."
Now, don't just read things really fast in stories. Think about this for just a moment. We see the beginning and the end. We know—most of us, or many, many of us, I should say—if you've read through the gospels, you've read this account, you know what happens and all of that. But don't just read so fast that you miss out on something here because what Jesus asked them to do, or told them to do, was really, really unusual. He says, "I want you to go to the priest." Now, going to the priest if you had leprosy and were healed was what you were supposed to do, right? There were a lot of religious hoops that you were to jump through in order to be considered clean.
But Jesus here is talking to guys who had leprosy right here and right now, and he's telling them to do something that they had absolutely no reason to go and do. I mean, why would I go and show myself to the priest? I'm not even going to get to the priest because I have leprosy, and they're not going to let me get close. And as soon as I start to approach the city where the priest is at, I mean, they're going to throw rocks; they're going to do all these things to keep us away. So Jesus here asks them to do something that they didn't really have any reason to do, but it ceremonially needed to be done if they were ever going to be considered clean.
So these guys are faced with a decision, and honestly, it's a decision that you and I have to make every time Jesus tells us to do something that will be for our good. Every time that we read something in the scriptures of what Jesus did, and we know that if we were to do that, that it would be good for us, that this is what Jesus would want us to do—the ways of Jesus, the words of Jesus—we know that these things are good for us. And every time we're faced with doing something that Jesus would do if he were me, we have to make the same decision that the guys with leprosy did here as well.
And the decision that they were faced with was this: do we go? For us, it's just like, do we do what Jesus did? Do we do what Jesus would do if Jesus were me? These guys, do we go? We have no reason to go. We're not healed. Why would I do this, Jesus? Why would I go to the priest? Matter of fact, I'm kind of surprised that nobody in the story that we know of for sure, nobody in the story actually stopped and said, "Jesus, why would we do that?" I mean, I would want to know why. Jesus, why am I going to the priest when I've not been healed?
For us, whenever Jesus asks us to do something, it may not seem like it's the thing that we should do in the moment, but Jesus knows what's best for us, and we have to make the decision on if we're going to follow him or not, right? This command by Jesus in the lives of these ten lepers produced three different things. One, it produced faith, right? It produced faith in their life because they had this moment, this crisis of faith in this moment, just like you and I do when we're faced with doing what Jesus would want us to do or not doing it. We're faced; we have this crisis of faith.
And so in this moment, they have to decide, do I go or do I not go? Do I go to the priest and show myself for absolutely no reason at all, or do I not? And so these guys in this account, what did they do? They decided to turn and to go to the priest. They take this first step of faith towards wherever the priest is at, right? So it produces faith within these guys. Another thing that it did, that it produced, is this: it produced an opportunity to share Jesus.
And think about this for just a moment. So these guys, they turn. The scripture says that they turned, and as they were going, they were actually healed. I believe this: that the moment that they took that step towards where the priest was at, that first step of faith, the healing started to begin in their life. And it says, as they were going, they saw that they were healed. And so because they were healed, by the time they got to the priest, the priest would likely see them.
Now, I don't know this for a fact. I tried to find out, but I couldn't find anything on it. But I can't imagine that a priest would have very many people who had been healed of leprosy come to him. What, maybe once? Maybe once in a lifetime of service to God would a priest maybe have somebody come that had leprosy or said they had leprosy and now they don't? So I can't imagine that this was a very common thing.
So you can imagine what the priest might be thinking when ten people walk in on the very same day who had been healed, claiming that they were healed and that they needed to be considered clean so that they could go back to life. Ten people in one day! Now, human nature is the same, and so the question from the priest would have probably been, "How in the world did all ten of you get healed?" Which gave the guys the opportunity with the priest to be able to say, "Well, you know, there's this guy, Jesus, and this is what he did in our life." And it wouldn't have just been the priest; it would have been everybody else that they came in contact with as well, right? Everybody would have known, "Man, what in the world happened?" And so they had the opportunity to be able to share Jesus.
Another thing that it produced—the obvious thing—is just it's the miracle, right? I mean, it produced a miracle in their life. They were healed of their leprosy. Now, notice in the passage it wasn't the touch of Jesus that healed them. It wasn't the words of Jesus that healed them. You go throughout the gospels, and you find different places where Jesus touched somebody, and it caused them to be healed, right? Or Jesus just said the words, and then the dad went home, and his daughter was healed in the very moments that Jesus spoke the words of healing into her life. But here, it wasn't the words, and it wasn't a touch of Jesus. What was it? It was the turning of the men in faith, believing that what Jesus said was the thing that they needed to do, believing that Jesus had the best in mind for them and their life, that Jesus knew the way that they should go.
And when they turned and they started their walk of faith according to the words of Jesus, healing started in their life. Their faith, their step of faith, brought that miracle into their life. Now, though it's not the point of our message today within this passage, there's a great lesson for us to learn in this right here, and I think it's this: God can and is able to do the miraculous in your life, and I think at times will do the miraculous in your life. You're just too stubborn to take the first step of faith. You think you know better than God. You think, "God, I know that You say in Your word that this is the best way to live life, that this will bring human flourishing, that I will experience the best life possible if I go Your way, but God, I think my way will be better. I think if I do what I want to do, I'm going to find everything that I am looking for."
And I can tell you this: that never brings to you what you think it's going to bring. Now listen, I'm not saying that people who walk in disobedience to God aren't happy. Let's get past this thing that we falsely believe sometimes, that people who don't know Jesus are just miserable people. Many times, they're not. They are enjoying the pleasures and the things that this life are able to bring. Some of them are way happier than some of you walking in this room every week, right? You love Jesus, and you're mad about it. So let's get over that untruth.
But people who don't know Jesus still have this nagging hole in their heart longing for something more than what they're able to get here in this life, and sometimes they don't even know it. But those of us that call ourselves Christians, let's just talk to us for a moment. Sometimes we're just too boneheaded to say yes to Jesus because we think we're smarter and our way is better. And God would do exactly what you're looking for in your life if you would just take a step in the direction that He calls you to go.
Let's look at verses 15 and 16. It says this: "But one of them, seeing that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice gave glory to God. He fell face down at his feet, thanking him, and he was a Samaritan."
So this story takes a turn right here. It takes a turn from being a story about a miracle to something else, right? The miracle happened, and the guy comes back, and he yells out with a loud voice again, but it's not because he had leprosy, but it was because he was cleansed. And he didn't yell at from at least 100 paces away from Jesus. It says here he was kneeling at the very feet of Jesus, and he cries out, "Thank you, Jesus, for what You've done in my life." He returns—one out of the ten, right? One out of the ten who was cleansed comes back to Jesus and says thank you.
Verse 17 says, "Then Jesus said, 'Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Didn't any return to give glory to God except this foreigner?' And he told him, 'Get up and go on your way; your faith has saved you.'"
So this is where the story turns from being a miracle to not being a story about ingratitude of the nine, right? If it would have ended at the miracle, we'd stand and we'd applaud, and we'd be so, so wonderfully happy for these people that have been healed. But that's not what happened. This account didn't end there. The account continues, and this one comes back who is a Samaritan. And I'm not sure why that's included in the story necessarily at other times I understand it, but we know Samaritans aren't necessarily very good people. Matter of fact, the Jewish people hated the Samaritans, right? But he's the one that returns, gives thanks to Jesus for what he has done, and yet there were nine that didn't.
And Jesus looks at this guy and He says, "Weren't there ten of you? I mean, Jesus knew the answer to that, right? I think Jesus is turning the story here. He's turning the attention from the miracle to gratitude or lack of it. So Jesus says there were ten of you, right? And only one of you has returned. Go, your faith has saved you."
And so now our human nature would be to go from applauding these ten—all ten of them for being healed—to being very, very critical of the nine who didn't come back and say thank you. It turns from the story of the miraculous and a celebration to us becoming critical towards the nine who didn't come back and thinking, and us thinking, "Well, they're just horrible people because they didn't say thank you." But again, we only think about it because of the one. We only have the story changed because the one decided to show his gratitude.
Now, the truth is this: many times, I'm putting myself in this story. Many times, I'm just like the nine. I want to take my gift, and I want to run. And listen, let's not be too critical towards them because I think if we look at their story, we understand they received their healing, and I think the closer they got to the priest and the more that they saw that they were healed, their pace probably picked up, and they probably went just a little bit faster because these guys—it's not that they didn't want to go back to say thank you to Jesus, but these guys, they wanted to get to the priest. They wanted to get to the priest because they wanted to get to their homes and see their family, and they wanted to start experiencing the new life that Jesus had given them the opportunity to experience.
So before we get too critical, can we understand the excitement that might be in these guys' lives? In fact, if we were to chase down the nine and ask them the question, "Aren't you grateful for what Jesus did for you?" I think they probably would have all said the same thing: "Man, I am so grateful for what He did." I think they would have all gushed with thanksgiving and said, "Yes, I am so grateful. This is why I'm in such a hurry. I'm trying to get to my family. I haven't been able to hug my spouse or my kids for years, maybe even decades, and at this point, I'm now clean, and I get to go back. In fact, Jason, I get to go to church for the first time this weekend, and I'm going to offer up sacrifices of praise for all that God has done in my life. Yes, I'm grateful and I'm thankful."
So it's not that they didn't necessarily have gratitude in their heart; it's just they never said it, right? They felt it; they just didn't express it. I mean, this was likely one of the greatest days, if not the greatest day of their life, but only one of them came back and said thank you to Jesus. And let's just imagine for the sake of argument that they really were all grateful in their hearts. They certainly wouldn't have seen themselves as ungrateful, right?
Here's what I want us to understand, and I got this from somebody; I stole it. It's not mine; I'm not that creative. But this is what I want us to walk away with today, and it is this: unexpressed gratitude communicates ingratitude. When you don't say thank you, people don't think you're thankful. When you don't show your gratitude, people don't think that you are grateful in your life.
Now, I think this is a perfect week for this illustration. So it was Thanksgiving, right? And normally on Thanksgiving, it was different for us this year. We actually went to one of our kids' houses. But in the past, what has happened on Thanksgiving is, you know, a good amount of time before Thanksgiving, Jennifer starts preparing for it, and we clean things that I didn't even know existed. I mean, we open up the furnace room, and we clean out the—nobody goes in there. Why are we cleaning this? Baseboards? Who cleans baseboards? Right? I'm just joking a little bit, but she starts preparing, right? You do the same thing, so don't laugh at me.
She starts preparing, and then the week of, she makes sure that she has all the ingredients that go into all the food. And then the morning of, she's actually a couple days before, she's doing some of the baking that needs to be done and making pumpkin bread that it's a miracle if it lasts till we get to Thanksgiving Day. And then on the morning of the holiday, she gets up really, really early, and she starts doing all of the preparations, right? She sets everything out that needs to be set out; she puts the turkey in the oven; she's making all of the dishes that go along with that. And then the family starts to arrive, and she puts out all of the little snacky things that we eat so much of that we're really not hungry for Thanksgiving dinner, but we still go ahead and eat Thanksgiving dinner anyways, right? Because nothing says Thanksgiving like gluttony, right?
And so, get to dinner. She pulls everything out; she puts it all out where it needs to be, and we all go and we make our plates, and we go and we sit. And she finally makes her plate, and she doesn't sit. She just stands, and it's not because there's 357 of us and there's no seats. She is eating while she's doing other things, right? Then everybody gets done, and they all go put their dishes in the sink, and the dish fairy comes and washes the dishes. No, I'm just joking. What does Jennifer do? Everybody else goes and takes their Thanksgiving coma nap, right? Or does whatever else, plays games, and Jennifer, what is she doing? She's cleaning up the kitchen; she's putting the leftovers away; she's doing the dishes, cleaning things up.
And about the time she gets done, everybody starts to leave, right? And then after everybody leaves, she finally sits down and passes out on the couch, right? Now, if you were to ask my kids on that day, "Aren't you thankful for all that your mom did to make this day as special as what it was?" they would all say, "Oh yeah," but probably nobody said anything, right? And so at the end of the holiday, she doesn't feel a whole lot of gratitude for everything that she did. In fact, she might feel just a little bit taken advantage of, and she didn't get to enjoy the holiday.
She shifts gears just a little bit. Okay, so I'm Dad, and obviously, I have an endless supply of money because my kids all, they're like, "Hey Dad, can I have $20? Dad, can I have $20? Dad, can I have $20?" Everything costs $20. I don't know why, but after a while of that, I go and I legally change my name to ATM because that's what I feel like, right? I'm just an ATM after a while. I give it to them, and they don't say anything. They never say thank you; they never show any gratitude.
But what I don't hear is the fact that sometimes, you know, one of the kids, I do something nice. I take them somewhere nice; I buy something nice, and they tell their friends, "Yeah, my dad did this. My dad is so cool." I don't know that they've ever said that in their life, but let's just pretend. My wife is talking to her friend. She's like, "Man, he works so hard, and he takes such good care of us. He makes sure that everything's taken care of, everything that we need we have." I don't hear that.
And because I don't hear that, I start to think that people are really ungrateful, right? Because there's no gratitude there because unexpressed gratitude communicates ingratitude, right? See, this is why it is so important that we teach our kids and that we make sure that we learn ourselves that gratitude is something that needs to be a part of our life, that the expression of gratitude is something that we need to be actively participating in as often as we can. Because if we don't teach that to our kids, and if we don't practice that in our own lives, what we develop is not an attitude of gratitude, but what we develop is a sense of entitlement, right?
And all of a sudden, it's like, "Well, Mom's supposed to do all of that on the holidays. Dad's supposed to be an endless supply of money for me whenever I want something or need something," right? And we build this attitude of entitlement, and the things that we should be grateful for, we just now assume and expect because that's what ingratitude does. Ingratitude develops a sense of entitlement. But the opposite of it is also true because the more gratitude that you show, the more you start to understand that you are not entitled. The more you begin to understand that you should be even more grateful than what you are and show greater thanks to people and certainly to God.
So let's apply for just a moment a little bit of this to the series that we're in because when it comes to giving in general, generosity—remember, gratitude is the birthplace of generosity. You see, gratitude, if you look it up in the dictionary, it says this: it's the quality of being thankful, readiness to show appreciation for, and to return kindness. That kind of sounds like if you're grateful, you're generous, right? You not only receive, but you give. If we don't learn to demonstrate gratitude for all that others have done for us and certainly all that God has done for us, if we don't learn to express that gratitude, we're never going to learn to live a life of generosity because we'll be living a life of entitlement, and we'll start to believe this: that everything that we have is for us, right?
And we'll live with, as somebody has said, the assumption that everything that we have is for our own consumption, right? You'll begin to feel entitled to do whatever you want with all that you have. And when you live that way with a sense of entitlement, you develop an appetite for things, and that appetite can never be satisfied. It just causes a desire for more and more. Here's one pastor in Tulsa, Alex Amaya. He said this: "More gratitude will not come with more gifts but from understanding the source of all of our gifts, who is God." But that's a statement that can make us pause, right? God is the source of all things. When was the last time we said thank you?
See, the heart of a person who's moving toward God is a heart of gratitude that leads us to generosity. Another pastor from Tulsa, his name is Michael Todd, he said this. I thought this was—Josh shared this with me earlier in the week, and I thought this was such a great statement: "Gratitude is the only gift that you can give God that is not already His." Think about that. You see, unexpressed gratitude communicates ingratitude.
So let me ask you this: who do you need to say thank you to? Okay, let's just take it for granted. Obviously, we all need to say thank you to God. That's, I mean, that's a given, right? So thank, say thank you to Him. But who in our life have we not expressed gratitude to in the way that we should? Who do we need to say thank you to this week? I encourage you to do that. I encourage you to take that step, and even if they don't even realize that you hadn't said thank you, just say, "Hey, I want you to know how grateful I am for you and for what you've done or for who you've been in my life."
And then, of course, our Heavenly Father. Just think of all that He's done. If nothing else, if God had done nothing for us and He was just God, He's worthy of our worship and our gratitude. But think of what He's done for us. He sent His only Son to die on the cross to become sin for us. The scripture says He sent Jesus to be the sacrifice not for the sins of Jesus but for my sins and your sins, for the sins of the whole world from the very beginning to the very end. Wow, what a gift! And what sense of gratitude do we respond with because of that gift?
We want to remember that gift today. We want to remember and show gratitude today in our hearts to God today. And part of how we're going to do that is remembering what Jesus did. We're going to experience communion together here this morning. And so what I want to do for the next few moments is just this: I want to give you just some quiet space just to thank God right there in your seats, just to show your gratitude to Him for all that He's done. And then in a moment, those who are serving, they'll get in place, and we'll come and we'll receive communion together.
Now let me give you just a couple of instructions. If you've never done this with us before, first of all, if you're here today and you're just trying to figure out if God even really is, Jesus did what He said He did, and you're not someone who would say, "Man, I'm a believer. I'm a follower of Jesus" right now, I just ask for your patience and that you just give us this moment because this is for those who call Jesus their Lord and Savior and are actively following Him. For those of you who are followers of Jesus, we're going to invite you to come today. If you have kids with you and they know Jesus themselves, man, we would love for you to bring them and to help them experience this as well today.
In a moment, I'll invite you to come after a quiet time that we spend together. And when you come, if you would go out the right side of your aisle, and you'll come and you'll receive one of three stations, and you'll return to the opposite side of the aisle that you came out of. If you are here today and you need a gluten-free option, we do have that at this section over here, so if you would just make your way if you need to around, they would gladly help accommodate that for you today.
But what we're going to do, I'm going to ask those who are serving here in just a second to come. We're just going to take a moment to be quiet, to experience some silence in our own hearts and minds as we come before the Lord and we show our gratitude. So let's do that. Those who are serving, why don't you come? Everybody else, if you would, bow your head and close your eyes.
on Nov 30, 2023
