Are You Truly Grateful?

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Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles and turn with me to the 17th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
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There are particular passages of Scripture that tend to stick out in our minds, whether they have affected us on some type of an emotional or spiritual level, sometimes just because of the amazing content of the story.
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Sometimes it's just that it hit us right where we needed to be struck at that moment.
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And this is one of those types of stories, this is one of those moments in the life of Jesus Christ that is, that for me, many of you are familiar with this narrative, but hopefully tonight you'll leave a bit more familiar and possibly even convicted by the content therein.
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We've all, on some level, had to deal with loss over the last few weeks, whether it's our own personal loss, which I think most of us fared well, comparatively, during the recent storms, but in the last two months in the United States, we've seen some of the worst catastrophe in the last several years.
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We've seen all of Houston almost underwater.
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We have seen South Florida and the Caribbean Islands just beat mercilessly by the storms.
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We've seen people in our own city, in my own neighborhood, who lost their home.
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We had a man-tree fall through his home in San Mateo, a pastor over at Bold City.
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And then, of course, Miss Eleanor, one of our church members, you know, four inches of water in the home.
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Four inches doesn't sound like a lot until it's in your home.
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Four inches in the bathtub is not very much, but four inches in the hallway is quite a bit.
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So we know that there have been losses for a lot of people and there have also been blessings.
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I mean, we have seen people rise up and bless one another with giving and serving.
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And there have been so many wonderful pictures, especially out of Houston, of people literally driving there with boats.
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I think they were called the Cajun Navy, you know, literally driving there so as to be used in whatever way possible to serve people.
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And so it's wonderful to see the blessings that have happened in the midst of all of it as well.
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And so, that's part of the reason why I sort of turned to this passage, because it is easy, it is very easy to live a life of ingratitude.
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It is very easy to find everything in the world to complain about.
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To find everything in the world to be disenfranchised over, just angry, just mad all the time.
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And it's hard sometimes to sit back and really be honest about what we should be thankful for.
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Charles Dickens told an audience on a Thanksgiving Day speech that he gave, he said, you know, Thanksgiving should be 364 days a year and we should have one day for complaining.
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He said you should have one day of ingratitude and he said, especially if you live in America, you know, you get one day for complaining and griping and then you should have to spend the other 364 days giving thanks.
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And he makes a good point.
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We all have things to be grateful for and if we truly recognize all of our blessings, we would give thanks much more than we do.
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So in our text today, we're going to look at the subject of gratitude and ingratitude and see what Jesus has to say about them.
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So, beginning in verse 11, it says, On the way to Jerusalem he, that is Jesus, was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
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And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
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When he saw them, he said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests.
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And as they went, they were cleansed.
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Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
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And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.
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Now he was a Samaritan.
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Then Jesus answered, Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, Rise and go your way.
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Your faith has made you well.
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May God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word.
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That's a tremendous narrative.
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It's a tremendous story, but it's not a story.
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I'm always careful when I mention things in the Bible.
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Now if we talk about a parable, you can talk about a parable being a story, but when you talk about the life of Jesus, it's not just a story.
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You've heard people call it the greatest story ever told.
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It's not a story.
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It's a life.
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It's a real life.
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It's a real narrative.
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Jesus really lived, and he really did the things that the Bible says that he did.
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And this is a moment, a snapshot.
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And I would say a very condensed snapshot in the life of Jesus Christ.
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And yet it was so valuable in his life that the writer, gospel writer, Dr.
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Luke, and he was a physician, felt necessary to include this.
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And you say, well, he was under the inspiration of the Spirit.
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Yes, that's true.
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So the Holy Spirit found it necessary for this story, this narrative, to be included in the text.
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And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to go through the text verse by verse, as we always do, and just sort of make my commentary.
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And then I'm going to give you some thoughts.
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I didn't bring an outline for you tonight.
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I do apologize.
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I know you guys like to have something to write on, and I'm sorry that I didn't do that.
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If you have cell phones, you can type your notes.
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I'm just kidding.
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But I want to just go through the text verse by verse and make our commentary.
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It says, on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
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This is not the first time Jesus makes his way through Samaria.
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In fact, we know several times in the gospel narratives, Jesus makes his way through Samaria.
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This is not something that Jews typically did.
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Jews typically went out of their way to avoid the Samaritan people.
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They tended to go out of their way to avoid Samaria altogether, if possible.
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Jesus made his way through Samaria.
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You remember the time in John chapter 4, he went there specifically.
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What did he say? I must needs go through Samaria.
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You find out, and I was like that, turn it to the King James Version.
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I must needs go through Samaria.
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What did he say when he, what happened? He went through Samaria because there was a woman that was going to be at a well, and Jesus was going to meet that woman, and he was going to ask her for water, and she was going to say, don't you know who I am? You know, Jewish people don't have conversations with Samaritans, and they certainly don't share the same bucket of water.
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Much more racially motivated, much more segregated.
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Maybe some of you are old enough to remember when America had that type of segregation, when people didn't drink out of the same water fountains as people of other races and things like that, but in general, we live now in a day where such a sort of scene is very antiquated and almost barbaric, but at this time in history, the Samaritans and the Jews weren't having that type of relationship, but Jesus said to her, you know, you remember this story? He said, if you knew who it was who was asking you, you would ask him for water, and you'd never thirst again, that water of life, and she said, sir, give me that water, and he went through the story of how she was married, but it wasn't really her husband, and she went back and brought people to hear what he had to say.
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I only mention that because Jesus doesn't go anywhere by accident.
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Jesus doesn't go from one place to another without a purpose.
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On Sunday this week, I've already written my message, at least the first draft, rarely what goes in the pulpit is what I wrote the first time, but my first draft is done and I'm preaching on the providence of God, and some people think, some people confuse sovereignty and providence.
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Sovereignty is God's authority over all things, but providence is God's exercise of that authority.
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You know, you were providentially brought here tonight, you know, there's so many things that could have kept you from coming.
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Car could have, you know, had an accident, car could have not started, could have had a flat tire, you could have gotten sick, you know, nobody's here by accident, you know, and so when we see Jesus going through Samaria, going through Galilee, I believe he's going because there's ten guys who just happen to need him.
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I don't think it's an accident that he's coming across these guys.
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Just like, remember when he met, who was it, Philip under the tree, and he said, I knew you, I saw you sitting under the tree, demonstrating that omnipotence that he has, omniscience rather.
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And so here Jesus is going along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered a village, verse 12, he is met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance, and that last section is key.
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Because when it says they stood at a distance, that was part of the rules.
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Leprosy was something that was highly contagious.
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So, when a person was found to have leprosy on their skin, they were ostracized for safety.
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It wasn't just because the people in the community hated them, in fact, a lot of people loved them.
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To find out that your child had leprosy, you know that child is now going to be separated, or you're going to get leprosy.
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How many parents do you think in the early, or the ancient world, how many parents do you think contracted leprosy because they didn't want to leave their children? I have no notes for that, I just wonder how many, you know, wouldn't leave my child, you know, and I'm sure you wouldn't either, you know, so you can't imagine how these people lived.
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They lived separated, they lived only with other lepers.
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It was a commiseration.
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And here comes Jesus, and they had heard about Jesus.
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You say, how do you know they had heard about Jesus? Verse 13, it says, as he entered the village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voice, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
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See, if they didn't know who Jesus was, if they never heard of him, they wouldn't know to ask.
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If they didn't know who he was, they wouldn't know his name.
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I imagine Jesus had people that went ahead of him that said, Jesus is coming, because it seems like everywhere he went, somebody was asking him to do something, heal something, heal someone.
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So I imagine when word got out that you've got this man who has these powers, not just to heal ringing ears and pain in the lower back, but guys who can restore whole limbs that are destroyed, and he can take an ear that's been cut off and put it back on, you know, real healing, like the world had never seen and has not ever seen since the time of the apostles.
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Here he comes, and here comes somebody who's told these guys, this guy's coming and he's a miracle worker, and so they are prepared.
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They say, have mercy on us, and that really is what it is.
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Work of healing is a work of mercy.
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Verse 14, when he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests.
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Now we're going to stop there, even though the verse goes on, I want to stop there, because this seems like an awkward thing.
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Because in other times, Jesus didn't do that.
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In fact, this time is unique, because in other healings, like for instance, when the man who was born blind, Jesus took mud, spit on it in his hand, rubbed it on the guy's face, and he told him to open his eyes, and it was blurry, and he said, close your eyes again, and then he said, open your eyes, and he could see, remember? That particular scenario is one, he didn't say, go to the priest.
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He said, tell no one.
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But in this case, he said, go to the priest.
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Now why is that? Well, it has a little something to do with the law of the Levites.
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If you go back into the Old Testament, you'll find that the person who was contracted leprosy, this is not a new thing, it's been around for hundreds of years, and at the time of Moses, when he was writing Leviticus, a person who was contracted leprosy had to be put out, but to be restored, if he was healed, whether it was miraculously, or somehow his body was able to fight it off, which is still a miracle, if he was able to be healed of the leprosy, he had to be checked head to toe, to make sure he's not bringing it back in.
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And the only people who had the authority to do the checking was the priest.
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They were trained into what to look for.
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They were trained to see what was clean and what was unclean.
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Somebody might have it on their back and not know it, or somebody not willing to say, hey, you still got it, and he thinks he's fine, he goes back and now he's sick and making other people sick.
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So this isn't Jesus just sort of acquiescing to tradition, this is Jesus reintroducing them to the society that they have been barred from, because they can't just go walk and just go into life.
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So Jesus says to them, go and show yourselves to the priest.
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Next line in the same verse here, verse 14, and as they went, they were cleansed.
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Now, I could spend all night here, I'm not going to, but this part has always got me in the heart, because they left before they were clean.
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Think about that.
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Jesus said, go and show yourselves to the priest.
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They left in faith, not yet clean, because it says, as they were going, they were cleansed.
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And I just, that for me has always been amazing, because, you know, we give these guys a bad rap because of their ingratitude, and we're going to get there in a minute, that nine of them didn't go back and show gratitude, and Jesus points that out.
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But I like to at least point out the fact that they all left in faith before they had been cleansed.
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They all trusted what Christ was going to do would happen.
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I wonder, do we have that, do we have the faith of the nine? Do we trust that Christ is going to do what he's promised for us? You know, when we lay our heads down at night, do we trust that if we didn't wake up in the morning that we would be in the presence of the Lord and be saved by him? These guys trusted in Jesus enough to go.
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But then the story takes a turn, the narrative takes a turn, because it says, then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his feet at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.
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Now before we go on to the subject of him being a Samaritan, just in that instant, and I don't know what it's like to have leprosy, I have no idea what it looks like or feels like outside of what I've read in textbooks in the seminary, you know, we read about different medical conditions in the ancient world, but it was something that was easily visible.
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And you can, I don't know if you can imagine, but just headed to the priest, white flaky skin, boils and all kinds of other problems on the flesh that just vanish.
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And the skin becomes like a baby's cheek.
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Because this isn't a partial healing.
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I've heard charismatic people talk about healing as like a, you know, we got healed half way.
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Yes, step by step or whatever, God doesn't heal half way.
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John MacArthur tells a story of a conversation he had with a charismatic teacher, and he said, he was talking about his wife, who unfortunately had had cancer, and he said, but she got healed of cancer.
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And John MacArthur said, that's wonderful.
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Where is she now? Well, she's dead.
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She died of the cancer.
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He said, she got healed, but then she died.
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So that's just wishful thinking, I don't know what you want to call it, self-deception.
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But when Jesus healed these men, they were healed.
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Top to bottom, there wasn't one flake on the toenail that weren't supposed to be there that day.
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And so this guy notices the miracle.
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This guy notices the thing that has happened to him, and he turns back, and he praises God with a loud voice.
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He falls on his face at Jesus' feet, which is what we all, not only will do, we all should do now.
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We shouldn't wait until that.
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You know, the Bible says that one day every knee shall bow.
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We should bow the knee now.
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And gave him thanks.
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And it says, and he was a Samaritan.
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It's interesting how much in Scripture we see about the Samaritans and the positive.
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The Samaritan woman at the well.
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Jesus uses the parable of the good Samaritan as a way to describe how somebody can be your neighbor, even if they're not, you know, ethnically or socially your neighbor.
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And here he is, the one man who was a Samaritan.
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It doesn't say the other guys weren't, but I tend to think they weren't.
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Again, I can't prove that from the text, but Jesus points out the fact that he was the foreigner.
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And the thing is, you say, well, why would a Samaritan be with Jews? Because when people got leprosy, they came together in groups because they didn't have anybody else to fellowship with.
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So it's easy to imagine that there would be a group of people of mixed, some Gentile, some Jew, some Samaritans.
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You remember the Samaritans are the half and half, half Jew, half Gentile.
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So it's a good idea to figure that at least some of these people were Jewish people.
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And Jesus makes the point, the one guy who came back is the guy who everybody would have in the Jewish community exiled.
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Then Jesus answered, powerful question, were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? And I said earlier, I like to at least give these guys the credit due to them that they went in faith, but they didn't return in gratitude.
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And here's the thing, Jesus didn't tell them they had to.
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Jesus didn't say, go show yourself to the priest and then come back here and thank me.
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So it's not as if they're being absolutely disobedient.
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You see, their faith caused them to go and their obedience kept them going.
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Jesus told me to do something, I got to go do it.
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But this one guy is commended because faith and obedience are good and gratitude should be the natural next step.
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But see, that's often not the natural next step.
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A lot of people exercise faith and a lot of people try to be obedient, but they're not obedient in gratitude.
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Do you want to say something brother? Yeah, just the part that gets me too when it says that, you know, he's talking about the ten and the nine that came back.
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He says there's none found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner.
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And so you could make a speculation there that they didn't even go anywhere to honor God, they were just getting out of there because they were healed.
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Yeah, you could say, we don't know that from the text, but you could say there wasn't a lot of gratitude shown.
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And that could be why Jesus is making the point.
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You know, things like that, we have to be a little careful, but I understand what you're saying too.
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It's certainly a possibility that these guys have now not demonstrated gratitude and that's why Jesus is making such a point.
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Couldn't you just think that when they were found that they were clean, that immediately without saying thank you Jesus ran and told the family? I don't know, it's possible.
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I mean, I know from a personal, I would want to go and see my family, you know, having been separated.
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So that's certain, like I said, both of these, it's interesting sometimes to think about what's not written.
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Cause as I said earlier, this story is much more than what's written.
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We don't know all the things that happened, but the things that we're, the text wants us to focus on here is the gratitude of the one.
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And then by extension, the seeming ingratitude of the nine, it doesn't explicitly say they were lacking gratitude, but it does say Jesus is, where are they? You came back and you're the foreigner.
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You're the one nobody expected to have any kind of right understanding or any kind of right behavior.
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And then, and he's asking his disciples, he says, you know, we're not ten cleansed, where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? He's no longer just talking to him.
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He's talking to everybody around.
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And again, I think he's using this as an object lesson, not necessarily condemning the men for their lack of gratitude in the sense of not doing exactly what this guy did.
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But as you said, maybe they were on the, maybe they did like gratitude or maybe they were so focused on, on their healing that they didn't take the time to look back and say, thank God.
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But he did look to the man.
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He said, rise and go your way.
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Your faith has made you well.
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And in some translations, it says your faith has saved you.
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And that is not outside the bounds of what Jesus does say at certain times.
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But I want to, I want to, using the text now, I want to make some application points.
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So if you, again, I didn't give anything to write on.
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I apologize for that.
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But I'm going to make three points of application from the text that I hope that we can, hope that we can get into our minds.
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The first is this.
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The vast majority of people, and I'm not, let me say this, let me preface this by saying these are not like light bulb, huge thoughts, but these are just thoughts I have when reading this.
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The first thing, the vast majority of people do not thank God for their blessings.
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The vast majority of people do not, and if you want to say, you want to add a word, you could say the vast majority of people do not thank God.
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You could say no one thanks God enough for their blessings.
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But the vast majority don't thank Him with any real sense at all.
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And if you think about it from simply a numbers perspective, this narrative gives us a 10% ratio.
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Ten men received the exact same blessing.
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Well, ten lepers, we don't know if they were all men, I don't think.
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I don't remember if the text said specifically, but there are ten people received exactly the same blessing, only one.
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That's 10%.
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And I wonder how that relates to the average in the world.
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I wonder how many people consistently thank God.
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And it's one thing, it's one thing to, you know, bow your head, thank you Jesus for this food, amen.
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But to really, from the spirit and from the heart, be overwhelmed with the gratitude of what, you know, I've heard it said, and I think it's true.
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If you live in America, you're better off than most of the people in the world.
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That's just, you know, you could be a little, you could be some grateful just for where you're located.
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The average dishwasher in America has more nutrition go through it than some entire nations as far as on a daily basis.
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The food that goes through your dishwasher is more than is going through the stomach of people in third world countries.
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There's so much that we have that we could be blessed and be thankful for.
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And there's a funny story, there's an elderly gentleman who had Parkinson's disease and he couldn't write a note to his daughter, he wanted to write her a note.
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And his hand shook and, you know, the disease is debilitating, so he couldn't do that.
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And so there was a young man in the nursing home and he said, okay young man, I need to write a note to my daughter, would you please help me? And the young man, be glad to sir, he says, okay, I'm going to tell you what to say, you write it down.
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And so he writes it down and he writes it, the note from the father to the daughter.
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And he says, okay, now write PS, I apologize for the bad handwriting.
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That's the way we often are.
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There's so much, there's so much blessing that, and we do.
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And you know what's funny about that is Paul in Romans 1, and by the way, if there's a section of scripture that I do recommend you memorizing, memorize as much as you can, but memorizing Romans 1, especially verses 18 and following, or even 14 and following, just on the nature of man and the sinful condition of the world is very helpful, especially when you're witnessing.
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But there's a section in there where he says, he's talking about the unbeliever.
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He says, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God, nor give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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And I always thought about that, you know, not only do they not acknowledge God, but they don't thank him.
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That's the worst thing about being an atheist.
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It's not just that you don't believe God exists, but you don't give thanks.
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What does an atheist do on Thanksgiving? There's actually an old TV show, one that I don't recommend you watching, but there was a little boy sitting at the table with his parents and he was asked to say grace and he said, God, my dad worked to pay for this food.
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My mother cooked it.
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I don't know why we're thanking you.
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Amen.
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So anyway, that's the attitude of the unbeliever.
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And the worst thing about being an unbeliever is to whom do you give thanks? Yourself or to other fallible men, but not to the God who created you or gave you all things that you have.
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So the majority of the people do not thank God and that includes Christians.
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So this story reminds us of the value of gratitude, that Christ appreciated the gratitude.
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He demonstrated appreciation by commending the man for his gratitude.
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The second thing is that the Lord expects people to give him thanks for their blessings.
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Now some people say, well, why would the Lord expect that? Because he is the one from whom all blessings flow.
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And as I said to that, he says to him, the man, he says, where are the nine? I remember years ago, I've told this story before, but it so sticks out.
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You have moments in your life that stick out, like there's things that happen and you can just remember almost like what it smelled like that day is so clear.
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And I was right in that room, I was standing right in that doorway.
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And a guy came here, he didn't have food.
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And this was back when we kept food in the pantry to give people.
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This was several years ago.
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We haven't done that in a while.
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Just because of maintaining it was too difficult.
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We didn't have enough people to maintain it, but we used to have a pantry.
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Now we donate other places.
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But anyway, long story short, I'm here.
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And the guy's standing over by the sink and he's eating the food that I gave him.
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Just standing over the sink.
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He hadn't eaten anything, so he's eating.
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And I'm sharing the gospel with him and I'm telling him that, you know, I'm a sinner.
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And that apart from Jesus Christ coming and dying on the cross and taking my sin upon himself and giving me his righteousness, I would be absolutely condemned.
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That I am nothing without Jesus Christ.
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And he looked at me and he said, Pastor, you can't think like that.
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He said, you gotta learn to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
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And now the irony of the fact that he's eating food that I just gave him because he didn't have anything, I think was missed.
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But I didn't point that out.
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I just said, I don't have boots or straps without Jesus.
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I don't have anything to hold on to outside of Christ.
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And I can't work my way into heaven.
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All I can do is thank him every day for how much he loved me and died for me and gave himself for me.
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That's all I can do is thank.
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And live a life of gratitude which is a life of service to him and to others.
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That's all.
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I can't.
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Without Jesus I ain't got boots, I ain't got straps.
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I ain't got nothing.
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So the Lord expects us.
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The Lord expects us to be in a spirit of gratitude toward him.
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Even if we've had a hard time.
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And you know, I'm gonna start closing now.
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But even if we've had a hard time, this is why I mentioned in my prayer earlier, before we started, James tells us, he says, give, you know, take joy in our trials.
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Because even in our trials, God is working.
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Third and finally, the last thought for the evening.
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All believers.
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All believers.
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Because we have been saved from something worse than leprosy, all believers continuously have a reason to be thankful.
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If you are in Christ, He didn't save you from leprosy.
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He gave birth to a dead corpse.
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He gave you a new heart because you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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You know, a lot of people tell this story and they say, well yeah, you were like the leper, you were sick.
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And Jesus came and healed you.
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That's not what the Bible says.
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The Bible says you had died from leprosy.
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You were already in the ground.
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You were a rotted corpse.
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And Jesus came and gave life to your dead soul.
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And if that ain't enough to be thankful for, then we don't really understand the gospel.
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We have something to be thankful for, no matter our circumstances.
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There was an elderly pastor who boarded an ocean liner.
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And while he was on the ocean liner, he was struck with an illustration, a physical illustration of thankfulness.
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He had an opportunity to eat dinner in the first class section of the ship.
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And as he sat there in the first class section of the ship, he noticed a young man a few seats away from him, who was obviously been brought up with, as they say, a silver spoon in his mouth, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
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And so everything in the night was not good enough.
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My plate is spotty.
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My fort looks dirty.
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My water's not cold enough.
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My meal's not hot enough.
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And just over and over and over to the point that the pastor, as soon as he finished his meal, was so disheartened by the attitude of the young man, he said, I gotta go.
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I can't do this anymore.
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I'm gonna get up.
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It's just too hard to listen to such ingratitude.
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So he got up and left.
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And as he was walking back to his cabin, he passed by the economy section of the ship.
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And this was long before the ships had open buffet to everybody.
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That's relatively recent historically.
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If you've been on a ship now, everybody eats all day, no matter whether you're first class or whatever.
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But at this particular time in history, there was meals served on the ship, sort of like an airplane.
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They got them at certain times.
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And he walked by a man who was pulling bread out of his jacket because at the meal time, he'd wrapped a piece of bread up in a napkin and saved it for later because he knew he'd be hungry later in the evening.
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So he pulled the bread out of his jacket, and he began to fiddle with what little bit of butter or whatever he'd brought with him to put on it, whatever he had in his coat pocket there.
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And he stopped, and he looked down, and he said, Lord, thank you for all my blessings.
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So where are we? Do we remember to thank God for our blessings? Father in heaven, I do thank you.
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I thank you for the blessing of these people, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ.
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Father, move us toward a feeling, a sense of gratitude for you and all that you've given us.
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And I pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.