The Value of Gratitude

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A few years ago, a doctor wrote a letter to a school teacher that he had had when he was younger, and he wrote a letter thanking her for her encouragement.
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He wrote a letter thanking her for all that she had done in his life and for all that she had meant to him, even though she'd only spent he'd only spent one year in her class.
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He believed she made an indelible impression upon him.
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And then a few weeks later, he received this letter back and went like this.
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She said, I want you to know what your note meant to me.
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I am an old lady in my 80s living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and seeming like the last leaf on the tree.
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You'll be interested to know that I taught school for 50 years and yours is the first letter of appreciation I have ever received.
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It came on a cold blue morning and cheered my lonely heart as nothing has cheered it in many years.
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It's amazing how important gratitude can be.
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This week is a special time in our nation wherein we have set aside an entire day that is supposed to be dedicated to the concept of being thankful for our many blessings.
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And while we shouldn't relegate our time of thanks to only one day a year, it is good to be reminded about the importance of giving thanks.
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This morning, we're going to be looking at a situation which occurred in the life of Christ.
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Yes, we are going to be stepping out of Hebrews.
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I've been in Hebrews for quite a while, so we can take a step away from that for a moment and look to the life of Christ.
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We're going to see a situation which points out one of the most natural problems that faces us as humans and individuals.
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And that is the problem of ingratitude.
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So with that, let us open our Bibles to Luke chapter 17, verses 11 through 9.
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We're going to talk today about the value of gratitude.
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And let's stand together as we examine this text of Scripture.
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Luke 17, verse 11 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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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to look at this text of Scripture, this important event in the life of Jesus Christ.
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We ask that your Holy Spirit be among us, that he fill us and open our hearts to understand it.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would keep my mouth from error as I am a fallible man and able to preach error.
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I pray that you would keep me only in the truth and put a hedge of protection around us as we study this text together.
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Lord, we pray all things done will be done for your glory and honor.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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As Christians, our expressions of thanksgiving and gratitude should be a consistent part of who we are.
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In fact, it was Charles Dickens who once told an audience that one Thanksgiving day a year was not enough.
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We should have three hundred and sixty four days of Thanksgiving and then only one day where we could gripe and complain.
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I like that.
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I think I second that sentiment.
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And he made a good point regarding the subject of gratitude.
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We all have things to be grateful for.
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And if we truly recognize all of our blessings, we would give thanks much more than we would complain.
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I think the song, the reason why I asked Miss Florence to play it this morning is, is though it's not the it's it's it's not one of the ones that we do a lot.
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It is a good reminder of the fact that if we really sat down and we really examined our blessings from God, it would surprise us just how much the Lord has done in our lives.
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If we took the time every day to examine all that God has given to us in our text for today, we see Jesus giving a group of men a reason to be thankful, a reason to praise him, a reason to acknowledge God's goodness.
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Yet in the story, only one chooses to give thanks.
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So I want to walk through the story together as we do, as we give exposition, we read through the text, we seek to understand it and then give its application.
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So let's look at verse 11 said on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
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And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us.
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Now, let's stop there for a moment.
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This is a scene that is very difficult for us to grasp, particularly as modern day Americans.
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Not too many of us have had experience with infectious disease, especially the disease of leprosy.
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And I think that to truly appreciate the situation which these men face, we must understand the issues that accompany the disease that these men had.
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There was two types of pain that came along with leprosy.
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The first was the physical.
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And then there was the emotional aspect of leprosy.
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The physical is easy to understand.
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Leprosy was and still is.
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It's a dreadful disease.
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Most it was one of the most dreaded diseases of the ancient world.
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This terrible condition consumed the flesh of its victims.
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And it began with small specks around the eyes or small specks in the palms of the hands.
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And it spreads around and through the body and begins to penetrate the skin and destroy the nerve endings.
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And as a result, the body loses sensitivity to touch, loses its ability to register pain, and eventually parts of the body simply begin to die.
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And one bit at a time, the body begins to rot away.
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And so physically, it is one of the most terrible diseases that one could imagine.
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And the biggest problem was because you lose the sense of touch, it didn't hurt as bad.
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But that made it worse because if you didn't feel the parts of your body that were going bad, then you didn't know which parts needed to be tended to.
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If there were cuts, you didn't know the cuts were there and so on.
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It's a horrific physical pain.
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But even more harsh than the physical pain was the emotional pain.
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Leprosy ravages, disfigures and punishes the human body, but it also ravages, disfigures and punishes the human heart and mind.
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A leprous person had to bear the heartache of being separated from his or her family.
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You remember in the Old Testament, the leprous person was to be put out of the camp.
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And this was something that was still in practice in Jesus's time.
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They were to put them away from everyone else because they were highly infectious and they had to be put away so that they could not spread the disease.
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They were removed from people that they love.
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They were banished from society.
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They were even forced to proclaim unclean, unclean wherever they went.
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That's in Leviticus chapter 13, verse 45.
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It says the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out unclean, unclean.
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And he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.
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He is unclean.
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He shall live alone.
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His dwelling shall be outside the camp.
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Imagine this, the severe emotional distress that would come with having such a disease.
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The physical is bad, the psychological even worse.
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It's quite natural, then, that these men wanted to be released from the grip of this horrible affliction.
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And they hear this man is coming, they hear this wonderful healer is coming to town.
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And they had probably heard his reputation often preceded him.
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They had probably heard that he was a master not only of various diseases, but he was the master of leprosy as well.
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In Luke chapter 5, many chapters before this event had happened, many days before this had happened, we see Jesus having already healed the leper.
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Luke chapter 5, verses 12 to 13 says, while he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.
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And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
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And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean.
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And immediately the leprosy left him.
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So we see Jesus has already he's already performed this miracle once.
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And certainly this reputation of him being able to thoroughly put away the disease of leprosy has already preceded him.
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People understand that Jesus is a healer and he can do this.
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So these men see him coming and they say, Lord Jesus, master, help us.
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Have mercy on us.
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In verse 14 says, when he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests.
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Now, this may seem like an odd thing for Jesus to say, go and show yourself to the priest.
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Notice he didn't just say be healed.
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That's what he did in chapter five.
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He healed the man right then and there.
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Chapter five doesn't tell us that he sent the man to the priests, but it is likely that he did.
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Remember, not everything Jesus ever said or did is recorded for us in the Bible.
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That's an important thing that we need to remember.
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There's an entire length of Jesus's life that's not recorded at all.
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We don't know anything about his life from birth to the age of 12.
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We don't know anything from the age of 12 to 30.
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And much of his life between the age of 30 to 33 is unknown to us.
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And John tells us why.
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John, at the very end of the Gospel of John, he says there, if everything that were ever written about him were written, the books would be too many to number.
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So we understand not everything can be written down.
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Jesus telling them to go and show themselves to the priest was part of the fulfillment of the law.
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Remember what Jesus said? I did not come to destroy the law, but so that through me the law might be fulfilled.
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Well, the law commanded that a person who had been put out of the camp because of leprosy, when that person had been healed, he had to go and show himself to the priest so that the priest could declare to the society that he had been banished from, that he was now clean and could be welcomed back in.
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It was part of the ritual of having been put out.
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Now he can be accepted back in again.
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Leviticus chapter 13, verses one through three, tells us that we can read it.
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Leviticus chapter 13, verses one through three.
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This is how it gets put out.
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It says the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying when a person has on his skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot and it turns into a case of leprous disease on the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests, and the priest shall examine the disease area of the skin of his body.
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And if the hair in the disease area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of leprous disease.
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When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.
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Now, that's the first part.
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That's what happens.
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That's how a person gets determined to be unclean.
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The priest makes that determination and he's put out of the camp.
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Well, the same thing has to happen for him to get back.
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The entire 14th chapter of Leviticus, the entire 14th chapter of Leviticus is dedicated to how to bring him back.
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Chapter 13 is how to determine how to get him out.
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And the entire 14th chapter is if a person has been healed, how to bring them back in.
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And Jesus is fulfilling this command from the book of Leviticus, go and show yourself to the priest and sending them to the priest.
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He was simply agreeing with the law of Moses that it was proper for a person who had been put out of the camp to be properly welcomed back in.
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This would remove any social stigma that they had and restore them to fellowship in society.
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And the men followed Jesus's command.
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It says in the verse 14, it says, and as they went, which means they believed him, they believed what he said.
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Jesus said, go and show yourself to the priest.
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Notice it doesn't say they were healed and then they went.
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Jesus didn't say you're healed.
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He just said, go and show yourself to the priest.
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In faith, they all took out to go to the priest.
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And as they went.
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They were healed as they were on the way, as they were already underway to go see the priest, they were healed.
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They all acted in faith.
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That's an important point, because even though they all acted in faith, what we're going to see in a moment is they didn't all act in gratitude.
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That's sort of a key to the story.
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They all believed enough to go.
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But not all appreciated enough to come back and to offer a praise of Thanksgiving.
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And this is where the really where the story finds its greatest point, because in verse 15, it says, then one of them.
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When he saw that he was healed.
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And just for a moment, I want you to think and try, and I know it's hard.
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But try for a minute to put yourself.
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In that man's shoes, not many of us are suffering from a life threatening illness, some of us have in the past.
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And to know that you're dealing with something that is so physically and emotionally and psychologically debilitating and to see it in your hands every time you look down to see this disease, which was was made you white to where everything every time you looked at your hands, you would see on it the mark of your affliction.
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And then as he walked, as they approached the priest, they were healed.
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And his hands were pink or in this case, probably more of a dark brown.
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And he could see himself and he could see that he was no longer a leper.
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He was no longer.
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One to be shunned, one to be put away, he could hold his children again, he could he could caress his wife, he could shake hands with a neighbor.
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Embrace his parents.
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Since then, one of them, when he was when he saw that he was healed, he turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
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I think we we missed the reality of how loud that voice would have been.
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His life just changed drastically and he fell on his face.
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At Jesus's feet, giving him thanks.
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Imagine the scene.
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Jesus has just taken 10 men in the most horrible condition a person could imagine.
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He's given them a new life.
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The physical and emotional isolation from the world now has been given away and they can go back to their homes, their lives, their occupations.
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Jesus has removed all of these ills associated with the disease and the gratitude should have flowed from all their hearts.
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But yet that is not what we see displayed.
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We see only the display of one heart giving thanks and the and the passage makes a point.
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And he was a Samaritan.
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Then Jesus said, we're not 10 cleansed.
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Where are the nine? Now, certainly Jesus knew all 10 had been cleansed.
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Jesus was not asking so that he could be told whether the 10 had been cleansed.
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But certainly the people around him did not know all 10 had been cleansed.
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Certainly his apostles would not not being omniscient themselves would not know that all 10 had been cleansed.
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They had seen them leave and only one returned to give thanks.
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What would be the natural deduction? Only one had been healed.
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But Jesus is making the point here, no, we're not 10 cleansed.
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Where are the nine? Verse 18, was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? The word ologenesis is the Greek there.
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Foreigner means from another gene or from other genes.
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Basically, it simply means in Jesus's way of speaking, this one who is not a Jew and the text has already included for us what he was.
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He was a Samaritan, the most hated of the Jews.
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The Jews hated Gentiles and they hated Samaritans more.
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Gentiles were not Jews, but Samaritans were half Jewish.
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And to the Jews, they considered them a mongrel people.
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And Jesus said, look, I healed all 10, only one has come back.
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And it's the one of the 10 who you all would have considered the least likely to have done anything good.
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You know, he also used the Samaritan as the example of and we all know the story of the Good Samaritan, the person who gave everything he had.
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Remember, Jesus had three people in that story, the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan.
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And who did he use as the hero of the story? He used the Samaritan.
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Why? Because it would be a surprise to everyone that the Samaritan would do anything good.
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Because the Jews had such a low opinion of the Samaritan saying here is that Jesus is making a point.
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He says there's there's there's 10 who have been healed, nine have not returned to give thanks.
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And the one who has is the one who would have been least expected to do anything that would have been regarded as virtuous.
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Finally, after seeing the man's gratitude, Jesus give the words in verse 19, which would have been so sweet to his ears.
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He said to him, rise and go your way.
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Your faith.
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Has made you well, literally, the Greek says your faith has saved you.
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And I think that's important because the wording of Jesus here strongly suggests that the man did not just receive a physical deliverance, but also a spiritual deliverance.
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And with Christ, those two often accompanied each other, such as the people that were brought to Jesus for physical healing.
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What did Jesus often say? Your sins are forgiven.
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Rise and walk.
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Because there was there was something about coming to Jesus for healing that demonstrated faith in him as Messiah, as as Christ and as coming to him with that.
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Remember what they said? Master, have mercy on us.
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There was a faith that accompanied that call to Christ for healing.
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And as such, Jesus says to him.
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And we know it is salvation is by faith alone, Jesus says to him, your faith has saved you, and I believe his faith was not just in the temporal blessings of Christ.
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But his faith was in who Christ was, which is what caused him to cry out to Christ in the first place.
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Jesus, master, Jesus, Lord.
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Have mercy on us.
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Certainly, his cure from leprosy was wonderful, but his cleansing from sin was more wonderful still.
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Now, we've read the story, we've sought its understanding.
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I want to expound now three truths concerning the issue of Thanksgiving that I think we are able to glean from this message.
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Number one, the majority of people do not thank God for their blessings.
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That's a simple truth, but I think it is a truth that we glean from this story.
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The majority of people do not thank God for their blessings.
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Think about just this story.
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One person out of 10 gave thanks to Christ for his blessing.
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And that's what, 10 percent? And I wonder how different that is on average.
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I wonder how many people consistently thank God for his blessings on a consistent basis.
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Being grateful is something we often forget to do.
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We often forget how to do it.
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We often put away our Thanksgiving and replace it with criticism.
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We replace it with deconstructive language.
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We replace it with all kinds of anger and hate and lack of appreciation when we should be very grateful.
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I think there's a story I'm often reminded about when I'm tempted to be ungrateful.
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I think about the story of the man who had Parkinson's disease and he was at the post office and wanted to send a letter to his daughter.
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And he did not have the capacity to write the letter by hand because his Parkinson's disease had led him to the point where he could no longer physically use a pen.
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So in standing at the post office, a young man walks in and he says to the young man, can I ask you to do me a favor? And the young man said, anything, you know, what can I do? And he said, well, would you please write this letter for me? So the young man sat down, wrote the letter for the gentleman as he dictated the letter to him.
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And he said, OK, and signed love dad.
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And so he signed love dad.
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He said, all right, one more thing I need you to put.
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P.S.
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Please forgive this sloppy handwriting.
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You see, that's that's often how we are.
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Rather than being grateful for what we have, we tend to find criticism.
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We find ways to criticize everything that we've been given.
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Being truly grateful for the blessings of God is something that many people have a hard time with.
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In fact, Paul tells us in Romans chapter one that man's sinful tendency to deny God his thanks is our foundational dilemma.
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Romans one twenty one says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
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But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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That is the that's the key dilemma of mankind is although God has placed the knowledge of himself in the hearts of every human being, instead of praising God, instead of giving thanks to God, men instead become futile in their thinking.
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Their foolish hearts are darkened because they refuse to bow down to God and to give him thanks.
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We know God exists.
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There is in our hearts a longing for God, which God himself has placed there.
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But yet people replace that and they refuse to give God thanks.
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So the majority of people in the world don't give God thanks and oftentimes it translates into the church.
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Oftentimes we do not thank God for our blessings.
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The second thing we see is that the Lord expects people to give him thanks for their blessings.
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Number one, we don't give thanks for our blessings.
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And number two, God actually expects it.
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If you read the story again, Jesus, obviously, Jesus is not surprised in the sense of the way we would be surprised.
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But his language in the text indicates why we're not ten cleansed.
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Where are the nine? It would be expected that God would be praised for such a blessing.
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Where is the praise? Where is the blessing? Where is the thanksgiving? I wonder how often we consider how much we are all blessed and how much God deserves to receive our thanks.
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Even that which may seem simple is a blessing.
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The food we eat, the place we live, the air we breathe, the very heart that beats within our chest is a blessing.
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A man once remarked to his friend, I mentioned this Wednesday night because we were talking about spiritual gifts and how we ought to appreciate God's giving us gifts and how we ought not ever think it comes from within us, but that it comes from God who gives us the ability.
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And I told the story about the man who says he says, I don't have to thank anyone for anything because I got everything I have from the sweat of my brow.
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And his friend said, well, where did you get the sweat? Who gave you the brow? No matter how much we think we have contributed to our own well-being, it is ultimately God who has given us the strength to work hard and the ability to have anything that we possess.
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All of our blessings are from God, and thus all of our thanks should be aimed, pointed directly to him.
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And the Lord expects us to be thankful.
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Finally, the third thing.
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All believers.
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All believers.
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Because of being cleansed from our spiritual leprosy, have a continuous reason to be thankful.
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Consider this before you got saved.
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If you were saved this morning before you got saved, you were spiritually leprous.
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Actually, let me back that up.
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You were spiritually dead.
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You were worse off than the leper.
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You were dead in your sins, dead in your trespasses.
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You had no desire for God.
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You had suppressed the truth and unrighteousness.
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You were without hope in the world.
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And if you are saved, it is because God breathed life into your dead soul and he gave you new life in Christ.
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And for that, no matter what we suffer, no matter what we go through, no matter what we face in life, we will always have reason to give thanks.
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Now, I realize that may sound like wishful thinking to some, but I want you to consider the words of a few people who have known hard times.
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And hear what they say, a lady by the name of Johnny Erickson Tata, have you ever heard of her? Johnny Erickson Tata suffered from becoming a quadriplegic.
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At the age of 17, from a tragic diving accident and since has only been able to move.
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From above her neck, and this is what she says, look around you, the blessings abound.
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The smiles of children, the beauty of a glorious sunset, the comfort of a warm bed at night, small and great.
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There are plenty of reasons to say to God, thank you.
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Helen Keller said, I thank God for my handicaps, for through them I have found myself, my work and my God.
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Before we complain about what we don't have or before we complain about our pains and sufferings, should we not first thank God for all that we do have and for his many fold blessings to us? Gratitude is not impossible in our difficult situations when we consider that under guarding our very existence is our connection to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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That is our consistent reason for Thanksgiving, always, and it never changes.
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Economics go up and down.
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Christ is still the Lord.
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Health goes up and down, and Jesus is still the Lord.
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Our family relationships go up and down, and Jesus is still the Lord.
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Our church family relationships go up and down, and Jesus is still the Lord.
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Thus, we always have reason to give thanks.
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I want to end with a short story.
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There was an elderly pastor who boarded an ocean liner and was struck with an illustration of gratitude and ingratitude.
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This elderly pastor on this ocean liner had the opportunity to be with the upper class group.
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He was able to eat with the more affluent section of the ship.
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And he noticed every time they would have a meal together or every time there was a social event on the ship, there was this one young man.
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He looked to be somewhere in his late teens and early 20s that just always was finding something for which he could complain.
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Whether it was the food was too cold when it was supposed to be hot or was too hot when it was supposed to be cold.
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Or the ship's courts for activities were not clean as they were supposed to be.
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Or there weren't enough towels around the pool.
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Or there was anything that he couldn't find to be satisfied with.
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One night, an evening dinner out on the deck was going on, and the young man's complaints became far too much for the old man to bear.
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So the old pastor excused himself from his table.
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He got up and he walked towards the rear of the ship, back towards the propellers.
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He walked towards the rear of the ship, trying to get away from the crowd, trying to get away from the hustle and the bustle.
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And as he walked back, he passed the lifeboats which sit on the outsides of the deck.
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And he noticed a man had sort of found a spot to sit with his back resting against the railing and with his legs sitting crossed and was pulling from his coat a piece of bread and a little small block of cheese that he had saved from an earlier meal.
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And he began to prepare himself a little food, and he noticed that the man's clothes were a little bit more shabby than he had been used to as he had been accustomed to the more affluent part of the ship.
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And he had not seen these people from the lower places in the ship.
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And he noted that the man set the food out before himself and he bowed his head.
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And without knowing the pastor was in earshot, he said, Bless you, Lord, for all you have given to me.
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And as the pastor continued on, not knowing he had been seen or heard, he said that this provided for him a living parable because it caused him to ask the question.
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On the voyage of life, which of these men best describe me? Let's pray.
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Father, we certainly thank you for giving us this time together to pray and to hear your word and to be thankful for all that you have given to us.
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And we are so thankful, Lord.
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As we consider our blessings, we are unable to count the many times and the many things and the many blessings which you have showered upon us as a church and as individuals.
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And we just pray, Lord, today that you would remind us of the blessing of your son, Jesus, that consistent promise of salvation in him that undergirds and gives us joy, that we can even in our trials take joy, as your word tells us.
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Because even in our trials, all we do is know that you are in control.
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Lord, this morning, I pray that if there is someone here who doesn't know Christ, who has never cried out, Master, have mercy on me.
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Lord, they've never recognized their sin.
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They've never seen their need for repentance.
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Lord, I pray that they have heard the gospel that only in Christ is their salvation.
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Only in him can we know eternal life.
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Lord, we love you.
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We thank you.
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We praise you.
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And we give you all glory and honor in Jesus' name.
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Amen.