Gratitude: Where Life Pivots

Intro

We have finished the Thread, tracing Christ and God’s story throughout all of His Word and through history.

I hope that it was beneficial for you all, that you are able to see the big picture of how God is working.

Delight in a Healthy Diet of God’s Every Word

But before we move on from our study, I want to have a brief moment of encouragement with you:

To often, we are ready to move on to something new. My wife and I just recently bought a new car which we consider our first “adult car”. My first car I ever bought was an old cop car with the coolest suspension where if you hit a bump it acted like you were out at sea. The next car I had was a free car that someone gifted me from our church. It was the old red car that had most of its paint scabbed off by the sun. It had some problem with it where you couldn’t hear anyone else in the car because metal was grinding on metal somewhere… I had to get a new car when surprisingly this car’s brakes didn’t brake and I went into a ditch. My next car was a blueish-purple mustang that was a manual. It was AWESOME… except that it didn’t work well in the winters and I would get stuck at Gabbi’s parents house whenever it snowed. My parents would have to pick me up. So, then I junked that car and moved onto the civic hybrid which I have had for a few years now. It was much nicer than all my cars by a loooong shot, still had its own quirks, but a good car. Of course though, I was ready to run for something new the moment it started to show signs of needing a little tlc. The wonderful gift of a baby also convinced us that it was time for a new car.

And now, we are here, with a car that actually seems street legal. I guarantee you though that even the excitement of this car will soon wear off, and as wonderful as this car is, I will want something better in a few years.

Sometimes, I think we approach our walk with God like this. we want to move on into the new and more glorious thing: how we serve, what we learn, our disciplines. We are so eager to move onwards and upwards, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be, if your motives are not God honoring. We need to be like Paul and “press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).

But in all our striving we need to soak in the truths we have been taught, to never forget them. Ps. 71:17-18 says, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.”

Each week, when we gather (whether in here or in the sanctuary), we should take each moment knowing God has gifted us this moment to learn, to enjoy His presence. Going from Genesis to Revelation and learning the wonderful reality of life, true life, is a blessing I don’t want you to be so quick to put in your journals to never think about again.

Because we have gone through the Scriptures, we (your leaders), have felt that it would be good to do something a little more topical.

Topical preaching is where we look at topics within the Bible and make a cohesive biblical understanding of it. This is different than what we have been doing as a church, where we have been going through Genesis verse by verse, and also different than our Wednesday evening message, where we have been diving deep into one verse (practically) at a time.

Topical preaching is helpful at times, but when you are older, and if you are looking for a church, you want to become a member of a church that teaches expositionally: verse by verse mostly. That way, you know that you are being fed a full and healthy diet. Hearing not only the things that interest you, but hearing the things that matter most to God.

That is another reason why you should not only be attending Sunday School. You should be going to our congregational service since the elders of our church are taking you through God’s Word, verse by verse.

That being said, topical messages are helpful because it helps you to apply God’s Word in your life very practically. You need to know all of God’s Word, but it means nothing if you do not know how to apply it in your everyday life: How to be a better sibling, find the right spouse (and be a godly spouse), talk to my friends about God, pick a college and career.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourself”, James tells us. As I already said, do not just write in your journals to never think about them again. Do not talk about it in small group, to just live totally different the other six days of the week. You wouldn’t just sit at the dinner table, be served your meal for the night, look at it, talk about it, not eat it, and then just walk away.

And this is why we are going through this series, we want to give you the opportunity to seriously consider and apply what we are talking about over the next 8 weeks.

We will be talking about Gratitude: how to cultivate in your heart real thankfulness.

We do not live in a grateful world: in fact, as we shall see in our passage today, our flesh is NOT grateful, but selfish and proud.

But as believers, we have the Spirit within us, to act and to live as God wants us to following after His Spirit, one that is distinctly grateful through faith. And the hope of myself and the other leaders is that after 8 weeks, you will have transformed your future by being distinctly a grateful people.

This takes us to our passage for today: Luke 17:11-19

Luke 17:11–19 ESV

11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

Where Life Pivots

Let’s take this passage in parts to fully understand God’s Word

A Strange Route - V.11

We see Luke records for us the route in which Jesus was taking: He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

Explain how this is remarkable considering the animosity between the Jews and Samaritans:

After King David and Solomon, the peak of Israels flourishing, Israel divided into two nations: Northern Israel, which capital was in Samaria, and the southern tribe of Judah, which housed the temple of God. God then judged both northern and southern Israel in their respective times because of their rejection of God’s Word and disobedience. God’s judgment was to allow Assyria capture northern Israel, and Babylon capture Judah.

The Fall of Samaria was really the beginning of their confilct (722BCE) when the Assyrians deported most nothern tribes of Israel and imported foreign settlers. The result was that the Israelites who stayed back began to intermarry with the Assyrians, and their generations began to lose their Jewish identity. They were known as Samaritains, or “half-breeds”.

Tension ultimately peaked when the Jews destroyed the Samaritan Temple around 128 BC on mount Gerizim. The hatred was so deep-seeded that it was socially unacceptable to say the word “Samaritan”.

This social, religious, and political hatred created a cultural wall that Jews would not pass.

He deliberately and consistently would take his disciples on this route through Samaria

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Jesus proved that he was willing to pass this cultural divide to reach the Samaritans. In fact, the first person he ever told he was the Messiah was a Samaritan.

An Unclean Group - V.12

Explain what it meant to have leprosy and how it was far more than a medical condition.

Medical: Nerve-destroying

Also various skin diseases: vitiligo/psoriasis.

Social: Outsiders — socially dead, sent away from God’s people and had to should “unclean! unclean!”

Many lepers internalized this to feel rejected by man and God.

They stayed in groups.

Spiritually: God created such harsh laws because it was a spiritual representation of corruption.

Leper’s Dialogue - V.13

They lifted up their voices because they had to be far from Jesus

They knew Jesus: His fame spread throughout all the areas

Understood what Jesus could offer them, and understood who He was.

Recognized that mercy from God was the only way to change their lives.

Jesus’ Compassionate Response - V.14

Jesus, being God, could’ve healed them as he normally did: touching them.

He does this to lepers in other places.

But he does this to reveal something specifically about their hearts.

To go to the priests was God’s law for lepers who were healed.

To go to the priests was an act of faith, having to trust that they would be healed in obedience to Jesus.

We see the powerful, and compassionate, hand of Jesus: they were healed on their way.

The Result - VV.15-19

Most likely after being obedient to Jesus’ request, one turned to go back.

Here, we see a Pivot:

They all were healed physically that day by the mercies of God. But only one of them was healed spiritually. Only one of them had a faith that actually meant something.

The issue is that the nine, and the world believes that they deserve something from God. Some might understand that they need God, but even still they believe that they deserve such mercies. And when we believe that we deserve anything from God, we are acting defiantly in ungratefulness.

Sam Crabtree, in the book that coinsides with our series, says:

“Whether we are aware of it or not, we’re always moving toward either the satisfaction of an ultimately unspeakable joy or the pain of excruciating regret. These are the ultimate consequences of either gratitude or ingratitude. This movement toward one or the other may be swift and unmistakably evident, or it may be slow and incremental, nearly invisible— but it always means (wittingly or unwittingly) heaping up either pleasures or sorrows every step of the way.”

Gratitude is the hinge on which life pivots. Here, we see it so perfectly in the Samaritan: where the others were healed physically, they are in eternal regret. Their faith wasn’t that of someone who has a saving faith in Christ. Let us be like the Samaritan Leper, where we realize to whom deserves glory and praise, for that is a faith that is life pivoting.

Can you say to yourself that you live with this sort of gratitude? Do you see that you were once a leper spiritually? One that was welcomed back into God’s kingdom with open arms?

You might wonder what this looks like? What is this faith-transformed gratitude?

Gratitude is the divinely given spiritual ability to see grace, and the corresponding desire to affirm it and its giver as good.

Conclusion

What is our desire for you over these next eight weeks? We want you to have a life that is transformed by Gratitude: to see the grace of God and respond in faith.

For some, this means you need to see truly what God has done or could do for you. You might not look at your life and feel it is something to be grateful for. We want to show you that it is.

For others, you might know already that you should be grateful. But you look at your life and realize you don’t respond as the Samaritan did, but rather you act more like the nine. We want to refresh in you a life that is joy-filled, with excitement to glorify God all the days of your life.

Big Idea: Gratitude is Life-Pivoting