Gratitude

A couple of months ago we had a volunteer mission team from America who came and worked together with us and with Grzesiek and Asia in Zelów. One of the days we hosted an event at a community centre in wasc, and before that as we were driving there we were praying in the van and asking God to work in that event, and to give some opportunities to share the gospel. Because it was in a Community Center we couldn't openly just preach, well we could answer people's questions, and one of the prayers that one of the ladies prayed was specifically asking that people who attended would see our joy and would ask the reason for that. So we shouldn't have been surprised when one woman asked exactly word for word that to the lady who had praised that prayer. And she was able to share the gospel with her and Greg was also able to share the gospel with her together they talked her about an hour and it was a really positive conversation. The lady said that when she came she didn't realize that she was going to meet God there.

And on the way back to the church the same lady who had asked if we could pray on the way there said hey let's pray and thank God for what he did. And we did that we prayed there in the van while we were driving, and I thought wow why don't I think to do this more often? How often do we see God answer prayers do we have blessings in our lives and we think that's cool glad that happened and we don't have we don't thank God for that? How many things have happened in our lives that we shouldn't expect to happen that we don't deserve that are clear blessings from God and we don't think to thank him for those things?

G.K. Chesterton wrote “Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”

Today we are going to look at an example of gratitude in the new testament in Luke chapter 17, verses 11-19. If you have your Bible’s you can follow along as I read.

[Read Luke 17:11-19]

To be a leper was an incredibly sad condition. It was completely hopeless. Throughout the old testament there were instances of it being a punishment from God, for example in the case of Miriam when she tried to take Moses’s position or Gehazi when he took Naaman’s gift against Elisha’s orders.

The thing is, that is the condition of all humanity. We are all spiritual lepers without Christ’s healing.

Their only action they could take to get healing was to cry out to Jesus. Likewise none of us is capable of healing ourselves of our burden of sin of our separation from God. The only hope that we have is to call out to Jesus or his healing.

So this is a really dramatic passages are really good example of the necessity of calling out to Jesus for salvation in faith. And if the passage ended there at verse 14 it would be really easy passage to teach on we would have a good lesson. But there's more. Because of what happens in verse 15 and the following that one turns around and comes back. And he comes back and gives thanks when he sees that he has been healed and Jesus points out well where's everyone else?

Luke’s note after the leper returned is really well timed dramatically. We see that out of the 10, one returned, and then we find out that the one that returned was a Samaritan. The well-known people group that everyone in Israel looked down on. I don’t think Luke accidentally wrote this passage the way he did. He knew very well then tendency to discriminate in his society. He knew the effect that this would have. on the readers, and he places that fact here in the story at the point where we have just seen that this 0one man had done thigns right, this one man ha dgiven glory to God where the others hadn’t This one man was the only one out of ten who received spiritual wholeness from his encounter with Jesus, and that man is a Samaritan.

So Luke here is saying it doesn't matter where you're from. It doesn't matter what is in your past. Your ethnicity, your religious background, your experiences, internationality, none of that matters. The one thing that matters is how you respond to Jesus.

This was completely countercultural in the society that Luke was writing to, and I think is pretty countercultural in ours as well. The people who live was writing to saw their identity as the real people of Israel as the thing that gave them worth and gave them the right to come before God. Because they were part of the chosen people that alone gave them a entitlement for God to do things for them. They deserve salvation. But in the ministry of Jesus that is turned around. All of the things that were taken as checklist items that could make you accepted, the things that made you socially acceptable, the things that made you worthy, those things didn't matter in Jesus ministry. He turned those things on their head time after time after time. And instead like this man all that mattered was that he came to Jesus in faith and his faith made him well.

This applies to us too. We think often that because we go to church because we give offerings or because we play in the band or because we read the Bible or because we do this or that or we're from a Christian family or we live in a Christian country that those things entitle us to God's mercy. That no one is entitled to God's mercy. God owes no one grace. He gives it as a free gift to those who seek him. That's all there is to it. Sometimes we think well we're good Baptists so we're better than the Catholics. Or we think we're from a Christian country so we're better from the people from the Buddhist country or the Muslim country. Or we think this or we think that and none of that is true. What is true is that we don't deserve fans grace anymore than any other person, that it is something that he offers to all people for free, and that all we have to do is come to him and accept that. So it doesn't matter who your family was it doesn't matter who your country is it doesn't matter which church you have grown up in, what matters is your choice personally what are you going to do with Jesus.

4. Faith that Sets Apart (17-19)

In verse 17 Jesus says “were ten not cleansed, then where are the other nine?” But the obvious question here is didn't the other nine also have faith? They came to Jesus to ask for healing, so they obviously had some faith that Jesus could help them. And they were healed physically weren't they, therefore their act of faith deadly to them receiving mercy from God in a way in a really important way too. Which So what does this mean that what Jesus says in verse 19 to this one go that way your faith has made you full. There is a level of faith that he sees in this one that he doesn't see in the other and that faith is manifested completely and ohh he responded once he had received physical healing.

There is a difference between accepting God’s gifts and responding to them in gratitude. Everyone likes to have good things happen to them in life, and everyone wants to get gifts from God. Even us we can often want God's blessings on our lives now we want health and we want prosperity and we want to see the success of our church and we want our ministries to grow and we want to have good community. And those are all blessings that do come from God. Those are all really good things that we can want and that's not a problem. But do we feel like we deserve those things? We feel like those things are things that we should have and when we have something else when we have problems in our lives then we have a something that we don't deserve then? Do we feel like we're entitled to a good life instead of problems? And we may not think that consciously but whether we actually think that in our hearts is revealed in how we respond to problems when they come up. And it's also revealed in how we respond to the blessings that we do have period because in both of those situations both good and bad we have the opportunity to expressed gratitude to God. Because he has given us gifts.

In 1 Thessalonians, Paul writes: Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. [1]

And we see that with this one man the Samaritan. He falls on his face. We are called to accept God’s gifts humbly. That means we need to recognize that we don’t deserve them.

One of the times in my life that I really understood what God had done for me was when I was in college. Because I'd grown up in a Christian Church in a Christian home, and I had been saved as a child I had accepted Jesus I understood the gospel and that I knew intellectually that I didn't deserve salvation that it was a free gift. I knew all the theology of that. And checked most of the boxes that a good Christian kid growing up should. But when I was in college I realized that I did not have a full understanding of my unworthiness before God. And through various processes including being in really intentional discipleship and Bible study with some other men, I realized in my heart how unworthy I was of what God had done for me. And the response to that the only logical response to that the the automatic response to that really, was intense gratitude for what he had done period now the difference wasn't really clear from the outside. I wasn't doing great sins before and then stopped doing them. The difference was just that I realized that even though I might have been following some rules and living a certain way that didn't make me deserving of God's love and his grace period I understood and felt that what he had done for me was something amazing and it was amazing because it was completely undeserved. And that change of perspective from realizing that we don't deserve anything when we had thought that I I'm pretty good that doesn't seem like a huge jump but it is huge it changes completely our perspective.

If an atheist came to the conclusion that they deserved nothing good in their lives then that would drive them to a deep depression. But in Christ that same realization that we deserve nothing is deeply joyful because we realize that we have received it anyway and the reason we have received it is because God loves us and that has nothing to do with anything we've done to deserve it. So that is an incredibly joyful positive thing in the life of a believer because that unworthiness that we have in ourselves goes along with an unimaginable love that God has given us.

One commentator on this passage wrote “It is possible for someone within the church to understand its true teaching and faithfully explain it according to the Christian faith. Such a person may clearly know the difference between the Creator and His creation, showing that they have been cleansed from the errors and falsehoods that once clouded their thinking.

Yet even such a person can fail spiritually if they do not remain thankful to God. Pride can lift up the heart, causing them to forget the Lord who healed and restored them. Instead of humbly falling before God in gratitude, they begin to rely on themselves and neglect to give Him glory.

They become like the people the apostle Paul described: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21).”

We see that the leper who came back was made spiritually whole when he returned to Jesus and humbled himself before Jesus. The other lepers who didn't return had received a physical healing, however they had not yet received a spiritual lasting feeling. The difference between the two is that the one leper humbled himself and came to Jesus to thank him, which shows that he glorified Jesus as the one who had given him the healing. He saw that the point of the healing was Jesus, that it wasn't him, it wasn't something that he deserved.

Earlier in this chapter in verses 7-10 we read (read 7-10)

Jesus points out that we are not owed anything. Even if we are faithful servants, we aren’t owed anything. This is an important idea to keep in mind, and it is demonstrated here in this story. The 9 lepers had forgotten that. They didn’t remember that their healing was something undeserved. They did nothing to earn it, it was a free gift.

This is a bit of a paradox. We are given a free gift by God in our salvation. We do nothing to earn it, and we cannot repay it. At the same time that gift demands a response from us. It demands that our hearts be changed towards God, that we are living in a daily state of gratitude towards what he has done.

That gratitude is the source of our good works. That gratitude is the impetus behind our repentance. It's really important for us to understand how this fits into our salvation. We know that the gospel says as Paul states it in 1 Corinthians 15 that “For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”. And we know that he did that on our behalf and that as it says in Acts 16 we can “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved[2]” That is the core of the good news and it is something that we have to know to be saved and to accept Jesus. The problem that some people fall into, that we think that just hearing those facts as a truth and intellectually accepting those is salvation. But we know that even Satan and the demons are aware of those things as facts. The gospel has to be something that we actually accept for ourselves not just where in the room when somebody says the words and we're like ohh sure I believe that's true. We have to actually understand that we need salvation. We have to understand that we aren't deserving, and that this is something that is really valuable for us that we need desperately. And when we do that then when we accept that salvation we will be deeply grateful for it we will praise God and honor him because we see what he has done. Otherwise we're like the other 9 lepers who just took the gift of physical healing and walked off it didn't change their lives spiritually.

That's why Jesus presentation of the gospel is a call to say when he says repent and believe the good news. True belief is not just an intlellectual acceptation of something. IT means that we no longer view ourselves as the most important thing, and we begin to view God as the most important thing. We no longer follow our own desires, but we follow God’s desires and we pray for our desires to be changed to be identircal to his desires.

When we do that, a funny thing happens and we begin to be more grateful.Becuase we aren’t bothered by thigns not going the way we had plaaned, as much, we aren’t as bothered by problems, and we aren’t as focused on getting our way. We are instead seeking to live in obedience to God’s ways and we are starting to see thing sfrom God’s perspective. And the more we do that, the more we see that God who is in control is in fact making “all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose[3]” for the posts to be together

[1]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), 1 Th 5:16–18.

[2]Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ac 16:31.

[3]Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ro 8:28.