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TEXT:
SUBJECT: Respectable Sins
#9: Unthankfulness
Today, with God's blessing, we will return to our study and discussion of Jerry Bridges' new book, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate.
As the title indicates, a 'respectable' sin is one we 'tolerate'.
Other sins make us feel guilty; respectable sins don't.
We confess and forsake other sins, respectable sins we can live with.
But we shouldn't live with them!
Whatever else respectable sins are, they are sins, and this means God doesn't respect them, they weaken our fellowship with Him and they hurt other people.
Lord save us from respectable sins!
Today's chapter begins with a story; it's one of my favorites, and one I told my boys over and over at bedtime.
We called it, The Nine and the One.
THE STORY
There once were ten men in Israel who had leprosy.
Leprosy was the most feared disease in the world at that time-and for good reason.
Leprosy made your skin turn white as snow; later, it made your fingers crumble and fall off, your toes crumble and fall off, and, then, after many years of suffering, it killed you.
Leprosy made you awfully sick, of course, but it did more than that.
It took you away from your family, from your job, and from the rest of your life.
Worst of all, it took you away from the synagogue, from the Temple, from the holidays of Israel; in short, it took you away from the public worship of God, and cut you off from His people.
When lepers saw someone coming, they were supposed to shout, 'Unclean!
Unclean!', so the person could go the other way and not be defiled by bumping into them or touching anything they touched.
But when the saw Jesus passing by, they didn't yell, 'Unclean', but 'Lord, have mercy!'
He turned to the poor fellows and told go see the priest who would pronounce them 'clean'.
This must have surprised them, because they were not clean, but why not?
Off they trotted to the nearest priest, and before they got there, every one of them was healed!
And all by the power and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What did the ten men do?
One-Luke says-
Fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks.
We have to wonder what happened to the others, and we're not the only ones.
Jesus Himself said-
Were there not ten cleansed?
But where are the nine?
I'm sure the nine were relieved and happy and excited to be lepers no more, but this is not all they were: they were also ungrateful!
THEIR INGRATITUDE-AND OURS
We shake our heads at their ingratitude.
How can a man whose fingers and toes were falling off, who hadn't seen his wife in years, and who couldn't support his family, receive such a blessing-and not so much as say, 'thanks'?
It is easy to judge the Nine Ingrates as if they were the worst men who ever lived.
But judge them softly, because we are as guilty as they were-if not more.
Jesus Christ healed their bodies and restored their ceremonial fellowship with God.
He has done far more than this for every believer: He has healed our souls, and put us into a fellowship with God far deeper than what the Law of Moses provided.
In a word, He has saved us, and Paul says-
Blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
How often do we thank Him? And, when we thank Him, how often do we mean it?
How often do we say 'thank you' at the dinner table, for example, the way a parrot would if you taught him to say grace?
Apart from the words, 'Thank you', how thankful are we?
Do we live gratefully?
Would the people at work or in the neighborhood, or even your own kids, see you as a thankful person?
Maybe this doesn't apply to all of you, but it sure applies to me.
Unthankfulness is one of my cardinal sins.
When I think about it, it makes me ashamed, but there's the rub-I hardly ever think about it, and when I do, it's not for long.
Lord, save us from unthankfulness!
THE SCOPE
Respectable or not, unthankfulness is a very great sin because our whole lives should be marked by thankfulness.
Some duties are limited to particular times.
You ought to go to church, for example, but not seven days a week; you ought to work, but not twenty-four hours a day-
To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under
Heaven.
There's a time to work and a time to rest; a time to laugh and a time to cry.
When is the time to be thankful?
One day a week?
Eight hours a day?
At Christmas and Easter?
We ought to be thankful every time we receive a gift.
This means: We ought to be thankful at all times because everything we have-oxygen, brainwaves, the sun, gasoline in the tank, a Bible verse in the memory-is a gift, God's gift, and given solely by grace.
At Athens, Paul denounced the idol-worshipping people for being ingrates.
The favors they got did not come from the gods they set up all over town, but from the True God, the One not made with hands, the One-
In whom we live and move and have our being
(as your own poets have said).
Because all is gift and because we ought to be thankful for the gift, being unthankful is a sure sign of spiritual blindness and moral decay.
is a catalogue of human life without God.
It starts with idolatry and moves on to perversion, and cheering it on.
But smack-dab in the middle of the sickening list is-
Neither were they thankful.
foresees perilous times to come, times when men will be unforgiving, unloving, brutal, proud, lovers of money, traitors, and-
Unthankful.
Ingratitude is more than 'bad manners'; it's a sin, as terrible as it is common.
If others have to be unthankful, let's pray for them, but we need to do more than pray for ourselves.
We need to confess our ingratitude, find God's forgiveness in Christ, and do everything we can to live thankfully.
THE QUESTION
This brings a question to mind: Should we be thankful when things don't go our way?
I don't exclude petty things from the list-like getting caught in traffic-but I mostly mean more serious things.
Your husband is not the man you thought he was-should you give thanks?
You've gotten bad news from the doctor-should you give thanks?
Your daughter is living with a man she's not married to-should you give thanks?
In other words, is thankfulness tied to circumstances?
II Thessalonians 5:18 says-
In everything give thanks,
For this is the will of God
In Christ Jesus for you.
Preachers and other Christians sometimes misread the verse, as though it says, 'For everything give thanks'.
They try hard to thank God for the death of a loved one, for the loss of a job, and so on, but they don't really mean it and this makes them feel guilty.
They shouldn't feel this way, for Paul doesn't say be thankful for everything, but in everything.
I'm not splitting hairs.
Of course we're not thankful that a loved one dies-death is an enemy, ours and God's!
Sin is our enemy too, and so to give thanks that your son is throwing his life away with drugs, is no cause for giving thanks!
To be thankful in everything, as opposed to for everything means, at least this much:
God is with us in our problems, and closer to us then than when things are going well.
For this we can be thankful, even when things are not going our way.
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