Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

So here we are in the great run-up to Christmas Day, 2019.

As soon as the clock struck 12:01 on the day after Halloween, all of the retailers immediately started re-tooling all of their displays; discounting the Halloween candy, clearing out the fall seasonal items to make way for all of the Christmas merchandise.

Hollywood is advertising its Christmas movies, the TV commercials have already re-tooled with tinsel and sleighbells, and everything is generally falling right into the glidepath for December 25th.

But there are a few people who are feeling kind of bewildered about all of this—they have a dim recollection that there used to be another holiday sandwiched in there somewhere… right?

Something about turkeys and people wearing hats with buckles on them, and Indians coming to a picnic or something?

It’s really only slightly exaggerated to say that our culture has a kind of amnesia when it comes to Thanksgiving Day.

Aside from the obligatory turkey recipe on a morning network news show, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, there will probably not be much time spent on the subject.

And as unfortunate as that is, it’s not really unexpected in our society here in the closing weeks of 2019, is it?

And as we look at our cultural and spiritual climate these days, there are a few reasons why Thanksgiving is a forgotten holiday.

First, it’s unpopular because it’s a story about Europeans and Native Americans getting along with each other—the Social Justice Warriors in our country want to talk about the European settlement of the New World in terms of exploitation, subjugation, bigotry and religious fanaticism.

In fact, last year someone on Twitter noticed in the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special that Franklin (the little black kid) was sitting all by himself across the table from Charlie Brown and his white friends (!), and so all the SJW’s lit their hair on fire and ran around in tight little circles screaming about “raaaaaaacism!!” in a 45-year-old kids’ cartoon.

So we don’t live in the healthiest atmosphere for celebrating Thanksgiving.

Also, Thanksgiving has always been a holiday traditionally celebrated with family—the classic Norman Rockwell painting of Grandma setting down an enormous turkey on a table surrounded by three generations of loving family members.

But there are so many people today whose families are so torn and broken and messed-up that the thought of Thanksgiving is too painful for them to deal with.

And so on that score Thanksgiving gets pushed off to the side.

But perhaps the greatest reason of all that Thanksgiving is a forgotten holiday is because it is, by definition, a day to be thankful.

And specifically, it is a day to be thankful to God for what He has given us as a nation.

The world around us is not at all keen on acknowledging even the existence of God (though Romans 1 tells us that it knows He exists)—let alone acknowledging that we as a people owe Him any kind of thanks:

So the world around us isn’t exactly eager to set aside a day to thank God for anything.

But for you and I, as Christians, thanksgiving is not just a day for us to celebrate this Thursday, is it?

Thanksgiving should characterize every day of our lives!

We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:

So the question before us this morning is, how can we be a people who live out our thankfulness to God every day in an ungrateful world?

How can we not only say we are thankful to God, but demonstrate that thankfulness in “all circumstances”?

So here is what I aim to demonstrate from these verses we read a few moments ago:

In this ungrateful age, our thanksgiving comes from what Jesus has done for us.

This passage in Luke comes to mind this morning because it tells the story of how one man expressed his thanksgiving to Jesus for what He had done for him.

And as we move through these verses together, we will see three strong reasons that this man had—three powerful inducements for him to express his thanks to Jesus.

The first strong reason this man had to thank Jesus was that

I. Jesus saw them when no one else did (Luke 17:11-12)

Let’s take just a moment to set the stage.

Verse 11 says that Jesus was “on His way to Jerusalem”, and passing between the border of Samaria and Galilee.

We know from reading John’s Gospel account that this story here in Luke happens just after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead—John 11:53-54 tells us that the religious leaders were so angered and frightened over Jesus’ power and authority that they began plotting to put Him to death, and so

That town of Ephraim was near the southern border of Samaria, and so that’s why Jesus was walking near this village when this story opens in Luke 17.

Now, when Jesus was walking into the town, it says that “He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance” (v.

12).

They stood at a distance because The Law of Moses required that anyone with leprosy had to stay outside of town, away from human contact:

Lepers were isolated from everyone

For us, the disease of leprosy seems like a myth out of the ancient past; not something that we have any experience with in the 21st Century.

In reality, leprosy (today called Hansen’s Disease) still afflicts as many as a quarter million people worldwide.

If left untreated, leprosy affects the nerves, skin and eyes, causing lesions and numbness in hands and feet, eventually leading to paralysis and blindness.

Because victims can’t feel pain, any wounds they suffer go unnoticed, allowing infections and gangrene to spread.

In its later stages, a leprosy victim will literally rot away, eventually unable to see or hear or even move, helplessly trapped in a living death.

It is a slow, painful and horrifying way to die.

These men were rotting away in a living death, and they knew that they would die alone.

They weren’t allowed into the village, they couldn’t hold their kids or embrace their wives, they couldn’t even have the most basic human contact with anyone.

Their lives were reduced to living in the wilderness, depending on whatever scraps of food or coins people would throw at them.

And they were not just isolated, but

Lepers were ignored by everyone

They would shout and cry out for attention, but most people would just walk by them as if they were invisible.

No one wanted to have to look on a leprosy victim slowly rotting away in a living death—nobody wanted to be downwind of that stench, no one wanted to get anywhere near them, for fear that they would catch the disease and be dragged down into the grave with them.

And this helps us understand what is so wonderful that Jesus saw them when no one else would!

He didn’t ignore them, He didn’t walk quickly by when they called out to Him—He didn’t see them as carriers of a horrifying disease, He didn’t see them as “nobodies” who were worthless to society—He saw them as precious souls with dignity and worth!

Now as I said a moment ago, you and I have no real contact with the disease of leprosy today—we don’t have this horrible physical condition.

But the Bible uses the graphic imagery of leprosy to describe an even more desperate condition that you and I share—the living death of our sin before a holy God!

In Psalm 38, King David describes his sin before God in a way that sounds exactly like leprosy:

You may not be suffering from Hansen’s disease this morning, but the Bible says that every last one of us in this room has been afflicted with spiritual leprosy, because

Some of you know in a very personal way what it is like to be isolated by the consequences of your sin, don’t you?

To be ignored by your friends and family because of the way you have hurt them in your sin (or the way they have hurt you in their sin).

The loneliness and isolation of having burned so many bridges that no one wants to deal with your crap anymore.

But when you were at your lowest point, when you were isolated and ignored by everyone else because of your sin, Jesus saw you when no one else did!

He saw you in your pain and isolation, He saw everything that had happened to you (and everything you had done)!

But no matter how ugly your spiritual leprosy had made you, Jesus didn’t look away in disgust, He looked on you with compassion!

And this is a powerful inducement for your thanksgiving—that Jesus saw you when no one else did!

And not only did Jesus see those lepers when no one else did.

And in verses 13-14 we see that

II.

Jesus rescued them when no one else could (Luke 17:13-14)

These men were living a slow, agonizing death sentence, because—even today as it was then—

Leprosy is incurable

There was no way to be healed from leprosy—the only hope that you had when you discovered it was that maybe it wasn’t leprosy after all!

The Law of Moses (Lev.

13) provided extensive diagnostic instructions to the priest to determine what was and wasn’t leprosy—if the lesion or spot went away, or had certain characteristics, then the priest could pronounce the sufferer clean and allow him back into town.

Otherwise, if it was really leprosy, there was nothing they—or anyone—could do; it was only a matter of time, because

Leprosy is fatal

These men knew that there was no cure—there was no point in going to see the priest, there was no reason to believe that their future held anything but a slow, agonizing descent into blindness, paralysis and agony as their bodies rotted out from under them.

So when they saw Jesus walking past them into town, they cried out in desperation that He would “have mercy on them” .

They knew exactly how miserable their condition was—they were under no illusions that they would get better, or that there was anything they could possibly do to get away from their living death sentence.

So they cried out to Jesus as “Master”: They were saying, “Jesus!

Don’t you have the authority to declare us clean?

Can’t you do something to deliver us?

Please, Jesus—you’re our only hope!”

And then Jesus rescued them when no one else could!

He told them (v.

14) to “Go, show yourselves to the priests!”

And there’s a wonderful little truth tucked into the end of the verse—that they were healed as soon as they obeyed Him! “…As they went they were cleansed!”

There wasn’t anything they could do to save themselves, but the moment they obeyed Jesus’ words they were saved!

Have you been there?

Have you come face-to-face with the fact that there is no way to escape the destructive consequences of your sin before God?

That you were rotting away spiritually—that “your wounds stink and fester because of your foolishness” of rebelling against God?

It didn’t matter what you tried to do, how you tried to clean yourself up, the spiritual leprosy of your sin was consuming you, deadening your feelings, rotting away your heart, destroying you from the inside out?

And you knew it was only a matter of time before all of that darkness and wickedness would finally kill you?

But Jesus rescued you when no one else could!

There was no way that you could have healed yourself from your spiritual leprosy—there was nothing good in you, nothing sound enough to even try.

But

He took on the fatal disease of sin for you, so that you would be rescued—He called out to you, and when you heard Him, He cleansed you from your spiritual leprosy and set you free from it!

This is your second powerful inducement for thanksgiving this morning, Christian—that Jesus rescued you when no one else could!

Jesus saw those lepers when no one else did, He rescued them when no one else could, and in verses 15-18 we see that

III.

Jesus received them when no one else would (Luke 17:15-18)