I Am Grateful

We live in a world where gratitude is often not expressed and help given is easily forgotten. Undercutting and backstabbing seem to be the order of the day!

In Deuteronomy 8, God reminds His people of how He had looked after them in the wilderness. He reminds them of the manna that He fed them with (vs 3) and how their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell up (vs 4).

From verse 6-9, God then paints a beautiful picture of all the blessings and wealth that awaited them in the Promised Land.

From verse 11-18 however, He warns them not to forget His goodness, once they begin to enjoy those same blessings. He says, ”Be careful that you don’t forget the Lord your God” (8:11) and warns them in verse 17, ‘you may say to yourself,” My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me”. In fact, the word ‘forget’ is mentioned 3 times and the word ‘remember’ once, in that portion of scripture.

We forget God’s goodness is that in spite of all His blessings, we look at other’s blessings and begin to grumble at what we think we lack, in comparison.

It amazes me how easily people forget God’s blessings. So often He blesses them when they cry out to Him but they don’t have time for Him thereafter, They don’t have time to just remember what God has done for us and to say Thank you.

As we begin this week of Thanksgiving, let me ask you, What are you thankful for?

What am I thankful for? Where do I start?

I am thankful for the 66+ years of life that God has given me.

I am thankful for His forgiveness of my sins, past, present and future.

I am thankful for the love of my life, my help mate, my wife of 22 years.

I am thankful for my children for accepting and using the wisdom God Has given them.

I am thankful for my 11 grandchildren, each with their unique personalities.

And I am thankful when I can drive to work and catch every green light on Tracy Blvd.

I am thankful for the little things in life.

Just take a minute to ponder my question. What are you thankful for? Are you grateful? Think about it?

Title

The title of our message today is: I Am Grateful

Scripture

Our Scripture is taken from Luke 17:11-19

Luke 17:11–19 NKJV

11 Now it happened as He went to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. 12 Then as He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. 13 And they lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 So when He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. 15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, 16 and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. 17 So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? 18 Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 And He said to him, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

Our focal verse is taken from verse 17,

Luke 17:17

Luke 17:17 NKJV

17 So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?

But where are the nine?

Lesson

C. S. Lewis said that ancient man approach God out a very strong feeling that he was approaching a judge. For modern man, the roles are reversed, says Lewis. Modern man is the judge and God is in the dock.

Maybe This is why we feel that we have no obligation to thank him. I suspect that This is what lies behind the reason that we are developing a culture without a sense of thankfulness.

But for me, our thanklessness smacks of a lazy atheism. Remember, our old definition of an atheist? It is someone who sometimes feels gratitude, but has absolutely no one to thank for it!

There are two sides in the issue of all self-righteous abundance: the thankful and the thankless. The thankless tend to act as though they are responsible for their circumstances and or entirely self made.

The thankful sees the providence of God in all the whole. The thankful believe that it is not how much we have or don't have in life, but what we view is the source of what we have or don't have that is important.

Lewis goes one to say, I once sit down with a missionary couple in Costa Rica who obviously were living on a shoestring budget. I studied the very meager table as we sat down. As the host said grace, his prayer swelled with such gratitude over God's abundance that I was tempted to open my eyes to peak and see if there was something on the table that I had missed. But I had missed nothing. It was not what was on the table that really produced gratitude; Rather, his Christian gratitude was a way of life.

He continues, I have sat down with a great many people who have fed me more scrumptiously, but their signed to begin eating was not a bowed head, but the green light signal of a fork which the host picked up.

But back to the lone Samaritan leper whose thankfulness mandated a bent neck and said, God, you are the giver of this feast. So the 90 percentile lepers are those who begin to eat when the host picks up the fork.

All of this goes to prove the old cliche: gratitude really is an attitude. Gratitude has absolutely nothing to do with what we have. Gratitude is a lifestyle. It rehearses praise so continually that God is always the giver, and the lepers are cleansed by His giving.

Is Jesus sorry that he cleansed the ingrates? Of course not, it is God’s nature to cleanse, to heal, and to give. But He does ask a very profound question in Luke 17 where are the other nine? It's a fair question! If ten lepers are healed and only one comes back, where are the other nine?

Let us live, therefore, in a constant attitude of God's abundance and reverence, as urged by the writer of Hebrews (12:28).

Hebrews 12:28 which says 28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear

Now, I know that God does not always provide us all the abundance that we want. Psalm 37:25 says,

Psalm 37:25

Psalm 37:25 NKJV

25 I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.

Psalm 100:4 {don’t read}

Psalm 100:4 NKJV

4 Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.

My suspicion is, this week most of us will sit down to a very fine meal. I hope that, as you do so, Psalm 100:4 will come to you “enter his gates with Thanksgiving, and enter his courts with pride.

God is the keeper of your feast.

He is the maker of your feast.

Tony Campolo say it that, as he was eating a meal in Haiti, he started to pick up his fork and eat when he glanced to the window, which was near his table, and saw the faces of little hungry Haitian children, faces pressed against the glass, watching him eat, mesmerized.

For a moment, he said, I had the awful feeling of guilt and sat poised, not knowing whether to eat or not. Then the waiter stepped over and said, Sir don't let this bother you, and pulled the blinds.

I laid down my fork, unable to eat that meal. But he said, it's so like the American culture to forget to thank God for what we have, who have enough to pull the blinds and forget that we are part of the 6% of the world who have enough to continually to eat again and again and again.

Enter his courts with praise: enter his gates with Thanksgiving.

While you eat your Turkey this Thanksgiving consider this 600 people will die of starvation while you are eating that Turkey. On Thanksgiving Day, 12,000 people will die of starvation. 800 million people in this world have not had enough to eat today.

One out of every 10 babies born this week will die within the first week of their lives. 25% of those babies will never reach the age of five. I now understand what it means to be a nation upon whom God has rained his blessings.

I understand how Malcolm Muggeridge must have felt when he watched Mother Teresa take a baby from the dustbin who someone had cast aside, believing it to be dead, and then suddenly chirping, see there's life in it!

Most of the world is not dying under nuclear annihilation, rather, by the thousands, many do die whimpering in the night. And T. S. Elliot lines haunt us, saying this is the way the world and not with a bang but with a whimper.

We all sometimes complain that God is unfair. But I remember that gratitude is an attitude Habakkuk 3:17 shouts are obligation to praise, whatever our financial circumstances. There is no use whimpering.

Harold Kushner said he used to have an old teacher who said, to say life is unfair is like saying a bull won't charge a man who happens to be a vegetarian.

Conclusion

Jesus’ is lone leper is a picture of great gratitude a picture of grace. Those of us who have been redeemed by a living Lord Jesus cannot help but say, thank you God. Thank you for eternal life, thank you for Our Daily Bread. Break from that crowded thankless lepers long enough to remember Somalia. Somalia is a land where there aren't any title holders anymore. there is no grain fields. Everyone their lives in extremes. Life is waiting on the United Nations grain trucks.

As we close today, I want to leave you with this thought.

We will never develop a heart of gratitude until we first recognize our natural standing before Christ. The Levitical code required these lepers to separate themselves from those not infected by the disease (Leviticus 13:45).

To compound this, they realized they most definitely were unfit to stand before the Lord of glory. Interestingly, it was a multi-cultural band of beleaguered misfits, thus reinforcing the biblical declaration that all equal before God with no exceptions for race.

Has it ever crossed your mind that you are unfit to stand before Jesus? We are born with spiritual leprosy no matter our financial or political standing.

The best of our goodness clothes us no better than the torn, leprosy-infected rags worn by these 10 men. The great truth that flies in the face of humanism is that we are spiritually bankrupt with no birthright for special status.

The truest gratitude comes from an unquenchable awe at God’s gift of salvation. We have sung “Amazing Grace” so often that we’ve lost our amazement at that grace. One leper upon realizing he was healed immediately turned back to praise and thank Jesus. In fact, he was quite demonstrative. He shouted and fell prostrate.

Until you establish an authentic recognition of your spiritual condition, you cannot internalize genuine godly gratitude.

This Thanksgiving, enter his courts with Thanksgiving an enter his gates with praise.

Were those not 10 leopards healed? Where are the other nine?

Then answer, Lord, I do not know where the other nine have gone. I only know that I have received healing, and to not praise you is a sin, a sin that I must not condone.

I have been loved, I am clean. I must enter your gates with Thanksgiving. I must come into your courts with praise.