Do You Think To Thank?

SPECIAL DAY: THANKSGIVING

TEXT: LUKE 17:11-19

TITLE: “DO YOU THINK TO THANK?”

INTRODUCTION: A. Rudyard Kipling lived from 1865 to 1936. He was British but born in Bombay,

India. He wrote poetry and authored books. You might now some of his stories:

Captains Courageous, Rikki Tikki Tavi, and The Jungle Book.

Kipling’s writings not only made him famous but also earned him a substantial

fortune. A newspaper reporter came up to him once and asked, “Mr. Kipling, I just

read that somebody calculated that the money you make from your writings amounts

to over one hundred dollars a word.” The reporter reached into his pocket and pulled

out a one-hundred-dollar bill and gave it to Kipling and said, “Here’s a one-hundred-

dollar-bill, Mr. Kipling. Now you give me one of your hundred dollar words.”

B. On one person out of ten could come up with a hundred-dollar word for Jesus after He

healed the ten of their leprosy.

1. Jesus met these men while traveling in the border areas of the region of Palestine

that were called Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

2. Jesus was going to Jerusalem but takes time out of His itinerary to meet the needs

of these suffering people.

3. Leprosy was the most feared disease during the 1st century.

--It was the AIDS of that day

a. It was a little different from what our medical community calls leprosy today

but it was a horrible skin disease that was highly contagious.

b. It basically ate away the skin a little at time and destroyed the regenerative

properties of the skin cells so they couldn’t reproduce.

4. Lepers were required by law to stay as far away from those who were not affected

by it as possible.

5. Those who claimed to be healed of this disease had to go show themselves to the

high priest at the temple in Jerusalem.

a. The priest had to verify the healing so that people could resume a normal life in

society.

b. Rarely, if ever, happened.

6. These guys had a lot to be thankful for: the horrible disease that had made them

outcasts has now been healed.

7. Only one who came back was a Samaritan

a. Jews despised Samaritans

b. Even though they had once been Jews, they had intermarried with other people

groups and were treated as half-breeds and traitors by most Jews.

c. Only this Samaritan came back to thank Jesus, praising God for the blessings he

had received that day.

C. We’re a people a look those nine who went on their way – never really considering

what God had granted them that day and never taking the time to say thanks for His

blessings.

--G.K. Chesterton was a voluminous and respected author who lived from 1874 to

1936. When he wrote his autobiography near the end of a long and useful life, he

set himself the task of defining in a single sentence the most important lesson he had

learned. He concluded that the most important thing he had learned in life was

whether one took things for granted or took them with gratitude.

D. Thanksgiving is something that should be done on a daily basis

--Not just one day a year.

1. We need to live lives full of thanksgiving.

--Paul tells us in Eph. 5:2- that we should “always giving thanks to God the Father

for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

2. But like the nine out of ten men in this scriptural account from Luke’s gospel, we

fail to think to thank.

3. There are barriers that we need to recognize and learn how to get around so that we

can life lives of thanksgiving.

I. The First Barrier to a Life of Thanksgiving: DISORGANIZATION

A. Our schedules are so hectic and so full that we just don’t take the time to consider our blessings.

1. Our English words “thank” and “think” come from the same root word: “to consider”

2. How many times do get so busy, we fail to take time to consider the blessings in our lives?

3. Many years ago, Coca-Cola had an advertising slogan: “Coke – the pause that refreshes.”

4. Taking time to pause and consider our blessings puts our life in perspective.

a. We don’t just see the difficult things but the things that benefit us.

b. We would probably be surprised at how the blessings outnumber the difficulties.

B. We’re such poor managers of our time that we never consider giving thanks.

1. We’ve let our lives spin our of control and actually fell controlled by circumstances instead of doing

the best we can despite the circumstances.

2. One of the main problems is that we have difficulty in establishing priorities

3. I’m that there are at least a few of us here today that have made the wrong things important but you