Alba 11-20-2022
Three Attitudes That Keep Us From Being Thankful
Luke 17:11-19
Rudyard Kipling was a great writer and poet who wrote Jungle Book, Gunga Din and many others. Unlike some other writers, Kipling was one of the few who had opportunity to enjoy his success while he lived. He made a great deal of money through his work.
One time a newspaper reporter came up to him and said, "Mr. Kipling, I just read that somebody calculated that the money you make from your writings amounts to over a hundred dollars a word. Kipling raised his eyebrows and said, "Really, I certainly wasn’t aware of that."
The reporter cynically reached down into his pocket and pulled out a one hundred dollar bill and gave it to Kipling and said, "Here’s a hundred dollar bill, Mr. Kipling. Now, you give me one of your hundred dollar words."
Kipling looked at that hundred dollar bill for a moment, took it and folded it up and put it in his pocket and said, "Thanks." ...He was right! The word thanks is certainly a hundred dollar word.
In Luke 17:11-19 we read about ten men who were healed by Jesus of their leprosy. Out of those ten men only one came back to give thanks. Here's the story. It is talking about Jesus when it says...
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.”
After Jesus has healed them all, nine of them who were healed went on their way to the priest leaving Jesus behind. The one who came to give thanks came back to be with Jesus.
How grateful the men should have been for the providence of God that had brought Jesus down that road. How grateful they should have been for the love that caused Him to pay attention to them and to their need, and for the grace and power of God that brought about their healing.
All of us were lepers at one time. Sin had left us far from God. Jesus delivered us also. He saw us in our sin and shame and made forgiveness possible by taking the punishment we deserve when He went to the cross. The death penalty we deserve, He took on Himself.
In Jesus we are cleansed and made whole. But are we like the nine? Do we just rush off on our way and leave Jesus behind. Or do we stop and and give thanks and praise to the source of our blessings?
We should not wait for Thanksgiving Day. We should be giving thanks every day. But too often the situation remains the same, some give thanks and many don't.
If there is one sin that is so very prevalent today, it is the sin of ingratitude. God does so much for us. Our indebtedness to Him is enormous, and yet we too rarely offer thanks for what He has done.
In fact, many professing Christians don’t even offer thanks over their meals, much less offer thanks over all that God does in their lives.
There are at least three attitudes that steal away our gratitude, three things that keep us from being thankful. The first is...
1. Our pride.
Jesus healed all ten of these lepers. Did the nine so quickly become proud of their new status? Proud of their skin now clean? Proud of being able to be acceptable within society again so that they would not even take time to give thanks?
Consider the position these lepers were in before their healing. It was an awful position. Luke says they stood afar off. Levitical law required the distance that lepers were to be separated from non-infected people (Lev. 13:38-46; Num. 5:2-4).
These lepers were shut out to an area away from everyone else. They were shut out from their family. How long had it been since they felt the touch of their wife or the kiss of their children? Friends no longer came over or invited them to go some plce with them. Lepers had to be separate from others.
So in order to be heard they had to cry aloud. Their cry for mercy indicates that they had some knowledge of Jesus. They must have heard stories of the Compassionate Healer that ministered health to those with incurable physical debilities.
So again, were they now proud of the skin that is now clean? Proud of being able to be acceptable within society again? So proud of the change that they forget the source of their healing? So proud that they can't humble themselves to stop to give thanks?
Someone once said pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick except the one who has it. I Peter 5:5 says,“God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” We can see pride and vanity in others, but we are usually blind to it in our own lives.
Dwight L. Moody said: “God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.” Augustine said: “It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.”
In the Peanuts comic strip, one day Linus is talking things over with Charlie Brown. He explains to him: “When I get big, I’m going to be a humble, little country doctor. I’ll live in the city, see, and every morning I’ll get up, climb into my sports car and zoom into the country! Then I’ll start healing people.... I’ll heal everybody for miles around!”
Then in the last frame he winds it up saying, “I’ll be a world-famous, humble, little country doctor!” Hmmm.
Romans 12:3 says, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” (NIV)
Pride is the attitude that says, "Nobody ever gave me anything, I worked hard for everything I have." With this kind of attitude, we feel that we have no one to thank but ourselves.
Yes, pride is one of the attitudes that keep us from being thankful. Another of those attitudes is a...
2. Critical spirit or constant complaining.
It was a hopeless and depressed group of lepers who had huddled together outside of village that day. They were marked men because their inflamed, scaly, splotchy skin condemned them as people to be avoided.
I don't know if all of this caused them to be critical and complain, but I do know that there are people who allow the difficulties of life to cause them to become bitter and unthankful.
The person with a critical spirit usually dwells on the negative, looking for flaws rather than the good. Most of the time we don’t even see the seriousness of a critical spirit until it takes a toll on our spiritual lives and robs us of our peace.
Psalm 77:3 says, “I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed.”
Different things may lead to a critical spirit. It may be caused by external things around us or it may come from internal thoughts and motives.
A husband and wife were leaving the office of a marriage counselor.
The husband turned to his wife as they walked to the car: “Well, did what the counselor say about being considerate and not criticizing me finally get through your thick skull?”
I don’t think that it got through his!!!
Philippians 2:14-15 says, 14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,
A positive, thankful person is a great witness in this dark world. We only shine when we are thankful. Our light shines for the Lord when we are thankful, when we live it and express it!
Instead of looking at the negatives in our lives and complaining, we need look at, and look for, the positives and give thanks.
A third attitude that keeps us from being grateful is...
3. Taking things for granted.
Just one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back. He saw a reason to give praise. He saw the difference Jesus had made. He saw the change brought about by Jesus Christ. He saw an opportunity to praise God.
All of them had enough faith to obey Jesus when He told them to go show themselves to the priests. There was only one reason to do so. That is if they were healed. So they went in faith. We can congratulate them all for that.
But this one, this Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, he stopped going the direction of the others and made a bee-line to Jesus Christ.
He had reason to give thanks to God and he went to do so. They all had reason to be thankful, but only one saw it.
Here is the key to the whole issue. All were in the same awful position. All called out to Jesus and all were healed. Yet only one of the ten returned to offer thanksgiving.
These lepers cried out for mercy because in Jesus there was a seed of hope and faith touching them in their desperate need. And by a power that only God has, Jesus heals them with a word of instruction – Go show yourselves to the priests.
All of a sudden all ten are healed. Do they accept this smooth, healthy skin as the new normal? So much so that they see no need to acknowledge that without the power of Jesus working in their lives they would never see a change?
Is that why only one comes back to be thankful and the nine others go on their merry way? Their dire situation had not caused them to look at their deeper even more serious need.
They had gotten the word they wanted from the Lord and didn't think much more about Him. So did they turn their backs on Him and head off taking for granted that they can now be accepted in society again? Taking for granted that now they are normal?
Someone once said that if the stars only came out once a year, we would stay out all night to watch them. But they are there every night and we have grown accustomed to them.
The Israelites grumbled because they had no food so God miraculously sent manna to cover the ground each day except the Sabbath day. Then they started to grumble because it was the same thing every day.
They had a miracle - straight from God every day but were no longer satisfied. They took it for granted.
If we allow in our lives pride, a critical spirit or are just taking things for granted, we will never be truly thankful for all that God has given us.
“Thanks” is like a million dollar word. Thanks is one word that is too seldom heard and too rarely spoken and too often forgotten. If we would all adopt an attitude of thanksgiving into our lives - our lives would be changed. We would savor each day.
Those lepers should have formed an impromptu choir and sung Psalm 103 together! And we should join them. The first few verses sing out...
Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies.
Let's be sure that Jesus doesn't have to ask someone about us, “Didn't I offer salvation to all through my death on the cross? But where are these people? Have they not returned to give glory to God?”
May it not be so!
CLOSE:
Chuck Swindoll told a story of a visit to a veteran’s hospital. He said:
“The day I arrived to visit, I saw a touching scene. This man had a young son, and during his confinement in the hospital, he had made a little wooden truck for his boy.
Since the boy was not allowed to go into the ward and visit his father, an orderly had brought the gift down to the child, who was waiting in front of the hospital with his mother. The father was looking out of a fifth-floor window, watching his son unwrap the gift.
The little boy opened the package, and his eyes got wide when he saw that wonderful little truck. He hugged it to his chest. Meanwhile, the father was walking back and forth waving his arms behind the windowpane, trying to get his son’s attention.
The little boy put the truck down and reached up and hugged the orderly and thanked him for the truck. And all the while the frustrated father was going through these dramatic gestures, trying to say, ‘It’s me, son. I made the truck for you. I gave that to you. Look up here!’ I could almost read his lips.
Finally the mother and the orderly turned the boy’s attention up to that fifth-floor window. It was then the boy cried, ‘Daddy! Oh, thank you! I miss you, Daddy! Come home, Daddy. Thank you for my truck.’ And the father stood in the window with tears pouring down his cheeks.”
How much like that child are we? How often do we thank others and not pour our gratitude out to our waiting Father, who has so blessed us? God gave us His only Son and often we never give to Him even a word of thanks.
The best thanks we can give Him is to try to deserve his goodness and mercy a little better. This story of the ten lepers reminds us that if our faith is genuine, we will never cease praising God for the many blessings of our lives!
