Three Things That Keep Us From Being Thankful Series

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.