One of my own unscientific observations since I became a Christian is that newer congregations sometimes tend to live in better harmony with one another than older ones. Have any of you noticed that? Among churches that divide and split, many have been in existence twenty or more years. If the observation is valid, there may be several reasons for it. One of them may be that the farther church members get from the realization of their former desperate condition outside of Christ, the less they are willing to tolerate those who are just coming into Christ. Of course, that could be said another way: The farther we get from gratitude for our salvation, the less tolerant we become. My reason from bringing it up? Thanksgiving could be the antidote!

Just how thankful are we?

A lifeguard recently reported that, while over the course of his career, he had rescued 223 people from drowning, only three of them ever thanked him.

A well known defense lawyer, with a long career of rescuing murderers from legal execution, says that not a single one of those he saved from the electric chair ever said "thanks."

Art King had a radio program called "Job Center of the Air." He supposedly found jobs for 2500 people, of whom, only ten, he says, ever thanked him.

An official of the post office, in charge of the Dead Letter Box in Washington D.C., reported one year that his office had received hundreds of thousands of letters addressed to "Santa Clause" asking for many things, but after Christmas, only one letter of thanks, according to this postal official, ever arrived in that same box.

I think we try from time to time to be more grateful like the couple mentioned by Toni D. Moore, in the April 1993 issue of Readers’ Digest. She wrote, "We attended the wedding of an acquaintance's son. Because we did not know the young man or his bride, we decided to send them a practical household gift, a fire extinguisher. Apparently, the couple mass produced their thank you notes because we received a card saying: ‘Thank you very much for the nice wedding gift. We look forward to using it soon.’" Toni D. Moore, Reader's Digest, April 1993, p. 10

We try!

A woman came up to a preacher and thanked him for the encouraging sermon he had preached. In response he said, "Why, don't thank me, thank the Lord." She said, "Well, I thought of that, but it wasn't that good."

Today, and probably again later this week, most of us will celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. We'll be sitting down to a wonderful meal of turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, dressing, mashed potatoes, pie... We have a lot to be thankful for in America, and in Christ. We Christians have the best of both worlds. In Christ, our citizenship is in heaven and our names are in the Lamb's Book of Life. In America, we're citizens of the greatest country on the face of the earth. If we aren't thankful, it isn't because we lack good reason.

Yet, those two little words, "thank you," can be conspicuously lacking from our vocabularies sometimes.

*Interesting to me is the fact that our English word thanks comes from the same root as the word think. Someone has suggested that maybe if we would be more thinkful, we would be more thankful.

That is the reason for the title of this message, which is Thinking About Thanks. In an effort to do that (make us more thinkful) let me share a familiar story from the Bible.

(Read Luke 17:11-19)

Look with me more closely at this passage and the ten men it describes. Let’s look first at

1. Their Condition.

A. Leprosy was a dreadful disease.

In a book called, "Where Is God When It Hurts," leprosy is described as we know it today. The author states that it is a disease that affects the nerve endings in the outer extremities of the body. The feet, the hands, the nose, the eyes, all become numb. For years leprosy was thought to cause fingers and toes to fall off. Today doctors know that it is the numbness in the appendages that allows for damage and infection to set in. Fingers and toes are lost as a complication of that infection. You’ll see modern day lepers with the tall-tale stubs where hands and feet used to be.

Leprosy in Bible times probably included more than just the modern disease. It is likely that any skin ailment with similar symptoms was diagnosed as leprosy. Such things as Psoriasis, Shingles, and other disorders of the skin were probably lumped together.

Perhaps just as bad as the disease itself was the isolation that accompanied it. The leper was an outcast of society. The Bible says in Leviticus 13:45-46,

"As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, 'Unclean! Unclean!' He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

Until the disease was gone and the victim was pronounced clean by a priest, he was an outcast. He could not hold a job. He could not see his family. Could not enter a city. He was cut off. No one wanted him. Can we relate to that?

George MacDonald was a minister in a small church in England in the middle of the nineteenth century. One day the deacons of the church came to him and told him that it was impossible for the church to continue his salary. He would have to move on. MacDonald innocently offered to remain and support himself by writing and teaching. His wife, however, had an insight that her husband did not.

"George," she said, "it isn't that the people here are too poor to pay us. They don't want us."

You can almost feel the hurt in those words. "They don't want us."

MacDonald went on to distinguish himself as a poet and a novelist, but the memory of those words, he said, never left him.

Rejection is hard to take. Imagine not being able to hold your husband's or wife's hand, put your child on your knee, or even go home. Imagine not being able to talk to your parents or your friends about your problems. That was the life of the leper.

B. As a result of their isolation, they became a society of their own.

That is an amazing thing about hurting people. They tend to be more concerned with helping each other than expressing their personal prejudice.

One of my own unscientific observations since I became a Christian is that newer congregations sometimes tend to live in better harmony with one another than older ones. Have any of you noticed that? Among churches that divide and split, many have been in existence twenty or more years. If the observation is valid, there may be several reasons for it. One of them may be that the farther church members get from the realization of their former desperate condition outside of Christ, the less they are willing to tolerate those who are just coming into Christ. Of course, that could be said another way: The farther we get from gratitude for our salvation, the less tolerant we become. My reason from bringing it up? Thanksgiving could be the antidote!

Anyway, these lepers who were cut off from society formed a little band of their own. It would be interesting to know their backgrounds before they were infected with the disease. Perhaps some of them had been wealthy. Maybe some were poor. No matter what their differences had been, though, they were now all just lepers.

C. Because of that, they were virtually hopeless and helpless.

There was no cure for leprosy. It's victims usually died, horribly disfigured. Any who recovered were probably the ones who had been misdiagnosed. It was a "no hope" situation.

But their path this day crossed the path of Jesus and that brought about:

2. Their Healing.

(Read verse 11-14)

The purpose of showing themselves to the priest was that he was the only one who could examine them and pronounce them, by God’s law, clean and able to reenter the society.

These men had probably heard about Jesus and His healing, so it only took the words "Go show yourselves to the priests" to send them scurrying on their way. Jesus had probably barely finished His sentence when they took off.

The Bible doesn't say how far they traveled before the miracle took place. But, as they were going, suddenly they were cleansed! These men certainly didn't lack faith! They moved out before they were healed and that is noteworthy. But Jesus called attention to something else, something they lacked. He called attention to:

3. Their Ingratitude.

(Read 15-19)

As I look at this, I can hardly blame these men for their rush to see the priest. I would probably have been at the head of the pack! They could think of nothing else at the moment but being pronounced clean so that they could go home. But in the midst of the excitement, one of them turned back, whooping and hollering and praising God, fell on his face before Jesus and said, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Praise God! Thank you!"

Then there is an irony in the text. The one who turned back, it says, was a Samaritan. The way in which the text is written makes me think that he was probably the only Samaritan in the group. Does that mean that the rest in the group were Jews? Probably. Other cultures around exclude lepers from their midst. Samaritans were not God's chosen people. The Jews looked down upon them. So we have here a Samaritan who doesn't know God's ways very well, but gives thanks, and nine (?) Jews who know God's ways but don't give thanks. Sometimes the greatest gratitude comes from the least likely people. This is a case where God's own people were not grateful.

Gert Behanna was 53 years old when she discovered God. The shock and wonder of that discovery haven't worn off after twenty years. Gert had another shock when, the very next Sunday after she was baptized, she went to church. She says, "I'd never been to church in my life and I remember how eagerly I awaited that first Sunday. I'd just had a glimpse of God Almighty--me, an alcoholic, a drug addict, rich, lonely, and miserable--already I was beginning to know what joy really was." Gert was eager to attend church to meet and talk with people who had known the love of God for many years. "What ecstatic people these long-time Christians will be!" she thought. Even though becoming a Christian was probably the happiest day of her life, she was somewhat hesitant about going to church that first Sunday. "I was afraid they would embarrass me with their love and enthusiasm," she said.

She needn't have worried. Gert did not find the church people as loving and enthusiastic as she thought. What she discovered was, in her own words, "Bowed heads, long faces, and funeral whispers." She expected people to shower her with love and affection for making the right choice and wanting to be a part of the church. No one welcomed her. No one even spoke to her that first Sunday she went to church.

"As time went one and I attended other churches," Gert writes, "in various parts of the country, I made a bewildering discovery. These long-faced, listless people were present in every congregation." Then she asked a very good question: "How could they come into God's presence Sunday after Sunday without breathing in the joy that danced in the very air?"

Perhaps the missing ingredient in the lives of the people this woman met was gratitude. They had long forgotten what they had been and what Jesus had done for them.

Have you made the observation yet that we human beings, even the best of us, tend to take for granted what we have and put our focus on what we don't have?

A certain farmer was an inveterate complainer. Although financially he was very successful, because of a very sour attitude, no one enjoyed his company. Nothing seemed to please him. At the time of the potato harvest, he had a bumper crop. Seeing his opportunity to reinforce a lesson for the moment, his minister suggested, "Brother I understand you've had a tremendous season with potatoes this year. That certainly must be cause for rejoicing!" The chronic complainer never even smiled, but sourly responded, "Yes, it's true. The harvest was good. But my problem is, I don't have any bad potatoes to feed my pigs."

There is wisdom in the counsel that says count the blessings you do have.

Bible commentator Matthew Henry, after being robbed, wrote this in his diary:

Let me be thankful

FIRST because I was never robbed before.
SECOND, because although they took my wallet they did not take my life.
THIRD, because although they took my all, it was not much.
FOURTH, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.

Being thankful for what we have rather than what we don't have is certainly a rare quality.

Corrie Ten Boom in her book, The Hiding Place, relates an incident which taught her this principle. She and her sister, Betsy, had just been transferred to the worst German prison camp they had seen yet, Ravensbruck. Upon entering the barracks, they found them extremely overcrowded and flea-infested. Their Scripture reading that morning in 1 Thessalonians, read from a smuggled Bible, had reminded them to rejoice always, pray constantly, and give thanks in all circumstances. Betsy told Corrie to stop and thank the Lord for every detail of their new living quarters. Corrie at first flatly refused to give thanks for the fleas, but Betsy persisted. She finally succumbed. During the months spent at that camp, they were surprised to find how openly they could hold Bible study and prayer meetings without guard interference. It was several months later when they learned that the guards would not enter the barracks because of the fleas!

Henry Ward Beecher writes, "If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet, and sweep through it, and it would draw to itself the most invisible particles. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find some heavenly blessings."

Now that is all good and fine. But this passage is talking about an ingratitude that is a lot more fundamental than trying to find a way to be thankful for robbery and fleas. These lepers were healed of their disease! For them that amounted virtually to life from the dead! And they did not express their gratitude. I can understand not being thankful for fleas, but this? When you consider it, it almost seems like a crime!

Yet, is it any different than people living in twentieth century America who know blessings and a standard of living the rest of the world can only dream of and who have the knowledge of Christ in super abundance all around, yet are often ungrateful?

I know, we have our reasons. One author gives his idea of some of the excuses the nine ungrateful lepers might have had: 

One waited to see if the cure was real.
One waited to see if it would last.
One decided that he had never had leprosy.
One said he would have gotten well anyway.
One gave all the glory to the priests.
One said, "Just any rabbi could have done it."
One said, "I was already much improved."

Ungrateful people always have their reasons.

One young man said to his father, "Guess what? I can say please and thank you in Spanish." His father asked, "How come you never say it in English?" Let it not be that we never say it in English.

4. What Does All This Have to Do with You and Me?

A. First, God wants his people to be a people of gratitude.

Jesus was concerned over the ingratitude of the nine.

(Read v. 17-18)

He was concerned that His people would be so wrapped up in themselves that they could no longer remember to give thanks.

He's concerned today as well. Listen to a few NT passages:

Colossians 3:17 "And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."

1 Thessalonians 5:18 "in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Hebrews 13:15 :"Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name."

He wants us to be people of gratitude.

B. Second, He doesn't want us to be the kind of people that ingratitude produces.

In parts of Mexico, I’m told, hot springs and cold springs are found side by side. Because of the convenience of this natural phenomenon the women often bring their laundry and boil their clothes in the hot springs and then rinse them in the cold ones. (Hey ladies, it isn’t quite a Maytag, but in a country where most don’t have indoor plumbing. . .!) A tourist, who was watching this procedure commented to his Mexican friend and guide: "I imagine that they think old Mother Nature is pretty generous to supply clean hot and cold water here side by side for their free use?" The guide replied, "No Senor, there is much grumbling because she supplies no soap."

People who do not cultivate thankfulness end up being spoiled brats!

C. Thirdly, He wants us to find our happiness in the circumstances we are given.

You know, from time to time some of us get a bit incensed by the insensitivity of our mates. We ought always to remember that it could be worse.

In the Hartford Kentucky Times News, Dorothy Gentry says that she hates it when her football fan husband refers to the turkey leftovers as "replays." She thought she had it bad. . . until she heard the wife of a TV executive who said her husband calls the leftovers "reruns." (Talk about insensitive!) But it gets worse. The local mortician's wife is not the least bit sympathetic because her husband calls them "remains." Associated Press, 113093.

The moral of the story? Be thankful for what you have. It could be worse!

Helen Keller, blind and deaf from birth, wrote: "I thank God for my handicaps. Through them I have found myself, my work, and my God."

Conclusion

Will this Thanksgiving celebration be a day to give thanks or just a day to eat a big meal and watch some football? I challenge you to make it a day where you truly give thanks.

Don’t be like the little boy I heard about. On his return from a birthday party, his mother asked him, "Bobby, did you thank the lady for the party?" To that, the boy replied, "Well, I was going to. But a girl ahead of me said, 'Thank you,' and the lady told her not to mention it. So I didn't."

We need to mention our thanks to God and to those around us who bless our lives.

For some of us here this morning, the greatest thanks we could ever offer to God would be to give Him our lives in obedient service. Have you done that?

Some of you need to. You need to quit ignoring His call on your life and give Him what He deserves for the things He has done, and continues to do, for you. I want to give you an opportunity to do that.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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