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Grace Emmanuel
Church
Pastor Sam Chess
(Are You Thankful
to Jesus?)
We've been trying to answer these questions…
I) Is anyone thirsty?
2) Is anyone weary and carrying heavy burdens?
3) Do you ache for the touch of Jesus?
4) Are you crying out for Jesus' complete forgiveness?
5) Are you (really) a follower Jesus?
6) Are you thankful ?
Jesus is making his way from Capernaum where we met him calling Matthew
last week, around the Sea of Galilee, walking with his disciples down the
dusty road toward Jerusalem. He's just ready to enter a village on the border
of Galilee and Samaria when he twitches his nose… and breathes in the
familiar smell of rotting flesh.
Remember the leper two weeks ago… remember Jesus reaching right into the
open, oozing sores, ignoring the stumps where limbs ought to have been,
ignoring the lack of a nose or ears which had simply fallen off… remember him
reaching right into the man's soul and healing him from the inside clear out
to the end of his newly forming fingers???
What his nose picks up today is not one leper…but ten lepers and he hears
them droning the familiar phrase… unclean…unclean… When they see him all ten
raspy voices yell/croak out in his direction…
Luke 17:11-19 As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the
border between Galilee and Samaria. 12 As he entered a village there, ten
lepers stood at a distance, 13 crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.
No hand on each chest… no transfer of healing for disease… this time he
seems to put all the weight of faith on their shoulders… He doesn't even say,
O.K. I'm going to heal you now… He simply "looked at them and said, “Go show
yourselves to the priests."
Talk about a test of faith… They must have been muttering out unanswered
questions to each other in their raspy, leper voices. Somebody must have
said, I bet He's going to heal us from a distance in response to our
faith…and soon all ten were beginning to believe.
Finally one screams out….look my hand is growing back… look your toes are
reappearing!!
Luke 17:14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.
And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.
Test one completed…test two just beginning. Nine rush on to show
themselves to the priest… then on to tell the good news to their families and
friends. One…a Samaritan (half Jewish/ half foreigner), turns back to find
his healer.
15 One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus,
shouting, “Praise God!” 16 He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking
him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan.
17 Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? 18 Has
no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 And Jesus
said to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.” (NLT)
Jesus, indirectly, gives us a very important principle: Does God expect
to be thanked for the blessings he brings into our lives? YES!
Obviously God doesn't need our thanks to stroke his sagging ego… so
there must be some additional inner benefit that we receive… when we
are thankful…
Eventually the New Testament get beyond giving us positive examples of
those who benefited by being thankful….. and starts to just, outright,
command thankfulness as a way of life for us as Believers.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is
God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
Can it be any plainer than that? Are we to be thankful?.... to God?....
We are poised at the beginning of national Thanksgiving week. I'll be
giving you a Thanksgiving quiz at the meal this afternoon… so I don't want to
spoil that… but our first president George Washington declared a one time day
of Thanksgiving, to God, for his blessings… and virtually every one of the
last 26 or so Presidents have reinforced a national day of Thanksgiving,
to GOD, for His national and personal blessings.
Many, many unbelieving, or just politically correct people, are trying to
figure out how to celebrate a national day of Thanksgiving without actually
thanking God for the blessings we experience… Our country pauses for a day of
thanks because that is a Biblical pattern and command and this country was
founded on the absolute truths found in the Word of God!
Hebrews 13:15 Therefore by Him (JESUS) let us continually offer the
sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving
thanks to His name. (NKJV)
How are you personally doing with this command? About how often this last
month would you say you stopped and just thanked God for all of the blessings
in your life?
Pastor, I would be more inclined to do that if what few blessing I have
weren’t overwhelmed by all my problems…. You can't expect me to be thankful
until at least some of my many problems recede.
"Here's my formula… I'll pray for God to bless me… when he finally see fit
to fill my life with lots of money, perfect health, relationships with no
thorns… then I'll have something to thank him for….
Wrong formula! Would you like to see the right formula…
Philippians 4: 6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about
everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can
understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ
Jesus. (NLT)
Colossians 3:15, 17 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your
hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And
always be thankful. 17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a
representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the
Father. (NLT)
When the Pilgrims observed the first day of Thanksgiving do any of us
think they were celebrating the end of their troubles?
When Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863… do
you history buffs know what was going on? That was exactly in the center of
the Civil War! Over 600,000 Americans lost their lives in just four years
fighting each other!
Yet Lincoln, right in the middle of the turmoil, a week after his
Gettysburg Address… asks the nation to pause and thank God for all his
blessings. Why? He understood the truth of Scripture…
1 Thessalonians 5:18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is
God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
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In 1585 in Eilenberg, in the area of Saxony in Germany, a little boy was
born. He was the son of a rather poor coppersmith. He worked his way through
the University of Leipzig, was ordained as a Lutheran minister and came to be
the pastor in his hometown of Eilenberg at the age of thirty-one. He arrived
there just as the Thirty Years War began to take its terrible toll on the
region around Eilenberg. A steady stream of refugees poured into the city
through its gates.
The Swedish army surrounded the city, and famine and plague were rampant.
Eight hundred homes were destroyed, and the people began to die. The pastor’s
home became a refuge for many, although his family had meager resources of
their own. There was a tremendous strain on the pastors who had to conduct
dozens of funerals daily. Finally, during the terrible plague of 1637, the
remaining pastors, too, succumbed, all but this young pastor. As the only
pastor alive in the city, at one point he was conducting 50 funerals a day.
Pastor Rinkart wrote a very famous Thanksgiving hymn.
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices Who wondrous
things has done, in Whom this world rejoices
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And guard us through all ills in this world, till the next!
When the Swedes surrounded the city and demanded a huge ransom, he left
the safety of the walls to plead for mercy for the city. The Swedish
commander, impressed by his faith and courage, drastically lowered his
demands. Soon afterward, the Thirty Years’ War ended. This young pastor whose
whole life had been little but grief and suffering wrote a hymn for a grand
celebration service. Martin Rinkart died a year after the war ended, but we
still sing Rinkart’s hymn, usually at Thanksgiving:
All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given,
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, Whom earth and Heav’n adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore
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Being thankful is not what one does during the good times in life. Being
thankful is what one does, continually, because he/she has a personal
relationship with the Creator of the universe. Thankfulness comes cascading
out of a heart that knows it has been forgiven of sin and offered eternal
life by/with the Forgiver of sins!
Thankfulness is the natural response that surfaces from someone who
realizes that are not the captain of their fate/ the pilot of their soul.
Thankfulness is non-existent in the person who really believes they have
single-handedly shaped their own existence…but the person who comes to truly
understand that the air they breathe, the power of being that makes them
alive at all, the strength to perform work, the mental capacity to know
anything let alone understand how to reason…. (and on and on and on)
All those things are a gift from God!
What natural response that should erupt from the heart and mouth of
someone who really begins to grasp how much of their life is a direct gift
from God.
I've shared with you before…but it is such a huge discovery…
The Greek word for Grace is….. CHARIS
The Greek word for Gift is …… CHARIS
The Greek word for Thanksgiving is …… CHARIS
The same exact word used in the Bible to describe God's unmerited favor to
us… is used to describe our expected gratitude back to him
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In fact, In Romans 1… when God is describing the complete depravity of a
rebellious sinful person… guess what characteristic He says shows a person to
be truly wicked..
Wickedness = A complete lack of thankfulness! Un-thankfulness is the mark
of a wicked person!
Watch this…
Romans 1:18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked
people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 They know the truth
about God because he has made it obvious to them…. 21 Yes, they knew God,
but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they
began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their
minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became
utter fools…. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped
and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself… (NLT)
The mother of all "right formulas"…
Colossians 2:6-7 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as
your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots
grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your
faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow
with thankfulness. (NLT)
Break it down…six points…
1) Now that you have accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord
2) You must continue to follow him.
3) Let your roots grow down into him
4) Let your lives be built on him.
5) Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught
6) You will overflow with thankfulness. (NLT)
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