Most of us would consider ourselves to be pretty grateful people, but the story of the 10 lepers in Matthew 17 challenges us to consider how grateful we really are. In this message we consider not only the rightness of praising God for what we have received, but also the wonderful difference it makes to our lives to live gratefully instead of ungratefully.
Ungrateful
29/05/2011
Recap
Yesterday was the National Day of Thanksgiving. Did anyone do anything special to express their thanks to someone? I was going to write a letter to our local politicians to thank them for the great support they have given us this past year, but I got busy and forgot - sort of appropriate given our passage for today!
Earlier in the service we heard the story of the 10 guys who got healed from leprosy (Luke 17:11-19).
I want you to try and put yourself into their situation for a minute – imagine if you were one of the people suffering from leprosy.
Leprosy was a term used in the ancient world for a number of different skin diseases. A common form of leprosy - now known as Hansen’s disease - is a bacterial infection that can lay dormant for years before showing symptoms. Then it will generally attack the skin, nerves, bone and cartilage of a person’s extremities – arms, legs, nose, ears and so on. If it’s not treated it will cause severe disfigurement as limbs and features are eaten away by the bacteria.
It’s still fairly common in the two-thirds world but is fairly easily treated today using antibiotics. In Jesus’ day it was untreatable and usually very contagious.
Of course, since it was untreatable and contagious, anyone suffering from it was immediately quarantined – sent away from mainstream society to live in leper colonies.
So imagine yourself in this story. You have a family, home, friends, a job and so on, then one day you discover a kind of rash on your skin. You’re worried, so you keep it clean, dry and covered up, but it grows.
Reluctantly, you go and show this to the priests – and they confirm that you have leprosy and need to be quarantined immediately. They suggest you repent of whatever sin caused you to contract the disease and beg God for mercy, but there aren’t many examples around of people who that has worked for.
You have a horrible feeling that you will end up unable to have any real contact with the people you love. You will be disfigured and unable to provide for yourself, dependent on the mercy of those you cannot touch.
It’s heart-breaking. But it’s real life and there’s no avoiding it.
Can you imagine yourself in that situation? It’s scary isn’t it.
We live in a country where good healthcare is something we take for granted. We tend to think that most things that go wrong with us can be fixed, but it’s not always the case. It’s not the case in most places in the world and it’s not always the case even with the best medical technology & healthcare available. Sometimes we get bad news.
These guys had been living with bad news – they’d been experiencing the effects in their bodies. Then Jesus turns up.
Again, imagine how you would feel having heard about Jesus the miracle worker and then seeing Him in the distance. Suddenly there’s hope!
You call out “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” You want to fall at his feet but you’re not allowed to approach anyone.
You desperately hope that He will come over to you and lay his hands on you for your healing. He doesn’t. Instead He calls back “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”
You look at each other. You can still see the disease! Disfigured features, discolorations on the skin, lack of feeling in your own extremities – you’re not healed, why should you go see the priests?
How humiliating to have to walk up the town calling out “unclean” so people can flee from you. When you get there you’ll need to call for the priest to come outside and inspect you. Why do that when clearly you are not free of the disease?
However hope is stirring in your heart. You believe that Jesus knows what He’s doing. So you nod, and so do the others. You turn and make your way toward the town. As you cry out people run terrified from you. Children are rushed inside as mothers stare hatefully at you for risking their contamination.
At some point along the way you feel a change in your body. You can actually feel your fingers and toes! You can wiggle them for the first time in ages! Your skin tingles and is free from the ugly splotches.
You know that you are healed, and now you can’t wait to see the priest. Jesus has told you to do it, and now you know that you are going to pass the inspection. There will be some cleansing ceremonies you’ll need to do which will take over a week to complete (Leviticus 14:1-32), but you’re only moments away from being allowed to have contact with healthy people again. Your family and friends will soon be restored to you – you can’t wait to take them in your arms again.
Stop the story!
This is where paths diverge.
This is where one man separates himself from the crowd.
How do you think those 10 guys were feeling?
Elated, excited, overjoyed…… grateful?
I’m sure that later on when they thought back on what happened, they would be full of gratitude to Jesus for what He did for them.
I’m sure that if someone had tapped them on the shoulder and said “Do you feel grateful for being healed?”, they would have all responded with “Of course we do!”
But 9 of those guys did not go back to Jesus and say “thankyou”. Some of them may have had the thought in the back of their minds that one day they would seek Him out to say thanks, but first they wanted to just get on with experiencing what they had longed so much for.
Let’s look at how this story finishes:
Luke 17:15-19
15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” [1]
Now here’s the interesting point – all 10 of those guys had faith in Jesus, and all ten were healed. But only one praised God for what He had done for them.
Does it really matter?
After all – the 10 all got the healing they wanted. They were all winners right?
Before I answer that, I want to share with you a very strange old folk tale.
The Story of the Ungrateful Son
Who’s heard of the Brothers Grimm? They are famous for writing down a huge collection of folk tales that they collected from across Germany
- Cinderella
- Rapunzel
- Hansel and Grethel
- Sleeping beauty
- Snow-white
- Rumpelstiltskin
- Tom Thumb
This is one of their less famous short stories, which is called “The Ungrateful Son”.
A man and his wife were once sitting by the door of their house, and they had a roasted chicken set before them, and were about to eat it together. Then the man saw that his aged father was coming, and hastily took the chicken and hid it, for he would not permit him to have any of it. The old man came, took a drink, and went away. Now the son wanted to put the roasted chicken on the table again, but when he took it up, it had become a great toad, which jumped into his face and sat there and never went away again, and if any one wanted to take it off, it looked venomously at him as if it would jump in his face, so that no one would venture to touch it. And the ungrateful son was forced to feed the toad every day, or else it fed itself on his face; and thus he went about the world without knowing rest.
After reading that story I thought to myself – why was he called “the ungrateful son”? Why wasn’t it “the greedy son” or “the selfish son” or “the unkind son”?
The fact is that if the son had gratitude in his heart for what his father had done for him over the course of his life, he would have been happy to share his feast. He would have enjoyed a meal with his wife and father in loving fellowship.
As it turned out, his ingratitude turned what should have been a blessing into a curse that made his life miserable.
Is it possible that you or I could find ourselves in that kind of position? Is it possible that things that we should be enjoying and sharing with others can become ugly monsters that control our lives? I think it is.
Whether it happens or not depends on whether we are grateful or ungrateful people.
We have no idea what happened to the 9 men who did not return to thank Jesus. Did they become better for the experience? Were they sympathetic to other people with illnesses since they knew what it was like to suffer from a disease? Were they generous toward the poor as they knew what it was like to lose a livelihood?
We just don’t know.
But we do know that there are many people who experience blessings in life but do not appreciate them. If you were to ask them “Are you grateful for….” they would undoubtedly say yes, but they do not stop themselves to consider their blessings and give thanks. There are people who have much but want more. There are people who whinge and complain about their struggles despite the fact that they’ve had things relatively easy. There are people who just feel entitled to stuff, somehow expecting others to give but never feeling the need to give of themselves.
Could that be you or I sometimes?
You might think “I’ve never been blessed with anything like a miraculous healing”.
Really?
Let me tell you about a man named Narsappa, who lives in India
Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to leave. He says his mother started grieving for him "as if I was already dead". Shortly afterwards, his father took him to a hospital two hours away from home and left him there. No one ever came to visit him and Narsappa never went home again.[2]
Narsappa is now 42 years old – this article was published only 2 months ago. Despite the fact that India
Have you ever taken a course of antibiotics? Narsappa would have loved that opportunity when he was a kid!
Do you ever stop to thank God for the blessings you have received?
Sadly, many of us are so focussed on satisfying our selfish desires that we don’t stop to realise how grateful we should be for what we’ve already been given. We don’t stop to think about what blessings we could share with others like Narsappa.
We could list our blessings all day and still not come to the end of them. However I want to bring our attention to the big one.
One reason that we celebrate communion every Sunday is that we never want to lose sight of the most important blessing we have received.
When Jesus met these 10 lepers, He was following a winding route toward Jerusalem
We have been given eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, because of His death and resurrection for us.
We know that whatever suffering we experience is temporary.
We know that eternal joy awaits us.
We know that we get to receive this despite the fact that we have sinned against God and do not deserve His love or His acceptance.
We know that it is purely because of His grace that we have eternal life.
And we should be grateful.
Like the Samaritan in this story we should praise God in a loud voice and fall at the feet of Jesus in worship and thanksgiving.
It’s the right thing to do.
But not only is it right to do that, it actually makes a huge difference to our lives.
At the University of California
- People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).
- Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others’ success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others.
Do you want your friends to think of you as caring, generous and helpful? Most of us do!
Do you want to be happier and more content with what you have? Would you rather be generous with what you have or envious about what you don’t have?
All of these things are affected by how much or how little gratitude is part of your life.
Listen to this wisdom from Psalm 92:1-8
1 It is good to praise the Lord
and make music to your name, O Most High,
2 to proclaim your love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre
and the melody of the harp.
4 For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord;
I sing for joy at the works of your hands.
5 How great are your works, O Lord,
how profound your thoughts!
6 The senseless man does not know,
fools do not understand,
7 that though the wicked spring up like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be forever destroyed.
8 But you, O Lord, are exalted forever.
According to this Psalm, foolish and senseless people look at what others have and are envious. Their attention is on what they want but do not have, and they forget that all such things are temporary. They forget what Solomon discovered and wrote about in Ecclesiastes, which is that achieving these things brings no satisfaction anyway.
The wise person praises the Lord and fills his or her heart with gratitude for all that God has done and all that He is. Our hearts become filled with joy and peace and our lives become characterised by a generosity of spirit that reflects the character of God.
Philippians 4:4-7
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
By all means present your requests to God. Believe that He can answer your prayers and give you the desires of your heart.
But never leave out rejoicing in the Lord. Never leave out thanksgiving. If you do, your heart will become selfish and your desires will not be in line with what God wants for your life. You will become ungrateful. You will be like the man with a monstrous toad on his face, surrounded by blessings but unable to really enjoy them.
God knows what you need, and he loves you so much that He will do what is best for you. Trust Him and be thankful for what He has already done for you. You might think that’s easy for me to say, but you would be wrong. But never mind about me, I’d like to finish by telling you about a guy who lived about 400 years ago.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Martin_Rinckart.jpg)
German pastor Martin Rinkart served in the walled town of Eilenburg
Listen to what he wrote as a prayer for his children to recite before meals during this terrible period.
1. 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. 2. O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; and keep us still in grace, and guide us when perplexed; and free us from all ills, in this world and the next. 3. 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 heaven adore; for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. Martin had learned the power of gratitude.
In the midst of terrible suffering he wanted his children to be reminded daily of God’s good gifts to them in this world and the next. He wanted his children to learn to praise God even when circumstances were horrible.
Everyone thinks they are grateful, but are you really grateful? Is your life showing that you are grateful?
Don’t ever think that more and better stuff, better relationships, easier circumstances will make you happy. You will keep pursuing them but the monster of an ungrateful heart will never be satisfied.
Gratitude isn’t something that just happens inside when things are going well, it’s an attitude of the heart that we must choose.Choose to have an attitude of gratitude and whatever hardships you may experience in this fallen world, you will know the joy and peace of God which will guard your heart and mind and help you to be the person God had in mind when He made you. A person who gives Him praise. A person through whom God blesses the world.
We live in a marketing-driven culture where we are being pressured every day to be ungrateful for what we have and lustful of what we don’t have. We are conditioned to keep pursuing happiness instead of being thankful for the blessings we have been given.
Make Psalm 92 (and plenty of others like it) your lifestyle:
That’s the life I want.
Don’t ever think that more and better stuff, better relationships, easier circumstances will make you happy. You will keep pursuing them but the monster of an ungrateful heart will never be satisfied.
Gratitude isn’t something that just happens inside when things are going well, it’s an attitude of the heart that we must choose.Choose to have an attitude of gratitude and whatever hardships you may experience in this fallen world, you will know the joy and peace of God which will guard your heart and mind and help you to be the person God had in mind when He made you. A person who gives Him praise. A person through whom God blesses the world.
We live in a marketing-driven culture where we are being pressured every day to be ungrateful for what we have and lustful of what we don’t have. We are conditioned to keep pursuing happiness instead of being thankful for the blessings we have been given.
Make Psalm 92 (and plenty of others like it) your lifestyle:
Psalm 92:1-4
1 It is good to praise the Lord
and make music to your name, O Most High,
2 to proclaim your love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre
and the melody of the harp.
4 For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord;
I sing for joy at the works of your hands.
It’s good to be grateful. It’s good to praise the Lord. It’s good to recite His blessings in the morning when we rise and at night before we sleep and at all times in between. He makes us glad & fills us with joy.That’s the life I want.
