Navigating the Landscape of Thanksgiving and Praise

The following resource is brought to you by Real Life Community Church in Richmond, Kentucky.

We hope you're both challenged and encouraged by this message from Pastor Chris May.

Luke, chapter 17, beginning in verse 11.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee Jesus would be Jesus.

And as he entered the village he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying Jesus, master, have mercy on us.

When he saw them, he said to them go and show yourselves to the priests.

They went and as they went they were cleansed.

And then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

Now he was a Samaritan.

And then Jesus answered we're not 10 cleansed, where are the nine?

Because no one found a return and give praise to God, except for this foreigner.

And he said to him rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well.

It's the word of the Lord and you may be seated Well.

In light of Thanksgiving, I just felt like it would be fitting, and I felt moved by the Lord, to preach on the subject of thankfulness and gratitude this morning.

How many know that giving thanks is an important message throughout the scriptures?

Listen to this the word thanks, along with its derivatives, is used 150 times in the Bible.

74 of those are in the New Testament.

You think God's trying to tell us something.

Paul pens these words in 1 Thessalonians, 5, 16 through 18, which goes along with the testimony that Missy shared.

Paul writes these words rejoice in the Lord always.

Somebody say always, and again I say rejoice.

That's what he said in Philippians.

And here it is 1 Thessalonians rejoice always, pray without ceasing.

And here it is give thanks in some circumstances.

No, give thanks in what?

All circumstances.

How are you doing with that?

For this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you.

We always want to know God, what's your will?

What's your will?

Here it is pray without ceasing, rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances.

How can you give thanks in the difficult seasons of life?

Anybody can praise him on the mountaintop, but your faith is really put to the test when you go through trouble.

Oh, I thank him when all the bills are paid and my health is good and everything is just how I want.

But what am I going to do when things aren't going so well?

The Bible compels me to give him thanks, and why can we do that?

One?

He's worthy If he never did another thing for us.

He's worthy.

If he saved you and he never did anything else for you, he's worthy of praise and thanksgiving.

But how many know he gives us new blessings every day?

The Scripture says his mercies are new every morning.

The fact that you are here today, the fact that you have breath, it's a gift of the Lord, and even in the tougher seasons of life.

Here's what we know.

Romans declares that he is working all things, somebody say all things together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

But you know, thankfulness it seems, generally speaking, inside and outside of the church, to be lost or hurt.

Warren Wersby, a great commentator, illustrated this problem in his work on the book of Colossians.

So he told this story about a ministerial student in Evanston, illinois, who was part of a life-saving squad.

And the story goes that in 1960, listen to this a ship went to ground on the shore of Lake Michigan, near Evanston, and Edward Spencer waded again and again into the frigid waters to rescue 17 passengers.

In the process his health was permanently damaged.

You can imagine.

Some years later, at his funeral, it was noted that not one of the people he rescued ever thanked him.

That was in 1860.

What about today?

In today's text we find 10 men who are plagued with this horrible disease, leprosy, and they have heard about Jesus, they've heard of his miracles and as he's walking, they approach him and they ask him for mercy.

Lord, have mercy on us, heal us, lord.

We beg thee and the Lord heals them All.

10 men healed of leprosy.

But it's interesting in this text normally the miracle itself is the focus of miracle stories, but that's just that miracle is just kind of blown past, it's just barely mentioned.

The focus is the response of the men who were healed.

And so, after all, 10 men receive healing, jesus is baffled because only one man of Samaritan comes back to say thank you, to glorify God and to worship Jesus.

So here's my aim today, really simple message it's to encourage all of us to meditate on God's goodness every day, in all circumstances, and my aim is that those thoughts would move us continually to expressions of gratitude, thanksgiving.

So let me say it again my aim today is to encourage you, through this text, to meditate on the goodness of God every day.

Paul said in Philippians 4, think on, meditate on anything that's true, noble, praiseworthy.

Don't meditate on the negative.

Meditate on what God's done and who he is.

And I want us to learn to do that today even more so.

And I want that meditation, that contemplation, to move us on, to push us towards expressions of praise to our great God.

If you're with me just this morning, say amen.

So something that I learned from Missy's testimony is that my aunt and I it must run in the family we like to both use alliteration with our points.

So today we have the path to Thanksgiving.

Number two, the posture of Thanksgiving, and number three, the product of Thanksgiving.

How about that?

All right, you're not excited about that, it's understandable.

So, number one, let's look at the path to Thanksgiving.

In other words, how can we sense more gratitude in our hearts?

How can we move to this place as believers, where we are constantly expressing thanks to God?

Well, number one, if we're going to move to this place of Thanksgiving, you and I have to reject entitlement, rect entitlement.

Look at verses 12 and 13,.

And as Jesus entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying Jesus, master, have what Mercy on us.

You don't ask for mercy if you think you deserve something when you go into the bank and you've got money in your checking account with inflation, you're like I wish I knew what that felt like.

Come on, but listen.

You go in there, you've got money in your checking account and you go to do a withdrawal at the counter and you're talking to the teller.

You don't say hey, please have mercy on me and give me 100 bucks out of my account.

Now, if you don't have money in your account, you ask for mercy.

You see the difference why?

Because if you have money quote unquote you're money and you're entitled to withdraw it whenever you want.

Are you with me?

And so the presumption is here.

The implication is that these 10 men at least in theory, at least, at first they all ask God for mercy, meaning they're not saying Jesus, you owe me this.

I saw you bless other people, I saw you heal other people.

Now do it for me.

And there, you know, there's a lot of people who pray like that today, like the Lord holds them something.

Are you kidding me?

He is God.

We are not.

We deserve nothing, we don't deserve to be saved, we don't deserve healing.

But doesn't God bless us all the time?

Doesn't he answer prayer?

But when we go to Him, we don't say, oh Lord, you better do this.

No, we say God, have mercy on me.

That's humility and you owe me nothing I never bring up.

There's a verse, taken out of context so often, where it says God is no respecter of persons.

How is God no respecter of persons?

In context, I'll tell you how he's no respecter of persons.

He lets Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and master into the kingdom, most genders, every socioeconomic class, every tribe and nation.

He's no respecter of person.

He invites all people to the cross into the kingdom.

But there's some people who take the text like this.

They say well, god is no respecter of persons.

So, god, you healed this person, so you have to heal me in the same way.

God, I saw the Mercedes in the driveway next door and I'm way more spiritual to them.

You did it for them.

Now you owe me.

How many of you if you have multiple children?

The holidays are almost here and you have to spend the same exact amount, almost to the penny, on both children, because if not, they're going to look up prices.

Well, you spent more on my brother than you did on me.

It's entitlement, son.

You better be grateful you got anything at all, because you want to.

You know I should have gotten you to purchase you coal this year.

Right, that was my son, he knows.

So the path to Thanksgiving, it is paved with humility.

We must reject entitlement.

You'll never be thankful if you think God owes you something.

Number two the path to Thanksgiving is paved with obedience.

Look at verse 14.

And when Jesus saw these 10 lepers, he said to them go, show yourselves to the priests.

They were lepers considered unclean.

They were separated.

They could never approach the temple and the priests.

But then the Bible says and they were cleansed.

They were cleansed.

Do you get what's happening here?

Jesus does something curious here.

When they beg for mercy, normally the miracles like that, but Jesus is doing something.

He tells them to go show themselves clean, healed, before they're healed.

And so what I see here is that even before the miracle comes, they are what they're obedient.

And I wonder if sometimes we're only obedient when God works how we think he should work.

I'm only going to go to church if he's given me everything I want.

I'm only going to pray if the Lord's blessing me like this Come on somebody.

No, we're obedient.

We're obedient Before we see any miracle in our life.

And let me tell you how obedience, I believe, produces Thanksgiving.

Often we give thanks, and you see this throughout the Psalms.

Anytime God would deliver the people of Israel from the hands of an enemy, anytime any miracle would happen, they would respond and praise.

Now, to be sure, we'd appraise at all times, but when miracles happen in our lives, aren't we moved to say something like Hallelujah?

Well, miracles come through obedience, miracles come through obedience.

So you have these 10 men and they're commanded, curiously to say, by Jesus to go before they're healed and to show themselves to the priests.

Then they go in, a miracle happens.

So the path to Thanksgiving, it's paved with humility, this idea of wreck, rejecting entitlement.

It's paved with obedience to God.

But you can do both those things and still not have Thanksgiving, because here's the third thing that must be present in your life if you're going to be moved to Thanksgiving.

Here it is pause, pause.

Look at verse 15, one of them.

Everybody say one of them, so you've got nine who ask for mercy, rejecting entitlement.

You've got nine of them, or let's say all 10 of them in both instances.

So 10 rejected entitlement, 10 obeyed Jesus words, but only one paused.

And one of them, when he saw he was healed.

He turned back, which, when God answers our prayers, we're a busy driven people, are we not?

When we accomplish something in our job, or our kids accomplish something, or God does some American, our life, I fear.

I fear this in my own life that we don't take time to pause and celebrate those good things and we just move right on.

Nine of these men.

They don't pause, they don't turn back.

They have an agenda.

They keep moving in the same direction.

Thus, they fail to thank God for this great miracle.

We have Pastor Hunter and Jessica.

Pastor Ben and Dean have a podcast and you get to it through the church app.

It's called the Altered Podcast and at the very beginning.

I love the beginning of the show because they ask this question something like this how have you seen God work in your life this week?

That's a really good question and what's so interesting, what I love about it is it's not that every week.

I mean, dina, you had a great testimony about God no broken bones in your foot right.

You thought you had broken your foot and somebody prayed for you and I think it's still sore, but not broken, correct?

Yeah, and that's a huge prayer and God does miracles like that.

But you know what, normally their testimonies?

They're just simple things in life.

Last night Dina was supposed to play keyboard this morning, which means she would have had to have been here at 9.30.

Well, I changed the song, that first song, and it's kind of bluesy.

So I was like man, I don't really like to play a piano on this keyboard, on this one, and so I text Dina.

She was at the ladies retreat in Gatlinburg and I said, dina, would it be all right if I played this morning?

I didn't get a response for a while and I thought, oh, I hope she's not upset with me.

But she finally texts back and she says translation Courtney and I get to shop too as late as we want in Gatlinburg and I don't have to get up early, courtney saying she was still here.

God did not work a miracle in your life, but Dina has her testimony.

Praise the Lord, they got home.

At what one in the morning.

Guys, in all seriousness, we're always looking for the big parting of the Red Sea kind of miracles.

But how many know that every day our lives are littered with God's providence and goodness to us, hallelujah, that's really funny.

If Siri would have given me a blessing right then that God had done, I'd ran all over this place.

So there it is reject entitlement, obedience and pause, and you'll be moved to Thanksgiving.

So what's the posture, then, of Thanksgiving?

I want to take a moment and differentiate between gratitude and Thanksgiving, and I've got a quote my hero, tim Keller.

He had this beautiful tweet.

It goes like this it's one thing to be grateful, it's another to give thanks.

Gratitude, he writes, is what you feel, thanksgiving is what you do.

Okay, let me read it one more time it's one thing to be grateful, it's another to give thanks.

Gratitude is what you feel, thanksgiving is what you do.

Thanksgiving listen, it is an action, it is an expression, if you will, of gratitude and Thanksgiving.

What I see in the text is that Thanksgiving is best expressed through praise.

In the Bible, it's almost synonymous with praise.

Giving thanks to God is praise.

So Thanksgiving?

I want you to see this it is expressed through praise.

Look at verses 15 and 16,.

I want you to consider the Samaritans.

Praise the one who was healed and came back, it says one of them.

When he saw that he was healed, he turned back listen praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus feet, giving him thanks.

He turned back in response to this great gift of mercy.

He turns back and he shouts with a loud voice praising God, glorifying him, giving him thanks, and he begins to fall at Jesus feet in worship.

Let's consider his, let's consider his expression of Thanksgiving.

He shouts and he shouts in the room Jan and Carly, you got my back one more time and he and he shouts in the room.

Now I want you to know, I preached very differently than I normally preach last week.

I got a little political because it was in the text and when I talked about politics, you guys I mean you about danced around the room.

The gospel is way better than anything politically.

That I could say.

All right, just saying so you need, I know you can shout.

So he.

He praised God with a loud voice, but secondly, he fell at the feet of Jesus, which you know what this shows.

This is a form of worship.

Likely even the knelt or fell prostrate before the Lord, which is an act of worship.

You know what this shows.

He glorified God with a loud shout, but he fell at the feet of Jesus and worship.

In the Bible, only one person can receive worship and that's God.

You see the divinity of Jesus right here.

Jesus accepts that worship.

Now here's what I want you to know.

So remember, thanksgiving is expressed through praise.

So we're, we're all to give thanks Track with me, which means we're all to praise, we're all to praise the Lord, we're all to thank God, which means we're all to praise the Lord because Thanksgiving is expressed through our praise.

But I was thinking about this last night and this morning.

There are a lot of words translated praise in the Bible, and I just want to point out I think I have seven of them today, yup Seven.

Very quickly move through these.

There's seven different words for praise throughout the Bible, all of them important, and I'm going to any Greek scholars in here, thank the Lord, cause I'm going to butcher these, these words.

So the first word is Barak, and here's what it means in the Greek.

It means to bless in an act of adoration.

It's most often, as a matter of fact, translated not praise but blessed, but it is used as praise as well.

It means actually to kneel down and you get the idea of this reverent worship.

Yeah, and now everyone to twice as much praise on this by say praising this little time I Job 121, it says Job said naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return.

The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.

Blessed Barak, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Okay, so so the first one is this reverent worship, making much of the name of Jesus blessing him.

David said I'll bless the Lord at all times.

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

The second word is halal and it means to boast or rave about God in a clamorous way.

All right, I've been, I've preached in a lot of different churches and I noticed that people worship a little worship a little bit differently.

In the church I grew up in, we had Barak, this kind of reverent worship, and then Carla and, I think, jan, a couple remember when I preached at pastor Kenny Clay's church primarily African-American church in Winchester and man, those people preached me happy.

I'll tell you what I mean.

I preached, literally I preached the same message here and it was like good word, pastor.

And I preached it there like preaching pastor, come on, I preached it here.

I'm 25 minutes in and you guys are going like this there I'm closing and they're going keep preaching.

So so there's different words for praise.

Psalm 64, 3.

It says no, no, no, that's not the right verse.

I I put the wrong verse in there, but that is in there quite a bit.

Halal, but.

But it means this yes, to praise God in a clamorous way, but it it means to act foolish at times.

Have you ever been so blessed by the Lord that the people around you just begin shouting and praising and they, they call you a holy roller, they say you're out of your mind.

Well, you just tell them I'm sorry, I've just got a halal in me, and they'll say what you are crazy and they'll just leave you alone from there.

The third word is Zamar, and it is the joyful expression of music.

It can talk, it can be singing, but as it is especially used in the playing of instruments, and actually very specifically to to, to strum or to pluck stringed instruments, we have our worship leaders out today.

If you're, if you're new here, his name is Bob Stamper, so I was kind of filling in.

But but Bob, I knew him.

I knew of him in high school.

He was kind of a superstar.

He was not saved, but I'll never forget.

I went to a talent show.

He was a senior, I was a freshman at GRC in Winchester and this guy with long hair down of there, a beard, looks like Jesus.

He gets on the stage and honestly, I had never seen anything like it outside of professional musicians and he played I think it was Van Halen, note for note, and I thought this guy's a superstar.

Well, bob, fast forward into his college years, Bob gets radically saved and he completely changed.

He was a little fool of himself back then, pre-salvation, but the Lord humbled him and transformed him and gloriously saved him.

And so now Bob gets up here with his electric guitar.

Now I know some of you, like me, grew up where you would never have an electric guitar in worship and I know some of you likely.

When Bob does a guitar solo every once in a while, you think, man, this is just showing off or there, come on, there's no place for this in worship.

But let me tell you, a couple of times I have been sitting there and and watch Bob kind of holding back, and I felt the Lord impressed on me to go up here and to talk to Bob or to stand down there and go, like this, play my little air guitar, and I said, bob, I want you to just rip a guitar solo.

And let me tell you why.

Because he used to play his heart out for the world, for the enemy from music that doesn't glorify God.

Oh, hallelujah.

How much more in the church should he use an instrument to praise the Lord?

Whoo, and quit praying so much for me.

Psalm 18, 1 through 4.

I love you, oh Lord, my strength, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, and whom I take refuge, my shield and the Lord of my horn, of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised.

There's this third word here and it's some Samar.

That's what it is.

He's worthy to be praised.

He's worthy to have instruments that bring glory to him.

He's worthy to be, to have songs directed at him.

That's why we do this on Sunday mornings, that's why we start with music, because he's worthy and the Bible implores us to worship him in song.

Fourth is yodah.

I got the in there and it here's what it means to worship with extended hands.

You know what raising hands is.

It means a couple things.

I'm gonna get to the second one in just a minute, but it's a an international sign of surrender.

So in worship, you know, true worship is is not just singing, but singing that's accompanied with obedience, god.

God's not interested in disobedient worship.

It's just the lifting of your hands and it's often translated giving things.

So when you worship, it's a sign that we and you're lifting your hands, it's a sign of surrender.

God, I give myself away.

I give myself away so you can use me.

It's what it is.

So I'm 134, to lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord.

Number five is I'm really gonna butcher this one it's three syllables to hot, okay, and it means again to sing a song of praise.

It's T H I L A, I believe, and it's to sing a song of praise and I'll send these to you if you want them later.

But to sing a song of praise again.

But it means to praise with a hymn.

So some of you like the guitar solos, but you're like man.

I don't know if we should do these hymns.

They're all listen.

We're to do both.

That's why we do blended worship here.

20, song 223 you, you are holy, and thrown on the praises, the hymns of Israel, he's enthroned on our praise.

That unbelievable Number five.

I want to say ta-da, but it's to da, to da, t-o-d-a-h.

I have no idea how to say it and it means to give praise to God, especially with the choir of worshipers In Crossway.

There's a great article on Crossway's website and it says that this word includes an attitude of gratitude for God's promise deliverance, even while we're still in need.

So you praise God when the miracle comes, but if you want to, ta-da, ta-da, here's what you're doing.

When the miracle hasn't come, when you're praying but you feel like God's silence, you praise Him anyways because you realize he's still worthy.

Psalm 56 is a beautiful song.

The first verse goes like this Brie gracious to me, o God, for man tramples on me all day long.

An attacker oppresses me.

Have you ever felt like that, that all day long you're being trampled?

One thing by another man.

That's life a lot of the time, isn't it?

And we pray, but sometimes the Lord doesn't move in the way that we wish.

He's trying to teach us something, whatever it might be, through the trials.

So that's verse one, the first verse of the Psalm.

But then you go to the last verse of the Psalm, verse 12, and the Psalmist says I must perform my vows to you, o God.

I will render thank offerings to you, lord.

I'm being oppressed, attacked from every side.

Everything's going wrong in my life, but I want you to know I made a vow to you to love you, to serve you, to glorify you, and so I'm going to render thank offerings to you.

The seventh word here is Shabbach, and it means to shout.

Here it is again Psalm 145, for one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts of praise.

So the other word where I talked about you know kind of boisterous praise, this was like anything.

I mean, you're just acting like a crazy person, right?

But then here you have this specific idea of praise which is, I believe, is what the man in our story, the Samaritan, employed, and it means to shout with a loud tone.

Do you ever just have that in you, even you, quiet people?

Just all of a sudden, something happens and you're like woo, hallelujah.

Have you ever just had a hallelujah come out and you're like, where did that come from?

Now, here's what I want you to see.

This is why I gave you the seven words.

This is very important.

I'm almost done here, I promise.

There are many ways to express thanks to God, praise to God.

Here's what we learned through those words, and there are even more in the Hebrew language that are translated praise.

We can praise him through reverent acts of worship such as kneeling down.

We can praise him privately or we can praise him corporately, like with the choir.

Remember that we can praise him softly, we can praise him loudly with shouts of joy, we can praise him with singing and we can praise him with instruments.

I see people burning up.

I don't want y'all falling asleep on me.

We can rejoice in a way that's collected or we can rejoice and praise God in a way that's foolish.

And here's why this is important, because we all express Thanksgiving.

We're all to do this.

We all express Thanksgiving to God.

We should, but I want you to see that there's many ways to do so.

The way that you give thanks and praise to God may not look like my way, and I think we have to be careful about judging one another for the way that we express our thanks to God.

You know there are many people who praise God in very quiet, reverent ways To give thanksgiving to God, and sometimes, as more charismatic people, we can look at them and go, ah, they just don't got it, they just don't have it.

But then, on the other hand, there's the jans of the world who dye their hair purple and get on the stage jumping and shouting and running around the room.

You could hear her out in the parking lot.

And then what happens if we're not careful?

I heard her out on 4 Mile one time, and when I was home sick from church, I'm like what is that?

Is it one of the sirens?

Is there going to be a storm?

Oh no, that's just Jan five miles away.

And so what can happen, though, if we're not careful, is that maybe some of you who are more quiet and reverent you grew up in very traditional churches then you can look at somebody like Jan and poke your spouse and she's praising to go ladies lost her mind.

Nikki texts me this weekend from the women's retreat and says can I use the church card to get Jan out of jail?

And for a minute I believed her.

Listen, my point is this.

I'm not here to push anyone towards a certain expression of praise.

I just want you to praise him.

Is Kenny's church the way that they praise?

Is it God glorifying?

Yes.

Is the Baptist church down the road more traditional?

Is their praise glorifying to God?

Yes, inasmuch as those churches have hearts that are set on God as much as their worship is authentic.

Let me just give you one illustration here.

October was pastor appreciation month and I want to say thank you from all of our, on behalf of all of our pastors, for showing so much appreciation.

And what's so interesting in the way that you guys show appreciation is you do it in different ways.

Some of you use words of encouragement and I want you to know how much we appreciate that.

As a matter of fact, when Wendy and some of the team were talking about recognizing all of our pastors, all five of us on stage, I said I want Wendy doing it, because Wendy gives.

She doesn't just say, well, I just appreciate someone.

So she'll say this is why I appreciate pastor Hunter, this is the way I appreciate pastor Jerry, so on and so forth.

So some express gratitude and I'm very thankful this with with kind words.

You spoke words.

Some of you wrote notes.

Matter of fact, I have right here in my Bible wonderful notes that when, when I'm discouraged, I just pull these out.

When the mean people of the church get ahold of me, I say, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to pull out the nice people's letters, I'm just serious.

So here it is.

So some give kind words, some write notes, others express gratitude through monetary gifts.

Have you ever heard of a Pentecostal handshake?

A couple of you.

I won't point you out because I don't want to, I don't want to rob you of your blessing, but but you go to shake my hand.

This is why I never refuse a handshake anymore.

And there's there's a bill in there, there's a, there's a you know some monetary gift in there.

Then, finally, lynn makes, takes time to, to craft in the.

She's so gifted and she designs and crafts things for us.

This time we got these beautiful bookmarks.

Half the stuff in my house Lynn made throw, pillows, wall hangings, you name it.

I'm just waiting for Don to get on board, because he's a woodworker.

I need him to make me some furniture.

But my point is this you all show appreciation in different ways.

Because you're different people, you speak different languages of love.

We've heard about that.

Right, there's the five love languages, and and I'm so grateful for each of you, except for the ones who show their love through physical touch, cause some of you are huggers.

I had to get, I had to get through this.

I used to have Steven told me, you know, when I first told him, man, I I'm not, I'm not really a hugger he said all right, I'm going to hug you for 60 seconds, I'm going to put put you.

You know we're going to get through this together, the most awkward minute of my life, but I did it and now I'll hug you.

Okay, thanks be to God.

But it doesn't matter how you showed us appreciation.

The point is, you did.

And it doesn't matter how you express your worship, if you're quiet, if you're loud, if you're kneeling, if you're jumping just make sure it's authentic.

The important thing is that you express thanks to God.

Finally, what's the product of our Thanksgiving?

This is cool and this would be a short point.

But what results from Thanksgiving this morning?

Well, number one God is magnified.

We saw that the man turned back and he gave glory to God.

How many know, in everything we do and are eating and drinking and everything we're to glorify God.

How do we do it?

We thank him, we praise him.

This is why we say quote unquote the blessing, we call it giving thanks.

Thank you, god for this food.

Bless it, lord.

We ask Psalm 6930,.

I will praise the name of God with a song.

I will magnify him with Thanksgiving.

When you and I give the Lord thanks, he is magnified, he is glorified.

And this is why Jesus is so disheartened with the nine lepers who didn't come back, because God desires our praise, he demands it.

So that's what happens, number one, when we give God thanks, he's glorified.

But secondly, this is so good.

Do you know, thanksgiving brings us wholeness.

Let me show you this.

This is going to blow your minds.

I didn't realize this until yesterday.

In the text, verse 19,.

And Jesus said to this one who came back and gave thanks to God.

Here's what he said rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you you might underline this word well, your faith has made you.

Well.

This is interesting.

Think of it all.

10 men were healed, but only one was made well.

Under the O Covenant understand this.

Leprosy separated people from the worship community and temple worship, as they were considered unclean, they could not truly go into the presence of God.

But the Samaritan who is kind of put on the outskirts of Israel?

He's already Samaritan, so the Jews don't like him anyways, and on top of that he's got this skin disease that would make him unclean.

Double whammy 10 of the men healed.

But what it says here.

Jesus says to the man your faith has made you well.

Well, here's what's so cool that the word translated well here in the Greek.

Anybody know what it is.

It's the word sozo.

Sozo, it's the word that's used so often in Scripture.

That's translated saved or salvation.

As a matter of fact, it's the same word that's used in Romans 10, 9, you know this verse.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God's raised him from the dead, you will be saved, sozo.

Now wait a minute.

Nine or all 10 lepros healed.

10 lepros healed, but only one saved, sozo.

We're not saved, to be sure, by Thanksgiving, like if you're not saved, you don't just say, oh, thank you God, and then you're brought into the kingdom.

We're saved by faith.

But do you notice what Jesus says?

He says your faith has made you well.

The implication is the other nine men may not have expressed faith at all, but God out of his mercy.

What do you do?

He healed them.

But one man came back and he expressed faith which led to sozo.

Which tells me this true saving faith is evidence, in part by Thanksgiving, and a better translation in verse 19 might be this go your way.

Your faith has made you whole.

Nine of the 10 men well, all 10 men physically healed, but only one, the Samaritan, who gave thanks, healed Body, soul, spirit brought to God, made whole.

Dina, would you mind coming to keys for me?

Second Corinthians 415, stand your feet with me.

We have much to be grateful for, but the apex of our gratitude ought to come when we look to Calvary, when we look at the cross of Jesus Christ.

Second Corinthians 415,.

Paul writes for its all, for your sake.

Paul's talking about his work, his ministry, his persecution.

He goes through it all he says for your sake, so that the grace, that, as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase Thanksgiving to the Lord.

How do we do what we do here?

Why do we proclaim the gospel?

Why do we make much of God?

Why do we want you to be saved?

It's for your good.

It doesn't stop there.

It's so that, as we receive grace upon grace look what he says as grace extends to more and more people, there's an increase of Thanksgiving.

It's all about Jesus, it's all about giving God thanks.

And so if you're not saved today, if you've not experienced so-so, if you find in your heart that you cannot give thanks to God in all situations.

Do a heart check this morning.

Let's meditate on the goodness of God, and perhaps some of you never known, truly known, the Lord, and if that's you, I invite you to come to Jesus today.

And for those of you who are saved, you're going through a rough spot.

I invite you to meditate on God's goodness and giving thanks this morning.

Psalm 343, o, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name forever.

Let's pray God how we love you, oh Lord, how we praise you.

You are worthy of Thanksgiving.

So as we gather this Thursday with friends and family, we celebrate all that we have in this great country.

As we eat turkey and stuffing and all of the things that go with it, may we, in all of our family time and busyness, may we not forget that every good and perfect gift ultimately comes from you.

So help us this Thanksgiving in all ways to just give you thanks, not just at mealtime with a quick prayer, but always, and pray this in Jesus' good name, Amen.

Thank you for listening.

If you'd like to know more about how you can have a relationship with Jesus Christ, or if you have questions about our church, you can email us at infoatmyrealchurchorg.

Real Life Community Church is located at 335 Glendon Avenue in Richmond, Kentucky.

We invite you to join us for worship Sunday at 10.45 am or Wednesday at 7 pm.

Visit us online at myrealchurchorg.