Of Faith and Thankfulness

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered on the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving Day, the 18th of November, 2018 at Pilgrim Reformed Church.  Look for the video of this and our other services on our Vimeo channel:  http://vimeo.com/pilgrimreformedchurch.]

During His short, three year ministry on earth, Jesus performed a lot of miracles as signs of His authority and His authenticity as the Son of God.  Many of these miracles were acts of healing.  Everyone who was healed were pretty much overjoyed, but not all of them stopped long enough to say thanks.

Please listen and follow along as I read from the Modern English Version of our Holy Bible of one time when Jesus healed some lepers.  Hear the Gospel account of the Apostle Luke, chapter 17, verses 11 through 19…

11 As Jesus went to Jerusalem, He passed between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As He entered a village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood at a distance. 13 They lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

14 When He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned with a loud voice glorifying God, 16 and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus said, “Were not the ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Were there not any found to return and give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then He said to him, “Rise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

--Luke 17:11-19 (MEV)

Let us pray…  Father God, You sent Your Son into our world to offer us eternal life if we would only believe in Him and follow His voice.  Thank You, Father, for this great gift!  Please help us be more thankful of all You give us.  Speak to our hearts this morning, Father.  Give us a better understanding of how our faith should give rise to a thankful attitude for all You do.  This we pray in the glorious name of Your Son Jesus.   Amen.


In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years' War, a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried five thousand of his parishioners in one year - an average of fifteen a day.  His parish was ravaged by war, death, and economic disaster.  In the heart of that darkness, with the cries of fear outside his window, he sat down and wrote this table grace for his children:

Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things had done,
In whom His world rejoices.
Who, from our mother's arms,
Hath led us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.

Here was a man who knew that true thanksgiving comes from the love of God, not from outward circumstances.


What does being thankful mean to us?  If there is one place we can look for how-to examples, it’s the book of Psalms in our Holy Bible.  Two that quickly came to my mind are both of unknown authorship, but some attribute both to David.  The first comes from Psalm 95, verses 1 through 3…

1 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.

--Psalm 95:1-3 (NKJV)

Sing to the Lord and shout joyfully, for He is indeed our Rock and our salvation.  Let us give thanks just to come into His presence!

When do we come into God’s presence?  Not just when we walk through those doors, into what some refer to as “God’s house”.  When we accept Jesus as Lord, then one person of God lives within us – His Holy Spirit.  By our faith, we are God’s house.  Effectively then, we are in God’s presence every single second, and especially when we stop to pray.  So according to the psalmist, we should always be thankful to God; after all, He is great and He is good.


The second example is much like the first.  In Psalm 100 we are instructed to…

1 Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before His presence with singing.
3 Know that the Lord, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

4 Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
5 For the Lord is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.

--Psalm 100 (NKJV)

Again, we are to enter into His presence with thanksgiving and praise, making a joyful shout.  We are His, He made us, we are nothing without Him.

Notice that we are also to serve the Lord as part of our thanksgiving.  And to serve Him with gladness at that!  We should be happy to serve our Lord – we should view it as a great opportunity for us to do so.


Jesus healed ten lepers, but it didn’t happen immediately.  He told them to go show the priests that they had been cleansed of their disease so they could rejoin the synagogue and the community.  As they went to do as He commanded, the healing took place.

I can only imagine they were overjoyed when they noticed they were now clean.  Leprosy was pretty much the worst affliction a Jew could suffer, because it made them an outcast among their kind.  They could not worship in the temple, nor even live in their communities any longer.  So being cleansed, being healed, would make all the difference in the world to them.

Yet only one of the ten returned to Jesus to thank Him and to glorify God for what had been given him.  Only one, and a Samaritan at that, one already treated poorly by the Jews even when healthy.  This one man showed gratitude for being healed.  Jesus said his faith had made him well.

Our Lord tied faith and thankfulness together.  Because of our faith, we are granted salvation.  And for that we should truly be thankful.  But God gives us so much more than our salvation.  He gives us things both great and small.

We already saw that we should always be thankful because we are always in God’s presence.  But the Apostle Paul tells us there’s another reason to always be thankful.  He tells us to rejoice always, to pray without ceasing, and to give thanks for everything.  Not just the really great things, like our salvation, but for every single thing.  Why?  Because it is the will of God through Christ Jesus for us to do.  It is God’s will that we give Him thanks for all His provisions, for all His mercies, for all He has done and continues to do.  We often ask what is God’s will.  It is that our faith give rise to constant thankfulness.  We should have an attitude of gratitude to God for what He has done through His Son Jesus, and for what He does on our behalf every day we live.

This Thanksgiving Day, and every day, give thanks to God.  Thank Him for our faith.  Thank Him for our life.  Thank Him for His Son and for His Holy Spirit living within us.  In everything give thanks.  In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.


Let us pray…  Father God, help us always be grateful for Your many blessings.  Forgive us, Father, when we fail to give You the glory.  Forgive us when we don’t stop to give You thanks.  Please help us see and acknowledge all You do for us.  Help us be ever thankful.

Please hear us now, Father, as we come to You in the silence, speaking from our hearts, promising to turn from our sin, and asking for Your help by our faith to serve You in all we do…

Lord Jesus, You showed Your power and authority by healing so many people, yet not all took the time to thank You for it.  Forgive us, Lord, when we don’t recognize Your hand at work in our life.  Please help us see all that You and our Father God do for us.  Let our gift of faith always give rise to a thankful attitude.

This we pray in Your glorious name, Lord Jesus Christ, our Master and our Savior.  Amen.