Number seven, I guess I should have looked at the calendar. I didn't realize that Christmas has already come upon us here. I'm still living in the past today. I'm still in November. You know, if I had another message in here, I probably would just switch over. I'm thinking about preaching on Thanksgiving. But then I think to myself, you know, how many of you got leftovers in the refrigerator from Thanksgiving? Still eating on them? Yeah, exactly. We are too. I'm hoping that's gonna end soon. I'm hoping my wife will be led to get rid of the leftovers and bring out something new. I like it one day for one day, but after that, that's all I need. She loves it, but we still get along. Isn't that amazing how you can do that? Agree to disagree. In Luke chapter number 17, read a passage of scripture that talks about, and many times as we look at this, we do think about thanksgiving and we think about giving thanks and being thankful. And I think that's okay. We're ought to be thankful year round. Luke 17, verse number 11, the Bible says, and he came to pass as he went to Jerusalem, he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him 10 men that were lepers and which stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, go show yourself to the priest. And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed. In other words, as soon as they obeyed the Lord, they turned around, they left, they were cleansed. They were cleansed of their leprosy. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. Jesus answered and said, were there not 10 cleansed, but where are the nine? They are not found that return to give glory to God, save this stranger. He said unto them, arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. And this man, not only was he saved physically, but he was saved spiritually that day. Let's go to the Lord in prayer, if we could, and ask the Lord to bless the reading of his word. Lord, as we come before you today, Lord, today we'd ask that you would just, you would bless. Lord, we sure do need your help. Lord, I pray that you would bless your word. May it speak to each and every heart. Lord, may we be able to see with understanding what you have for us here this morning in this passage. Lord, there's so many good things in here that We need to learn and we need to know about, and I pray that you'd bless. Lord, use me today. I sure do want to be used of you. Lord, my voice, my heart, my mind, I pray that it would all be just an instrument in your hand that, Lord, you could take it and use it and speak to our hearts today and help us to learn the message that you have for us, the lesson, and we sure will be thankful for that, and I pray that you'd bless now. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. As we look at this passage of scripture, and no doubt we're familiar with it, we've heard this before, we've heard and seen this before, if we're not careful, and if we're not, if we just read the passage and just look at it for what it says here, sometimes we miss the meaning, the true meaning of what God is trying to do, and what God is trying to say to us. You know, not only this passage, but as you look around, you see these decorations, you see Christmas trees, you see the manger scene, you know, you see the wise men over here. Nothing wrong with those things. Those are all good things and not discounting any of that. You know, this time of the year, Thanksgiving, Christmas time, it's a blessed time. Because, you know, a lot of times we get to be with our family, have meals with our family, spend time with people that maybe we wouldn't normally spend time with. We give presents, you know, to people. We are kind to people. We're thankful for, you know, we look back and reflect on this past year and we're thankful for that. But you know, can I just say in all of those things, really the true message behind all of that is that God loves us. That's the message. Now all of us, we understand and we know that this book, this Bible that we hold in our hand is all about God. But sometimes when we read it, we forget that God, whatever the passage is, whatever's being said, that God is doing something great and wonderful, whether we see it or not, whether we realize it or not. Hey, during Thanksgiving time, when we're thankful, what do we say that we're thankful for? Well, I mean, most of us, if we're saved this morning, most of us would say, I'm thankful that I'm saved this morning. Well, what happened? How did you get saved? Well, God loved me so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for me. I'm thankful that he did that. And, you know, we ought to never get over that, never get used to the fact that God saved us. Man, that ought to be something that we just can't get over. And we ought to tell everybody. We ought to say it loud. We ought to, every opportunity, let people know, listen, the Lord saved me, and I'm thankful for that. Christmas time, we think about Jesus. Coming to the earth. Now, He didn't come to earth so we could have another holiday, so we could have a reason to give gifts to everybody. He came because He loved us. That's the whole purpose behind it. That's the whole reasoning behind it. He loved us so much. God did. He said it like this, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Listen, if we're not careful, like I said, we'll see this passage, we'll look at this, and we'll see that, hey, there was one man that was thankful. There were ten or nine that wasn't thankful. And we'll see that, and that'll take our focus. But folks, look farther than that. Look deeper than that. God is doing something. God is doing something great here, whether, like I said, whether we realize it or not. And so, my goodness, we were to look at this and see what God is trying to do. God's doing something great here. But can I just say for a minute, You know, we just went through Thanksgiving, and like I said, I'm thankful for Thanksgiving. I hope y'all are too. We had our Thanksgiving meal with my wife's parents, her mom, and the family. You know, when you're the preacher, you're always the one that they ask to say the blessing. You know, if you're vocal in your belief, which, by the way, we all should be, I think. So, I made up my mind a long time ago that if they're going to ask me, To say the blessing, I'm going to give them just a little bit more than just the blessing. You know, people are sitting there ready, they're wanting to eat, and they're ready to devour the meal, and they're not really wanting to hear a message, but by the way, hey, shouldn't have asked me if you didn't want to get the whole thing, right? So before we did, I asked, I said, is anybody here thankful for something that God has done in your life or God has done something for you this year? Well, three or four people said something and most of them said, I'm thankful for being saved, I'm thankful for the family and stuff like that. And like I said, I was glad for that. But like I said, I made up my mind a long time ago, I wanna make sure that people understand that Thanksgiving is not about just being thankful. Thanksgiving is about God saving us. And that's the only reason that we can say that we're thankful. And the only reason that we can say that, you know, God's working in my life and God's blessed me in so many ways because he saved me. And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for my wife. I'm thankful for my family. And God's blessed me in a lot of ways. I'm thankful for this church, my church family. I look out here and I see all these people, and I may not be able to call everybody's name, but most of you's name I could call. And you know what? Whether you consider it or not, I consider you my friend. that I consider you part of my family. And you know, not everybody can say that. Boy, it's such a blessing to be a part of a good Bible-believing church and have a good church family that you can be a part of. I'm thankful for that. I tell you, that's one of the biggest blessings in my life. I believe that. Not other than being saved, hey, this church family. I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful I had Christian parents. I grew up in a Christian home. And they tried to do me right. They took me to church. Didn't work until later on, but they didn't give up. They took me to church, they prayed for me, and eventually I got saved. I'm thankful for that. And I'm thankful for this church. I tell you, I just can't say enough about this church. I'm thankful for Pastor Broyhill and the leadership that he has here at this church. I mean, you think about where, in the short time that he's been here, where he has brought us to. God's done something great here. And I tell you, we got a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful for being in the ministry. God saved me, God called me to preach. I'm thankful for that. And I don't, like I said, I don't know, I really don't know where I'd be if God hadn't saved me, God hadn't called me to preach, I don't have a clue where I'd be. But I'm thankful that he did all that for me. And listen, by the way, one of the easiest things in the world that we can do is tell people what God's done for me, what God's done for us. Listen, if you never had a soul winning course, don't worry about it. Just tell people what God did for you. What did God do in your life? He saved me, you know, and he's done all these things for me. And I tell you, I am so thankful for all the things he's done in my life. When we go to Luke chapter 17 here, We see there's three important lessons that He has for us here in this passage of Scripture. Verses 1 through 6, He's talking about forgiveness. If someone wrongs you, forgive them. And you know, that ought to be a lesson that all of us have learned and all of us should be working on. There shouldn't be a person in this room that has something against me or I've got something against you. There shouldn't be anybody like that. Listen, if you have wronged somebody, forgive them, even if they don't ask you, even if they don't ask you. Like I said, there shouldn't be nothing between any of us here in this room. By the way, we're family, we're friends, and we ought to forgive one another or to be faithful. Verses seven through 10, it talks about being faithful and faithful to serve and do it with a good attitude. And all of us should be faithful in our service to the Lord. Listen, it ought to be said of all of us. One of these days, we walk across this stage, like I said about Brother Don, Don's been faithful for years and years and years. I've known him for many years, I don't even know how long, and he's been faithful the whole time. That ought to be said about all of us. How long have you been saved? Well, you ought to be faithful in your service. And then he talks about being thankful, and that's what we want to look at. here this evening, if we could. Being thankful for what the Lord has done. You know, unthankfulness, not being thankful is a sign of self-centeredness. You know, these people in this passage, these 10 men, nine out of 10 of them thought they were self, you know, they were self-sufficient. They thought that really they deserved this, and there was really no need to give thanks because this is just the way it should have been. They didn't deserve this disease, but now that they're healed, they didn't think anything about the one who healed him. Not only that, but it's a sign of an unrepentant heart. Romans 121 says that because when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened. You know, I'm telling you, there's so much that could be said negative about being unthankful. God wants us to be thankful, though. Listen, and by the way, it shouldn't be hard It shouldn't be hard for us to do, once we realize and once we think about all the good things that God has done for us. Ephesians 5, verse 20, the Bible tells us that we're to give thanks for all things, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we're to give thanks for everything that comes in our life. Now, I'm just going to tell you, I know and I realize that's a hard thing to do, because not everything is what we call good. Not everything that happens to us, not everything that we go through is a good thing. But yet the Bible says we're to give thanks for all things, all things, no matter what it is. Romans 8, 28 says that everything that happens in our life works together for good. TO THOSE THAT LOVE GOD, TO THOSE THAT ARE CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE. NOW, AGAIN, THAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S HARD TO UNDERSTAND. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S DIFFICULT. HOW CAN ALL THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN MY LIFE, GOOD OR BAD, HOW CAN ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR MY GOOD? FOR MY GOOD. AND I'LL BE HONEST WITH YOU, I DON'T KNOW THAT WE'LL EVER, ALWAYS UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT. But I tell you what we can do, and what we can understand, we can always understand that God loves us, and no matter what's going on in our life, listen, God is working, God's doing something great in our life. And we see this passage of scripture right here, and we see these 10 men that's got leprosy. I'll guarantee you that none of these ten men were sitting around and shouting and saying, man, I'm so thankful that I've gotten leprosy and I'm at the point of death in my life. You know, leprosy in the Bible always was a sign, it's always a sign or a picture of our condition before we get saved. These men right here, when they received the news that they had leprosy, they had to separate from everybody. They had to go off by their self and be by their self. They couldn't be around people because it was something that it was contagious and other people would get it. And so they had to separate themselves from their family. from their friends and from society. They were by their self. They had no hope. And they really didn't have any hope of any cure whatsoever. There was no cure. And unless God, by some divine intervention, touched them or forgave them or whatever it was, they would die with this dreaded disease, leprosy. And I'm going to tell you, it was a hard thing for these men to live through. I know that. It was a difficult time. I think about a story I read about Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry was a commentator of the Bible. And most preachers have a set of his commentaries in their library. But Matthew Henry was one of the great commentators of the Bible. And he wrote in his diary something about one day that he was robbed. And here's what he said, he had been robbed, and he wrote this in his diary, and he said, let me be thankful. First of all, because I was never robbed before. Now I'm gonna tell you, you think about that, you stop and think about it, well, that's something to be thankful about. I mean, you were robbed one time, but I hadn't been robbed many times. He was thankful that he was only been robbed one time so far. Second thing, although they took my wallet, They did not take my life. I tell you, again, that's a lot to be thankful for. They can take property. They can take things that we might count precious or valuable to us. They can take that, but that can be replaced. But you know, your life can't be replaced. If you lose your life, then it's over with. Third, because although they took my all, it was not much. We can say amen to that right there. Man comes, he's gonna steal my wallet. He's probably gonna feel sorry for me and say, well, let me help you out. Let me give you something. Maybe I could be a blessing to you. But they took his all, but it wasn't much. And then fourth of all, and I think this was the best one, it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed. And you know, I always thought that story was such an encouragement to think about, that you can always find something to be thankful for. Listen, God says, we're to give thanks for all things. Not only that, second thing I want you to see, it is the will of God to give thanks. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 18, and everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. And you know, as Christians, were to give thanks to God in every circumstance of life. The fact that God works everything together for good for those who love him is the basis for this thought. A thankful heart is usually someone that's humble. And that's true. These men right here, like I said, they gave evidence of the fact that they didn't, they just thought this is the way life should be. They had gotten healed and they didn't give thanks to the one that healed him. You know, I think about Some people in the Bible that we read about that were going through difficult times, and they had very hard times that they went through, and yet they were able to give thanks through all of these things. Paul, as a prisoner, many of the books he wrote, many books of the Bible he wrote were from a prison cell, and he was chained to two Roman soldiers. He was in a prison, and yet he gave thanks FOR BEING IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCE. AND BY THE WAY, HE WENT ON TO EXPLAIN HOW THE GOSPEL WENT FURTHER AND WENT OUT TO MORE PEOPLE THAN IF HE HAD BEEN FREE. HE WAS GLAD THAT THE LORD HAD BROUGHT HIM TO THE PRISON. AND PUT HIM THERE BECAUSE THE GOSPEL WAS FREE TO GO THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE WORLD. BY THE WAY, NOT ONLY THAT, BUT WE'VE GOT PART OF THE SCRIPTURES THAT WE HAVE HERE, AND THE GOSPEL IS STILL GOING OUT IN THOSE SCRIPTURES EVEN TODAY. AND SO PAUL WAS GREATLY USED OF GOD BECAUSE HE WAS IN PRISON. I THINK ABOUT JOB, AND ALL OF US KNOW THE STORY OF JOB, HOW JOB SUFFERED PROBABLY AS MUCH AS ANY MAN THAT EVER WALKED THE FACE OF THIS EARTH. And Job had this to say, Job 1, verse 21, here's what he said. He said, naked came I out of my mother's womb, And naked I shall return, thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job, after he lost everything that he had, he said, listen, the Lord has gave, and the Lord has taken away. And then he gave the expression, or he gave how we should feel about that. He said, blessed be the name of the Lord. Listen, the Lord has given. And we can rejoice in that, we do rejoice in that. But wait a minute, what about when the Lord takes away? Can we not rejoice when the Lord takes away? Well, you say, well, the Lord has given me these things. And by the way, I'm telling you, if we don't think that we should be thankful for those things that the Lord has given us, guess what? You know what that means? That means that we feel like that was owed to us. And listen, it is a sin, I believe it's sinful to be unthankful for the things God has done for us. Listen, he said, the Lord hath given but the Lord hath taken away. You see, we feel like and we believe when the Lord gives to us that He loves us. When the Lord takes away from us, He doesn't love us. But can I tell you that the Lord loves us just as much when He gives us something as when He takes something away. May I just go on to take that a step farther, that maybe He loves us more when he takes it away than when he gives it to us. You see, when the Lord takes it away, whether we realize it or not, whether we want to believe it or not, whether we understand it or not, God is doing something in our life. You see, these men, these 10 men here, they had leprosy, and I'm telling you, if they had not interacted with the Lord Jesus Christ, these 10 men would have died with their leprosy. But you know what? They had leprosy. And because they interacted, because one day they were walking. By the way, the Bible says He went to a certain village. You know what that means? That means He's doing something on purpose here. He came to this village. Why? Because there's 10 lepers down there that's getting ready to die if something don't happen. If something don't take place in their life, these men are not going to survive very much longer. But because they had leprosy, they were able to encounter the Lord Jesus Christ. And we say to ourselves, man, it's terrible that they got leprosy, but wait a minute, it's probably a good thing that they had leprosy because they were able to come across the path of Jesus and he was able to change their life. Can you imagine if they hadn't had leprosy, would they have ever come across the path of Jesus? I don't know. Would anything have happened? Would anything have changed in their life? I don't know, but I do know this, but because they did have leprosy, because Jesus came to see them one day, guess what? They had the opportunity to receive the greatest gift they ever had a chance to receive. Listen, and I'm not talking about being healed from leprosy. The greatest thing that happened to these men was the opportunity to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior. Listen, God loved those men. God wanted those men to be saved. I believe on purpose He came to where they were at so they would know how much He loved them. Listen, can you see Jesus coming to these folks? Now, folks, we know we're all on the same page on this. This is God. Jesus is God. He knows those men are going to be there. He knows exactly what those men are going to do. He knows that none of them will care less and not have anything to do with Him. He knows that. But they cry out and they say, God, have mercy on me. You know what Jesus did immediately? He said, okay, I'll forgive you. Okay, I'll heal you. I'll answer your request. I'm gonna do something great for you. And they didn't realize that the greatest opportunity was what this one man received. He received life eternal. He received life everlasting. You see, these men, even though they were healed from leprosy, eventually they all died. But one man, one man, the Bible says, you know, when you drink this water, you eat this bread, you'll never die, you'll never hunger again, you'll never thirst again. And this one man received the gift of eternal life, and nine men did. And I'm gonna tell you, folks, listen, God, no matter the circumstances, we may not, like I said, we may not understand, we may not realize all the time, listen, I know this is a hard thing. You think about it, here's somebody that's sick, here's somebody that's going through the worst time of their life, and they're facing death, yet one of the best things that ever happened to them was the thing that they were going through. because it brought them face to face with Jesus. You know, I think about, again, I think about Job. And you know, when Job went through what he went through, he had a decision he had to make. He could either believe and trust God that he was doing the right thing, or he could turn his back on him and become better and have nothing to do with him. You know, Job, we would have looked at Job and we'd have said, you know, Job, you would have been justified to look at God and say, God, you did this because you hate me. You did this because you don't care anything about me. We would look at that and most people would look at that and say, you know what, Job, Job was justified. Look at all the bad things that happened to him. But you know, all the time, all this that was going on in his life, the devil had a plan. The devil wanted to drive Job away from God. He thought if he could get Job to get his eyes off of God and get him on his circumstances and get him on all the bad things that's going on in his life, The devil thought that Job would turn on God and, you know, just like his wife, why don't you just curse God and die? And you know what? That was not God's plan at all. You know, in God's plan, he wanted Job to draw close to Him. Because listen, Job had the right attitude. Job had the right spirit. He saw, he believed what God was doing. He didn't understand it. He didn't know what God was doing, but I'm gonna tell you what, he said, the Lord hath given, but the Lord has took away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And all this, the Bible says that God didn't charge God foolishly. He didn't point his finger at God and say, God, you did this because you hated me. He realized, no matter what, that God loved him and God was doing something great in his life. Now, folks, can I tell you, I can look back over my life, I can tell you the story, or give you my testimony of how I can look back and I've seen all these things that God allowed to come into my life. My daughter had a disease that we didn't understand, we didn't know anything about, and she's had to take medicine every day her whole life. And when we got the call, We thought to ourselves, this is the worst thing in the world that could happen. But neither one of us was safe. We didn't know what we were going to do. And so we got that news. I almost lost my job. I thought I was gonna lose my job. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to afford to buy anything or do anything to take care of her. There were so many things that had happened. My best friend was killed in a car wreck, and I could just look back and see so many things. Now, when those things were going on in my life, I thought to myself, you know, we're on a bad streak. We've just got to run a bad luck going on here. But once I got saved and once we got to looking back on it, we could see how God was moving and He made every move there to get us to the place to where we had to look to the Lord. You know, folks, listen, I don't know what you're going through. You may be going through the worst time of your life, but guess what? Just remember that God loves you, and He's not doing something to try to drive you away from Him. He's trying to do something that's going to bring you close to Him. You see, you have to see and understand. That if you have the wrong attitude and you turn your back on God, it's never gonna get better for you. I'm just telling you, it'll never be better. But when you get to that place to where you see and realize, listen, no matter what happens, no matter what takes place, God loves me so much. So much, listen, I'm telling you, we think because that's the way we are, we think because everything is not going right, we think that God doesn't love us, he doesn't care. But that's, folks, I'm telling you, that's just not true. God loves you so much. He wants you, He wants you to come to Him, no matter what. By the way, even as Christians, once we get saved, God still wants us to come to Him. He's still doing things in our life to bring us closer to Him. He says, if you will draw nigh to me, if you'll come close to me, God says, listen, I'll start coming to you. All you have to do is make the move. All you have to do is turn toward Him. He's ready and willing to accept you and take you just like you are. Folks, listen. God loves us so much that He allows things to come in our life that we might be drawn close to Him. Well, folks, can I just tell you, listen, through all of this, God wants us to be thankful. God expects us to be thankful. He is looking for people that will love him no matter what. You know, I believe, like I said, when we look at Job, we see the example of a man that no matter what happened in his life, he always looked to God and he said, you know what? God, I trust you no matter what. And I tell you, folks, listen, as Christians, that ought to be our attitude, that ought to be our spirit. If you may be here this morning and you don't know what it means to trust and believe that Jesus loves you more than anything. Listen, he died for you on the cross. He paid for your sins on the cross. Why did he do that? Because he loves you and he wants you to be close to him. He wants you to be drawn close to him. And so if you're here this morning and you're lost, you don't know what it means to be saved. We're gonna give you an opportunity to come and trust Jesus Christ as your savior. And we're gonna invite you to do that. You may be here and you're going through a difficult time. Why don't you come and ask God to work in your heart. Ask God to help you to see and understand what's taking place in your life so you'll be able to see and understand and appreciate the things that's going on and realize that he's drawing you close to himself. Let's bow our heads for a prayer. Lord, as we come before you, Lord, here this morning, we are so grateful and thankful for you and your blessings. Lord, thank you for the word of God that we have. Lord, thank you for the examples that we have in our Bible. that Lord tell us and shows us and demonstrates to us how much you love us and how much you care for us. Lord, you're not doing things to us to drive us away. Lord, you're doing things in our life to draw us close to you. And Lord, I sure am thankful for that. And I pray that, Lord, you would just bless the message. No doubt there's somebody here this morning that's lost, and Lord, they need to be saved. I pray that, Lord, you'd give them and work in their heart, and Lord, help them to see that, Lord, how much you love them. And you'll take them just like they are if they'll only come to you. And then, Lord, we'd ask that you'd bless Christians and help. No doubt there's Christians that are going through difficult times, and I pray that, Lord, you'd bless them and work in their hearts and their lives, Lord. And we'll thank you for what you do. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.