Thanksgiving

during thanksgiving. So if you guys have a bible, open up to Luke chapter 17. I want you today look at this incredible story

where Jesus is gonna have this chance encounter with these guys, and he's going to forever impact their lives. And I think it's gonna show you and I the keys on how we can actually live a life of thanksgiving and not just have thanksgiving be something that's on our calendars once a year, but it can actually become a posture from which we live our lives.

And the part that you and I have to understand is though when we read the New Testament, when we read scripture, we don't see thanks giving the holiday in there, but throughout the Old Testament, God instructed his people, the nation of Israel,

multiple times throughout the year to do something very similar to what we do on the holiday of thanksgiving where we actually pause. And if you don't know this, when congress passed thanksgiving as when they made it a national holiday, it was actually instituted to be a day where we as a nation would pause,

and we would thank God specifically for all that he's done for us. Though I know in a few years, they're probably gonna remove that away, we're gonna thank, like, the random doorknob or something. But, like, when it was originally established, it was a part to it was supposed to break our rhythms

and force us to pause and just say thanks, much like the the the feast of Passover Passover or the feast of the Tabernacles, where Jesus would tell the the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, pause. Remember what I did when I delivered you from Egypt. Remember when I brought you out of captivity. Take time out of your schedule and your routine

to remember what I've done. And I don't know about you, but man, there's sometimes I find myself in this season, in the season of thanksgiving leading to Christmas, and it's this this season that has so much expectation, and sometimes my reality doesn't meet my expectation.

And the part that's crazy when you look from a sociological standpoint, depression and anxiety and suicide rates skyrocket during the holidays.

Why is that? I think part of it is because the the the TVs and the magazines show us what we're supposed to have and what it's supposed to look like, yet when we look around us, it's not what we see.

And I don't know about you, but if I ever opened up a door on Christmas morning and told my wife there was a car with a bow on it, she'd be like, what are you expecting me to get a job to pay for that? Like, what are we, like, what are we doing here? Like, you made another dumb financial decision, yet that's what's sold to you and I is like, here's the keys to happiness.

Go buy a car that you can't afford with money you don't have so you can impress people that you don't really know. And then we try it and we're like, wait, that didn't work. Now I just have a car payment that shows up every month.

And so the question that I often ask as I look at my life, as I look at my family on Thanksgiving, and my kids are fighting and screaming at each other, and I'm like, be thankful. This is Thanksgiving. You can't fight on Thanksgiving. And then I go, man, why is it that so often I don't feel thankful?

How come it's so easy for me to ask for mercy when I need mercy, but it's so easy for me to forget to be thankful for all that God has done for me. Well, I think in the story that we're gonna look at today in Luke chapter 17, we're going to see

what we can do. We're gonna see I believe there's a bit of a process that leads us to living from a posture of thankfulness. And the story we're gonna look at is these 10 men that 10 men that have this disease called leprosy.

Jesus is gonna heal all of them, but only one of them is actually gonna ever come back and thank Jesus. And when he does, he's gonna get something that the other nine don't. And here's the goal this morning is for you and I to figure out how to be the one and not the nine.

And I think kinda simply just to put my cards on the table of where I'm going, I believe this is how you and I can be the one, Is we have to begin to connect the dots between the gift that we've been given, the things that God does for us,

and the gift giver that's there. And we need to be people who begin to pursue the gift, not the gift, the gift giver. Here's kind of the big idea if you're taking notes. When we realize that Jesus is the source of our healing, when I realize that Jesus is the source of my healing,

then at that point, he should become the object of my thanksgiving, and here's what I mean. If we realize the life that we've been given, this life that is beyond our dreams, where we realize that we used to be people who were far off, and now we've been brought close to God.

When we connect the dots that that gift has been given to us, and our job is now to pursue not the gifts, but the gift giver, then Jesus should be the object of my gratitude, the thing in my heart that overwhelms me with. And I think if we see this story,

we can see some things that we can apply to our life. So Luke chapter 17. Are we there? Yes. There we go. That was the best one yet. Luke chapter 17 verse 11. Here's how the story starts. It says, as Jesus continued on towards Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria.

And as he entered a village there, 10 men with leprosy stood at a distance crying out, Jesus, master,

have mercy on us. K? He here's how this story begins. And remember, when you read the gospel of Luke, Luke was a doctor. He was probably the smartest of all of the disciples. He was a really intelligent guy. When you read his gospel account, there's there's four narratives of the life of Jesus recorded in the Bible. Luke remembers details that are not in a lot of the other gospel accounts. It's because he was just so detail oriented.

And when he begins to record this story that takes place in Luke chapter 17, he gives us some really powerful details that give us insight into what's really taking place in this story.

The first one is that he remembers when this encounter takes place. They're not they weren't in Galilee, and they were not in Samaria. They had not yet gotten to Jerusalem. They were kind of just in this in between nowhere land. Now what you have to know is Luke chapter sixteen, seventeen, and 18 are what theologians refer to as the journey

section of the gospel. This is where Jesus, his public ministry for the most part has come to an end. He's done the majority miracles that he's going to do, and now what he's doing is he's making his way back to Jerusalem. He's journeying back to Jerusalem knowing that that's the place that he's ultimately going to die.

The place that he's ultimately gonna go to this to the cross to pay the penalty for sin. He's going to go to Jerusalem to die the death that the Bible says that you and I deserve because the penalty of our sin is death.

But he's going to be our our our big word, our propitiation for our sins. He's gonna die the death that we deserve so we can be invited into the life that we never could have lived.

And on his way back to Jerusalem, he has these encounters. There's a few of them that happen where he gives some kind of final lessons and final instructions to both you and I as the readers, but also to his disciples that were with him.

And along his way, when they're in between, they're not in Galilee, they're not in Samaria, they're kind of just in between. They come across these 10 men.

Part of why it's important for us to see that they're not in either of these cities, they're kind of on the fringes, is because these are guys that weren't invited. They were no longer allowed to live within the city limits, and the scriptures tell us it's because they have leprosy. They have this this debilitating

skin disease that progressively slowly takes over their entire bodies. Leprosy, especially in the age of Jesus, k, with with westernized medicine, we, for the most part, eradicated or at least been able to heal leprosy.

But in the time of Jesus, this was a disease that was feared beyond almost anything else because it was so highly contagious, and they didn't understand it. All they knew is that once you got it, there was no way to stop it.

It was a progressive thing that would ultimately take over every single part of your body, and so their only response, the only thing they knew to do was to banish people that could even potentially have the possibility

of it. And the way that this worked in their culture is if, literally, if you came home and your neighbor pulled into their driveway and you looked and you're like, yo, what's that thing on his face? You would go to your priest and you would tell the priest, hey, I think my neighbor's got leprosy, and then it would force your neighbor to report to the priest, and the priest would have to make the final declaration if this was leprosy.

I think we can all praise God that since then we've separated the roles of doctor and priest. Right? Like that's good news for all of us. But in this culture, the priest would be the judge and the jury, and they would make the decision. Even if it was wrong, this is leprosy. And in that moment,

if this was not, hey, go home, turn into two week notice, collect your things, say goodbye to your family, get get your stuff, and then you're gonna take a bit of an extended vacation. It was right now, in this moment, you will never see your family again. You won't say bye. You won't say bye to your parents. You won't say bye to your children. You'll never see your spouse again.

Right then in that moment, you're taken to the fringes of society. Here's why I think leprosy is such an incredible example for you and I to see, because obviously most of us in this room don't have leprosy.

But what you and I do have, the Bible says is this thing called sin that's in us. And what we have to know about sin is sin is progressive. It doesn't want to just stay in the one place that we allow it to live in our lives.

Sin wants to ultimately destroy you. Take over every single part of your life. Sin always gets worse. It always grows. It ultimately wants to destroy you. It ultimately wants to kill us. We have the same curse. It just looks different

than these guys. And here's, again, something that's kind of a side point that really stood out to me as I study this. As we as we look in these next couple verses, we're gonna realize that in this group of 10 lepers, there's nine that are Jews, nine that were Jewish men. One of them is a Samaritan.

If you don't understand the history, Jews and Samaritans hated each other for for a bunch of different reasons. They they never would have been around each other outside of the fact that these guys all had the same thing wrong with them. And it shows me something about our humanity. We have this uncanny ability to attract

people that are like us. Oftentimes,

if you want to change your life, here's my biggest challenge to you, and it's kind of a side point of my message today, but it's just free. You can have it and not even have to give me anything in return. If you wanna change your life, here's how you can do it. Change the people you spend the most time with.

I would venture to say right now, you were to look at the people you spend the most time with, they probably look a lot like you.

They're probably right you probably are right in the middle in the same economic status as the people you hang out with, the issues that you struggle with, the people you spend the most time with. I would venture to say they struggle with the same things.

Sometimes when we sit down, we go, God, change my life. He kinda looks back at us and goes, just change your friends. If you wanna know who you're becoming, look at the five closest people to you. The truth of our humanity is we can only sit in the barbershop long enough before we eventually will get our haircut.

And if you're sitting here like, I don't want my haircut, I would push back and say, well then, get out of the barbershop. Because these 10 lepers prove something. We just naturally attract who we are.

There's a lot of times I'm doing premarital counseling and somebody's like, I don't know how I attracted this crazy person. I'm like, have you looked in the mirror? Like,

that that's the scary reality. We attract who we are, and and here's what we wish that it was. We wish that we attract who we want to be, but we don't attract that. We will, at a very core level, attract who we are. So the question is is who are you, and who you spend the most time with? Because these 10 guys,

living by themselves, all they had was each other. Living on the fringes of society, being outcast from their families, and their cultures, and their jobs, and all of a sudden, here comes Jesus.

And they start to shout to him, and they start to yell out to him. And something you have to know, you go read the book of Leviticus and Levitical law, it lays out what lepers had to do. And one of the things they had to do is if somebody got within 50 yards of them, a leper would have to begin to yell out, I'm unclean.

Don't come near me. Don't come any closer. I'm unclean.

Imagine for a moment that that was your reality day in and day out. Anytime you had an encounter with somebody, imagine this morning as you walked in the doors of the church. One of the rules that we had is, hey, as you come in anytime you see somebody, just begin to shout, scream really loudly the thing that you deal with the most. The the the deepest, darkest sin that you've struggled with the last couple weeks, just yell that at the top of your lungs anytime you meet somebody.

That would get really awkward really quickly, but that's these guys' reality. They lead with the thing that they try to hide the most, and here's something that really stood out to me this week as I was studying this passage. You know one of the blessings that comes with leprosy? I don't think that there's many,

but one of the blessings of leprosy is somebody that has it, they can't hide it from those around them. More importantly, you're never gonna try to have an encounter with Jesus and try to act like you're something that you're not. Because when a sin, when an issue is external,

everybody sees it. And sometimes our our society, I think we have it completely backwards. The sins that you and I hate that we push back against the most, especially in the church, are the sins that manifest themselves externally.

When there's somebody that has an issue externally, we sit back and we're like, yo, look at this guy. Like, what is he thinking? As long as your sin issue is internal, as long as it doesn't show itself on the outside,

man, you're welcome here. Just come to church, pretend like everything's okay. When somebody asks you how you're doing, you go go, blessed, brother. Obviously, blessed. And whatever you do at all costs, never talk about the realities of the things you're struggling with, especially if Jesus comes walking up to you.

And the one thing that these lepers had is they weren't trying to hide who they were. I'm telling you right now, God sees the things we do in secret, yet we think we get away with it.

And then when we come to places like this, we try to put on something that we're not, and sometimes that's the barrier to our breakthrough. That's the very thing keeping us from experiencing the thing that God wants us to have.

Because we go, man, I'll just hide it, but these guys can't. They begin to cry out to Jesus, and he says something to them next that is kind of bizarre. In verse 13, it says, crying out, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Verse 14 says, he looked at them. Jesus looks at them,

and he says, go show yourselves to the priests.

Jesus sees these lepers, and he says, go show yourselves to the priests. Now what you have to understand is in scripture, we we see there's actually a few times where Jesus heals people that have leprosy. There's a time where there's a crowd of people, and a man with leprosy comes and tries to get near to Jesus, and all the disciples do the logical thing and they go, hey, stop him. Don't let him get close. And Jesus says, no. No. No. Let him come. And he puts his hand on him and he heals him instantly right there in front of everybody. The leprosy begins to fall off and he becomes healed.

But in this story, that's not how the healing happens. That's not how the breakthrough happens. Jesus gives them a really bizarre command. He says, hey. Go show yourself to the priests.

The only reason that you would ever, as a person that had leprosy, ever show yourself to the priest is if you were convinced that what you had been given was a misdiagnosis.

If you had been told you had leprosy, but it was really just a sore, you went to the dermatologist, and they gave you an ointment, and you did it for a couple weeks, and the thing went away, and then you would go show yourself to the priest, and he's like, you're right. I'm wrong. My bad. I'm not a doctor. I'm a priest. I don't know why I'm doing this anyways. You're right. Go back to your family.

Other than that, there would be zero point in showing yourself to the priest. And most theologians believe that these guys, these 10 had been leopards for decades. This was their reality. Leprosy was their cross to bear. This was their lot in life, and it was never gonna change. This was just who they were.

Yet Jesus comes and says, go show yourselves to the priest, and the next verse I don't understand. Because these guys are just gonna obey. They're just gonna listen, and look what happens. The very next verse. It says, and as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy. Jesus gives them a really bizarre instruction.

He gives them a seemingly simple step of obedience to take even though it makes no logical sense.

They could have sat there and been like, nah, Jesus, man. I I just man, I like I just recorded the, you know, I guess it's the cardinals game out here. Like, I just I recorded the cardinal. I got the turkey in the oven. Like, I'm man, I've got like, the priests are far away. There's no like, that's gonna be so inconvenient.

Like, I it's just it's a long walk. There's no point. They could have sat there and told themselves rational lies when they rationalize why they weren't gonna do the thing that God had asked them to do, but for whatever reason, they don't. For whatever reason, they just listen and they just go, okay.

And, again, I with Luke being the detailed author that he was, I think if there was more discourse here, he would have recorded it in the scriptures, but there's nothing there.

Maybe they had a conversation. Maybe there was a back and forth, and they pushed back. And Jesus is like, just trust me. Just go. But Luke says, Jesus says go, and they go. And the moment they go, what happens? They are healed. Why does this matter for you and I? Here's what I think that you and I underestimate.

I think we underestimate the power that exists in a simple step of obedience. I think you and I in this room, we have the makings of miracles in our midst. We have the makings of miracle in our hands. And the reason we're not experiencing the breakthrough and the miracles that God is trying to get to us

is because we refuse to simply be obedient to what it is that he asked us to do.

I'm telling you right now, if you hear nothing else this morning, I hope you hear this,

God has so clearly laid out in scripture what he wants you and I to do, who he wants us to be, how you and I are called to live, the integrity that we're called to walk with, the disposition that's supposed to be in our heart, the things that he wants us to do.

And yet so often, my conversations as a pastor is people come to me and they're like, hey, Daniel. What do you think about this? You know, wait. And I'm like, I don't should you make a business decision? Like, you know, the last I get paid to talk for a living. Like, I don't know anything

about business, but here's what I know. Is if you're doing it with integrity, if you're doing it according to God's will, and you're doing it for his glory, and you're there's not this deceit that's in your heart, and all that man, tear it up.

But most of the time here's a really practical example of how this happens in my world as a young adults pastor. Most of the time when I have conversations with people, the question is, hey, Daniel, should I marry this girl? Hey, Daniel, is this guy the one? And I'm like, you spend more time with him than I do.

But hey, I'll ask you some basic questions. Is he Christian? No. Does he have a job? No. What are we talking about here? Like, this isn't a man, this is a boy. K? He just happens to shave. Like, there's no need to proceed to step two.

But he in this just just go with me a little bit in in this example. K? In my world, what I watch is is is is girls that are in the season of life of watching their friends get married, watching what they so desperately want happen all around them, and it feels like it's not happening to them.

And they have this deep desire that I believe is placed there by God to be a wife, to be a a a mom someday. And they feel like it's not happening in their timeline.

And so what they do is they go and they pull up something called Bumble, and they find some random dude. And I'm like, what's Bumble? And they're like, it's a dating website. Like, it's crazy how fast you become the old guy. Right?

And I'll watch this girl walk in the door. This this literally happened a few weeks ago, young adults. This girl walks in, there's this guy that I've never seen before. And I'm like, I walk up. I'm like, hey. Who's this guy? She's like, oh, this is Brian. You know, it's always Brian. Right? I'm like, where'd you meet Brian?

She's like, oh, on Bumble. And I'm like, oh, man, that's awesome. There's Christian people on Bumble. And he's like, oh, no, I'm not Christian. I'm just here to support her.

And literally, was in the back of this room and I looked at both of them and I was like, here here's what scripture says. The scripture says for a Christian to date a non Christian, it is like two oxen given the task to pull a wagon. And what you do is you go and you take a saddle, you take a yoke, you put a thing on them, but the problem is the yoke that you pick, one side of it is way heavier than the other. And what happens is one oxen can walk faster than the other, and what will begin to happen is they will think they're walking forward. But one will begin to walk faster, and they'll slowly veer to the left. And eventually, they will just find themselves in a holding padding pattern walking in circles thinking they're making progress. That's what the Bible says you've just entered into. Good luck.

And then I walked away. And I was like, what is wrong with me? Like, I literally just had this conversation with somebody. And the truth of what I know is I I I've seen this tape so many times. I've watched how this plays out almost every single time. The girl is not getting what she wants. Sometimes it's the guy.

So they try to short circuit it. They try to make God's thing happen for them in their timing, in their way, and then the guy gets what he wants, which is probably just her body, and she is left holding the shambles of her life.

And what I don't wanna do is to have to be the one there to put my arm around her and say, look, God loves you, and your best days are still ahead of you, but you could have avoided this pain if you simply were willing to walk obediently. And I know all of you in this room, that's not your issue.

But I use that example to say there are things in your life that you are hoping will happen sooner. It feels like they're not happening fast enough, and what I'm telling you right now that scripture is so clear on,

If you sit down in the morning and you expect God to tell you exactly where you're gonna live, what degree you're gonna get, what time the thing's gonna happen, where you're none of that's gonna be there. But what scripture is going to be abundantly clear about is the seemingly

simple steps of obedience that we're called to take. When our finances are a mess and it makes no logical sense to trust God financially, and to give to the church when it feels like we have nothing left, that's how we begin to find these moments of breakthrough. These guys took a step that was ridiculous,

that made no sense, that they could have rationalized their way out of. And the reason that it matters for you and I is because here's what this story proves to me. Obedience always leads to miracles. Obedience is what leads to breakthrough. And it might not always be these massive big things,

but obedience, the thing that's on the other side of it is not pain and it is not hurt. It is the breakthrough that God wants for us, but it doesn't stop there. Look at as the story continues. This is where it gets really good. Verse 15.

It says, one of the 10, as they were healed, when he saw that he was healed, he came back to Jesus shouting, praise God. And he fell to the ground at Jesus' feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan. And Jesus asked him, didn't I heal 10 men? Where are the other nine?

Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And Jesus said to the man, stand up and go. Your face has healed you. The story in Luke chapter 17 is a powerful story of 10 men who are cleansed, but it's really only a story about one man who's ever transformed and healed.

Here's what you and I have to understand. This is the crossroads that a lot of us sit in when it comes to going to church and pursuing a relationship with God. If all you want is what God can do for you, if all you want is the gift that he can provide for you, if all you want is the external things to change,

sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is those external needs get met. Because the very moment they do, the truth of our hearts and where we were is proven. Because the one thing that we had that was causing us to need God, the one thing in our life that was causing a desperation for Jesus,

Now that we have it, we have no need to be here anymore. 90% of these guys got what they wanted, and they said, awesome. Thanks God. I'm going back to my life. And and here's what I know. I'm not trying to vilify these guys.

I know that probably the moment that they they were healed of their leprosy, they realized, man, this changes everything. I can go see my kids again, and I can see my my wife again, and I can go back to my company that I left. Like, this changes everything. It wasn't necessarily evil things that they went back to.

It was just good things that weren't God's things. Here's the thing that I'm telling you, I've watched play out so much in church. One of the primary motivations that gets people in the door of church is when life isn't going well. Things are falling apart. A marriage is on the rocks.

Finances are a mess. Jobs are all over the place. It's usually pain and hurt that gets brought in, that gets people to come in the door. And what happens often is God will begin to do what God does and bless his children because that's who he is. He's a good father in heaven.

And sometimes our circumstances, our external circumstances will change, and we'll go, awesome, God. Thanks, man. I I rubbed the lamp. The genie showed up. He fixed my issues. I'm gone.

And the people don't come back in the door until their life is a mess again. And I'm telling you right now, that is not what God wants for you and I,

to live a life that is in shambles. Come to him when it's broken. Let him put the pieces back together. Go live without him. Come back in when our life is in shambles. And that's the cycle that we live in, and yet so many of us, that's what we think Christianity is. We think that's the cycle of blessing, but it's not.

And even worse, sometimes when those external circumstances don't change, then we say things like, well, I tried the church thing. It just didn't work for me. When it didn't work for you, what you mean is the things that you had quantified

as a blessing, the things that you had decided were the only ways that God could move. Those things didn't happen, therefore, church thing didn't work for you. Here's what I need you to hear, church. God could almost care less about your external circumstances. In his omniscience, in his sovereignty,

he will just out of his grace begin to bless us. But the biggest thing, the greatest gift that he wants to give you and I has nothing to do with external things. He wants to give you the gift that you can't get anywhere else.

He wants to give you the gift of eternal salvation. He wants to give you the gift of a thriving relationship with him. But if all you want is the gift and not the gift giver,

I'm telling you, watch out because sometimes you'll get the very thing that you want, and you'll be like the nine that missed out on the greatest gift of all.

The reason that this story is so important for us to understand is because only one of the 10 get what Jesus says at the very end to the one guy that comes back and thanks him. One guy comes back and falls at the feet of Jesus and praises him and thanks him for what he's done.

Jesus says, stand up. Go home. Your faith has healed you. Your faith has made you well. The word that is used right there for healed, for made well, is a Greek word called sozo. It means salvation.

Jesus looks at the one who got it, the one that connected the dots between the blessing and the one that does the blessing and said, yeah, the blessing was cool, but, man, what I ultimately want is the one who did the blessing, the one who did the breakthrough. I don't wanna live in this place of just perpetually asking God to change my external circumstances, and I want to go to the one who has the ability to make me new.

And he falls on his face before Jesus, and he says, you receive salvation. You and I have to understand part of why I think we find ourselves in seasons wondering why we have no gratitude and no thanksgiving is because we just think God is a genie in a bottle that's here to fix our mess when we want him to.

And yet often his invitation is into a life that is completely countercultural to everything that we understand. He says, if you really wanna find your life, be willing to die. Be willing to lay down your life. The moment you lay down your life is when you'll find true life. The invitation is an invitation to death.

Yet on the other side of that is the ability to have true life. What Jesus says in John ten ten, a life that is abundant beyond our wildest dreams. But if we don't connect dots,

if we don't ever get past just pursuing him for his hand and what he can do and get past the gifts and get to pursuing the gift giver, we will live perpetually in this state. And here's the part of the story that blows my mind. Nine guys were obedient. They did the basic. They did the first step, yet they never

actually got the greatest gift that God wanted for them. And scripture never tells us what happens to those nine guys. All we know is that one of them came back and had a heart filled with gratitude. He was like this, if if this is true, this changes everything.

And he fell on his face and began to worship God. I would petition to you this morning, that is the posture from which you and I are called to live our lives, not just in the season of Thanksgiving, the holiday, but throughout the entire year.

I would venture to say the invitation to the life that is abundant is one that is lived in response to in a worshipful response to what it is that God has done for us. Because when we look through when we look at our life through the lenses of what Jesus did for us, when I remember

where I was when I was 19 years old, sitting in a rehab wondering what God would ever do if there was ever a chance for me to do something with my life, and I look over the last twelve to thirteen years what God has done, it is mind blowing that I can never get to a spot and I go, God, what have you ever done for me?

Yet it's so easy for me to slip into that pattern because I begin to treat God like a genie. And I wonder if maybe you do the same thing too. I know it's nothing profound, but here's what the story shows me. That oftentimes what God asks us to do, what he invites us into is to do things that don't make any sense.

And if you do them, they're the very things that lead to miracles. They're the things that lead to breakthrough. And when we experience God's miracles and these breakthroughs that happen, what should be birthed in our heart is thankfulness that leads us to respond to him in worship.

And then what happens when we become thankful and remembering what he's done? It becomes really easy to be obedient to what he's asked us to do.

I would put before you this morning the cycle that we are called to live our life in is just being obedient when it doesn't make sense, trusting God even when we don't have all the answers, and then figuring out a way to be thankful for everything that we have, even though sometimes it looks like we have nothing, and we wonder what's gonna happen. We just continue to trust. We continue to be obedient, knowing and understanding that the miracles,

that's the part that God handles. We don't have to worry about the middle. We seek his kingdom. We pursue and do what he's asked us to do even when it doesn't make sense, and I promise you there will be a day where we will look back and all of this will make sense.

And I think the easiest way to illustrate how you and I become the one and not the nine is to tell you a story about when I was a kid at Christmas. I think Christmas is the greatest example of grace in its its personification.

Like, Christmas morning is the best example of grace, is it not? It's parents buying gifts for these kids that have done nothing to deserve it. It's like, oh, you want a gift? Why? Because you were born? Like, okay. Here's a present. Right? Like, you don't even do the basic chores, but sure. I'm gonna lavish you with presents. Right? And it's just a part it's what we do. It's what good parents do is they desire to give their kids good gifts on Christmas morning, but it's a perfect example of grace.

Because what your kid is probably going to give you, what I know full well that my kids are gonna give me this Christmas is some terribly painted picture, and I'm gonna have to act like it's the Taj Mahal. And they're like, are you gonna hang it in your office? And I'm like, of course, because that's what I want in my office is terrible artwork. But, yeah, let's do it.

And then I'm gonna give them a bunch of expensive gifts that my wife bought for them, and I won't know what they are, and then we'll all be surprised together. Right? That's the truth. But it's this perfect example of getting things that we haven't earned, things that we have not deserved.

And when I was a kid, there was a year where we we played outside in our cul de sac a bunch, and the one thing that we wanted was a basketball hoop so I could dunk on my neighbors. You know? Like, that's that's all I wanted. Me and my brothers were like, we just want a basketball hoop. And we were like cutting pictures out of basketball hoops and taping them on my parents' bathroom mirror and like serving food shaped like a basketball hoop and, like, just everything we could do. Like, we were telling them. Like, they had no excuse to not know

that that's what we wanted. And yet, I'll never forget the Christmas morning when we were sitting there opening presents, and my parents always went all out. They always went above and beyond to sacrifice to bless us.

And I remember sitting there opening every present, and all I could think was, man, this box doesn't look big enough to be a basketball hoop. I was like, you know, my parents probably got real creative. This is like a key that unlocks a lock that's gonna be in there, and then the thing's gonna be in the garage. I mean, my parents are they're gangsters. They went all out doing this thing. Like, it's the process is gonna be awesome. And every present, I just was disappointed and more disappointed and more disappointed.

And I don't even remember what any of the gifts were, but all I remember is when I opened the last one.

I think I threw it on the ground, and me and my brothers were like, mom and dad are the worst. Like, I hate them. And we're like, want a new family. And we're like, yeah, we want new families. Right? Like, kids say, like, every 12. You know? It's like, alright, man. Like, let's let's do it, man. I'll help you. You know?

But I remember just the absolute disdain in my heart that I had towards my parents because they didn't give me the one thing that I wanted, so I stormed up to my room and threw a temper tantrum. Right? Like all good kids do.

And then all of a sudden my mom walked upstairs and she knocked on her door and she was like, hey, would you idiots come back downstairs? And we walked back downstairs, and I'll never forget she goes in the other room and pulls out this box that I was like, that's either a Porsche or a basketball hoop. Wasn't a Porsche.

But as I began to open it, I saw that this was the basketball hoop. And I'll never forget that moment as I unwrapped that gift. The overwhelming feeling in my heart, it wasn't joy, though that was what my parents were hoping. It it wasn't just absolute jubilance at what my parents had done.

The overwhelming thing that I felt in that moment was shame, was guilt, and was condemnation because of what I had just done. And I realized, man, I I could care less what it cost my parents. I missed out on all of these other gifts because all I was looking for was this one thing.

I thought that the only gift that I could get looked like this, and so all these other ones I missed. And then when I got the one that I thought I needed the most, that I wanted the most, when I got it, the only thing that was there was grief and shame and guilt, not joy.

I put before you this morning that that's the exact same way that so many of us treat our relationship with God.

So often we look and we miss all the gifts that he's giving us every day. The fact that we woke up today breathing, living in America, are gonna eat meals today, and we're not even gonna have to think about it. We're gonna go home and there's gonna be running water. The fact that all of that is there, yet so easily

we look around and just go, man, we got nothing. Just living here puts us in the top 1% of the world's wealth, yet we look around and all we see is what we don't have. And maybe, just maybe, it's because we have bought the lie that the enemy is telling us that the best part of God is what he can do for you.

And friends, let me tell you, God is powerful. God can do some incredible things, but the greatest gift that God will ever give you and I, the ultimate gift that he wants all of us to have is sozo, is salvation. A relationship with him that is rich. A relationship with him that is thriving,

that allows you to have peace and joy regardless of what's happening to you externally. And here's what happened to me this week. As I've read this story, I began to change the way that I prayed.

I said, God, what things am I praying for and asking for right now that if I get them, they're gonna make me run from you? They're gonna remove my need from you. God, give me more of you. All I want is more of you. The rest of this stuff, God, take my heart from it.

And the more we live in this world, the less we feel like we need God, and the more this world matters to us. And I'm telling you right now, this is how we live a life of worshipful response to God filled with gratitude. As we every day figure out simple steps of obedience that we can take,

that I promise you the thing that will be on the other side of them is not pain and it's not burden. It's miracles. But if we then don't connect the gift to the gift giver,

we will just pursue his hand and not his heart, and we will miss the entire thing that he's trying to do for us. The entire thing that he's trying to do in us because he has a life for us beyond our wildest dreams, but it has nothing to do with the stuff out here. It has everything to do with what he's doing in here. So, father, I thank you.

God, I thank you for the absolute honor and privilege that it is to get together with our our church family, to lift up songs of praise declaring your goodness and your faithfulness.

And God, I know that it it's so easy for us as we go through our routines and to go through our our lives and just to look at all the things that we don't have. And Lord, as people who live in this very social world, this social media world, the comparison trap is is greater than ever before.

And Father, I pray that above everything else this holiday season, you would give us contentment. Contentment. You would give us what Solomon asked for in the book of Ecclesiastes, contentment for his lot in life.

That Lord, we would look at what you've given us in the gift of salvation, and we would realize that anything else we get on top of that is just icing on the cake. And that Lord, we would live our lives in a worshipful response to you forever thanking you for what it is that you did. Because Jesus, you willingly

laid down your life. You died a brutal death. You were mocked and beaten beyond recognition. Because if you didn't do it, it had to be us. Yet you did it for us. And three days later, you conquered death, forever inviting creation, humanity back into a relationship with God.

And so father, would we receive the ultimate gift that you have for us this holiday season, which is salvation. And, Lord, we focus less on these external things that happen around us. Jesus, we love you, and we so desperately need you this morning. It's in your powerful name that everybody said. Amen. And