Giving Thanks for Salvation

Trinity 14| Luke 17:11-19| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| September 1, 2024

In the Small Catechism, Luther explains the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” with these words, “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” Now, some might wonder, what is so great about thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is important, because it is the fruit of an active saving faith. Where there is active saving faith, there is thanksgiving. And where there is true thanksgiving, there is an active saving faith. This is what Jesus teaches us when He said to the one cleansed leper, who gave thanks, “Your faith has saved you.” Ten lepers were healed of their leprosy. This cleansed leper, who gave thanks, was saved through the faith, which brought forth his thanksgiving.

And it is not inconsequential whether you give thanks or not. Jesus asked with complete seriousness, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” Jesus expected all ten to return to give thanks to God. Yet, only one returned. Such is the case with our fallen race. We are ungrateful to our Creator, who provides us with everything we need to support this body and life. God cares for all people, even those who hate Him. He performs miracles like the cleansing of the lepers every day, healing thousands from their diseases, many millions more he clothes and feeds. Yet, few return to give God thanks for what He has done. If all God gave us was our daily bread, food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, devout spouse and children and good government; it would be incumbent on us to give thanks always. As the pagans sacrificed to their gods for sending them rain, so we should regularly worship the true God for taking care of our bodily needs.

Yet, Jesus teaches us that we have much more to give thanks for than our daily bread. Jesus teaches us to give thanks to God for salvation. Christ has rescued us from the leprosy of our sin, on account of which we were separated from God and soon would be sent to hell. As leprosy causes the skin to die, so our sin caused our very hearts to die and resist God. As leprosy restricted the voice from crying out without pain, so our sin made us mute to God’s praise. Yet, by His blood, Christ took all our sins away, rescued us from the jaws of hell, and opened to us the gates of eternal life. So, how much more ought we to always give thanks?

And since thanksgiving is so important to saving faith, I would like to teach you three things about true thanksgiving. First, thanksgiving requires true faith. The man glorified God with a loud voice, fell upon his face at His feet giving Him thanks. Whose feet? To whom did He give thanks and praise? God’s feet. He gave thanks and praised God. Yet, God does not have feet. True, according to His divine nature, God is spirit and does not have a body. Yet, Jesus is God. Jesus is a man with feet. So, His feet are God’s feet. When the man worshipped Jesus at Jesus’ feet, He was worshipping God. True faith recognizes Jesus as God. So, to give thanks to God means to give thanks to Jesus and to acknowledge what Jesus has done.

This corrects a major misunderstanding popular in our generation. People will often speak of being thankful. To whom are they thankful, that is anyone’s guess. They talk about going out into the woods or in nature and connecting to God or nature. They speak of Jesus, Moses, Mohammad, and Buddha as if they are all equal holy men. They speak of the LORD, Allah, the universe, and the many other deities people worship as if they are all the same God. Being Christian is equal to being Muslim or Hindu, or spiritual, they say. Just so long as you are thankful in your heart. But this is not true. Mohammad and Buddha were false teachers. Allah is a false god. The only true God is the God who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer and die for our sins. True thanksgiving involves giving thanks to Him. And so, true faith is trusting in the God, who sent Jesus to be our Savior, and trusting in Him for forgiveness and salvation.

Having true faith in Christ leads us to the second thing we need to know about thanksgiving. Thanksgiving requires true worship. What is true worship? True worship is service that flows from faith in Christ. The devil manipulates people like this: “Faith is an invisible thing in the heart; therefore, worship also is invisible. One cannot say that one way of worship is true or false or better than another.” But this is a clever lie of Satan. If there is true faith, then there is also true worship. True worship responds to true faith. The leper returned to give thanks to Jesus, because he had faith that Jesus was his God, who saved him. Before, he cried out with the nine, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!” That word for master is different than the word for Lord. He did not yet know Jesus as His Lord and God (John 20:28). But after he was healed, he returned to worship Jesus properly as His God.

People repeat another clever lie of the devil. They say, “Well, God is everywhere, so why go to church to worship God? I can worship Him in my garden or out in the woods with nature.” It is true that God is everywhere. It is also true that water vapor is in the air we breathe. Yet, when you are thirsty, you don’t say, “There is water everywhere! I don’t need to get a drink of water.” Yes, God is everywhere. But He is not everywhere in the same way. When God comes to you with His grace, you should meet Him where His grace is offered. The Samaritan would have been a fool, if he had worshiped God at the foot of a tree instead of at God’s very feet, which are Jesus’s feet. When Jesus is there, you worship Him! And so, we today worship Jesus where He promises to be: in His Word and Sacrament.

Jesus told the lepers to go show themselves to the priests to prove that He did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. The priests could not heal a leper, but they could declare a healed leper ceremonially clean. Moses describes how a priest would do this in Leviticus 14. He would take two doves, cedar wood, scarlet yarn, and hyssop. He would kill one of the birds and drain its blood in a vessel of fresh water. He would then dip the live bird with the cedarwood, scarlet yarn, and hyssop in the vessel filled with the bloody water and let the bird go free. Then on the eighth day, the priest would offer a lamb for a guilt offering and smear some of its blood on the cleansed leper. Now, this might sound gruesome, but it clearly foreshadows the Sacrament of Baptism, which Christ Jesus instituted. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who smears us with His blood. As the bird is dunked into the blood of the sacrificial bird and then flies free, so we are washed in Jesus’ blood and cleansed from all our sin in Baptism.

God instituted the Levitical rite of cleansing lepers to foreshadow Christ and Baptism. He forbad manmade forms of worship. He even forbad them from worshipping Him on the high places under the trees, because He commanded them to worship Him in Jerusalem, where He promised to dwell in His temple. So, today, we worship Jesus, who is greater than the temple in the manner He instituted for us. When you were baptized, you were brought to Jesus and washed by Him with His blood. That was when you first worshipped Jesus. Yet, it is not enough to begin as a Christian. God cares more how your Christian pilgrimage ends than how it began. Judas too was baptized and even preached the Gospel, cast out demons, and healed the sick. Yet, he fell away and went to hell. Yet, Paul, who was a persecutor of the Church repented, fought the good fight of faith, and finally obtained the crown of righteousness that was waiting for him (2 Timothy 4:8).

What good was it that those nine lepers were healed if they did not continue to worship Christ? Likewise, what good is it for you if you were once cleansed in Baptism, but you do not continue in your Baptism? So, you see that it is not enough that you once worshiped Christ. You must continue to worship Christ.

The greatest worship you can offer Christ is to receive in faith the grace He offers you. When you believe in Christ’s promise, you not only receive salvation, as Jesus promises, you glorify Christ. This is why you come to hear His Word. Jesus promises, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed, and you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:31) St. Paul reminds us that saving faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ. (Romans 10:17) So, when you listen to Christ’s Word, as sheep listen to the voice of their shepherd and follow him, you are worshipping Christ as He teaches you to worship Him. And you are blessed with an increase of faith, so that you may continue to give thanks to Him.

The Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood is called the Eucharist. Eucharist comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. Christ gave thanks when He gave us His body and blood to eat and to drink. And we give thanks whenever we gather to eat and drink it for our forgiveness and salvation. And as the cleansed leper bowed down at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks, the Sacrament of the Altar gives us an opportunity to bow down and worship Jesus where He is. Yes, Jesus is everywhere. But in the Sacrament, He is there for us to forgive our sins and strengthen us in faith. When we receive the Sacrament in faith, we proclaim that the crucified and risen Lord Jesus is with us bodily.

Finally, thanksgiving continues in our works. Just as it is not right to be baptized and then forsake the Word of God, as the nine ignored Christ after being cleansed, so also, it is not right to worship Jesus at His feet, hear His Word and eat His body and blood in the Sacrament, and then live lives unworthy of your call. St. Paul admonishes us to walk by the Spirit, so that we do not gratify the desires of the flesh, which work against the Spirit. Those who continue in fornication, uncleanness, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like those, will not inherit the kingdom of God. And so, your thanksgiving does not end when you leave church. Your worship does not end. Rather, having been filled with the Spirit through the preaching of Christ and His Sacraments, you should conform yourself to the Spirit and walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. As you acknowledge that Christ is present in His Word and Sacraments, so that you worship Him there, so also acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is present in you, who have received Christ’s Word and Sacraments in faith. And walk by the Spirit.

Christ instructs us to give thanks to God for our salvation, which we have received through faith. And so, we should never cease to give thanks to God. Our faith should always be active, because only our faith can save us. We should trust in and always confess the truth of Christ our Savior. We should regularly worship Him by paying attention to His Word and faithfully going to Church to worship Him in person, where He promises to be, and we should conduct our lives as if Christ is with us all the way, because He is. We should not be like the ungrateful nine, who failed to return to worship Christ. We should with thankfulness to God shun sin and pursue love and righteousness.

Faith produces thanksgiving. Thanksgiving strengthens and protects faith. So, let us give thanks to God for Jesus’ sake until our faith finally obtains our salvation. Amen.