When God Calls It Sin – Part 2 – #2 Unthankfulness

About this Series: “When God Calls It Sin” was originally a 5-week study I had lead in 2019 for an adult Sunday School class at my old church.

The outlines and lessons were based on Jerry Bridges’ book “Respectable Sins,” which I highly recommended for anyone serious about confronting the sins in their own hearts that are often overlooked.

For the blog, I am adapting my own notes and slides from the class and posting them almost verbatim. Since each class was an hour long, however, I will be dividing segments of each lesson into separate posts for easier reading.

Jump To:

• Part 1 (Introduction)
• Part 2 (Ungodliness || Unthankfulness || Anxiety || Frustration || Discontentment)
• Part 3 (Pride || Selfishness || Judgmentalism)
• Part 4 (Anger || Impatience & Irritability || Envy, Jealousy, & Related Sins)
• Part 5 (Sins of the Tongue || Wordliness)

Part 2 Segments:

1. Ungodliness
2. > Unthankfulness
3. Anxiety
4. Frustration & Discontentment

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Unthankfulness

Unthankfulness is one sinful attitude that comes out of an ungodly heart. Everything that we are and have is a gift from God. When we fail to thank God for His blessings of salvation, deliverance from spiritual darkness, and the gift of life itself, we are not merely being forgetful; we are being sinful.

Read this brief passage from the Gospel of Luke:

And it happened that while He was on the way to Jerusalem, He was passing through Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met Him. And they raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And it happened that as they were going, they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine—where are they? Was there no one found who turned back to give glory to God, except this foreigner?”

Luke 17:11-18 LSB

When you read that passage, do you wonder how those other nine men could have been so ungrateful? Leprosy was a horrible disease that left these men outcast from society, targets of scorn and banishment, not to mention their physical suffering.

Jesus cleansed them all and sent them to the priests to present themselves cleansed, allowing them to once again be welcomes in the Jewish community. Yet nine of them could not even be bothered to turn back and offer a single word of gratitude.

We are all too often guilty of that same sin of unthankfulness!

Do you remember the spiritual state you were in prior to your salvation? Our condition was far worse than that of leprosy. We were dead! Slaves to the world, children of the devil, and objects of God’s wrath.

But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:4-7 LSB

How often do we stop to consider the magnitude of that truth? Christ pulled us out of the grave and made us alive! We were enslaved to our own worldly desires, but God moved us from death to life!

Shouldn’t that alone cause us to be in a constant state of euphoric thankfulness? Have you stopped today to give thanks to God for delivering you from sin, death, and hell?

Paul writes in Ephesians 5:20 that we are to be “always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.” I am sure that I am not the only here that gets a little miffed when I am not thanked for holding a door open for someone.

Have you thanked the Lord for that last breath of oxygen He so graciously provided for you? After all, it is God Himself who “gives to all people life and breath and all things!” (Acts 17:25)

At the end of your workday, do you ever stop to thank the Lord for giving you the skill, ability, and health to accomplish that day’s work? Do you ever walk through your house, looking at all the possessions He’s provided and thank God for the food in your cupboard, the car in your driveway, your furniture, or your indoor plumbing?

It is so easy, especially in our culture of abundance, to take for granted all the provisions and blessings that God has so freely given us. And that is why we can so easily see unthankfulness as an “acceptable” sin; or worse, we do not think it to be a sin at all!

But the Apostle Paul did. In Romans 1, Paul provides a vivid description of how a pagan culture spins into abject depravity and wickedness, and it all starts with our first two “acceptable” sins of ungodliness and unthankfulness:

For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Romans 1:21 LSB (emphasis added)

So, again, what we may see as a small sin, God takes very seriously. It was because of their ungodliness and unthankfulness that God gave them over to their sinful lusts (Romans 1:24).

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Now, not only are we to give thanks for everything, we are also to give thanks always. Give thanks in all circumstances, whether good or bad!

What about when things do not go as planned? Well, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28a), and if you read the rest of that passage, you learn that the “good” in view is our being conformed to the image of Christ.

That is the good that God is working us towards. So, “all things,” even our trials, are opportunities to express our gratitude. God is doing something in our trials that will help lead us to greater godliness and becoming more like His Son. It is not for us to understand how or why He is using our pain for good, but to trust that He is and we can be thankful for that.

So we give thanks, not just with empty words, but with genuine faith in God’s promises. He has promised to work all things for good and we must believe that!

In the book, Brides offers this helpful prayer that we might offer God in the midst of difficult situations:

Father, the circumstance I am in now is difficult and painful. I would not have chosen it, but You in Your love and wisdom chose it for me. You intend it for my good, and so by faith I thank You for the good You are going to do in my life through it. Help me to genuinely believe this and be able to thank You from my heart.

Jerry Bridges, “Respectable Sins”

Questions

• What are some blessings God has given you?
• Was there ever a challenging time in your life when you were, or were not, able to give thanks? What did God teach you through that experience?

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