GRATITUDINAL THANKFULNESS Luke 17:11-19

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1 GRATITUDINAL THANKFULNESS Luke 17:11-19 This is an interesting text for us today. By all accounts it simply seems like a story of Jesus healing. If your Bible is like mine it actually has that as its title: Jesus Heals Ten Men With Leprosy. Great. Fantastic so what? Jesus healed lots of people! Blindness, bleeding, demon possession, DEATH we even have an account earlier in Luke 5:12-16 where Jesus healed a man with leprosy so why is this account any different than the rest? What is Luke trying to get us to see, or hear? When we read this short story Luke is assuming that we know that all these words he uses, all these incidents in these 9 verses are wrought with things one just didn t do. First off, a good Jewish boy or girl or man or woman does NOT go near Samaria. If you remember from previous sermons, possibly throughout your life, you ll remember that Samaritans and Jews were not friends. They didn t hang out with each other, they didn t knock on the other ones door and ask for a cup of sugar nor would you call up the other and ask them if they could babysit little Johnny and Suzy.and that s not because they didn t have phones back then! They hated each other! And to hang out with one meant you actually defiled yourself! For Jesus, if they saw him even exchanging words with a Samaritan then he would be considered filthy. And Jesus knew this! I guarantee you every good Israelite boy and girl knew this! This is a history that goes back to when the kingdom was split after Solomon s passing in 975BC! These are two distinct groups with Samaria in the North and Judah in the South that are not only divided by whom they worship but one that is filled with a history of wars and killings and disagreements! It was probably part of bed-time stories for little kids as they curled up nestled their blankets! And if that wasn t bad enough now we take the whole skin condition into account (the Bible mentions leprosy but in actuality it was really ANY skin condition that wasn t

2 normal they all fell under this generic term of leprosy )! By what we can observe by looking at this man, along with the other 9 that had some skin disease, their affliction had made them utterly lost. They couldn t associate with people unless they were a cast-out as well. They couldn t go to your place for dinner, eat of your food heaven forbid they use your utensils and wipe their face with your linen napkins! You d have to toss them in the fire if that was the case! The belief was that they were filthy! They were full of sin! Lev 13:3 states that one who has leprosy is rendered unfit to worship God. If you came in contact with someone who had it you too would be considered unclean. So lepers were cast aside from the group. Isolated into their own location so that the rest of the community wouldn t become defiled and could still worship God. Having leprosy is so bad within society that even the clothes that they wear, or if your clothing touches a leprous person your clothes must be burned building materials that are touched or somehow believed to have come in contact with someone who has leprosy must be discarded outside the community. These were shunned people to the extreme! And so Jesus sees these men who are cast-offs and responds. Verse 14 says that when he sees them he says to, Go and show yourselves to the priests. Which is odd until we realize that the very next sentence states that as they were walking they were healed. So why does Jesus send them to the priest? Well, rules and tradition has it that once you were healed of your sins, your sicknesses one had to go to the priest to be allowed back into society. What s interesting, something that I ve never seen in this text before, is when the 10 men take off on their way to the priest one of them, looks down maybe as he s walking quickly, maybe as he s pulled up his long robe so that his sandals don t catch that cloth as he is trying to scurry quickly along. So he s holding a good portion of his clothes tightly near his chest and he catches a glimpse of his hand and he notices something. No legions. No sores. No discoloration. Nothing but smooth skin. And he stops dead in his tracks. He realizes he s healed. And I think that he realizes that not only has he been

3 healed but it had to have come from Jesus. It couldn t have come from anyone else, it couldn t have been from anything different because every day for a leper is the same. You stand on the outskirts of town, you beg for money, you beg for healing, you beg for everything you can get because nobody would allow you to work for them, your family cannot associate with you lest they be deemed sinful and plague-stricken as well and so this day truly would have been no different than any other day until Jesus came. And so he does a full 180 and starts sprinting towards Jesus. Can you imagine that sight? Not only to see some grown man running down the road as he is holding his robe, exposing skin that shouldn t be exposed in society.and scripture tells us in verse 15 that he is now praising God in a loud voice. So he now looks like a half-crazy lunatic man that is sprinting down the path scream praises at God and when he comes near Jesus he falls at his feet and thanks him. And this right here verses is really the meat, the gist, the point of the story. Jesus asks the man, Weren t there 10 of you that were cleansed? Where are the other 9? Did God not heal them as well? Have they not returned to give praise to God for what he has done as well? Earlier I asked the question of what is Luke trying to get us to see, or hear? Actually I don t think Luke wants us to only see or hear anything. His whole book is about seeing and hearing and discovering and understanding who Christ is and what he has done making the case of Christ as our Lord and Savior through eye witness accounts and investigative discoveries but in this small pericope amongst other pericopes I think Luke wants us to see, hear and RESPOND. He wants us to discover that WE are amongst the 10 lepers. WE have been healed by Christ. WE MUST BECOME THE SAMARITAN MAN in our actions! We are the filthy, unworthy sinners who need the voice of God, the work of Christ, the healing

4 power of his grace to save us! A saving grace that is offered up to all people but only given to those who come with gratitude and thankfulness. Those who understand what God has done and continues to do. But we shouldn t simply respond we must respond WITH gratitude and thankfulness. Have you ever really thought about those two words: gratitude and thankfulness?(if you haven t well, we will now) I think gratitude and thankfulness are actually very similar. To me gratitude is a feeling where thankfulness is the expression that comes out. But no matter how you look at them their words, their work, their necessities are the same. Because we show our gratitude by giving thanks right? Scripture has a high mark for thankfulness and gratitude because it s an emotion and action that is directed towards God for what he has done. We see that throughout both the Old and the New testaments, and even today, giving thanks is part of our worship to God. The psalmist even declares that giving thanks is better than sacrifices (Ps 69:30-31). We read that during pilgrimages to the temple and temple worship the people gave thankful praises DURING those long walks Paul writes in Rom 6:17-18 that we should give thanks to God for delivering us from sin, to which we had been committed in fact every account of giving thanks, every feeling of gratitude, every word uttered in command to give thanks all stems from the fact that God has done what he has done but didn t need to do it. God wasn t required to do it but every ounce of love in him wanted to do so for us. So every praise and thanks comes from a people who understood, and understand, the magnitude of what has happened for them. Gratitude and giving thanks to God must be engrained into our DNA. Everything we do must be done with giving gratitude and thanks to God. To me, the DNA of what it means to be a reformed believer, someone who believes in the reformed tradition and our understanding of who God is we affirm that everything we do must be in a gratitudinal

5 response all our words and actions in life are in direct response, direct thanksgiving, direct gratitude of what God has done. And I say that because we affirm that there is nowhere within us, nowhere around us, nowhere anywhere where God is NOT present. He is everywhere. He is in control of all things. There is nothing that happens that he doesn t not know about or allow. And thus all things, ALL THINGS in our lives must be in direct response to that understanding and his grace which means that all things we do and say, from our interactions with our children, neighbors, co-workers and God himself all of that must be with gratitude. But you and I both know that that can be hard. We have a choice in all things. Give thanks in all things, show gratitude in all things or not. So the question hangs there for us do you show gratitude for the things happening around and in your life (even when things are not going in a direction you d like, or circumstances put you somewhere else different than you d rather be) do you give thanks or do you not? To which do you focus? Which draws your attention? Which initiates a response from you? Why is gratitude and thankfulness so important? Because it s a positive response to life. Those other 9 men who were healed they responded let s get that straight they actually obeyed Jesus command and took off for the priest and NOT returning to give thanks is actually a response and I guarantee you they saw that they were healed but their positive response was missing. Their understanding of healing was missing, their gratitude and thankfulness was missing. They also completely missed something else Let s take a look at verse 19. Jesus tells the man, Rise and go; your FAITH HAS MADE YOU WELL. Now wait wasn t he already well? Wasn t he already healed? NO. He was on the outside but as we know Christ doesn t come to heal that which we can see

6 and touch. He does but he comes to heal something greater. He comes to bring salvation. The healing of the soul. If you re looking at your Bible and you see the very last word of our text, and from what I can tell most translations have the same word well but really we re losing something in our translation. The Greek word here is pronounced sozo and it means healed which makes sense, it means well like we have in our Bibles but more often than not it means saved or delivered. So verse 19 then is, Rise and go; your faith has SAVED you. Or Rise and go; your faith has DELIVERED you. See Christ doesn t come to simply heal he comes to save us from our ailments, our problems, the sins that have so corrupted us that we should stand as outcasts. We very rightly should stand from a distance and shout out to Christ to have mercy on us, have pity on us. Christ has every right to stand clear from us as he is pure and radiant and holy and that simply cannot come near filth and disgust and cancerous sins but He does not. Christ draws near and enters into our lives to heal. The thing about sin is that any amount of it, even the smallest drop, ruins the whole body so once you have sin you are fully corrupt. But Christ, being fully God while being fully human has zilch amount of sin in him draws into our lives and takes his holiness, his goodness, his complete purity and heals us. And we know that God, in his infinite love and compassion heals all people throughout their lives but complete healing only comes when you turn to God and give thanks and we all know, and we just saw that not all people respond with gratitude and thankfulness for what He has done. When you accept who Christ is and understand what he has done and fall to your knees in praise and thanks and gratitude because you fully understand what has transpired...you not only become healed but salvation is then understood as well.

7 AND THEN you get what Christ means when he says, Rise and go; your faith has healed you has saved you has delivered you. You have fully been healed inside and out now and forever. I leave you with the question that Jesus asked, slightly changed for our message today: Were you not healed as well? Will you fall before him with gratitude and thankfulness as well?