The Ten Lepers Gratitude People Jesus Met, Part 22 Lon Solomon McLean Bible Church October 18, 2009 Hey you know, this past summer Brenda and I celebrated our 35 th wedding anniversary, which is an enormous testimony to the grace of God and to the patience and longsuffering of my wife, because I am not an easy man to live with. You say, How do you know that? Well, I know it because Brenda tells me that all the time; that s how I know it! I remember our wedding very well, even though it was 35 years ago. I remember how nervous I was. I remember how radiant my wife was and still is. I remember how, just as she was getting ready to walk down the aisle with her father, he turned to her and said, Now Brenda, if you re not 100% sure this is the right thing to do, we can stop this right now. Honest, he really said that! But you know, there is one bad memory I have of our wedding, which is thank you notes. Oh, the dreaded thank you notes! I mean, months later, we were still writing these thank you notes. I remember suggesting to my wife several times that we knock it off, because people had probably forgotten by then that they d even given us anything. She said to me very wisely, No, Lon, being grateful and showing it is very important in life, and she s right. This is what we re going to talk about today. We re in a series entitled People Jesus Met. Today we re going to see Jesus meet ten lepers. He healed them all, but only one of them came back to say thank you. We re going to go back 2000 years in time and talk about that event, then I want to bring all of that forward and have us answer the question, Well, what difference does that make to you and me today? That s our plan. Luke chapter 17 is our passage, and we begin at verse 11. The Bible says, Now as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. And as Jesus was going into a village, ten lepers met Him. Now we ve all
heard of this disease leprosy, but I ll bet most of us know very little about it. Leprosy or Hansen s Disease is actually a contagious bacterial disease that is an upperrespiratory infection really, but it manifests itself because of the damage it does to people s skins. It causes lesions on people s skin. Often their body parts are severely disfigured, and sometimes they literally even fall off. Today leprosy is curable by a multi-drug antibiotic treatment, but of course, in the days of the Lord Jesus, this disease was incurable. As a result, leprosy was one of the most dreaded diseases in all the ancient Near East. Because it was contagious, the rabbis decreed that no leper was allowed to approach within 50 yards of a healthy person. Leviticus 13 in the Old Testament said that lepers had to wear torn clothing. They had to cover their faces, and they had to cry out, Unclean, unclean wherever they went to warn healthy people to stay away from them. Leviticus 13 also says that as long as they have the infection, lepers must live alone outside the camp. As a result of this, in the days of Jesus, most people that had leprosy lived in leper colonies where they were isolated from their families, their friends, and the rest of society. Well, let s go on to verse 12. So these lepers stood at a distance remember the 50-yard rule, right? and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, please have mercy on us! You can get the picture here. These guys were screaming at the top of their lungs. They re not bashful. They re not ashamed. They re not embarrassed, because they ve heard about this fellow named Jesus who can actually cure people with leprosy. Now hear He was in their town. This was their one chance to get their life back, and they were not going to lose it because of being too timid. Verse 14, And when Jesus saw them, He said to them, Go, show yourselves to the priest. You say, Lon, why in the world would He say that to them? Why didn t He say, Okay, you re healed? Why did He tell them this? Well, it s because in Leviticus 14 in the Old Testament, God says that if a leper ever experiences a divine healing, a supernatural healing, that person is to go immediately and present themselves to the priest. The priest then will corroborate the healing, lift the quarantine on them, and then they will be allowed to rejoin normal Jewish society.
Look here, look here. This is so important that we understand this. When Jesus tells these ten lepers to go show themselves to the priest, what He was really promising is that He was going to heal them. He said to them, By the time you get there, you ll have something to show the priest, because I m going to heal you before you get there. There was a promise here in what Jesus said to them. Verse 14 continues, And it came about as they were on their way to the priests that they were cleansed from their leprosy. Would you notice that they went and started on their way to the priests while they were still lepers, before they had been cleansed and healed? Now friends, this is the way true biblical faith always works. Number one, God makes us a promise. Number two, God asks us to believe His promise and to act on it like these lepers did. Then number three, God keeps His promise. This is the way it worked with Abraham when God asked him to leave his homeland. This is the way it worked with Moses when God asked him to go back to Egypt and face Yul Brynner. This is the way it worked with Esther when God asked her to go to the king uninvited. This is the way it worked with Ruth when she stuck with her mother-in-law Naomi and with Joshua when God asked him to march around Jericho seven times while the walls were still up. This is the way it worked with the ten lepers. Jesus asked them to do something based on His promise before He actually fulfilled the promise. All these people believed God first. They stepped out in faith first, and then God kept His word and did great and mighty things for each one of them. Now friends, the problem is that you and I are always trying to reverse this order. We always say, God, show me and I ll believe. God has to say, Huh-uh. I m sorry. That s not the deal. You believe, and then I ll show you. This is why the apostle Paul said in II Corinthians 5:7, For we walk by faith. That is, we believe God first. We don t walk by sight. May I say that if you re a follower of Jesus here today and God is asking you to walk by faith in some area of your life, if God is asking you to step out on His promises before you can actually see or figure out how He s ever going to keep those promises,
I m here to urge you to do it. Don t be afraid to do it! I m here to urge you to follow in the footsteps of the ten lepers who did it, because God reserves His richest, deepest blessing for people who will walk by faith and believe Him first. Well, let s get back to the story. Verse 15, Now one of the lepers, when he saw that he had been healed, came back to Jesus praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus feet, and he thanked Him. And this man was a Samaritan. This leper was on the way to see the priests, and suddenly he realized he was healed, and he said to himself, You know what? The priests can wait. The priest didn t heal me. I m going back to say thank you to the person who did. Verse 17, Then Jesus said to him, Were there not ten lepers who were cleansed? Where are the other nine? Is no one but this foreigner, this Samaritan, the only one who came back to give praise to God? Jesus said to this guy, Hey, I thought I healed ten of you guys. Where are the other nine? This is actually kind of funny! I mean, it s humorous. It s Bible humor, which is why you don t get it, but this is really funny what Jesus said to him! He said, How come they didn t come back to say thank you like you did? Verse 19, Then Jesus said to him, Rise, go your way. Your faith has made you well. Now that s the end of the passage for today, but we want to stop now, because it s time to ask our most important question. Are you ready? Here we go, nice and loud, one, two, three SO WHAT? Come on, you can do better than that! One, two, three SO WHAT? Ah, there you go! Doesn t that feel good? You say, Lon, so what? I mean, I don t understand what difference this makes for me. I m not a leper. I don t even know any lepers. What difference does this make to me? Well, let s talk about that, shall we? You know, the question Jesus asked in verse 17 is, Were there not ten lepers who were cleansed? Where are the other nine? Folks, this is a rhetorical question, meaning that Jesus didn t ask this question to get an answer. Jesus asked this question to make a point. The point that he wanted to make is that way too often, people forget to thank God for the kind and merciful things that He does for them and by the way, too often we fail to thank other people for the kind and merciful things they do.
Now can we be honest here together for a moment and admit that all of us are a lot like the nine lepers many times in our lives? Can we be honest and say that? There are three areas where I think this is primarily true. Number one, we all tend to be like the nine lepers, first of all, when it comes to God. We pray, Oh, God, if You ll just get me out of this mess! Oh, God, if You ll just get me out of that mess, if You ll just get me out of the other mess. Oh, God, if You ll just do this wonderful, great and mighty thing for me. Then God does it, and He never hears from us again (pauses) until we need something else. We never come back to say thank you. We never express any gratitude. We never publicly give Him the credit and the honor for what He did. Folks, this dishonors God. This offends God. I think it s clear here in Luke 17 that Jesus was irked by the ingratitude of these other nine lepers. You say, Well, then why didn t He just take their healing back? Why didn t He just say to the one leper, You know what? It s good you came back. Those other nine, pfffth! I m taking their healing away right now. Why didn t He do that? Well friends, He didn t do it because our God is a good, merciful, and kind God. Even when our behavior is undeserving of His goodness, God is still good to us anyway. Hey, praise the Lord and amen for that, huh? Do you guys agree? (applause) That s a good thing, but listen. That doesn t excuse us for not going back and thanking Him for what He does. There s a second area where we tend to be like the nine lepers. That s when it comes to our parents. There was a time in each one of our lives, my friends, when a week s worth of neglect would have killed every one of us. The people who took care of us in those years, who took care of us through the fevers, the flus, the colds and the sleepless nights were our parents. I wonder how many of us have ever gone back to express to our parents the proper level of gratitude and respect that they deserve for what they did for us. Some of us have aging parents, but we re too busy to call them. We re too busy to visit them, and we re too busy to fly them in to visit us. Hey, you know what? It s a really good thing that our parents didn t treat us the way a whole bunch of us are treating them. Finally, there s a third way in which we re a lot like the nine lepers sometimes, and that s when it comes to other people who have helped us along our way in life
friends, teachers, counselors, bosses, relatives who have done things for us that change the very direction of our life for the good, things we could never possibly repay them. Yet have we ever gone back to thank them or even written them a thank you note or given them any tangible expression of our gratitude for what they ve done for us? Listen, this is the point that Jesus is making in Luke 17, namely that all of us are prone to be like the nine lepers. All of us are prone to be ungrateful. It s simply a part of our sinful human nature, but that doesn t make it right. In fact, what you find interesting is that did you know in the Bible, over 100 times God commands you and me to give thanks, to be thankful, to express our gratitude both to Him and to other people? Did you know that? For example, Psalm 100:4 says, Enter God s gates with thanksgiving. Give thanks to Him and bless His name. In Colossians 2 in the New Testament, Paul says that as followers of Christ, we are to be overflowing with thanksgiving. In Ephesians 5:20, the Bible tells us we are always to thank God, to give thanks to God for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look here. Remember that biblical thanksgiving, biblical giving of thanks is an act of our will; it is not a feeling. God never commands us in the Bible to feel any way about anything, but He commands us a hundred times to give thanks. Why? Because biblical thanksgiving is a deliberate act of our will; this means that we can give thanks for things that we don t feel thankful for. We can be in a situation where we feel very unthankful for the situation, but the Bible says we can still rise up on the wings of faith and thank God for the situation by faith anyway. You say, All right, Lon, okay. Take a breath. Listen, I understand what you re saying. A hundred times God tells me to give thanks. I got that, but my question is, Why is this such a big deal? I mean, I don t understand why God thinks this is so important that a hundred times He tells me to do this. Well, that s a great question! There are three reasons why God considers it so important. I m going to tell them to you, and with that, we re done. Reason number one is because true thanksgiving honors God. When we are outwardly grateful about everything in life, it exalts God. I love what Paul says in II
Corinthians 4:15. He talks about thanksgiving, which overflows to the glory of God. You say, I don t get it. How can my being publicly thankful to God give glory to Him? Oh my friend, listen! When we are publicly thankful to God for everything in our life, no matter whether it s good or bad, this is a public recognition. This is a public acknowledgement that there is a good, kind, merciful, gracious God running the world, not fate, not coincidence, not happenstance, and certainly not us. God is in charge of His world and God is doing what is best for me and for everybody else in His world. When I acknowledge that publicly in front of people everywhere I go, my friends, that honors God. That exalts God. That turns the spotlight on God. That gives credit to God. That gives fame to God, so this is the first reason why God tells us to do it. There s a second reason, and that is because it brings the peace of God to our lives when we are truly thankful for every circumstance we re in. Listen to what Paul says in Philippians 4:6. He said, Be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving hello! present your request to God. Next verse, And the peace of God there you are which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Listen, look here. God s mercy runs through every single circumstance in our lives, in the good, the bad and the ugly. God s mercy runs through them if we will simply look for it. When we do this, when we identify God s mercy in our circumstances--no matter how bad they look and then focus on God s mercy and thank God for His mercy, then we unlock God s supernatural peace in that circumstance. A number of years ago, my middle son Justin who is now 28 was a preschooler. We were coming back from a softball game one night. It was around 10:00. We were going around the loop at Nutley Street getting onto Route 66 East to head up to the Beltway and go home. Justin was sitting in the back seat with his seatbelt on. As we went around this loop getting onto 66, suddenly I heard air rushing into the back. My mind raced to figure out what was going on.
What Justin had done was unlocked his seatbelt, opened the door, and rolled out of the car. My wife Brenda was in absolute shock. She turned to me and said, Lon, Justin just fell out of the car! I pulled over and ran back to get him. He was lying face down in the middle of the road on the ramp. Cars were coming around the ramp. It was pitch dark, and they were swerving at the last minute not to run over him in the road. I finally got back up there and rolled him over, and he looked at me and went, Daddy. I thought, Okay, Jesus, he s alive. We ve got a chance! I ran back to the car, gave him to Brenda, and we drove off to Fairfax ER doing about 95 or 100. I figured if any policemen got in behind me, he could follow me to the emergency room; that s the way I looked at it. We got there. It wasn t real crowded, thank the Lord. They were able to rush Justin right back in. We immediately called and activated the McLean Bible Church prayer hotline. We had some friends who came over almost immediately to sit in the waiting room with us. As I was sitting out there in the ER, not knowing whether my son was going to live or die, I was upset. I was scared. I was anxious. It was at that moment that I sensed the Holy Spirit tapping me on the shoulder and saying, You know, Lon, there s a lot of My mercy in this situation if you ll just look for it. I was like, Are You kidding me? You ve got to be kidding me, God! Where is there mercy in this situation? But alright, I ll look for it, so I began to look. Suddenly I realized that God was right. You see, friends, it was mercy that we were going 25 miles an hour and not 55 miles an hour when this happened. It was mercy that my son was still alive in the middle of the road when I got to him. It was mercy that all of these cars saw him and swerved around him instead of running over him. It was mercy that all of this happened so close to such a great hospital as Fairfax. It was mercy that they weren t that busy and that they were able to rush him right back in. it was mercy that we had all these friends around McLean Bible Church praying for us. It was mercy that we had people come right over and sit there so we weren t alone. It was mercy that my son was in the hands of the great physician who can keep anybody alive, I don t care what the injury is.
Suddenly as I began to realize all the mercy that really was here and began to thank God for it, all I can tell you is that the fears and the anxieties that I was feeling went away, and I was engulfed by the sweet peace of God. You say, Lon, that s not even logical to be sitting in an emergency room waiting area not knowing if your child s going to live and to have peace. Well friends, what does the Bible say? The Bible says it is peace that passes all understanding. It s a supernatural peace. It s not logical; it s supernatural, and we unlock it when we become grateful for God s mercy in every circumstance. I still practice that today. Many times I ll get in bed at night. My mind is racing about everything, and I m getting myself all spun up, and you know what? I ve learned to say, Okay, God, I need to stop now. What I need to start doing instead of worrying about that is to start thinking about all the mercy You ve shown me today and in my life and begin thanking You for all the good things that I ve got. It s amazing how those things melt away and the peace of God takes over! This is what the great hymn says. It says, Count your blessings. It says, When upon life s billows you are tempest tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost, count your many blessings. Name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Number three, why does God tell us to be thankful a hundred times? Third and finally, a true spirit of gratitude in our lives, my friends, protects us from sin. It protects us from self destructing in life. Think about it now. If Adam and Eve had been truly grateful for what they had in the Garden of Eden, then they never would have eaten from that tree. If David had been truly grateful for all the wives the Lord had already given him, he wouldn t have committed adultery with Bathsheba. If Lot had been grateful for the possessions he already had, he wouldn t have gone down to Sodom and self destructed his whole family. If Bernie Madoff had been grateful for the wealth he already had, he wouldn t be in jail today. Look here. Friends, one of the greatest protections against sin and self destruction in our lives is for us to be truly grateful for whatever the Lord has given us right now. (applause) This is why the apostle Paul said in Philippians chapter 4, For I
have learned to be content, to be grateful, to be thankful in whatever circumstance I am. This is why he says in I Timothy 6, Godliness with contentment is great gain. You say, Well, Lon, wait a minute though. Does that mean it s wrong for me to work hard and try to improve my lot in life? No, absolutely not! That s fine. That s good, so long as listen we are so grateful for what God gives us at every point along the way that we re never willing to engage in biblical disobedience to try to get more. So let me conclude and say how you do this. How do we get to be grateful like this? How do we get this kind of thankful spirit in our lives like in Ephesians 5:20 where we always give thanks to God for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus? How do we get that? Well, folks, it s simple really. This kind of attitude is based on having a biblical worldview of life. You say, What do you mean? Well, friends, a biblical worldview says four simple things. Number one, it says that God is in absolute control of every circumstance, of every detail of my life. You say, Where do I find that out? It s in the Bible. Number two, a biblical worldview says that God loves me and knows what is absolutely best for me at all times. You say, Lon, where do I find that? It s in the Bible. Number three, a biblical worldview says if anything were better for me than what God has given me right now, then God would have already changed it. Where do I find that, Lon? In the Bible. Finally, a biblical worldview says, in light of these three things being true, therefore, I can thank God for whatever situation I m in with the absolute assurance that I am right where I m supposed to be at this moment in time. Where do we find that truth? Tell me! It s in the Bible; that s right. Folks, a biblical worldview means we believe what God tells us in the Bible without question, without hesitation. Just like a little child believes what his mother tells him without question and without hesitation. What did Jesus say? He said we need to have faith like a little child. Listen, friends, please don t be educated beyond your intelligence. Be like a little child. Just believe what God tells you without question, without hesitation. Build your worldview on that, because a biblical worldview is the foundation for a grateful life. You can thank God for anything in your life if you run it through the lens of a biblical
worldview. Folks, a grateful life is a foundation for a life that is richly blessed by God. Let s just believe what God tells us, and let s be thankful people. It will be a benefit to us, and it will be a glory and an honor to the Lord Jesus. Let s pray. Father, thanks for reminding us today that this world is right on schedule, that our lives are right on schedule. There are no surprises. Lord, there is nothing that happens outside of Your absolute sovereign control, and You love us. What is happening to us right now is best for us. If it weren t, You would do something else. So Father, help us believe these biblical truths so deeply that we can rise up, and on that foundation, we can give thanks to God for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, change our lives because we were here today. Change the very way we see our circumstances and the way we react, that we might bring glory to You and that we might enjoy the blessings that come from obeying You and giving thanks in all things. We pray these things in Jesus name, and God s people said, amen.