23 Jan

10/21/18  LUKE 17:11-19    TC   “ALWAYS GIVING A HEARTY THANK YOU!”

If we were all the same and doing the same things, the world would get a little boring, don’t you think?  But we are not and we can praise the Lord for that.  In His infinite wisdom He gave us free will.  Jesus wants us to do certain things but we have the free will to accept the good ways of Jesus or the evil ways of the devil.  We have just talked about that so we know that all of this is real.  One of the reasons that I enjoy reading and rereading the Bible is that I find many passages that I never noticed before.  I find them every year. I love this passage today because it is so full of meaning.  I read it once and thought of one thing and then I read it again and I was thinking of something else.  We wouldn’t think that nine short verses could say so much but that is the beauty of what Jesus did.  Today I’m going to try to explain who these ten lepers were and what if anything that they have to do with us.

But first I would like to start with a quick story from David Dykes.  It is about a man who was having a truly terrible day.  He was sitting in a bar and staring at his drink.  He sat like this for a good half an hour before a huge trouble maker of a man couldn’t take it anymore.  He walked up to the man and gulped down his drink in one swallow.

At that point the man burst into more tears.  The big man said, “Hey, I was only joking.  I will buy you another drink.  I just couldn’t stand to see a grown man cry.”

“No it’s not that,” replied the first man.  “Today is the worst day of my life.  First, I overslept and was late for an important meeting.  The boss was outraged and fired me.  When I left the office, I found that my car had been stolen and there was nothing the police could do about it.  So I took a cab home and realized that I had left my wallet in the back seat after he drove off.  I thought that things couldn’t get worse but when I walked into the house I found that my wife had left me for another man.  So then I stopped at a chemical store and came here.  I was sitting here contemplating taking my life when you come in and drink all of my poison!”

Now that is a bad day, for both men.  The Bible never promises that our lives will be free from pain and difficulties.  Rather the Bible promises that we will have trials and tribulations in our lives and that Jesus will be there to help us. As we look at today’s Scripture, we see 10 lepers who have had massive trials in life, harder trials than one of the men in the opening story.

In order to understand this we really have to know a little about leprosy.  Leprosy in Biblical times was a terrible disease.  So called experts don’t seem to tell the whole story on this disease.  From what I could gather, someone with leprosy would usually die of complications from it and not the disease.  It began with nerve endings dying.  This would cause fingers, toes, ears and noses to lose feeling and eventually fall off.  They would injure themselves severely as they couldn’t feel anything.  So physically, it was a killer.

Socially, it was just as bad.  Persons with leprosy were unclean.  They could not live in a village and they could only come so close to people.  Their heads and faces had to be covered and no one could touch them.  They would lose their families, their jobs and everything else.  They were totally outcast because of their disease.  This disease was thought to be the result their sins or their parent’s sins.  Please bear in mind that these people thought that punishment for sins were handed to the next generation.  The culture was fairly advanced in some ways and in some ways not.

As we look back at the Scripture, we have ten lepers calling to Jesus from a proper distance, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”  The first thing I notice here is that even though Jesus is traveling between Samaria and Galilee, these lepers know Him.  I don’t think that they have ever seen Him before but they know Him before they ever meet Him.  They know that He can do something for them.

I think that the first lesson here is that we are all the lepers.  They represent us in our sinful nature.  We are so covered with sin that we are disgusting in our looks.  It is only through God’s plan of saving grace through the blood shed by Jesus Christ that we can become clean again.  So if you haven’t asked Jesus into your heart yet, please do so today because it is not too late.  All you have to do is recognized Jesus for who He is like the lepers did, confess you sins to Him and ask Him to live in your heart.  It is painless and easy.  It is important for your eternal life and you will never regret it. It just takes faith.

There is another lesson here also.  Jesus could also be representing the church and the lepers are all the people who haven’t come to Him yet.  Our world is full of people who don’t know Jesus yet.  We have talked several times about the different religions around the world.  Islam is the largest.  We also have Buddhism and Hinduism.  And there are many, many others.  None of them believe in Jesus.  They are all like the lepers standing far off.  They can see Jesus but they cannot get to him unless they come to Him like the rest of us through faith.

And this is because these larger religions have made laws in their countries so no one can talk about anything but the national religion.  If they do, they risk being executed.  Don’t let anyone tell you how great and loving these religions are when they carry on these terrible activities.  They cannot love because they don’t know God, through Jesus Christ, and therefore they don’t know love.  And that is because God is love.

And we know that they are standing off to the side watching Jesus because of what is happening in some of these countries.  The Christian population is exploding in China.  Africa is another place where the growth of Christians is phenomenal.  If the laws were relaxed in all of these countries there would be an explosion for Jesus that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with.  This is because they want to come just like the lepers in our story.  People of the world want what we have and that is Jesus.

And this even happens in our own communities.  I would guess that we have people that haven’t been to church in years that are curious as to what we have that they don’t.  They are waiting for the invitation to come.  It may take more than one invitation.  This should be one of your jobs, your priorities.  Don’t be afraid to invite the unchurched.  Don’t be afraid to pick someone up and bring them to church or this recording.  We have had the very sad situation where we had a church close in this area.  I’m sure it’s happened in your area also.  We are to extend our hospitality to those who are left after the closing.  Let them know that they are really welcome.  We understand these situations and we want to extend our hands to all people in the name of Jesus.

As we move on notice that Jesus doesn’t heal them right away.  And He doesn’t touch them or make any type of production out of this.  He simply says, “Go!  Show yourselves to the priests.”  Every leper obeyed Jesus and turned and left.  As they were leaving, they were healed.  First they had to obey and then they were healed.

We have talked many times about the importance of our prayer lives.  How often do we rattle off a to-do list for God?  Many times we get so involved with talking to Jesus that we forget to listen.  And then when we do listen, we forget to do what He says.  Then we may wonder why prayer doesn’t work.  It doesn’t always work because we don’t obey.  This is an important little lesson here.  You are to obey first, and then you will be healed.

I have to move on or we will never get done with this as there are so many little lessons here.  The ten are moving off to the priests because only the priests can declare them clean and give them their life back.  Only one of them decides that it is more important to thank God than to thank the priests.  The man who comes back is also a foreigner, a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jews.  Jesus is once again showing that we are to love our enemies as well as our neighbors.  Another point that Jesus makes here is that it is not important that the priests or church gets thanked.

It is important that we give thanks to Jesus.  When we come to Him in praise and thanksgiving, then He will be pleased.  He is pleased when we just come to Him and leave as we see by the nine who were healed.  I am sure that these men were thankful for being healed of this deadly disease.  Who wouldn’t be?  But they didn’t offer thanksgiving to the right place.  Only the Samaritan, the foreigner did.

I often feel that we are a little short on thanksgiving.  I have to include myself in this also.  I hope you notice that just about any prayer I give will start with praise and thanksgiving.  There is a school of thought that tries to tell me that I should change this up a bit so it is not so boring.  Well, I don’t think that it is boring to God.  He wants to hear from us and He wants the thanksgiving.

I read a book once called, Praise the Lord Anyway.  It was a delightful book about thanking the Lord in any situation.  One time the author was to speak to a crowd from a bleacher like platform.  It collapsed and it was a huge mess.  They found her under some boards all disheveled with her dress in a non-lady like fashion.  Luckily, no one was seriously injured and as they were pulling her out of the rubble, she exclaimed, “Praise the Lord anyway!”   She found a way to give thanks in a bad situation.

I find it amazing how different people react to situations.  Some will come away from an accident cussing and swearing.  Some will be blaming everything in sight.  Some will start to try to put everything right.  And a few will give thanks to God for not injuring more or that the accident wasn’t worse.  They will find a so called silver lining to any situation.  I used to hate those people in my old life.  Now I find that I am one of those people.  Good things happen when Jesus comes into your life.

The last thing I would like to bring up is that man who came back was a foreigner.  This is also who we are.  It is easy for us to go through life thinking that the things of this world are important.  But we are set apart just like the Samaritan.  Our citizenship is in heaven and not here.  We are temporary.  We are renters.  We are not here to accept the world view on matters that the Bible specifically talks about.  We are here to follow the Word, or the Word view instead of worldview!

I was reading in the Upper Room a while back an article by Ron Musser.  Their teenager had just gotten his driver’s license and was going to visit his grandparents 100 miles away.  He was apprehensive as were the parents because there was a lot of construction on the way.  I find that hard to imagine.  Anyway, the mom told the son to just follow the car in front of him through those zones and he would be all right.  He did this and of course the car in front went down the wrong exit and the boy followed and got lost.  It took him awhile but he finally made it to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s.  The lesson here is that we cannot just follow people in front of us.  If they do not have a relationship with Jesus, they will lead us down the wrong path.  It is our job to try to take the path of God in whatever we do, no matter how unpopular it is. When people see us do this, they will wonder.  Soon they will wonder what we have and soon they will want what we have.  They can have Jesus just like everybody else in the world.  We can help them find the way to Him.

We have taken a broad look today at how important it is to be inviting the lost.  We need to remember that we were all lost at one time.  Jesus came to heal us of our sins and He wants thanks in return.  We talked last week about how hard it is for some of us to be dependent.  It will be easier if we realize that this earth is not our home.  Heaven is our home and it will be for eternity.

I know that you have heard of doing this before but try this.  For the next week, at the end of each day, list 5 things that you should give thanks to God for.  Do this especially on days when things aren’t going right.  If you kept this up for a month, I know that you would see some changes in your lives.  Even if you are a strong Christian and you think this is a little silly, try it.

Jesus wants to hear from you and what better way to begin a conversation with Him than with a hearty thank you.  Be like the leper who came back and let his faith make him well.  Jesus wants you all to be with Him all the time.  That is how you were made and that is how you can achieve the total happiness and satisfaction that only Jesus can provide.  He only wants the best for you and He is the best.  Praise the Lord for His Son Jesus Christ.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us. Let’s pray.