Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers

Transcript

Rob McFarlane: 0:58

The title of my sermon today is Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers. Today we'll see that we need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude and not have a sense of entitlement. My hope is that we at River Church would be a grateful people. Let's not take for granted all that Jesus has done for us. When we brought up our children, we taught them to say please and thank you. If they went to visit someone, we would coach them before we went to that person's home and we would encourage them to say please and to say thank you. But with God, we should always say thank you before we say please. We should come to Him with an attitude of gratitude in our prayer and not just a shopping list. Let's not be like Timmy, who said, My name is Timmy, and I'll take all you can give me. Let's have an attitude of gratitude. So let's read the verses we're going to study today. They from Luke chapter 17, verse 11 to verse 19, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible. On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up 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 as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. I love these stories or accounts of encounters with Jesus and how people's lives are transformed. Remember, he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And what he did 2,000 years ago when he was here on earth, he can still do today through his Holy Spirit and through his people. We saw in verse 12 that Jesus was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance. And that's because those who had leprosy were not allowed to mix with other people. They asked Jesus for mercy in verse 13. And I think it's wonderful that we can come to a merciful Savior. In Psalm 145, verse 8, the Bible says, The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4, we're told, because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy. I love that. We have a God who is rich in mercy. Let's be those who come to him in our time of need to ask him for mercy. And then verse 14, we're told that Jesus said to them, Go show yourselves to the priests. Now this was the law we read in Leviticus chapter 14 for those who were cleansed from leprosy. Before they could have normal contact with other people, they needed to go and show themselves to the priest who would verify that their disease had ceased to have its destructive force on their physical body and that they could return to normal life. They came to Jesus and He sent them away into a normal life. That's what Jesus does. Now, today we're going to learn four life lessons from this passage of Scripture. And number one is that results are not always instant. We see in verse 14, as they went, they were cleansed. Just recently, Jill and I returned from a ministry trip and holiday in South Africa. Now, when we first got married, we went on a game drive or safari and we enjoyed seeing wonderful animals. I remember seeing a herd of elephants. We took out our camera in 1987 and we snapped as many photographs as we could. Then we had to wait 21 days from the time we submitted the film to be developed. It took that long for the photographs to be available for us to be able to see what we had taken photographs of. But this last trip we had our iPhones with us and we were able to take photographs and have a look at the photographs straight away to determine whether we had a good shot or not. Sometimes we have to wait, and other times we're able to see the results instantly. In this particular case, it says, as they went, they were healed. And often healing or answers to our prayer are not instant but they are progressive. Many people think that whenever Jesus prayed for someone, they were instantly healed. And I do believe that the New Testament or the Gospels teach us that all who came to Jesus were healed. However, we read in Mark chapter 8, verse 22 to 25 that Jesus prayed for a blind man and he was progressively healed. It says in Mark 8, verse 22 to 25, they came to Bethsida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand, led him out of the village, and when he had spat on his eyes, he laid his hands on him, and he asked him, Do you see anything? He looked up and said, I see people, but they are like trees walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Do you notice in those verses Jesus prayed twice for that man? The first time there was a progressive healing, and the second time his healing was complete. We need to pray until we see a complete breakthrough. We need to be persistent in our faith. Don't think that just because you've been prayed for and you've only seen a partial healing or a partial breakthrough or a partial change in your circumstances, that God is finished with you or God's not at work in your life. No, He is at work. The Bible says He who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion. So, number one, we've seen that first life lesson is results are not always instant. Sometimes they are progressive. Life lesson number two. Notice the good things. We read in verse 15 and 16, then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back. Praising God with a loud voice, he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving thanks. Now, thanksgiving is an appropriate response to God at work. When he saw that he was healed, now notice it was past tense, he was healed. It wasn't just an act of faith, it was an act of a response to the fruit in his life. When he saw that he was healed, he came back praising God with a loud voice, and he fell at Jesus' feet. What a wonderful picture of praise and worship. Sometimes our praise is loud as we sing and clap and shout, and other times it's quiet as we fall at his feet and worship him. I think it's important that we notice the good things, that we stop and we say thank you. Let's be those who count our blessings. Let's be those who recognize all that Jesus has done. Number three, our third life lesson. Remember to say thank you. In verse seventeen and eighteen. Then Jesus answered, Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Only one of the ten came back to say thank you, Jesus. And I think this indicates human nature. Only ten percent or ten percent of people say thank you to God. I think it's important that we remember to say thank you. We must cultivate an attitude of gratitude. It's something that we should cultivate in our lives, we should work on in our lives where we stop and we say thank you. I encourage you, don't be a lukewarm, low-impact, high maintenance, self-centered Christian, but be a fired up, high impact, low maintenance Jesus-centered Christian. Let's be those who say thank you to God and live a grateful life. Here's a memory verse for you this week, and I'd like to encourage you to memorize this. Write it down and spend time thinking about it this week and put it into practice. It's Psalm 9, verse 1. It says, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all your wonderful deeds. I love that. I love the fact that we can give thanks to the Lord wholeheartedly and that we can recount all of his wonderful deeds. Have you ever heard the phrase count your blessings? Well, I want to encourage you to recount your blessings. When our four children, all precious gifts from God were born, we counted their fingers and toes. And I think it's important for us often to count on our fingers and maybe even on our toes, the goodness of God in our lives. Think about every day maybe five things that you can recount about God's goodness and grace and wonderful deeds in our lives. So that verse again is Psalm 9, verse 1. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. So we saw life lesson number three is remember to say thank you. And number four, gratitude opens the door for more. Let's look at verse 19. And he said to him, Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. In the King James Version, it puts the verse this way Your faith has made you whole. I believe the leper who came back to say thank you to Jesus was not just healed in the sense that the disease stopped attacking his body, but actually Jesus made him whole. He replaced that which was taken, he restored that which was broken and lost in his life. I believe that if we live in a with an attitude of gratitude and that we we cultivate worship and praise, we stay thankful, we create an atmosphere for God to do more in our lives. I believe that when we read the Old Testament, leprosy is often a type or shadow of sin in the New Testament in our lives. Things that have attacked the human body, and uh and when we encounter Jesus, we are healed. In that sense, the the effect of sin on our lives stops, and we now have a right relationship with God. But often people still live with broken relationships or aspects of their lives that have been lost because of sin and its effects in their lives, perhaps poor choices or things that have happened or been done to them. I want to encourage you as we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we create an environment for miracles where God is able to do more, where he's able to make us whole. Let's have an attitude of gratitude. Wherever you go, I want to encourage you to create the environment for miracles by being thankful, having an attitude of gratitude, and not living with a sense of entitlement. So today I would like to ask you a question. And I'd like to encourage you to consider this today. If you can, if you're with somebody else, or perhaps even use WhatsApp or a text message or an email to interact with a friend and share with them what you can say thank you to Jesus for in your life today. So the question is this what can you say thank you to Jesus for in your life today? Remember, our memory verse for this week is Psalm 9, verse 1. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. Let's pray together. And as we do, let's ask the Holy Spirit to highlight for us exactly what He wants us as individuals to do as a result of what we've heard in today's sermon. Let's pray. Father God, thank you. That you want us to have an attitude of gratitude and not a sense of entitlement. We ask that you would give us thankful hearts. That our response to you would be to count and recount your blessings in our lives. As Psalm 9 verse 1 says, we want to give thanks to the Lord with our whole heart. We want to recount all your wonderful deeds in our lives. We want our prayers to start with thank you before we start saying please. We know you want us to ask for things, but we want to say thank you first, and we want to say thank you afterwards for all that you are doing, have done, and will do in our lives. Holy Spirit, show us now what you want us to do as a result of hearing this sermon today. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.