[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, Amen. Dear saints, this text of the ten healed lepers and the one Samaritan who returns to give thanks ought to be planted in our hearts and minds and imaginations like a like a plum tree in the backyard that always has fruit on it. You can just always go and grab something off it. I want it. I hope and pray that this text will live in your hearts and your imaginations. Because there’s just so much there. There’s so much there in the in the troubles of leprosy that Jesus heals. There’s so much there in the in the fact that this group of ten lepers was made up of Jews and Samaritans. There’s so much there that that they believe the words of Jesus and they go to the temple without seeing any evidence of healing. They just they trust the word. But then there’s so much there in the fact that nine of them don’t come back, but one does. That’s the point we want to highlight in in just a little bit. There’s so much to reflect on that Jesus is teaching his disciples when he receives the worship of this Samaritan. And he says, “Have none? Have none of the other ones returned to to praise God except for for this foreigner?” So Jesus is is teaching them also. It’s it’s just an amazing text. It’s so beautiful, and so I want it to to live in your imagination, so that you can talk of it with each other, so that you can teach it to your children and your grandchildren, that you can think about it when you’re walking the dog, so that this text can bear fruit in in your lives consistently. So so I want to just I want to plant the story in your imagination. Today, mostly by just talking it through, and then, and then I’ll pick a couple of these plums and we’ll taste them together. But you just should know that this is a the amount of wisdom and the amount of comfort in this text is inexhaustible. So we’re just going to begin to to take a look. First, we notice that Jesus is going between the land of Galilee and Samaria. It’s kind of a no man’s land, and for Jesus especially, nobody wanted him. I mean, nobody. The the Galileans didn’t want to hear from Jesus. The Samaritans certainly didn’t want to hear from him. There was there was though a group of people who were particularly interested in Jesus, and they were these ten Samaritan or these ten lepers. Now we’ll remember that that leprosy was a particularly devastating disease. It was a skin disease. It was and it was very contagious. It was one of the few diseases that God speaks about in His law. Moses has a lot of instructions about what to do with with the leper, what the restrictions are with leprosy, and you have to think that it might have been one of those. You know the passages in Sunday school that the kids didn’t really pay that much attention to until all of a sudden the white spot shows up on their skin, and then and then they have to be taught by the by the Pharisees in the synagogue what this means. It means you can’t come to church anymore. In fact, you can’t go home anymore. You have to you have to move out. Of the camp, of the city, of the homeâyou can’t come to church. You can’t go into the synagogue. In fact, this is the banishment of leprosy. If you have leprosy, you have to stand far off. And if anybody would approach you, you have to warn them by yelling out “unclean, unclean.” Can you imagine that existence? It’s just a horrifying thing to think about. So the children have to leave their parents. Parents have to leave their children. Spouses have to leave one another, and they’re justâthey have to defend for themselves. So what would develop were leper camps or leper groups because they were unclean and so they could be unclean together. That’s not a problem, and they would try to care for each other in this way. And and that’s what it seems like what was happening with this group. They were living there in this kind of no man’s land where no one wanted to be anyways between Samaria and Galilee. But there were these ten lepers, and they were gathered together. Now, it’s it’s an amazing thing to think about, and I still I still think that there’s a The implications of this are are really profound. That while the Jews and the and the Samaritans would never be found together, they would never be living together or taking care of each other. When when a Jew would get leprosy and a Samaritan gets leprosy, now they are. If you’re sick enough, you don’t care. And there’s something about that. I think there’s something about that in the church. I think that the Lord, you know, there’s a way that I don’t know. Maybe we wouldn’t all hang out together except for we realize that we’re desperate, that we’re sinners, that we need the Lord’s help. And so we we gather here into the Lord’s church, and and and we confess our desperate need that we’re that we’re sinners. I I’ve encouraged you to do this before, but when you’re confessing your sin, it’s not a it’s not a bad idea to to listen to make sure everyone else is also confessing their sins because then you know you’re not the only one. Lord, I’m a sinner, but you hear your neighbor say the same thing that they’re a sinner, so that so that after church you could look at them and say, “You too? You’re also a sinner.” We’re all here because we’re all sinners, and the Lord has put us all in the same place because we’re in this desperate situation. So this band of lepers is there, and notice though what they when they see Jesus walking along the road, they they do not cry out what they are supposed to cry out. They don’t yell to Jesus unclean, unclean, and step away from him. In fact, the opposite happens. They approach Jesus and they cry out mercy, mercy. They know they’ve heard the rumors that this one is more than just a teacher. This one can heal the sick. This one can raise the dead. This one can cast out demons. This one can make the unclean clean, and so they they run to Jesus, praying for mercy. And Jesus doesn’t do what he normally does. Now, what he normally does is already astonishing enough. Every other time Jesusâwell, I think every other timeâI didn’t check this out. So if you find contrary evidence in your study this week, let me know. I think that every other time Jesus cleanses someone with leprosy, it’s by touch, and that’s very significant. Very significant. Because if you were to touch someone with leprosy, you yourself become unclean. That’s the point. Jesus would touch them. In fact, it’s in Jesus touching the lepers that Matthew quotes the Bible passage: “He carried our sins and bore our sorrows,” that he was taking upon our affliction onto himself. But that doesn’t happen here. Jesus just speaks to them, and he doesn’t say to them, “You’re clean,” or “I’m going to help you,” or anything. He says, “Go and show yourself to the priest.” Now what’s that about? It was the priest who had the duty in the Old Testament, by the Old Testament law, to declare someone to be clean from leprosy. So say you got leprosy and your skin was infected, but then it started to get better. The only way that you could be readmitted to society and into the church was to show yourself to the priest, and he would say, okay, you’re clean, the leprosy’s gone, you can come back in here. So that there is an implied miracle in the command of Jesus when He says, go show yourself to the priest. He’s indicating to them that on the way you’ll be healed. And sure enough, it happens. Now that’s already again another little miracle to think about itâthat that they they don’t sit there and say, “Well, could you heal us before we go, just so we don’t have to go all that way for nothing?” They don’t do that. They say, “Okay, off we go.” So they turn around and start heading down to Jerusalem to go and show themselves to the priests. And while they’re going, the miracle happens. Now, how do you think it happened? You wonder that like they’re walking along, kind of limping in their leprous state, and then one of them says, “Wait a minute! I feel something funny in my arm,” and he looks down, and all of a sudden, it’s gone. And he says to his other guys, “Hey, look! My arm is cleared up. You guys keep away from me, or whatever.” And then they’re like, “Whoa! Look!” And they’re all of a sudden coming to this realization that we’re cleansed. The Lord hasâhe’s worked this miracle. He’s rescued us from from this disease. We’re all fine. And then they’ve got a decision to make: What are they going to do next? Are they going to continue on to the priest to show them their their cleansed state, or are they going to run home, embrace their wife and children and parents, or? Are they going to go back to Jesus? That’s what the Samaritan does. It’s an amazing thing. In fact, I don’t even think, in my imagination of the text, I don’t even think he has to think about it. I think he sees that he’s been healed; he’s cleansed. The leprosy is gone. This affliction that’s been driving him down for so many yearsâit’s goneâand he just immediately, almost instinctively, turns around and heads back the way he came. And he and he’s praising God the whole time until he falls down at the feet of Jesus, praising and thanking him for the work that he’s done. It’s amazing. And Jesus highlights it, but he underlines the wonder of what happens here. He says, “What about the other nine? They were healed also. Where where are they? We don’t know where they are. Where are they? Was none found to praise God except for this Samaritan, this foreigner?” And then Jesus gives them this amazing blessing: “Your faith has made you well.” Every time Jesus says that after a miracle, I want to say, “Jesus, it was you who did it,” but He gives the credit to faith. Stunning. Now this is this this is the text. This is the story. And it’s so full of wisdom for us, and so full of comfort. I just want to maybe point out three little things. The first is that the Lord in this text highlights for us the foundational importance of thanksgiving. I learned when I was growing up that there was two magic words. Well, this is what Mom said: there are two magic wordsâplease and thank youâand I said to her, “That’s three words.” Sorry, Mom. It was a matter of manners. You always say please and thank you. Now, it’s true. This is part of our manners, but I want to I want to press on this a little bit. Thanksgiving, being thankful, is more than just good manners. It is the foundational posture of the Christian heart. When Paul in Romans chapter one, and I hope you’ll take a look at this this week, when he’s tracing how things go wrong in the world, how societies become corrupt, how people’s hearts are handed over to idolatry, he he goes back to the fountainhead of wickedness, and he says that even though the invisible attributes of God are known in creation, theyâthat is, the unbelieving worldârefused to acknowledge God, the Creator, or give thanks. So that thanklessness is the foundation of idolatry. It is the sand upon which the unbelieving world builds its collapsing home. Thanksgiving is for the Lord, the the very beginning of a of or the the very heart of a life that recognizes that it’s receiving gifts. I was reading this commentary last night about Thanksgiving in Wordsworth, who makes this point that you can read a lot of prayers in the ancient pagan stuff. Homer has a lot of prayers to the gods, but hardly ever a giving thanks. It’s always trying to talk the gods into giving you something and and trying to negotiate with them. But it’s not life received as a gift. So when the Lord calls us to thankfulness, He calls us to this life of reception. In fact, I want to maybe hone in on this by considering the difference between thanksgiving and gratitude. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of gratitude talk today. You can find a lot of people talking about how we need to live lives of gratitude. You can go to Target and you can buy a gratitude journal if you want to. And every day it’ll have you at night say what are the things that you’re grateful for. But there’s a difference between gratitude and thanksgiving. Here here’s maybe not in the dictionary, but I’m going to make a difference right now. That gratitude is recognizing the goodness of the gift. But Thanksgiving is recognizing the goodness of the giver of the gift. The best example I knowâit’s Pastor Davis’s favorite example, also because I say it so oftenâhe monitors how often I repeat my storiesâis when I was growing up. If Mom gave me a plate full of Twinkies and Oreos, I was grateful. If Mom, on the other hand, gave me a plate full of broccoli and Brussels sprouts, I was supposed to be thankful. So I don’t recognize any goodness in the gift that’s giving, but I’mâI ought to recognize the goodness of the giver. That’s the difference, you see. And and this difference between gratitude and thankfulness isâis seen right there in the story. I’m sure, I’m sure that the nine who were cleansed of their of their leprosy were grateful. They recognized the goodness of the gift. They were cleansed now. They were healed. They could go home. But one was thankful. He came back and recognized the goodness of the giver. Now we are called, you and I are called in this life to a life of thankfulness. That means that no matter what’s on the plateâTwinkies or Brussels sproutsâwe are able to thank the Lord. I mean, we all have different stuff on the plate. Some of us walked in here and things are great; never been better. Most of us walked in here with trouble, kind of limping along. There’s a lot of difficult things that are happening, but can we recognize the goodness of the Giver? There’s a difference. We’re going to pray the old prayer of the church in a little bit from from the old hymnal, and on purpose this morning because there’s a difference in the way that the old church prayed about difficulties in life and the way we do. The the prayers that a lot of times now are something like, Lord, rescue us from all these difficulties. But the old prayer says this: Grant us your wisdom to see that all of our afflictions come from the hand of your fatherly goodness. That’s thankfulness. So that so that it’s hard to be grateful for the diagnosis. It’s hard to be grateful for the for the tragic news. It’s hard to be grateful for the affliction and the trouble. It’s hard. But we can be thankful in all circumstances to the Lord who dishes this out. There’s one thing. A second thing from the text, and I want to, I want to reflect on this. I want to begin to reflect on this with you. But I think there’s a lot more. But Thanksgiving is as close as a lever to the heart that we have access to. And let me explain what I mean by that. We we have different parts of our lives. We’ve got our, we’ve got the things that we do, and the things that we say, and the things that we think, and the things that we feel. And we have a different degree of control over all of those things. We have surprisingly a pretty sophisticated level of control over the things that we do. You all chose to get up this morning, to get dressed, to get yourself to church, to sit down, to stand up, to kneel, to stand, to sit. You you have some control over that, over the stuff that you do. Not total, but pretty good. You you you have a little bit less control over the things that you say. I mean, still more control over the things you say than the things that you think. At least I hope. We generally think things that we don’t want to think, but it’s easier to not say them. Although James says that if a man has says everything perfectly, if he has control over his tongue, he’s perfect in every way. That’s pretty amazing. But we have a little bit less control over the things that we say than the things we do. We have even less control over the things that we think. How many times have you caught your your brain wandering during the midst of this sermon? I have the advantage of wherever I wander, I just go there, right? But you have to try to stay focused. And you are like, why does my brain go this way and that? Why do I think this way instead? We don’t. We can’t force ourselves to think certain things. It’d be nice if we had that control. But even less control over the things that we feel. Now, of of all the things in our lives, it’s the it’s the feeling partâthe wanting, the desiring, the feelingâthat that we that part that’s deepest in us that we have the least control over. And I know this all the time because we’re always wrestling through this thing together, Pastor. I don’t want to feel this way. I know it’s wrong to feel this way. The Lord, in fact, tells us how we’re supposed to feel and how we’re not supposed to feel. He says we’re not supposed to be angry. He says we’re not supposed to worry. He says we’re not supposed to be angry. He says we’re not supposed to be anxious. But, but we say I say you say to me if well I don’t want to be angry. If I could control it, I would. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to be anxious. I don’t want to worry. I don’t want to be so upset. But I can’t just tell myself to stop feeling that way. It’s hard to, it’s hard to maneuver our feelings. It’s like how do you reach down in there and tell them how to be? Well, here’s I think part of the. The gift of thanksgiving. As far as I can tell, that thanksgiving is the best lever that we have to sort of reach down into our hearts and guts and control what’s happening there. In other words, I can’t tell you to not worry. I mean, I can tell you, but I can’t make you not worry. I can’t make myself not worry. But I can. I can make myself be thankful. Well, give thanks. I can say with my lips, Lord. I can I can sit down at my desk and I can write down a list of the gifts that God has given, and I can say it’s good to give thanks to the Lord for His benefits to me. And I can write out those benefits. And unlike anything else that we can do, like physically do in life, I think that giving thanks affects what’s going on down in our hearts. Here is my proof. Paul says in Philippians chapter four, he says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” And the peace of God, which passes understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. So that thanksgiving is the is the lever that the Lord has given us to try to to try to mess with all the stuff that’s going on, with all the anger, with all the frustration, with all the sadness, with all the anxiety, with all the worry, with all the stuff that we can’t make ourselves stop doing. We can start giving thanks. It’s amazing. That’s a second little fruit from the tree of this text. Now here’s a third: we worship Jesus. The Samaritan comes back and he falls down at the feet of Jesus, and I want you to notice what Jesus does not do. He does not say, “What are you doing? Stand up! Don’t worship me; I’m a man.” No, the Lord Jesus receives his worship. Why? Because he is God, who is good, and is giving out his gifts. This is what it means to be a Christian. If someone asked you, “What What does this mean, being a Christian?” You can say this simply: I worship Jesus. He is God in the flesh, for me to save me, to bless me, to rescue me, to set me free, to make me clean, to declare me whole, to welcome me into eternal life. That’s why we’re here today. We’re here to worship Jesus, who does all things well, who gathers us unclean sinners and declares us to be holy and perfect and pure and ready for eternal life. And one day, I don’tâI don’t know why I think like this, but. But I do, and I think it’s kind of nice. One day we’ll actually be able to fall down and worship Jesus together with this Samaritan. We can find him in the resurrection. He’ll tell you about this day when Jesus healed him, and he returned to give thanks, and we’ll be able to worship the Lord together with him. So may God grant it. May God grant the well. May God grant us the spiritual protection of Thanksgiving. May God grant us the wisdom of giving thanks. And may God give us the confidence to worship Jesus, and the comfort that comes from His mercy. May God grant it for Christ’s sake, Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. We are pursued.