Dear Friends,
I imagine you are familiar with the account in Luke 17 about the ten lepers who cried out asking Jesus if He would heal them. Luke tells us that Jesus directed a ten men riddled with the deadly disease to go and present themselves to the priests, who had the authority to pronounce them clean and restore them to society.
It is after the men had left and were on their way to see the priests that they were healed.
The punch line in this story involves one of the ten, a Samaritan, who, upon realizing he had been healed, turned around and went back to Jesus, falling on his face at His feet and giving Him thanks.
It’s common for some to read this account and assume it’s a living lesson about the importance of gratitude. And it’s not wrong to draw conclusions about thankfulness from this story. We could probably all stand to meditate a bit on the virtue of gratitude and thanksgiving. If I was preaching a sermon on that subject, I would cite the ten lepers to make my point.
The Bible has a lot to say about thankfulness. I Thess. 5:18 tells us to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Romans 1:21 speaks to how a lack of gratitude will have a hardening effect on our soul. 2 Tim. 3:2 teaches that a lack of gratefulness is one of the wicked characteristics of men living in the last days. It’s mentioned alongside being lovers of self, lovers of money, pride, arrogance and a general lack of holiness.
It's a healthy spiritual practice to take a hard look at our hearts to see if we are truly grateful people – people who regularly express gratitude to God and others. But that’s not the main point of the story of the ten lepers. The passage is not teaching us that we need to be more polite and mind our manners and not forget to say thank you when someone does something nice for us.
This story is in the Bible to illustrate that if we don’t respond to God’s grace with worship and a reprioritized life, it’s an indication that you are still spiritually dead.
Think for a minute about what the lepers wanted when they cried out “have mercy on us.” It’s not clear in the text if they were asking Jesus to heal them. The cry for mercy could have been a cry for food. Or pity. Of some show of kindness. We can’t presume they expected that Jesus would miraculously heal them.
And Jesus didn’t heal them immediately. In fact, he tells them to go and present themselves to the priests while they are still covered with leprosy.
Why? Three reasons.
First, Jesus was affirming the rightness of the law and the legitimate role of the priest to declare these men clean or unclean.
Second, He was calling these men to take a step of faith. He wanted them to respond to Him even though it made little rational sense for them to head off to the priests while their bodies were still covered with a contagious disease.
Third, Jesus had to smile as He imagined the scene that was about to take place. These ten lepers were about to appear before men who were conspiring to have Jesus put to death. They would arrive, healed of their leprosy, and bearing witness to Jesus as the One who had healed them.
There is a clear juxtaposition in this account between the priests, who represent the law of God, and Jesus, who is the One who fulfills the law and offers grace and mercy to the unclean.
The priests, as the representatives of the law, had no power or ability to make the lepers clean. All they were able to do was to judge the lepers as clean or unclean. The law could not help these men with their disease. It was powerless to save them.
Jesus, on the other hand, was able to make the lepers clean.
The same is true for us today.
The law of God can only confirm that we have a sin problem. It can diagnose our disease, but it has no power to make us better.
But Jesus can make us new. He can wash us clean. He can transform our lives by His grace.
If you want to deal with the sin problem in your life, you don’t run to the Ten Commandments. You don’t go to the moral teaching of the Bible and say “I will live like this.”
You run to Jesus and cry out – Kyrie Ellison – Lord, have mercy.
Jesus, kindly and graciously chose to heal all ten of the lepers. We should see this as an act of common grace. Common grace is the blessing God pours out on all people, regardless of their attitude toward Him. Matthew 5:45 says that God causes the sun to rise on both the evil and the good. He sends the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He sustains the whole earth by His power. All human beings are recipients of His common grace.
Physical healing in the Bible was sometimes an act of divine common grace. It was not necessarily an indication of regeneration and new life. There are some people in scripture who Jesus healed where we have no way of knowing if those people ever repented of their sins and followed Him.
I have no doubt that the ten who were healed told people for the rest of their lives about the man who healed them. I’m sure they remembered Jesus with fondness, and maybe even with appreciation and gratitude.
But the difference between the one who came back and the other nine was this: The one who returned to Jesus saw something the other nine didn’t see.
The nine knew they had been healed.
But the one who came back understood who Jesus was.
He realized that the only proper response after having experienced God’s common grace, was to bow in humble adoration and there proclaim “my God, how great Thou art.”
I believe that we have many people today who think they are headed to heaven because they acknowledge that there is a God, they see His common grace and they are thankful for their experience of that grace.
They think as long as you believe there is a God, and you’re grateful to Him for His goodness, you’ll go to heaven when you die.
Folks, that’s just not true.
If God opens your eyes to see His goodness, you’re on the path that leads to eternal life. But your still not there.
What sets the one leper apart from the other nine is this: He turned back. And in turning back, he was turning away from the law as a means of salvation and the performance-based religion of Judaism He was embracing the grace of God as his only hope in life and death.
That’s where it starts for us, too. We must turn from what we have been trusting for eternal life – our own goodness – and turn to God and anchor our souls in His gift of grace.
The leper in Luke 17 fell at Jesus’ feet. In doing so, he was acknowledging both his own unworthiness and Jesus’ worthiness to be worshipped. His life and his heart had been reprioritized. God’s glory was his new consuming passion, and he was filled with gratitude for God’s grace.
Simply giving thanks to “the man upstairs” or “the good Lord” doesn’t save anyone. It’s not enough to go to church, or pray before meals, or donate to worthy causes or serve in the nursery.
Salvation is made evident when we pivot from a life centered on self to a life where we respond to God’s grace by working on putting self to death and putting Jesus at the center.
The leper who turned around and came back to Jesus was healed from more than his leprosy. He was healed from an even deadlier condition – his sin. That’s why Jesus tells him “your faith has made you well.”
A faith that makes us spiritually whole and healthy is a faith that takes us in a new direction.
The lesson of the ten lepers is only in part about gratitude. It’s ultimately about the transforming kind of gratitude that leads to reordered worship and reordered priorities.
That’s the kind of faith that truly saves.
LEADERSHIP IN THE LOCAL CHURCH
Our final Leadership in the Local Church class for men will take place tomorrow night, April 16.
WOMEN'S STAY-TREAT
Ladies – there is a big weekend ahead for you next weekend. It’s the annual Women’s Stay-treat. All the fun of a retreat, but you get to sleep in your own bed!
Here’s the link (https://redeemerlr.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=df57aea0670b59c32464d5bab&id=e4fc573f13&e=fbb0a4052b) for more information or to register.
ROOTS HANGOUT
Roots Students – the next Hangout with the Perkins happens this Saturday night!
NXT-GEN
The next young adult NxtGen get together happens the first Saturday night in May.
MEN'S BREAKFAST FELLOWSHIP
Men – plan now to join with other men from our church for a Men’s Fellowship Breakfast on Saturday, May 9.
BABY DEDICATIONSOn Mother’s Day (four weeks from this Sunday), we’ll be dedicating children to the Lord, following the pattern modeled by Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-2. If you’d like to take part in this commitment ceremony for your son or daughter, please let Becky Perez or Jen Gurney know, and plan to invite friends and relatives to join you in church on Mother’s Day.
BIBLES FOR GRADUATING SENIORS
If you’ve been in the Living Room at church recently, you’ve probably seen the Bibles on the tables. We have four high school seniors who are graduating next month. On Sunday, May 3, we’ll be honoring them and presenting them with a keepsake Bible.
We’re asking all of you to take a few minutes to highlight a verse or two in each of the Bible, along with your name and a note so these students will be able to see the verses or passages that you’d like to point them to.
Please take a moment this week to add a note in each of the Bibles for our students. Plan to arrive a few minutes early or to stay a few minutes after church on Sunday to bless these seniors.
READY FOR SUNDAY
Here is the preview (https://redeemerlr.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=df57aea0670b59c32464d5bab&id=6a6d4117ad&e=fbb0a4052b) of the songs we’ll be singing together this weekend.
Our Gospel Way Catechism Class is a great reason to come early to church each week. Come enjoy the fellowship as we talk about the core elements of what we believe.
What’s the difference between knowing and knowing? It’s the difference between having information about something that you agree with and having a deep conviction that something is true. As Paul wraps up the first half of his letter to the Ephesians, he prays that God will help them move from knowing to comprehending all that God has done for them in Christ. We’ll see this Sunday how Paul prays for his readers.
See you in church!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor Bob
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