Praise God!
Luke 17:11-19 ·April 28, 2024· Joel Passmore
Part of: Luke
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So good to be with you this morning. He's so good. As we, as I'm, we're about to get started here in the sermon, I just want you to take a minute, take just a few seconds, and think about some way that God has been good to you. Just bring it to your mind. It's, hopefully the list is long, but just bring something to mind. Some way God has worked in your life, in a way that only he could, to bring life to you, to save you, to sanctify you, to help you with what you're going through.
Bring it to mind. When you go to the doctor for a physical, for the annual checkup, one test that they do, which is easy, painless, but weird, frankly, is the reflex test. The little rubber hammer. I think they do it on your, down on your calf, but I know the one they do right below your kneecap. And most of you of all ages, you know what this is like. They give a little tap, and your leg, involuntarily, just kicks out. It's weird. It's weird. It's kind of hard to stop it from happening.
It's a test of your neurological system. As long as your neurological system is healthy, you can't help but have your leg kick out when that little rubber hammer hits very gently right below your kneecap. If your system is healthy, you're going to kick. It's going to happen. Now, if that's the response of a healthy body, is there a reflex of healthy faith? Well, today's passage says, yes, there is. There is a reflex of faith, of healthy faith. A healthy, life-saving faith has the reflex of praising God.
Praising God. Thankfulness to God of what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do. Today in Luke 17, it's a short passage where many people experienced mercy, but only one truly responded to it. It challenges our reflexes. How healthy are our reflexes? Is there health in us when that little rubber hammer hits? What happens with our faith? What just naturally comes out? So it's a challenge for us, but that's why I asked you to bring to mind a way that God has intersected with you and has helped you, has saved you, because that's what I want you to bring to mind.
The work of God in your life. His saving work, His sanctifying work. Because I want you to leave here today praising God more than you walked in. Give Him the praise. Turn with me, please, to Luke 17. It's in your bulletin. It's up on the screen behind me. This is the Word of God for us. It's meant to convict, to encourage, and most of all, to draw our eyes to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
So let's pay attention and receive it as God's speaking to us today. 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 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.
Pray with me. Lord, awaken our hearts to receive Your Word today. May it bear fruit in us, the fruit of praise on our lips. Lord, help us to be more thankful for the work that You've done. Because, Lord, You have taken the initiative towards us We read this earlier, Lord. While we were still sinners, You died for us, Jesus. How much more, now that we are reconciled to You by Your blood, will You continue doing good, life-giving, eternal work in us?
So give us eyes to see it and lips to praise Your name today. We pray this, Jesus, in Your name. Faith is expressed with overflowing thankfulness. So let's dive into this. It starts with this. Ten receive mercy. Ten receive mercy. These ten people, they have a big problem. They all have leprosy. If you don't know this, when the Bible talks about leprosy, it's a catch-all term for a whole bunch of different skin diseases that we might call different things these days.
But they all have something in common, all these different conditions. They are highly contagious. And because this is not the modern world, they have no real treatment for it. The only way to control the spread was segregation and isolation. They had to keep their distance. They had to let everyone know that they had this disease. It marks them all the time. It used to be years ago that a person like me in a situation right now, I'd have to do a lot of explaining to help you understand the gravity of what this meant to be separated from someone and have to tell everyone that you can't get near them.
But since the pandemic, we all kind of understand this a little bit more now, don't we? During the pandemic, if someone tested positive, it meant isolation. From the jump, it was isolation. You just had to pull back and you had to tell everyone you couldn't go where you wanted to go. You couldn't be around the people you wanted to be around. You would feel obligated to tell them, I just tested positive. I'm asymptomatic, but I tested positive. Let me stand over here.
We have this whole little script that we would say, right? There was even sometimes some stigma about it, right? But there certainly was isolation. It interrupted our lives socially. It was hard. Leprosy was like that, but it wasn't just for seven days. It wasn't just a timer from the first time you got symptoms. It might be months. It might be years. It would last as long as the disease hung around on your body.
All the while, these lepers were cut off from society, from community, from weddings, from funerals. Maybe some of you experienced that. You couldn't go to some special event because you had COVID. Imagine that for months and months and years. Seemingly not no end in sight. They were cut off from synagogues and from temple. There might have been times that you wanted to come to church, but you couldn't because you were sick, because you had COVID.
They had to remain at a distance and tell everyone that they were unclean. Literally, all the time. But then Jesus comes to town. And that's where the change happens. These lepers have heard about him. They know who he is. They can't come near, but they still cry out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. The fact that they call him Master means that they believe that he has authority.
Not everyone called Jesus Master, but they do. And their request for mercy means that they believe that he can do something about their condition. Now let me pause here. So their example, the example of these ten lepers can challenge us for a second. Church, Jesus is near.
He's walking by right now. And you have needs. Are you willing to lift up your voice and ask him for help? To cry out to him? Do you believe that he can do something about what you're going through? Sometimes that cry goes on and on for us, but it is the cry of faith to say, Jesus, Master, have mercy on me.
I know many of you are crying out in different ways for God's mercy and help. And I want to encourage you, that's the right response. Keep doing that.
Now Jesus hears their cries just like he hears yours. But his response might strike you as odd. Go and show yourselves to the priests. Well, according to the law that God gave Moses, the priests were the ones who examined people who had skin diseases to evaluate their progress to see if they've been healed. There's actually extensive instructions on this in Leviticus if you want to read. It reads a little bit like a medical textbook, an ancient medical textbook at points.
It was the priest that looked and said, yeah, you know what? It's getting better. You're fine now. But the thing is, Jesus hadn't healed them yet. Did you notice that? He hadn't even told them that he would heal them. He just said, go show yourself to the priests. And this trip would have been long. There wasn't a priest in every town. Who knows how far they had to go?
This is an exercise of trust for them. A call to obey before seeing any results. To do what he says, believing that he will act. Because he is who he said he is.
So again, the challenge comes to us. Are you willing to do what God says to do before he answers your requests? Can you obey him before you see results, believing that he has the power? Believing that he loves you? That he's faithful to you. In fact, more faithful to you than you are to him. And can you act out of that faith, waiting for him to do what he's promised to do?
So next, what happens is one gives thanks. Ten receive mercy, but one gives thanks. The lepers are on their way. Who knows how far they went? Was it a mile? Was it ten miles? Was it an hour? Was it two days? We just don't know. Some point, they realize that something has happened to them. My skin, it looks different. Hey, wait a minute, yours does too. It looks healthy. It looks clean. It doesn't itch. It doesn't burn. I think we've been healed. I think it's happened.
And suddenly, their entire world opens up. Their whole future changes right before their eyes. They think about their family, their friends, their whole life before leprosy hit them. Can you imagine how excited they were in that moment? The whole course of their future has been changed. Somewhere on that road, they realize it. And this happens to all ten of them, but one of them responds differently than the others. When he saw that he was healed, he turned back.
I'm looking forward to meeting this guy, hearing more about this story. It's going to be great. When he saw that he was healed, he turned back. Instead of rejoining his family, his friends, he wanted to go back to the one who had healed him. The others went back to their former life, but this man wanted a new life.
As he went, he was praising God with a loud voice. Jesus didn't say that he would heal them, but this man knows who did this. He immediately gives credit to God. It's God that did this to me. And when he gets back to Jesus, however long that took, he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. He's no longer at a distance. He's no longer at a distance crying out. He's right there next to Jesus now, on his feet, giving him thanks. He's no longer unclean.
He can come near. And so he does. And he has made a connection, right? Praise to God, falling on his feet in worship to Jesus, they go together. They're the same thing.
And then Luke saves it for the end. He gives us a shock. Now he was a Samaritan. The Samaritans, if you don't know this, they had distant Jewish lineage. But they didn't follow the worship and the sacrifices that God had told his people to do in the Old Testament. They were estranged from the Israelites, from Jews. Jews considered them inferior in every way, socially and spiritually. But it's among this group of lepers, among this group, it's the lone Samaritan who gets it.
He understands. He's an outsider, but he's recognized that Jesus of Nazareth, the one he called Master, is something more. Could this be the Messiah? God's grace, it defies expectations, including who responds to it.
God works in surprising places and surprising people, including, guess what, you and me. Who are we? That the highest king should welcome us. But it's Jesus' response to this one Samaritan that really illuminates the meaning here, that really takes this passage up and helps us see why it's here, why we're being taught it. Jesus' response starts with this. This is easy to miss, but the first thing to notice is that he receives the man's thanks.
There is not one time in the Gospels that someone gives him praise where Jesus says, oh, it was nothing. Never. He never does that. He never says, no, no, no, no, you really should be praising someone else. He never turns it away. He always receives it. He accepts it. In fact, he says, where's the rest of it?
We're not ten cleansed. Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Now, he's not being pejorative about using the word foreigner. He's just pointing out to everyone listening to him, and you Jews around me, do you notice? This Samaritan gets it.
He's been distant, but now he sees, and he's coming near. Do you? Now, Jesus' response here about where are the nine was no one found to return and give praise to God. This is not about politeness. Jesus is not like, boy, it would just be nice to get a thank you. A card in the mail would have been great. This is not about social convention. This is not about politeness. Here's the deal. These nine lepers are an example of a spiritual truth. A lack of praise is a sign of a lack of faith.
Everyone on earth receives some of God's good gifts. Everyone. Life, the beauty of creation, friendship, love. Everyone on earth is experiencing at least some of this these are gifts, but not everyone acknowledges the giver of those gifts. This is exactly what Paul describes in Romans 1. Look at it now with me. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
A lack of thankfulness is a spiritual warning indicator. It's like the check engine light on your dashboard for your soul. Sometimes that light comes on and I don't know what it means, but I know I've got to take in the car. Right?
Now listen, some of you may struggle with discouragement, with despair, with depression. It may plague you off and on for long times. I'm not talking about that. This passage is not talking about that. This is talking about the response of the human heart to want to just take from God his gifts and give him no praise in return. Okay? That's different than struggling with discouragement from depression. So let's just hear me clearly. Jesus is talking about the spiritual condition of people like the nine who just want to take from God.
Give me the healing, but I don't really want you. Now it's a mistake, I believe, to assume that the other nine didn't feel any gratitude. The difference between the one and the nine is not that the one felt gratitude and the nine didn't. The difference is that the one man turned around and brought that gratitude to God and to Jesus in the form of praise. The difference was not a feeling of gratitude, it was turning around and giving that gratitude to God.
He didn't just celebrate the gift, he adored the giver. That's the difference. Some people bring their needs to God, they cry out in mercy to God asking God like the ten lepers to do something in their lives but like the nine once they get what God says that he would do, once they get the prayer request answered, they don't want God anymore. He's just a genie to them.
They go on their way. Think about this, if I get a gift from Nikki and I am just over the moon about it. Imagine I am just really happy, you hit the nail on the head. This is exactly what I wanted. I'm really happy that I have it, I might use it every day, I might get so much joy from it. But if I don't turn around to her, not just to say thank you but to see her as more lovely and gracious and kind than I did before, then the gift really hasn't had its full effect.
I'm just basking in the glow of whatever she's given me. The purpose of that gift, the purpose of the heart behind that gift is for me to enjoy it, but then to turn to her and say how wonderful you are that you know me and that you gave this to me.
How much more so with God? How much more so with God even for the small things in our lives? The everyday kindnesses show us that God is kind. The everyday wonders tell us that He is wonderful. The everyday graces remind us that He is gracious.
Like James 1.17 we ought to say every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father. This is the response of faith. This is what Jesus is getting at.
This James passage is one that I return to a lot. I love it. Every good gift, every good gift in our whole life comes down from above. It's ultimately comes from God.
Now C.S. Lewis says that this is how when we have this kind of posture, this is how we're thinking. One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun. Now isn't that creative? This is why he's C.S. Lewis and I'm not. You look at a patch of sunlight, right? Sometimes you can actually see the beam and you trace it all the way back to its source. That's what we're meant to do with every good and every perfect gift in our lives. To trace it back to the source and say, God, how great you are.
Praise you, God. I praise you. And if this is true of the small gift, that little ray of sunshine, how much more for the greatest gift of all? the work of salvation in Jesus to cleanse us by faith, right? for that gift. To forgive us by grace. To renew us all the time by His Spirit changing us, shaping us, informing us, to deliver us through union with Him. What an amazing gift. It's all these other gifts, but it's that gift too.
If you have received salvation through Jesus, you have so much to be thankful for. It's like that song we sing, we have every reason to praise the Lord. All of God's common gifts that everyone gets, plus His particular gift to you, of spiritual life and renewal, through Jesus your Savior.
So I want to close in today's sermon with some encouragement about why it's valuable to cultivate thankfulness. The good that it does for us when we stir this up and cultivate it. So the value of thankfulness, the first thing is this, it is clarifying. Thankfulness is clarifying. Thankfulness to God guides us into right thinking. It's like spiritual smelling salts that wake us up, clear out the confusion from our minds. It's truth spoken out loud that cuts through the confusion in our minds.
Because thankfulness is declaring God's power and His provision and it's acknowledging that He's already acted in some way in our life. That's why at the start of the sermon I told you to think about some way that God has acted. It's bringing it to mind. And you know what this does? This is why this is clarifying. Because thankfulness roots out the particular sin of complaining. Which comes from a spirit of entitlement. This is what plagued the Israelites.
They had been freed from slavery. Hard bondage. They were in the desert with the cloud in front of them and they were complaining about what was on the menu.
And this is what threatens us even now. Threatens me every day, every week. There's a tendency to complain. Now complaining happens in families and households including mine, including from me. When our daughters were younger, Nikki came up with a very, very clever way to treat a complaining spirit.
When there would be a complaining spirit from one of our daughters, she would say, I want you to tell me ten things you're grateful for. And she wouldn't let them off the hook until they had actually finished the list. With real answers, not things like, I'm grateful that I don't have to do this anymore or something like that. Real answers. Now listen, this is better, far better than making them write, I will not complain about the dinner I didn't cook 20 times.
Writing that 20 times is just a plain old punishment. It's just giving them something unpleasant to do so they don't ever want to complain again. She wanted to change their outlook. Right? Take your eyes off of whatever it is that you're complaining about and look at something different. Look at something different. Look at your faithful God. The things in your life. It was like spiritual rehab that she was doing. And it worked. It worked. Parents, feel free to take that and use it.
It is really good. And wouldn't you know God does the same thing for us. This is why it was so clever of her. She was imaging God when she told Cadence and Bree to do this. She's imaging God over and over and over in God's word. Dozens of times. I mean, you lose count. You see the command give thanks to the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord. give thanks to the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 5.18 says this, Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
You know, when someone walks up to you and says, I know God's will for you, beware. But I can tell you right now with full confidence, I know God's will for you. At least in this, give thanks to God in all circumstances. This is the same thing Nicky was doing. Tell me ten things that you're grateful for. It's his will for us because giving thanks it trains us in the truth that God is faithful when we've forgotten.
The second thing is this, it is contagious. Thankfulness is contagious. Thankfulness and praise to God are meant to be shared with each other. It's right within that very word praise. The Greek is doxazo. And the word it means roughly this, giving a claim so that others join in. That's what it means. It's a public thing. It can be private too but it's mainly giving a claim to someone else so that other people see and join in with you. So the word has three parties involved.
It's got God and you and somebody else involved. That's what praise means doxazo. Your praise of God is meant to influence other people to praise God themselves. This is why there are so many commands which are the people make them known talk about them sing to him sing praises to him tell of all his wondrous works praise is contagious and that's by design it lifts others up and it directs them to God this has absolutely been my experience when I have been taught and influenced by brothers and sisters in Christ who were far quicker than me to praise God for the little things what a profound influence the body of Christ in various places including here has been on me to quicken my response to praise God it's contagious and it's designed that way I'm so glad for how I've been changed through other people listen if anyone has a praise about how God is working in your life even if the story is not finished yet but you just see God working please consider sharing it with the church reach out to me I would love to schedule time if you're willing to come up and you can say something brief in our worship service and just give praise to God I want to have more testimonies of God's work were meant to do the last thing is this thankfulness is confirming Jesus kept his most important words to the very end he looked at the man prostrated his feet and he said your faith has made you well this sentence is a glorious confirmation that he has been spiritually reborn that it's happened for him
when he walked away from Jesus the first time he was cleansed this is the Greek word katharizo when he looked and he saw that he was healed that word is aeomai but now Jesus says by your faith you are sozo this word is close to the others but it is the only word that can be translated saved it's the only word of what's happened to this man that could be translated saved you could translate this sentence your faith has saved you his praise is an indicator of a brand new genuine faith in Jesus a person made new in Christ by faith is a person who is thankful to God so let's cultivate thankfulness and enjoy give praise to God for what he's done in our lives and what he is continuing to do this is what Colossians 2 says just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord continue to live your lives in him rooted and built up in him strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness let's praise God together and pray God we praise you today the spiritual life that has happened among your people here and your people anywhere it is only because of your gracious work in them you have brought them to you you have healed them and sanctified them set them apart and now I and everyone else that that's happened to Lord we have a testimony of praise even in the hard seasons Lord even in the hard seasons we have a testimony of praise so would you please open up our mouths that this praise can come out and we can encourage each other and spur each other on to praise you in the
same way thank you Jesus for this message of your healing to ten but the one that came back may we be like the one to the of your name we pray this Jesus in your name