SPROUL: If I would say to you, “What’s your most base sin? Your worst action of evil?”
would you come up with something like failure to be grateful to God?
And if a person is truly grateful, he shows it, and he shows it in worship and in service to God.
We read in verse 12, “As He entered a certain village, He met ten men who were lepers,
who stood afar off.” Now we know, of course, that once you had been diagnosed with leprosy
in ancient Israel, you suffered the worst of all possible kinds of quarantines. Not a quarantine
that would last a week or two weeks, but it would be a quarantine that would last for the rest of
your life—unless by some marvelous means you were cured of that leprosy. You were sentenced
to a solitary life removed from the community, removed from your family,
removed from the religious institutions of your day. You were a social pariah,
and the only fellowship that you could have with other human beings would be with other lepers.
And so, there were reasons why lepers gathered together in groups, such as this group of ten,
because that was the only companionship that they could enjoy was with other miserable human beings.
And now, as they are outside the village and Jesus approached while they were standing afar off,
they lifted up their voices because Jesus was at a distance. And so, they shouted out to Him,
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When He saw them, He said to them,
“Go show yourselves to the priests,” a citation from the book of Leviticus,
where it was the priest who was authorized to make the diagnosis in the first place of leprosy. And
if a person were recovering or if it was a false diagnosis, it would take the priest’s declaration
to free them from the quarantine. So Jesus doesn’t say, “Be clean, you’re healed.”
He said, “Go see the priests,” which meant what? “This is not an idle mission.
It’s not a fool’s errand. If I tell you to go see the priests,
I’m telling you to go check yourselves out and you will be clean.” And so it was that as they went,
they were cleansed again, not when they just first saw Jesus, but after they started on their journey
to see the priests, while they were walking along the road, all of a sudden their fingers are
becoming whole, their toes are being healed, and the horrible sores on their body were vanished.
And one leper would say to the other, “Look at my hand; it’s clean,” and the other would say,
“Mine too! It’s happening!” And they were beyond themselves with joy and excitement as
their bodies were being cleansed with every step they took on their way to the priests.
But one of them, when he saw that he was healed,
returned. Imagine ten lepers in a group watching each other suddenly
being made whole. Oh, they can’t wait to get to the priests, because they know if they go to the
priest and the priest pronounced them clean, then in that moment, they can go home again.
They can see their wives again. They can embrace their children again. They can go to church again.
So they’re saying, “Let’s go, hurry up.” And one says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait.
We’re clean, aren’t we?” “Yes.” “It was Jesus who made us clean.
We’ve got all day to see the priests, but first we have to go back and see Him
and thank Him and honor Him.” The rest of the lepers say, “We don’t have time for that.”
The first one says, “Aren’t you grateful?” Grateful? How can you not be grateful? I’m sure
all ten of them were grateful. No question that they were grateful. You can’t be healed of leprosy
like that and not be grateful. Their hearts were filled with gratitude, but not so filled that they
want to detour and have to go back to say thank you. See, beloved, it’s one thing to be grateful.
It’s something altogether to show it, to manifest it, to do gratitude. Feeling and doing are not
the same thing. If I would say to you, “What’s your most base sin? Your worst action of evil?”
would you come up with something like failure to be grateful to God? Hardly, but this is our
fundamental problem. We think that God owes us everything that we receive and much more.
And if a person is truly grateful, he shows it,
and he shows it in worship and in service to God. This is why we’re here.
We’ve been made clean, and we come to give praise, and we come to give thanks.
So Jesus answered and said, “Am I
having a problem with my math? Did I not just heal ten? Where are they?
Where are the other nine?” “Oh, sir. They’re on their way to the priest, like you told them.”
“Yes, but you came back to say thank you. You came back to give honor. You came back to praise God.
Where are the rest?” He’s speaking to the man, and the man’s still on the ground.
And now Jesus said to him, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”
Now this poor leper was really clean. Do you see it? It’s your story. It’s my story.
How do you show your thanks to Christ?
How do you give glory and honor to your Redeemer? That’s what we’re about, saying thank you.