Introduction
My church is getting ready for Vacation Bible School which starts this week. This message is what we will teach on the fourth day, the story of when Jesus
Heals Ten Lepers. Our theme is: JESUS IS FULL OF HEALING.
When I was a kid, my parents used to fight
a lot. Mostly it was just shouting and
name calling and verbal violence. Sometimes
it turned physical. As a kid, I didn’t
know any better. I just thought that’s the
way all families were. It’s all I’d ever
known. It wasn’t until I was a little
older and spent more time outside my home in my friend’s homes, maybe spending
the night at their house. Their parents
didn’t fight like mine. Eventually, my
family was the unusual one. Families
aren’t supposed to fight all the time.
Jesus
came to make the world right again. Jesus
is Lord of all the earth. And everywhere
He walks, the Kingdom of God starts to break in and take over our broken
world.
In the Bible,
we see a lot of stories where Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind,
and caused the lame to walk. It was a
natural thing to happen. You see, there
is no sickness, blindness, or lameness in God’s Kingdom. And when the King comes, these things are banished. What is it that Jesus said so often? "The Kingdom of God (of Heaven) is near." And there is no sin. sickness, sorrow, or death in God's Kingdom. So whenever Jesus bring the Kingdom close, those other things naturally disappear.
Luke
17:11-19
11 As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the
border between Galilee and Samaria. 12 As
he entered a village there, ten men with leprosy stood at a distance, 13 crying
out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
14 He
looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed
of their leprosy.
15 One of
them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, “Praise
God!” 16 He fell to the
ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a
Samaritan.
17 Jesus
asked, “Didn’t I
heal ten men? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to
give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 And Jesus said
to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed
you.”
Leprosy was a terrible disease. People with leprosy had sores all over their bodies. Sometimes leprosy caused people to go blind or to limp or to hurt very badly. It also made them very lonely. The disease was very contagious, so lepers couldn’t be around other people. They lived as outcasts in camps together away from the rest of society—even their own families. Anytime they went away from their leprosy colony, they had to ring bells and yell, “Stay away! I’m unclean!” It was so embarrassing! And most people in those days also though people got leprosy because they had done something bad. People said, “God would only let someone catch leprosy if they’d done something really bad. They must deserve it.”
But then
in our story, Jesus is different. These
10 lepers were in agony and full of shame.
But Jesus knows this isn’t the way God’s world is supposed to be. And Jesus knows these lepers aren’t sick
because they did something wrong. They’re
sick because we all live in a broken world.
And Jesus came to bring God’s mercy and healing. He came to forgive sins and make the broken world
right again.
So when
the lepers cry out: “Jesus, Master, have
mercy on us!” He is glad to heal them. The passage doesn’t say how Jesus heals them.
It seems like it was just and instantaneous thing. Otherwise, the passage would tell how he gave
them some medicine, said a pray over them, or something else. But Luke doesn’t tell us how Jesus healed
them. He just said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed
of their leprosy. (vs14)
That
tells us two things. First, when Jesus heals,
it doesn’t have to be some elaborate ceremony.
It doesn’t require oil or music or even a fancy prayer. It just takes our desire to be healed and
Jesus’ power and consent to heal us.
The
second thing the stories shows is healing comes as we obey. Jesus told the lepers to go show themselves
to the priests. That was what the Old
Testament Law that God gave required. If
someone had leprosy and then they were healed, they went to the priest to be
examined and pronounced clean. And Luke
17:14 points out: “As they went, they were cleansed of their
leprosy.” So they had to do
something. It wasn’t much. But they had to obey Jesus command to go. And as they did, hey were healed.
So when we are in need of healing—whether it is physical healing, emotional or spiritual healing—we should take not of these two insights. First, trust in Jesus. Don’t expect some magical ceremony that makes you feel like healing is taking place. It’s not religion that heals. It’s Jesus that heals. And Jesus is not interested in fancy religion. Jesus main concern is bringing God’s Kingdom on earth. It’s just like the words we pray in the Lord’s prayer: "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
So only two main things are needed to receive God’s healing through Jesus Christ: Faith that Jesus is Lord and our obedience. We need to do what He says.
Jesus is
powerful! He is full of mercy and grace
and kindness and healing. When we don’t
feel well, when someone we love is in the hospital, we can pray to Jesus. He will always answer us with love. Like the tenth leper, we thank God for healing
us. Even more, we thank
God for taking away our sins when Jesus died on the cross in our place! Jesus healed our sinful lives. He forgives us when we make bad choices and
sin by disobeying the Ten Commandments God gave us.
There’s another important principle I’ve learned over the years from this story I want to share with you. I call it the 1 in 10 gratitude principle. You see, only 1 of the 10 lepers came back to tell Jesus thank you. It’s not that the other 9 weren’t grateful. I bet they were grateful to be healed. But only one—a Samaritan—came back to actually say “Thank you.” And that’s the way it it is so much of the time. Only about 1 in 10 people know how and takes the time to really express their thankfulness in ways that tells you they really are thankful.
I think
this might be an important principle for all the VBS volunteers to understand this
week. Our volunteers have already put in
a lot of work getting ready for VBS. And
they’ll put in even more this week. And Melissa
Starling has already done so much work—it amazes me! Melissa works a full-time job. Plus, she’s a mom and a wife. (And I know Robert is an unsung hero in all
of this too; Robert works full-time too and then I’m sure he’s doing extra
working as a great dad with his kids while Melissa does extra work for the
church). And Melissa has done such a fine
job organizing VBS and getting everything ready for our volunteers. It amazes me and we a we all appreciate Melissa and her family.
We
will all work hard this week. We’ll be
good and tired at the end of it. And there
will be many who say thank you. And that
gratitude always feels good—to know people appreciate your hard work and to
know you made a difference.
Even
if you’re not working with VBS this week, whatever ways you serve Christ and
make a difference in the world, it’s nice to be thanked. Mom’s and Dad’s and grandparents, it’s
nice to be thanked and you don’t always get the thanks you deserve. Or if you work, people probably don’t tell
you “Thank you” enough at work (or really show you that they do appreciate you).
That’s
where the 1 in 10 principle has helped me.
You see, only 1 in 10 lepers came back to tell Jesus thank you. So here’s a little trick I started doing many
years ago in ministry. I always figure
for every one person who really shows their gratitude well for anything I’ve done,
there are ten more who are thankful but just didn’t say it or don’t know
how to say thanks in a really meaningful way.
So I just take that one person’s gratitude and multiply it by ten in my
own heart.
If you ever feel like you don't get the thanks you deserve, take whatever thanks you receive and multiply it by ten. It works for me.
Maybe it’ll work for you.
But it’s healthy to be a thankful person. The more thankful you are, the more joyful you are. Showing gratitude actually enhances your own appreciation for your gifts in life. So I want to close today by giving you time to be thankful. Take a minute to close your eyes and thank God for your blessings. You may even want to go further and take 15 or 30 minutes to make a list of all the things for which you have to be thankful.
Here are some things you might consider:
Your health
Family
Church
Nation, etc.
And praise God! We
all can be thankful for what Jesus has done.
Forgiving our sins and giving us eternal life…
