Sermon Tone Analysis
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I remember when I was a boy and my mother made me write thank you cards for first time after Christmas.
I was really upset; I thought it was a waste of time.
That really showed something about my heart – I wasn’t very thankful.
Of course now I realize it’s appropriate to send a thank you card when you receive a gift.
In fact, the greater the gift, the more you should express thanks for it.
That leaves us with a serious question: What about the gifts we get from God?
They are the greatest gifts we ever receive.
Do we thank him?
And if we aren’t showing our thanks to God, what does that say about our hearts?
We can’t send God a card, so what can we do?
In our lesson for today, we see what it means to be a thankful believer.
1. Thankful believers appreciate God’s mercy
2. Thankful believers can’t wait to give thanks.
In the ancient world, one group of people didn’t have much to be thankful for.
These were the lepers.
Lepers had a horrible life.
They had a painful skin disease.
They had to live outside of town in leper colonies because other people were afraid catching their disease.
In Israel, according to the Law lepers weren’t even allowed to go into cities or towns.
If a leper was walking along a country road somewhere and saw a healthy person walking by, the leper had to cover his face and shout out, “Unclean, unclean” so the other person would know to stay away.
So you understand the lepers we read about a few moments ago.
When they heard he was coming, they were hoping he would see their sad state and be moved to help them, as they knew he had healed other lepers...
They wanted to catch his attention before he got into the town beyond their reach.
Afraid to get too close, *they stood at a distance and cried in a loud voice,* *“Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”*
They couldn’t offer to give anything in return because they didn’t have anything to offer.
They could only appeal to Jesus’ mercy and compassion.
What were they thinking as Jesus looked in their direction and called back to them, *“Go, show yourselves to the priests.”*
He didn’t immediately heal them.
Instead he told them to get going.
When someone was cleansed of leprosy, he was supposed to go see the priests to be officially declared clean.
So Jesus implied they would be cleansed when they got there.
But by delaying their healing, he was giving them a chance to trust him and show it by acting on his word.
Sure enough, *as they went, they were healed*.
Was there a glowing light?
Did a funny feeling come over them all at once? Or was it a quiet miracle?
One leper turned and noticed something different about his friend’s face.
Soon they all stopped in wonder.
Were they shouting with joy, or silent with awe? Think what this meant for the lepers – no more living in the deserted places!
No more separation from friends and family!
No more physical suffering from leprosy!
They had so much to look forward to!
No doubt they hugged each other as they departed.
But nine of them didn’t stay around long, because they just couldn’t wait….
to go home.
This miracle /should have/ humbled the lepers and led them to see that Jesus was much more than a medical wonder.
He healed all 10 of them at once, and he had done it from a distance.
That alone was enough to prove he was the one sent from God.
It also proved his compassion.
You would expect them to all immediately return and worship Jesus, their newfound Messiah.
But instead we hear that only one returned.
How could nine of them just run off like that?
Their lives were changed forever.
They would /wake up every day/ thankful that they were no longer lepers.
They had experienced Jesus power and compassion in an intensely personal and miraculous way.
Their entire lives were permanently stamped with Jesus.
When they didn’t return Jesus was baffled and wondered out loud, *“Were not all ten cleansed?
Where are the other nine?
Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”*
*But there was one leper, who when he saw that he had been healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.
He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
* Why?
Because this one leper kept clinging to Jesus’ words as he went along.
When he felt the divine power working in him and saw that he was healed, he /had/ to praise God in response.
What led him to have such a different reaction?
There are two details to consider: The first: he realized what he received was /mercy/.
He understood that he had been given something he didn’t deserve, so naturally he wanted to express his appreciation.
After being healed of leprosy, he wasn’t about to forget it.
He didn’t have something else that was a higher priority.
Jesus had taken pity on him and deserved much more than a thank you card.
The other difference between the one who returned and the nine who went on was the one’s religious background.
He was a Samaritan, while the other nine, it’s pretty safe to assume, were Jews.
The Samaritans were partly Jewish by blood, but they weren’t fully Jewish.
They had corrupted the Jewish religion by making their own version of the Old Testament to fit their own preferences.
The Jewish people of Jesus’ day generally looked down on the Samaritans.
They weren’t God’s people.
And yet it was a Samaritan, not a Jew, who returned and thanked Jesus.
Does this surprise you?
You would expect the Jews to appreciate Jesus’ mercy the most.
The Jews had the Old Testament promises to Abraham and David.
Ever year as they reenacted the Passover and celebrated other feasts, they remembered God’s mercy on their people.
This should have made them ever more grateful and appreciative of God’s mercy.
But sadly we see the opposite.
We see again and again in Israel’s history that they often became indifferent to God’s mercy.
Eventually when their Messiah came to redeem his people, they weren’t interested.
The nine lepers who didn’t return displayed this same attitude.
Why should they run back and thank Jesus?
He showed them mercy – big deal.
They had more important things to worry about.
That’s called a hardened heart.
And the hardest hearts are often found inside people who are surrounded with God’s mercy.
And who was it that returned?
A Samaritan.
Not someone who had grown up as an heir of God’s promises.
Not someone who had been going to church all his life.
But someone who recognized how great God’s mercy was when it came into his life.
Where does that leave us?
There’s a story about a pastor who was giving his annual report to the elders of his congregation.
Towards the end of his report, he mentioned incidentally, “We had a pretty bad year as far as deaths, I counted that 300 people died.”
The elders were stunned.
They looked at each other, wondering how they could have missed this.
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