God, the Ten Lepers, and You

I want to say thank you to our lovely women's choir. Watching our ladies up there today, isn't it nice that we have some of our young people there on the front row? And being able to sing praises to God and being involved at the church, I want to say thank you. And to our young ladies that we're singing today, I want to remind you that a lot of people that are professional singers started out in church choirs. So when you come into your kingdom, remember us. A lot of people that have sung over the years have always said it started by just singing in church. I want to also say thank you for the lovely flowers. I don't know if these are from us or from our fellow Sabbatarians, the SDA community, but they're very, as we say, autumnal, very pretty with the earth colors. And so let us proceed now into the message. Looking forward to bringing you this message this afternoon. I brought it to the San Diego congregation, and hopefully it'll be worth your spiritual worthwhile. I'd like to cite my text for today. If you'll join me, please, join me in Luke 17. This will be the anchor of our message to you on this afternoon. It's always good to anchor in Scripture and in one of the great stories of the Bible. As I mentioned that, I'm very careful with my words because this is a story, and it is an event. This is not a parable. Sometimes when we don't think it through, we think this might be another one of Jesus' parables. This is actually a story, an event with real people, with real challenges coming before a real God. We pick up the thought in Luke 17 and verse 11. Now it happened as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then, as he entered a certain village, there met him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off.

Now, before we go any further into the story, it would be an injustice to you if I don't begin to establish a framework so that we can fully appreciate the story. That may be somewhat familiar to you, but I want to elevate it and expand it, hopefully, in your mind, in your hearts, and your life today. Because two small phrases pop out at me, and I've got to smile.

Anybody that has an acquaintance with God or with the Scriptures, now it happened. That's one that we want to look at. Then, let's look at verse 12, where it says, And then, as he entered a certain village. Well, may I say something, friends? We're dealing with Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh, the Son of God. And we have got to come to appreciate that, well, when it's all said and done, nothing just happens when it comes to God.

God never wastes a miracle. And then, when you look in verse 12, when it says, And then, as he entered a certain village. Let's understand that Jesus did not just simply bump into 10 lepers. The reason I bring this out is because, before we can go any further in the story, we need to establish some thoughts about these phrases. And thus, we need to go back and kind of get a feel of how Luke is written and why it is written. Because the story of the 10 lepers and the one, only the one, the tithe of the community that came back to give God thanks, is but a part of the full flow of what God is trying to share with us in the book of Luke. Join me, if you would, in Luke 1 and verse 52, and at the very beginning of Luke, to establish a theme of what is occurring here.

Luke is written by a man who is a Gentile, a Greek, a Greek doctor, and his name is Luke. And one of Luke's reasons for writing the book of Luke, which is named after him, is that he wanted to give a more excellent and more thorough presentation in a systematic manner, as only a professional man can, of what occurred when salvation came to this earth through Christ. He wanted to show how it came, and he wanted to show how it was spread. What is very important, any time a student of the Bible begins the book of Luke, is to understand the compass that guides us. And it's actually found in Luke 1. It's in what is oftentimes called the song of Mary. It's where Mary is giving forth praise back to God because of her being chosen to be a vessel that through her and by her that the Messiah is going to come. So it's a song of exaltation. It's a proclamation of the greatness of God, the grace of God, as we heard in the first message. And it also has the tones and the tune and the rhythms of one of the great messianic books, and that is the book of Isaiah. Join me, if you would, considering on verse 52. In verse 52, Mary speaking, and actually speaking, though, from other verses out of the Bible, he has put down the mighty from their thrones. So there is a lowering of the mighty. There's a lowering of the mountains, as Isaiah would have it. And then notice at the end of verse 52, and he has exalted the lowly. So we recognize that there are things that are, to use biblical language, things that are abased and are brought down, and there are those things that were brought down by man that are going to be exalted. Now, it's very important to understand what we call the magnificant. That is a Latin word of where Mary is extolling the magnificence of God, because it doesn't only end here. This is the beginning of the compass. Join me, if you would, just a few chapters forward in Luke 4, because Luke is a tremendously well-crafted book that builds upon itself, because then we come to the aspect of Luke 4, which is the first sermon that Jesus gives in front of his hometown crowd, to let Nazareth, where he had been born and where everybody knew him. And notice what it says in Luke 4 in verse 17, and this follows on the heels of the magnificant.

And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and that's what would occur on a given Sabbath in a synagogue, as they would read from the book. And that's why the book of God is always so important. That's got to be our anchor. But he chose to read out of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. And he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. This is no less than the message of Jubilee. That community then of covenant, the Israelites, later the Jews, understood the purpose and the meaning of Jubilee. It was about release. It was about being let go. It was about redemption. It was a time every 50 years that when people were able to be released from being indentured servants or slavery, they were allowed to be free of debts. They were allowed to return to the land. They were allowed to become a part of community in which, perhaps in one way or another, they had been outcast. And so this is the message that Jesus is giving. Everything in the rest of the book of Luke is built upon the two compass of the Magnificant in Luke 1, and in the story or in the message that Jesus gives out of Isaiah in that first sermon in the book that he gives to the people of Nazareth. We need to understand that. And the reason why this is so important, friends, is, again, Luke had been one that had been outside the fold. He was a Greek. He was a Gentile. And so to him it was all wonderful that, in a sense, he had been brought into this fold. He who had been on the outside, only looking in, could now be on the inside, that salvation had come to all man. And so Luke is all about people that basically been on the outside looking in, that the rest of humanity gave basically short shrift to.

Whether it be women, whether it be Roman centurions, whether it be widows, whether it be lepers, whether it be people that were disadvantaged. Through Luke, God was saying, I want all of you. My plan is inclusive. It's not just for those who think they're good. It's for those that understand that only God is good. And so this is the background I wanted to establish before we go any further to understand the power, then, of the story and the events that are in Luke 17. Again, let's go a few chapters forward back to Luke 17 and begin to fill in the blanks with the story. Because, again, I want to remind you on this Sabbath day, in your own personal life, to take encouragement that God does not waste a miracle. God never does anything by accident. There is always a design to it. And we're going to find that out in this wonderful, fantastic story. Then he entered a certain village, and there he met ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. Now, this is very important to understand what leprosy is and how the communities of antiquity dealt with it. The very word leper, out of the Hebrew language, the Hebrew root word for leper, literally means to smite and to be smitten and or to be scourged. Leprosy is basically a very infectious and progressive, deteriorating disease that causes damages to the nerves and to the skin and to the limbs. Now, sometimes, because of some of the movies that we've seen, we kind of take leprosy to where maybe it ought not go. Often things that maybe ears or noses are falling off or there goes the limb, the leg or the arm. And that isn't really the case with leprosy. Leprosy is best known and best detected by its external symptoms, which are basically heavy lesions or scars on the surface. And so a leper couldn't hide himself. A leper was known basically by what was on the outside of him. And it's interesting when you understand that because of it being so contagious and because of the law of quarantine, lepers were separated from the community. And there were also sorts of prescriptions. I'll allow you to do the homework this week. May I give you a few verses that you can jot down and I'll let you fill in the blanks. But in Leviticus 13, verses 45 through 46 gives the abomination and the regulations dealing with leprosy under Moses.

Also in Numbers 5 and verse 2 adds more material on this. But allow me just to, for the sake of time, share a little bit the high points of what these verses bring out. Number one, it would be that a person that was a leper would have to wear a certain kind of clothing. And it would be clothing that would be shredded and it would be ripped apart. It would be like sackcloth. In other words, to be a leper in the sense of the community, God was humbling you. God had smitten you and therefore a leper wore clothing that was ripped and shredded as a sign of humility. Not only that, but a leper had to whenever he came into nair contact with individuals, he would have to yell, unclean, unclean! And so this was the story and this was the plight and, yes, also the responsibility of a leper. You give a warning like a lighthouse.

But rather than a beacon of hope, it was basically a beacon of distress, I am a leper. The Jews who were very good at measuring so many things came with a measurement of being a leper that a leper could not come within 150 feet of another individual.

150 feet of another individual. And so if anybody was down and out, if anybody was outside the cast of humanity, it was a leper. It was bad enough to know that you had leprosy. Imagine having to remind people every time you came into nair contact with them, I am unclean, I am unclean! Now there were reasons why God did this.

A reason that God did this to remember that he is a holy God and that there can be no uncleanness around him, whether it be spiritual, emotional, and or physical. And God has his ways and he knows what he is doing. But may I suggest what God ordained of Moses 1500 years before would also be enacted out by that same God, the God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, and using the story that we are about to have to show what God's heart is really about.

Notice what happens. And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. They recognized something there, perhaps by the hearing of the ear that they heard that this man was a healer. And perhaps they also came to realize that what man couldn't do is only the beginning of what God has in store for us. It's very interesting that here are 10 men. You might want to circle that in your Bible, students of the Scriptures.

There are 10 men later on in the story. We'll come to it, but I'm going to jump there and then jump back. We also understand that one of those men was a Samaritan. What is very interesting in the story is that there's 10 men. There are nine men of the covenant, and there is just one Samaritan. What is interesting is this, is to recognize the ethnic and religious strain and tension that there was between the Jews and the Samaritans. Neither one had too much in store for the other. There was tremendous animosity and, frankly, viciousness between these two human peoples. And it's only interesting when there was adversity that they forgot all of those things that had troubled them.

All of those things that were in between them. All the biting and all the animosity and all the acrimony somehow disappeared when they were all in the same pool of misery. It's interesting that they found that when there are floods in the wilderness and animals have to seek high ground, that those animals that are predators that are there with those that they usually eat, they'll all be on that high ground.

But all of that animosity and all that acrimony is not there on the mound surrounded by water. They become docile. They're not chomping on one another. They're not looking at one another. They're not looking at the differences because of the common distress. All of a sudden, the lion does lie down with the lamb when the floodwaters are rising. Kind of interesting in this, that as the floodwaters were rising figuratively around these lepers, they weren't looking at one another as a Samaritan.

They were not looking at one another as a Jew. They were looking at one another as human beings that need answers. And the answer comes in the form of Jesus Christ. Notice what he says here in verse 14.

Join me, please. So when he saw them, that is speaking of the Christ, he said to them, Go show yourselves to the priest. Go show yourself to the priest. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. Now, why is this brought up, and why does this need to draw your interest with me for a moment? Let's understand that when a man and or a woman felt as if leprosy was coming upon them, and you can read that in the text that I gave you out of the Old Testament, that they had to report to the priest.

It was the priest that determined that which was clean or unclean, and then set in motion the laws of quarantine involving the leper. When leprosy began to go into remission, whether it be man or woman, then the leper was asked to go back to the priest, to, in that sense, be redeemed, and to be brought back into the community of man and woman. What is interesting in this, if you'll notice, when he saw them, which is interesting, God's eyes never miss the target, just as God's eyes are on you and me today.

As he saw them, he sees us. And he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priest. Now, in doing that, they had not yet gone into remission. They had not yet been healed. Oftentimes, following what Dr. Henderson brought out, as we come to God in faith to experience His grace, God is not simply going to do it all on His own, even though it stems from Him. He's going to ask us to partner with Him, isn't he?

He's going to ask us to step out on faith. These men, stepping back and moving towards the priest, even before they are healed, reminds me at least of what God asked the priest under Moses to do, as they crossed the River Jordan. Remember what the priest had to do when they crossed the River Jordan? They had to step into the water before the water parted.

They had to get their pinky wet before God would do the rest of the job. Sometimes God asks us, even though He surrounds us with His love and with His wisdom, and with all that He wants to do for us, as children, He wants us to grow. He wants us to step out on faith. He wants to know that we really believe Him. As we come to God in faith, we are justified. The more we give of ourselves, the more He wants to do for us. These individuals step out on faith, and then notice they were cleansed on the way. Now, that would be nice if that were the end of the story, and we could all high-five and kumbaya. Isn't this wonderful? And end of the story. But there's more. Because God's still talking to us. And one of them, when He saw that He was healed. Can you imagine what it must have been like as that man was walking? Kind of a werewolf story in reverse. We've all seen Michael Landon, you know, back in 59, where he gets furry like a wolf. Well, that was Michael Landon, by the way, if you ever saw the old movie. Some of you did her older than I am. But this is in reverse. The lesions are coming off of them, even as they are walking. Imagine! And this man saw it and looked at it. And notice what happens. He was healed. And notice, healed, comma, and he returned. And with a loud voice glorified God. As students of the Scriptures, it's always very important, especially going through the Gospels and through the writings here in the New Testament, of recognizing the term loud. That is very important. We all use the phraseology, loud. Hear you loud and clear? This is loud. This man wanted to be known that there was no mistake where he gave the credit for his healing. Loud is not something that is just simply lost on Luke 17. Allow me to expand our thinking for a moment. Remember when Jesus is at the foot of Lazarus' grave? And it says that he looked towards heaven and with a loud voice said, Lazarus, come forth. There was a direction and there was a connection that Jesus wanted to make sure that nobody lost, that this was not some form of sorcery, this was not some abracadabra, but that he had a direct line to God and that he was favored by God and that he could raise the dead. In the same way, we also are to be loud in our direction signal to God, that people can understand that we give God the credit for our life and for our existence and for our well-being, and even at times for the trials that he allows to come upon us, that as this man, we might return glory to God. Then notice what happens here, verse 16. And only one returned, and he fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks, and he was a Samaritan.

It mentions that this human being fell down before Jesus Christ and worshipped him and praised him and gave him thanks. This reminds and refreshes and exhilarates us that Jesus was no less than God of the flesh.

Jesus, even in his earthly ministry, was fully able to receive worship as the Son of God. And then notice who is doing it, though. Is it a member of the Covenant people? Is it a part of the tribe? No, it's one of the leftovers. One of those had been on the outside of the gate, outside of the community. It was a Samaritan! But remember what it said in the Magnificent, that Jesus had come that he might lift the lowly. And in Luke 4 it said that this is the acceptable year that all could be released, whether they be Jew, whether they be Samaritan, and or whether they be Gentile.

Now, we're going to learn something here for a moment, if we haven't learned anything yet. Join me now in verse 17. And so Jesus answered. Paul said in the book of Corinthians that Jesus is the wisdom of God. We're going to hear a song at the end of this message about Jesus being the wisdom of God. We read the Scriptures to learn to walk wisely. Notice the wisdom here. So Jesus answered and said. But notice how he answered. Were there not pin cleansed? But where are the nine?

First question. Not a statement. It was a question. And were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? Not a statement, but a question. See, we need to remember that Jesus was not only the Son of God, he was the Son of Man.

And he was not only the Son of Man, but he was a Jewish man. And the Jewish way of learning is not to give all of the answers, but to ask questions. And in the Jewish community so often, the answer is in the question if only we'll follow the question. Because then that allows the other person to respond. That allows the other person to grow. I believe that, if I can make a comment, that Jesus answers as a good Jew in this sense in the Jewish way. You've often heard that the Jew will often answer a question with a question. But it's not really a question. It's an answer. But it's posed as a question. And this is left open-ended not only for the audience, but this comes down to our day that we have got to provide an answer to the questions that Jesus asked. Again, what are those questions? It says, Were there not ten cleans, but where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? This continues to be an open-ended event right down to our time. In other words, this is an experience that moves beyond the streets of this certain village into our lives, into our minds, and into our hearts. As to how grateful we are to God. As to whether our gratefulness is simply based upon an experience or based upon our existence and what God has done with us. Notice what he says here then at the end. It says, And he said to him, speaking of the now-heeled leper, Arise and go your way. Your faith, your faith, has made you well.

Why am I bringing this to you today? Allow me to give you the second part of this message. Because this story is more than just simply being, if I can use this phrase, geology, shamed into thankfulness. Perhaps at one time or another we've heard a message on the lepers, and maybe even on Thanksgiving weekend, it seems to be appropriate to learn to give thanks, or perhaps, Oh, no, I didn't thank mom, or I didn't thank grandpa, or I didn't thank my wife, and I just need to be a more thankful person. I want to kind of really extend and elevate the discussion, though, and approach you on this aspect. And to understand that it's more than just simply being thankful and making sure that the coming week, we thank everybody from the newspaper man to the guy that opens the door for us.

And that's all well and good, but there's a much, much, much bigger story than just simply that. Join me, if you would, in Luke 19.10, because again, we must understand why the book of Luke is written. And various commentaries will say that the specific purpose statement of Luke, and or the key verse, is found in Luke 19 and in verse 10.

In Luke 19 and verse 10, breaking into thought, it says, For the Son of Man, that is Jesus Christ, has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

That's why the book of Luke is written.

It's about the seeker. It's about the seeker.

And he not only seeks, but he does something once something is found.

He rescues it. He saves it. He redeems it and makes it good. That is why we have the beautiful stories in Luke 15 about the Good Shepherd that goes after the One rather than the Ninety and Nine. The woman that seeks the one coin versus the other nine, and the father that runs out the door and embraces his son, in a sense of jubilee, that he is redeemed.

Thus we find that the book of Luke is not to go find people that think they're good and think they're saved, but to open up salvation to those who thought they are lost. And in that day and age, there could be nobody more forlorn and apart from the community of man other than a leper.

Other than a leper.

And Jesus faced them. He sought them out. He didn't bump into any certain village.

He didn't bump into the... Oh, what am I going to do now? Oh, I think I'll do a miracle.

He was seeking the occasion, and he knew exactly what he was going to do with us. Let's understand something to make this story relevant to each and every one of us in this room.

All of us, all of us, have been like the leper.

All of us, at one time or another, have been cut off from the community of God.

Paul reminds us in his great treatise in the book of Romans. He tackles the Gentiles in chapter 1, saying, look what they've done. He tackles the Jewish community in Romans 2, saying, look what you've done and haven't done with what I gave you. And then notice Romans 3 and verse 23. Join me if you would there for a moment. In Romans 3, 23, which is the concluding declaration of the first part of the book of Romans, in Romans 3 and verse 23, it says, For all have sinned, and all have fallen short of the glory of God.

I'm glad all is just one syllable. I don't have to figure it out a lot. I think all means all.

Sometimes God just kind of puts it right in there so we don't get too complicated.

It says that everybody has fallen short. With that thought in mind in the New Testament, join me if you would to an Old Testament verse, Isaiah 59, to build upon this foundation of recognizing where we were before God sought us out and before God rescued us in Isaiah 59. 1. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. 2. But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear.

In a sense that human nature that is within us, spawned initially by the spirit of Satan, and yet we must take responsibility as well for our own actions, that we were cut off from God the Father. We were outside the camp. And God chose in his wisdom and time for one reason or another to bump into our certain person back then and for now that we in turn might be redeemed. Join me for another thought on this in Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2, I want to give you some framework on this because I hopefully want to be true to Scripture. Ephesians is about the body of Christ. A part of it is written to the Jewish community at that time, a part of it is written to the Gentile community. The verses I'm about to go into are basically be speaking to those that have been grafted into the body of Christ that have been Gentile.

But I think it has an overriding principle that we can build upon in this discussion that we're having today of the Ten Lepers. In Ephesians 2, let's pick up the thought beginning in verse 14. Excuse me, verse 10, pardon me. Ephesians 2 and verse 10. And we'll try to link this up with the story of the Ten Lepers.

And remember, there's always in the Bible a tension between that which is past, now, and the future. So the we that is being discussed here is none other than you and me. Did you notice how we put all the pronouns together? We, you, and me. For we are his workmanship.

We are his workmanship as much as the work that he was doing with those Ten Lepers before that certain village at that moment of then. For we are his workmanship, speaking of Jesus, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Therefore, remember that you, now, again, understanding the reference of Gentiles, but we're going to expand upon it in a moment, that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands, that at times you were without Christ being aliens, foreigners, from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. There was a time when all of us, frankly, friends, no matter what our racial or ethnic background, all of us were in that sense spiritual Gentiles, spiritual Gentiles, unclean, uncircumcised in our hearts. That's the plain truth. That's where God started with us. And God said, I'm going to do a work. I'm going to do a work of jubilee and of redemption. And I'm going to be doing my work in them, and I'm going to take them, and I'm going to have mercy on them. And I, through my son, the Christ, am going to bring them into the community of God. They're no longer going to be unclean. You see, back when this was being written about 60-65 AD, a Gentile was considered unclean. He was uncircumcised. A Gentile could only get so far in the ways of God. Until the Jerusalem Conference of 49 or 50 AD, you take your year, that a man, even a Christian man, had to be outside and not in.

In other words, there were many people at that time, you know, when the Roman world was losing its moral compass, there were people that were looking for a morality. They were looking for answers, just like in our day and in our age. They knew that there had to be more to life, and there was a great attraction to Judaism. But amongst the Gentiles, they could only go so far. There were people that were monotheists. They knew that there was one God. They knew about those false gods of Rome and Greece, that they were just plaster and marble and ivory. And they understood that. And they honored the law and the Ten Commandments. But they could only go so far. A man that was a Gentile could never go into a synagogue. They could peek into the window. They could look into the door. But they were outside the camp. They could only go so far. And this is what Paul is saying, that when Christ came, when Christ came, the barriers came down. The community expanded, was enlarged, redeemed, grafted in. Let's continue the thought here.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were afar off, had been brought near by the blood of Christ. This struck chords and volumes within Luke's heart. Luke, who is a Gentile, who is a Greek. Luke, who had to be, in a sense, on the outside of the window looking in. When he came to understand how salvation had come to all, and that there would be no man that was unclean as he came to God in faith, and accepted that grace of God, and then responded to God by the rules and the laws of God as listed in the Bible, as Dr. Henderson brought out, that they could have full fellowship within the middle and the community of man before God.

Verse 14, for he himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition. In that certain city, in Samarian Galilee, there had been a wall of partition.

Jesus broke it down then, and he continues to break it down right in front of us. You know, it's very interesting that I'm going to share a thought with you. To recognize where we've all been, and to appreciate that when we do become redeemed, remember what a leper had to do as an act of redemption? He had to go back to the priest.

And when we are led by the Spirit of God, and by the Father that calls us, and then as we accept the sacrifice of His Son, and truly believe in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, things begin to happen. We become clean before God. He does not even remember any of our sins, any of those lesions that were in our heart or our mind or any of our soul. And they are all taken away as if they never were. And then what do we do? Just like the leper of old, we have to report to the priest. But who is the priest that we report to? It's none other than the high priest, Jesus Christ. Think about it for a moment. You know, it's nice to be able to report to a priest like these lepers did, but can you imagine reporting to the priest that has been where the lepers have been, who is willing to touch the lepers? And who, like the lepers himself, was put outside of the camp? When Jesus was crucified, He was crucified on the outside of the camp, outside of the walls of Jerusalem. He was looked upon as being unclean by those that truly were unclean, be they Roman or be they the people of the covenant at that time. And He was put on the outside of the camp. But He was redeemed. God the Father rejected what the courts of the earth had said about His Son, turned it over on appeal of the heavenly court, and resurrected Jesus Christ, who is not only our Savior, but our High Priest. So thus, when we are redeemed and we accept the call of the Father, and are atoned by the blood of the Son, and that when our thankfulness and our return to God the Father comes, who is the priest that we meet? Who is the priest that redeems us and says, you can move forward now in life.

And I bring you to the Father. See, that's how Jesus acts and is as the High Priest of Heaven.

And He says, you are reconnected. You're not only just in the community of man. You don't just get to go back into the tent, but you get to come before the very, very throne of God.

My friends, in Redlands, when you understand that, and you fill yourself to the core with that understanding of what's literally happening, and what God has called us to, in the act of Jubilee that has come upon you, to recognize then that being thankful is not event-driven, it is your existence. It is not something that you reach for, it is something that you are. You have a joy in yourself, recognizing that there is something that God has placed so deep inside of you that no man can touch, unless you allow him to. And to recognize that you have been cleansed by none other than God the Father and by Jesus Christ. Join me if you would. Come, let's go to Philippians 4 as we begin to conclude. Philippians 4. And let's pick up a thought here in verse 6. Philippians 4 and verse 6. Be anxious for nothing. Sometimes you say, yeah, but I've got something to be anxious about. But that's not what the book says. Be anxious. Don't worry about anything.

But in everything by prayer and supplication. Supplication is specific prayer about a given item that you go to God again and again, that He will supply the answer. And if He doesn't give you the answer that maybe you want, He will give you the wisdom and the strength to abide in the answer that He gives. With what? With thanksgiving. Like the Samaritan, one out of ten that returned to God, and let your request be made known to God. And then notice what happens when we do that. When we don't worry and when we give thanks.

And then the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ. Did you notice that? There's a peace of God. There is not an eighth day of creation where God said, and there was peace. And it was good. Peace is what He is yet establishing in the children that He is molding and shaping to become the sons of glory.

Peace is a connection of knowing that you, like that leper in that certain village, have come into contact with something that is humanly unexplainable.

That you have been touched by none other than God Almighty through Jesus Christ. And that your life has changed forever. And to recognize that when you do that, there is a peace that comes upon you, which surpasses all understanding. Basically is better than knowledge, better than facts, better than a bunch of head knowledge, because you know who you have come into contact with. Surpasses all understanding and will guard your heart. The word guard there out of the Greek conveys the sense of a Roman centurion or Roman sentry at watch.

And it says, if we will do this, stop worrying and give thanks.

God says, if you do that, just as those lepers were asked to go and walk towards the priest before they were healed, I'll tell you what I'll do.

I will guard your heart. I'll be like that Roman sentry. I will stand watch and partner with your heart and your mind through Jesus Christ.

That's what God wants to do for us. Can there be anything more fantastic than that?

Why am I bringing you this message on this very special weekend?

Let's understand that to be able to grow, we must be a thankful people.

A thankful people are a growing people.

And a growing people are people that worship not only on one day of the week, but every day of the week, because they know that they were met at a certain village, at a certain time in their life, and they gave themselves to God.

You see, you not only had to meet the high priest when you were redeemed as a leper, you had to also bring a gift to the altar.

And the gift that God wants is your faith and your confidence and your love in him.

And when you do that, you won't have to ever worry about not being thankful.

Thankfulness will be the engine that drives your life rather than the caboose that sometimes gets unhinged.

I'd like you to think about that. Think about it a lot. Allow the story of the lepers to change your life.

You know, a leopard may not be able to change its spots, but a Christian can rid herself of its lesions through the love and the grace and the mercy and forgiveness and the touch of God.

I'm going to play a song at the end of this message. It's a beautiful song.

You think about what Jesus meant to that man, that leper, that return, and was truly thankful.

In conclusion, we're going to hear a song by Johann Sebastian Bach.

You'll know the melody. It's called, Ye Su, Joy of Man's Desire.

And it's sung by...what's the first name? Josh, by Josh Groban.

Listen to it. Read the words. Allow this day to be a day of transformation in your life.

If you are worried, if you are full of fear, if you have doubt, give them to God.

Leave the lesions behind and walk with Him.