Leprosy and Being Thankful to God

Well, you know, every day we're lambasted, aren't we, in the media by COVID-19. Probably about every day you hear that word, I'm guessing a hundred times. If you watch the news, if you listen to the radio, it's all they talk about. I was telling my wife that, in fact, yesterday, that every time the news comes on, somebody has a mask on or they're walking down through the court of a hospital or somebody's in a respirator. So anyway, today, just relax a little bit.

I'm not going to talk about COVID-19. I'm going to talk about another disease. I thought you might want to hear about another disease. Let's do some variety here. I'm going to talk about leprosy. And I was going to have a slideshow for you and I looked at some of the pictures last night and said, no, we wouldn't want to do that. We didn't want to show you the pictures of people who have leprosy because it is quite a grotesque disease, a plague that was upon this world for a long time with no cures.

Now the reason I was thinking about leprosy as a topic is that I'm the pastor of the Hawaii churches. You may not be aware of it, but Hawaii at one time had a leper colony. leprosy came to Hawaii in 1823 and nobody knows how it came. Probably by ship, obviously, by migrant workers who may have worked there.

But by 1865 leprosy was common enough in Hawaii that it spread so much that the government sentenced 87 people to lifetime of exile on a colony on the island of Molokai. And that's one island Jonah and I have never been on. We would like to go over there, in fact.

I've read a little bit about a fellow named what they call called Father Damien. He was a Catholic priest who himself came to Molokai in 1873 to help out. And in the process of helping these people with this this horrid disease of leprosy, he contracted the disease himself and he died in 1889. And apparently, you know, he was made a saint by the Catholic Church for his work. And you know, we may not agree with the theology of some people, but we can certainly admire people's dedication to try to help people, to reach out to people the way doctors do and other people do.

You know, often as Christians, we don't realize how blessed we are. We don't realize how good we have it as God's people until you lose everything. Then you may have some sense of how good you had it in your life. Or what you have is threatened to be taken away. And of course, today, people have that as a problem because they can't work. And they have homes that they have to pay bills with, you know, mortgages and so forth, and take care of all the necessities of a household and a family.

And I'm sure a lot of people realize now in the United States and around the world how good they had it before. And maybe they took it for granted. But, brethren, there is nothing, nothing on earth like leprosy. And how demoralizing it is. Let's go over to Luke 17. You know, it's in the Bible. It is talked about by Jesus Christ, and it carries a tremendous lesson for us all, brethren.

A very important lesson, but over here in chapter 17 of Luke, and we will notice here, in verse 11, it says, now it happened in Luke 17 verse 11, as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And you know, these were areas that were maybe prone to have outcast type people. Up in Samaria, people were not looked upon too well. And frankly, being from Galilee was not a plus in the plus column for anyone.

And you might remember that the apostles, some of them, were from Galilee. Jesus himself was from Galilee. And people didn't respect that that much during that time. So he's going here in this area, and then as he enters a certain village, it says, there met him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And it says, and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. So when he saw them, he said to them, go show yourselves to the priest. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. Here are these horrid, probably looking individuals that had to cover themselves in sackcloth.

You know, they had to cover every inch of the body. So it was not visible to people because it was so ugly. And Jesus said, go show yourself to the priest. And as they went along, they were cleansed. They were miraculously healed here. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned and with a loud voice glorified God. And he fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. He was a Samaritan. I have more to say about that a little bit later. But here were 10 lepers, brother. 10 lepers whose lives were dramatically changed. And I'll explain further how their lives would be so much different after this healing that Jesus Christ gave this miraculous healing. And by analogy, brethren, it reflects, frankly, this incident here, reflects the character of most people today, the way that people are in our world. We live in a thankless society. And probably 90% of the people don't really appreciate what they have. They don't appreciate God. They don't look to God and thank God for what they have, although we're going to be observing Thanksgiving next week. You know, will people truly thank the God who has given them what they have? And realize how it can be taken away so quickly. Everything can happen so very rapidly. So in the remainder of the sermon, brethren, here, let's discuss leprosy as it relates to our life and being thankful to God. If you want to title, the title of this sermon is leprosy and being thankful to God.

Now, the medical name for leprosy is called, it's called Hansen's disease.

And in leprosy, you may wonder what causes it. It's a bacteria, certain bacteria that is, in fact, in the name it has, it's called lepre, lepre, and then there's more technical definition of it. I won't try to give it because you won't remember it anyway. But it affects the nerves of the upper respiratory tract. And skin lesions have external symptoms that begin to appear and if left untreated, what happens is parts of your body start falling off. If you go and you look at pictures of people with leprosy, their fingers just fall off. And all they have is that they've got the nub, basically. A nose can fall off. And there are these lesions all over their bodies. In some cases, just horrid looking. And yet, interestingly, the pictures of people that I saw, some of them were trying to smile in that state. But it was a horrid thing. And leper colonies still exist today in India. And in Vietnam, there are leper colonies that are there. Of course, in Hawaii, they're not there anymore. It's like a tourist thing now. Again, we haven't seen it, so I can't speak from the experience having seen it. But interestingly, leprosy was not effectively treated until, you know, the 1980s. And it's by a cocktail of drugs that they give to people. They're able to combat this. And it's something that apparently is fairly easy to treat now. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and we begin to see the relationship of leprosy and how it relates to us. Over in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 26 over here, let's notice this. Here Paul is talking about the scriptures that should be very familiar to us. But here in verse 26 of chapter 1, it says, For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise, according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. You know, that's the story of our lives, isn't it? We realize we're not the movers and the shakers of this world, not at all.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put the shame, the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to put, to shame the things which are mighty. So God has called us, frankly, to confound the mighty. And people are going to look at us in the future, and they're going to say, how in the world did you become a king? I never heard of you. What year were you born? You know, never heard your name, ever spoken. That's the way it's going to be in the future, brethren. They're going to look at us, and they're going to be incredulous that we are kings in the world tomorrow. And so let's go on here, verse 28, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised. Despised! Underline that word. The world is, it despises us. We look in the world today, and unfortunately, there is a mentality that is in the world where people look down on other people that, frankly, don't believe in global warming. They think you are stupid, you know, that you have no education. You know, that's the kind of mentality that some people have today. We don't even have to mention people who believe the Bible. I mean, if you believe the Bible and what the Bible says, people really think you're crazy. What's wrong with you? You know, the world despises anybody that is religious. Well, you know, Satan's the God of the world. That's why. And he's motivated people along these lines. And so we see that this is the case with us, brother. We're despised. And God has chosen us. And the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are. And the reason is that no flesh would glory in his presence. And so the glory should go to God, like Mr. Knudsen was saying. God gets all the glory. We don't get any glory because God has called us and we don't amount to very much.

Leopards are symbolic of us, brethren. They're symbolic of us because God calls the weak of the world and the despised of the world, which the lepers were. They were outcasts from this world. No one want to have anything to do with them. You know, base things, what we are, brethren, and we are despised of the world as well, an outcast of this society. Now, think about this. Now, think about this. What caused the nine lepers who did not come back and thank Jesus Christ from a human standpoint, what caused them not to come back to thank Jesus Christ for what he had done for them? Let me give you a few things that people oftentimes think that maybe to, and I think it's important for us to meditate and to try to figure out why people do the things they do. Now, I'm sure all of us have wondered that about ourselves, what do we do the things we do? Well, I like to analyze things and look at it from different angles, but maybe even the lepers, some of them may have thought, well, was the healing real? Did really, was it real? Did it really happen? And maybe also, Jesus said, go thank the priests and maybe, or go to the priests, and maybe they thanked the priests. And maybe he thought that the priest did it, but the priest didn't do it. They were healed on the way, and all they were to do is to talk to the priest, so they didn't give Jesus Christ the credit for healing them.

And maybe they thought, well, you know, I'll probably see him later, and I'll tell him later, and they never did. You see how the human mind works? It comes up all the ways why we don't do what we should do. Or maybe they thought, well, Jesus really didn't do anything. And really, he didn't. He just said, go show yourself to the priest.

You know, go show yourself. But we know he did. He healed those 10 lepers. And, you know, maybe some even thought, well, maybe I didn't have leprosy after all.

Because when it's gone, it's gone, isn't it? It's like sometimes when we're healed. Sometimes you wonder, well, what did I have? Did I really have that?

You know, we sort of reason that way in our mind. Or maybe we would have thought, well, any rabbi could have done this. No, rabbi could have done this, too.

And why didn't I ask before? Or maybe one of them thought, well, you know, I was getting better anyway. So maybe he didn't really heal me. So you see the mind, the human nature, caused them not to go back and to thank Jesus Christ. They didn't accept the reality. It was Jesus Christ that healed them. Something to really think about, brethren.

You know, in Smith's Bible dictionary, if you get a chance to read what Smith's Bible dictionary says, it gives eight points comparing leprosy and cause it a type of sin. You know, if you want to read Smith's Bible dictionary under leprosy. And when I've done, I took what Smith said, and I've consolidated into four quick points I want to give to you about how leprosy is like sin. But this is a paraphrase and basically consolidation of what Smith's Bible dictionary says. But Smith says leprosy is hereditary.

Leprosy is hereditary, passed from one generation to another. And a leper, he says, can have a beautiful baby, healthy by parents. You could not tell the baby had anything. But eventually, with a leper's baby, eventually leprosy becomes visible. And so even a baby, again, can look completely healthy, but it's affected by the leprosy. Now think about this in comparison to sin. Sin is passed on generationally. Now any parent, you know, would look at, you know, in this world at least, would look at a baby and would think, how could there be any sin in this little baby? Any potential of sin even in this little baby? And we know that when a child is born, they're basically neutral. But you know, it doesn't take very long before the old carnality comes out, even out of a little baby, a child. And eventually, you know, the sin begins to appear like leprosy. You know, we used to have an old saying, I don't hear it very much anymore, the nut does not fall very far from the tree. You know, as the parents are, so shall be the children. Our children, you know, children actually inherit what we give to our children.

And I know a lot of us probably repent. We wish there was a way that we could protect our children from our own fallacies, our own problems. You know, we wish there was a way we could protect our children from our genes, if we could, you know, our DNA, that we pass it on to our kids, whether we want to or not. You know, you could be an absolutely perfect parent, but you know, like it or not, your children probably going to have to deal with the same problems you've had to deal with as a human being. You know, maybe you can do a little legwork with them and help them and prepare them, but they're going to have to deal with your DNA and their DNA in the final analysis. So like leprosy, being hereditary, sin is hereditary. It's passed on from one generation to another. What Smith says again about leprosy, number two, point number two, if you want to write them down, is leprosy is incurable except by the power of God. Now today, we there are, again, a cocktail of drugs you could take that might alleviate the problem. But from that standpoint of the time of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament period of time, it was not so.

It was incurable except by the power of God. It was a death sentence, and God was the only one who could heal it. Now I'm not going to go to Isaiah 59 and verses 1 and 2. You should be very familiar with those verses there, but it tells us over there that sin separates us from God. And whether we like it or not, all of us, you know, we have to deal with sin in our lives. We have to repent of sin in our life. If we tolerate it, if we let it get a toe hold in our lives, brethren, it's a death sentence. It's a death sentence. Eternal life hinges on whether we are willing to repent of sin and to change. So you see by analogy here, and when we see our sin, brethren, we realize only God can forgive sin and deliver us from eternal death. He's the only one that could do it. And it's only through Jesus Christ and through His shed blood that you and I could have our sins wiped away. And that's what, of course, we see in Acts 2.38. I'm not going to go there, but we need to remember those things, how very valuable it is. And it's like the message that Mr. Knudsen gave about the need for us to constantly be working on ourselves every day.

We need to be overcomers. That doesn't go a day go by that I don't think about trying to overcome my own flaws, my own sins and problems. And so it's incurable except by the power of God, except by God intervening for us. Number three, leprosy is contagious and tends to increase and get worse. It doesn't get better. It gets worse. You know, sin has a tendency to increase. We, of course, every year at the Days of Unleavened Bread, we talk about leavening and how it multiplies. That analogy, of course, is very familiar to all of us who've been in the church a while. Well, sin has a tendency to increase. And it's, of course, passed on from one generation to another. Back over in Exodus 20, in verses 5 through 6, it talks about in the commandments, it says, Your God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity or the sin of the Father upon the children until the third and fourth generations of them that hate Him, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments. So if we teach our kids, if we strive to teach them, that will stay with them. If they accept it, you know, we can't make people do anything, can we? I wish we could, but we can't make people do anything.

So leprosy, again, is contagious. Sin is contagious. And if you don't deal with it, it gets worse. So you can't tolerate sin in your life. Any problem, whatever it is, you've got to face it. You've got to overcome it. And number four that Smith talks about, again, I'm paraphrasing and breaking it down into just four points. He gives eight points. Leprosy is deforming, unclean, and they were shamed and disgraced by it.

It was a grotesque disease that was not only painful, but it stigmatized people. It was a terrible stigma on them, a shame, a horrible shame. Let's go over to Numbers 5, over in the book of Numbers here. In Numbers, chapter 5, ancient Israel had, of course, to deal with this. And some might think it was cruel the way that people were treated, but, brethren, unless quarantine was used, it had the danger of affecting everybody in the camp. And so they had to take action that was an immediate action. But herein, in chapter 5, just a couple of verses here at the beginning, at the outset of Numbers, God spoke to Moses, and He said in verse 2, command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge. And so if somebody has it, you've got to deal with it immediately. And the priests were important in this. By the way, they had the responsibility. It's like ministers today have the responsibility to protect the flock as well. In ancient Israel time, God commanded it be done that way. And even whosoever is defiled by a corpse. Now why would it be so bad if you happen to touch a corpse? Well, you don't know if what they had was something that was highly contagious that could have spread throughout the entire camp and killed thousands of people rapidly. And they say, of course, that some diseases are that way. They're saying COVID-19 is that way. That can affect people rather rapidly. And so quarantine is important. God did not command quarantine the entire, by the way, camp. You quarantine the people that are affected by the disease and take care of it that way. But Mosaic law pronounced the leper as being unclean. Now that's not something that, you know, that's terrible to say because in the sense of how it can affect the entire congregation, it was the best way to put it. They were unclean.

Now I want to give you some other things that happened with somebody who was a leper. You know, because they had to be placed outside of the camp. They couldn't be around anybody. They had to be put outside. And verse 3 says that you should put out both male and female, you shall put them outside the camp that they may not defile their camps in the midst of which I dwell. So they couldn't live with their families. They had to be outside of the city.

And naturally, they were not permitted to go to the temple to worship at all.

And according to the law, they had to cover their faces. And if they came near anybody, they had to cry out unclean, unclean. And rendering basically somebody who has leprosy as being all alone in the world.

And because of that, tending to separate them from God. I mentioned about Isaiah 59, how sin separates us from God. You see the analogies with this, but because they could not enter the synagogue, even at the time of God's death, the synagogue, even at the time of Jesus, no one would touch them. They were outcasts. And as lepers, they had no intimacy with anyone. No friendship with anyone except somebody that had leprosy.

If you were a leper, you essentially lost everything that you had. You lost your family. You lost your job. And you lost money. You had no money, no livelihood. Again, they were outcasts from the society. Leprosy was considered a disease inflicted by the punishment of sin and a mark of God's displeasure.

And like it says in Luke 17, verse 12, when they cried out to Jesus Christ, they had to stand afar off, and they cried to Christ. Help us. Have mercy upon us.

You know, let's go over to Leviticus now. Leviticus chapter 13 over here. In chapter 13, and just some verses over here that deal with this, in verse 42 of Leviticus, and it says, and if there is on the bald head or bald forehead of a reddish and white sore, it is leprosy. So here the priest would have to examine a person for these symptoms that they were given. You might ask the question, well, what about the priest?

You know, what about him? Well, apparently God gave him protection during this time. You know, I would have to say I've annoyed many, many people who were very sick, and I've never gotten sick, annoyed of anybody through my entire ministry. God has been there and protected us.

It says, then the priest shall examine it, and indeed the swelling of the sore is reddish-white on his bald head or on his bald forehead, as the appearance of leprosy on the skin of the body, he is leprosy. He's unclean. The priest shall surely pronounce him unclean, his sore is on his head. And now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare, and he shall cover his mustache and cry unclean, unclean. And he shall be unclean, and all the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. So again, this was a lifelong sentence, like in Hawaii. Interestingly, in reading about the colony over in Malachi, the community where the leper colony began started with, I mentioned, I think about 83 people. It eventually grew into a town of 8,000 people. You had family that came in and eventually grew into that big of a problem.

And of course you have a father, Damian, that also came in as well.

And you know, so ancient Israel was commanded to immediately quarantine people that had leprosy. A priest's job was to inspect and give a clean bill of health before anybody could rejoin the community or the family. Or his job was to declare someone unclean, if indeed that was the case. I'm glad we don't have to do those kinds of things in the ministry now. But you think about it, in terms of the of the priesthood at that time, they were the educators. They were essentially, for lack of a better term, the doctors of their time, watching after and over the people of God. Now, Eaton's Bible dictionary says this, leprosy was the outward and visible sign of the innermost spiritual corruption.

A meat emblem in its small beginnings, its gradual spread, its internal disfigurements, its dissolution little by little of the whole body, of that which corrupts, degrades, and defiles man's inner nature and renders him unmeted to enter the presence of a pure and a holy God. That's what Eaton's Bible dictionary says about leprosy, as it applies to sin and corruption. Leprosy, like I said, is a type of sin. And, brethren, all of us are infected with sin, even though we've been forgiven. You know, Satan would love, he would love to reinfect us. He would love us to neglect a sin and hold on to that sin tenaciously. He'd love us to do that, brethren, but we simply cannot allow ourselves, if we would call it a luxury, to do that.

We can't allow ourselves to do that. So lepers were separated from God. We can be, brethren, separated from God by unrepentant sin. If we, and of course nobody might be aware of it, but if we continue to sin, then we have, we don't have that contact with God, because sin, you know, separates us from God so that God will not hear us after a period of time if we are simply refusing to change, refusing to repent.

Hopefully none of us would ever get that way. Satan would love us to be in danger of losing all that we have because of a sin, a particular sin, in our lives. He would love us to face eternal death. Then he's won. He's won. So we must continue, brethren, to repent. Repentance means that it's a lifelong process. We repent and keep on repenting. That's what it's about. When we go through repentance and baptism, we don't cease repenting. We keep working on ourselves. We see the sin and we try to put it out as God's people. You know, Mr. Knudsen mentioned in his message, he said that we need to ask. Ask and you shall receive. You know, sometimes when I talk to people, they counsel about people, they, you know, want maybe something in their life, and I said, well, have you asked? Have you asked? Maybe they would like a better job. I always suggest, why don't you go talk to your employer? Maybe he would give you something better himself if you just ask.

Or maybe just ask God if you feel that that's the only appropriate place to go. Jesus said, ask and you shall receive. If you're sick, you know, first thing you should do is ask God to heal you. Get anointed. You know, sometimes you might not have to be anointed unless, you know, you, you know, have something that might be serious and that you've asked God before, then I would definitely go to the minister and say, please anoint me for this, you know.

That, and God will hear. He will answer. We come in the name of Jesus Christ and we have a desire to obey God. You know, it says the 10 lepers, it says that the lepers cried out, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. You know, that, that, that word mercy comes from a, you know, a Greek word that means to compassionate or to have compassion on us, have pity on us. And it certainly was a pitiful circumstance. You know, then no known medicine could cure them. They were helpless. And when we're called brethren in the state of being in sin, we stand condemned by our sin, brethren, to eternal death. And we're totally helpless without God's help. And we stand afar off as it were. When we cry out, Jesus have mercy upon us. God have mercy upon us. And please heal us. Please forgive us of our sins. And like lepers, brethren, we're helpless in sin, and we have to cry out to God for His mercy. Now let's go back over to Luke 17. Luke 17, we want to milk this verse for all that we can. But in chapter 17, and usually, you know, when we have these accounts in the Bible, there's much more to it than we're probably just getting if we're just reading through it. But in verse 13, let's notice here, and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy upon us.

And it says, so when He saw them, He said to them, go show yourselves to the priest. And so it was that as they went, they were healed.

Now, why did Jesus tell them to go to the priest here?

You would expect Him to tell them that they were healed.

You know, there's a lot of commandments in the Bible, brethren, that you and I full well know, don't we? We know the protocol, don't we, about sin.

And this was a common thing that people did in that day. Go show yourself to the priest.

You know why? Because they wouldn't be able to enter the community unless the priest approved of it.

Remember, we read that, didn't we, back in the Old Testament.

No, there's something we need to learn out of this. Jesus gave them a command here, something that they were to do. And, you know, lo and behold, they're on the way to the priest and they're healed. In other words, all of them, all 10 of them, did what Jesus Christ said to do.

Now, is there a lesson in this for us, brethren? What is the lesson? Well, let me give you another illustration. You remember the story of a Naaman, the Syrian, this big, powerful Syrian general who had leprosy. He contracted leprosy.

You know, he had heard of Elijah, and so he went down and he talked to Elijah, where he sent his servant to do that. And Elijah says, Elijah says to him, okay, what I want you to do, I want you to go down here to the Jordan River, and I want you to dip yourself seven times. And so the servant goes back and tells him what Elijah says. And Naaman, you know, this big general, got upset. He got to be crazy. Why don't I want to—and by the way, if you've ever been to Israel, and my wife and I've been there, the Jordan River is probably the most—I mean, in Arkansas, we don't call the Jordan River a river. You know, we call it a creek, basically. And Naaman's reaction was, you know, we got better rivers in Syria than you got down in Israel. The Jordan is nothing. And but interestingly, eventually Naaman to Syria goes and does what Elijah says. He dips himself seven times, and he is healed. So what is the lesson? What is the lesson? Over as well, in Matthew 8, there's another story of a leper.

And, you know, Jesus told him, tell the story to no one when he was healed.

And show yourself to the priests and offer the gift commanded by Moses as a witness to them. Show yourself to the priests. Again, why do that? Once again, it's because that was the protocol to be pronounced clean. So what is the lesson in all of this, brethren? When God tells you to do something, what do you do? You do it. You do it. If God says, jump, you know, you and I say, on the way up, we say, how high, God, do I jump? We do what God commands us to do.

The lesson for us is to do what God tells us to do. Ten lepers were healed on the way, and not when they got to the priest. Jesus healed them. Let's go back up here to verse 3 of chapter 17. And let's notice what precedes the account here of the lepers being healed. In verse 3 it says, Take heed to yourself. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.

Now, if I were to walk through this hall here, and I would have stepped on all your toes, and then next week, I come and I say, I'm really sorry that I did that.

You know, if I did it another time, I don't think you'd be willing to forgive me, would you? You might let me buy on the first time, but seven times?

That's why the apostle said unto the Lord, increase our faith. And you know, all of us need to have more faith in what God says, what God tells us to do. And we need to learn to obey God. Without equivocation, we should be willing to obey. Now, let's notice in verse 6, so the Lord said, if you had faith as a mustard seed, and you say to this mulberry tree, be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea, it would obey you. It would obey you. And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he had come from the field, come at once and sit down to eat? But will he not rather say to him, prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself, and serve me till I have eaten and drunk? And afterward you shall eat and drink. Does he thank the servant because he did the things which are commanded him? He says, I don't think so. So likewise you, when you have done all those things that you are commanded, say we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.

So again, brethren, we do more than God tells us to do.

So important lesson of being a Christian. When we obey God, you know what? Our faith increases as well. Brethren, our faith increases because we do what God instructs us and he blesses us. He helps us.

Things turn out right. They just do. I've seen that happen so very many times in our lives, and Jonah and I through the years, and I'm sure you have too, as well. Have you been in the church for a while? You've seen things just seem to work out. Maybe you thought they wouldn't, but lo and behold, you turn around and they did.

God has always blessed us. The big lesson is not just to do what we're told to do, but go above and beyond. And you know, the fact is that when the apostles said, you know, increase our faith, increase our belief in God what you say, what you say.

Do we believe what God says? If we do, we want to go above and beyond the call of duty.

You know, the instruction was not coincidental to the incident of the 10 lepers. There was a lesson, the same lesson, was revealed in the example of the 10 lepers. I'll show you here in a few moments.

Out of the 10 lepers, only one return. Why was he so different? Why was he so different?

Jesus was pleased with him, and we need to mimic him in some way. Would you agree? I mean, don't you think the one leper, you know, who came back and thanked Jesus Christ? Christ was very pleased with him. We need to learn something from him.

Number one, the thankful leper was perceptive of what God had done for him, and what Jesus Christ had done for him. And it says in Luke 17 verse 15, and one of them, when he saw that he was healed. I don't know how long this man had the leprosy, but when he saw he was healed, you know, and here you've got all these decrepit sores and lesions on your body, and we have no way of how bad this man may have looked.

And all of a sudden his skin becomes smooth, like, you know, the general of Syria, you know, was healed. And what was leprosy's wanting to know is his skin became absolutely perfect. The God had intervened. And he saw he was healed, and he realized, again, what God had done for him. Brethren, do you and I, do we perceive how much God has done for us? How he's blessed us so much? You know, think about the food that God gives to us. I could ask the question, has anybody gone hungry this past week? Probably among us not, you know, unless you purposely were fasting. You're doing without food, you could maybe do that. And certainly if anybody is going hungry, please, by all means, let us know. We wouldn't want that to occur. But God gives us the food. He gives us the clothing and the shelter. He gives us the health that we have. And he called us, most of all, to know what the truth is. And he accepted us. You know, the leper was unaccepted, our cast, but God accepted us. God loves us. He cares for us in a very special way. Now again, do we perceive what God has done for us? Thankfully, we don't have physical leprosy, but we're still dealing with that old problem of sin and needing to repent, needing to change.

You know, if you suddenly lost everything God had given to you, brethren, maybe then we would perhaps appreciate what God has given to us, provided for us.

There's an old Jewish story that goes like this.

There was a man who went to his rabbi and complained. He says, life is just unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. Now, that would be pretty hard, wouldn't it? What can I do? The rabbi answers, well, take your goat into the room with you.

And the man was incredulous, but the rabbi insists, do as I say, and come back in a week.

And a week later, the man comes back looking more distraught than he was before. He says, we cannot stand it, rabbi. The goat is filthy.

And the rabbi then says, go home and let the goat out and come back in a week.

And the next week, the radiant man returns to the rabbi, any exclaiming, life is beautiful.

We enjoy every bit of it now that there's no goat, only the nine of us.

And the situation was the same as the first, the lesson goes, but now his perception had changed. He realized that he had been blessed all along, that they had a place to stay.

Life is sort of like that, isn't it? You have a goat coming into your life and he smells up the place, and then you get rid of it, and you realize you had a better situation than you really thought. You know, Satan wants us to start comparing ourselves among ourselves. Satan wants us to give us our minds off the blessings that God does give us, that God supplies for us. He wants us to think how bad we have it. Oh, we have it so bad. He wants us to turn our hearts away from God. And when we're unthankful, you know what? We defeat ourselves. We hurt ourselves.

If we see how much God has done for us, you know, we love God more.

He wants us to, brethren, turn our hearts to Him. Satan wants us to turn away from God. He feels successful if he's done that. So be thankful for what you have. Brethren. So number one, the thankful leper, he was perceptive of what God had done for him in a very dramatic way. Number two, he returned to give thanks.

It says in verse 15 of chapter 17, it says, when he was on his way, when he saw he was healed, he returned to give thanks. Wait a minute. Jesus gave the command to go to the priest, but this man turned around and came back and thanked Christ. He didn't do what Christ told him to do.

Why didn't Jesus rebuke him when he came back? Because he didn't go to the priest. Well, let me tell you why, brethren. Apparently, thankfulness is a priority over immediate obedience.

The man probably later saw the priest as he was commanded, but he returned first to thank Christ, to thank God for what God had done. Now, think of it this way. In the parable that we read earlier about going above and beyond the call of duty, this man didn't just do what he was told to do. He went above and beyond the call of duty. He came back and he thanked God, thanked Christ, for what he had done. And he did what Christ commanded him to do. Something to think about, isn't it? Read some of these parables and the things are in the Bible and put them together, and it tells us a story. You know, over in Philippians 4 verse 6, it says that we should be anxious for nothing, and in all things we should give thanks to God. All things.

Nothing in our lives should we refrain from giving thanks to our great God. You know, don't ever get anxious. And anxiousness is basically, you feel anxiety because you haven't done what you know you should have done. How many people have done things for you, brethren, in their lives? They've done things for you that you maybe had this nagging feel inside. You know, I should have probably thanked that person for that magnanimous thing that maybe they did for me. And certainly, most assuredly, we should thank God. We really should do that. Number three thing we learn from the leper who returned to give thanks is he came with a thankful attitude. Because notice how it's written here in verse 15, and with a loud voice he glorified God.

He didn't come back and say, you know, okay, thank you, God. He was exuberant that what God had done for him. He had an attitude of gratitude in Christ's presence. The Greek word for glorified actually means to esteem, to magnify, to be full of honor. He came back to honor Christ for what Christ had done for him. And then in verse 16 it says, he fell down on his face at his feet. So you worship God. You know, no man, you know, is supposed to be worshiped, but Christ was worshiped because he was God in the flesh. He was a manual. But his attitude of the leper, he fell, leper, he fell down and he worshiped him at his feet. Showed his attitude again. And then it says he was a Samaritan. Now, I want you to think about this. The other nine were likely Jews. And you know, the Samaritan was somewhat looked down upon, considered despicable in the sight of the Jews at that time. Let's notice here in chapter 17 of Luke in verse 17. And so Jesus answered and said, were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found or returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? You see what he's saying here? You would have expected it would have been the Jews that did it. But it was somebody who was a Samaritan who was looked down upon himself. They were considered wicked. The Jews were considered holy. And so this rendered his conduct even more striking. This man's life, brethren, was changed in more ways than just being healed. This man became a follower of Jesus Christ. He became a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I have no doubt that this man was a part of the church. He's going to have a story to tell, isn't he, the future, how his life was so transformed by this action. And Jesus, remember, he told him his faith had made him whole, what he believed, what he embraced in his heart and his mind. Again, how does this relate, brethren, to you and me? Over in Isaiah 51, Isaiah 51 just, I think we'll hurriedly go to that, but in the book of Isaiah, God appealed to Israel, ancient Israel, that it was turning his back on God. And we know as a result of it eventually went into captivity. But God appealed to them many, many times. He appealed as well to Judah. But in chapter 51 in verse 1 and 2, you know, here Isaiah writes, Listen to me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the eternal. And that's us, isn't it, brethren? We're the—are we seeking God?

You who seek the eternal, look to the rock from which you were hewn. In other words, remember where you came from. And, brethren, I want you to take some time here, this moment in time, to remember where you came from, where you were when God began to work with you. What was your state of mind before God called you? And how far have you come since God opened your mind, since God opened your heart, that you began to see the truth? And though the hole of the pit from which you were dug, then it says, notice here, look to Abraham your father, look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you. For I called him alone and blessed him and increased him. In other words, he's saying to ancient Israel, you'll remember from where you came. And God wants us, brethren, to remember where we came from, how God called us, where we were, when our minds began to be open. If you forget that, brethren, you begin to lose ground. Albert Barnes' notes on the Bible says about this particular passage, the first duty of sinners after they have been forgiven and have the hope of eternal life is to prostrate themselves at the feet of the great benefactor and to consecrate themselves to his service. Then let them go and show to others the evidence that they were cleansed. Let them go and mingle like a restored leper with their families and friends and show by the purity and holiness of their lives how great is the mercy that has cleansed them. How great God has been to clean cleanse us, brethren, to clean us up. You know, when we realize God has done what he's done, it was such a miracle, brethren, we're thankful and we want to be expressive to others. I know when I was converted, I wanted to convert my whole family. I'd have converted the dog if he had been willing to, but you know, I would have done anything to tell other people. Of course, people are not inclined to listen. And we realize even then how much of a miracle is for our minds to be open that we can see the truth. Let's go to Psalm 51 for a final verse over here to show what happened to David. David got down probably to his worst level, where in fact his very, the Spirit of God was jeopardized. That God was on the verge of taking away from everything from David that David had had, that everything he had been given. But let's notice here in verse 9 of chapter 51, it says, here David says, Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Have you ever been there, brethren, with that in your life where you cried out to God?

And sometimes when I'm praying at home, oftentimes I walk around late at night because everybody's quiet. And I do my prayer sometimes walking. You know, maybe not the best way to do it, but it helps me sometimes to focus better. But he cried out these kind of things that David talked to God about. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast Spirit within me. And do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. What a terrible situation that came about because of Bathsheba, the sin of Bathsheba.

But here he's crying out to God, Don't take your Spirit from me.

And notice it says, Restore to me the joy of your salvation. When we get caught up in sin, we lose that joy of salvation. And uphold me by your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you. See, just like Barnes Notes said, when you are converted, when you really have a change of heart, you want to tell everybody how God is so great, how God is so wonderful. You know, Paul, remember, fought the church. He killed and imprisoned Christians. And when he was converted, he became one of the greatest advocates of Christianity, probably the world has ever known, besides Jesus Christ.

What about us, brethren? Are we perceptive of what God has done for us?

And since turning around, have you continued to give thanks to God? And do you have a thankful attitude? Do you have evidence in your support for what God is doing, not only in your life, but what he's doing through the work of God today around the world?

Do you remember where you came from? And what God brought you out of? How you've been forgiven? How you've been given this Holy Spirit?

Do you share with others the right way? You stand for righteousness in your life.

We were healed, brethren, like Jesus healed the 10 lepers.

Nine were healed physically, and only one was healed spiritually. He knew he needed to return to Christ and to thank Jesus Christ. So, brethren, at this time of the year, it's good for us to reflect on this topic.

We were outcast from God, and we're outcast, of course, from the world because we embrace God now, because we're the weak and the based things of the world. And God has blessed us so abundantly ever since He called us. God has blessed us abundantly in so many ways. So, brethren, are we like the nine who were healed physically, or are we like the one who returned to thank Jesus Christ? Are we a thankful leper? Something to think about on Thanksgiving.