Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
10/3/2022
So what can we learn from the story of the 10 lepers?
Like leprosy, sin kills us slowly. Sin turns us into spiritual lepers
Leprosy in the olden days did not have a cure. The manifestations included disfigured faces due to the bacteria eating your flesh. Fingers and toes fell off and eventually a limb. Once you had the disease, you had it for life. You were forced to live outside of the community until you died. Most Jews considered lepers as the worst kind of sinners and their illness was the proof.
Like sin, leprosy separates us from God and his people. You can imagine why the 10 lepers wanted to be healed so badly. Not only was there a disease painful they were completely isolated and cut off from their families and from the community.
In the same way, we are all spiritual lepers and on our own, we can’t cure our disease.
It takes the divine intervention of God and his son
to cleanse us from our infirmity.
But the problem is not everybody wants to get well. Not everyone wants a cure.
I don’t know what your spiritual sin is. But if you want a cure, you need to look for the cure.
It is said, that until you are in enough pain
you won’t make a change.
Jesus is the only way to cure that disease!
2. God is merciful
Luke 17:13 the lepers asked Jesus, “master, have mercy on us!”
Interesting that they appealed not to Christ’s miraculous power, but his mercy. They didn’t need to explain what they needed or what their problem was. Lamentations 3:22 says it was very clearly: “The Lord’s love never ends; His mercies never stop. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness”.
They asked for mercy, and by receiving mercy I believe they received their healing.
3: We must do our part:
It is quite astonishing how many people ask for God‘s healing and yet they don’t do their part. They asked for healing, but continue to live an unhealthy lifestyle. They consume unhealthy food, they don’t exercise, and they have other hazardous practices. They obviously don’t care about their health.
The lepers asked for mercy but look at the response of Christ, he said in Luke 17:14 “Go show yourself to the priest”. It tells us that we have a role to play. God will surely do his part, but we must also do ours. When we surrender our all into his hands it requires an active faith.
4: Our faith will be tested.
Living faith is your faith in action. It is not simply a belief system that you keep in your heart and mind. But it must be coupled with action. The lepers had already heard of Christ’s miraculous healing. Their faith had already started to develop. They recognized that Yashua have the ability to heal them. That’s faith… however, that’s just intellectual faith
Now they need toa couple it with action. .
Someone said – faith sees the invisible,
believes in the incredible,
receives the impossible.
Noticed that Jesus didn’t tell them that they will be healed. He said go show yourself to the priest.
But I think it’s amazing, because of things I’ve seen that people get an attitude that Jesus just doesn’t heal them on the spot. But requires them to do something, to go somewhere or to wait awhile. Like what is going to the priest… it’s just a waste of time? Or that’s just too far away. But despite all of this, they were obedient. We read in Luke 17:14 “and so it was that “as they went”, they were cleansed”.
“Faith does not make things easy. It makes things possible”.
5: Don’t forget to be thankful:
When I was younger I never understood why only one leper returned to give thanks. Luke 17:15 says “and one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with the LOUD voice glorified God. He fell down giving him praise and he was a Samaritan”. A foreigner!
It is becoming more of a rare thing to see people not afraid to glorify God out loud. Those who are not ashamed to proclaim God‘s goodness in their lives. I firmly believe that it is almost impossible to worship God without feeling grateful. How can we be grateful, but still, forget to praise God?
What I mean is that we can be thankful to other people, but not realize who is the real source of our blessings. Thus, we can focus on the people whom God used and forget about giving back the glory to God. So when you give thanks to others, remember to give thanks to God as well and give him praises and glory due to him.
God wants to build a closer relationship with us and being thankful is one of the best ways we become closer to God. Noticed his response to the man who returned. In verse 17 “were there not 10 cleansed? Where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?
Jesus expected them to be thankful and when we are not we clearly are more focused on ourselves, which is a favorite recipe of Satan to tie us up in the sin of pride
And sin that goes unchecked becomes a spiritual leprosy that can eventually kill us… Kill our spiritual life and kill our spiritual fruit, all the while killing the communication between us and God that separates us from family and community.
Finally, it is not who you are, but it’s what you do. It’s not about us, it’s about him
Phil Driscoll You Deserve The Glory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmdaV0ES8MU
Excerpts are taken from BecomingChristians Lessons from the 10 lepers
