The Ungodliness of Ingratitude

I have your Bibles with you tonight. Turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 17, and we're going to be looking at verses 11 through 19. On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourself to the priest. And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, were not ten cleansed?

Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? He said to him, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we look at a story tonight that angers us, a story of engratitude and unthankfulness. Jesus blesses 10 lepers by healing them. He heals their bodies. He takes away their pain. He gives them hope. He gives them their lives back.

He restores to them unbelievable joy. Nine of them walk away without offering a word of thanks. Lord, that ticks us off. We hate that attitude. We think that we are like the one, that we are the Samaritan who's filled with appreciation and humility and ran back to Jesus to offer thanks. Father, help us tonight to get real. Help us to see that we are way too often like the nine who enjoy your grace and your mercy and your blessings and your joy and take it for granted that we probably deserve it. We don't deserve it. We deserve disfavor. We deserve your wrath.

We deserve hell. But oh Lord Jesus, you gave us what we don't deserve. You gave us salvation. You gave us grace. You gave us Jesus.

You gave us your love. Lord, open our eyes to our ingratitude and may we leave this service tonight loving Jesus more than when we came in here. And it's in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

You may be seated. The old Puritan, William Law, said the following and as we go through this passage tonight, I want you to keep these words in mind. He said, if I could tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and all perfection, it would be to make a rule for yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity may happen to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing. If you could work miracles, you would not do more for yourself than to have this wonderful spirit.

For it heals by just a word and turns all that it touches into happiness. Tonight we're looking at an event in Jesus' life that seems to have caused him very deep hurt. Jesus heals 10 lepers and nine of the lepers run off rejoicing with happiness over their healing and only one comes back and gives thanks to Jesus. Jesus responds in painful disappointment and he says to them, were there not 10 that were cleansed?

Where are the other nine? Does it matter to God whether we're thankful or not? Does he really care? I think that it matters greatly and I think that this passage teaches us that it matters greatly. This event took place, according to most Bible scholars, probably about exactly a week before Jesus went to the cross. Jesus at this point in time has just raised Lazarus from the dead and after raising Lazarus from the dead, he took a short trip back up to Galilee and I think probably he did that in order that he might spend a little bit of time with his mother who lived in Galilee in Nazareth. He went there to spend time with her and I think knowing that he was going to die very, very soon, he was probably getting his house in order. So now after that is done, he's going to travel from Galilee back down to Jerusalem and as he does that, he goes south through Samaria.

As he's going through Samaria, he goes by a little village and as he goes by this little village out by the side of the road, there are 10 lepers and it's like they're waiting for him to come by. Evidently, I think they were. I believe that they were waiting for Jesus because maybe they had heard that he was coming this way. Had these guys met Jesus before? We don't know, but we do know this, they knew who he was. Jesus' name had spread and gotten very well known by that point in time.

Everybody was talking about him. They were saying, maybe this is the Messiah. This is the one who's done unbelievable things and most of all for them, they knew that people were calling Jesus the healer. Jesus had the power to give sight to the blind, to give hearing to the deaf, to give speech to the mute, to give the ability to walk to those who were lame and not only that, but just a few days before this, Jesus had even raised somebody from the dead.

Lazarus, after being in the grave for four days, Jesus had raised him from the dead and now he was out sharing his testimony and giving Christ the glory for what he had done. So these lepers knew exactly who Jesus was. Now this story is only recorded for us in the Gospel of Luke.

Why is that? I think probably because Luke was a doctor. He was a physician and we have more of the healing miracles that Jesus did in the Gospel of Luke than in any of the other Gospels. Here was Luke, a physician himself, and he had spent his life trying to cure diseases, especially terrible horrible diseases like leprosy and he probably not had much success at that at all and now he sees Jesus. Jesus who can just say the word and somebody will be made well.

Jesus who can just touch somebody and somebody will be made well and I think Luke is very excited about this story. But Jesus enters the village and these lepers see him coming. Look at what they did in verses 12 through 13. As he entered the village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. I want us to think for a minute about their approach to Jesus. The Scripture says they were standing off at a distance.

That was purposeful. You see, they were lepers. They lived in a leper colony. They were there by the side of the road, but it was actually a place where they were relegated to go. So they were there by the side of the road and as Jesus came, they kind of stepped back.

You see, this is what they were told to do. They could not touch any person that was a non-leper. They had to stay away from them. In fact, when they went out on the street, they had to carry a little bell with them and they would ring that bell so that if anybody saw them coming, they would hear the bell and know this is a leper. Stay away. He's contagious.

Don't get around him. So I think by the distance that they were showing respect for the Jewish law, they were also showing respect for Jesus Christ himself. But that didn't stop them from asking for help. They cried out to Jesus from a distance and they said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. I think essentially what that is is a prayer.

It starts off with praise. They call him Master. They could have been calling him Lord. Jesus, Lord, Master, have mercy on us.

What is that? That's intercession, isn't it? And it's not selfish intercession. They didn't say, Jesus, have mercy on me. They said, Jesus, have mercy on us. Collective mercy they were asking for.

Here's the thing I really want you to key in on. It was a prayer of mercy and desperation. Hebrews 4 16 says this, Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. I know a lot of professing Christians who get all cranked up about that verse and they say, man, we like this idea that we can come boldly to the throne of grace, and they give you the idea that by coming boldly to the throne of grace that that means to them that you can come arrogantly to the throne of grace.

And folks, that's not the truth at all. Why is it that we can come boldly to the throne of grace? Is it because we are righteous and we are good or that our faith is so powerful that we can just come arrogantly to the throne of grace?

Absolutely not. The only reason that we can come boldly to the throne of grace is because what the blood of Jesus Christ has bought for us, and that is the privilege of being able to come before Him. It is simply mercy. I remember being in a community prayer meeting one time and everybody was praying for different people that had needs. There was one guy there that was in the faith word church, and he was praying for a lady that was sick, and he was getting very, very loud, almost shouting, and he was demanding of God that God heal this lady. He was saying, Lord, I am holding you to your word. I am standing in faith.

You cannot deny me. And in Psalm 84, the Scripture says that the Lord will not withhold any good thing to those who are walking uprightly. He said, Lord, I am walking uprightly. He said, Lord, I am living a strong Christian life. I am living by faith, so I am demanding that you give me what I ask for here.

You cannot withhold this good thing from me because I am standing in faith. I got up and I started to walk out of the room. He said, where are you going? I said, I'm getting away from you. And he said, why? I said, well, God is my Heavenly Father. And I said, my father, Dutch Agnew, is my earthly father.

And if I had talked to my earthly father, like you've just been talking to my Heavenly Father, my dad would have knocked me across the room. I said, I feel much more comfortable asking for mercy rather than demanding that God give me what I want because I think that I'm righteous. R.T. Kendall said the following, mercy is that something that can be given or withheld and justice still done. What makes mercy mercy is that the person whose power it is to give it can either bestow it or withhold it and be truly just whichever he chooses to do. Mercy is not receiving what we deserve. When's the last time you asked for mercy?

When is the last time you prayed for mercy? Do we not realize then that mercy is the first thing we are to ask for when we come to the throne of grace? This is because the throne of God is to be protected from people who rush into God's presence and demand as if with a snap of the finger God will not have this. The throne of grace has a built-in protection shield that cannot rightly be penetrated unless the petitioner knows his or her place and shows the right attitude when approaching God. Maybe this is why you haven't been seeing your prayers answered.

We are first of all to ask God for mercy. Only a sovereign has the right to determine who comes into their presence. You don't walk up to the wrought iron gate at Buckingham Palace and ask to see Her Majesty the Queen. Only if you were previously invited would you be allowed in. Fortunately in the case of the throne of grace on which is seated His Majesty King Jesus, you and I are invited. Let us come, simple ordinary people like you and me. The invitation has been given.

Moreover no qualifying is necessary. It does not matter what your political party or cultural background, the color of your skin, your education, or your social status is. Let us come.

Ordinary people like you and me, but we must know our place. When we come to the throne of grace we ask for mercy and this keeps us from any trace of arrogance or presumption. Our gratitude to God will almost always be in proportion to our sense of feeling unworthily blessed because the God who could have passed us by didn't. See the attitude of this understanding mercy in John Newton's great hymn, Amazing Grace. When he said, through many dangers toils and snares I have already come.

It is grace who brought me this far and grace will lead me home. In the movie Amazing Grace, I don't know if you had the opportunity to watch that or not, it's about William Wilberforce's life and his ministry and trying to remove slavery from England and they did a wonderful job in that movie of portraying the heart of John Newton, who is one of William Wilberforce's best friends. Newton, when he was a young man, had been a slave trader and he had terribly mistreated the slaves and once he became a Christian it was just a thing that brought honing memories into his mind until the day that he died about how he had treated the slaves.

And now at this point in time John Newton is an older man, he's almost blind, his mind is not where it once was, and he wasn't able to preach anymore, he still wanted to serve in the church, so in this particular scene he is cleaning the floor in the church as his way of serving God. Well, William Wilberforce, when he got in trouble or needed some counsel, he'd always go to John Newton, shows up at the church and shows up at the church and he's over there washing the floor and he starts talking to him and telling him how he's been working so hard to get these laws passed in England that would abolish slavery and John Newton walks over to him with tears streaming down his cheeks and he grabs him by the arms and he shakes him and he says, don't quit, don't quit, don't quit. He said, for the sake of all the damage that I did to the slaves, don't quit. He said, if God could save me, a wretched sinner like I am, then God can use you to break these wicked slavery laws, and God did.

Newton wrote his own obituary, it reads as follows, John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and a libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy. Now I said all that to say this, all 10 of these lepers saw their need for mercy. Jesus looked at these poor wretched men and his heart went out to them, he saw their condition, skin was falling off their bodies, they had some of their flesh on their faces that was, had holes in their faces, the flesh eating all the way to the bone. They were, had families that were back home and they were alone and uncared for because they could not be with them, and Jesus looked and he saw the humiliation that these lepers were going through and his heart broke for them, and he stayed, he was still at a distance from them, but he screamed out to them and he said, go and show yourself to the priest. And the scripture tells us that they left and they went and they headed to the priest and that as they went, they were healed. I want you to try to picture that sight if you can.

Ten men whose flesh is falling off their bones, who are sick, who are weak, they can hardly move, their muscles are just atrophied, they're trying to get down the road, they're trying to do what Jesus says, and as they're trying to move down the road, headed to the priest, bam! Just like that, they are made well. I mean, just completely. Their skin is perfect, their flesh is back on their face, they're able to move, they're able to get around, everything's right. And can you imagine their excitement? I mean, just filled with joy, they're praising God, they're jumping up and down, they're hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, giving each other high fives. Finally, one of them says, hey, this is what we need to do, let's go to the priest real quick, let's get him to okay and declare that we are clean, and then we'll go to our families. They got all excited about it, and they took off, nine of them did. Headed to the priest as fast as they could run, one of the guys stayed back, a Samaritan, and he watched him as they ran down the road till finally they're out of sight, and he turns around and he goes to find Jesus. I don't know how long it took him, probably a while, but he finds Jesus.

And when he finds him, he runs to him and he falls on his face in the dirt, his nose is down in the dust, he throws his arms around Jesus' feet, bathes his feet with tears, and he says, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jesus looks back up at him and looks kind of out in the area as if there ought to be some more people there, and he says, were there not 10 lepers that were cleansed? Where are the nine? Where are the nine?

Several things I want to point out to you in this passage. First of all, I want us to look at the way that all the lepers are alike. Number one, they are all lepers. They all have that same terrible deadly disease. They are sick.

They're all sick. They are weak. They're all facing certain death. Their situation is absolutely hopeless. They are outcast.

When they come to a road, they know that they have to get their bells out and have to ring the bells to be sure that nobody comes because they are very contagious and they could give it to somebody else. They're in a horrible, terrible situation, and they can't do anything about it. Folks, they were the most pitiful people, humans, on earth at that point in time. I've been in hospitals visiting people who had diseases where the flesh was deteriorating, and there's a stench that goes along with deteriorating flesh that will nauseate you, and the people that are experiencing that themselves and they're going through that, they get embarrassed over that. It's a horrible, terrible thing, and that's what was going on with all these lepers. They are all in the same situation.

Now, let me ask you this. What does leprosy represent in the Scripture? It's a symbol. It's a type. It's a picture.

Of what? It's a picture of sin, and so this is a picture of us, because guess what? We're all sinners, and what that means is that without Jesus Christ, we have no hope. There's no hope of being cured. Only Jesus can do it.

In Romans chapter 3 verse 23, it was the Apostle Paul who said, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Number two, they were alike in their desperate, desperate determination to live. Those rascals refused to give up. Man, they were not going to just take death lying down. They were going to fight to live. I don't know about you, but I like that. I like people who don't want to give up.

It bothers me when I see people that just want to quit because things get tough. They weren't like that. These guys were determined to live. Thirdly, they all possessed a faith in Jesus. They may not have understood all the spiritual ramifications of who Jesus was, but they had heard about him, and they were wanting to ask him for help. They wanted and were willing to believe. They heard some great stories about Jesus. They had heard how he healed blind eyes and deaf ears and how he loosened the tongue of the mute. They heard now that he'd even been raising people from the dead, and so they were excited. And all 10 of them said, by George, let's try him out.

Let's try him out. I believe that he can help us. And all 10 of them were out there at the road waiting for him to come by, having heard that this is the great physician and he is able to heal. Finally, when they see Jesus, we see more of their faith, for what do they do? They cry out to him for help.

They say, Lord Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. You know, they very easily could have said, Lord, this is not right. This is not good. We've been dealt a bad hand here by God.

Look at all these other people out here that don't have leprosy. Why is it that we got it and they didn't? This is not fair, Lord. They didn't say that. They just asked for mercy. Then they obeyed Jesus, for Jesus said, go and show and show yourself to the priest. Now, if a person had leprosy and he wanted to go to the priest to be okayed and declared not leprous, they usually waited until the leprosy was gone. Jesus didn't tell them to do that. They still had leprosy. Disease was still there, and Jesus said, you go on to the priest. They didn't question him, and he said, well, wait a minute, Lord, that's not how it's supposed to be done.

We've watched the guys on TV. We know how it's done. You're supposed to pop them on the head and say, heal.

No, that's not what they said. They just obeyed Jesus, and as they went, they were healed. Fourthly, they were alike in that they were all healed. The path of obedience is the path of healing, and the Bible says as they went, they were healed. All of them, all ten of them. What a beautiful picture. Ten men who literally stunk with decaying flesh, rotting skin, open sores, running pus, their hair falling out, their feet and muscles not able to function and move, and all of a sudden they are clean.

Their skin is clean as a newborn baby, and they've got strength and energy like they hadn't had in probably years. Can you imagine the joy and the excitement you would feel if you experienced something like that? I will never forget a situation that happened with one of my best friends. His name is Tony Harper.

He has been a youth director at Calvary Baptist Church for over 45 years, and a man of God knows and loves the Lord. We played football together and baseball together in high school, but when Tony was in his late 20s, he started having bad headaches. He went to the doctor. They did an x-ray. They found out that he had a brain tumor that was about the size of a small orange.

They said, Tony, we're going to have to operate. He did an x-ray. He could see where this tumor was. They said, we're going to have to do another x-ray right before the surgery, and so they started doing, or we're going to do that x-ray, and Tony was laying on a gurney waiting to do the x-ray, and as he was lying there, he said all of a sudden he felt something just on his head.

He said it felt like a hand, but it just kind of went through his hair and went over his head. He said he could feel it, but there wasn't anything there, and he said all of a sudden the pain was gone. He said he'd been experiencing pain for months without a let-up, and just like that it was gone, and he said a piece came into his heart like he'd never experienced before, and then they took him into the x-ray. They did the x-ray and took him back out, and then they came out said, Mr. Harper, I'm sorry. We're going to have to do another x-ray. They brought him back in. They did another x-ray, and they checked that out. They came back. They got him again. They said, Mr. Harper, we're going to have to do a third x-ray.

They did a third one, and they came back. The doctor sat down with him. He said, Tony, you're not going to believe this. We don't even believe it, but he said we took the three x-rays today, and that tumor is absolutely gone. Absolutely gone, and he brought the x-rays out from the day before from several different angles.

You could see it about the size of a small orange. Brought the x-rays out for that day, and it was absolutely gone. Tony called me a little bit later that day to tell me what had happened. I was in seminary at the time. We were living in a in a duplex.

There was a ministerial student that was living in the duplex right beside me. His name was Gary, and before this surgery, I had gone over and said, Gary, one of my very best friends is having surgery on a brain tumor today. I want you to pray for him, and he said, Doug, I'll pray for him, but I don't think it'll do any good.

He says, everybody I know that has had a brain tumor has died. I said, pray for him anyway, and he did. Well, when this happened, and Tony called me, I went over to his apartment hooting and hollering, and I told him what had happened. He went crazy.

I don't think that his faith grew like that in any time in those three years that he was in seminary, but that did something to his heart. What a time of rejoicing that was for Tony's family, for Tony's friends, and for for everybody that knew him. That's the way it was for all these 10 lepers. It was a time of healing, and what rejoicing they must have done. So in many ways, those 10 lepers were very much alike, but in one way, they were not alike at all.

Nine of those lepers said, let's go home. It's been a long time since we've seen our family. It's been a long time since my wife hugged my neck. It's been a long time since I got to hold my little girl.

It's been a long time since I got to play ball with my boy. It's been a long time, and they took off for home and didn't give a thought to going back and giving thanks to Jesus. The nine lepers failed to be grateful, but you know, I don't think that any of the excuses that they had were valid, do you? And I've just got the feeling that if they could have been there and they could have watched the Samaritan that went back and fell at Jesus' feet and wept at his feet and said, Jesus, thank you, thank you, thank you. I think it would have changed the direction that they were going. I think they would have stopped, and I think they would have given great thanks to the Lord. I think if they had been able to look into Jesus' eye and see the tear in his eye and realize the hurt that it caused him because of their lack of thankfulness, I think it would have been different. Thanks living. Living your life with an attitude of gratitude. Maybe you're not a leper that's been healed, but if you're a Christian, you're a Christian that a person that has been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And let me tell you this, if Jesus never does anything else for you through all of eternity, you will never be able to thank him enough for what he did for you on the cross. Years ago, I heard Jack Hudson preach a sermon used an illustration. It was on Thanksgiving, and he used an illustration that I've just never been able to forget, but he said that there was a lady in the first church that he pastored that experienced the death of her husband, and she had a son that was a senior in high school. She had very little education herself. She knew almost nothing about the modern work world. She'd been a housekeeper all of her life and a housewife. Now, all of a sudden, everything's different. After the funeral, her son, senior in high school, came up to her and said, you know, dad's died and he's left us no money. He said, I guess I can kiss college goodbye. And she said, oh no. She said, I'm going to put you through college.

You'll go to college. So she went out. She got a job.

It was a very low-paying job, but she scrimped and she saved and she worked and worked. She got enough to put him through that first semester. He got to school and he started writing letters to her. He would write letters to her about three times a week, and after that first year, the letters started coming about once every three weeks. He would go home at vacation time and spend time with her for the first two years.

Then after that, he started taking his vacation time and going off and spending with friends instead. All this time, as the years started going by while he's in college, she kept right on working. She would take in washing and ironing and do all this extra work in order to make enough money to to get him through school. During all that time, she never bought her self-address. She never got a car that she needed, worked with several miles, and she walked to work each day. And she did that, rain or shine, whether she was sick or whether she was healthy. Finally, it was his senior year. He joined a fraternity, and the fraternity was then decided that during the spring time, they were going to take their spring break and go to Daytona Beach for a big party, and so he wrote his mom a letter and said, we want to take this vacation to Daytona Beach.

Would you provide the money? And she took in some more washing and took care of that. Increased her workload. About three weeks before he graduated, she got a letter from the school, and the letter stated that he was getting ready to graduate. She was invited.

She got so excited. She was going to see her son graduate. After all the work she'd done, after all the things that she had done and sacrificed, he was finally getting ready to graduate. She didn't have enough money to go, so she went to her next-door neighbor, and he let her borrow it. Said, if you do some more washing for me over the next few months, I'll let you borrow the money, and she took it. She called up her son. She said, look, I'm going to be able to go to your graduation. Soon as she said that, he got panicky because he didn't want his girlfriend or his frat brothers to see this mom of his who would wear dresses that were just totally out of style and who had just kind of gotten a haggard look, a haggard demeanor. He was pretty much embarrassed about that. He said, mom, you don't need to do that. He said, that's just a waste of your money.

I'll show you my diploma when I get home. Don't worry about that. You just don't need to come. You don't need to waste your money, and so she said, okay, I won't come. She got off the phone. She started thinking about it. She said, I want to go, and I'm just going to surprise him, so she did that.

Wild horses couldn't keep her away. On graduation day, she arrived on the campus. She didn't tell him that she was there. She went right to the auditorium.

She found a seat right there on the aisle. Graduation started. Her son walked up on the stage, the platform. He walked across. They called his name. He got his diploma. He came and sat down there with the students, and then finally the graduation ended. All the students stood up.

They threw their hats into the air. Then they started marching down the aisle where she was. They marched right down the aisle, and when her son got to right where she was, she reached over, and she grabbed his hand. He jerked around to see who in the world that was, and when he saw it was his mother, he jerked his head back, and his frat brother was right beside him and said, who is that old lady? He said, oh, her? Said, she's just my wash woman.

And his mama heard the comment. That sounds like ingratitude. That is ingratitude, but I have a feeling that that's nothing compared to the unthankful, inappreciative attitude that we often have toward God. Folks, what has Jesus done for us? He created us. He saved us. He's in the process right now of sanctifying us, and one day He will glorify us. Does Jesus deserve our thanks?

Oh man, does He ever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we now prepare ourselves to partake of Your Supper. You've promised that in this service You would bless us with Your presence. We don't believe that You show up physically by literally appearing to us in the bread and the wine, but we stand in faith that You will be with us spiritually as we partake. We also look forward to our Lord's Supper times, but we always do, but Thanksgiving is more special than ever. It's the time to not only partake, but to focus on how much we appreciate and love what You did for us on the cross. Lord, let us experience Your presence. Let us experience Your glory this evening, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.