The One Who Returns

Good morning, brothers and sisters. It is a pleasure to be with you guys again.

Glad you invited me back. It can be one of those things where you get a text

like, oh, thanks for helping.

Don't come back. So I'm glad that that did not happen.

For those of you who don't know me, my name again is Boris Pena.

I'm the youth pastor at the Platteville Free Methodist Church,

and I'm a CMC at the conference level. So I'm in the process of becoming an ordained elder.

And hopefully that happens next summer. We're praying that works.

I have a very interesting relationship with hunting season.

I am a city kid. I grew up in a town of about 300 something thousand,

massive town, and married a girl from a small town.

I don't know how small Platteville is considered, but married this girl from

Platteville and fell deeply in love.

And when I asked her to marry me, I said, all right, let's pick a date.

And she said, hey, let's get married November 18th. I said, great.

That sounds like a great Saturday.

Let's do it. I didn't know the issues this was going to cause.

When I talked to my father-in-law after we had this whole discussion of the

marriage and I said, he asked us, did you guys pick a day? He's like, yeah, November 18th.

And I immediately saw this, his face furrow and just kind of look and ponder.

And he said, you know, that's opening day, right?

And I was like, opening day of what? I don't, of the door, of the neighborhood,

is something happening?

He said, that's opening day of deer season. I'm like, well, that's not a big

deal. You guys can, you know, it's something.

But he's like, no, like, you don't understand. So the entire time that we're

planning this wedding, we send

out invites, we let people know that we're going to be getting married.

All we hear back the entire time is...

It's opening day. It's opening day. And my wife would say to people,

well, what do you love more, me or opening day?

Yeah, it got very heated very quickly.

Well, what ended up happening was our wedding day was full of people because

we would tell people, if you haven't got something by the time the wedding starts,

you can call it a day. It's okay.

And my wife and I thought it was so funny that we decided to have our ring barrier

walk up with a sign saying, you know, here comes the love of your life.

And on the back, it said, you could be hunting right now, just to jab it a little bit.

But that's, I have such an interesting relationship with opening day.

Now I understand more of how much of a big deal it is and how important it is

for everyone out in our area.

And I am very thankful to be here and we're going to be reading today out of

Luke chapter 17 and we're going to be reading verses 11 through 19.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.

As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him,

and they stood at a distance, and called out in a loud voice,

Jesus, Master, have pity on us.

When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourself to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus said, We're not all ten cleansed. Where are the other nine?

Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?

Then he said to him, Rise and go, your faith has made you well.

And so reads the word of the Lord.

It is an interesting thing when we read scripture.

And in the scripture, there is a question that the more I read it,

the more I realize it is something that is consistently going to tug at us.

We're not ten cleansed. Where are the nine?

The thing about this question is that it's not a harsh question.

It's not an angry question, but rather it's a kind of revealing question,

a question that really looks at our hearts.

That looks at and makes us wonder, what is going on here?

Because when we look at the story of the 10 men with leprosy,

we see that it's a story that's about not just leprosy, but also about gratitude,

about spiritual sight and faith,

and also the condition of the human heart.

Jesus invites every one of us to find ourselves in the story.

So as we walk through the story, I want us to explore a few things.

We're going to explore our deep need for mercy. We're going to look at how faith-filled

obedience unlocks healing.

We're going to see how a grateful heart always returns to Jesus.

We're going to look at the tragedy

of unreturned blessings and a deeper salvation that gratitude opens.

I am a youth pastor, so I have learned that you have to preach fairly short

because teenagers will not pay attention to you very quickly.

So I promise you, I will keep it under two hours. We'll be all right together. We'll be good.

So when we look at this chapter, we see verses 12 to 13.

It says, 10 men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called

out in a loud voice, Jesus, master, have mercy on us.

For us to understand the weight of this cry, the weight of this moment,

we first have to understand what leprosy meant in the old world, in the ancient world.

Leprosy back then, it wasn't just a physical disease that was kind of ugly,

made you feel not that great. It was actually a death sentence.

There was no cure back in the day. You were dead.

And on top of that, it basically came with you were going to die at some point

isolated. You were not going to be allowed to be with the people you loved.

So when you died, you died alone.

The thing that makes leprosy so difficult is that for the Jews,

if you had leprosy, you were considered unclean.

So you were taken from your home, from your work, from worship,

and from your community. You were cast out to the outside gates.

You were far away from everything that you loved. You were considered unclean,

not only medically, but spiritually. So you've lost basically everything that

makes you human to this disease.

And the only way that you could survive was by begging for someone to have pity

on you and give you something to live.

It was a pitiful, sad, terrible existence that led to nothing but desperation.

And that's why Luke tells us they stood at a distance because they couldn't come close.

But when Jesus comes near, something stirs in them. They've heard of this rabbi

that's doing things. There's hope.

Something desperate in them moves. So they lift their voices and they cry out,

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

The beautiful thing is that it's such a simple prayer.

But it's something that is one of the most powerful prayers in Scripture.

There's no fancy words. There's no bargaining.

There's no conditions. is just 10 broken men crying out for mercy.

And then Jesus hears them, which is for us fantastic news because no matter

who we are, what we carry, what we're suffering,

our struggles, there is always a prayer that God is going to respond to.

And that is a prayer for mercy.

When our hearts are heavy, when our bodies hurt, when we feel lonely,

when life gets overwhelming, when we don't know what to do next.

It's a beautiful thing. We don't need perfect words.

All we need is an honest heart. Lord, have mercy.

That will always be a prayer that you can pray to move the heart of God.

But the thing about this story is that mercy doesn't arrive in the way that

the men expect or that we would expect.

When we look at verse 14, Jesus responds to these men with leprosy.

And he says to them, go, show yourself to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

Jesus didn't touch them. He didn't instantly heal them.

He doesn't even say, be clean. He could have. He could have easily performed it right there.

Instead, he gives them a command that requires faith. He says,

go show yourselves to the priests.

Why the priests? Couldn't they have just gone home? Well, for their situation

to change, they had to go present themselves to the priests because the priests

were the only ones who could officially declare a person clean and restore them

back into the community.

So they had to go to the highest authority to go back to where they were.

But the problem in this is that they weren't healed yet.

They still had leprosy when Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests.

Nothing looked different. Their skin still carried the disease,

which leprosy, it's a really scary thing.

Your skin basically is falling off. It's extremely painful.

Their bodies still had the damage, and their condition was unchanged.

That's the hinge of this entire story. Would they obey before anything looked different?

Would they trust his word more than their circumstances?

And they did. They took a step, and then another step, and then another step,

and scripture says, as they went, they were cleansed.

Healing came not in the moment of asking, but rather in the journey of obedience.

And that's the thing that we sometimes overlook.

God often works like this. Peace comes when we start walking Strength comes

as we're getting it done Freedom unfolds as we follow the Lord's voice And hope

rises as we trust Him in every moment.

Sometimes, oftentimes, actually most of the time, we're going to be honest here.

We want Jesus to change everything right now.

But God says, walk with me first.

And some of you are in your as they went season.

You haven't gotten an answer yet.

You haven't seen a breakthrough yet. You haven't seen the healing yet.

And that's a hard place to be.

But you're walking you're trusting you're obeying my wife and i spent a long

time praying for a daughter well a child and one of the things that i struggled

with the most was when people would say to me the lord in his time will provide

a child will give you a child the lord will will do this.

He is going to give this to you.

And I was still in my walking phase.

I was still trying to find what was going on.

And it sucked. But I had to keep going.

When we look at verse 15 and 16, we see when one of them saw he was healed,

he came back, praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan.

Ten men were healed.

But only one of them truly saw what had happened.

He noticed as he's walking, hey, my skin is getting better.

He paused and he let it sink in. And that awareness that there was change happening

produced movement. He turned back.

And right here is the heart of gratitude.

It's the willingness to turn towards Jesus.

He returned to the place of mercy. he returned to the one who heard his cry

he returned to the giver not just the gift.

And then scripture says with

a loud voice he was praising God he wasn't shy he doesn't care what anyone thought

he knew he had been touched by grace and he came out to worship sometimes when

we actually get that blessing we can't be quiet about it we tell everyone we're

full of joy just like this man and we pray that that continues.

And then he comes and he falls at the feet of Jesus.

He falls into this place of surrender, of humility, of devotion, and he gave thanks.

That's beautiful. He came back to the one who changed his life after he got what he had asked for.

And then it says he was a Samaritan.

He was an outsider. He wasn't a Jew. He wasn't one of the people,

to an extent, waiting for the Messiah.

He was an outsider, the least expected one to turn around to show gratitude or faith to Jesus.

But here's the thing. It's that the people who have received so much grace,

they're more often the ones who are going to worship freely,

no matter whether they're foreigners, whether they know Christ or not.

Nine experienced the miracle, but only one experienced Jesus.

And Jesus responds with that question. We're not all 10 cleansed. Where are the nine?

Has no one returned to give praise to God, except this foreigner.

And he's not saying it as an insult to him. He's saying, hey,

these people should know better.

And you can feel the sadness in that. Ten received mercy, nine walked away, only one returned.

And Jesus wasn't scolding them. He wasn't saying that they were terrible people,

but rather he's trying to show us something about our hearts.

Receiving a blessing is easy we ask

for them all the time we want them returning ingratitude

is harder and it's rarer the nine

weren't bad people and they weren't ungrateful they

were probably very thankful that their skin was healed that they were able to

go show themselves to the priests they were moving towards the life that they

wanted back but the one realized what's the point of me getting my life back

if I don't return to the one who gave it.

A lot of us ask for God's help. We pray in crises when things are not going

our way, when we're desperate.

We ask for mercy and we're quick to receive our blessings.

But few return in worship. Few make space for gratitude.

Few allow thanksgiving to reshape their hearts.

And before we judge the nine, we have to be honest. We are often like them.

We pray desperately on our knees, tears and snot, but we're very quick to move on when we get it.

We receive God's daily mercies, but fail to pause in gratitude.

We experience all sorts of answered prayers, but forget to return and worship.

As I prepared for this week, I talked with my wife about this.

When our daughter, when we found out we were pregnant, it was a shock because

this is what we were asking for. This is it.

And as our daughter grew in my wife's belly

we prayed over her and we gave thanks to the Lord

regularly and then she was born and our miracle was here and my wife said it's

really easy for us to continue to give thanks to God because she's right there

this is the miracle we can continue to be thankful for her and as she's gotten

into a toddler it's been a little harder,

but I can still find time to give thanks to the Lord, to be grateful for the

tantrums, for the potty accidents, to be full of gratitude for the mercy that he gave me.

Jesus' question is not an accusation. It's an invitation.

It's Jesus saying, I don't just want to heal you. I want to know you.

I want to change your life.

I want a relationship, not a request.

Only one came back, and that one received something deeper.

Verse 19 says, Then he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well.

That's the climax the most beautiful part of the

story jesus tells this grateful man something he

did not say to the other nine you're not just healed

you are whole when i first read this i said well weren't all the other nine

well too they were healed they were good but the greek word for well is sozo

which has a couple different definitions the first is saved the second is healed,

made whole, or restored.

All ten of them received a physical miracle. Only one received spiritual renewal.

Why? Not because his gratitude earned salvation, but because gratitude opened

his heart to a deeper work of God.

This foreigner, this stranger, was able to come to the Lord and be made whole.

When we return to Jesus with thanksgiving, our relationship with him deepens.

You can't ignore that. If you're constantly thankful to the Lord,

your relationship is going to get stronger.

Our trust in him grows. When we're in the thick of it, when we're in our walking

season waiting for the change to come, we know we can say, if he did it then,

why wouldn't he do it now?

Our soul awakens. We're not constantly full of worry.

We know that we serve a God that is full of mercy and grace and we can trust in Him.

And that is how our faith expands.

It opens our eyes to see what He's doing on our walk.

And our hearts soften because we can get pretty cranky when we're not getting our way.

We receive not just His blessings, His mercy, His gifts, but rather we receive His presence.

Gratitude is not just polite manners

gratitude is worship gratitude is spending time with the Lord gratitude is spiritual

formation gratitude turns miracles into meeting with God it turns blessings

into deeper belief it turns encounters with Jesus into transformation.

Gratitude makes space in us for God to do more.

Ten men cried out in need. Ten men walked in obedience. They did what they needed to do.

Ten men were healed, but only one returned.

Be the one. Be the one who notices what God has done.

Be the one who pauses long enough to feel gratitude, not asking for the next

blessing or the next thing.

Be the one who turns back towards Jesus.

Be the one who falls at his knees and thank you.

Be the one whose thanksgiving becomes worship, loud, unafraid, thankful worship.

Be the one who receives not only the blessing, but the deeper work of God in your heart.

Jesus still asks us the same question today. Where are the nine?

May we be the ones who come back. Let's pray.

Lord, give us eyes to your mercy. Father, help our hearts overflow with your gratitude.

Father, give us faith that draws us back to your feet.

Father, make us people who return again and again to you.

Father, we may fall at your feet and be thankful for the mercies,

Lord, big and little that you have for us every day.

Father, may we be able to pause in the chaos of our lives and be thankful for

the good that you've done for us.

And Father, I pray that as we enter into this season of Thanksgiving,

as we gather around family and friends, and that we can be intentional in thanking God.

That we may be able to thank you for our brothers and sisters,

our fathers and mothers and cousins, the family that has gathered around our table.

Father, we may be able to give you thanks for being able to be in this nation

that we can worship you freely.

Father, that we may be able to worship you for opening weekend,

that we can hunt, that we can do things that bring us joy.

Father, fill our hearts with gratitude for you, Lord.

Father, we thank you for an opportunity to gather together to worship you and

praise you and give you just a fraction of the worship you are due.

Father, we thank you for this time together. In your name we pray, amen.

And I leave you with this short benediction out of Ephesians 3, verses 20 through 21.

Ephesians 3:20–21

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask for or

think, according to the power at work within us.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout our generations, forever and ever. Amen.