The story that we're going to start with today, is in Luke chapter 17. And I think more than perhaps any other story of an encounter with Jesus shows you that many people can have the same encounter but not walk away with the same change. And it's a story of 10 lepers and Luke chapter 17.
You have 10 people who encounter Jesus in a powerful way, but only one really leaves with all that God had intended for Him. And so if you have your Bibles, Luke chapter 17, you can follow along. If not, we have the scriptures up on the screen.
We also will have them online as well. And Here's the story. I wanna read it to you.
And then we're just going to pull some principles out of it that we can learn. As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. As he entered a village there, 10 men with leprosy stood at a distance, crying out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
He looked at them and said, Go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, Praise God.
He fell to the ground at Jesus feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, Didn't I heal 10 men?
Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And Jesus said to the man, Stand up and go.
Your faith has healed you. So you notice how that finishes? It's not just my idea.
Walking away from Jesus. Jesus told him, You now go walk away. But you're walking away different.
Can you imagine what that phone call was like when he picked up his cell phone and called maybe whatever contacts he had left because he had been isolated from society? We'll talk about that in a minute. Can you imagine, though, being a fly on the wall on that conversation?
I got to tell you what just happened to me. And let me tell you, I'm walking away different. What would he say to us?
What would that Leper say to us if he could tell us about his encounter with Jesus? I have three things jumped out to me as I read the story. And if you're taking notes, you can write this first one down.
If you're not taking notes, you can also write this first one down. First one I think we can learn is I think He would tell us he saw me when no one else did. Jesus saw me in my pain when nobody else.
Let's go back to the story for a second. We don't talk a lot about leprosy today, thank God, because there have been medical advances and we don't really deal with it like they used to. But Leprosy, you have these 10 men and they were gathered together in community and it wasn't around their race.
It wasn't around their religious background. Those are all things that normally would have been identifiers. But they were connected around their pain, around their disease.
Leprosy and leprosy was a disease. It was awful. And I'm not going to get into the details of it because you're getting ready to go eat lunch and you're not be hungry if I went into all the details of it.
But it was just a terrible, terrible disease. And when you got diagnosed with it, it was the beginning of a long, drawn out painful in some ways, in some ways, it wasn't. Part of their issue is they couldn't experience pain, so they would have an infection.
They wouldn't know about it, it would get worse, but their limbs would become deformed. And it was awful, but a long, long journey towards death. But it wasn't just a physical death for them.
It was also a social death and a cultural death. And while the physical death took a long time, the cultural and social death happened immediate. As soon as they got a diagnosis, they were kicked out of the town.
They couldn't by law live within a walled town. They were sent away to live on their own. And so Jesus is coming down this road to Jerusalem and he comes across these letters and they are likely holding up a sign, if not by law, by religious law and the Old Testament Laviticus, they had to shout out, Hey, unclean, if somebody gets near him, unclean, I am not clean.
I am not well. Shouting out being identified by this place of pain. Can you imagine what that would be like to have to literally, by law, yell out, your worst sin, your worst disease.
Hey, I'm sick. I'm not well. If you think about all of the restrictions that we've had to deal with during COVID, imagine all of those.
And then some. But you're the only one that has to abide by them. You're the only one isolated.
That's who these people are. They live their life. Their primary identity is in their uncleanliness, their disease, their sickness.
And so they're hanging out. They're shouting out, I'm unclean. And Jesus would certainly not have been the first person to walk past them, because when Jesus is going to Jerusalem, it's to celebrate one of the Jewish festivals.
And people would make pilgrimages from all over the world to Jerusalem for these celebrations. And so most people, as they're walking down this road, when they see these letters, they do what many of us do. When you see somebody maybe who is homeless or who's asking for money, or they probably see them from a distance, they see that they're unclean.
And it's not that they're cruel. It's just that this is what culture does. They move as far away from them as they can, and they try to get past them without contacting the disease that they have without being stuck in a conversation with them.
And they just kind of move past, but not Jesus. When Jesus sees them, the Bible says in verse 14, again, he sees them, and it says he looked at them. He noticed them.
He saw their pain. Why did Jesus do that? See, we're getting ready to study the life of Jesus for the next couple of months.
And one thing that you're going to notice as we do is that Jesus always move towards people with pain. It's almost like he had a radar in him that guided him towards people who are in pain. He did.
He always found himself in proximity of people who were hurting. Why is that? I believe it's because Jesus is the hope of the world.
And not everybody experiences the thrill of success at the same level. But if you live long enough, all of us experience the heartache of pain and nothing opens you up to the need for hope like your pain does. Nothing gets our attention like pain.
Jesus is God and Carnate we know. Psalm 34 says, The Lord is close to the broken heart and he saves those who are crushed in spirit. See, Jesus doesn't even make his way towards pain.
He's always there. He's always there. So that's good news for us.
If you're in pain today. Just know that Jesus draws near and our hope is a Church is that we would do the same thing. This is not a country club for Saints.
This is a hospital for sinners. This is a hospital for people who are in pain. So where is your pain today?
Some of us you're grieving today, and I just want you to know Jesus is near. Some of you may be your heart broken today. Just know Jesus is close to that.
He's near that pain. Some of us are dealing with the pain of our own regret, something that we've done that cost us or hurt somebody else. And just know Jesus draws near to our pain.
He's always close. I realize this in kind of a a real personal way in these last few weeks. I've told some of you may have heard that picked up Corona virus about six weeks ago, and I wasn't thinking it was going to be that big of a deal.
I was mostly disappointed not to be able to preach on Easter, but it dropped into my lungs and it became something that there was a pretty serious thing for me. I ended up hospitalized for several days, and the low point for me of that whole deal was Easter Sunday morning. Easter Sunday morning.
I've been admitted to the hospital the day before. All of the numbers that they came to me the day before and said, Hey, your blood work. We're really concerned about this.
They had all dropped the next day, especially my white blood cell count. The doctor said, This is as low as I've seen, and we're really concerned your immune system is shutting down. Our goal today is to keep you out of the ICU.
And I was just with that disease. There's a whole lot that we've seen and images on the news, and it was just a lot going on inside of me. A lot of fear, a lot of concern.
I couldn't even walk to the bathroom without just gasping for air. I was discouraged. My wife had tried to face time me into watch the kids do some of the Easter egg stuff at home.
I couldn't even really pay attention to that. I tried to log on to the website and watch the website. Didn't have enough energy even to watch Church.
I was disappointed not to be a part of this community on Easter Sunday, and I was kind of having a pity party. I was afraid I was in my bed. I was crying, and another doctor walked through the door.
But this was one I hadn't seen yet. His name was Dr Sean Haley, and he said, Hey, I'm Dr Haley, and I work here at MUSC, but I'm not your doctor. In fact, I don't even treat coronavirus, but I am a member of your Church and I have privileges at this hospital.
And I heard that you were here, and I know that nobody else can come see you. And I thought maybe you could use some encouragement. And I'm telling you what.
I have visited the hospital hundreds of times to see other people, but I've never been at it from that vantage point. And when you're in a place of pain, when you're a place of need and you so appreciate the hope that Jesus offers. And so this guy, he just came in and he said, How are you doing?
And I started to explain physically. And he's like, Okay, well, how are you doing? Spiritually.
And how are you doing emotionally? It's like, dude, I'm not in a good place right now. I'm struggling.
And he said, Well, I just want you to know there's hope. And I want to pray for you. And so he prayed for me.
And I'm telling you what that was the moment for me when things started to turn around in my health. In fact, I was supposed to be in the hospital for four more days, and I ended up going home the next day, partially because of great medicine. But I believe it started when Dr Haley came in at my moment of deepest pain and just brought Jesus and brought hope into that pain.
And as he was leaving, he got to the door and I said, Hey, Sean. And he stops and looks back at me. And I said, Thank you for being my pastor today.
And you know what? You may not be a doctor. You may not be a pastor, but you do have access to people with pain.
And when you step into people's moments of pain, there's a readiness. There's an openness for them to receive the hope of the gospel. And as we come out of this pandemic, the experts would tell you both in the Church and outside of the Church, that our country, our world is on the front end of a tidal wave of grief that we're going to experience just the stuff that we've lost.
Many have lost loved ones. Some have lost opportunity. Some have lost graduations or community, whatever it might be.
But our world is in pain. And my hope and my prayer for us is that we would just be a whole bunch of doctor. Sean Haley's.
They go, Where is there some pain? I want to step into that. We talk about Serve Day that we're going to do this July.
And then we'd love to see thousands of us jump in to Serve Day. Why? Because we want to Pat ourselves on the back now?
Because our communities are dealing with pain. They're grieving. And we want to come and bring the hope of the gospel to the pain.
Jesus always had a radar for pain. He always showed up in people's pain. And you know what?
Let's just be honest. It's awkward to show up to people's pain. Sean even told me later we were texting about a man.
It was very uncomfortable for me to step in. I didn't know what I was going to say. I just knew you were there.
And I wanted to be helpful. It's never easy to step into somebody's pain, but we have to move past that. Some of our very dear friends this week are just going through the worst kind of pain, the loss of a loved one way too soon.
Great friend of ours, a long time sea coaster, Brian Fisher, who went to be with Jesus on this past Monday. And we've been walking with their family. And that Monday, after he had passed away, Keenan and Joe, who Kenan is Brian's daughter, had said, We'd love for you to bring the kids out to the house.
And so I was driving them out. We're on our way. And the car was quiet.
It's normally not normally. It's loud. People are fighting or playing or whatever.
And it was just you could tell the kids were uneasy about stepping into this grief. And so I asked them. I said, Hey, do you think that Kiki and Joe invited you out to the house because they're hoping that you're going to say something and it's going to take away their pain?
And it was like, No, Yes. I don't know. Is this a trick question, Dan?
And I was like, No, no, there's nothing you can say. If there was something that you could say, I would have written a book about it. And I'd be a billionaire because nobody.
There's nothing you can say to make pain go away. Right? I said, they're not looking for you to say something.
They just want your presence. They just want you to show up. And that's the truth.
With anybody who's going through pain, you think, well, I don't know what I'm going to say to them or I'm not sure. I don't want to say the wrong thing. I've never had somebody tell me, Hey, I just wish that they hadn't shown up in my pain.
But I do hear I wish that they had shown up. So you may know somebody you may be in proximity to, somebody who's hurting right now. Just show up, move through the awkwardness.
Just show up. Bring the presence of God and your life and your friendship. And God is going to use that as a part of the healing process.
I think that this leper would say, Hey, Jesus saw me when nobody else fit. Let's be a people that see other second thing I think you would tell us. I think you would say it's easier to have faith when I'm sick, then when I'm well, I think you would say observation for me is that when 10 of us were sick, Jesus told us to take a step of faith.
Let's look at the story again. He tells him. He looked at them and he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests.
And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy. Here's the deal. What Jesus asked them to do was really pretty ridiculous, because the only reason a leper would show himself to the priest is because he's been healed.
You show up after you've been healed in the priest will look at your skin and he'll say, Hey, this person is clean. And Jesus didn't heal them. And then say, Go to the priest.
He said, Go to the priest. And as they went, they were healed. Almost any time God is moving in our lives.
He's going to ask us to take a step of faith. And how many, you know, when you're at the end of the rope, it's easy to take that step. Has anybody ever prayed that God, if you get me out of this situation right now, I'll give you my life.
Right. And that's great. That's a good prayer if you're in that situation.
And so Jesus tells them to go. And I'm sure if I'm one of those letters, I'm thinking, I mean, couldn't you fix this nasty hand before I go, like, wouldn't you heal me first? But I'm telling you, think about Moses at the Red Sea, right?
They're stuck at the border of this ocean and on the other side of them as an Army who's coming to kill them. They're going, God, help us out. We need something.
And what does God knows us to do? Pick up your staff and hold it up in the air. God, do you have any better ideas?
Because we're getting ready to get slaughtered by this Army, right. But now he says, Hold it up in the air. And it's in that moment, doing something, taking a step of faith that God begins to part the sea.
And then 40 years later, they're at the Jordan River, and it's flood tide. Joshua is taking these people in. And again, I'm thinking, if I'm Joshua, Hey, God, remember when you did that Red Sea thing?
I'll lift this up. You do that. Let's do that again.
But God says, no, I want you to step into the water. Now, if you don't know what a flood tide is, how many of you have seen on the news a car floating down the Street as a result of a storm? That's about what a flood tide is.
And so in that kind of environment, God says, Go ahead and start walking. And as they get into the water, I don't know how high it got. But the water began to recede and they cross on dry land.
And so often, that's how God moves in our lives. God, would you heal my marriage? Yeah.
Why don't you go get in a small group? Why don't you get transparent, open yourself up to a group of community. And as we take those steps, as we move towards faith, we realize, Oh, God starting to heal our relationships.
Some of us were going through some tough God's calling you take a step of faith. And I think this leper would go you know what? It's easy to do that when you're sick.
Quick reading comprehension. What percentage of the lepers took that step of faith? Or 10 out of 10 when they were at the end of their rope?
10 out of 10 said, Man, I'm all in. Let's go. But once they got well, once they got their healing, you can imagine what it would be like for them to be healed.
Once they got that, the percentage drop down to only one out of 10 came back to Jesus. And I mean, honestly, it's easy to throw shade at these guys. But what would you do if you had this affliction, this leprosy, this Corona virus, and God heals you of it.
Now you can go back to your family. Maybe for the first time in a long time. It's very natural to want to carry the sign around.
I'm not unclean anymore. I'm healed. And so they go and they go to probably to do what Jesus told him to go to the priest, but only one of them.
And I believe he had a revelation. I just had an encounter with the high priest. I'm going to go back to Jesus.
I'm going to go back to the one who healed me. And so he does. But listen, it's easier.
It's easier to walk in faith when you're sick. Some of us are here today. We're healed.
What would it look like for you to continue to live in faith, to serve, to connect with people, to live out that faith, even though you're well, so last thing that I think that this leper would say to us, and that's why he came back, I think you would say the real price is the healer, not the healing. The real prize is the healer, not the healing. Yeah, I was going to do a message on gratitude because clearly gratitude is laid into this passage.
But this is not a man who wrote a thank you note because someone gave my gift. This is a man who had leprosy and he was healed. And the only appropriate response in that moment is to do what he did, which is to run back to the feet of Jesus and to worship him and to glorify him.
Look at actually, I have a verse in here before. I think he must have known this verse from the Old Testament. I saw 1 7.
And my friend Brian Fisher died last week. I learned something. He only read the King James version of the Bible, that he's been coming to this Church for 28 years.
I thought he loved our preaching. He's just been tolerating it. He only read the King James.
So I put this verse in the King James to honor my friend Brian. But it says he sent his word and he healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children.
Of men and let them sacrifice the sacrifices of Thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing. I think that one Lepper. He knew that scripture.
So man, the only thing you do when God comes and touches you and heals you, you worship, you bring that sacrifice of Thanksgiving. And that's what he did. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, Praise God.
He fell to the ground at Jesus's feet, thanking him for what he had done. I wonder if there are people watching the Sun play out on the road. You know what?
That's a little over top over the top, man, like, you're really going to get down on your knees and throw yourself at the feet of Jesus. And I think that leopard would say, Man, if you knew if you knew what Jesus did for me, you do the same thing. And some of you, maybe you're here at Church or at one of the campuses and you see people raising their hand and worship, or kind of getting a little bit rowdy, and you go, That feels a little overkill.
You know what if you knew what God had healed me from? We all have leprosy. We've all been afflicted with this disease that separates us from God.
And it's a disease called sin. And I don't need to convince you of how much sin you have in your life. You came in fully aware of that.
And we could easily all be carrying signs around that say, I'm unclean. And maybe we don't hold that sign. But when people get close to us, it's easy for them to see the pain.
It's easy for them to see the label. Maybe that this culture has put on them because of their issues. But man, when Jesus comes into your life and he cleanses you of that sin, the only appropriate response is to throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus, to worship Him and to be grateful for Him.
And so Jesus says to him, This man was a Samaritan. Jesus asked him, Didn't I heal 10 men? Where are the other nine?
Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And Jesus said to the man, Stand up and go, Your faith has healed you. I want you to notice something as we close.
Jesus said, Did I heal 10 men? The word that he uses for healing in that particular case, I can't pronounce it in the Greek, but it's where we get the word, the catheterization that we use today. And it's a medical term.
It's a physical healing. Jesus healed these 10 physically. But when this one came back to him and worshiped Him, kind of brought his gratitude to the feet of Jesus.
And he tells them, I want you to walk away. I want you to go away. Your faith has made you hit.
Your faith has healed you. It's a different word. The word is so so.
And it's a word that's translated into a couple of different things. But ultimately, what it means is whole. See, nine letters settled for a transactional physical healing with Jesus.
But one of them came back to the feet of Jesus. And he left healed all the way through. His soul was healed.
Sozo is a word that has five or 6 different meetings. It's healed. It's a word chip judge taught me this.
He comes from a little bit more charismatic background. He said, Man, we used to talk about Sozo all the time, saved, healed, delivered, prospered, protected, made, whole. And that is the imitation that Jesus has for each one of us.
Jesus wants to make you whole. He doesn't just want to settle for the healing. And you know what we've seen in this Church?
So many people be healed. But we've also seen so many people pray for healing, but they didn't get it. But that's okay, because I think the leper would say to you, Hey, the prize is a healer, and we all have access to Jesus.
The prize is a healer. The healing is great. But, man, the thing that can heal you and make you whole is the healer.
And his name is Jesus. And so I don't know where you are today. Some of us are here today, and maybe you're just painfully aware of the areas of your life that you're unclean.
You know what they are. Maybe it's something that you've done. Maybe it's a label that's been attached to you.
It could even be a physical diagnosis that you've been given a terminal diagnosis like these lepers had. And maybe you kind of been carrying a sign in some form or fashion that says, I'm unclean. And I'm praying that God will do both.
I'm praying for some that He will make you healed. But I'm praying for all of us that will make us whole. And that word whole.
Soso it's the same word that comes from Romans 10 and verse nine. It says that if you would confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be so. So whole, saved, prospered, God can bring a healing that is so much bigger then even the thing that you're praying for right now, if He can make you right with God.
And so I want to pray for you today. I'll pray for all of us. We've encountered God.
We're going to continue to encounter Him and worship that we would walk away from this encounter in the same way of that leopard that we would be. That God. I don't want to settle for the answer to prayer.
I want you. I want your Grace. And I want your love that would walk away.
My faith would have made me hold. Would you guys bow your head as we close in prayer? So we pray.
I pray for a number of us. But one group of people I want to pray for if you're here today and you know your story, and everybody's here here is coming with different backgrounds and different stories. But you would say, You know what, Josh?
I want to be whole. I want to be whole. I want Jesus to make me whole.
That's your hands are already going up. You know that you just raise your hand, say, Yeah, I want I want to be whole. Jesus, make me whole.
Make me home. Father, I thank you so much for every hand that's raised here and at the campuses, every heart that's leaning into you right now that says, Jesus, I want to be made whole. Only you can do that.
So we do our part. God, we confess with our mouth. We know our sin.
We know it's separated us from you. But we know that you are, Lord, that you lived a sinless life and that you have cleanse us from all unrighteousness by taking all of our leprosy, all of our sin on the cross, so that we could be clean so that we could be healed so that we could be home. And God, I pray for every one of us.
It's here today. Some of us are just in a great deal of pain right now. And I think you are right here that you are right in the midst of it, or that you would show us areas of our lives, Lord, where you're just here, your presence is there.
And, Lord, that even those of us that maybe were doing well, that you would help us to be a people that lives out our faith that learns to have a radar for pain, just like you did. That brings that hope and that healing to the people around us, and that all of us would walk away from this encounter with you whole saved deal. Or we worship you.
We're going to take these next few minutes and we're going to do only what is natural for us to do, which is to worship you, to come to the feet of Jesus and say, glory to God. Thank you for what you've done in my life. We love you in Jesus name.
Amen.
