What Faith Looks Like

[0:00] Please turn with me to Luke 17, verses 1 through 19. For those of you who don't have a Bible, we did print it for you this time around because we don't have Bibles to give out today.

[0:22] Let me pray for the reading and preaching of God's Word. Heavenly Father, we have gathered in your name and we now ask that you speak to us from your Word.

[0:38] Teach us about the nature of faith, what it looks like to believe in you, to follow you. The preciousness of faith, the humility and gratitude that should characterize people of faith.

[0:55] And we pray that you will make us more like that. We submit to you and to your Word this morning.

[1:08] In Jesus' name, amen. I'll read it out for us, Luke 17, 1 to 19. And he said to his disciples, Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come.

[1:26] It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Pay attention to yourselves.

[1:38] If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him.

[1:51] The apostles said to the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.

[2:06] Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and recline at table? Will he not rather say to him, prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink and afterward you will eat and drink?

[2:26] Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty.

[2:39] On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered the village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

[2:56] When he saw them, he said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests. 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, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

[3:15] 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?

[3:28] And he said to him, Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. This is God's holy and authoritative word. Having spent chapter 16 teaching his disciples and warning the Pharisees about the need to repent of our sins and believe in Jesus for salvation, he's now teaching his disciples about what it looks like to be a disciple, what it looks like to have faith in Jesus and to follow him.

[3:56] So I titled the sermon, What Faith Looks Like, from Luke 17, 1 to 19. First, in verses 1 to 6, he teaches us about the preciousness of faith. Can you guys hear me okay?

[4:09] Okay. And he says to his disciples in verse 1, Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. So this is really emphatic, the way it's pressed.

[4:21] The phrase here, temptations to sin are sure to come. Meaning, temptations to sin, it's impossible for them not to come. They will surely come. And the phrase in English, temptations to sin, is a translation of a single Greek word that can mean, more literally be translated as a scandal, a trap, or a snare.

[4:44] It's referring to something that makes people stumble into sin, something that entraps people, ensnares them. And so the English translation, the New American Standard Bible, translates it this way.

[4:58] It says, it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come. So it can be discouraging for us when we hear of other believers who fall into grave sin and scandal.

[5:10] And I'm sure you've heard of something like that. Too often it happens to believers in very prominent positions. Maybe famous ministers. And it brings great disrepute to Christ and the church.

[5:23] But it should not come as a surprise to us when these scandals happen. Jesus already warned us in this passage that such snares and scandals are sure to come. It's inevitable that they come.

[5:35] However, the fact that these scandals are inevitable does not mean that they are therefore unimportant or admissible. Right? Because Jesus says, Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come.

[5:50] Woe is the opposite of blessing. Right? It's to pronounce woe on someone is to pronounce pity. How pitiful. Because it's such a sad condition. It's a misfortune.

[6:02] And it's so severe. The punishment that will come upon someone that causes someone to stumble into sin is so severe that Jesus feels pity for such a person. And Jesus explains that further in verse 2.

[6:13] It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than he should cause one of these little ones to sin. The word for millstone used here, it refers to the heavy duty kind that they used in the ancient world.

[6:28] Maybe about half the size of this rock over here. That people wouldn't be strong enough to turn. They would use the beast of burden to turn. So imagine having something half that size hung around your neck and being thrown into the sea.

[6:43] It's short to cause death. You'd be drowning. There's no way to swim out of that. And the little ones that Jesus is referring to here are not literal children, but they're figurative children.

[6:55] It's the children of God. Jesus often uses the figure of a child as an illustration for children of God. Christians who come to God with childlike humility and faith. That we saw that early in Luke chapter 10 verse 21, Jesus prays to the Father this way, You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

[7:16] The little children, it's are those who come to God, not pretending about their own wisdom and understanding, but coming to God humbly and saying, No, I need you to save me.

[7:27] I'm unable to save myself. I need to listen and believe in God's revelation instead, what God has revealed to me. Those are the little ones that are in view here. So even though Jesus is addressing his disciples here, we also have to keep in mind that the Pharisees are still in the background.

[7:44] They are within earshot of Jesus' teaching. They were the main subjects of Jesus' instruction, objects of Jesus' instruction in the previous chapter. And Jesus had rebuked them previously for their self-justifying hypocrisy and love of money, their greed.

[7:59] And with that background in mind, the woe that Jesus is pronouncing here in verses 1 to 2 would certainly apply to the Pharisees because they were misleading God's people into greed and love of money and pride and self-justifying hypocrisy, which were an abomination in the sight of God, as Jesus said in chapter 16.

[8:19] And this is consistent throughout Scripture. God holds people who teach others, who are in a position to lead others to a higher standard.

[8:31] It says in James chapter 3 verse 1, Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

[8:43] And in Matthew 5 verse 19, Jesus says, Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Because the people of God, the children of God are so precious to Him, anyone who is in a position to lead or teach and they mislead them and teach them and lead them, make them stumble into sin will be, anyone that scandalizes them, causes them to stumble, it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and thrown into the sea.

[9:15] It's a scary thought. And so He's speaking about faith, the preciousness of it and how it must be safeguarded in even those people who have frail faith, who are little ones among us.

[9:28] And that's why Jesus continues it this way in verses 3 to 4. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him.

[9:45] Christians are here called brothers and also sisters. Since they are the little ones of God, because we are children of God, because we have the same heavenly Father, we're called brothers and sisters in Christ.

[9:59] And we become siblings through faith in Jesus. And as brothers and sisters in the family of God, we must pay attention to ourselves so that we do not stumble and sin. And it says here that being alert to sin in our own lives involves two things.

[10:14] When a fellow Christian brother or sister sins against us, we must rebuke him or her. But if that person subsequently repents of sin, then we ought to forgive.

[10:29] So rebuke and forgive. There's two responsibilities that this passage highlights. It's hard to do either of those things well, right? And it's especially hard to do both of those things well.

[10:41] I think most of us are better at one than the other. Some of us are too eager and gleeful about rebuking other people.

[10:53] And some of us are too casual and indulgent in forgiving other people, right? But both rebuke and forgiveness have to be offered not glibly, but seriously and lovingly.

[11:07] So the command to rebuke a brother here, we need to be careful to understand, it's not an appointment in the church to the office of church watchdog, right? To feel like you should be going up to everybody and to their face, tell them about all their sins that they're doing.

[11:25] Notice it says in verse 4, This is referring to times when a fellow Christian sins against you in particular. So unless it is your responsibility, for example, pastors or people that God has placed to oversee the church, you shouldn't be going up to everybody to rebuke them for whatever sin you can see.

[11:48] It's when they sin against you, you should go up to that person one-on-one to confront. And this is important because resorting to gossip and slander is a cowardly way to deal with someone when they sin against you.

[12:04] Instead, you should rebuke them personally, which takes courage. It ensures peace of the church and the unity of the church. Instead of talking about the brother or sister that sinned against you to someone else, you should talk to that brother or sister that sinned against you.

[12:20] And we are to rebuke, and the goal of that rebuke is not condemnation, but it's redemption. It's an invitation to repentance so that you can extend forgiveness, not a form of rejection and condemnation.

[12:36] So if we're self-righteous, if we're instead of mourning over our brother or sister's sin, we gloat over them, point our fingers at them, then that's not the attitude that Jesus has in mind here. The German Christian who was really martyred for standing up to Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he puts it this way in his book, Life Together.

[12:58] Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

[13:14] That's what we have in mind when we rebuke one another, when we sin against one another. A church that tolerates all manners of sin among its members just because it claims to be tolerant or open or inclusive or affirming is not practicing compassionate interest.

[13:29] They're actually practicing cruel indifference, saying that it doesn't matter to me whether you sin or not because I actually don't really care that much about you. It's the people that we care nothing about that we leave to do, make bad decisions, and to do whatever they want.

[13:43] People that we really care about and love, our family members, the friends that we love, are invested in. We rebuke them. We correct them. We speak the truth to them. That's what this command has in mind.

[13:56] We are to be true family in Christ. Rebuke one another when we sin against each other. And if that brother or sister who has sinned against you responds to your rebuke with repentance, our call then is to forgive.

[14:09] Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32 says, Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. It's because God has already forgiven us of our sins that we can forgive one another without expecting anything back in return.

[14:24] God's, because not their posture necessarily, but what God has done for us already, that's the basis for our forgiveness. Again, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way in the same book.

[14:36] He says, Anybody who lives beneath the cross and who has discerned in the cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him.

[14:49] Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.

[14:59] Because we live before the cross, because we live before the awareness that God has forgiven us and paid a costly price in the death of his son, we can hear even the confession of the worst of sinners and be able to forgive.

[15:16] And we must never offer that forgiveness lightly. Forgiveness offered lightly makes light of sin. And sin is never a trifling matter.

[15:29] Sure, yes, everybody sins. That's true. But the fact that sin is inevitable, like I mentioned before, does not mean that sin is admissible. Our sin put Jesus, the Son of God, to death on the cross.

[15:43] Our sin required that God the Father pour out his full wrath on his Son. It's not a light matter. And so we should always acknowledge the gravity of sin Brother, the wages of sin is death.

[15:59] Your sins have grave consequences. They have wounded me deeply. They have hurt and affected the body of Christ. But Christ has paid even for your sins.

[16:13] Because Christ didn't withhold his forgiveness from me, who am I to withhold forgiveness from you? That's how we extend forgiveness. Not make light of sin, acknowledge its gravity, but acknowledge at the same time the even greater work of redemption that Christ has done on the cross for us.

[16:29] So we're to offer costly forgiveness, not cheap forgiveness. But because of what Christ has done, even when a brother does this seven times in a day, I mean, that's, that number is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not saying after seven on the eighth time, you don't have to forgive them.

[16:46] It's saying you forgive them every time they come to you. I mean, that's hard, isn't it? Can you imagine the same person coming back to you seven times on the same day? I mean, at some point you're going to start to question their sincerity.

[16:58] Like, did you really mean that? You really repented of your sins, but Jesus says instead, no, even seven times, forgive them because I have forgiven you. And God's forgiven us many more than seven times.

[17:10] And, and when we, so when we actually recognize, come to grips with how difficult this command is, our response will be the same as that of these apostles because they recognize the weighty task of ministering to one another, keeping one another accountable, rebuking for sin, and forgiving for repentance, in response to repentance.

[17:30] Because we recognize the inadequacy of our own faith. And so the apostles responded the same way in verse five. The apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith.

[17:41] And then Jesus turns their question around in verse six. If, if request around in verse six, if you had faith, like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.

[17:54] So Jesus, instead of focusing on the degree or level of faith, instead focuses on having faith at all, however small it may be.

[18:05] A grain of mustard seed is one of the smallest garden seeds. It's barely visible if you put it on the palm of your hand. Yet even faith as small as a grain of mustard seed is enough to uproot and replant a mulberry tree in the sea.

[18:19] A mulberry tree referenced here is known for a vast root system that stretches so long and deep that these trees can live up to 600 years.

[18:31] Can you imagine trying to uproot that kind of tree? A spate of a mustard seed, as small as a mustard seed, can, that kind of formidable tree can be uprooted and replanted with this faith that small.

[18:41] This is not a literal teaching, but a proverbial teaching. It's similar to the phrase that Jesus uses in other places, faith that can move mountains. He's speaking of faith that can accomplish seemingly impossible things.

[18:56] He's saying that even the smallest faith, if it is genuine and if it is present, can accomplish great things, seemingly impossible things. And this applies to our salvation.

[19:07] We are saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus. It's, it's, it's, it's seemingly impossible. We're sinners in deserving God's wrath. Sinners deserving eternal damnation.

[19:18] Yet through faith in Jesus Christ, God gives us grace and mercy and love. And we can be saved. And, and it's not a matter of how strong your faith is.

[19:28] It's whether or not you have faith at all. And sometimes in our life of obedience to God, in our trying to, in the discipleship trying to follow God, we lack faith. We're faithless. And so we disobey.

[19:41] But if there's any faith at all, even the smallest faith, we can repent of our sins in faith, knowing that God will receive us and forgive us. We can rebuke one another in faith, believing that they will also repent.

[19:53] We can forgive one another in faith, knowing that God in Christ forgives all of his people of their sins. And that's the preciousness of faith, that even this small faith can have such powerful effect in the life of the body of Christ, in the family of God.

[20:10] So not because of that, we have to safeguard one another's faith, given how precious it is. But we also ought to make sure that our faith is characterized by humility. And that's the second point, humility of faith, in verses 7 to 10.

[20:23] Here he uses an illustration to teach us about what humble faith looks like. Let's read verses 7 to 10. Let me read it out loud for us. Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded?

[20:52] So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. The household servant in the ancient world was expected to serve his master dinner and wait at table until he was finished.

[21:10] And then afterward he would eat. It's very similar to when we go to restaurants. If you go to a restaurant for lunch, the people who wait on you, the waiters, waitresses there, not going to eat until all the clients, all the patrons of the restaurant have been served.

[21:26] And then afterward they will sit down to eat. So the same idea was observed by the household servants in the ancient world. And it was not only customary for them to do that, it would be a great breach of social etiquette for the servant to come in from a long day of work and then say, Well, Master, I've had a long day, so why don't you just wait a little bit and I'm going to get my meal first and then I'll come and help you.

[21:46] That would be a breach of social etiquette. It would be really a sign of insolence on the servant's part. And the proper attitude of the servant Jesus is teaching here is this, We are unworthy servants.

[22:00] We have only done what was our duty. It's the servant's job to work out in the field. It's the servant's duty to attend to the master and wait while he eats.

[22:12] Doing what is our duty as Christian servants of God does not get us any extra credit or merit before God. It doesn't accumulate any good standing or favor from God.

[22:25] It's rather something that we ought to do. It's our responsibility. And this is an important lesson, especially after Jesus' teaching about how we ought to safeguard each other's faith.

[22:38] Because not only do we have to be extremely careful about safeguarding one another's faith, not making them stumble, we also have to rebuke one another and forgive one another. And this is all hard work.

[22:50] And when you do hard work, it's easy to develop develop a sense of entitlement. Lord, do you know how much I have suffered for your name's sake?

[23:04] Lord, do you know how much this brother or sister has hurt me over and over again and how many times I've forgiven him or her? Lord, do you know how much money I've given to your church and to your ministry?

[23:17] Lord, do you know how much I love and care for these brothers and sisters of mine, how painstakingly I try to prepare to lead them or teach them? And they're so unresponsive and unappreciative.

[23:29] Well, since you know that I've had a long day out in the field plowing and keeping sheep, now, if you'd please excuse me, I'm going to stretch out my legs, have a nice hot meal, and then I'll come back to you to attend to you.

[23:43] That's the attitude of entitlement. That's the posture of an impudent servant. We should say instead we are unworthy servants.

[23:54] We have only done what was our duty. The word unworthy there literally means useless. We are useless servants. We've only done what was our duty. Of course, the servant that does his duty is not useless.

[24:07] This is rather an expression of humility. It's a recognition of the fact that there's a vast difference between the supreme worthiness of the Lord and Master whom we serve and our relative unworthiness.

[24:21] It's because when we recognize that all we can say to him, even after we have rendered much service to him, God, I have been a useless servant because what you deserve is so much more than what I am able to give you.

[24:33] I'm a useless servant. I've only done what was my duty. Because we serve the creator of the universe, because we serve the supreme Lord over all, because we serve a gracious Father and a Lord Jesus who has died for our sins, laid down his own life to save us and redeem us.

[24:52] We can give every ounce of our energy and every second of our lives. We could even lay down our very lives to serve him and to love him. Even that would not be enough to repay all that he has done for us.

[25:06] And so all we can say as his servants is we are useless servants. We have only done what was our duty. And so when you start to feel entitled or disgruntled by the treatment you're getting, maybe by the lack of recognition, maybe that you feel from God or from his people, instead of dwelling on how amazing you are and thinking about all that you have done, think instead and meditate on what God has done for you and who God is.

[25:36] Then our posture will change. Instead of entitlement, we'll have humility and we'll be able to say what this servant says to his master. And that's a nice segue to Jesus' next lesson, this passage and it's the praise of faith.

[25:49] Faith is supposed to lead to praise and gratitude. Humble servants who recognize what their master has done for them will live their life praising him, worshipping him. And we see this in the next story about the ten lepers.

[26:05] It says in verses, it begins this way in verse 11, on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee and as he entered the village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

[26:22] The term leprosy is in the Old Testament and New Testament. It's a generic word that refers to all kinds of skin diseases. Leprosy proper, if you give a medicinal definition, it's known as Hanson's disease.

[26:38] It's a long-term bacterial infection. It inflames the skin and the nervous system and it damages the nerves so severely that you no longer feel pain in your body, in the affected parts of your body, which often leads to further injuries because when you're touching something that's scalding hot and you don't feel it, obviously you're going to keep your hands there and get even more injured.

[27:02] And so that's the kind of disease that's in view here. It's some kind of contagious skin disease. And the physical consequences of this disease was bad, but the social consequences were even worse because a leper was contagious and they had to be, they were considered ritually unclean by Jews and they were separated from the town and had to live in their own village community in exile, really.

[27:31] In the same way, and this is not to be cruel, it's just a way of quarantining people and protecting the rest of the population in the same way at Cambridge Public Schools. If your kids have an unidentified skin disease, they tell parents to keep them home.

[27:45] It's the same idea. And so that's why you could see that these lepers, instead of approaching Jesus, it says that they stood at a distance and lifted up their voice because they are not allowed to approach them.

[27:59] They might contaminate them and spread their disease. So they're shouting to Jesus from a distance, Lord have mercy on us. And they call Jesus Master, which is interesting because it's a word that only the disciples of Jesus and the apostles of Jesus use in the Gospel of Luke.

[28:15] And it's a recognition of his lordship, the fact that he represents God and the fact that he has the power to have mercy on them, that he is their superior. And they plead for mercy.

[28:27] And Jesus' response to them in verse 14 is curious. It says, when he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests. This is interesting because Old Testament law, the Jewish law, stipulated that leper is to show himself to the priest after he has been cleansed.

[28:46] It's a way of verifying that you have been cleansed. But Jesus here tells them to go and show themselves to the priests before their healing. Jesus' command does seem to promise healing, but it will only take effect when they step out in faith and obedience and start to go to the priest, to show themselves to the priest.

[29:09] And that's what happens at the end of verse 14. As they went, they were cleansed. And the word cleansed is used here to show that it's not just the physical healing that they receive, but it's also the ritual cleansing that they are now able to be admitted back into society, into the community of the people of God.

[29:28] And it says, after the healing in verses 15 to 16, that one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

[29:41] Now he was a Samaritan. This Samaritan recognizes that he was healed and comes to Jesus. And this time when he comes to Jesus, he does not have to stay at a distance and shout at Jesus.

[29:54] He runs right up to him and falls at his feet and praises God and he thanks Jesus for it. And the parallel phrases here, the fact that he turns back, praising God with a loud voice, but then he falls before Jesus' feet, giving him thanks, it shows that he recognizes that Jesus is God's representative, that Jesus healed him with God's power, that he is...

[30:19] And so he's humbling himself before Jesus as a master and as before a king. And the kicker at the end of all this, what's surprising is at the end of verse 15, now he was a Samaritan.

[30:35] This detail is added here for emphasis. We know from the Gospel of John that the Samaritans and Jews don't get along. The Samaritans were a mixed race of Jew and other nations.

[30:46] They were... And their theology was also a little bit mixed up. So the Jews considered them not only an ethnic half-breed, but also a religious heretic. And it's incredible that the hero of this story, the one person that comes back to thank Jesus, is a Samaritan.

[31:05] And Jesus comments on this surprising reality in verses 17 and 18, were not ten cleansed. Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?

[31:18] This is the only time in the entire New Testament that this Greek word for foreigner is used. It's in the Jewish temple. There was a wall that separated the Jewish sanctuary, the parts that Jews were admitted to, and the court of the Gentiles where the Gentiles, the farthest that the Gentiles could go in the temple.

[31:39] And in that wall, there was an inscription chiseled on the wall itself that read this, No foreigner is permitted inside the partition and wall around the temple.

[31:50] Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his ensuing death. It's a threat. You're not the chosen people of God.

[32:01] You cannot go beyond this point. So foreigner is a loaded word. It's the word that Jews used in order to alienate those of different ethnic descent.

[32:15] That alien, that pagan, that heathen, that gringo, that gook, that guelo.

[32:27] That's the kind of connotation that this word has. Jesus uses that word here intentionally to teach that God makes no racial or ethnic distinction when it comes to saving those who approach him in repentance and faith.

[32:44] That foreigner that you look down on was the only one who returned to give thanks. And Jesus commends that Samaritan and says to him, Rise and go your way.

[32:56] Your faith has made you well. More literally, it says, Your faith has saved you. It's the exact same phrase that Jesus used to speak to the sinful woman in chapter 7, verse 50 when he said, Your faith has saved you.

[33:11] and refers not only to the leper's physical healing and ritual cleansing and readmission to the community but also to his holistic salvation that he has repented of his sins and he's been accepted.

[33:26] It's an example really of what Jesus taught earlier that even the faith of a mustard seed can do, accomplish great things. They can uproot a mulberry tree and be planted.

[33:37] This Samaritan's life, that small faith that he had that Jesus can heal him and save him now has brought this foreigner into the kingdom of God in equal standing as citizens of his kingdom.

[33:50] And it's this faith that separated him from the other nine lepers. And this is an important distinction because the other nine lepers also benefited from Jesus' ministry.

[34:01] They were also healed of their physical disease but only the one who returned with Jesus in faith receives that pronunciation, the pronouncement your faith has saved you, your faith has made you well.

[34:16] And Jesus kind of made a, kind of gave an extended teaching on this earlier in chapter 11 that merely benefiting from Jesus' healing is not enough if you don't have faith.

[34:27] What good is it for you to receive healing for a disease if you're going to die without faith and perish forever? What good is it for you to have a demon exercised from you as Jesus said if you refuse to believe in Jesus and are filled by his Holy Spirit so that you remain vulnerable to these other evil spirits?

[34:44] The nine lepers did not return and so they misthought on the ultimate benefit of Jesus' ministry and this is important for us to heed as well. The church can offer financial help to people in need, emotional support to those who are struggling.

[35:00] It could offer recovery programs for addicts and do many other things but if you receive those benefits without repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus for salvation you're going to miss out on the ultimate benefit, the ultimate reason for which Christ came to save us and to grant us eternal life.

[35:20] We cannot just receive the gifts of God without receiving and repenting and receiving coming into relationship with the giver of all the good gifts himself. The temporal healing in this life must lead also to eternal salvation in the next life and that's why Jesus came.

[35:37] He came to save sinners like you and me. He was able to pronounce salvation on this Samaritan because as it says in verse 11 he was on the way to Jerusalem and in the Gospel of Luke that means he's on the way to die.

[35:51] On the way to Jerusalem to die for our sins on the cross. On the way to Jerusalem to be the perfect blameless Lamb of God the perfect Son of God who never sinned had no blemish on Him but taking on the blemish of all of our sins taking on our own leprosy upon Himself in order to pay for our sins on the cross and be raised to new life to save us so that we who were formerly cut off from the presence of God and we who formerly could only like these lepers stand at a distance and shout and plead for mercy that we can be brought near to God through Jesus and what He has done and be accepted into the family of God.

[36:31] That's what Jesus is on His way to do in Jerusalem and that's why because He knows that He can pronounce this salvation on this leper. And as I conclude I want to exhort some of you who may not have this faith in Jesus Christ yet.

[36:48] Some of you have not taken the step of faith. Maybe you're skeptical. Maybe you're holding on for more evidence. But I urge you to take the step of faith. As Jesus told the ten lepers in verse 14 go and show yourselves to the priests.

[37:04] It was only after they stepped out in faith to go to the priests that they received healing. A fourth century Christian pastor Augustine puts it this way faith is to believe what you do not see.

[37:17] The reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Don't wait to see so that you can believe. believe and stop it in faith and you will see and you will experience and you will receive the grace of God and His Holy Spirit.

[37:32] And that's really the main point that we should take away from this passage for us today. for chodzi MCNHGH for Pilgrim. Thank you for饌 Team...

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