Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that it's Thanksgiving this Thursday. And remind us, Lord, this is not just something that came up with our forefathers came up with, but your word reminds us to give thanks long before that. But we thank you that it is an American thing as well as a biblical thing as it should be. Lord, we pray for what we are about to receive truly make us thankful. Remind us of your heart and our need, our hearts, our need of you. That we would be grateful by grace and giving glory to Jesus. We ask it in his name, everybody said. All right, what does God owe you and what do you owe God? Those are the two questions we want to look at this morning and how we answer those questions shows what kind of relationship we have with Jesus Christ. What does God owe you and what do you owe God? I said this is owing all about. That has nothing to do with grace. Well, I get it. I get it. And yet this text is going to open up something hopefully for us. Some folks go through life thinking that God owes them something. Is that true? OK, and then they spend a lot of time grumbling about it when God fails to deliver. And even when they get what they wanted, they're always find something to complain about. Can you relate to that? OK, they're like the mother in the women's school parable whose son was swept away by a tornado and the woman cried out for help. Please, Lord, she said, bring back my boy. He's all I have. I'll do anything to get him back. And suddenly her son fell from the sky right at her feet, a little shaken, but safe and sound. And as the mother joyfully embraced her son, she noticed something was missing. So she she glared up at the heavens and she said he had a hat, Lord. Hey, there's always something to what? Yeah, to complain about. On the other hand, other people have this attitude of gratitude. And they understand that God doesn't owe him anything, that even the smallest blessings from God are a gift of his grace, that everything he does deserves thankful praise from us. Amen. Well, two kinds of people. Who are you like? Now, if we just look at that in terms of moralism, are you a thankful person or are you not a thankful person? That is not what the text is saying, by the way. OK. The thankfulness of the one Samaritan, who came back and gave thanks, showed that he was truly saved. That's the point of the text. Because I could here's the here's the question, why are some people grumblers while other people are grateful to God? And it has to do with the condition of our hearts, which comes back to what we think God owes us and what we owe him, because all the gifts from God are meant to point us to who? To the giver. Amen. Amen. So and causes to thank him. So in our passage today, Jesus heals 10 lepers, but only one returns to give thanks. Could it be that nine out of 10 people never thank God for what he's done for them? It's an interesting point, isn't it? I'm reminded of the rabbi in Budapest, a man went to a rabbi and he complained, he said, life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do? Someone told me this morning about my room just being as small as the foyer in the front. It's like, is it your room? Well, he came in, he said, we got nine of us living in one room. What can I do? The rabbi said, take your goat into your room with you. The man said, I can't do that. The rabbi insisted. Do as I say and come back in a week. A week later, the man came back looking more distraught than before. We cannot stand it, he told the rabbi. The goat is filthy. The rabbi told him, go home, let the goat out, and come back and see me in a week. A radiant man returned to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, Life is beautiful! He said, we enjoy every minute of it now. There's no goat, only the nine of us. It reminded me of this story, amen? Maybe you need to let the goat in at home, amen? Maybe you need to let the goat in at work. I don't know. Maybe you need to let the goat in at church. Maybe there are some goats here this morning. I'm not trying to make fun of nobody. No sheep and goats, right? But just think about it. What's the truth of our text? It's so simple. That heartfelt, humble gratitude to Jesus is an evidence of saving faith. That's why it glorifies God. It's so simple. There's your sermon in a sentence. Now we can all go home, right? Maybe. But really, what we have is it's one story. Jesus heals 10 lepers, one comes back. It's one story, but it's two stories within one story. What do I mean? Well, first we have 10 lepers healed physically. If you look at your outline in the back of your bulletin, but we only have one sinner that's saved what? Spiritually. So that's what we want to look at this text. Verse 10, lepers healed physically. You see it in verse eleven. He's on his way to Jerusalem. He's got to pass through or along between Samaria and Galilee, enters a village. He was met by ten lepers stood at a distance. They're lifting up their voice, saying, Jesus, master keyword, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, notice he saw he said, go and show yourself to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. OK, he's got to go between. Galilee and Samaria. Why? Because the Samaritans and Jews weren't on good terms and because the Galileans tried to throw him off the cliff. You can see that in Luke chapter four. He's concerned, I would say he's concerned mainly for his disciples' safety, not his own. He could call the angels down and nothing's going to happen, right? I mean, he's not concerned for his own safety, but for theirs. But as he entered a village, he's 10 lepers stood at a distance and they're crying out for mercy. Why? Leprosy is like a living death that corrupted a person's body a little at a time so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell off. So we would say in a sense that these lepers were like walking graves. Yikes. You've seen horror stories. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you don't watch this stuff and that's probably better. But if you watch anything like movies like The Mummy and things like that. Yikes. Right. So leprosy, people, lepers and all that, your skin begins to just rot and fall off. But here's the point. In addition to their physical pain, they were social outcasts and the law proclaimed them unclean and they were excluded from worship in the temple. Scripture likens leprosy to sin being an outward picture of an inward spiritual death. So like leprosy, sin gradually spreads its malignant virus through the whole person and it separates us from God and it separates us from people. It's a great picture of sin when you think of it. OK, in terms of illustrating material. The difference is this, that we're all born into sin. It's a universal epidemic. And though there's no cure for leprosy, there is a cure for sin. What is the cure for sin? The life and the death of Jesus Christ. Amen. It's the gospel. And without that cure, without the gospel, sin will always lead to eternal death. So that's why leprosy is a fitting, a great picture of our sinful condition. Now, notice the text that though the lepers had kept their distance physically, they didn't keep quiet. And why? They had heard of Jesus power to heal people physically. They knew that he was their only hope of being made well. And notice what they called him. They addressed him as master because they knew that he had a total command over disease and death. They realized their need of his mercy. Here's the question. Do you do I realize? My need of mercy. So here's the question, why do so many people in our world reject Jesus Christ? I think it's a fair question. Why? Why? It's our proud refusal to acknowledge our true condition as spiritual lepers. We're all prone to say, hey, I may have my faults. After all, I'm only human. And then we say, but I'm not a terrible sinner. I'm not as bad as So and so. Right. And you could fill in the blank. Many people say, I'm basically a good person. Right. That's what the Pharisees said about themselves. And they rejected God's Savior. They rejected Jesus. Here's the thing. Who needs the Savior if you're a good person? Right. But nobody's what Jesus said, nobody's good compared to God. Right. That's the point. That's how the lukewarm church of Laodicea thought of themselves. We're rich and we have become wealthy and we have need of nothing. They had need of Jesus, but we all need God's mercy. Unbelievers and believers, we all need the gospel. I think maybe this is the point that I struggle with it. Twenty one years of pastoring, almost 31 years of being a Christian. Or 32. It just seems like people think, well, once I got the gospel, once I'm saved, I'm in. I mean, now it's coast time. I hit the cruise control. I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago. The cruise control, now I can just cruise, right? Isn't this the long drive to heaven? Hit that button and then we're good. No, no. Think of it. If the lepers had fought, hey, we may be sick, but we're not that bad. Would they have cried out to Jesus for mercy? No, no. But they knew they were goners unless God in his power had mercy on them. And so they acknowledge their desperate condition before Jesus. And so must we. Somebody said that mercy is not getting what you deserve. What do we deserve? Eternity in hell. And it's not fun to make. It's not funny to make jokes about hell. I know I'm tempted at times when somebody says, oh, where are you from? You know, or you ask somebody where they're from and they say Texas, that big hot place. I get it. But the point being is that that's where we end up hell forever without God's mercy. And you remember the politician, we say politician, you could say it. Anybody you say pastor, you could say say priest. I mean, we make jokes and it's interesting that. But the politician that after receiving the proofs of a portrait, he was very upset at the photographer and he stormed back and he said, this picture doesn't do me justice. And he said, sir, he said, with a face like yours, you need mercy. You don't need justice, you need mercy. And the same is true of us. But I wouldn't say with a face like ours, I would say with a what? Heart like ours, we need what? Mercy. That's the that's the point. And the good news is that God delights to show mercy to those who cry out to him for it. His holiness demands that he judges sin. Oh, yeah. But his mercy on those He has mercy on those who call on him and trust in his son. Here's the thing. Don't think that you have to get cleaned up before you can come to God. The answer is you can't. You won't. He won't accept you if you try to come on any other basis than through his son. Come as you are. The ten lepers did. What if they said, well, we got to get cleaned up before we can call on him. It didn't happen. It wasn't going to happen. And Jesus saw their misery and he had what mercy on them. But notice how he did it. Notice the text. He told them to go show themselves to the priests. Here's a question. Did they take his command as a promise that they'd be healed? Was his word like food to their faith? What did they have to lose? They'd be foolish not to act on his word. Here's the background behind this. The priests were like public health inspectors. I know what that's like. I used to manage restaurants. Some people pay them, you know that, right? Because then they can know when they're coming in, they can have it all spiffy ahead of time. But when they showed up, it was like panic time. Public health inspectors, the priest would examine people's skin to determine whether they could return to the community or not. And in a sense, then Jesus was commanded them to do something that only a cured leper could do. In other words, if you had leprosy, and you go show yourself to the priest, guess what? If you had leprosy, and there was any question that you still had it, you wouldn't be going to the priest. Unless there was a question that maybe there could be a chance of healing, right? A chance of remission, we might say, that the cancer has gone into remission, or something like that. Because it was such a communicable disease. The point being is, He's answering their cry for mercy by telling them to go to the priest. And they could have objected that they'd only look like fools in their present condition, but they simply took Jesus at his word and they went. And notice verse 14. It was as they were going that they were cleansed or healed. So Jesus met them in the path of obedience. Now, this is so applicable and how so do you do I demand that we see before we believe? The lepers didn't, did they? No. They didn't have to know how it all turned out. If they had indulged in their doubts, they would have died lepers. Somebody said this. Understanding can wait. Obedience can't wait. Right? Faith steps out looking and feeling no better, but believing that God is faithful, whose promise and as we go, we're cleansed. Question. Does that mean that every obedient Christian will be healed of every disease? The answer is. He said, well, what determines whether God heals or not? God does. Because he's sovereign, amen? We have to leave that with him. But Jesus is saying that in the path of trustful obedience is where God meets us and where God blesses us, whatever that blessing looks like. Question, is it because we've earned it? Never. Never. Does God owe us that healing? Not at all. He's simply being faithful to his word, for he cannot deny himself. Was this a miracle? And the answer is, Yeah. Yeah. So Jesus just said the word, and all ten lepers were totally cleaned, totally healed by the word of His power, by which He upholds all things, right? Sometimes we do this, we read over these stories, and, what did you read this morning? Oh, Luke 17. What did you read about? Oh, I guess part of it was the ten lepers. Pretty exciting story, I guess, but, you know. What's for lunch? Really? Could you imagine, if you're one of the lepers, the wild celebration that broke out? I mean, looking at each other's skin, touching it, can it be true? They must have been just elated! Excited! But the main emphasis in the text is not so much on the miraculous cure that they received, as on how they responded to God's mercy in the miracle. That's the emphasis of the text. What do I mean? It's possible to receive special blessing from God in answer to prayer, such as healing from a serious illness, and yet to fall short of that best blessing of all. What's that? This healing of the nine lepers was only skin deep, we could say. Which brings us then to the scene shifting to the return of one thankful Samaritan, and brings us secondly to one sinner being spiritually saved. Look at it in verse 15. Then, that's where the text just gives us a transition. 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. Now, he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, Were there not ten clans? Where are the nine? That's what I should have titled it, huh? Where are the nine? He's asking these questions. Was no one found to return and give praise to God except his foreigner? And he said to him, Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. A text says when he saw that he'd been healed, he turned back. Right. But didn't the nine also see that they'd been healed? The answer is. Yeah, but something happened differently in this man's heart. Something was born in his heart that wasn't born in the heart of the nine. He saw the same results as they did, but he saw with new eyes. The nine only grasped the healing. This man grasped the healer. That's the issue here. The man saw beyond the gift to the giver, do we? And this is what somebody, they said, why didn't the nine return to thank Jesus? We don't know. But here's nine suggested reasons why. And I love this. One waited to see if the cure was real. Maybe you can relate to that. Another waited to see if it would last. A third waited, you know, he would see what Jesus later, he'd go and thank him later. The fourth, well, he decided that he never had leprosy in the first place. A fifth said, well, he'd gotten well anyway. A sixth, he gave the glory to the priests. A seventh said, oh, well, Jesus didn't really do anything. And eight said any rabbi could have done that. And a ninth said, I was already much improved. In other words, all the excuses we could give for not giving what? Thanks, right? And while all that speculation, I agree, one thing is for sure, that truth is never determined by majority. Amen. Isn't that right? It was nine against ten, and this man thought that he should return to Jesus. They didn't. Question, what would you have done if you had stood alone against the nine? In the Reformation, Martin Luther stood against the world of his day. He stood with and for the truth. And so God and one still make a majority, amen? That's the point. You feel alone, Christian? You feel like, wow, the world is against me. Yes, but God is for you. So what would it matter who's against you, right? The nine took Jesus for granted. They treated him like a cosmic butler instead of the suffering servant. They didn't think of what they owed him. They didn't think they owed him anything, in fact, not even their Thanksgiving. In a response to the miracle, it's all representative of humanity that 90 percent of people never thank God at all. And one out of 10, we say ain't good. Amen. Let me illustrate it for you. Thankfulness seems to be a lost art today. This is what way one person illustrated the problem in his in his story about a ministerial student in Evanston, Illinois who was part of a life-giving squad. It was 1860 and a ship went aground on the shore of Lake Michigan near Evanston and Edward Spencer was the guy's name. He waded in again and again into the frigid water and he rescued 17 passengers. In the process his health was permanently damaged. And some years later at the funeral, guess how many people came to the funeral that he rescued? Guess how many people thanked him that he rescued? None. The same amount. None. And yet, listen to the contrast in this. Amazing. Maybe I remember the Rickenbacker Causeway in Florida, where I grew up, named after Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. You ever heard of him? Maybe you haven't. Okay. Amazing story that Lickenbacker was on a mission, a B-17 mission, 1942, to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour that would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of life. Now just contrast this guy, Captain Eddie Lickenbacker, with all these people that this Spencer guy, Edward Spencer, saved. Somewhere over the Pacific, South Pacific, the flying fortress that he was in became lost beyond the radio and fuel was dangerously low. So the men ditched the plane in the ocean for nearly a month. Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, the weather and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their raft. The largest raft was nine by five feet, in other words. And the biggest shark was 10 feet long. It's an interesting story, but I'll cut to the chase. Of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable, starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone and destroyed by the salt water, or destroyed by salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them, and a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie's own words, Cherry, that was the B-17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, read the service that afternoon, and they finished with a prayer. In other words, they're having a church service as they're out at sea. That is fascinating to me. And so they finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. And there was some talk, but it tapered off. And with the oppressive heat, he says, with my hand, I pulled my hat down over my eyes to keep out of some glare. I dozed off. And this is what he said. Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a seagull. I don't know how I knew. I just knew. Everyone else knew it, too. No one said a word. But peering from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces and they were glaring at the goal. The goal meant food. If I could catch it and the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the goal. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because of one Lonely seagull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. And we know that Captain Eddie made it. What's the big deal about that? So what? OK, so they're saved because he caught a seagull that gave its life involuntarily, unlike Jesus, right? But here's the point. Captain Eddie never forgot. What do I mean? Because every Friday evening about sunset on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast, you could see an old man walking, white haired, bushy eyebrows, slightly bent, and his bucket filled with shrimp. Guess what he was going out to feed? Seagulls. He never forgot. If he would thank seagulls for saving his life, do you think we would thank Jesus for saving ours? Amen? What a story! His bucket filled with shrimp to feed the gulls to remember that one which on a day long past gave itself without a struggle like manna in the wilderness." That is just powerful to me. I love stories like that. Just reminding us what? To give thanks. To give thanks. And we are usually tempted to think, inclined to think that ungratitude is a small sin. This is what Paul said. He said, for even though they knew God, they did not honor him or give him thanks. And so ingratitude is a way of saying that God owes me whatever he gives me and I owe him nothing in return. It's a reversal of positions. God owes me nothing and I owe him everything. Yeah. So and someone else said this, that ingratitude is an assault, a direct assault on God's glory. We don't give him thanks. We don't glorify him. We don't thank him for his blessings. We refuse to give him the praise that he rightly deserves. Think about this. Would you say that gratitude or ingratitude characterizes the church today? Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's all too common where we are nearly as likely to hear people complaining about their circumstances as praising God for them. We sung it. Do you count your many blessings? Name them one by one. Right. Are you remembering to thank God for your present trials? Are you? Am I trusting that he will use those to grow us in godliness? Or do we take God for granted? Do we forget to praise him for everything he does? Or are we grumbling about every little thing that goes wrong? Are we like the nine lepers who receive so much from Jesus and never think about thanking him? Or are we like the one who returns immediately when he was healed to give thanks to Jesus. Here's the question. Do we forget Jesus once he's met our needs or do we find our joy in him? Now, again, we could just pray and be on our way. But here's a question. Let's look at the text and ask if we are like this one thankful Samaritan, how would we know? Well, from his response, notice he glorified God enthusiastically with a loud voice. In the Greek, it is phonase, megalase. We got our word megaphone from it. Right. It's very what? Loud. OK, this man megaphone his praise to God. Now, here's the thing. But what if somebody gets embarrassed? What if somebody is offended by me getting excited and enthusiastic? We expected of the preacher, but not a person in the pew. Really? So here's my point. If someone gets offended by your enthusiasm, let them be offended. Amen. Go get all excited. Lucy knows that song. Go get all excited. Go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King. Amen. Jesus said healed him. And this guy's going to make it known. His glad praise should be part of every person. Every person whose heart has been healed by Jesus' mighty power. Here's the question. Is your praise of Jesus enthusiastic? Is it heartfelt? This man's was. But it was also humble. Notice that he what? He threw himself down at the Lord's feet. We might say, well, you know, it's not the position of the body that matters. It's the condition of your heart. Yeah, but this man's heart was being expressed through his body, ain't it? Isn't that right? His actions were an indication of how he saw himself in comparison to the Lord. Lord's high and lifted up. He's got to be low and humble. Is that how we see ourselves in comparison to the Lord? The man knew that he didn't deserve to be healed, and he begins to to come to grips with the sense of his own unworthiness. And why? Because he experienced the mercy of God. That's the point, isn't it? It's a deep sense of our own unworthiness. That's the secret of a thankful heart. The root of humility bears the flower of what? Thankfulness. Here's the thing. Have you ever met anybody that says, why me during trials? You say, John, that's me. You've said this, haven't you? Why me? Why this? Why now? Right. That's what we're prone to ask. I'm prone to ask it, but here's what I'm seeing in the text. There's only one out of 10 that would say, God, why would you choose to save me? Interesting question, isn't it? Why me? When I think about my neighbors that aren't saved, I say, why would you choose to save me? I'm not any better than them. Right. If you think that he saved you because he saw something in you or you have some inclination in your heart towards him before you were saved, then you will never ask that question. By the way, those things aren't true. He saw that I was a rascal before I was saved. He knew to a certain degree I'd be a rascal after I was saved. OK, and he's still getting the rascal out of me. Amen. It's a true story. True story. God's grace is free, sovereign, unearned and undeserved. And only the person who feels his or her debt to God and remembers that he or she received nothing but hell forever will daily be blessing and praising God. So true thankfulness is not only heartfelt, enthusiastic, it's also humble. What? Lying low before the Lord. And if this man had said, I'm nobody, Lord. It was as if he's saying, I'm nobody, why would you heal me? Would here's a question, would you rather be nobody at Jesus feet or somebody without him? That's that's the question. In the Maasai tribe in West Africa, they have an unusual way of saying thank you. This is what they do. They bow and they put their forehead on the ground and they say in that language, my head is in the dirt. My head is in the dirt. Another African tribe expresses gratitude by sitting for a long time in front of the person's hut who did the favor for them and literally saying, I sit on the ground before you. It's interesting, because I think what happens is that Africans understand what Thanksgiving is and why it's difficult for us at its core. Thanksgiving is an act of what? Humility. It acknowledges what? I owe everything to the person that did something for me. That person didn't have to what? Do anything for me. But they what? They did. We owe God everything. He owes us nothing. He daily loads us with benefits, the Bible says. And then in verse 17, 18, lastly, Jesus asked some questions. But they aren't addressed to anyone in particular. Notice they're addressed to the crowd, the people around him, right? His disciples, people that were traveling with him. And of course, maybe the one thankful leper. Jesus says, hey, because I think we're supposed to answer them not with our lips, but with our lives. Were there not ten clans? Yes, Lord, we would say. And a yes answer. But the nine, where are they? Well, they're not at your feet, Lord, where they should be. And then he asked, was no one found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? We would say, well, no one, Lord. What's Jesus point? There's two points to the story. And then we'll look at three lessons and we're done. One is that Jesus often gets least where he expects the most. What do you mean? The text implies that the other nine were probably Jews. And the Jews were highly privileged. They had the covenants. They had God's law. They had the promises, the prophets. They had the land and much, much more. To whom much is given, much is required. That's what the text says. That's what Luke 14 says, right? And they forgot God. They took his blessings for granted. The Jews did. And even when the Messiah came, he came to his own and he received him not. They rejected Jesus. That should be a warning to us. What do you mean, Sean? The longer that you and I have the gospel, the greater the danger becomes that we take it for granted. It's called the peril of privilege. The peril of privilege. America has had the gospel for over two centuries. But here's the question. What fruit have we borne with it? What fruit have we borne with the good news that we must never trust in our position or our privileges as if we're safe and secure? by merely having them. Instead, we must what we must show that we've improved what God gives us by a worshipful attitude of gratitude. Sometimes God gets what he gets least where he expects the let's flip flop it. Sometimes Jesus gets most where he expects least. Isn't that true? This man was a Samaritan. They didn't enjoy all the privileges and opportunities of God's peculiar people. He was only acquainted with the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and yet he returned to thank Jesus. What's the application of that? If the first one is don't take anything for granted, don't take the gospel for granted. The second is this, never write anyone off spiritually because of his or her race or because of the place that they live in or because of their social status or whatever else you would think. Like that person, that person so and such and such into such and such. They'll never become a Christian. Don't even think that, amen? We only say it because we think at first, right? What do I mean? Remember that in Jesus' day, tax collectors and prostitutes pressed into the king before the Pharisees and scribes. And neither should we despair, even of the most ignorant or the most atheistic person. What do I mean? There was a feud between the Samaritans and the Jews, and it was bitter. And yet this man returns to thank his Jewish deliverer. The answer is, yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's my point. Reach out to anybody and everybody with the gospel. Amen. Don't write anybody off. It's never too late until they're dead. Amen. So, Jesus, you see, he gets what we say most, he gets most where he expects the least or least where he expects the most in this particular case. And then these three messages, what are we supposed to learn from this passage? Three lessons. Jesus is grieved by our ingratitude. Now, if you say, duh, great. That's good. That we are meant to sense the disappointment in Jesus questions. As far as we know, the nine never returned to Jesus. And it's frighteningly possible to receive his gifts in vain. Question, does our ingratitude deny us his mercies? And the answer is no. He's merciful over all his works. Isn't that true? It's true. But it denies us him. Interesting. Well, I like his gifts, I just don't want him. Wow. Jesus administered no punishment to the nine lepers for their ingratitude, he just left them with his gifts and themselves. That's profound to me. To have him without his mercies will be better than to have his mercies without him. Think of it. Secondly, though, not only that Jesus is grieved by our ingratitude, Jesus is glorified by our gratitude. Luke tells us not once but twice this man glorified God when he thanked Jesus. He glorified the father as he falls down at Jesus feet. So the thankful Samaritan was shown that Jesus is who? God. He's glorifying who? God. By thanking who? Jesus. God and Jesus, God's glory and Jesus' mercy were so blended together in this man's mind that he couldn't separate them, and neither can we if we truly know Jesus and His mercy. In other words, what the text is saying is that how you treat Jesus is how you treat who? God the Father. And most of us pray more than we praise, and yet prayer will last only for this lifetime. How long will praise last? Forever. Maybe we're just practicing now for then. Amen? There's a good reason to praise the Lord every day. Amen. So praise the Lord isn't a cliche. It's the most repeated command in the whole Bible, and it should characterize the life of every believer. Lastly, though, third lesson, gratitude for God's mercy in Christ reveals saving faith. The Samaritan came. He came as a foreigner, but he left as a citizen of Christ's kingdom. A literal translation of verse 19 is your faith has saved you, not made you well or healed you, but saved you. The ten were healed, but only one was made whole. A grateful heart is a blessing, but Jesus is not teaching salvation by thankful disposition. No, no, no. Rather, Jesus teaches us here that where there is true faith, there is profound thankfulness in the heart. Isn't that the point of the text? Beloved, why is gratitude so rare? A text tells me it's not hard to get to see. It's that faith in Christ is so rare. Isn't that true? When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? It's a good question. Luke 18 asks in the next chapter. It's not enough for us to obey him. It's not enough for us to be grateful when he restores our health or grant some other blessing. We will be saved forever only if we come to Jesus in faith, if we trust him the way the leper did and worship him at his feet. Charles Spurgeon was sharing the gospel with a very talkative woman who was beginning to understand the good news when she burst out. Oh, Mr. Spurgeon, if Christ saves me, he'll never hear the end of it. I like that. I like that. She was right. Jesus will never hear the end of it, because salvation lasts for how long? Forever. And therefore, his grace demands eternal gratitude. We'll be thanking him forever for healing us of something far worse than leprosy. And what's that? Sin. Amen. It's the gospel good news to you this morning. It was to the leper who was healed. Gifts are good, but gifts aren't God. Amen. And verse 11 says Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He was on his way to the. The cross. For you and I, do you know him if you don't turn from your sin and trust in him? And if you do know him, be encouraged. Jesus thought of you as he went to the cross. Trust him today. You will not be disappointed in the long run. You'll see it was his appointment for you. Amen.