I like cook outs. This 4th of July we celebrated our independence with a barbeque at the beach. Holidays are awesome. It gives us a reason to eat, a lot, and get away with it. But before we eat we pray in acknowledgement and appreciation to God for all He did, is doing, and will do in our lives. The Bible records a story about a former leper who did just that, gave thanks to God, while nine of his homies did the opposite.
As Jesus was walking by, 10 lepers yelled out for Him to heal them. He did. But, Scripture tells us only one of them came back to give thanks. 1
The story starts off pretty good. They were at a distance, or far from Jesus, but they called out to Him, none the less and Jesus heard them. Leprosy reminds me of sin; it’s a disease that starts from within then, you can see it from the outside. and it and keeps us a distance from God. We, for whatever reason, maybe guilt, we detach ourselves from the Lord.
Bette Midler had a song that I absolutely hated after I paid attention to the chorus called “From a Distance.” In it she says that God is watching us from a distance. Horrible! My God is not at a distance! My God is here, next to me! He’s close to the broken hearted. 2 And, the Bible teaches me that, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” 3 …God is with me then, too. I’m thinking about getting a youth group together to throw rotten tomatoes at her anytime we see her performing live! (Just kidding!) And, let’s say you do feel that God is being distant, and you feel you are alone, well, God is not the one that moved.” Sin makes us run from God, instead of running to Him. Isn’t that something!? Maybe that’s what happened with the other 9. They were healed physically but not mentally. They still were lepers in their minds. We see those kinds of people in our churches. They look good with their fancy Sabbath clothes on but on the inside they’re rotten.
You know what’s cool about Jesus, though? He knew that the other nine weren’t going to come back to say, ‘thanks,’ but He healed them, anyways. And, He did the same for us on the cross, while we were STILL sinners. 4 Everyone from Cain to Osama Bin Laden. No sin can be committed by man for which satisfaction has not been met on Calvary. 5
Now, that’s something to be thankful for!
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