Give Glory To God

We are in the ministry of Jesus. We’ve been doing exegesis study. What could be better than studying Jesus?

Today, we’re going to pick up with Jesus. Can I show this on the map? Jesus is going to be traveling between Galilee, where a lot of Jewish people live, and Samaria, to where a lot of Samaritans live. He’s traveling down to Judea, and this is the account where he heals the 10 lepers.

Do you want to do some Bible study? Let’s jump in. “Now, on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, 10 men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us. When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourself to the priests. As they went, they were healed.”

Now, there’s one more slide in the scripture, but I just want to point out this is a little bit different than in Matthew 8, where Jesus healed one single leper. Famously, he touched the leper in Matthew 8. In this passage, just with a word, not even touching them, he heals 10 lepers at once.

Now, in the Old Testament law, if a person with a skin disease got healed, they were supposed to go see a priest. He’s telling them, I’m assuming this miracle, you guys are healed. Go and see the priests because you’re healed. They go, and as they go, they’re healed. Let’s keep reading.

“One of them, when he was healed, came back, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned for what? To give praise to God, except this foreigner. Then he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well.”

Now, when we try to study this passage and see what we can learn or how we can grow, I would like to ask this question. What is important to Jesus in this passage? What does Jesus want you and I to learn from this passage. Let’s read the crux of the passage again. This is the culmination of the story in verses 15 through 18. It says, What does Jesus want?

It says, One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, ‘We’re not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? ‘ I don’t know what you’re getting out of it. I’ll give you my three things that I got out of this, and it’s this.

I believe that Jesus is showing us a foreigner, an outsider who’s worthy of invitation. Do you see that? He’s not a Jewish guy. Jesus calls him a foreigner. He’s an outsider worthy of invitation. The second thing is that Jesus is saying, has no one else come to give glory to God? The third thing that I think Jesus thinks is appropriate and right for us is to show thankfulness, to show gratitude. I’m going to be using those two terms as the same definition as synonyms. What do you want to do with these three points? Is there room for you to grow in these three areas? Are you open to change in these three areas?

What I’m asking of you is this, to come to this text with an open, humble heart. I don’t want you to come to this text going, I’m already as grateful as I need to be. I’m already given glory to God as much as I need to, and I can learn from anyone. Is there any room for growth? Here’s what I want to ask you. Let this passage challenge you. Just let Jesus challenge you to grow in these areas.

Let’s start with the foreigner. Who’s the foreigner? This is an interesting question. Is the foreigner from far away? Not really. If you’ll notice on the map, you got Jewish people, Samaritan people, Jewish people. The foreigner is the guy next door. The Jews didn’t want to associate with the Samaritans, and there was a lot of racial and cultural prejudice in this setting. The Jews would come down to Samaria, they would not go through Samaria.

By the way, that’s what’s remarkable about Jesus’s discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well, was he led his disciples through Samaria, which the Jewish people didn’t do. Another story, different day. But they usually would go around Samaria down to the Jordan River to go down to Jerusalem for the holidays like Pentecost and the Passover and the other holidays.

Who’s the foreigner? Is the foreigner that we could learn from, someone who’s racially or ethnically different than we are? Well, maybe, but our congregation right now is already diverse, which by the way, is the power of God. I am very proud, not that we’re perfect, not that we don’t have stuff to work on and grow on, but I’m really grateful and proud to be in a church, as Jesus called it. I think I have the scriptures here, he called it a church for all nations. That’s what church is supposed to be like. He said, “Is it not written? My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a den of robbers.” He was rebuking some people. But Jesus’s vision for us is to live together in diversity, aiming for unity. Amen? Amen.

I don’t think the foreigner is someone who’s a different race from me in this particular setting. That’s not how I would apply it to me. Is it the immigrant? Is the immigrant something where I’m not going to usually learn from them? I don’t think that’s the case either.

We have plenty of immigrants who are members in our church right now. I want to propose this. Since it was hard for the Jews to learn from the Samaritans, who’s it hard to learn from today? I would propose one category, the person who’s not a churchgoer, the person who doesn’t know the Bible, the person who does not already have a strong, well-established lifestyle as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Can I learn from the visitor? Can a Christian learn from a non-Christian? Can an old person learn from a young person? Can somebody who knows the Bible very well learn from somebody who’s just getting started on the Bible? No. Well, what is it about the Samaritan that makes him worthy of imitation? It’s not his Bible knowledge. It’s not the fact that he knew the Jewish faith better than the Jewish guys because he did not. Here’s what he knew. He knew to glorify God. He knew to give him thanks and praise. I tell you, there’s a lot of young Christians who just became a Christian or somebody who’s studying the Bible to become a Christian who sometimes have better hearts than we do. They know what it feels like to need God.

They know what it feels like to value the forgiveness of sins. Have you and I forgotten that? I think we need to have the humility to learn greater godliness from anyone. We should be able to learn from anyone. Jesus said this in the King James that uses the term babes. “He said, the Sadducee said to Jesus, Do you hear what these children are saying about you? Yes, replied Jesus. Have you never read from the lips of children? The King James says, From the lips of babes and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise.”

Sometimes from the lips of babes, we need to learn. We need to be teachable. While we’re talking about that, do you have the enthusiasm and the devotion of a new convert? Do you still feel that way? Are you sharing your faith better and more enthusiastically than when you first became a Christian? Are you studying your Bible like you did when you first became a Christian? Do you have a type of devotion and a type of gratitude that you had when you first got saved? Listen to what Jesus says in Revelation 2. Talking to the church in Ephesis, Jesus says, I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lambstand from its place. Can we learn from anybody? Can we learn from somebody where the freshness of God is powerful in their life? Let us have that heart. Are you willing to keep digging into the scriptures here? Let’s talk about giving glory to God. Do you recognize any of these people? So these are superlatives. These are the best at what they do. Usain Bolt is retired from competition, but he still holds the world record at 100 meters as the fastest runner who’s ever been measured in modern history. This is the best guy on the planet that we know of. Steve Jobs, who’s the greatest businessman ever? I don’t know, but he’s right on up there. He’s in the conversation, a business and technology genius. Let me talk to you about Julie Andrews. I know it’s a dated illustration. Julie Andrews singing out in the field in the sound of music. She had a five-octave voice. I’m going to sing an octave for you, all right?

Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Let’s go. All right. I’m done. First of all, that wouldn’t have been a nice, pretty sounding octave, but I can’t sing much lower and I can’t sing much higher. Julie Edars could sing five octaves. That’s why Mary Pappins never sounded like she was training on any note she was singing. These people did not give themselves their abilities. Usain Bolt did not make himself fast. Steve Jobs did not make himself a genius. God made Steve Jobs with the talents and the gifts and abilities that he had. Same with Usain Bolt. You could train every bit as hard as Usain Bolt and sprinting. What’s going to happen? You ain’t going to win because you don’t have the gift. Do you guys remember American idol? Where people who wanted to be like Julie Andrews thought they were like Julie Andrews and were measurably not like Julie Andrews, those people would have given anything on American idol to give themselves the gift of professional, vocal performance. They were, we saw it, unable. Are you stealing God’s glory? Or are you giving glory to God for the strengths, the talents, and the abilities that you have?

Here’s a question to ask. How does God feel about people stealing the glory for themselves? Let’s read it on account in the Old Testament of Moses. This is a very important event in the life of Moses and a lesson for us all. In numbers chapter 20, this is going to take two slides. The Lord said to Moses, take the staff and you and your brother Aaron, gather the assembly together. Speak to the rock. He didn’t say, strike the rock. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will pour out water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community, so they and their livestock can drink. Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, must we… Oops, he says, “Must we bring you water out of this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice. I think he struck it twice because it didn’t come out the first time. He struck it twice with his staff, water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust in me enough to… Here we go. Honor me as holy in the sight of the usualites. You will not bring this community into the land I give them. How does God feel about having his glory stolen?”

What he told Moses, who has spent 40 years leading the people to the promised land, is you’re not going into the promised land now that you attempted to steal my glory and take credit for water from the rock as something that you did on your own. This is what it says in Isaiah 42. I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. Is God being arrogant? I don’t think so because He made us. He made the universe. It is proper, fitting, and appropriate to give God all the praise. What’s arrogant is when we don’t do that. I hope that we will have a heart to give God the praise.

Are you a self-made man? Are you a self-made woman? Are you making that six-figure salary? Have you risen in education because of your hard work and your diligence?

Listen to this warning. This is really helpful, I think, for us to have a godly heart. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, your God, failing to observe his commands, His laws, and decrees that I am giving to you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build the houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied, we get over there. Then your heart will become proud.”

Isn’t that human nature? I think we do better with poverty than prosperity. I’m just saying. We do better with poverty than prosperity because prosperity is spiritually dangerous because a lot of us can’t handle prosperity. Then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. For you may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands produce the wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth and to confirm his covenant, which he swore to his ancestors as it is today.

I’m doing something uncomfortable. I’m trying to preach so that it’s convicting to you guys, but I have this same problem. I can get conceited. Conceited means where you have an inaccurately high value of yourself. You have a wrong way of viewing yourself. I hope that all of us will remember and give God credit where credit is due. These guys sure did.

I love this picture of Usain Bolt saying, We all know where my speed really comes from. Drew Brees, the Super Bowl winner. Steph Curry gives praise to God so much they make memes and posters out of his sayings all the time. He’s a great example of a man giving glory to God. How are you doing in giving glory to God? I have some suggestions. First of all, give glory to God in your thought life. When you’re alone, you’re driving in the car or you’re walking down the road, or you’re alone in your thoughts, are you thinking how wonderful you are? Are you thinking how skilled you are? There was a preacher when I was a young man named Martin Bentley who said, If we don’t control our thoughts, our thoughts drift in four different directions.

I’m not sure I can remember them all. One was lust, one was materialism, and one was pride, and I don’t remember the fourth. But I thought about that over the years. I’m either thinking lustful thoughts, I’m either thinking materialistic thoughts, what car I want, what house I want, what possessions I want. I’m thinking about how wonderful I am. Oh, the last category was resentment. A lot of times it was like, the next time I see that person, I’m going to tell them this because they’re probably going to tell me that. Then I’m going to say this to them. We need to control our thought life. Amen? Amen. That’s not brainwashing, but it is brain cleaning. Listen to what the scriptures say about our mind. For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, do not think, there’s the word think, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought. Here’s the word think again, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Can you be proud of your talents? I say yes, but the way you should be proud of your talents, Galatians 6:4 says this, is without comparing yourself to other people, you can say, I thank God that I can sing one octave.

I thank God for my artistic ability or the level of intelligence or the level of education or my athletic ability or my ability to relate to people or whatever your strengths are. Even taking into account your weaknesses, I think we should say, God, I thank you and I praise you for what you’ve given me. I love using the talents you’ve given me to the fullest ability. I love the successes and the victories that come from using the talents God that you gave me. But I do remember you gave them to me. That’s my suggestion to you for our thought life.

The next thing is, do you value God’s glory? Do you care about it? Is it in your value system? One of the things I care about is the glory of God. Can you say that? If you can’t say that, I would recommend developing this value. I value that God’s name, his reputation, who he is, is glorified in any way that I can contribute to that. The last way to give praise to God that I wanted to bring up is in your own words. This is a little tricky because sometimes we can praise God to exalt ourselves.

Somebody comes up to you. I do a lot of Bible teaching. Here’s a common struggle for me to stay humble. Somebody comes up to me and says, Joe, that lesson was really helpful to me. I could do the fake glorification God thing. You want to see it? I am only as good as God has made me. Anything that I am is from God working through me. Sometimes actually, sometimes the best way to handle it, this is not really taking glory away from God. Sometimes the best thing to do is just say thank you. Thank you. I’m glad it could help. But when they start gushing, No, you’ve really helped me so much. Then they cross the line and you have to do that. You have to say, Look, any way I’ve been able to help you is coming from God. I just need to give glory where glories do. All right, we’re in the third and final lap. Let’s talk about Jesus-approved gratitude.

What is thankfulness? A thankfulness that Jesus would consider thankfulness. If you were cured of incurable leprosy, disfiguring leprosy, would you be grateful? Actually, let’s read it one more time. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Nine out of 10. Jesus asked, Wait a second, were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? The statistics could be construed this way. Nine out of 10 people are not as grateful as they should be. Are you with me? Yeah. Sure, I’d be grateful that I was cured of leprosy. Would it be a Jesus-approved level of gratitude? Well, 9 out of 10 of those guys did not have that type of gratitude. Here’s the challenge I think we see from the scripture. If your gratitude doesn’t show in your actions, do you have a Jesus-approved level of gratitude? We often make the mistake of judging other people by their actions, but judging ourselves only by our intentions. You know, I would have said thank you. I was going to do it. There’s that old famous saying, it’s not a scripture, but the principles are there. There’s an old saying that goes, The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I was going to do it. I was going to change it. I was going to repent of that.

What I think the challenge here for us is that our gratitude shows an action. It shows in the thoughtfulness, remembering what somebody has done for you so that it leads to action. Sometimes the reason we’re not grateful or we don’t show it is it’s too much effort for us. We just don’t want to go to the trouble. I feel grateful, but I’m not going to go to the effort to thank the person who deserves it and would be really encouraged by that. There might be one last thing. When you thank somebody, you do make yourself a little vulnerable. It’s like, in a way, I owe you. I owe you. You did something for me, and I really needed it. I think maybe some of us do not express our gratitude because there’s a little bit of pride there. Those who are greatly blessed are tempted to take those blessings for granted and to feel entitled. For those of you like me who’ve been Christians for a while, let’s not slip into that. Amen. I consider myself greatly, greatly blessed by God. That means I need to be living in gratitude all the time. That’s a challenge to have that godly heart, to have a good heart about it. Here’s the thought.

Gratitude or being ungrateful affects your relationships. Have you ever said this or thought this? You are so ungrateful. You ever said that? Parent-child relationship, husband-wife relationship, boss-employee relationship. You are so ungrateful. Now, whether you said it or thought it, you know what I’m talking about? Somebody’s lack of gratitude has deeply hurt you. I heard an example of the other side of the coin. There’s a couple that are good friends of Pam and I, Todd and Tamara Shanaman. Many of you know them. They’re members of the church here. A sister in the church, Michelle Obatero, advised Tamara in making her marriage better. She said, I want you to get a journal, and every day for 30 days, I want you to write down what you are grateful for in your husband, Todd. She did it. She said it transformed their marriage. She gave the book to her husband. I asked him again this morning on my way to church because he lives next to us. I said, Todd, can I use this illustration in the sermon? He says, Yeah, but I’ll tell you, I’ve never been able to read all through her journal without breaking down and weeping from joy.

Does that make sense to you? That makes sense to me. Gratitude changes relationships. Lack of gratitude damages relationships. Let us, in our relationship with God and with each other, have the gratitude that we need to have and ought to have. Gratitude affects our motivation as Christians. We’re almost done, guys. I got two more scriptures for you. I can’t promise. I might have three. I’m not sure. Here’s the down position and the next scripture is the up position.

There’s a warning in 2 Peter 1. It says, if you possess these qualities, he had listed the qualities of growing like goodness, righteousness, love. He says, If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, in other words, if you’re growing as a Christian, they will keep you from becoming ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them, whoever’s not growing is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Have you forgotten how great it was to be saved? Do you see that losing that gratitude and forgetting what God has done you is going to damage your own spiritual life? You’re going to decline in the quality of your Christian life unless you remain grateful for what God has done.

An example of this, a positive example of this is the scripture where we get our church congregational motto. Our motto is a church not for ourselves. It comes out of this passage. It says, for Christ’s love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died, and He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for who died for them and was raised again. Now, I know this passage does not use the word thankfulness or gratitude, but I see it in this phrase, For Christ’s love compels us. I am so grateful for how Christ has loved me that I am compelled. I am motivated to live for Him and not for myself any longer. Here’s my concluding slide. Let us please Jesus by imitating the Samaritan that Jesus commended by showing gratitude in our actions and giving proper glory to God. Let us keep this in mind as we go to the Lord’s Supper. I’m going to pray before we take the Lord’s Supper together. Holy Father, thank you so much for what you’ve done for us. Thank you, Father, for giving your son, Jesus Christ, for us, Father.

We could not have saved ourselves, Father, and we are aware of that. Thank you, Father, that you are worthy of all the praise that we can give you. Help us to have that heart. Have that attitude of always giving you the praise instead of ourselves. We pray in your son’s name, Amen.