Sermons
Only One Turned Back
ONLY ONE TURNED BACK
Sermon Outline By Terry Siverd
Cortland Church of Christ / November 22, 2015
Our annual ThankSinging is this evening (6:00-7:30) and we hope that lots of you will be in attendance.
Forty-five minutes of grateful singing followed by a 45-minute pie and ice-cream fellowship.
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Over the course of my ministry I have preached quite a number of “Thanksgiving” sermons.
Many of these have been prepared for delivery on the Sunday before the Thanksgiving holiday.
But, of course, you can’t relegate the topic of thanksgiving to just one sermon a year.
This subject comes up often (as in our series on “prayer”) … because we need to be reminded frequently.
The psalms remind us
Sing praises to the Lord, you holy ones and give thanks to His holy name / Ps.30:4
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits… / Ps.103:2
Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name; make known His deeds / Ps.105:5
Remember His wonders which He has done / Ps.105:5
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so / Ps.107-1-2
Every day I will bless Thee (praise & thank) / Ps.145:2
In my final preparations for this morning’s sermon, I experienced an unexpected challenge.
Frequently I will do research in advance and stash my hand-scribbled notes in a stack on my desk.
Typically (although not always) I will do my final sermon prep on Friday morning.
For the most part this past week was a really good week.
Monday was warm & sunny and Mark & I worked together in “tidying-up” of the yard - - gathering leaves & sticks, etc.
On Tuesday, Dustin Durst repaired the ridge-cap shingles on my garage roof that were ripped off by the high winds.
On Wednesday, Jack Simpson & I went to the chicken church for lunch and visited Ann Landis at Lake Vista.
That evening we went to simple supper (Keith had a superb devo message) and then Tammy Haney was baptized at Lutz’s pool.
Thursday, I completed my class notes and FamilyMatters and proofed and copied them and emailed them to Rob.
Early Friday morning I took recycling to Vienna and walked Siggy at Vienna cemetery on a beautiful sunny day.
I came back to my office and sat down at my desk at eight o’clock and spread out my work station.
I reviewed my opened day-timer, I spread open my Bible to our text for today, and I laid out all of my research notes.
I reached for a thick file on my left (notes from past Thanksgiving sermons) - -
I wanted to check to make sure I hadn’t preached on this same text last Thanksgiving.
I grabbed the file on my left to set it down under my reading lamp on the right and it flipped over my big glass of water.
In one instant, my Bible was drenched, my day-timer was sopping wet and my notes were completed baptized.
I didn’t curse, but I panicked. I ran to the laundry room to get a towel.
It took me a half hour to mop things up. I quickly put my Bible beside the vent of the dehumidifier.
I have to tell you - - that is not the way to start a sermon on Thanksgiving.
This minor calamity reminded me once again of William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) - - I’ve told you about him in the past.
Basically, Spooner’s whole teaching career (sixty years) was spent at New College in Oxford, England.
He was a professor, dean and warden, with academic credentials in ancient history, divinity and philosophy.
He was an accomplished scholar - - but he was noted for his absent-mindedness and his slips of the tongue.
His tendencies gave birth to a word entry in our dictionaries: spoonerisms.
Three cheers for our queer old dean - - he meant to say, three cheers for our dear old queen
It is kisstomary to cuss the bride - - he meant to say, it is customary to kiss the bride
The Lord is a shoving leopard - - he meant to say, a loving shepherd
Once he rebuked some students saying, You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle - - he meant to say, lighting a fire
He once introduced his sermon topic as being grumbly hateful - - he meant to say humbly grateful.
Some scholars have concluded that many of these expressions were made up by the boys at the college.
His real slip-ups became fodder for his students to formulate all manner of spoonerisms.
Open your Bibles as we read together from Lk.17:11-19
This text begins by saying that “(Jesus) was on the way to Jerusalem”.
While this story may have been parenthetical (a parenthesis to greater event that was unfolding),
it was not incidental - - Jesus was always going about doing good (Acts 10:28).
In the story of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus (earlier in Lk.10:30f), the priest and the Levite
(both of whom were charged with nurturing the spiritual lives of others) were “too busy” to help.
Jesus was never too busy or too preoccupied with His own mission to the extent
that He neglected the requests and cries for help from those all around Him.
There is something about this story of the healing of the lepers that ought to cause us to do a reality check
(a gut check as to what we’re really all about as Christians). This is the case on multiple layers.
First, we should never become so busy that we can’t hear the pleas for help from those around us.
Secondly, and most pertinent for our thinking this morning, we must not diminish the importance of gratitude.
The story ends with the words of Jesus spoken to the only one who turned back (Lk.17:17-18)
Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine, where are they?
Was no one found who turned back to give glory to God, except this foreigner?
Leprosy was a dreadful disease with PHYSICAL RAMIFICATIONS that were devestating - - it was debilitating in evil way.
It’s a bacterial disease where the body gets reprogrammed to attack itself.
Skin pigmentation refuses to heal and thus open the door to all kinds of other infections.
The end result (especially in a day when no cure existed) was quite grotesque.
Nerve-endings would die off and the afflicted would suffer severe degradation of muscle tissue.
Beth Moore, in her book, Jesus, The One And Only, tells of a time in her travels when she had the opportunity
to visit a modern-day leper colony. She felt a strong compulsion to go in and minister to them.
But she couldn’t bring herself to step inside - - confessing, the over-powering smell of decay was too much to handle.
Perhaps, even worse, was the PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL that it took on the person afflicted.
They were truly outcast - - ostracized from society - - quarantined for life - - forced to live outside the camp (Lev.13:45f).
They were restricted - - they were required to keep their distance (about 100’) from others.
The healthy were forbidden from touching them. They were prohibited from entering the temple.
The psychological, social and religious deprivation they experienced often made life unbearable.
This account in Luke 17:12-13 tells how they “stood at a distance…and raised their voices”
beseeching Jesus, the Master, to have mercy on them.
At a Wednesday night Bible study recently, Bob Villers shared a story about his trip to Las Vegas SEMA show.
They encountered many homeless people and Bob was warned, “whatever you do, don’t make eye contact”.
It’s not hard to imagine the twelve apostles giving Jesus a similar warning.
But wherever He went, Jesus carried on with being Jesus.
Earlier in Luke (Lk.5:12 & also in Mt.8:2f), we’re told of a man who was “full of leprosy” who
fell on his face imploring Jesus, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean”.
Jesus broke down the barrier (that 50 yards of open space) and actually “stretched out his hand, and touched him”.
On this occasion (back to Lk.17:14), Jesus shouted out to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
And it came about, that as they were going, they were cleansed.
Two things are amazing in this text. One, that they were healed.
When they went to the priests to show themselves, the priests (who also served as medics) would have been awestruck.
Nowhere in the annuals of their record books had anyone ever been healed except it be from a miracle from God.
The only precedent they had to draw on was Miriam (Num.12) and Naaman (2Kgs.5) and both of them were
healed by Divine intervention. Surely the priests would have concluded that “something special was in the air”.
The second thing that is utterly amazing is that “only one turned back to give thanks” (Lk.17:15-16).
Vs.16 ends by noting, “and he was a Samaritan”.
Normally, a Samaritan and a Jew would not dare to be found living side by side with one another.
But this was a case where their infirmity eradicated any barrier that might have previously existed between them.
There’s an underlying theological message here if we can take time to see it.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom.3:23). Our sinfulness unites us in an unexpected way.
The other insight has to do with the state of mind and heart of many in Israel.
The nine others that did not return are very much like the elder brother in Lk.15 who appears to have had a gratitude problem.
Now, let’s fast forward to us today. How does one explain our lack of gratitude?
Have we, as the people of God, like many in our nation, become stricken with a sense of entitlement?
Do we really think we’re all that deserving?
Are we waiting for some really BIG blessing to stir up within us a sense of gratitude?
If you’re waiting for a winning lottery ticket to be grateful, you’ve got a serious problem.
Even bigger than the problem you have in playing the lottery, is this absence of daily thankfulness.
What about our daily bread?
What about the fact that even with our serious health issue, God has surrounded us people who love us?
What about the thousands of small blessing that grace our lives each and every day?
¯ Thy gifts are strewn upon our way, like sands upon the great seashore. ¯
Surely we’ll be singing tonight, Father of Mercies.
James reminds us that, “every good & perfect gift comes from above…” (Js.1:17).
Gratitude is like faithfulness, “when we are thankful for the very little things”,
God smiles upon us and blesses us all the more (Lk.19:17).
Besides, spiritually speaking, we who are Christians have “won the lottery”.
Surely if we only know one verse by heart, it must be Jn.3:16.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son
That whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Let’s close with one more brief reading from Lk.7:40-47.
MAY NOT A ONE OF US DARE TO THINK THAT WE HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN JUST A LITTLE.
Let each and every one of us leave here today fully cognizant of the fact that we have been forgiven a whole lot.
And may that realization remind us that our lives must be “overflowing with gratitude” (Col.2:7) and
that we must DAILY “give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for (us) in Christ” (1Thess.5:18).
How tragic is will be if only one (or a few) of us turn back to give thanks.
