How do you come to Christ?
It’s the question we wrestled with last week in verses 7 – 10 and it’s the question we’re wrestling with again this week in verses 11 – 19. Last week in part one of this message we wrestled with what it looks like to come to Jesus as his servants. We wrestled with what it means to serve Jesus by working hard instead of living like God owes us something… To be Christ-centered followers rather than self-centered & self-serving egoists… To be humbly obedient to God’s Word rather than pridefully disobedient… The question we were left with was… Have you come to Christ as his servant?
Have you come to Christ as his servant?
Think about your job, your marriage and your friendships. Are you working hard to serve Christ there? Are you putting Jesus first in everything? Would people say that you are Christ-centered? When you come to Christ you must come to him as someone who is ready to serve him by working hard… serve him by putting him first and serve him by humbly obeying him. Have you come to Christ? That’s my prayer today… My prayer is that the Spirit of God would move on our hearts and compel us by the picture of Christ who was and is our suffering servant. My prayer is that we would be compelled to come to Christ as his hard working, Christ centered, humble and obedient servants.
The problem for some of us is that what Jesus says here sounds really hard…
Jesus says some really hard things when he speaks. He doesn’t gloss things over and he doesn’t paint a picture of easy-peasey faith. When Jesus calls us to be his disciples he invites us into a journey of suffering as he hands us a cross, which is an instrument of torture. Try that one on for an invitation to join the church family. The message of the gospel is a message that invites us into a life of suffering. Yet… to follow Christ is also to find true joy and happiness and satisfaction in the gospel. To follow Christ and to be his disciples is to serve him who served us through the suffering of his cross on our behalf so that we could be made whole again. So that we could be healed. So that we could be set free. So that we would no longer be slaves to sin but instead become slaves or servants to Christ Jesus. Christ offers us all we could ever need in his life, his death, his resurrection, his glorification and his imminent return to take us home to the presence of our Father who is the embodiment of love. The question for us now is this… How do we come to Christ? Do we come to Christ as his servants? Do we come to Christ as people in great need of him? Do we come to Christ as people who trust in him?
Read Luke 17:11 – 19…
11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
When We Come To Christ We Must Come To Him As People In Great Need… (11-14)
What stops you from coming to Christ as a person in need? People who believe they’re clean don’t believe they need Jesus. People who believe they’re perfectly healthy don’t believe they need Jesus. Can you imagine a person who believes they smell perfectly fine when in reality they need a really good shower? Does this person really believe they’re in great need of mercy or are they just stuck in the bondage and slavery of self-justification? Can you imagine a person who believes they’re perfectly healthy when in reality they are terminally ill? Does this person really believe they are in great need of healing or are they just stuck in the bondage of self-help? These two problems of self-justification (trying to prove that I am ok) and self-help (looking to myself to make myself ok) are barriers to coming to Christ as people in great need.
We must come to Christ as people in great need of mercy… (11-13)
Self-justification (or trying to prove that I am ok) is the barrier that stops us from believing we need God’s mercy. Instead of seeing ourselves as people in great need of mercy we see ourselves as people with our lists of accomplishments that prove our worth. Luke tells us that as Jesus was, “On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Listen… what Jesus was encountering here was a really unhealthy community of people. Jesus was encountering a sick family of lepers. Lepers weren’t allowed to be in relationship with healthy people because they had a serious skin disease. They couldn’t live in town with their families. They couldn’t enjoy the intimacy of close relationship or physical touch. To be a leper was to be an outcast whom everyone stared at and avoided because their problems were too great for others to step into and the risk of catching their infection was too high. Can you hear the desperation in the voices of these lepers as they call out to Christ? Can you hear the loneliness of their cries? Can you imagine the years of isolation and shame? Can you imagine their feelings of failure and hopelessness because true healing kept evading them? Can you imagine their desire for someone to just have mercy on them and extend a healing touch or an encouraging word? This is what Christ offers to all who would come to him in great need of mercy. The lepers couldn’t fix themselves or justify themselves. They couldn’t cover up their shame. They couldn’t hide their sickness. Their sickness was obvious to everyone no matter how much they sought to seclude themselves or build bunkers of self-protection. What these lepers needed most was exactly what we need the most. Mercy. Our sin is like an infectious skin disease that leaves us rotting in the stench of death. Our sin first creates chaos within our relationship to God (vertically) and then secondly is made visible in our relationship with others around us (horizontally). Mercy from our Father is what we need the most. The cross of Christ is the picture of the Father’s mercy for us. Why wouldn’t we come to Christ crying out for his great mercy that he has freely offered for our sick souls? Why would we keep trying to prove that we are ok because of our lists of accomplishments or our lists of everyone else’s failures as we attempt to shift the shame we feel to someone else? Why would we resist God’s mercy? We must come to Christ as people in great need of mercy.
We must come to Christ as people in great need of cleansing… (14)
Self-help (or the tendency to go it alone and look to ourselves for healing) is the barrier that stops us from believing that we need Jesus to cleanse us. Instead of seeing ourselves as people in need of cleansing we minimize, ignore, excuse, blame or hide our shameful failures on external circumstances rather than admitting our deadly sickness and our great need for cleansing and we jump from one self-help technique to the next to try to fix ourselves. Luke tells us that Jesus doesn’t give these lepers another self-help book or another self-help talk show with Oprah or Dr. Phil but instead, “When he saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went they were cleansed.” One commentator on this passage says that priests effectively worked as public health inspectors and had the authority to diagnose people as either clean or unclean. So these lepers turned and headed for their meeting with their caseworkers with their heads hung low probably expecting another disappointing report and as they did Jesus did the miraculous. He did the impossible and he cleansed them completely. Why would we want to look for cleansing in any other place than the cross of Christ? Why would we want to go it alone and look to ourselves to fix our brokenness? Why would we resist God’s cleansing? Why would we want anything other than the blood of Jesus which washes us whiter than snow? The Scriptures tell us in Isaiah that “though our sins they be as scarlet… though our hands have been an enemy of God… though our hearts have played the whore… God gave us more than we deserve when he washed our hearts as white as snow.” This is the message of the gospel! This is the message of the cross! It’s great news! We are people in great need of cleansing and we can’t cleanse ourselves but Christ offers all the cleansing we need in the shower of his grace through his work at the cross. When we come to Christ we must come to him as people in great need of cleansing.
Have you come to Christ as a person in great need?
Think about your thinking patterns… the desires of your heart and the habits of your life. How often do you attempt to justify or defend yourself? How often do you try to just pull yourself up by the bootstraps? Is your mind occupied by how bad everyone else is in light of how good you are? Have you come to Christ as a person in great need? My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would compel us to come to Christ as people in great need of mercy and cleansing.
When We Come To Christ We Must Come To Him As People Who Trust In Him… (11-19)
Do you struggle to trust in Christ? People who struggle to trust in Christ actually struggle with deep roots of self-focus, self-righteousness, people pleasing and unbelief. Imagine the person who talks about themselves all the time… all their disappointments and all their accomplishments. Don’t they really just struggle with the roots of self-focus and self-righteousness? What about the person who struggles with always following the crowd? Don’t they really just struggle with being a people pleaser? What about the person whose life always seems to be in a constant state of chaos or unhealthiness? Don’t they really just struggle to believe that Christ is enough to make them whole and healthy? When we come to Christ we must come to him as people who trust in him.
People who trust in Jesus praise God… (15)
The enemy of praising God is self-focus or self-worship. Luke tells us that when one of the lepers realized “…that he was healed, he turned back, praising God with a loud voice”. The evidence that this healed leper actually trusted God was not so much proven by the miraculous cleansing of his sickness as it was proven by his public display of praise and worship of God. He didn’t run around and try to bring attention to himself by seeking the intimate touch he probably longed for. He didn’t run out and find the nearest chick to jump in bed with. He didn’t go join his old homies to smoke another joint and celebrate. He didn’t run down to the local bar to get trashed. Why didn’t he do these things like so many others often do? He didn’t do these things because he was replacing his pursuit of self-esteem with a new pursuit of God-esteem. He trusted in Jesus and the evidence of his trust in Jesus was his public display of worshipping at his healer’s feet rather than worshipping himself through self-focused, self-indulgent, self-gratifying pursuits of stroking his self-esteem. Why would we want to worship at the shrine of created beings and created things when we can worship at the feet of our Savior who created all things and who saves us and offers lasting change through the work of the cross and the message of the gospel? Why would we want to worship broken things and broken beings and broken selves when we could give our broken selves over to the wholehearted worship of our Savior… Our Master… Our King… Our Creator? People who trust in Jesus praise and worship God with their lives!
People who trust in Jesus give humble thanks to God… (16)
The enemy of giving humble thanks to God is self-righteousness or self-reliance. Luke tells us that after the leper was healed and after he turned back to Christ in God-focused worship “he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks.” This healed leper gave credit where credit was due and not only that but he did it with a heart of humble gratitude because he was overwhelmed by the grace and the mercy of Christ. He wasn’t trusting in his own behavior so he didn’t grandiose himself in front of others. He wasn’t relying on himself so he was enabled to authentically give public thanks humbly to God for his mercy. If we really trusted in Christ wouldn’t we spend more time in a posture of humble gratefulness rather than a posture of prideful, self-reliant, self-righteousness? Wouldn’t we find ourselves kneeled on our faces before our Savior who gave himself on our behalf? People who trust in Christ renounce their self-righteous and their self-reliant ways of living and they trade them in for a life of giving humble thanks at the feet of Jesus.
People who trust in Jesus are willing to come to him alone… (17-18)
The enemy of being willing to come to Christ alone is the desire to be part of the crowd. Luke tells us that the one leper who returned to praise and give thanks humbly to Jesus “was a Samaritan”. He was an outsider. Not only was he an outsider because of his disease but he was like a double outsider because of his nationality. But when Jesus noticed this man he asked, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” In other words… this dude was most likely the only irreligious dude in this colony of lepers who was healed and his trust in Christ was made obvious by his refusal to go with the crowd. Instead of following the crowd he was willing to come to Jesus alone. Trusting in Jesus is a deeply personal and individual road that thankfully is walked out within the context of community as Jesus brings other healed people into relationship with Him through the local church. But we must never forget that to follow Christ means we must reject the crowd who is walking away from Jesus so that we can trust him by coming to him and following him. Listen… the healing this man received went deeper than his skin. The healing this man received wasn’t just a mere physical experience. This leper was brought to a true place of trusting in Jesus where the healing he received went deep into the darkest places of his heart and soul. The healing this man received was authentic heart healing and it was evidenced by his willingness to come to Christ alone regardless of the crowd of people that were only looking for a mere physical experience. Would you come to Christ alone even if you were the only person on Earth who followed him? People who trust in Jesus are willing to come to him alone.
People who trust in Jesus become whole… (19)
The enemy of becoming whole is a lack of faith. This is why Jesus said to the healed leper “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you whole.” Listen… its’ not that we do not have enough faith. Trusting Jesus is all about having true and authentic faith. But faith is only as authentic as the object in which it is placed. You and I can place our faith in many things that will fail us because they don’t have the authentic power to save us or heal us or cleanse us or change us which means that our faith would be rendered useless and lacking. This leper trusted in Jesus. Jesus isn’t useless. Jesus doesn’t lack the power to heal, to save or to change us. This leper had faith that made him whole or complete because he was trusting Christ who is whole and complete. Why would we trust in our marriages or our friendships or our children or our possessions or our vocations or our accomplishments to satisfy us when only Christ can satisfy us and give us the wholeness that we long for? People who trust in Jesus become whole because they’ve placed their faith in someone who is whole.
Have you come to Christ as a person who trusts in him?
Are you trusting in Christ right now? Is the Holy Spirit turning your heart away from the idols of self-focus and self-worship to the worship and praise of God? Is God turning your heart from the path of self-righteousness or self-reliance to reliance upon God, which results in thankfulness to God? Are you headed down the path of skin deep healing which results in you following the crowd from one experience to the next or are you willingly coming to Christ and learning to trust in him? Does your life give evidence to the wholeness and healing that is produced by repentance and belief in the cross of Christ?
Here’s my prayer for us…
My prayer is that the Spirit of God would move on our hearts and compel us by the picture of Christ who was and is our suffering servant. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would compel us to come to Christ as people in great need of mercy and cleansing. My prayer is that the Spirit of God would move us to repentance from the sins of entitlement, self-centeredness, prideful disobedience, self-justification, self-help and the pursuit of self-esteem instead of God-esteem. My prayer is that we would be compelled by the Holy Spirit to come to Christ as people who trust in him by praising and worshipping him, relying on him with a grateful heart, being willing to come to him alone and believing that he is enough to make us whole.
My prayer is that the Spirit of God would draw us to belief in the gospel and that as he does this we would come to Christ as servants who are in deep need of Jesus.
How are you coming to Christ? Have you come to Christ as his servant? Have you come to Christ as a person in great need? Have you come to Christ as a person who trusts him? Have you come to Christ?