See It, Before You See It (4) - Derek Greier
Transcript
00:00 Why is it okay for you to shout for your team when it scores, but it's not okay for me to
00:05 shout for mine?
00:07 If he brought you through what he brought me through, you would shout the same way too.
00:14 Yes you would.
00:15 Yes you would.
00:16 I know you don't get it, but you ain't been where I've been.
00:19 You ain't let him bring you where he brought me.
00:22 And you can't help but be grateful when one day you got leprosy, you got sores, and you
00:28 stink and you're in your mess, in your sin, but he said live and not die.
00:34 He calls you by name.
00:35 Amen.
00:36 And you know, you got reason to pray.
00:39 I don't care what you say.
00:41 I know a God that saves.
00:42 I know a God that sets free.
00:44 I know a God that delivers.
00:55 Now I'm not sure if David said this, but Palm Sunday is the Sunday we celebrate the day
01:03 that Jesus entered into his last week and he entered the city of Jerusalem and the people
01:11 spread cloaks on the ground and they shouted "Hosanna in the highest" and they waved palm
01:18 branches.
01:21 And it was an incredible day, but it would just be a week later that Jesus would hang
01:28 on the cross.
01:29 Today we're going to look at a man that I'm almost certain was in the crowd that particular
01:34 day.
01:35 Luke chapter 17 and verse 11.
01:40 Now it happened as he went to Jerusalem.
01:47 And Jesus is taking his final journey into the capital city where all the who's who of
01:56 Israel lived.
01:57 It was about a week or so before Palm Sunday and he knew he had been preaching this for
02:06 months if not at least a year that he would be crucified when he got to the city.
02:14 But what's amazing about Jesus is he kept walking anyway.
02:19 You know whenever I feel like giving up, whenever I feel like running away, anytime I feel like
02:27 throwing in the towel, I can't help but think about Jesus.
02:34 You see the Gospel is the only story where the hero dies for the villain.
02:43 And Jesus passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.
02:50 Jesus had been rejected on both sides by both nations, people in both territories, so he
02:57 was forced kind of to walk and travel in between the two territories.
03:03 And likewise when I feel rejected, when I feel like there's trouble on every side, when
03:08 I feel like folks don't get me, I can't help but think about Jesus.
03:14 You see our pain was the only reason Jesus did not exempt himself from his.
03:22 Then as he entered a certain village, you have to understand the weight of the world
03:29 was on Jesus' shoulders.
03:34 He was tired, he was weary, he knew his disciples would betray him.
03:41 He knew that the Pharisees and the Sadducees would gloat over him.
03:46 He knew that people would mock him and make fun of his naked body on the cross.
03:54 When I feel like unfriending everyone on social media, when I feel like locking up my heart
04:06 and throwing away the key, I can't help but think about what it was like for Jesus.
04:16 You know his attitude was a lot like my wife's.
04:23 Every morning I wake up grumpy by the way if you didn't know that, well actually you
04:26 shouldn't know that.
04:29 I wake up grumpy.
04:31 When my wife wakes up like, "If you don't have a smile, I'll give you mine."
04:39 And there met him ten men.
04:48 Now if I was about to be stripped, crucified, beaten, mocked, hung for birds to pick for
04:57 my flesh, I'm sure I would have got a little stuck on the inside of myself.
05:06 And if Jesus was just focused on the pain that he was about to face a couple miles up
05:11 the road, we would have never read this story.
05:17 But it's the little things we do in life that make our lives big.
05:22 And despite what he was facing and going through, he still had time to enter a village and to
05:31 speak to these ten men.
05:32 It said, "There met him ten men who were what?
05:37 Lepers."
05:38 I like the way Luke writes that because most of the time we see people by their problem.
05:45 But Luke learned enough from Jesus to see them first as people, and people with problems.
05:54 And it's funny though how people have a way of finding each other.
06:02 These men connected because they had similar problems and similar pains.
06:10 But such friendships typically only last until someone escapes the problems and the pains.
06:18 So you know, she was your girlfriend until you got out of your situation.
06:22 You see, I used to hang out with people because, you know, they kind of came out or came from
06:31 a similar place.
06:34 But I've learned that a relationship does not last unless we're trying to go to a similar
06:41 place.
06:44 So there were ten men, people first, who were lepers.
06:53 But what you have to understand because we live in a modern environment, it's very, very
06:58 different now, but these ten men assaulted the senses in every possible way.
07:07 They had oozing sores.
07:11 They had disfiguring bones.
07:15 They had tumor-like growths on the back of their thighs, their hands, their faces, their
07:20 necks.
07:22 The fingers were curled and they probably had some missing limbs, and on top of that,
07:31 they stank.
07:35 But Jesus, despite all that He had on His mind, I mean as bad as the cross would be,
07:46 I think the most troubling thing for Jesus was that the Father would lift His presence
07:52 from Him.
07:55 That's why from the cross He didn't say a whole lot, but He did say this, "My God, my
07:59 God why hast thou forsaken me?"
08:02 For the first time in eternity, Jesus, as He took our sin, our shame, our punishment,
08:11 He didn't sense the help and the presence of the Father.
08:15 He had never had a moment without God being very real in prayer.
08:20 He said, "I don't do anything unless I first see the Father."
08:25 And this would be the first thing that He would do just completely as the second person,
08:35 if you will, of the Godhead.
08:40 Despite all of that, when Jesus gets to town, not only He gets to—I would have stayed
08:46 on the outside of the city, I would have been so wrapped up, and this ain't fair, this ain't
08:50 right, why He did it, I'd be so wrapped up.
08:55 But Jesus still enters the town, and He engaged with the lowest.
09:05 We only love God as much as we love the person we love least.
09:16 And these ten men, the Bible says, stood afar off.
09:23 Leprosy was so contagious that at this time in history to make sure that, you know, it
09:30 didn't become an epidemic, people were legally required to stay 100 paces from anyone that
09:36 was healthy.
09:37 And if anyone healthy got even remotely near them, they had to scream, "Unclean, unclean,
09:46 unclean."
09:49 And these men had obviously heard about Jesus.
09:57 They lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master."
10:06 Now if you call Christ Master, it implied that you were willing to serve.
10:16 So anytime I call Christ my Master, I'm really saying that, "Lord, I'm willing to obey."
10:26 But here's the question, can you still call Jesus Master when life has made you an outsider?
10:36 I mean everyone else is going on with their lives, raising their children and enjoying
10:43 their families, but your face is pressed against the windowpane on the outside looking in with
10:53 no hope of things ever changing.
10:56 Can you still call Jesus Master?
11:03 The step of faith that these 10 lepers took was great.
11:10 Jesus Master.
11:13 Again, outsiders, pariahs, you know solitude is healthy at times, but alienation crushes
11:23 the soul.
11:27 Watch what they said to Him.
11:30 "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
11:40 You see, no other attribute of God could help if Jesus didn't put His mercy first.
11:49 You see, God's justice would doom us.
11:54 His holiness would be forced to reject us.
11:58 His power would crush us.
12:01 His truth would condemn us, and His wrath would torment us.
12:07 But mercy said no.
12:16 So when Jesus, when He saw them, He didn't just see their problem, their condition, He
12:24 saw them.
12:25 And I don't know what your problem is, I don't know what your issue is.
12:30 And you know, you might walk in a room and everybody say, "Here comes such and such,
12:32 who do such and such."
12:33 But I'll tell you something, Jesus doesn't first see your problem, He sees you.
12:38 He sees the person behind the problem, the person behind the issue.
12:45 So when He saw them, He said to them, "Go show yourself to the priest."
12:53 Now He told them to go while they were still lepers, still have sore, still smell all the
13:00 grass, but they had to see it before they saw it.
13:07 And they had to do it before they had it.
13:11 To walk with a God that calls things that are not as though they were, you got to adjust
13:16 your attitude about things in life.
13:21 Romans 8 and 24 tells us this, it says, "Hope that is seen," watch this, "is not hope.
13:29 Meaning, if you can see it, it's not hope."
13:35 But my Bible says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for."
13:39 So if you're going to have faith, there got to be some hope.
13:44 And if it's hope, it's something you can't see.
13:51 So last week we learned that God was a God of hope.
13:58 You know, if I said that He was the God of joy, that meant He had a whole lot of it.
14:02 I mean, that's His thing.
14:04 But of all the things He called Himself, He called Himself the God of hope.
14:09 So if He's the God of hope, the most important things He does in our lives start where we
14:16 can't see them.
14:19 Start where no one can see them.
14:23 The most important work God does in any of our lives is first in places nobody can see,
14:31 and He does it before anyone sees.
14:36 Verse 14, "So when Jesus saw them, He said to them, 'Go show yourselves to the priest.'
14:47 And so it was, as they went, they were cleansed."
14:55 Now I can't predict how long a walk or how short a walk it's going to be before you get
15:03 the thing God promised.
15:06 All I know is if you keep doing what Jesus told you to do, at some point the miracle
15:11 will happen.
15:20 What God promised may seem impossible, but He who promised is faithful.
15:28 So it was that as they went, they were cleansed.
15:35 If you're like me, you want it before you go.
15:41 I plan ahead, I look, I want it before I go.
15:46 But if you're like God, the miracle won't happen unless you go.
15:56 Peter could have never walked on water if he stayed in the boat.
16:07 We are saved by faith alone, but real faith is never alone.
16:14 Deeds are faith's constant companion.
16:19 As they went, as they did what Jesus said, they were cleansed.
16:25 Now a lot of folks want to get cleansed, but you don't want to do what the master done
16:29 told you to do.
16:32 It gets worse.
16:36 As they went, they were cleansed.
16:41 They were healed as they obeyed.
16:46 You see, Jesus didn't send you on the road that you're currently on to punish you, but
16:54 to heal you.
16:57 And you got to learn to trust the journey.
17:01 Trust the journey.
17:02 Trust the journey.
17:04 Verse 15, "And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned."
17:14 Now initially these 10 men had a common bond and they befriended based on their shared
17:21 problem and their shared pains.
17:25 But you'll notice once the healing came, they went in different directions.
17:32 So don't be surprised if you can no longer hang out with some folks once you get well
17:40 that you used to.
17:43 Now it might break your heart, but you got to learn to say, "I love you.
17:49 I wish you would join me, but I got to keep moving on with Jesus with or without you."
18:04 That friend loved you while you were still in the projects, but when you moved to the
18:07 suburbs.
18:08 I mean, I can, okay, we going to stay.
18:14 And with a loud voice, you know, there is a time for quiet and everything doesn't always
18:32 have to be loud.
18:36 But the Bible recorded the volume in his voice because it was significant and it mattered.
18:43 All the details that could have been recorded, he recorded this.
18:46 And with a loud voice, this man had spent years of his life shouting from 100 paces,
18:55 "Unclean, unclean, unclean."
18:59 And probably by this time in life, he only knew how to talk loudly.
19:07 But it's funny how turned up we were in our uncleanness, how turned up we were in our
19:18 mess, how turned up we were we had oozing sores and all the rest.
19:26 But after God says this to me, all of a sudden we so quiet.
19:29 You know, "I ain't got, I don't want to say nothing.
19:31 I don't want to, I don't want to do nothing.
19:33 I don't want to confuse.
19:35 I don't want to cause no problems."
19:39 But if just half of God's people did half as much for God as they did for the devil,
19:46 our world would be turned around almost overnight.
19:51 We'd just get a little bit bolder.
19:54 I mean we were on fire for the devil, marching for the devil, shouting of devil's language
20:03 and we were the devil's kids, boy.
20:08 I mean remember some of that language and how loud you said it?
20:14 But now you're like, "God knows my heart.
20:17 I don't want to say hallelujah.
20:21 I don't want them to think, you know, that I'm one of them."
20:31 With a loud voice, he glorified God.
20:37 He didn't care who was watching.
20:40 He didn't care what anybody thought.
20:43 With a loud voice, he glorified God.
20:47 This man was lit for Jesus.
20:52 And yeah, and we got to be a little bit more like David.
21:01 I like David.
21:02 You know, when his wife, Mikael, got an attitude, she started criticizing him for getting a
21:10 little too carried away in worship.
21:14 But watch his response, 2 Samuel 6, 22.
21:22 "Baby?"
21:29 The first service I said, "Woman," but I was like, "I don't know if he said it that
21:32 way, but he might have."
21:37 He said, "Mama, I will be even more."
21:44 You think you mad now.
21:45 "I will be even more undignified than this.
21:49 I haven't even got started."
21:51 See this is between me and my God.
21:54 This has nothing to do with you.
22:01 And I'll be humble in my own sight.
22:04 Y'all talking about with the handmaiden's thing.
22:06 Listen, in my own sight.
22:08 Listen, listen, listen.
22:09 My point is not to be foolish in the way we worship.
22:16 We must operate in the context we're in.
22:22 The Bible does say we're to do things decently and in order.
22:29 All that's true.
22:30 But I'm not going to let anybody shame me either.
22:37 Why is it okay for you to shout when your team scores, but it's not okay for me to shout
22:47 when my team scores?
22:49 You see, if he brought you through what he brought me through, you shout too.
22:56 I said, if he brought you through what he brought me through, you'd have a shout too.
23:02 I said, if he brought you through what he brought me through, you'd find a shout too.
23:09 You'd have a thank you Jesus.
23:12 You'd have a praise the Lord.
23:15 Hallelujah.
23:24 If you've been where I've been, done what I've done, and God blessed you and loved you
23:31 anyway, anyway, anyway.
23:46 Luke 17, 16, "And he fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks."
23:55 Some are like, "That's too much."
23:56 Say, don't take all that.
24:02 But if he brought you through what he brought me through, you do the same thing too.
24:16 He fell down on his feet and began to give him thanks.
24:22 And I've learned there's no higher place than at the feet of Jesus.
24:33 And here's the rub, and he was a Samaritan.
24:40 Samaritans didn't mix with Jews.
24:45 You see, all 10 of the lepers were separated from the healed, the well, the good folk,
24:52 the clean folk, and Jesus because of their leprosy.
24:59 But this man had a double separation.
25:01 He was separated because of his nationality.
25:06 So why was the guy with the highest hurdles to overcome the only one to return?
25:17 Probably because the rest felt entitled because they were Jews.
25:28 Be careful about living your life like God owes you something.
25:41 The world owes you nothing and will keep spinning if you fall off.
25:52 So in my life, every touch, every insight, every explanation that God gives me has been
25:58 a pure act of mercy.
26:00 I don't deserve an explanation.
26:04 I don't deserve half the things he's shown me.
26:08 And when you realize that, there's a gratitude that comes up out of your heart.
26:13 But when you think you deserve it because you're a Christian, and Christianity becomes
26:18 a religion, and not a relationship where someone high look low, but somehow because you were
26:26 born in the right place, you know what, I kind of deserve it, and I'm a good old boy,
26:32 and God ought to do to me, you know, this, that, and the other, and I'm mad that He didn't
26:35 do this.
26:38 And he was a Samaritan.
26:44 This man did not feel a natural right to receive from the Jewish Messiah.
26:52 You see, a mistaken sense of entitlement will shrink the joy and the wonder in our lives,
27:05 and also minimize the worship of the true God.
27:11 Now back in the day, the electric company and the gas company had counters.
27:22 So if you did not pay your bill or send it in the mail on time, you had to go in, or
27:27 if they shut it off, and you needed it on that day, you had to go into the counter.
27:35 Not that I've ever had this experience, of course.
27:41 I don't know what they do nowadays, but I've been at those counters.
27:49 But not one time have I gone to one of those counters and paid my electric bill, my gas
27:56 bill, my cable bill, or my mortgage, and the person on the other side of the counter began
28:05 to rejoice because I paid my bill.
28:10 Why?
28:13 Because I owed it.
28:14 I owed it.
28:15 I owed it.
28:18 When you realize that Jesus paid a debt He didn't owe because you owed a debt you couldn't
28:25 pay, the only thing left in your life will be to rejoice and to be happy and glad about
28:35 it.
28:40 And He was a Samaritan.
28:43 Brothers, I want you to remember when certain diseases were incurable, and you went down
28:53 to the clinic for a test, and you were clear.
28:59 Don't tell me you didn't rejoice.
29:03 Don't tell me you were not thankful.
29:05 Your deeds deserve something else.
29:10 But you ain't never been in church talking about "Hallelujah, thank you Jesus."
29:19 Yes sir.
29:21 Sisters, I'm not letting you off the hook.
29:29 Remember when you peed on that stick?
29:36 Six of y'all know what I'm talking about.
29:41 And waited for the color on those two lines.
29:46 See all of a sudden now you get it.
29:54 You didn't deserve it but He let you off the hook anyway.
30:05 So Jesus answered and said, "Were there not ten cleansed?"
30:13 But where are the nine?
30:14 Jesus is doing the math.
30:17 He said, "I did the same thing for all ten.
30:21 But only one is grateful enough to return and say thanks, but not the others."
30:32 I don't just come to church out of a sense of duty, and if that's all you have, that's
30:36 not bad.
30:37 That's a good start.
30:38 Some of us come to church because mom and them told us to and all the rest, and it's
30:43 the right thing to do, so start there.
30:48 But for me, I don't come to church just because it's the right thing to do.
30:51 I don't stream just because it's the right thing to do.
30:53 I don't worship just because it's the right thing.
30:54 I don't give just because it's the right thing or what I'm supposed to do.
30:58 I give because I'm grateful.
31:00 I worship because I'm grateful.
31:02 I'm in this house because I'm grateful.
31:05 He's been good, better than good to me.
31:08 Better than good to me.
31:10 Better than good to me.
31:19 Young Derek Greer should have been dead.
31:24 Middle-aged Derek Greer should have lost his mind, but he's been better than good to me.
31:33 So I can't help but worship and praise and take a little time out to say thank you.
31:46 And Jesus said, "Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this
31:54 foreigner?"
31:57 The man who didn't feel entitled.
32:01 And in many Christians, you feel entitled.
32:04 God don't owe you nothing.
32:06 He doesn't owe you an explanation for one thing.
32:10 Everything He says to you is out of His mercy and kindness and love for you.
32:21 "Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?"
32:28 You see, God's justice doomed him.
32:32 His holiness frowned on him.
32:36 His power could have crushed him.
32:39 Truth condemned him.
32:41 His wrath would have eternally sentenced him.
32:45 But instead, Jesus healed him because mercy said no.
32:57 And Jesus said to him, "Arise."
33:00 And God's not in your life to put you down.
33:03 He's just trying to get you up.
33:06 Arise, go your way.
33:11 And when you really come to God with a true sense of gratitude, you will never leave the
33:15 same way you came.
33:19 In fact, the more you show gratefulness, the more things you discover you could be grateful
33:24 for.
33:28 He said, "Arise, go your way.
33:31 Your faith has made you well."
33:35 You see, all 10 received a physical healing.
33:43 All 10 got the thing they asked for, they wanted.
33:47 But the Bible says only one of those 10 men truly got well.
33:56 You can get the thing you want and not get the wellness you need.
34:06 You see, health is a matter of body.
34:12 Wellness is a matter of the soul.
34:25 Your faith has made you well.
34:32 It was not just a faith to receive from Jesus.
34:36 It was a faith that came back to Jesus and was thankful.
34:46 And if you only receive from God, but never spend any time thanking God, celebrating God,
34:56 you will never know the wellness that this man came to know.
35:03 Did you get anything out of that message today?
35:15 I did.
35:35 [MUSIC PLAYING]