There is no real gratitude in this world to Almighty God the Creator. How many people are grateful to God for their life, for their existence, for their mind, for their faculties? How many people remember to return thanks to God? Perhaps if you are very sick or if you are very alarmed by some circumstance in life, even if you're an atheist, you may stop and pray; most people pray at some time. But who praises? Who pledges their life to Almighty God? Who wants to serve him and love him and live for him, even after getting a great deliverance from God? You hear of people and they have had no belief in God, no time for God, or perhaps a very small belief, and then something happens to them and they have a quite amazing deliverance from death or sickness or tragedy or something of that kind. What do they do? Oh, they are amazed, and they feel just momentary relief and gladness and awareness of the frailty of life: how nearly they lost it. Just for a moment, they may think thoughts of God and what they may owe to him, and within seconds it's gone. ‘What shall I do? I'll celebrate. I'll go out and enjoy myself.’ How few have any gratitude to Almighty God!
What strange people we are. We are conscious of God. We don't know him as our Lord, but we are conscious that there is a God. We have an instinct about him. We are very complex creatures, full of complex emotions, and yet here we are, so petty, so small, with no interest in divine things, no interest in seeking and finding the Lord, no thanks, no gratitude. But here, in this single, one leper out of the ten, he comes and he thanks God. Those who truly turn to God are always a minority. The others were ready to go to the priest; this single leper, having been healed, returns to Christ because he must thank him personally, and he must give himself to him, he must worship him. The others are quite content to have no personal thanks, no personal acquaintance with Christ who has healed them, but to just go to the priest, get the formularies over with, and then go back into their lives.
That is a description of the religion of many. There are many, many people: they will go to mass, they will go through certain ceremonials, or in other religions they will go and worship the idols. None of these things give them any personal knowledge of God so that they can say, ‘I know my God, and I walk with him. I speak with him, and he touches me and blesses and helps me.’ They have no personal communion or communication with God, and they don't really want it. ‘I just want an indirect slot machine kind of religion. If I go to mass and go to confession, or if I go and worship my idols, I can believe that will do something for me. But thank you very much: I don't actually want to walk with God, which is personal and felt and real.’ That's what is happening here. Nine lepers have an amazing healing, and all they want to do is go and get the technical ceremonial procedures over, so that they can be reestablished into the community. They don't think of going to the Lord.
What did the Samaritan leper think? ‘What am I doing, going to the priest? I've got the Lord himself here. What is a priest but a go-between? I don't need a go-between. I can go directly to the Saviour of the world, the one who has healed me, God himself. I can fall at his feet and acknowledge him, and love him and serve him.’ That was the attitude of this man. He realized that Jesus was God himself.
The leper was an outcast, and we too are outcasts viewed spiritually. Before we are converted, we are outcasts. As far as God is concerned, we are pushed out. We cannot speak with him. We do not associate with him. We can be tremendously accomplished in this world. We can be clever, we can have a lot of money, good jobs, and yet we can be outcasts, not knowing the Lord, not related to him. The leper had no future and it is the same with us. Our spiritual disease is that we have no future. Once we get to the grave, we are condemned, everlastingly, away from the presence of God.
The leper was unsightly. He was covered with ulcers and sores and weeping, open wounds, raw flesh. Even if he had been allowed to move in society, people wouldn't have been able to bear to look at the lepers unless they were covered up. So too are we unsightly. We are proud people. We don't like to hear this, but to God's holy view, we are unsightly. We are so selfish, so small-minded, and so much of the earth, earthy, as the Bible puts it. Like the leper who was incurable, we are incurable, except by God. We cannot improve our lives. We cannot give ourselves spiritual life. We cannot please God. And just as the leper was in pain, so we know much pain, much heartache, much disappointment in this life on the run from God. Just as the leper, in a way we cannot understand, could communicate his disease to someone else, so can we. If I am an atheist, I might infect my children with my atheism. If I am just a pleasure-loving, selfish, deceitful individual, all the people who grow up in my care are going to get it from me.