Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 17:11-19
Sit way over on this side of the room may not hear this, but one of my favorite things on Sunday mornings is to hear kiddos singing and clapping and otherwise making a racket. I love it. I'm glad that they're in here learning to worship with us. Glad for their enthusiasm. Hope that you don't give them ugly looks because I don't think Jesus would do that. Take your Bible and find Luke 17. We're gonna look at a very short passage this morning. There's an outline in your bulletin. If you'd like to follow along there, you can do that, Luke 17. While you find Luke 17, let me start off with a question just to get you thinking. Don't answer this out loud. What would it take for you to genuinely, fully, without restraint, shout out loud for joy? What would it take for you to do that? Would money do it? Enough money? If you won the lottery, the big power ball, the big jackpot, $500 million, would you shout for joy if you did that? On the other side of winning money, there's people who sort of get out of debt. Maybe you drive around in the afternoon, you listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio and he has people call in and they say, "We're debt free," and they shout out and they're excited. They're just with all that they have. They're shouting, they're exciting, they can't hold it in. So maybe money would do it. Maybe for a lot of us, at least in West Texas, it would be if our favorite team won the big game. Maybe then we would shout for joy with no restraint. Maybe your favorite high school football team, maybe your favorite NFL team, maybe the Rangers can somehow not choke this year and they can make the playoffs and we would shout for joy. I don't know, maybe. I remember in 2008, some of you may not know this, I'm a big-time Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan and I qualify that with basketball because I'm not sure that we have a football team. But we do play basketball and I love the Jayhawks. 2008, I remember sitting in my living room, we lived in Frankfurt, Kentucky and I'm watching the Jayhawks. My beloved Jayhawks played the evil, wicked, villainous, Memphis Tigers in the national championship game and it was not looking good. It was a big letdown after the last game, they trounced North Carolina and then this game, it just, it was not a good game. And I wish I had a clip of how the game ended to show you. I do have a clip of how the game ended to show you. This is how it ended. (upbeat music) Uh-oh, Spotify didn't get shut off. Stop it, we want to see this in all its fullness. Spotify needs to end, start it over, start it over. Here it is. (crowd cheering) He missed the last free throw, so it's a three-point lead. Kansas is down three points. Iran Collins, that's just how they drew it up. Yes, one less shot. No game went to overtime. Jayhawks dominated in overtime and won the national championship game. So I'm watching this right here and I'm sitting on my couch and it's late at night 'cause these games go late at night and next to me is a sleeping 22-month-old. (crowd laughing) I held it in, I don't know how. But I held it in, I was fist-pumping the air. (crowd laughing) But I held it in, did not wake up my daughter. In this passage, there's a man who comes before Jesus and he just couldn't hold it in. He literally comes back after what he experienced and he is shouting for joy with no restraint, with no embarrassment, nothing held back and he just lets it all loose. This was a man who had leprosy and he was healed of his leprosy and he comes back to Jesus to give thanks and with no restraint, he's shouting for joy and he's praising God. At first glance, this seems like a pretty straightforward story, it's just a miracle story. There's lots of them in the gospels, there's lots of them in Luke. It's just a miracle story, Jesus heals somebody, he did that sort of thing all the time. But when you really look at this story, it's not just a miracle story because there's something unique in the response of the men, plural, men who were healed. And when you look at their response, or we'll see in just a minute, their lack of response, we learned some very important things that I want you to see this morning. And so before we read the text, here's the big idea of the passage. Jesus, the Son of Man is calling you to these things, wholeness, completeness, worship, gratitude and faith. Jesus is inviting you to be made whole. He's calling you, inviting you to worship. He's calling you to be grateful, to be a thankful person, and he wants you to be a person of faith. And we're gonna talk about what all of these things mean and what they look like in our lives. So once you've jotted those down, look over at Luke 17, beginning in verse 11. Word of God says this, "On the way to Jerusalem," He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice. And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. And then Jesus answered, "We're not 10 cleansed? "Where are the nine?" It was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner. And he said to him, "Rise and go your way. "Your faith has made you well." Let's pray it again. Father, even as we read this story, we feel the weight of our own ingratitude towards you. You are patient with us. You are faithful to your word. You have offered us and made available to us anything and everything that we could ever want through your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, give us eyes to see truth in this passage. Give us hearts to receive it and give us the will to leave changed. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. We've talked about leprosy before. We've seen it before in the Gospel of Luke. Let's take just a minute to think about leprosy and what it looked like for these men involved. This is on your outline. In the Bible, leprosy, in quotes, leprosy describes a number of different skin diseases. Some of these diseases were serious. Some of them were not at all serious. Some would stick with you until you died. Some would come and go just like a rash or something that you would have today. And leprosy was just sort of an umbrella term for any sort of skin disease. In the Bible though, the most serious of these diseases we know as today, Hanson's disease. And there's a story behind this. In 1873, there was a Norwegian scientist named GHA Hanson. There he is. This is the first guy who discovered that a particular bacteria caused a particular disease. He was the first one to put that together and the light bulb went off and he said, wait a minute, this particular bacteria is causing this particular disease. And the disease he figured that out for was what we know as leprosy. Or we call it today, Hanson's disease. You know a lot of this stuff. You've read it, you've heard it. It affects your peripheral nerves, your nerves on your extremities. It affects your skin. It's spread by touch or it can be spread by breath. If somebody sneezed on you or coughed on you. It doesn't eat your flesh. Sometimes we think leprosy. It's like a flesh eating disease. Leprosy, at least Hanson's disease, does not do that. What it does do is it causes a loss of feeling in your extremities. So if you mash your finger or you injure yourself, you may not take care of it properly. You may not feel certain things if you get burned or whatever. And so sometimes people lose their extremities because they have a lack of feeling in their extremities. You can look at pictures online. They're not terribly disgusting but I'm not gonna show them to you this morning. You can look them up if you want to and you can see what the disease does to different people. I will tell you that a couple of years ago in 2012, there were still about 200,000 cases of Hanson's disease around the world. About half of those right at 100,000 were in India. So it's still with us today. It's still around and we see its effects. Today, because of doctors like Mr. Hanson, we know what causes it and we know how to treat it. And today it is a curable disease over a prolonged period of treatment with specific drugs. In Jesus's day, clearly, it was not a curable disease. It was in effect a slow death sentence. And these 10 men had leprosy. Here's another thing you need to understand about leprosy and what the scriptures have to say about it. In the Old Testament, God gave Israel specific instructions about how to handle cases of leprosy. And you can read them in Leviticus 13 and 14. We're not gonna look at all the specifics. If you're interested in that, you can. Here's my hunch. Those of you who have set out in your life to read the Bible beginning to end, you made it through Genesis, easy. You got to Exodus and it was great till about halfway. And then they started talking about a tent. And then they talked about that tent again. And some of you fell off the wagon in Exodus. But some of you made it all the way through Genesis. You made it all the way through Exodus. And then you got to Leviticus. And you got to chapters like Leviticus 13 and 14. This is what you thought. You didn't say it out loud 'cause you didn't want to get struck by lightning. But you thought, this is really weird. This has no application to my daily life. I should just jump to the New Testament. I should read the book of Psalms. I should go back to the Exodus story. This is just, I don't get it. You can read these passages later. And I'll admit to you, they're a little bit odd for people who live in the year 2015 and a highly developed scientific society. Let me just remind you of a few things as you read these in the context of the Old Testament. The law say things like, the leper has to live outside the camp. The law say things like, we're gonna burn the clothing worn by these people. The law say things like, you're ceremonially unclean to be involved in the temple worship. And they say things like, if you want to be made whole, if you want to get a complete full clear bill of health, you've got to come talk to the priest. At which point you say, was he medically trained or is he just some guy? Remember these things as you think about leprosy in these laws. Leprosy, first of all, was used to describe a variety of diseases. I told you that. Not just Hanson's disease, but other rashes, other problems that people may develop. Some of these things would go away on their own. Some of these things could go away with their treatments of the things that they had available to them in the day. Some of these things were with you for life, but it describes a variety of things. Keep that in mind. Also remember this. Some of these laws that God put in place prevented the spread of this disease to other people. Separating these people out, wasn't just to make them feel bad, but it was in effect to protect the community as a whole. And here's really the biggest thing you need to keep in mind. Not just a variety of diseases and we're trying to protect the group. Here's what you gotta remember. When God says to his people, "You treat the disease like this, "and you don't treat it like this, "and this is who you go talk to, "and you go to the priest," what he's saying, without saying it is, quit going to the witch doctor. These are people who came out of Egypt, a highly pagan, highly animistic society, where if you got sick, it was very simple. You went to the high priest of their gods, you went to the shaman, you went to the witch doctor, you got some sort of spell, you offered some sort of crazy sacrifice, you said some sort of magical word, they gave you an amulet to wear, and what God is saying is, would you knock that off? That's ridiculous. Every time you get sick, every time you get some kind of rash, you go to this witch doctor, you offer these pagan sacrifices, stop it. What you need to do is go to the priest. The priest is never told to heal people of leprosy in the Old Testament. His job is to diagnose him to say, yes, you're sick, or to say, no, you're not sick anymore. And in all of these instructions, God is saying, look, quit trusting in various gods and goddesses and potions and spells and shamans to make you well. Listen, you go to the priest, you get checked out, some of these things will go away, some of them won't, but you need to worship me only, not all of these other deities, and so God is giving them not only medical laws, but spiritual laws in Leviticus 13 and 14. And that's why in this passage, if you look at the text, Jesus says in verse 14, go and show yourself to who, the priest. It's not because the priest was gonna heal them, it's not because there was anything magic in it, it's because that's what God had told his people to do. Go and show yourself to the priest. And as they go, we don't know how long it took, but we know that when they left, they were lepers, before they got there, they were cleansed, all 10 men were healed. And when you look at the one man who came back, and when you think about the nine who didn't, you learn some really important things about who Jesus is and what he's looking for in your life. And so let's talk about the miracle, three simple ideas. Number one is this, this miracle reminds us that Jesus is doing more than saving souls, he's making all things new. He's concerned about more than just saving souls, he's on a mission to make all things new. Now let me be very clear, I don't wanna minimize saving souls. I don't wanna pretend like that's not important. I've told you every single week in the Gospel of Luke that Luke 19, 10 is an umbrella for the whole book. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. He came to live for you, a life of perfect obedience. He came to die on the cross, not for his sins, but for your sins. He came to save your soul by dying as a sacrifice, dying as a substitute, and he's promised to come back for you someday. Jesus Christ came to this earth on a rescue mission to save your soul. That's a true statement, that's a glorious statement, that gives you hope, that gives you life. And some of you here this morning need to accept that for the very first time. Some of you here this morning say, you know I've been around church a lot, grew up going to church, I've done lots of churchy things. I can tell you a decent amount of stuff about what's in the Bible, but you've never really trusted in Jesus for salvation. Your soul is lost. The Bible describes it as being alienated from God, being separated from God. The Bible describes it as being under God's judgment, even goes so far as to call lost people, all of us at one point in time, children of his wrath. And some of you this morning need to say, Jesus, I need you to save my soul. I need you to forgive me. I believe that you died on the cross, not for your sins, but for mine. And I'm putting my hope and my trust and my faith in you, please save me. And the good news is, that's what he came to do. Luke 19, 10, to seek and to save the lost. And clearly, there's a man in this passage who experienced that in a special way. Look what Jesus said in verse 19 to the one man who came back. Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well. Literally, he uses the word, the Greek verb, that means you've been saved. He's saying something special happened to this one man that didn't happen to the other nine. All 10 physically healed, completely, no more leprosy. Jesus looks at this one man and he says, your faith has made you well. Literally, your faith has saved you. Of course it did, that's what Jesus came to do, to seek and to save the lost. Lepers like this man, this man, sinners like you and me. So yes, he did come to save souls. That's not all he came to do. Bible describes Jesus is coming on a mission to make all things new. And I've given you some scriptures on your outline. We're not gonna look him up. You can read these later. Let me just tell you what they say in Romans eight. Paul says that all of creation is waiting for redemption. Not just human beings, not just people whose soul has been saved, all of creation. It's not just waiting. Paul says it's groaning for the day of redemption. That when Jesus Christ comes back, it's going to be set free from bondage. The Bible describes that day in Revelation 21. It talks about new relationships. It talks about new life. It talks about new creation and new heavens and a new earth. It talks about a new city. Jesus is making all things new. And don't miss the beauty of this passage. As Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem, Luke 951. He set his face to go. He made the decision, I'm going and I'm going to die. Our passage, Luke 171, as he's going to Jerusalem, to die, to save souls, he stops and he looks at these men who are suffering physically and he makes them new. And you get a tiny glimpse of what it's gonna be like in the end. You get a tiny little glimpse of what Revelation is describing when it says there'd be no more sickness, no more pain, no more suffering, no more death. We can't fathom that. But you get a tiny picture of it here in Luke 17. He's not just saving souls. He's making all things new. Here's the second thing you see. Number two, the miracle highlights the importance of worship and the ugliness of ingratitude. The importance of worship and the ugliness of ingratitude. The story is a little bit shocking. It doesn't go exactly like you expect. The guys take off their lepers. They're healed along the way. Nine of them go and show themselves to the priest. One of them, a Samaritan comes back and look what he does. Verse 15, one of them when he saw that he was healed, turned back. Here we go, praising God with a loud voice. Number one, fell on his face at Jesus's feet. Number two, and he gave thanks. Number three, when you come to worship, you ought to come like that. That ought to be a picture of how you come. Number one, praising God with a loud voice. You don't have to sing like Laurie Farber. You can sing like Tyler Mintz. (congregation laughing) We'll let you sing too. We let Tyler sing. But you gotta sing. I'm amazed when I talk to people saying, "Oh, I just don't sing." Yeah, that's not for me. Baloney, I've been to a lot of rock and roll concerts with big, tough, strong, burly looking dudes, and they sing every word to those rock and roll anthems. People like to sing. We all like to sing. And this man came and he opens his mouth and he praises God. Second thing he does is what? He comes and he falls on his face. Now you may not come in and get on your face weekend and week out, but you better come humbly. You better come with a heart that's filled with humility. Better not come to worship thinking that God owes you something, but understanding that you owe God everything. This man gets on his face in front of Jesus and then he gives thanks. He thanks Jesus for what he has done for him. And when you look at him, compared to the other nine, you see real clear, not only how important worship is, but how ugly and gratitude is. Can we be honest and just say that this is probably an issue for every person in the room on some level? Just drop the sort of church façade and I'm a good person and just say, we struggle with this. I see people struggle with it in two ways. On the one hand, you have the person. They have a crisis in their life. Maybe it's a health crisis. Maybe it's a legal crisis. Maybe it's a relationship, a family problem of some kind, but they've got a big thing. And all of a sudden they get real spiritual. Real quick, and they come asking for this and they come asking for that and they begging God and they're brokering deals and you know how it goes. And then things work out, things get better. Sickness goes away, family relationships healed, legal problems taken care of, whatever. And then they forget God. I see that on a weekly basis as a pastor. And you've seen it too. It happens. Every day in every town in the United States of America, no matter how big, no matter how small, no matter what the drama is, what the crisis is, I've got a problem. I come to God and ask him to help. The problem goes away, I'll go on with life as usual. That's in gratitude. That's one way I see it. Here's the other place I see it and this is the one that hits home to me more than that one. Is in people who don't have any problems in their life, relatively speaking, no big cancer diagnoses, looming over our heads, no big financial problems that we're worried about, no big marriage problems or parenting problems, you just sort of look at your life and you say, "You know, life is just pretty good right now." Don't really have anything to complain about. And we go through our life day after day after day, our pretty good lives and we never give thanks. And then we realize that's a problem. So we make a holiday, thanksgiving. And a lot of what we do on the holiday is about us, not about giving thanks, like I love football, I love turkey, I love food. But we do say on this one day, we should stop and we should give thanks. That seems like the least we could do, one out of 365 to give thanks. But then some of you guys are really, really spiritual. You're a step above the rest of us. And some of you guys say, you know, one day in November is not enough. I'm gonna do it the whole month. And I'm gonna get on social media and make sure everybody knows I'm doing it the whole month. You get on there in November 1st and you say, "I'm gonna do the Thanksgiving challenge." And some of you can do this, I'm not making fun of you too much. I'm gonna get on social media and I'm gonna give thanks for one thing every day. And we all know you're gonna make it to about November 4th and you're gonna forget. And you know what happens then? You get on the 5th and you say, "Oh, I forgot, I'm gonna do two things today on the 5th." And then you do it the 5th and you make it the 6th and then the 7th, something comes up, you're busy, you forget. So you get on the 8th, you know how it goes. And you get about halfway through it and it's a giant guilt trip for everyone. It's a guilt trip for you because you can't make it a whole week without giving thanks for something every single day. And it's a guilt trip for the rest of us 'cause we read it on your feed and we think, "I'm not a very thankful person. "I should really be doing this." And when that happens in a couple of weeks, somebody like Parker Heinzley ought to just cue the old hymn. Here it comes, you ready? (upbeat music) You know this song? How many of you know this song? ♪ When the formats below you are tender stars ♪ ♪ When you are discouraged thinking all is lost ♪ ♪ How too many blessings lead them one by one ♪ ♪ And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done ♪ ♪ How too blessings lead them one by one ♪ ♪ How too blessings lead what God hath done ♪ ♪ How too blessings lead them one by one ♪ ♪ How too many blessings lead what God hath done ♪ - Two things about that song. Number one, thank you to Tyler in the band for recording that version for me this week. (audience laughing) It's a great version. Secondly, I hate that song. If you come on Wednesday nights, you know I like hymns. We sing hymns and I pick the best hymns. I let you guys pick, you don't pick hymns as good as I do. I pick the best hymns every week and we sing them and they're fantastic. I like hymns, I don't have any problem with good hymns. I don't like that hymns. I've been in churches where we sang that hymns. And here's what happens to me. Maybe this is not you, maybe this is just your pastor. Can't get it together. But I hear that song in church and I sing that song and I sit there and it does not inspire me to worship and give thanks. It makes me feel guilty for how grateful I am. Every time. In fact, in our house, we have a running joke. When somebody starts complaining, we start singing that song. ♪ How too blessings name them one by ♪ And nobody thinks it's funny when somebody sings that song to you 'cause it just makes you feel guilty for how ungrateful you are. So then what do we do? Then we start trying to come up with a list of all the things we're thankful for. Thank you God for my house. Thank you for my car. Thank you for my new tennis shoes. Thank you for my job. Thank you for, and we list a bunch of stuff that we're thankful for. So here's my advice. Thanksgiving's right around the corner. I vote, I make a motion, this is a business meeting that we banish that hymn for the rest of 2015. If you come on Wednesday nights and I'll let you pick a hymn, do not even think about picking that hymn. We will not sing it on Wednesday night. Be done with the guilt trip and instead open the Bible and let's see what people gave thanks for in the Bible. And I've given you a head start, okay? I put a lot of verses on your outline. Didn't even put them up on the screen 'cause they wouldn't fit on my slide. So I just have them on your outline. And you can take those and you can read through about what did people give thanks for in the Bible? Let me just give you a sort of a spoiler alert. None of those things are new Nike tennis shoes. None of them are homes. It's not about stuff and that's where we miss it. We just try to work up this guilt trip and think about all the things that we have and we're missing what's at the heart of true thankfulness. And so you can look up the verses, you can read them yourself. But when you look at this story and you see one man out of nine coming back to actually give thanks, you see really clearly how ugly in gratitude is. Whether it's these nine men who were healed of leprosy and didn't come back to give thanks or whether it's you and me. Padding ourselves on the back for one day out of 365 that we're thankful people. The last thing you see in this passage is this. The miracle teaches us that true faith is not satisfied with God's gifts. True faith seeks God himself. True faith is not satisfied with God's gifts. True faith seeks God himself. I'm about to warn you of one of the greatest dangers that you will ever face on a spiritual level being a follower of Jesus who lives in the United States of America in the 21st century. You have a choice. You can look at God as a means to some other end, your comfort, your happiness, your stuff. Or you can look at God as the ultimate end all be all. You have a choice. You can be comfortable and satisfied with the blessings that God offers you. Or you can be grateful for those things but strive after God himself. You can follow God like he's some sort of genie in a bottle who's there to do you favors and get you out of trouble and make sure you have a new pair of Nike's in your closet and a roof over your head. Or you can come to God as the creator and the sustainer of everything who sent his son to seek you and to save you and you can pursue him, not his gifts. But it's hard in this country because we enjoy a lot of gifts, an abundance of blessings. And we think that he's given them all to us just so we can enjoy them. And when you start to think that way, you just get wrapped up in all the gifts and you very easily forget about God. I know that this is an issue for people. Here's one way I know it's an issue. I've been a pastor for about 10 years and I've preached a decent number of funerals, surprisingly few since I've lived here but a decent number at the last two churches that I've pastored. And when I preach a funeral, I go and I meet with the family of the one who has passed away and sometimes it's parents or kids or whoever and I sit down with them and I say, tell me about your loved one. Just an open-ended question. Tell me about them. What would you want people to remember? What do you remember? What's important about them? You know, in those situations, people say really nice things, really nice things. I've done that with some families where I knew the person that we were talking about and I knew how rotten they were. Nobody said anything rotten. They find something nice to say. You really don't have to worry. It doesn't matter how rotten you are. When you die, we'll say nice things about you. That's what we do. We'll meet in your living room and we'll sit around and we'll talk about you and we'll say nice things. And I've done that time and time and time again and people say lots of nice things. Do you know what I don't hear very much? That person loved Jesus more than anything in this world. I don't hear that much. I hear when they were a really good parent. I hear, well, they really liked fishing. I hear, well, she was a really good cook. I hear lots of nice things. Just don't have a lot of people who look me in the eyeball and I throw out this open-ended question. I say, tell me about your loved one. What do you remember? What would they want people to remember? Not a whole lot of folks. Some, but not a whole lot of folks that look me in the eyeball and say they loved Jesus more than anything else in the world. Maybe they just didn't know their loved one very well and they're not in a position to say what they loved most. Or maybe they did know them pretty well. In this passage, in this miracle, you see a choice between being satisfied with the gift and the blessing or pursuing Jesus himself. And before we get too hard on the nine, I want you to think about something. I had never thought about this until this week and it may be totally obvious to you, but it just occurred to me this week and I never thought about it. The nine guys that didn't come back, they did obey Jesus. They did exactly what he told them to do. I mean, think about the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus and he says, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus says, what, sell everything you have? Give it to the poor and then come follow me. And he says, no, I'm not gonna do that. Jesus says to these guys who are very, very sick, go. You're not healed yet, but go and show yourself to the priest. And what do they do? They do exactly what Jesus tells them to do. They get up and they go. How can you knock somebody for obeying Jesus? They did exactly what he told them to do. And there's a danger in doing religious things that look very obedient on the outside, that are not truly aimed at chasing a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. There is a kind of obedience that completely misses Jesus. And I'm certainly not suggesting you try to find Jesus through disobedience 'cause that's a dead end street. But there is a kind of religious obedience, an external conformity to what this book says to do, that completely misses Jesus. And it talks a good game and it sounds good and it may even sound very thankful for all of God's gifts, but it's not focused on God himself. When you look at this passage, I want you to see Jesus, not as a means to some other end, but as the end. I don't want you to see Jesus as some sort of tool or person you can use to get what you want. I want Jesus to be what you want. I want you to see, yes, the ugliness of ingratitude, but I want you to understand that true faith in Jesus is not just about coming to get cleansed so you get a ticket punch for heaven one day and you can be in this great place called heaven. Luke 19, 10 is true and it's glorious true and you should accept it, not just so you can go to heaven someday, but so you can be with Jesus now and forever. That's the point, he's not some means to a greater end, he is the end, he is as he says elsewhere, the pearl of great price. He's the treasure that's worth liquidating everything that you own to pursue it. And you see in this parable of the nine who obeyed and the one who came back, there's a great danger in an external formal obedience that completely misses Jesus. Don't miss him, let me pray for you. Father forgive us when we are ungrateful. Whatever situation or circumstance brings that out in us, we seek forgiveness this morning. Father help us to understand what true faith looks like and it's not just about getting a ticket punched for eternity, it's not just about healing now or in the future, but it's about a relationship with you through your son, Jesus Christ. Father help us to be people who worship with our hearts, yes, but also with our mouth. Help us to come humbly into your presence. Father we pray for those who are here this morning who have never personalized the truth of Luke 19 10 and we pray that you would open their heart, that you would draw them to salvation and that they would begin to chase Jesus, not as a means to some other end, but as the greatest end that they've ever known, as the only one that can bring fulfillment and peace and wholeness to their heart. Father for those of us who love Jesus, we're amazed at the truth that you send him to seek us and to save us and we also have great hope that you are in the process of making all things new and that a future awaits us that is amazing and beyond description, but the best part is that you will be with us and we will be your people and we will see you face to face. Father make that the chief in the first and the top in the last desire of our heart to be with you and to know you. As we sing, help us to focus on the things that we've heard from the Gospel of Luke, help us to respond with loud praise to you for who you are and what you've done for us. We ask it in the name of your son Jesus, amen.