Good morning, CHURCH!

Welcome to FFM where we are here to connect people to the love of God through biblical teaching, loving community, and relational small groups.

(Church joke of the day)

My wife spent some time in Dallas this past week with some other pastor’s wives from Dallas and across the country.

During one of the times of questions and answers someone asked my wife: “As a pastor’s wife who deals with the people all of the time, do you ever wake up GRUMPY in the morning?”

Do you want to know what her answer was?

She said “Naw, he usually wakes up before me.”

And she told me that while we were driving back from the airport. Of course, it started a huge argument.

All of a sudden, the car ride got really silent.

Then we passed a field filled with cows and horses and donkeys.

She looked over at them and said, “Are those relatives of yours?”

I said, “Yeah,” those are some of my “in-laws!”

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Pray

Lord help us to see you as new and fresh through your word today.

Help us to see where we have believed a lie or been deceived.

Let us see how much you love us.

Give us your heart for humanity.

Let’s go to the book of Ephesians 5:31-32 NLT for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

(Picture of a bride in prep for the wedding day)

📷

This picture makes you think of a wedding or the preparation for a wedding.

This picture also represents a cosmic mystery or shadow of a mystery.

The mystery is our very existence being represented in a love story.

The bride is a picture of what each of us was created to be.

She is so excited in anticipation of the fairytale marriage she dreamed of since being a little girl.

We were each created to be that bride.

That’s why we never feel complete in ourselves.

There is something in the bride that longs to be married.

So, we never find our completion until we are joined to Him who is beyond us.

That is why we go through life trying to join ourselves or attach ourselves.

We’re always looking to get hitched.

We attach to people, success, possessions, achievements, comfort,

Acceptance, power, a movement, and anything else we think will fulfill the longing in our hearts.

All of things will only temporarily provide fulfillment.

Only the Bridegroom will ever fully satisfy that longing in us.

Another part of the mystery is that the bride isn’t just found by the groom.

She marries him.

So, it’s not enough to just find God, you must marry Him.

‘How do you marry God” you ask?

By joining every part of your life and being to Him.

Your deepest parts. Your heart, your soul, your wounds, your longings, your desires, and everything else you can think of.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

Ephesians 5:31-32 NLT

As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ, and the church are one.

Deuteronomy 6:5 NLV

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Let’s get into today’s message.

Today I am starting a new series titled:

The Gift of Gratitude

As we enter the holiday seasons I think it would be good for us to keep a grateful heart.

Have you as a parent ever did the best you could do for your children and one of them is upset that you couldn’t do more?

They shrug their shoulders and make a pouting face.

The sheer ungratefulness almost makes you want to take away from them what you did do for them.

Or on the opposite side of the spectrum, have you ever thought about how it makes you feel when you’ve done something for someone and they show you that their grateful.

Especially like when you do something for your kids that they seemingly come to expect from you because you are their parents.

But they happen to notice that some of their friends parents don’t do for them what you do.

And they take the time to show you that they’re grateful.

Today’s message title is:

The Words of Gratitude

In this series each of the message titles will end with of gratitude.

Today we have the words of gratitude, we will have The Prayer of Gratitude, The Praise of Gratitude, The Dance of Gratitude and the Song of Gratitude.

Point #1

Outcast with no mission.

In the bible leprosy was an unattractive skin disease for which the Bible had prescribed quarantine for anyone with it, from the rest of society (Lev 13:45–46).

Leviticus 13:45-46 ESV

English Standard Version (Chapter 13)

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

Although the Bible did not go so far as many Jewish teachers in blaming the disease on the leper’s sin.

Lepers were outcasts from the rest of society, the kind of people most healthy people preferred to ignore.

(Kind of like the way vaccinated people treated non vaccinated people during the height of the covid plandemick.)

Luke 17:11-13 NLT

11 As Jesus continued toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. 12 As he entered a village there, ten men with leprosy stood at a distance, 13 crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

So, here stands a mob of lepers.

Outcasts from society.

They can’t have anything to do with the rest of the people and the rest of the people have nothing to do with them.

Maybe you’ve never had a rare skin disease or rash, but you have a times felt like an outcast.

Hardly anyone wants anything to do with you.

I’ve got some good news for you.

Jesus specializes in finding a purpose for those who used to be outcasts.

All you have to do is cry out to Jesus like these 10 men did.

Point #2

Faith sends you on a mission.

Now, we had these 10 men with leprosy who were crying out to Jesus for help to be healed.

Before we get to what Jesus did.

Let’s look at the Bible’s prescription of sacrifices once someone’s leprosy was cured. You can read about it in: (Lev 14:1–32).

They were brought to see the priest outside of the camp.

If the priest agreed they were clean they had to take two birds, some wood, some string and some hyssop.

They had to kill one of the birds and go through this extensive ritual.

On the eight day they had to take two unblemished lambs, some grain, some oil and some flour.

There was another extensive ritual.

This is just some context for you to understand what these men were facing once the leprosy went away.

Luke 17:14 says:

Luke 17:14 NLT

14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

As they went, they were cleansed.

Looks like all 10 of them had faith in the very word of Jesus.

They possibly had heard the news of a previous healing of a lepros man in Luke chapter 5.

But in the Luke 5 healing Jesus actually healed the man before sending him on his way to see the priest.

Luke 5:12-13 NLT

“In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. “Lord,” he said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.”” 13 “Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared.”

But here in Luke 17 Jesus was putting their faith to the test by asking them to act as if they had already been cured.

Jesus didn’t do nothing dramatic. He didn’t spit on the ground and make mud.

He uttered a simple command: Go let the priests see you.

Kind of like when he uttered the word come to Peter when he was walking on the water.

Such a command demanded action from the sick men.

Did you know that we have words that are commanded to us from Jesus in the scriptures.

Are you going in faith or are you waiting to see the manifestation before you move?

For these men to run to the priests meant to show them that they were no longer infected so they could return to normal human contacts in society.

If they were thinking why in the world would he send us to see the priest when he didn’t even lay hands on us?

But these 10 men all went away in faith expecting that by the time they got to the priest there leprosy would be healed.

Point #3

Gratitude brings you back.

Luke 17:15-16 NLT

15 One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, “Praise God!” 16 He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan.

It was no small thing that a Samaritan would travel with Jewish lepers in the area between Samaria and Galilee. (v. 11)

This illustrates the extremity of lepers’ status as outcasts.

There is such and emphasis put on it that it erases all other social distinctions.

We don’t have details on why the other 9 men didn’t immediately return to Jesus and show some gratitude but we know they didn’t.

Now not only was the man that returned a leper, but he was also a Samaritan.

That’s a double whammy.

Why would Jesus deal with a Samaritan that was a leper?

Isn’t it the nature of our God to not forget about the ones that others cast away.

What I love about this Samaritan is that he didn’t wait to be certified fit to rejoin the community.

He returned to Jesus as soon as he saw that he was cured.

That would be a great habit to add to your arsenal.

As soon as God blesses you tell him thank you.

I woke up this morning. Thank you.

I got out of bed and my legs worked. Thank you.

I sat down to hear from the Lord and he spoke. Thank you.

Luke 17:17-19 NLT

17 Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men? Where are the other nine?18 Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?”19 And Jesus said to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.”

There seems to be an apparent disappointment in the lack of gratitude from the other nine that were healed.

Where are the other nine wasn’t a question about their physical location.

It was a question about the location of their heart.

Apparently the other nine were so absorbed in their new blessing that they could not spare a moment or didn’t think to give gratitude for the source of the blessing.

Ain’t nothing like being blessed and then taking the blessing and forgetting about God.

Jesus told the Samaritan your faith has healed you or made you well in some translations.

Presumably the other nine had faith also, for this was the common prerequisite of Jesus’ miracles.

But certainly, this Samaritan had faith and he had gratitude.

We should take the statement has healed you or made you well, to mean more than cured you.

All 10 were cured.

It literally means, ‘has saved you’.

It appears as if Jesus recognized in this man the faith that brings about salvation and so he sent him off with the assurance that it was well with his soul as it was with his body.

Full restoration means a saved soul as well as a sound body.

Are you grateful for what the Lord has done for you?

If you’re watching online or here in the building, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now?