Faith and Worship
When Jesus said faith can move mountains, it meant that God can accomplish so much through faithful people. The things that seem impossible are possible when God is involved. At the beginning of any work worthy of God lies faith. For without faith, it is impossible to please God. (Heb. 11:6)
When we look at Luke 17:11-19, we find a group of leprous men who are eager to be healed. And what we see from these men is an exercise in great faith. This really is a great story… take a minute and read it: Luke 17:11-19.
Ten men rejected because of leprosy are forced to live outside the village. No doubt for years they have lived isolated lives, only able to see from a distance what life could have been like if not for this wretched disease. But then one day, Jesus walks by – the man known to heal people of all kinds of sicknesses — and they yell to Him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And the compassionate Jesus says but one thing on record: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”
Now my first reaction was to wonder why Jesus would tell them to go to the priests, almost as if to say, “I can’t do anything about it. Go to the priests and let them take care of it.” But upon further study, I found in Lev. 14 that whenever someone was healed of an infectious skin disease, they had to get it confirmed by the priests before they could be deemed “clean”. So in reality, when Jesus tells them to go to the priests, He is telling them to show the priests that they were healed.
Why are these men of great faith? They are faithful because the passage says they weren’t healed until after they started on their way. They didn’t wait to be healed before getting up and going. They literally walked in faith. What a picture of obedient faith! We could all learn a lesson from these lepers to act in belief even before it happens.
But unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. They had a great start, but a lowsy ending… except for one Samaritan (an outcast in the eyes of the Jews making him doubly rejected both as a Samaritan and a leper). This lowest of outcasts turned back to give honor and praise to Jesus for the healing he had received. He was so thankful that he threw himself at Jesus’ feet in worship. The other nine, they just kept right on going. They presumably were interested only in the fact that they were going to get to rejoin society. Indeed, that is a great blessing. But Jesus, perhaps sadly, perhaps surprised, was critical of the other nine who were so greatly blessed, yet failed to give an ounce of thanks to God.
Worship. It is supposed to be the end-product of faith. Faith is not merely to give us what we want, but rather to lead us to worship the One who gives. We walk by faith in order to develop our worship. That single Samaritan man showed us that.
God can do the impossible through faithful servants. No doubt you have seen Him move mountains by faith – maybe in your life, maybe in the life of a friend or family member. No doubt you have seen Him work by faith in something on the scale of a mole hill in your life. Don’t get me wrong, God wants to bless His children. But from the passage today, His greater desire is that our faith might lead to worship. That is my prayer for us all (myself included), that our stepping out in faith might lead not only to God’s blessing, but more importantly, to our worship of Him.
