Responding to Grace

What is our response to the wonderful grace of God?  Do we take it for granted?  Do we relish in the gifts but forget the giver?  Do we get so preoccupied with life that we forget to worship the giver of life?  In Luke 17 there is an account of just such questions and answers. 

In Luke 17 ten lepers came to Jesus crying out to Him to have mercy on them.  In His mercy and grace He sent them away healed of their dreadful disease.  Upon seeing their healing, though, only one turned back to give thanks to the healer.  This one was a despised Samaritan.  Philip Bliss wrote a hymn titled “Where Are the Nine?” 

Ten men rejoiced to be healed. One man rejoiced in the healer.  Bliss’s second verse captures the moment for us.  “Loudly the stranger sang praise to the Lord, knowing the cure had been wrought by His word, gratefully owning the Healer divine; Jesus says tenderly, where are the nine?”  Are we the one’s singing His praises or are we the nine who rejoice only in the gift given? 

The world is looking for a savior.  They just don’t know where to look.  There are too many saviors being offered.  The One who is truly able to make whole, Jesus Christ the Son of God, has cleansed many but is acknowledged by few of them as the source of their healing.  Bliss’s chorus is a simple question that Jesus asked, “Where are the nine, where are the nine, were there not ten cleansed, where are the nine?” 

In his final stanza Bliss sets forth the situation we find in our world.  Christ is doubted, derided and considered irrelevant.  Into this courtroom of accusation against the Savior, where is the witness of the nine?  “Jesus on trial today we can see, thousands deridingly ask, Who is He? How they’re rejecting Him, your Lord and mine! Bring in the witnesses—where are the nine?”  Let us gladly lift our voices with the Samaritan and declare to all that Jesus Christ is the healer of men’s souls and witness to that truth each day. 

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

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