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Tucked into Luke’s ten-chapter account of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem is a narrative featuring ten lepers (Luke 17:11–19). Prevented by Jewish purity laws from approaching Jesus, those ten lepers call out to him from a distance, begging to be healed. Jesus agrees to their request with a Naaman-like test of faith: “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (verse 14). All ten lepers comply, discovering on their way that they have been cleansed.

At this point, one lone leper chooses to defer his face to face with the priest and to delay his restoration to society in order to turn back, find Jesus, and thank him. Cleansed and now unafraid of spreading his dreadful disease, he approaches Jesus, loudly praising God before falling on his face at his Savior’s feet (verses 15–16).

What happens next may have surprised the unnamed leper. Jesus delays his customary “your faith has made you well” (verse 19) in preference for three piercing questions. Jesus’s response simultaneously exposes a sobering reality about ingratitude and offers a healing balm to those familiar with its sting, a pain Shakespeare’s King Lear described as “sharper than a serpent’s tooth” (King Lear, 1.4.302–303).

1. ‘Were not ten cleansed?’

Jesus’s first question exposes the pervasiveness of ingratitude: So many were healed, and yet so few returned. By calling out the many who had not returned to praise and thank God, Jesus unveils ingratitude as sin and rightly assesses its weight. Ingratitude — a blindness to God’s grace and failure to honor him with our thanks — justly provokes God’s anger. Paul includes it in a list of grievous sins in Romans 1, alongside the likes of idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality (Romans 1:21, 26–32).

With his piercing question, Jesus, far from excusing ingratitude, exposes it and laments its pervasiveness.

2. ‘Where are the nine?’

Similar to the first, Jesus’s second question hints at the sting of ingratitude. Only one among ten men had a heart that was properly oriented toward God in that moment. Only one returned — only one — when all should have done so. Where were the rest? Hadn’t they also believed, obeyed, and been healed?

The 9:1 ratio confronts believers with the possibility that we, too, might be among the nine. We may want to believe we’re the one who came back, singular in virtue, but this encounter causes us to pause and take stock. Are we among the nine? Too often, we also are slow to perceive God’s grace in our lives. We blithely go about our business, consuming God’s good gifts, when, much like the lone leper, we ought to turn back and sing with the hymn,

Dissolved by thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.

3. ‘Was no one found except this foreigner?’

The third question distinguishes the lone leper as a foreigner among Jesus’s people; Luke identifies him as a Samaritan (Luke 17:16). We might expect to find hearts rightly oriented toward God among the people with whom Jesus lived and served, but the sorry state of affairs was this: Most of Jesus’s countrymen rejected him. He received little gratitude from those he came to save, and little praise to God issued from their mouths. Those who professed to love God best not only rejected Jesus but murdered him. More often, it was the foreigners and the social outcasts who were quicker to perceive God’s grace to them in Jesus. It was they who begged not to be parted from him (Luke 8:38).

Jesus’s piercing questions unmask our own hearts. Are we quick to see God’s grace at work in our lives and praise him for it? Do we thank those who are his means of accomplishing his good purposes?

Jesus Kept Walking

However spotty our gratitude-record toward God may be, our failures do little to diminish the pain when we experience the sting of ingratitude. The wounds from ungrateful children, spouses, friends, church members, and church leaders have barely scabbed over; they remain ready to break open and bleed again. And when they do, bitterness floods our thoughts, and pride and anger seek to reestablish dominion in our hearts.

But a soothing ointment for those wounds is found in fellowship with Jesus, who knows — better than anyone — the sting of ingratitude. Within this fellowship, Jesus sets the example for us. It isn’t wrong to feel the sting of ingratitude or to expose its pervasiveness. We need not excuse the behavior. Oh, the other nine were so overcome with joy, it drove every other thought from their minds. But neither need others’ ingratitude keep us from joy in God, obedience to his will, and persistent love for ungrateful neighbors. We need not linger over the sting any longer than Jesus did.

You see, after this episode, undeterred by the continual ingratitude of his people, Jesus once more “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). There were more miles to walk, more people to heal, more sins to forgive, more parables to tell. Zacchaeus would be waiting in a sycamore tree, and a blind beggar along the Jericho road. There was the Last Supper to prepare and eleventh-hour instructions to give his disciples. There was the cross, the grave, and the crown. The hours were short, and nothing would prevent Jesus from completing his journey.

So we walk Jesus’s steps after him, following as closely as we dare. Aware that few may praise God, few may return to thank us, and those who do are often the ones we’d least expect, we nevertheless set our faces to Jerusalem and take up our appointed crosses, for the time is short, and much remains to be done.

When was the last time you felt an impulse to do something fresh and daring for Jesus, but then you glanced around, thought how strange you might look, and let the desire die?

Sometimes the tug is relatively small: Kneel in corporate worship. Ask a deep question in a superficial conversation. Stop and talk to a stranger.

Other times, you may feel stirred to something bolder: Start a Bible study on your block. Foster a few children. Gather some brothers and try street preaching.

You feel prodded, moved. The impulse begins to feel like a matter of obedience. You come right to the cusp of action. But then you look around and see no one else you know following Jesus like that. And so you don’t either.

I know the feeling. And I wonder if Jesus would tell you and me in these moments what he once told Peter: “What is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22). You follow me: Take the gifts he’s given you, the opportunities in front of you, the burdens placed upon you, and don’t worry so much about what others are doing or what others might think. Instead, fix your eyes on Jesus and follow him as faithfully as you can.

‘You Follow Me’

Those three simple words — “You follow me” — remind us that Christians are both remarkably similar to one another and also strikingly different.

“You follow me,” Jesus says to us all. We fix our eyes on the same Jesus, the same Lord, who is conforming us into the same image (Romans 8:29). Whoever we are, wherever we come from, we all want to be as much like him as we can.

But when Jesus says, “You follow me,” he really means you — you with your distinct personality, your unique background, your particular gifts, your specific ambitions, your precise circumstances. The call comes to fathers and mothers, singles and spouses, teachers and engineers and artists, the church-raised and the world-raised, with all the fantastic variety that the image of God can hold.

Because Jesus calls us to follow him, we can learn a great deal from those farther along the journey; we ought to imitate those who imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). But because Jesus calls us to follow him, our following will sometimes depart from that of others and may even look strange to some of them. Peter will not go everywhere John goes; John will not do everything Peter does. The eye and the ear both have their place.

In healthy churches, Christians learn much from each other but keep their first and best focus on Jesus himself. They remember that Jesus may bid them to go where others aren’t going, say what others aren’t saying, try what others aren’t trying. They still lean on their community to discern the wisdom of their way, but they keep their eyes locked on the one who often leads his people in different directions. They stay open to surprises.

And when, like Peter, their focus subtly shifts from Christ to his people, and they ask, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus snaps their gaze back to him: “What is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:21–22).

Blandly Predictable

Now, Peter’s situation was not exactly like ours. He did not hesitate to obey because he feared the opinion of others (so far as we can tell). But he did look at the path Jesus laid out for him — pastoring followed by martyrdom (John 21:15–19) — and immediately turned from Jesus to John. What about him? He waited to walk until he knew how his calling compared to his brother’s. Jesus’s response gives us an enduring principle: Let your obedience be defined by the Lord before you, not the disciples beside you.

Some Christians, of course, need little encouragement to depart from the crowd. They already shout, “Amen!” when no one else does and readily strike out on their own. They are John the Baptist’s spiritual children, conspicuous as a camel’s-hair coat. If anything, they would do well to get more advice before acting.

Many more of us, probably, stand on the other side of the river. We blend in too well. We wear various shades of beige from day to day. We follow Jesus only as we see others doing, only in ways that won’t turn heads. We have become blandly, un-Christianly predictable.

Those who hear and heed “You follow me” will, over time, take fresh risks and launch new ventures, whatever their personality. Paul and Barnabas will set sail for new lands. Mark will write the first Gospel. Pastors will plant churches in hard places. The naturally timid will speak brave words. The natively brash will minister to the disabled.

But such adventurous obedience will happen only if “You follow me” holds more weight than what others are doing or what others may think. How many beautiful ideas do we discard too soon because they seem too bold? How many times does a good work die because we look too long at the people around us and too little at the Lord ahead of us? How often have we let the opinions of unbelievers, or even other Christians, steal the salt from our lives?

I’m not suggesting that you start judging your brothers and sisters as disobedient while you embark on the real Christian life. Just because you adopt a child or do door-to-door evangelism doesn’t mean they should. They may be following Jesus exactly as he wants them to. I’m only suggesting that you not let their good works set the boundaries for your own. What if he wants you to do something new in your community?

Follow the Stories

What a sad story church history would tell if God’s people had always limited their obedience to what they could see. Paul would have kept silent in the face of Peter’s hypocrisy. The gospel would have stayed with the Jews. Augustine would have never written his Confessions. Luther would have remained a monk. Wilberforce would have let slavery slide. Whitefield and the Wesleys would have used only their indoor voice.

And what a sad story our own lives would tell. What if the person who shared Jesus with you had not listened when he told them, “You follow me”? What if those who sharpen you most stayed quiet instead of reproving, correcting, pursuing? The brothers and sisters we so admire, the ones who speak and evangelize and sing and pray in ways that jostle and stir us and make us yearn to be Christlike — aren’t they the ones who hear “You follow me” and obey?

So too with our own history of obedience. Haven’t many of our soul’s best moments come on the far side of risk? We dreaded the thought of some hard conversation — but then we spoke, and what good came! We counted the cost and joined a church plant anyway — and how glad we are that we did! Even when our attempts to boldly follow land us flat on our faces, aren’t we often still thankful for how God shapes us in the falling? Better to sink walking on waves than stay seated in the boat.

Following in the First Step

If following Jesus so freely, so gallantly, feels unnatural to you (as it does to me), remember that you already have followed him in this way. All our daily following is, in one sense, a continuation of the first step we took.

Do you remember what happened when Jesus first called you? There you were, maybe in high school or college, perhaps a young parent or an empty nester. You lived among the crowd. But then you heard the voice of Jesus in his word saying, “Follow me.”

Looking up, you probably saw some people you knew following him, but you saw many more — family, friends, classmates, neighbors, coworkers — not following. You were a Nicodemus among Pharisees, a seeker surrounded by unbelief. But you couldn’t shake the voice you heard. His call was too alluring, his glory too compelling. So you looked at the crowd again and said, “What is that to me? I’m following him.”

Today, you often find yourself in the company of those who also follow him. But even now, the Lord who called you by name still holds your first allegiance. At times, he will lead you to say things, do things, risk things that surprise even the Christians around you.

But even if you find yourself out of step for a moment with your brothers and sisters, you will not be out of step with your Lord. For wherever he calls you to follow him, there he is.

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All the plenty will be forgotten. (Genesis 41:30)

Pharaoh looked out from the bank of the river. What were those coming up out of the Nile?

Seven healthy cows emerged from the waters and walked upon the land. Who has ever seen cows emerge from the depths of a mighty river? A strange sight indeed. But more came; he shivered. Seven sickly cows staggered from the waters to stand on the shore. Seven plump cows; seven bony cows. Even for dreams, this was odd.

But bizarre soon turned nightmarish. “The ugly, thin cows ate up the seven attractive, plump cows” (Genesis 41:4).

Pharaoh woke.

Cannibal cattle could not be forgotten. Pharaoh turned over, disturbed. Eventually he dozed off into another dream of seven thin ears of grain swallowing seven thick ears. The pattern begged explanation. What did the architect of such visions mean to tell the king?

His magicians could not answer. But Pharaoh’s cupbearer, overhearing the inquiry, remembered a guy who had interpreted his dream exactly as it unfolded. Joseph was told to prepare himself to see the king.

“It is not in me,” the Hebrew confessed before the court. “God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer” (Genesis 41:16). He unraveled the mystery:

There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, but after them there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will consume the land, and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow, for it will be very severe. And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about. (Genesis 41:29–32)

God warned Pharaoh of coming calamity while he still had time to prepare. Pharaoh, with Joseph elevated to his right hand, did prepare. They survived. More than that, they used the prophecy to profit. Egypt became a mighty nation.

Egypt’s prosperity and famine has come and passed. But I believe Pharaoh’s nightmare teaches us a lesson about the nature of another impending calamity, one each of us must prepare for. This nearing catastrophe too is fixed by God, and shortly he will bring it about. Blessed only are those who are found ready.

Thin Cows Come

What sends a shiver up my soul is how the ruinous years erased the memory of the prosperous ones. God warned the king that poverty would so overwhelm the days of plenty that those happier days of abundance would be emptied of meaning and memory.

Isn’t this a picture of the destruction destined for the unrepentant? God has shown us a vision of coming judgment, a judgment so severe that it will make irrelevant the days of fortune, even Western fortune.

We live, figuratively speaking, in the first seven years. Many flatter themselves that things can only get better. Fat cows do not just stand on our banks; they lay well cooked on our plates. So many feast sumptuously and cannot understand all this fussing by their religious relatives of coming destruction. All is sunny; life is fair; why can’t these Christians just enjoy themselves?

Because these Christians know more of the vision. It is not in us to foretell the times, but our God has plainly told us: Thin cows are coming upon an unwatchful world. Near is a calamity so severe, so devouring, so unmistakable and inescapable that all unsanctified plenty, all worldly laughter, all ungodly abundance will become utterly meaningless and altogether forgotten. As memories of feasts do not fill starving bellies, so recollections of favorite pastimes shall bring no satisfaction to perishing souls.

This is the point of the ugly cows swallowing the plump ones. The happy times, the good old days, those merry and unholy moments — consumed, seen no more. When the promised judgment comes, when the wrath of God descends, when the books are opened and the pleading of the unrepentant for death goes unanswered — all the former pleasure, all the bright days, all the former times of fat cows shall be swallowed forever.

Jesus makes the connection for us in his teaching. He teaches that earthly riches shall not offer one drop of relief to the anguishing tongue under burning judgment. The Lord describes a ghastly vision of a rich man withering in fire, who would have given every coin, every feast, every pleasure he ever owned — all from that former life — for a single drop of water, a second of reprieve. He cries, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16:24). A suitable caption for this tormented man: “All plenty will be utterly forgotten.”

Wise Men Prepare

Sinner, your prosperity — now felt by you as a wall of protection — will crumble in a moment, as the walls of Jericho, and you will stand exposed before the wrath of God. And when you look up you will not see cows but white horses, a divine army led by a Lord whose robe is dipped in blood.

But here is the point: You have time to prepare. Pharaoh and Joseph prepared for the famine in times of abundance and saved many in Egypt and beyond. So must we.

Consider God’s willingness to save. “Fire and brimstone preaching” has fallen under rebuke, but wasn’t it gracious for God to interrupt Pharaoh’s cozy dreams to foretell of the famine to come? The nightmare was not given to destroy Egypt but to save it (and God’s covenant people through it). In receiving the warning of coming disaster, do not miss the mercy of God.

He is willing to save. Warnings of wrath and coming punishment may alarm you, annoy you, make you angry — the thin cows are grotesque in your sight. Such talk ruins a good time, weighs down levity, grounds a helium life. But the bad news is told to you that you may avoid it. God warns of the flood, the fiery judgment, the wrath to come so that you flee to Jesus Christ. The Lord himself spoke most of hell because he most wanted the guilty to escape it.

He alone made a way through his own blood for us to be saved. Sinner, meet the great Savior: Jesus Christ. He, the only one who ever deserved eternal life by his perfect obedience, laid down his life that you may share in his reward. God offers you mercy, not by letting you out of hell centuries early on good behavior, but by sending his own Son to bear your consequence so you never taste a drop of his wrath. His obedience for your rebellion, his reward for your guilt, his death for your life. Will you not relent?

Consider his promises of blessing. This Redeemer is so full he does not just take away the famine; he leaves eternal prosperity in its place. On the shores of the better country, the plump cows devour the ugly and thin. It is the very reverse of what we have seen. No matter how much pain and sorrow and loss and famine you have experienced, come to Jesus. He promises future years that swallow all sorrow.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

God’s warning: Continue to ignore Jesus Christ, continue to cling to your sins, and all your former joys will be utterly forgotten in an endless famine.

God’s welcome: Trust in Christ — his perfect life, his atoning death, his resurrection, and his soon return — and all your past griefs and pain and regrets shall be swallowed up by eternal life with him.

For the preaching pastor, each sermon demands a fresh hunt for insight in service of a hungry people. How do we find that life-giving truth?

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