"Giving Glory To God" - 2

Maybe you are not seeing the big deal in what it means to recognize Jesus? Well, for starters, we must come to an understanding of what is sin, or what sin is. In the case of our 10 lepers, it was not to difficult for them to know what it was they were suffering from, because all of them cried together for mercy and a chance to be made clean. However, nine of the ten did not go back to praise the One who healed them; why do you think that was? As I said yesterday, those nine that returned not back to give glory to God were most likely Jews, and given that Jesus had instructed them to "go show themselves to the priests", they might have considered that their healing came from the obedience in following His command; because it says in the same verse, "and as they went, they were cleansed". But there is another aspect of their misunderstanding, and that could have been the Temple; where they may have figured in their understanding of the Temple, that in setting out towards it they were healed. Or, maybe they were just being ungrateful for their healing, but I do not think so; I think that they were ignorant of what healed them, or Who; and more importantly, they did not understand the healing that they received. Now, when it comes to sin; we must know what our sin is towards God; knowing that our sin separates us from fellowship with God. Does that mean that He stops loving us? No! What it does mean, is that He can not fellowship with us while we have unconfessed sin. Which brings me to my second point: we must know what is sin. Sin is anything that is contrary to God's Holiness, and it is anything which takes away from Glorifying God. So, in the case of our nine lepers that did not turn back and give Glory to God, was that then sin? or was it just plain ignorance? I am thinking that it was sin, because sin means 'missing the mark'; and there are two ways to miss the mark, you can aim somewhere else, or you can just not know how to properly aim; either way, you will miss the mark. In Psalm 100, which I started with yesterday, there is something very important which is said in verse 3: "Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture". The reason that this verse is so very important, is that we have a tendency to give ourselves credit for things that are good. In other words, we like to take credit when things go well, and put blame on others when things go bad. We also have, in the same line of thinking, a tendency to assume that our position in where we stand with God is based upon our own righteousness; this is really normal and easy to do without even thinking about it. However, that too is missing the mark; because the one leper who turned back to Jesus, had realized that he had been healed by Jesus, and that the only reason he was going to the priests, was to show himself clean...