The Ten Lepers

Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 17. Luke 17. We have a short passage to look at today, a simple story from the scripture, but one with important implications for us. > [11](#) And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. > [12](#) And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: > [13](#) And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. > [14](#) And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. > [15](#) And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, > [16](#) And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. > [17](#) And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? > [18](#) There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. > [19](#) And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole. > Luke 17:11-19 (KJV) Jesus is traveling here. He's traveling to the city of Jerusalem. If you know the geography of Israel in Jesus’ times it was basically split up into three different areas: - The main area in the south was called Judea and that's where the city of Jerusalem was. This would have been the tribe of Judah or the southern kingdom in the Old Testament. - The Northern tribes, the Northern kingdom, we call Israel in the Old Testament. It's actually split into two different areas by the time of Christ. The bigger southern area was called Samaria. Remember Samaria was the capital of the Northern Kingdom. - At the very top there's a small region called Galilee. What happened was the Northern Kingdom apostatized. The people of the Northern Kingdom went into idolatry. They worshiped with golden calves and they worshiped Baal and then they were basically destroyed by the Assyrians. The people that were left there, the Jewish people that were left there, had such a messed up faith. They ended up intermarrying with Gentiles and basically the rest of the Jews wrote them off. They hated those people. They hated the Samaritans. And there was a pocket of faithful Jews north of there in the Galilee region. That's where Jesus was raised. That's where most of the disciples came from. But to get from Galilee to Jerusalem, you had to either go through Samaria (which was the most logical way to go) or you had to go around Samaria. Often people went around Samaria because they hated the Samaritans that much. Well here Jesus is traveling and he's in the border region between Samaria and Galilee. And he comes across a group of Leprous people. Leprosy has basically been healed. It is not a common thing today. But in Bible times leprosy was a big deal. If you got leprosy it was basically a death sentence but it was the worst kind of death sentence. Because it's highly contagious, you are ostracized from society. And on the outskirts of society you had to watch as your body basically disintegrated. It took a long time; it took over ten years for people to die of leprosy. The Jewish law had it that lepers had to stand away from everybody else. They had to give a certain amount of space away from everybody else and they had to shout, "Unclean, unclean," whenever they were around a group of people. And so Jesus, in this story, is coming upon this group of lepers. They are away from everybody else and they recognize Jesus. They recognize who he is. And they start shouting, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" They knew who Jesus was. And they called him master. They called him commander. They called him lord. And they begged for his mercy. And Jesus has compassion on these people. He gives them an interesting command. Now Jesus has healed lepers before. In one instance he touched lepers, which was a big no-no, and the lepers were healed. In another instance he just told lepers, "You're healed" and they were immediately healed. But this time is different. This time he tells the lepers, who are still lepers, to go show themselves to the priest *as if they've been healed* from their leprosy. Now I imagine these lepers are looking down at their hands and they're seeing missing fingers. They're looking at their friend and they can see he's missing a nose. They're like, "We're gonna go to the priest? He's gonna laugh us out of the room! You're not supposed to go to the priests unless you've been healed.” In the book of Leviticus there is a very specific practice of how lepers are supposed to act when they get healed. It's actually two long chapters, chapter 13 and 14. Chapter 13 is all about how to tell if leprosy is indeed leprosy and what to do about it. Chapter 14 is what to do if you are healed of leprosy. And I don't imagine Chapter 14 got acted on very often. But here's what it said you have to do. 1. You have to go get inspected by a priest. They're going to thoroughly inspect you. 2. You have to shave off all of your hair, including your eyebrows. 3. You have to spend seven days outside your tent or outside your dwelling. This is a good thing; it's partial reintegration into society but you don't get fully integrated. 4. You have to clean all of your clothes. Everything has to be thoroughly cleaned. 5. You have to shave off all your hair again and give an expensive offering. 6. You are clean again. So when Jesus told these lepers, "Go present yourself to the priest," this is what he was telling them to do. But they're still lepers. They still look like lepers. They still feel like leopards. They're still obviously unclean. Don't you see how this command required faith? To obey this command they had to believe that Jesus was going to change them after they obeyed. And look what the end of verse 14 says again: > And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. It wasn't until they obeyed. It wasn't until the ten of them did what Jesus told them to do in faith that they were cleansed. Their leprosy went away. I imagine there's some grumbling about this. They're deciding as a group: "Okay we're going to obey this. We're going to do what Jesus told us to do." As they start going they look around and they can see miraculously fingers growing back. They can see their friend who doesn't have a nose; he has a nose now and his complexion doesn't just look healed, it looks good. I don't remember him looking that good before he had leprosy, right? They're healed. And one of them kind of disobeys. One of them turns around and runs back to Jesus and praises Jesus for what he's done for him. He's yelling about it. It says, “with a loud voice, he glorified God.” The Greek translated “with a loud voice” here are \* phonis megalis\* - What does that sound like to you? Megaphone. This guy was praising Jesus like through a megaphone. And Jesus said, "Where are the nine?" Weren't there ten of you guys? Why is there only one coming back to praise me? Now what are we supposed to learn from this story? I think there are two truths that this story beautifully illustrates: You see… > In healing ten lepers, Jesus shows us what saving faith looks like — and also shows us how ungrateful born again Christians can be in failing to worship Jesus as He deserves. So I think this story is about two things. I think it's about saving faith and I think it is about the gratitude we should show to Christ after we're saved. Let's look at both of those things in turn. So the first thing we are going to look at today is how… 1. The healing of the ten lepers shows us what saving faith looks like. ======================================================================= I think these 10 lepers are an amazing illustration of what it looks like to be saved. Let me break that down into five thoughts: In order to be saved we must know we are sick. ---------------------------------------------- These lepers knew they were lepers. They knew they were sick; they knew they were unclean. They were on the outskirts and they knew why they were there. They were lepers. Church, I think if we are going to come to Christ to be saved, one of the first things we have to do is realize that we are sinners. We have to realize that we're sick. That we are unclean. A lot of people never come to Christ because they never realize their uncleanness. They never realize their sinful state. They say things like, "I'm a good person. I keep the Ten Commandments. I go to church. I haven't murdered anybody. Those people over there are way worse than I am." They're trying to justify themselves when in reality they're sick. And step one is realizing you're sick. A second thing I think we can learn from these lepers about what it looks like to be saved is… In order to be saved we must realize we can’t save ourselves ------------------------------------------------------------ There was no cure for leprosy. In Bible times there was nothing that they could do that would make their leprosy go away. No amount of cleaning, no amount of scrubbing, no amount of vitamins was going to make them stop being a leper. Church, we have a sin debt. We are sinners and nothing that we can do is going to save us. You can't be good enough to erase your sin. You can't give enough to erase your sin. You can't pray enough to erase your sin. That's not how it works. Our sin comes to us through Adam. It's in our very nature. We can't behave well enough to make ourselves not sinners in God's eyes. Church, if you're going to be saved and truly saved, you have to give up the idea that morality can save you, that religion can save you. Well if we know we're sinners and we know we can't save ourselves, where is salvation to be found? Well we can learn a third thing from these lepers: In order to be saved we must know Jesus can heal us. ---------------------------------------------------- I think we should give these lepers credit. They recognized Jesus and they knew that he could help. They knew where salvation was to be found. It was to be found in Christ. As Peter said in his sermon at the temple: > [12](#) Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. > Acts 4:12 (KJV) Or as Jesus said in John 14:6 > [6](#) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. > John 14:6 (KJV) The only way that we're going to be saved is through Jesus Christ. - Jesus Christ, who came as the God-man and lived the perfect life that none of us could live. - Jesus Christ, who was punished on our behalf on the cross, who took our sins upon him on the cross, who died for our sins and then rose again in triumph three days later. - Jesus Christ, who is our second Adam, who replaces our sin nature of Adam with the holy nature and righteous nature of Christ. If we are going to be healed of our sickness, we have to realize that we're sick. We have to give up the idea that we can save ourselves and we have to go to Christ. And that's the fourth thing. In order to be saved we must come to Him. ----------------------------------------- These lepers came to Christ. They came to Christ and they called him Master. To recognize that Jesus, and Jesus alone, could heal them and they threw themselves at his mercy. And that's the thing I want to think about for a second because what did Jesus tell these lepers to do? He told them to act. He told them to act as if he had already healed them. And when they acted on that command, when they started walking to the priest, that is when they were transformed. That is when they were saved from their leprosy. So the fifth thing these lepers show us about salvation is In order to be saved we must act on the salvation He offers in faith. --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have to come to Christ. We have to believe that He paid the price for our sins and we have to come to Him in faith, acting like it's true. You might look at yourself and you might say, "I don't feel like I have been redeemed. There's no major transformation in me yet." Believe that Jesus has done it. Believe that Jesus paid the price for your sins and act like it is so. There was a time before we came here. Audrey had just been born. We had no money and there was this wealthy man in our church that gave us a card one day. In the card it said, "Go to Applebee's for a meal on us" but there wasn't a gift card in that card. There was a business card of the manager with an illegible signature on the back. Nothing was written on it besides an illegible signature and this note that said, "Go to Applebee's for a meal on us." Now at that point we just didn't. We barely had enough money for basic groceries. I think we were driving my father-in-law's 1976 Ford Maverick because the transmission died in our car. We were as broke as I've ever been in my whole life. And the idea of a meal out sounded really good. And so we went. We ordered our food and it came time to pay for the food. We handed this card, this business card, to the waiter and waited while he went and tried to figure the thing out. And after a while he came back and said, "Your meal is paid for. Would you like dessert?” I think that is a great illustration of saving faith because Jesus is paid for it. Jesus has taken care of it. He's told you it's taken care of but you have to act on it. You have to act like that saving faith is true. You have to act like that redemption is yours. It's not enough to get this card called the Gospel. You have to take the card to Applebee's and order a meal. Friend, if you trusted Christ, has there been a time in your life when you realized you were a sinner? You understood you couldn't save yourself. You realized Christ was the only answer. You understood that Christ paid your sin debt and you believed the Gospel and followed Him in faith? Why not do that today? But there is a second thing we see in this story. It’s not just a picture of saving faith. 2. The healing of the ten lepers shows us how ungrateful we tend to be for our salvation and how Jesus deserves our worship. ============================================================================================================================ You see in this story the crazy thing is that even though all ten lepers were healed. Only one of them came back to worship Jesus. All ten of them experienced this miracle of transformation but only one of them thought to come back and praise God. And the interesting thing is that one was from the despised group. That one was a Samaritan. And Jesus noticed. Jesus marveled at this. He said, "Where are the nine? Weren't there ten of you guys? Why is there only one of them that came back to worship me?" Jesus wanted and expected all ten of those guys to praise him but only one of them did. I think this is indicative of how many Christians act. We've experienced salvation. We've put our faith in Christ and yet we don't think to praise him as he deserves to be praised. We want the salvation, we want the healing, and then we get it and we don't give Jesus what he deserves. Church member, when other people look at you, do they see you as a grateful person? Do the people around you know that you're grateful for your salvation? Do they know that you are grateful to Christ for your salvation? There's so much scripture on the topic of gratitude. I was thinking this morning of Psalm 103, verse 2. > [2](#) Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: > Psalm 103:2 (KJV) Have you forgotten Jesus' benefits? Oh listen, we can get so wrapped up in ourselves and complain about everything. When we do that we have forgotten the benefits of our salvation. How about this verse? > [4](#) Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. > Philippians 4:4 (KJV) Or this one? > [20](#) Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; > Ephesians 5:20 (KJV) There is always something for us to praise God about. In one of my commentaries there was this note about the old writer Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry was once robbed and someone took his wallet. He sat down that night and he wrote in his journal four things he was grateful for: 1. First that he'd never been robbed before 2. Second that though they took his wallet they didn't take his life 3. Third because even though they took it all it wasn't very much 4. Finally because he was the one who was robbed and not the one who did the robbing We need to be grateful and the prime person we need to be grateful to is the Lord Jesus Christ. He deserves our worship. Hebrews 13:15 sums it up like this: > [15](#) By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. > Hebrews 13:15 (KJV) Church, Jesus deserves our worship. He wants it. He misses it when we do not give it. If you’ve been healed? If you’ve been saved? Why not be like this one leper - who gave Jesus the praise He deserved? Who shouted with that mega-phone load voice and glorified God? Conclusion ========== So as we wrap this up this morning, are you still a leper? Are you still in your sin? You need to learn from these ten? You need to see your sickness, you need to give up on saving yourself, you need to come to Christ and you need to trust Him in faith. Why not do that today? I would suspect most of us have. So here is the second application. Are you like these 9 ungrateful lepers - you’ve received salvation - but you are not showing Jesus gratitude? Or are you like the one who praises Christ as loudly and as often as you can? Let’s stand together for an invitation and I want to sing a simple chorus together and give you an opportunity to praise Him today. Thank you Lord - number 266

The Ten Lepers

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Ryan Hayden