Luke 17:11-19

So um this morning Albert Albert is gonna read the word for us together now on his way to Jerusalem Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee as he was going into a village and ten men who had leprosy met him.

They stood at a distance and they called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us.

When he saw them, he said, Go show yourselves to the priest.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.

And he was a Samarian.

Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed?

Where are the other nine?

Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?

Then he said to him, Rise and go.

Your faith has made you well.

Amen.

Lord, we ask that you would speak to us through this text and that you, knowing our story, would speak straight into our lives.

We thank you and pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Thank you, Albert.

So Luke 17 is a passage.

Can you hear me?

I think maybe we'll just stick with the hand up because the um lapel pack doesn't seem to be working.

So we've been in Luke for a while now, and we're having a great time.

This morning, we're gonna look at this story of the ten lepers.

And um, I just had a great time looking at this passage this week.

I I'm just praying that that the things that God was just kind of encouraging me with come through this morning and that you're encouraged in your walk with the Lord.

Um the the first thing that we've got to start with in order to look at this passage and study it is a bit of the context.

In fact, we've talked about this.

As we're learning to study God's word, one of the things that is essential in being an interpreter of God's word is to get the context, right?

So we want to know what is the uh historical context, what's the cultural context, um, where does this story fit into the life of Jesus?

So what I want to do is I want to look at just kind of for a second the cultural context of what's going on here.

Because if you were reading this as a Jew, you would have grown up having read the book of Leviticus and understood a lot of the laws related to leprosy and skin disease.

But for us, now 2,000 years removed from this story, uh removed from the culture, what we call that is like a culture gap, a time gap.

There's also a geographical gap.

We've got to go and we've got to kind of do the homework ourselves.

So in Leviticus 13 and 14, um, we have some instructions that God is giving to Moses for the nation of Israel.

And these laws relate to how the nation is specifically to relate to one another.

So there's a number of things that God tells the nation of Israel, but um a lot of the laws relate to hygiene, right?

So you have all these things that relate to cleanliness and being considered ceremonially clean.

The center of um Israel as a nation was its worship in the tabernacle.

So that was like the town square.

And basically, your status uh within society related to your ability to worship, your ability to offer sacrifices.

And so there were things that would make a person unclean.

That didn't necessarily mean that they were sinners, but there were things just like if you're going into an operating room and you're the surgeon, you you need that operating room to be sterile, right?

You need it to be completely clean from any kind of germs.

And that was the idea behind a lot of the laws that God gave to the nation of Israel.

Now, we don't believe that these laws apply to us.

We believe that this was a part of the forming of the nation of Israel, but it was not given to Gentiles.

But Jesus, in his ministry, was working in Israel and with Jews.

And so when we come to a passage that talks about ten lepers, we know that they're governed by the Levitical law.

So Leviticus 13, 1 through 3, we'll just, you can go through the whole chapter on your own, and that will give you some more context.

But this is what it says in just the first three verses.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be defiling, that may be a defiling skin disease.

They must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of the sons who is a priest.

The priest is to examine the sore on the skin, and if the hair on the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is a defiling skin disease.

When the priest examines that person, he shall pronounce them ceremonially unclean.

So it goes on, and it's very graphic, and it's almost just like uh you don't want to you don't want to read this right before dinner time, essentially.

Right?

It's it's pretty gross.

But but the way that God's setting up the nation of Israel is that the priests would be able to diagnose a skin disease.

They're able to say, yeah, this is definitely leprosy, or no, no, no, this is just an abnormality, come back in a week, and it should be, it should be um all fine.

So that there was no cure, but there was the ability to diagnose it.

Now, if you go and you read commentaries today about um Leviticus 13, one of the things that you'll find is that some commentators will say the leprosy that's spoken of in chapter 13 is different from the leprosy that we um know of today.

Um so I started doing some digging.

It helps that one of my friends is a one of the leading toxicologists in America.

He consults for the FDA and other major drug manufacturers.

In fact, I'm gonna play a minute of an audio teaching that he gave on this very topic in just a second.

But when I talked with him, one of the things that he said was that this paper that came out in 2013 in the Cell Journal was this radical discovery in our understanding of Hansen's disease or what we call leprosy.

And um the way that leprosy develops is exactly how Leviticus 13 um talks about the symptoms.

The symptoms of chapter 13 line up beautifully with now how we understand this bacteria that um is uh affecting like the uh the at a neurological level.

I'm not a scientist nor a doctor.

If you want to read this or listen to his teaching, what I'll do is I'll share an email tomorrow.

I'll put it up on Slack.

You can read this article and um listen to Dr.

Wing talk further about this.

But but here's the crazy thing.

Um there was no known remedy to leprosy, but God did give directions in chapter 14 about a person, if they're healed, how they can be brought back into society, how they can be um how they can be dealt with.

So look at this in chapter 14, it says, The Lord says to Moses, these are the regulations for any diseased person at the time of their ceremonial cleansing when they are brought to the priest.

The priest is to go outside the camp and examine them.

If they have been healed of their defiling skin diseases, the priest shall order that two live cling birds and some other cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop are to be brought for the person to be healed.

Now, mind you, chapter 14 is laid out, but there is no known remedy.

Like, we couldn't heal leprosy for years and years and years.

Only in the 60s did we start to discover how leprosy could be cured.

So the amazing thing about chapter 14 as you go on is that this person will be brought back into worship within a ceremonial setting, but they were to be anointed with blood on their thumb, on their big toe.

But here's the trippy thing.

These formerly leprous were also anointed with oil on their thumb and with their big toe.

So the crazy thing is that even the priests were not anointed with oil.

So the way that this whole thing plays out is just incredibly fascinating for us.

This is what we've gotta, this is what we've got to understand about leprosy and kind of what was taking place.

First of all, leprosy was incurable at this time as Jesus is facing these ten lepers.

It caused a person to smell and to look awful, and leprosy caused isolation from significant relationships, right?

So because of the uncleanness, these lepros had to step out of society, and they were not um able to be amongst the clan.

Look at look at um listen to this audio bit here from Dr.

Wing.

If we could um just turn up the audio just this description on the tape.

Yeah.

In his book on Palestine in the land and in the book.

So we think about that those incidents.

Leprosy, in conclusion, was a judgment.

And there are incidents that I'm gonna do.

I wasn't able to edit the audio very I wasn't able to edit the audio perfectly, but uh it just an incredible um, it's incredible that um what God, the instructions that God gave to Israel about leprosy, how beautifully it lined up with um science even to this day.

This is um we're gonna get to this slide in just a second, and this this point.

But I just I want as we go into this story for you to have an understanding of just the um gravity of the situation for these ten men.

They have lost um everything because of this disease.

They're um they're devastated.

But not only that, the other unique thing about the text, and again, going back to the idea of looking at context, is the idea that some of these are Samaritans.

So there's a racial tension between the Samaritans and the Jews.

And um Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and um he's traveling through Samaria.

Samaritans were half-breed Jews, they're they were known as mutts, basically.

Um, they were a genetic mixture.

And so there was this racial tension that existed in Jesus' day between the Jews and the Samaritans.

So this just is um a messed up situation.

Now, um, let's let's jump back into the text.

So look look back down at your Bibles at um at verse 11, and I want to just point out a few things that we see just right here in this text, okay?

First of all, the identity of the men.

There's a lot of conversation here or in this description about identity.

You'll you'll notice that there's a group of ten.

There's a group of ten.

You'll notice that they're identified by their disease, that they have leprosy.

That's their identity.

There are ten men in a group who have leprosy.

We also see that one is a Samaritan.

That's another way of identifying one.

And then we have one of nine.

So there's this whole issue, underlying issue of identity that is in the text that we're looking at.

Another thing that we see is that they developed community around their disease.

They were outcasts, they were isolated, they were subhuman.

Society had given them an identity based upon their physical condition, and here they are encountering hope.

So, all of that to say, this group of men that we encounter in the text are a group of men who are humiliated, separated.

Um it's fascinating that they are identified, that their identity lies in their body, right?

Their body determines who they are.

That is such a problem with humanity, and this is kind of where we're going next with this slide, is that the more that we actually look at this passage and consider their plight and consider in the context of Leviticus, the more we realize that this text is not only describing a disease, but like the disease within the disease.

The Bible teaches that that at the very beginning of humanity, sin came into the world.

God created the world perfectly, but Adam and Eve rebelled, and with that rebellion, the world was wrecked.

And that's what we see as we go through the text, we see the leprosy devastates the individual, and running parallel to that is in the same way sin devastating a person's dignity.

There is this reference to this border between Galilee and Samaria.

Why is there a border between Galilee and Samaria?

Why is that there?

Why is um why are these men standing at a distance?

They can't come close to Jesus.

Why do they have leprosy?

Why do they need to say, Lord, have mercy on me?

Um, why does only one come back and worship?

Why is somebody called a foreigner?

Why is all of that here in the text?

Do you know why?

It's because the world that we live in is broken.

The world that you look at, the world that we are experiencing right now this morning around us, it's broken.

It's not how God originally designed it to be.

It reflects the fall of humanity from God's original calling.

So there's leprosy, but even below the surface of leprosy, there's sin.

There's the disease of sin that's affecting the world.

Now, the psalmist David, he played this out in Psalm 38.

He tied this connection between leprosy and sin.

He says, This Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.

Your arrows have pierced me, and your hands have come down on me.

Because of your wrath, there is no health in my body.

There is no soundness in my bones because of my sin.

My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.

My wounds fester, they are loathsome because of my sinful folly.

I am bowed down and brought very low.

All day long I go about mourning.

My back is filled with searing pain.

There is no health in my body.

See, David is expressing how his guilt is similar to the experience of having a physical disease or having leprosy.

Just like how Dr.

Wing is saying, like these men who had leprosy, they would have stank.

There would have been just the smell of rotting flesh.

That's what sin does to our world.

It causes decay, it causes our relationships to be screwed up, it causes disease to be in the world, it causes suffering, it causes brokenness and death.

That's the result of sin.

There's a um, this was an image I came across.

Some Christian painter did this.

And um so we've got the we've got the ten here, and and they say to the Lord, have mercy.

They call him Jesus, Master, have pity on us, right?

So there's this recognition of the authority of Jesus, and they ask for pity.

Go sometime when you have a chance and just like look up all the times of that word pity.

It's also translated mercy.

It's like, Lord, just have mercy upon our condition.

Have mercy upon us.

And what happens?

They start on their trip, right?

So when Jesus says, go show yourself to the priests, what would happen was they're traveling south from Samaria down to Jerusalem, right?

Almost the same journey that Jesus has to go on to get to Jerusalem.

So these ten go on their way.

As they're going, they realize they've been cured.

And one comes back, and what does he do?

He comes back, he says he falls at his feet.

He's praising God, he falls at the feet of Jesus, thanking him, thanking God for what God has done.

So Jesus tells them, go, and on their way, they are healed.

And this is what I want to wrestle with the rest of our time this morning.

What now?

They're on their way, they're on their way, and all of a sudden they're healed.

Now, mind you, they're devastated, right?

Have you ever been in a place in your own life where you want something so badly, you want something so badly, you're just like, if I could just get that one thing, it would change my life.

And you feel like there's this impossible thing that's there, it's this giant in your land, or maybe it's a hurdle, or it's a mountain, whatever like figurative language you use.

But it's like, if I could just get rid of that, that would just change my life.

Imagine these guys having leprosy, they've been ostracized from society.

Their only identity that they have is a negative identity as leprous.

And they're on their way and they've been healed.

Imagine, put yourself in their shoes.

This very thing that that they long for has been changed.

Whatever it is, maybe you dream of winning the lottery, maybe you have a disease that needs to be cured, maybe you have some kind of handicap that is just keeping you back.

Whatever it is, it's possible to think that by getting that one thing changed, your whole life will change.

Some people, it's like I'm just longing for this relationship to come to pass.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know what it is for you.

But I know that I and you are made as worshipers.

We're created to set our hope upon things out far from us.

That's why we dream, that's why Martin Luther King Jr.'s message was so powerful.

I have a dream, right?

I've I've been to the mountain peak, I've seen the future.

That is who we are as humans, is to have a hope.

And here these men have lived in this dire, desperate place, and they have now been healed.

And the question is, now what?

What do you do when you win the lottery?

What do you do when your thing that you've longed for is all of a sudden change, your circumstance that you are hoping would be changed, it comes to pass.

What do you do at that point?

It's kind of easy when you look at it that way to see them just going on and living their life.

We wonder, did Did they go?

Did the other nine?

Did they go to the priests?

Or did they just go on to live?

Maybe they weren't that religious.

Maybe they are kind of like, forget the priests.

We're just gonna go and live the life we always wanted to live.

Our main problem in life has been fixed.

Maybe they went home.

I don't know what they did.

We know about one.

Like we know about this one.

And but just imagine, this is the most epic moment of their life since they got leprosy.

They can hug their family, they can walk through the marketplace, they can go into the synagogue if they're Jewish, they can get a job, they can get married, like they have the rest of their life out in front of them.

And they don't come back to Jesus.

So when you and I, you and I get healed in that way, do we go back?

Do we say thank you?

You know, I just, as I was looking at this and as we were doing our reading this week, um, some of us are reading through the New Testament in eight weeks with the immerse Bible reading.

And one of the things, like reading through Luke, I don't know how many times I read through Luke, but reading through Luke this week, I'm just like tripping out on Jesus, right?

Jesus is like the point.

What do we go?

We go out and we tell people about Jesus.

Like Jesus will fix everything in your life, right?

But yet you're reading through the story of Jesus, and there's this point where Jesus like talks to the disciples and he's like, Who do the people say that I am?

And Peter's like, You're the Christ, you're the Messiah.

And Jesus' like, okay, don't tell anybody.

They're like, wait a second, but we go tell everybody about Jesus.

Like, Jesus is such a trip.

Like, why?

And this is the thing, is that because it's it's it's more than just it's Jesus, but Jesus is bringing in a kingdom, right?

He wants, these guys had a choice, like they got what they wanted, right?

They are healed.

Just because they didn't come back and say thank you doesn't mean that they got sick again.

They're healed.

But the question is, was that good enough?

Right?

Is that good enough?

Is that good enough for them?

Let's go back just for a second.

Think about Leviticus, right?

So God gives this law.

God gives this law to um Israel.

This is 29 of the 617 laws that God gave to Israel, right?

Leprosy was one issue, right?

Here's just a what could fit on one screen.

I don't expect you to read this, but this is just 29, right?

29 things.

So here's the thing for these lepros, these nine, were they permanently now, was their life fixed once they were healed?

No.

Their life was not permanently fixed, right?

The issue that they faced was that they would again be ceremonially unclean.

They would again cross one of these lines.

You see, the law of God doesn't just require the absence of leprosy.

The law of God requires absolute perfection, holiness, and love.

And unless they keep the law perfectly, these ten will not be fully human.

Notice that.

They have not been thinking of themselves as fully human.

Now they're healed, and they're probably thinking, now I've arrived.

Now I'm where I need to be.

But here's the thing that only one of them realized is it's not good enough.

It's not good enough to just be healed of your leprosy.

There's a deeper issue.

The law is gonna continue to judge these ten as not clean.

Not clean.

Here's what the story continues on.

Right at the end, the last verse of our text, it says, after this guy comes and he's worshiping this one of ten, then Jesus says to him, Rise and go, your faith has made you well.

The word well is the word that we translate 140 times, saved.

Right?

Us Christians, we talk about being saved, right?

Rescued from God's judgment.

That is the word that Jesus used.

He says, Is your faith has made you saved?

It's not the same word as healed or cleansed in the text.

This man's faith has made him saved.

In Luke 7, 50, you have the same statement to another woman.

Jesus said to the woman, Your faith has saved, that's made well, has saved you, go in peace.

Jesus is in the business of healing people, healing people from more than just leprosy.

Jesus tells this former leper that his faith has saved him.

So look at this text.

Here's the question: What faith?

Go back in the text.

Go back.

Let's go back.

Can we go uh it'll play the audio again?

We we can't go back on the slides, but go back on your Bibles.

Where's the faith?

Where's the expression of faith?

I see worship, but I don't see a statement of faith.

What?

Yeah, worship.

It's worship.

That's right, Colonel.

It's worship.

As he's expressing his faith, that as he's worshiping, that is the expression of faith, right?

That is the expression of faith in this leprous man.

Though this man was placed through this worship, this man was placing his faith in God.

There's no special prayer, there's no confession of sin.

There is a genuine, wholehearted worship of Jesus.

This is like the gospel, you guys.

This is what God wants for us.

As Jesus comes on the scene, he's not here to just take away your leprosy.

Jesus has come into the world to save us.

To save us, to save our entire life.

John 3.17 says this for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but there it is again.

Do you see the word?

What does it say?

He came to save the world through him.

Jesus is not just a leprosy healer.

Jesus has come into the world to save the world.

How many of you this week you felt like this?

And the more you thought about church, you thought about condemnation.

And don't, don't, don't, don't shake your head at me.

Some of you tell me you don't come to church because of this word right here.

You don't show up on Sunday because you feel condemned about Saturday night, right?

You feel condemned about Friday night.

But here's what it says about Jesus.

Jesus came into the world to not condemn the world, but to save the world.

That's you and I.

He came to save you and I from our sin.

The only thing better, notice this, the only thing better than having that circumstance that you're waiting on, that mountain, that giant, the only thing better than having that circumstance changed is having a daily friendship with the one that changes all things for good.

Do you got that?

The only thing better than having your circumstance changed is having a daily friendship with the one that makes everything good.

We're going to finish this off.

We'll land the plane here.

We live in a city where identity is a major issue.

The community and other cities are crying out for justice, issues of justice.

Sometimes, you know, if you're in the black community or you're working on black justice issues, the whole idea is like we need to be woke, right?

But it isn't just black and white or race, it's immigrants, it's women.

There's this crying out for justice.

But when these lepers were cleansed, or when the injustice is addressed within our society, it is taking a good step forward, but it is only a reflection of God's kingdom shining for a moment in human history.

It is a shadow of things hoped for.

Jesus is the substance.

You see, as we long for these things in our life, you've got mountains, you've got giants, you've got stuff, you've got issues maybe you've hoped for.

Do you know that when God rescues you from that, and God does, he loves to rescue you and I, many things God wants to work in your life and rescue you from.

When he does that, that is the shadow of things hoped for.

It's the evidence of things not yet seen.

Do you know sometimes you'll be waiting at a door, you'll be watching a door, and all of a sudden you'll see a shadow going through the door frame.

And you know because of that shadow, you know what's about to happen, right?

You know that a person is about to walk through the door.

But if you are the leper, if you are the person suffering an injustice, and you're just settling for healing, or you're just settling for the injustice being made right, then you are only settling for the shadow.

And this one that came back was the one who said, I want the substance.

I want the one who changes the lepros to be clean.

I want to have a relationship with that one.

Yeah, he healed my leprosy.

Yeah, my life is forever changed, but that's not good enough.

I want to know the substance, and Jesus is the substance.

Look, if Satan can get you and I to settle for the shadow, if Satan can trick you to think that your physical healing is the objective, or that getting a bigger paycheck is sufficient, then Satan's kingdom will have one in your life.

The message that Jesus brought was an alternative reality.

God doesn't just fix you to be functional, God wants you to enter into an alternative identity, bring you into a kingdom, give you a hope, and give you a mission.

The kingdom of God broke out in these ten men's lives.

They're suffering with leprosy, and God's kingdom breaks out.

It's off the chain.

It's like that dog that gets away, right?

It's here's God's kingdom running loose in ten people's life.

When we give away the food on Friday mornings and we feed 30 families through the Compassion Center, or when we're clothing people on Wednesdays, or when we give financial support through the church, through the bulwark fund, or as we meet in small groups, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is breaking out in our neighborhood and our city, but this is just the kingdom functioning as it should.

Do you understand that?

Yes, it's good.

Our small groups are good, our healing is good, our caring for the poor is good, right?

Being cared for as somebody that is poor is good.

It's the functioning of God's kingdom.

But we are called, we are called to worship the king, not just the kingdom.

The most human a person can be is found in verse 16.

Can you look at verse 16 for a second?

Can you look at look at it?

Look at verse 16.

This is the most human you and I can ever be, is found in verse 16.

It says, He threw himself at Jesus' feet and he thanked him.

This is the whole story of humanity.

This is where the whole thing's going.

The whole thing's gonna wrap up, and it says that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

So within this little tiny story of 11 to 19, verses 11 through 19, we have the whole story of humanity.

We've got the disease, we've got people that have an alternative identity, they're wrecked by something, and Jesus comes on the scene as the king, he rescues these men, and humanity is restored to its proper place.

But then what does Jesus do?

This guy's worshiping there at Jesus' feet, and it's cyclical.

Jesus says to the man, go, rise.

He endorses the life of faith.

This is why we do church every week, right?

This is why we are doing church right now.

Right?

It's because we are a people diseased by sin who have been healed, and we worship.

We fall at Jesus' feet and we say, Jesus, thank you for healing us.

And what does Jesus say to us every week, right?

I know in our church, he's, and in what he says to me is, he says, Rise and go.

You're a people on mission.

You are a people with a calling.

You are a people that are not just blessed, but you're blessed so that you can bless others.

He sends us back out on mission.

Let's close with this verse.

1 Peter 2.10 says this.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Do you remember what these 10 lepers they cried out from a distance?

They said, Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us.

And Peter says for to you and I this morning, he says, You and I have received mercy, and we've become a new people, the people of God.

Let's pray.

God, thank you.

Thank you for having pity upon us.

That you looked upon us and you said, I love you.

That you you cared enough to die on the cross for our sins, to rescue us.

Lord, I pray that none of us would settle for that shadow.

Um we need, we need to be rescued.

We need you to work in the midst of our circumstances, but we need you, Jesus.

So, Lord, just connect us to you, just like a branch is tied in with a vine.

We pray that our lives would just be connected with you this week, that that the life sap would flow into us and that we would be a fruitful branch connected to the vine.

Lord, I pray for each one in this room, Lord, there are things that are disrupting their full humanity, that's keeping them from being able to worship, that's holding them back.

Lord, I pray that they would experience your presence in their life this week, that you would demonstrate your power, that you demonstrate your power in our life, in our midst.

Lord, even today.

Let today be the day of salvation.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.