Transcript

Max Lucado tells the following story about a time when he was living in Brazil. One day, as I was walking along the street on my way to a university to teach a class, I felt a tug on my pants leg.

Turning around, I saw a little boy about 5 or 6 years old with dark beady eyes and a dirty little face. The little boy looked up at me and said, “Por favor, Senor. Bread, Sir.” He was a little beggar boy.

Max Lucado states: There are always little beggar boys in the streets of Brazil. Usually, I turn away from them because there are so many, and you can’t feed them all.

But there was something compelling about this little boy so that I couldn’t turn away. So, I took his hand and said, “Come with me” and I took him into a coffee shop just down the street. And I told the owner, ‘I’ll have a cup of coffee and give the boy a piece of pastry, whatever he wants.’

The coffee counter was at the other end of the store so I walked over to get a cup of coffee, forgetting about the little boy, because when beggar boys get their bread they usually run away and disappear.

But this one didn’t. After he received his pastry he walked over, and unnoticed by me, just stood there beside me, until I felt his staring eyes.

I turned and looked at him. He looked down and then slowly his eyes came back up until they met mine. Then the little boy, holding his pastry in one hand said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.” And then he ran off.

I was so touched by the boy’s thanks that I would have bought him the whole store. I just sat there for another 30 minutes, late for my class, just thinking about a little beggar boy who came back and said, “Thank you.”

Max Lucado finished with this thought: “I wonder if God feels the same? I wonder how pleased our Lord must be when, His children, beggars all, come to Him and rightly say, ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you very much.’”

Luke 17 tells of an account about one who returned and gave thanks. And we can only imagine how this touched the heart of the Savior. It reminds us of God’s desire for our thanksgiving and worship which is rightly due to Him.

Luke 17:11-12: “And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off.”

Here in Luke 17, we are in the final months of the Lord’s earthly ministry. Luke states in verse 11 that “as He went to Jerusalem.”

The Lord is traveling and ultimately headed to Jerusalem for the Passover at which He was crucified. He arrives in Jerusalem in Luke 19:28.

As the Lord traversed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, He entered a certain unnamed village. Here ten leprous men, standing at a distance, met Him.

Leprosy is a horrific disease which attacks the nerves and the skin. It compromises the body’s ability to feel pain.

Leprosy results in open sores, ulcers, lumps on the hands, feet, and face. The face and various parts of the body swell. The disease results in missing fingers and toes, and damaged limbs. It can destroy the eyes and cause blindness as well.

The disease still occurs in more than 120 countries, with more than 200,000 new cases reported yearly. So, the disease is still with us.

God laid down strict instructions and commandments about leprosy for Israel in the law.
Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 outline a very long and careful prescription for determining whether somebody had this disease. And the health inspectors were the priests.

That was part of their function since they were responsible for knowing the Law of God and applying it to Israel in her worship and daily life.

If it was discovered that one had leprosy, Leviticus 13:45,46 reads: “And the leper in whom the plague is…shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean…without the camp shall his habitation be.”

Numbers 5:1-2 tells us, “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper…”

Lepers were religiously and socially defiled and unclean. Put him out of the camp of Israel was God’s command. The disease was too horrible to leave lepers near the healthy.

They were removed from all social contact and the only people they could ever associate with were other lepers.

They couldn’t go near the people they needed most, their family and friends. They couldn’t associate with other people in Israel or any social environment whatsoever. They were aliens from all of life and were left only with others in the same misery.

And so it’s little wonder that when Christ came to the outskirts of this village they cried out to Him collectively for His mercy and help.

These ten men had banded together for the sake of mutual care and support in their state.

The 10 men were on the outskirts of the village, in accordance with the Law, as they were not allowed to enter the village because of their leprosy.

And it says that they “stood afar off.” This also was in accordance with the Law, as being unclean with leprosy they were to keep their distance, so as not to pass this dreaded disease on to others.

Luke 17:13-14 reads, “And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. 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.”

The ten men were legally required, by the law of Moses, to stand at a distance, and thus their communication with Christ was by lifting up their voices and shouting.

The lepers only came as near to the Lord as they could so that they could shout and be heard. And they all shouted out to the Lord, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

They refer to Christ as “Master,” which means “chief Commander.” Only Luke uses this particular Greek word in Scripture. The title speaks of one who has authority and power, one who commanded and obedience was required.

The disciples used this title when they were on the stormy Sea of Galilee, and Luke 8:24 says that “they came to Him, and awoke Him, saying, Master, master, we perish.”

Like the disciples, by using this title the 10 lepers affirmed that they recognized the notable authority and limitless power of Christ.

The lepers knew and believed that Christ was Lord and in command of disease, and if He commanded it to be removed, their disease of leprosy would obey. In using this title, it shows that they fully believed He was able to help them.

So they obviously had some exposure to and had heard of His power and healing miracles which were widely known in Samaria and Galilee.

They had no way out of their dilemma. There were no cures or solutions. But now Jesus, the chief Commander, was there, so they had hope for healing, and so they cry out for mercy. These were desperate men. They saw this as their only hope, their only chance.

Along with Christ’s power and miracles being well known to these men, His mercy was likewise widely known. And so they say, “Have mercy on US.”

By crying out for mercy they recognized their need and that they were in a dilemma about which they could do nothing; they were unable to help themselves, unable to solve their problem. They knew they must depend on a superior power for any hope of deliverance. And they realized that their only hope for healing was His mercy, not their worthiness.

And it’s the same way with us in our sins. We too must cry out for mercy, recognizing our need, and that our sins are something which we can do nothing to help ourselves, unable to solve the problem of our sins separating us from God forever in hell. Our only hope for deliverance and life is God’s mercy and grace, not our worthiness.

And thus, as Titus 3:5 says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His MERCY He saved us…”

With the leper the Lord had healed earlier in His ministry, the leper approached the Lord and the Lord came near and touched him when He healed him.

Christ had no reluctance to go near lepers or to touch lepers. In this case, however, He didn’t do this. He didn’t go to these 10 lepers. And He didn’t call them over to Him.

They cried out to Him from a distance, so He healed them from a distance. He just gave them a simple instruction to “Go show yourselves to the priest.”

He could have said “Be healed” and they would have been healed. But He didn’t do that.

Our Lord was doing a couple things here. First, He’s testing their faith. Second, He’s affirming and upholding the Law of Moses. They were under the Law here, not under grace, like we are today.

When you are in the Gospels, you are under the law and God’s dealings with Israel. It’s in Paul’s letters that the Church finds our grace instruction from Christ for this current age.

And in upholding the Law, it required one who was cleansed of leprosy to “Go show yourselves to the priest.” And that’s why the Lord gave this instruction.

After the Lord healed a leper earlier in Luke 5, He likewise told him to “go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded” (5:14).

The Lord knew Leviticus 13 and 14. He was the One Who gave the law to Moses.

And as chief Commander, He commanded these lepers, to fulfill the commands, mandates, and obligations of the Law. Healed leprosy required one to go to the priests.

If the priests saw they were clean, there was a long, involved protocol they had to go through. There were ceremonies, washings, and sacrifices that needed to be offered. It was an elaborate thing when somebody was certified as cleansed from leprosy.

So in order to reenter Jewish society as whole, cleansed men, the Lord tells them to travel to Jerusalem, to meet with the priests.

But a person would not want to go anywhere near Jerusalem or the priests if they still had leprosy. The priest had no power to heal them; he was only designated as the one to pronounce them clean.

But the Lord sent them to the health inspectors with their disease, to go to the priests while they were still lepers. And thus, His call to go to the priests took faith in the unseen, to against hope to believe in hope.

Christ’s command implies that they would be healed, but He didn’t tell them directly that they would be. It implied they should exhibit to the priests the evidence that they were clean, and then to obtain permission from them to be restored into society.

Christ commanded them to go, to fulfill His command AND the commands of the law.

And these 10 men obeyed Him, believing in the power, authority and mercy of Christ. They understood what His words meant according to the Law, and they probably had a little hop in their step as they went.

When they turned, without having any evidence yet of being clean to show the priests, and they began to go toward the priests, with full intention to go there, it was an act of faith. And verse 14 says that “as they went, they were “cleansed.”

All 10 obeyed the Lord’s command. All 10 lepers were suddenly cured or made whole, as their obedience was evidence of their faith. If they didn’t have faith in what Christ had said, or didn’t do what He asked, they wouldn’t have been healed.

One of the things that has always stunned me in looking at the Lord miracles is how understated each one is. You expect the Scriptures to read something like “Then the sky grew black, and it began to thunder and lightning flashed across the firmament, and Christ said, ‘Be healed,’ and the earth shook and their leprosy left them.”

It’s never like this. These 10 lepers just started walking toward Jerusalem, and as they went they were made whole, healed just like that.

For Christ to heal them, it was just in the normal course of being God. And miracles for Him are simple, a piece of cake, so they’re stated simply and matter-of-factly in Scripture.

Even though it’s stated simply, the miracle must have been astounding. You imagine them as they were walking, suddenly looking at each other and saying, “Whoa. Wait a minute.”

Then they looked at themselves, their skin had cleared, and the sores had disappeared.

One looked at the other, another looked at the rest, and it dawned on them all. Then they began cheering and shouting in their glee. Their nightmare was over! This was a stunning and joyful moment for them.

And it’s the same way with our sins and our spiritual cleansing by Christ’s shed blood: there’s nothing left. Our sins, past, present, and future, are gone, forever. We are whole.

All 10 had leprosy. All 10 headed toward the priests. All 10 were healed. All 10 rejoiced. But then, their commonality was broken.

Luke 17:15-19: “And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

“And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”

As the others continued down the road in the direction of the priests, one of them who was healed stopped in his tracks. “When he saw that he was healed,” looking at his hands and arms and legs, he stopped, considered, and thought for a moment.

He processed what this meant. He thought about all the implications of now being able to go back home to family, friends, society, and regular life.

And so he “turned back.” He turned around and looked. He understood another implication of what had just happened, that he was in the presence of God.

He looked at the One who had delivered him from so much, by His mercy. And then he cried out “with a loud voice” and “glorified God,” for Christ and for His deliverance.

All ten of them cried with a loud voice “Have mercy on us!” (v. 13). But only one of them cried with a loud voice, glorifying God, thanking the Lord for His mercy (v. 15).

The words “loud voice” are the Greek words, megas phone. With a mega loud voice, at the top of his lungs, he glorified God. He let loose his praise of Christ.

He cried out glorifying God’s Son; and not only this, then he ran back to Christ, to express his deep gratitude for His kindness, to express gratitude to Him for the gift he had received. He came back full of joy, amazement, and wonder to thank the Lord.

As he ran up to the Lord, he hit the dirt and “fell down on his face at His feet,” and he worshipped Him and thanked Him for the suffering he had escaped, the horror he had been delivered from.

And then there’s a punch line here. “And he was a Samaritan.” This cut into Israel’s racial prejudice of the Samaritans who were part Jew and part Gentile.

And like the parable of the Good Samaritan, this account shows how wrong their loathing of the Samaritans was.

The account is a snapshot of Christ’s earthly ministry, and how so many basked in the wonder of His teaching and His miracles. But only a small percentage came, fell at His feet, glorified Him as God, worshiped Him and offered Him thanks, and were saved.

The Lord asked a couple of questions in verse 17 that point out the ingratitude and indifference of the other 9 men. “Were there not ten cleansed?” The structure in the original Greek expects a positive answer: “There were ten cleansed, weren’t there?”

Then He asked a second question, “But where are the nine?” The “where” is a punctuation point in the original Greek. In other words, the question was, “But the nine, they are where?” They ought to be here. They’re where?

No answer is given. They didn’t have any interest in Christ anymore. They got what they wanted out of Him. They were takers. Presumably, the 9 were on the way to the priests in Jerusalem to bring the proper sacrifice and to worship God in the temple.

But “one of them” rightly first came to Christ with a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for His goodness and mercy, and to worship God in the Person of Jesus Christ.

All the healed lepers should have been grateful for the providence of God that brought Christ into their area, for the love that caused Christ to pay attention to them and their need, and for the mercy and power of God that brought their complete healing.

But impatient in wanting to get to the priests so they could be restored to society and normal life, the other nine overlooked the Lord.

It is human nature to overlook God’s goodness. We all do it. We all forget to be thankful. An account like this reaches for our hearts to remember Him more, and to be more grateful to Him in life.

As Psalm 107:8 states, “Oh that men would praise the LORD for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!”

In verse 18 the Lord said, “There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.” “This stranger,” as the Lord calls him here, or literally “this one who is of a foreign people” was the only one to return and give thanks.

It seems clear that the group of lepers contained both Jews and Samaritans, but all ten were outcasts, and their common disease erased the usual animosities between them.

What is shown here is that the one who might have been LEAST expected to have expressed his gratitude to God was the one who did so.

Then in verse 19 the Lord “said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.” Everybody, all ten, were made whole here.

“Your faith has made you whole” suggests that whereas the nine were cleansed from leprosy, the tenth was also saved from sin. In Luke 7, the Lord forgave the sins of a woman and there He said to the woman, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”

“Thy faith hath made thee whole” here in Luke 17:19 is translated from the exact same Greek words, and means the same thing: “Thy faith hath saved thee.”

The nine were going to Jerusalem to be declared clean by the priests, but this man turned back, and because of his faith in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, he was declared to be saved by the Son of God. And so, this man experienced two miracles that day.

Leprosy in Scripture is a picture of sin. We were each afflicted with the leprosy of the soul, the condemnation of sin, making us unclean, and placing outside the camp or separating us from God and His life and presence in heaven.

In this condition, we are absolutely helpless to save ourselves. But by God’s mercy, we have been made clean spiritually by Christ.

Ephesians 2:4,5 says, “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us [made us alive] together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).”

By God’s mercy, love, and grace through Christ’s death and resurrection, our sins have been washed away, and we’ve been made whole, and we are saved.

This man stopped. He thought about all the implications of his deliverance, the suffering he had escaped, the horror he’d been delivered from, the new life he’d been given, and it led him to express gratitude to Christ for the gift he had received.

And so, as we stop and think of the implications of our deliverance from our sins, in our rescue from the suffering and horrors of the lake of fire, the new life in Christ we have been given, we should glorify God, and continually express our gratitude to Christ for the gift of salvation we have received from His finished work.

And verse 16 is something we probably will all do in glory when we see our Savior for the first time: falling on our face at His feet to worship Him and give Him thanks, thanking Him for saving us, for giving us life and an eternal home in heaven.

A man was once in a veteran’s hospital. He had a young son, and during his confinement in the hospital, he’d made a little wooden truck for his boy.

The boy was not allowed to go into the ward and visit his father, so an orderly brought the gift down to the child, who was waiting in front of the hospital with his mother.

The father was looking out of an upper-floor window, watching his son unwrap the gift.

The little boy opened the package, and his eyes got wide when he saw that wonderful little truck. He hugged it to his chest and jumped around in his excitement.

Meanwhile, the father was walking back and forth waving his arms behind the windowpane, trying to get his son’s attention. The little boy put the truck down and reached up and hugged the orderly.

And all the while the father was going through his dramatic gestures, trying to say, “It’s me, son. I made the truck for you. I gave that to you. Look up here!”

Finally, the mother and the orderly turned the boy’s attention to that upper-floor window. It was then the boy cried out to him, “Dad! Thank you! I miss you, Dad! Come home soon! Thank you for my truck.”

And the father stood in the window wiping tears from his eyes.

It’s good to have a time of year that reminds us to look up and return thanks for God’s goodness and His gifts and manifold blessings.

It reminds us also that we should be continually, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”