Luke 17:11-19
In this lesson we meet a man who epitomized unashamed gratitude to God.
Some people say they are grateful, and others act grateful in addition to saying to. The latter are those for whom gratitude is an action as natural as breathing and blinking. Not an optional activity; not even a choice to consider. But an inner obligation to which their body responds.
The last person we will meet in our study of People who met Jesus is a wonderful one to end on. This person's life was tragic before meeting Jesus. But after they met, he was so full of gratitude and joy that he provides a wonderful launching pad from which we can anticipate our own daily encounters with Christ.
Before meeting this grateful man, a brief word about another grateful man will set the stage. A gentleman named Lansing Moore, when he died in l990, left Dartmouth College a bequest of two million dollars. His wife, when she died a few years later, left another $18.2 million to the college - the largest gift in the college's history. Mr. Moore had been active for fifty years in Dartmouth's alumni activities, but in connection with Mrs. Moore's gift it was discovered that Mr. Moore had never graduated from the college. In fact, he had only been a student for a mere 12 weeks during his freshman year in 1933. That was during the worst of the Great Depression in America, and he likely had to drop out due to financial hardship. But apparently those 12 Weeks meant something special to Mr. Moore. In fact, they meant more than $20 million to Mr. Moore! That's an example of receiving something small, but being so grateful that you return to the source with acts and words of gratitude for that which was received. What would he have given if he had gone for four years and graduated?!
The man we meet in this lesson is a man who received something much more profound than 12 weeks of college classes. He received his physical health, and probably his life, from Jesus. He was a man completely healed of that dreaded first-century disease, leprosy. But when he was healed, he came back to say thank you to Jesus. Thanksgiving was the legacy of his encounter with Jesus.
THE CONDITION (17:11-12)
Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover for the last time. Traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee, He meets a group of ten lepers, "who stood afar off" (17:12). Once a person contracted leprosy, they were not allowed to live in the midst of the rest of the community. They were quarantined outside the borders of a village or town so as not to infect others. Not onlv was it a horribly disfiguring disease, it was socially humiliating as well. According to the Mosaic Law, lepers had to cover themselves and cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!" when others came near so that healthy persons could pass by at a safe distance (Leviticus 13:45-46).
While in the developed world today leprosy has largely been eradicated, in biblical days it was a scourge. Leprosy slowly eats away at the flesh, turning otherwise healthy limbs into scaly and crusty appendages which have no nerve sensations in them at all. As the flesh of a leper's body gradually deteriorated, the ultimate result was death itself. The leper died a slow and humiliating death as an outcast from society, shunned by everyone else. It was a common superstition that lepers received their condition because they were being punished by God in some way. This was not true, but this belief added spiritual humiliation to their physical and social embarrassment as well. Lepers were the most pitiful and needy individuals in Jesus' day.
THE CRY (17:13)
Though they were keeping the required distance from Jesus, someone in their group must have recognized who He was. They lifted up their voices - though lepers voices are often reduced to a hoarse whisper - and cried aloud as best they could to get Jesus' attention: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" They knew that Jesus had the power to heal them and would not treat them like the outcasts they were. They knew He was merciful and kind, and they wanted Him to free them from their debilitating yokes of physical social, and spiritual shame.
THE COMMAND (17:14A)
Jesus responds to the cries of the lepers by drawing near and telling them to do something that appears very unusual: "Go, show yourselves to the priests." Instead of just healing them on the spot, pronouncing them cured of their leprosy, He simply tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. The connection here is that the priests in the Old Testament were in charge of monitoring diseases in Israel. There were no doctors as we know them, and the priests had responsibility for controlling diseases - especially communicable ones that could spread among the people. Deuteronomy 24:8 says that in case of an outbreak of leprosy, the people were to take instructions from the priests in order to control the disease. So Jesus, in compliance with this Old Testament regulations sends these lepers to appear before the priests.
THE CONSEQUENCE (17:14)
"...And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed." That is a unique and interesting statement. It wasn't after they got to the priests that they were cleansed, or before they left. Rather, it was in the process of going. Jesus had given them a command, and as they walked from where Jesus was to where the priests were, they could gradually begin to feel the wholeness coming back into their body. Can you imagine the conversation between these ten as thev walked along the road? All of a sudden a spot or blemish was gone from one man's hand, and the protrusion on the lips and ears on another man began to recede back into its normal fashion. As they walked, they were totally cleansed of this horrific, disfiguring disease. This is one of the greatest expressions of the power of Jesus you will find in the New Testament. He did not heal them on the spot. He did not heal them in a distant spot. He healed them in the process of their obedience on the way to the priests.
And then a really interesting thing happened. One of the ten whom He healed came all the way back to find Jesus and make a confession.
THE CONFESSION (17:15-16)
Ten men were healed of leprosy that day, but only one came back to give Jesus thanks for his healing. We do not know why he chose to come back, but he did. He fell down on his face at the feet of Jesus and, with a loud voice, glorified God and gave Jesus thanks for his health. When you consider what had happened to these ten men, it is not surprising that one came back to give thanks. It is surprising that the other nine did not.
Of the ten men who were healed, the one who came back to give thanks was a Samaritan. The other nine were Jews. We have already seen in Lesson Two in our study that there was no love lost between Jews and Samaritans. In this case, however, their common situation of suffering had caused these leprous enemies to band together in a community. But in this case, the nine Jewish lepers failed to return and express their gratitude to God. It is not always the most religious who are the most grateful, but it is the most grateful who are the most exuberant in their thanks to God.
THE CHALLENGE (17:17-18)
The one who returned was challenged by Jesus with the obvious lack of gratefulness on the part of the other nine. They were no doubt happy to have been healed, but for some reason they didn't return to express thanks to God. And it is unfortunate that they didn't, for the faith of the one who did return was amply rewarded by Jesus.
THE COMPENSATION (17:19)
The Samaritan man came back for a simple reason: To thank Jesus for something he had already received. He didn't come back to receive more. He was so grateful not to be a leper anymore that he thought he had been given all that anyone could possibly need or want. And yet there was another healing in his life that needed to take place - and that was the healing he received when he returned to give thanks.
Jesus said to him, "Your faith has made you well." This statement can also be translated, "Your faith has saved you." When the man returned to thank the Lord for his physical healing, he experienced a healing that went much deeper than the physical. He experienced salvation. He was a leper who met Jesus and came out clean inwardly and outwardly. His reward for returning was to see the real nature of the power of God in cleansing him from the inward stains that cannot be cleansed from one's soul except through the blood of Jesus Christ. He was healed and made well.
And that is the story of the leper who returned. It is a story in Scripture that is often taught during the Thanksgiving season, and rightfully so, for it certainly reveals the essence of a thankful heart. But it is filled with lessons on gratitude that should characterize the life of the Christian during every season of the year, not just Thanksgiving.
LESSONS ON THANKFULNESS
The psalmist says to, "Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good!" (Psalm 106:1). A spirit of thankfulness should be evidenced in the lives of God's saints at all times.
A Time to Reflect
No matter who we are, or how sophisticated and educated we may be, we are all not too much different from that little colony of lepers if we are outside of Jesus Christ. We are helpless and hopeless without the grace and mercy and power of Almighty God. We cannot heal or save ourselves. The stain of sin in our souls is permanent unless God removes it by the washing of the blood of Christ. And if we do not cry out to God like the lepers did, seeking for Christ to make us whole, we will live forever with our souls blighted by the leprosy of sin.
We need to take time often to look back and reflect on the matchless grace of God that has saved us. Being raised in a Christian home, I had heard the message of salvation often but it was not until I was an older teen that I really understood that Christ had died for me and that my sins were, in fact, forgiven� and I was going to heaven. It does us much good to revisit the alter of our consecration, to go back to that place where Christ made us whole and give Him thanks again and again. We can never thank Him enough for what He has done.
A Time to Respond
Reading the story of the ten lepers�and especially the one who returned with thanksgiving�reminds us that there are times when we must respond to God in obedience. When Jesus told the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests, they didn't argue and say, "Wait a minute. No priest is going to give me a certificate of healing, showing that I am now clean, with me looking like this!" Instead of looking at their leprosy, they simply looked at Jesus and obeyed what He asked them to do. And it was in the process of their being obedient that God met them on the way and took away their leprosy.
I like to think that with every step they took in obedience to Jesus, their healing became a little more complete. There is healing in obedience. When God tells us to do something and we walk in the light that He has shed before us in His Word, there is healing that takes place in our soul and body in the process of going into that light. We must not be the kind of people who debate with Jesus about what He asks us to do. We must step out by faith into the fulfillment of His Word, trusting that as we do, we will be healed. Many Christians have had the experience of resisting the word of the Lord, and sensing that when they finally yield to Him, His healing truly begins to take place in their lives. The lepers remind us that there is a time to respond in obedience to God.
A Time to Rejoice
I have a pastor friend who lives in the mountains of western North Carolina who has been through a struggle with illness similar to what I have been through. He tells me that every morning he gets up, goes out on his back porch and looks out over the mountains. He raises his hands in the air and says "Lord, God, thank you for this new day! Thank you for this beautiful world in which I live. Lord, I'm going to enjoy every bit of my life that I can all day long." That's the response that ought to come to our hearts when we think of what God has done for us. He hasn't just saved us for a few new days to live. He has saved us for eternity. And we're to come back and praise God and rejoice in His healing every day of our lives just like the one leper did who was healed. Ge came back and "with a loud voice glorified God."
Do you feel that sense of exuberance and praise about the good things God has done in your life? It may be a good report about an illness you are enduring. It may be some other kind of victory that God gives, whether large or small. But there are things every day for which we�with a loud voice!�can glorify our great God. Why are we willing to shout praises at a football game if we are not willing to shout out our praises to God for what He has done? The leper who returned teaches us to rejoice and exult in our God.
A Time to Return
We should plan now, looking into the future, to learn to praise God more consistently for what He has done for us. We need to develop a spirit of praise. What keeps us from doing that? Perhaps the same things that kept the other nine lepers from giving thanks:
-Calloused underestimated the benefit.
-Conceited considered it unnecessary to be thankful.
-Contemptuous made sure of the blessing first.
-Careless forgot.
-Cowardly feared Christ's foes.
-Calculating wondered what it would cost.
-Concerned was willing, but only if others were.
-Cautious put it off until later.
-Consumed got busy with other things.
But one man came back. He wasn't what all the others were. He was the one who cared the most about his relationship with Jesus. He came back to say thank you.
If you don't think you have all that much to thank God for, just look around. Even if you are in the midst of hard times, there is still much God has done for you that you can thank Him for. Be the one that returns to say, "Thank you, Lord. You have been good."
Did you know...?
Today leprosy is today called Hansen's Disease after the Norwegian physician, Arrnauer Hansen, who isolated the leprosy bacillus in 1874. Today less than five percent of the world's population is considered susceptible to leprosy. Worldwide, it is estimated that 10 million cases of Hansen's Disease exist. Drugs and proper nutrition now allow most cases to be handled on an outpatient basis since the disease is only mildly infectious. Great progress has been made in eliminating the social stigma that was attached to lepers for centuries. Once Jesus shocked His contemporaries by doing the unthinkable and touching a leper to heal him {Matthew 8:2-3), though He still followed the requirements of the law to have the priests verifv the healing (Matthew 8:4). The church of Jesus Christ ministers to lepers openly and without fear today.
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