Where Are The Nine? Series

Introduction

In 2000, my wife and two children visited Cape Town, South Africa.

We had the opportunity to visit Robben Island.

Robben Island is an island in Table Bay, about 6 miles north of the city of Cape Town.

It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals, hence the Dutch/Afrikaans name Robbeneiland, which translates to Seal Island.

The Island is roughly oval in shape, approximately 2 miles long north–south, and a little over 1 mile wide.

Robben Island is well-known for housing political prisoners during the apartheid era.

Its most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 years of his 27 years in prison on Robben Island.

While visiting the island, we learned that it was once a leper colony.

Initially, lepers were free to leave the island if they wished to do so.

However, in 1892, lepers were no longer free to leave the island, as they were required to be quarantined there.

Doctors and scientists did not understand the disease and thought that isolation was the only way to prevent other people from contracting it.

Before 1892, about 25 lepers a year were admitted to Robben Island, but in 1892 that number rose to 338, and a further 250 were admitted in 1893.

As we drove around the island on the tour bus, we could see the houses where people lived, the hospital where they were treated, the church where they worshiped, and the graveyard where they were buried.

Leprosy was a dreaded disease in ancient times.

John MacArthur has the following description of leprosy:

Like its Old Testament counterpart, lepras (leprosy) is a general term for a number of skin conditions. The most severe of those was Hansen’s disease, which is leprosy as it is known today….

Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, is known from ancient writings (c. 600 B.C.) from China, India, and Egypt, and from mummified remains from Egypt. It was common enough in Israel to warrant extensive regulation in the Mosaic Law of those suffering from it and related skin diseases (Lev. 13–14). The disease is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, discovered by the Norwegian scientist G. H. A. Hansen in 1873 (it was the first bacterium to be identified as the cause of a human disease). The bacterium was communicable through touch and breath.

Leprosy attacks the skin, peripheral nerves (especially near the wrists, elbows, and knees), and mucus membrane. It forms lesions on the skin, and can disfigure the face by collapsing the nose and causing folding of the skin (leading some to call it “lion’s disease” due to the resulting lion-like appearance of the face). Contrary to popular belief, leprosy does not eat away the flesh. Due to the loss of feeling (especially in the hands and feet), people with the disease wear away their extremities and faces unknowingly. The horrible disfigurement caused by leprosy made it greatly feared, and caused lepers to be outcasts, cut off from all healthy society, for protection (John F. MacArthur Jr., Luke 1–5, MacArthur New Testament Commentary [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009], 313).

Today, we are going to learn about Jesus’ healing of ten lepers.

Jesus was on his way from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south.

He passed through the region of Samaria.

The people of Samaria were a mixed race of Jews and Assyrians.

Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans (cf. John 4:9), and they would go out of their way to avoid traveling through Samaria.

But not Jesus.

He traveled through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem.

As he entered one of the Samaritan villages, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance.

The Mosaic Law forbade lepers from getting close to anyone (see Leviticus 13:45-46; Numbers 5:2-3), which is why they stood at a distance.

When they saw Jesus, they begged him for mercy.

Kent Hughes paints the following picture for us:

On the outskirts of an unnamed village on the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee, ten leprous men stood before Jesus in various stages of decay, their clothing torn in perpetual mourning, their skeletal heads uncovered, their lips unveiled as they warned others, “Unclean, unclean!” (cf. Leviticus 13:45; Numbers 5:2; 12:10–12).

They looked as though they had climbed out of the graves. But they were alive, sensitive human beings, feeling souls living in the nether world of society’s fringe while they rotted away. So from a safe distance they shouted the traditional plea, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (v. 13). They were loud and persistent. “Have mercy on us!” “Master, have mercy!” “Mercy please!” (R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth, Preaching the Word [Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998], 170).

The vital point to note here is that Jesus is the one who can answer every need.