Healing Vs. Wellness

• Would you rather be ‘healed’ or made ‘well’?

• That is perhaps a deeper question than it appears on the surface.

• Healed seems so complete whereas being well, is, well, not complete

• Healing can simply be temporary, as we can always be injured again, but being well is more of a condition of the soul

Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers

11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

• Jesus is enroute to Jerusalem, where the culmination of His ministry, the purpose for His coming would be fulfilled

• And as He goes, they travel through the border area that is Samaria, where the people living there are shunned by the Jews.

• It’s here we find 10 lepers – who knew they were both sick AND not doing well.

• Sick with a type of visible, debilitating, painful, scarring disease that would have kept them from being part of society

• Kicked out to live in separate places away from the town/city

• Having to cry out ‘unclean’ to any passersby

• They cry out to Jesus – ‘Master, have mercy on us!’

• Not ‘heal us’ but ‘have mercy’

• Why? Because no one else would…

• First, they acknowledge Jesus as MASTER – if we are to be healed and made well, we need to do the same.

• Jesus is no fly-by-night faith-healer looking for money so he can buy another jet plane…

• He is MASTER, LORD, SAVIOUR. People need to come to Him humbly and acknowledge His Lordship over their lives.

• These lepers stood afar off, knowing that by the law their disease obliged them to keep their distance.

• A sense of our ‘spiritual leprosy’ as sinners should make us very humble in all our approaches to Christ.

• ‘Who are we, that we should draw near to Him that is infinitely pure?’

• We are impure, covered with the disease of our sin, our own failings, our shortcomings compared to His holiness

• Before devoting our lives to Jesus we are unclean – our sin keeps us from the presence of God, separated, unsure of eternity, filled with selfishness and pride

• As sinners, we are kept out of the kingdom of God and no one but Jesus can bring us back in

• We cannot do it ourselves, even if we are really GOOD people. The lepers may have been nice guys, but they were sick

• Many in this world are sick, and they don’t really even know it. The lies of the world keep them from seeing their own spiritual leprosy

• All the ‘good things’ we may do in this life, however wonderful they may appear on the outside, are like filthy rags.

• Isa 64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

• This is where the lepers saw themselves and this is how we must see ourselves – sinners in need of God’s mercy

• So how does Christ respond to their cry for mercy? Not simply with, ‘be healed’ or anything like that

• Instead, He told them to go and show themselves to the priest (who were the ones to determine if a person was clean or not)

• No one grumbled, no one thought this was strange, none of them asked to be touched by him or prayed for

• They simply obeyed

• This was the law – you want to be deemed, clean go to the priest and prove it (Lev. 13 talks much about this…)

• Jesus was upholding the law, yet He was so far above it in that they had not yet BEEN cleansed, and He tells them to go show the priests. It was not until they obeyed… that they were healed

• Do we ask to be healed, cleansed, forgiven or anything form God, and still act in disobedience in some way?