Beginning a few Wednesday nights ago and for the next several weeks, we’re talking about the issue of Grace. And as I said last time, the way we define grace is that “Grace is getting a gift you don’t deserve.” Now mercy is when we don’t get a punishment we do deserve; but grace is getting a gift we don’t deserve. And as we saw, the Bible almost always describes grace in the context of God’s character, manifested in how he treats people. John 1:14 says,
14 The Word (Jesus) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
And then in verse 17 it says,
17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)
So if we’re going to understand how God relates to us; and how he wants us to relate to him; and how he wants us to relate to each other, we need to understand the issue of grace. And so we’re going to be looking at stories and conversations of Jesus in which we can see how God’s grace collides with our misconceptions about God, with our broken relationships, with broken families, with religious traditions, with sin selfishness, anger, and pride, and all the stuff going on in our lives and relationships. And today we’re going to start with a story in Luke 17:11-19.
11Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” 14When he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 15One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. 17Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? 19Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
The first thing “collision of grace” I see in this story is that…
God’s grace collides with thanklessness
Even though there are ten lepers, the two main characters in this story are Jesus and a Samaritan leper and here’s why: In the first-century, Jews and the Samaritans were divided by both racial and religious prejudice. The Jews hated the Samaritans because they were Assyrian-Jewish hybrids and they viewed the religion of the Samaritans as a perversion of Judaism because they only believed in the first five books of the Bible or “The Law,” whereas the Jews believed in all the books of the Old Testament, which was the entire Bible at that time.
On this map, this middle region is Samaria, where the Samaritans lived. Below that is the region of Judea where you find Jerusalem. And then up above Samaria is the region of Galilee, where you find the Sea of Galilee and the cities of Nazareth and Capernaum. And then the Jordan River South runs south from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.
All three of these regions—Judea, Samaria, and Galilee—make up what is now known as Israel and Palestine. And it was mostly in Judea and Galilee that Jesus walked and taught. It’s about 140 miles in a straight line from top to bottom.
Now, if you had to travel from Jerusalem to Capernaum, you would want to take the shortest route possible, which would be a straight line. But because of their prejudice toward the Samaritans, the Jews would not go through Samaria, they would go around it which obviously added quite a bit of time when you’re walking.
However, over time, they relaxed their restrictions and by the time of Christ, Jews would travel through Samaria, but only travel through. And even though they would allow themselves to do business with Samaritans or take a short-cut through their country, the Jews still hated the Samaritans and considered them unclean—the same way they felt about the lepers—and the feelings were mutual.
Now, like the Samaritans, the lepers were also outcasts and outsiders. And even though they were allowed into the city to beg for money, they were required to live outside of the city walls. Even in Samaria—because they did believe in the Old Testament Law of Moses, the Samaritans also considered lepers to be unclean. And according to the Old Testament law, people with this disease were quarantined outside of the city and required to keep a “safe” distance from people so that they would not touch anyone and make them unclean.
So you can see why the Samaritan leper is going to emerge as the other central figure in this story alongside Jesus. He has two huge strikes against him. He’s an outcast among the Jews because he’s a Samaritan and he’s an outcast among the Samaritans because he’s a leper. You probably couldn’t ask for a worse situation.
Now, the type of leprosy these people suffered with is known today as “Hansen’s Disease.” It starts with a white patch of skin that becomes numb, so much so that the victims cannot even feel a needle piercing that spot. The patch begins to spread all over the body and often manifests itself on the face, so the disease is impossible to hide. It then begins to form spongy tumors on the face and, at the same time, attacks the internal organs as well. The tissue between the bones in the hands and feet deteriorate and disappear, causing them to become deformed and unusable. At the same time, the nerve endings become numb so that the victim cannot tell when something is hurting him, like an animal biting him. And since these lepers had to live out in the deserted areas outside the city so animals would sometimes come at night and begin to chew the flesh of their infected limbs and they wouldn’t even know it. This type of leprosy is eventually fatal, but more often lepers died from diseases they incur because of their condition.
Another (less severe) type of leprosy is called “tuberculoid.” It begins much the same way as the one I just described, but it does not progress beyond the skin discoloration and would often heal over time. It was these people who were eventually able to go and show themselves to the priests and be declared “clean” and were then allowed to return home to their families and jobs.
But those suffering with the first type I described never healed at all and its probable that the lepers in our story had this fatal type so that their healing could be verified as a miracle and not just something from which they healed naturally. And so back in Luke 17:11-13, we see ten men who have been relegated to living life as outcasts and outsiders. But even as outcasts and outsiders, they recognized Jesus and had most likely heard that he could heal. So as they see Jesus approaching, they figure that they’ve got nothing to lose so they yell, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
It is interesting how people who have been rejected, who feel like outsiders, and those who are really hurting are drawn to Christ. These social and religious outcasts don’t question whether Jesus will accept them or even want to heal them. They just cry out to him, even though they have little understanding of who he is. In his book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” Philip Yancey recounts a story that happened to a friend of his who wrote,
“A prostitute came to me wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter—two years old—to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. “At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naïve shock that crossed her face. ‘Church!’ she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.’”
“What struck me about my friend’s story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost this gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, (often) no longer feel welcome among his followers.”
Sometimes we need to ask ourselves about this both as individuals and as a church: Are hurting, broken, sinful people drawn to us like they were to Jesus? Do the modern-day Samaritans and lepers see that same image of Christ in us? And what kind of people embrace God’s grace so much that they naturally attract those who are hurting, broken, and sinful?
Its people who demonstrate grace throughout their daily lives—accepting people and valuing people as God’s creation. They’re people who are sought out by those who feel guilty and sinful because they know they won’t be judged—they’ll be accepted. They’re people who know the pain and destruction of sin and why God wants his children to be from it. They’re people who don’t wield their religion and spirituality as a club to beat on those who don’t meet their spiritual expectations. Its people who are not prejudiced or biased against others either because of their nationality or the color of their skin. And its people who understand that the church is supposed to be like a hospital, not a museum.
In a spiritual museum, people come to view examples and specimens of religion and spirituality and only the best will do. But in a spiritual hospital, people come for healing, rest, acceptance, forgiveness, and to discover God in the lives of the others in that spiritual hospital. There’s a verse that quotes Jesus’ words that I like to use as often as I can, when he said,
31 “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32)
You know, this is a strange way to say it, but if you see yourself as being so spiritually healthy that it seems like most of the people you see in church really bother you because they just don’t seem as spiritual as you see yourself, or that you don’t need the help or encouragement that God’s people have to offer, then the church really isn’t the place for you.
But if you know that, no matter how well you’re doing in your relationship with God, you often still need spiritual treatment, and occasional surgeries, and some ongoing spiritual health maintenance, then this is the place for you. In Luke 17:14 we see that, based only on their request of Christ to have mercy on them, it says,
14aWhen he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”
What is interesting is that it doesn’t describe Jesus actually healing them, just his instruction to go show themselves to their priests because before a leper who had been healed could re-enter society, a priest had to have declared them “clean.” So Jesus uses the “priests” in the plural. And it is there as a reminder that one of them was a Samaritan and would go to his own priest. But look what happens is described in the next part or verse 14:
14bAnd as they went, they were cleansed 15One of them, when he saw he was healed came back, praising God in a loud voice.
It doesn’t say whether they were instantly healed as they began going to the priests, or if they were just healed by the time they got there, but apparently, all of them experienced the same cleansing or healing. But only one, when he experiences God’s touch, comes back to give thanks directly to Jesus for healing him. One of the things that is interesting about this miracle and healing is that Jesus didn’t cause the miracle to happen instantly before their eyes. But it apparently happened in such a way that it had a profound effect on one of the ten, but not on the others.1 Thessalonians 5:18 says,
“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Think about that for a minute, “Give thanks in all circumstances,” because that’s sometimes hard to do because your circumstances may not be evoking a thankful attitude today. But God’s word says basically, “No matter what’s going on, find something for which you can be thankful.” So the leper comes back, and as it says in verse 16,
16aHe threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
Why does Jesus point out that he was a Samaritan? There are a lot of speculations as to he draws attention to this fact. But as I looked at this whole passage, I realized that, of the ten, it was the Samaritan who probably stood the greatest chance of being thankless instead of thankful. And if anyone was going to be mad at God or feel that God owed him a cure, it would have been the Samaritan because not only did he have leprosy, but he was also a victim and a target of racial prejudice.
And when we talk about being thankful to God for all the things in our lives, sometimes people can get a little defensive and say, “Hey wait a minute! God hasn’t given me anything! Everything I have in my life I worked for!” Then I thought, “Okay, what if I wanted to take that attitude and say, “God didn’t give me anything either. I put myself through college, I got a job, I earned my positions, My wife and I take care of our family.”
But then I have to recognize that it was God who created and orchestrated the circumstances through which I was given the opportunity to do those things: God allowed me to be born in a country where these opportunities existed. He allowed me to be born into a family that instilled a strong work ethic. He gave me the opportunity to get an education and pursue my career goals. He placed me in a job where I met my wife. And it was God who gave us our kids and gave us the things I described above that allows us to take of them. Had I been born in a different place, to a different family, in a different century, I wouldn’t have experienced any of those things.
Am I a self-made man? No. You can be the hardest worker around, but you can only play the cards you’ve been dealt. God has dealt each one of us many cards for which we can be truly and thankful. But are we? I know that I am not thankful enough, and even when I am thankful, it’s not often enough. In fact, even as I was preparing this, I had to stop the CD playing in my office and thank God for each one of these things and more.
Because everything I have can be traced back to an opportunity or an event that I never could have orchestrated or created. Every good thing I have going on in my life finds its source in a gift of God’s grace. Does this mean we live in denial of the challenges and the crud in our lives? No. But we don’t have a problem forgetting about or ignoring the things in our lives that we don’t like because we think about them all the time.
The things we most often forget are the gifts of God’s grace that we so easily grow accustomed to that we even come to expect them. Yet they are all gifts of his grace. And that’s why we also have to remember that…
God’s grace collides with discontentment
It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Contentment makes a poor man rich; but discontent makes a rich man poor.”[1] If there was ever someone who had a right to be frustrated, ungrateful, or discontented, it was the apostle Paul. Here was a man who gave up a promising career with power, influence and security to become an itinerant evangelist and church planter who spent much of his time in prison cells recuperating from his many beatings.
I think that if I had lived his life, I would have, at least once said to God, “Hey, I gave it all up for you and this is the reward? And you want me to be thankful? You expect me to be content? Yet, from his prison cell, he wrote these words to the church in Philippi in Philippians 4:11-13:
Not that I speak from want; for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
This contentment of which Paul speaks in verse 11 is not a contentment that is the result of circumstances. The word content in this passage is literally a compound word that means self-contented. What Paul is saying is that “the secret” of being content is not depending on outside circumstances, but rather finding within yourself, the resources to be content. And we know from Paul’s writings that the resource within him was his relationship with God. And then Paul ends his testimony of self-contentment with the familiar quote,
“I can do all things through Him strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
Did you know that the original context of that verse was contentment? Because we often see it applied to everything and anything but contentment. What this means is that God in Christ can give you the strength you need to choose to be content in whatever circumstances you find yourself.
So when it comes to the things God has done in your life—healing you emotionally, physically, relationally, spiritually do you thank him for those things? Or are you stuck in an attitude of discontentment?
In the temple in Jerusalem, there was an inscription on a block in the wall of the temple were these words: “Let no foreigner enter within the screen and enclosure surrounding the sanctuary.”[2] And so in Luke 17:17-18, Jesus asked three questions:
17Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?
That word “foreigner” in verse 18 is the same word used in that inscription in the temple. If anyone was going to feel like an outcast and an outsider it would be this man. If anyone was going to feel forgotten by God, it would probably be this man. But look at verse 19:
19Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
That word “well[3]” is from the same word that is used in the New Testament to describe salvation: forgiveness from sin and a relationship with God and the promise of eternal life in heaven.
I think that Jesus said this to him because this whole encounter was not just about seeing the man cured from his leprosy. It was about God doing a work in a man’s life that he could recognize as a gift from God and decide to keep going on through life without him—which is what it appears the other nine lepers did, or he could recognize that whether he thought he deserved it or not, God had blessed him with a gift of grace.
And so he returned to Jesus with gratitude and he revealed to him that this was an act of faith and that this faith—even just a small amount—had unlocked the door to a relationship with God and the acceptance and love that God wanted to give him.
Here’s what I want you to do this week: take some time to trace at least one good thing you’ve ever done or accomplished or earned in your life back to a root or a source for which you can thank God—and then do it. If this is something you find easy to do, then see if there is anything in your life with which you couldn’t go through this process. Either way, the objective is to become like this Samaritan leper who had every reason to be bitter and indifferent toward God, but chose instead to be grateful. And it was that choice that God used to draw him in closer so that he could experience a deeper level of life.
Sometimes we go through life missing all the things God has done and so we never come back to him to say “Thank you.” And when that happens, often people also miss out on knowing God in a deep, intimate, and personal way because they didn’t choose to recognize the little road signs along the way. I’d bet you can thank God right now for at least one thing in your life for which you can be thankful to him, maybe hundreds. And maybe through that exchange, you’ll see that all it takes is just a little faith and you can know God personally and receive his acceptance, his love, his forgiveness, and his grace.
If you’re a believer, don’t let this principle get by you because you already know about this stuff or you’ve heard it before. Life is busy and hectic and it often seems that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. Take a moment, even now, to think of the blessings and the gifts that God has given to you and thank him for them. Recognize even just a few things that could never have been a part of your life if God hadn’t worked things out in advance to set the stage for those things.
-----------------------------------------------------[1] Biblical Studies Foundation illustrations
[2] Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, p. 228
