Only One Came Back
Today we are going to take a look at a section of scripture in Luke 17:11-19. Please open your bible to those pages.(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.” Today we are going to take a look at being thankful people.
Let me read a part of the list that several housewives compiled. They wrote that they were especially thankful: "For automatic dishwashers because they make it possible for us to get out of the kitchen before the family comes back in for their after-dinner snacks.
"For husbands who attack small repair jobs around the house because they usually make them big enough to call in the professionals. "For children who put away their things & clean up after themselves. They’re such a joy you hate to see them go home to their own parents. "For teenagers because they give parents an opportunity to learn a second language. "For Smoke alarms because they let you know when the turkey’s done.
APPL. Now our list might not be the same as theirs, but I’m convinced that if we began to make a list, we would find that we have much more for which to be thankful than just our material possessions.
Let’s get into God’s word here and see how we can benefit from what is said in this passage in the gospel of Luke.
In verse 11, it gives us the impression that Jesus is continuing on a journey and his final destination is Jerusalem. He’s traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee. There are two main routes going from Galilee to Jerusalem. One route went through Samaria and the other route went on the other side of the Jordan River through Perea. Jesus wasn’t on either road, but kind of in between them both.
As he enters into a certain village there were ten lepers yelling together and asking for help from Jesus. Which happens to Jesus all the time. People were constantly coming up to Jesus and asking for his help and for his touch. They had to yell together to be heard by Jesus, one commentary tells me that “the leper’s bronchial tubes are dry, and their voice is harsh and squeaky. So if they didn’t yell in unison they had the chance of not being heard by the one who could ultimately help them. Let me describe what leprosy was like back in those times. If you had leprosy you were considered a social outcast, you would often have to stay away from the main population, even your own family, so you don’t infect them with this incurable disease. You were required to stay away from other people and make sure you were off the side of the road at least 16.5 feet. If someone came close to you, you were required to yell out the best that you could, unclean, unclean, so the other people around you knew that you were a health hazard. Leprosy was a feared disease because there was no known cure for it, its kind of like cancer or Aids today. Some forms of leprosy were highly contagious. Leprosy has some emotional impact and terror attached to it, as Aids does today for us. Just picture, in your mind the impact the Aids virus has on our minds and our culture and how it was deeply feared when it first broke out and that’s how others back then thought about Leprosy. There was a custom that goes all the ways back to Leviticus 13:1-3 and it says. 1The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 2“When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. 3The priest is to examine the sore on his skin, and if the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is an infectious skin disease. When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean. If he’s pronounced uncleanthan he is banned and has to live in isolation along with the other unclean people. The priest banned lepers who were in the contagious stage to help keep the disease from spreading to others. This is a way of protecting the general population, not out of rudeness like we may tend to believe. In verse thirteen, we notice that the lepers are calling out to Jesus and they are calling him Jesus, Master. This gives me the impression that they are quite familiar with Jesus or at the very least have heard about his reputation as someone who can heal them of the disease they have. Maybe they heard about the other healings he’s done and they desired a healing like their friends had. A good example of Jesus healing lepers is found in Luke 5:12-15. Maybe they even have known some of the other lepers that were completely healed in the past by Jesus, because lepers had to stay together and they probably knew each other very well.
Sin can be like leprosy, if you think about it. If you have contracted leprosy you are considered an outcast and you have to stay away from all the other people who do not have leprosy. Sin is like that as well, if we are sinners, then it keeps us away from God and we are isolated from him. That’s just the way sin is in our lives, if we sin and do not repent then there is a natural gap between sinners and God. So if we want to close that gap between God, and ourselves then we need to ask for forgiveness and God closes the Gap for us. We as God’s people have to cling onto righteousness and we need to live a life that is pleasing to God, in short we need to quit letting sin hurt us and decide to live a holy and a Godly life. Like in today scripture, the only way that we can be healed from our disease called sin is by the powerful hand of Christ and by our actions. In today’s scripture the lepers were asking for Jesus to come on and heal them and we, as sinners need to do the same thing. We need to ask God to come and heal us from our sin problem.
The lepers had to ask Jesus to heal them! Jesus didn’t come up to them and say you are healed; they had to put their plan into action and genuinely ask Jesus for his healing touch. We as sinners have to go ahead and ask Jesus to forgive us, we have to put the plan into action, sort of speaking. If we ask, we have a loving Father who will forgive us of any sin we’ve ever done and he will heal us from our sins. So if you are living a sinful life and you know it, ask Jesus to come into your life and ask him to forgive you and like he healed the lepers, he can heal you as well.
In verse 14, Jesus doesn’t say go you are healed, he comes up with a strange plan and he tells them to go and see the priest. Why would Jesus do that? Why doesn’t he just heal them? It goes back to that scripture in Leviticus 13. The priest was the only one who could make the recommendation that the former leper was actually clean, Jesus knew that and he always sent them to the priest so they could get that certificate of cleanliness. Jesus could have said to them your faith has healed you, but he doesn’t do that. He tells them to go and see the priest. This right here is a step of faith on behalf of the ones with Leprosy. They had to immediately act on the command of Christ. They could have just not believed him and stayed put, but if they did do that then they wouldn’t have been healed. As they were obedient to Christ, then they were healed, Jesus set them free, but only after they started off to see the priest. How would you have reacted if Jesus told you that? Would you have gone immediately to see the priest or would you have stayed put and waited for the answer you wanted to hear? These lepers acted on faith, didn’t they? They went and did what Jesus asked them to do and because of that fact, they were blessed and were healed. Do you do that as well? When Jesus asks you to do something, do you just get up and do it or do you just wait until you begin to see results in your life and then begin to move. Sometimes Jesus isn’t going to bless us until we begin to exercise our faith and begin to act on what he asks us to do. We have to be tender hearted to his will for our lives, if Jesus asks you to go in a certain direction, we need to be the type of people who go ahead and act on it, without hesitation and get moving in the direction that the Lord wants us to move in. Is your trust in God so strong that you act on what he says before we see evidence of his hand working in that area? I hope so, God loves someone who loves him and trusts him whole-heartedly.
That’s the way salvation comes to us, God talks to our hearts, and we get moving towards repentance and forgiveness and he saves us and blesses us with eternal life. But we have to act on the touch of God’s hand in our life first, then we will begin to see the blessings of God come.
I like verse 15; it says “one of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.” There are two things that I like about this verse. The first thing is that they were on their way to the priest and one notices that he is healed and he begins to praise God. Verse 16 says, “ He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him---and he was a Samaritan. He went back and he thanked him. What a great response! I’m not sure that’s what I would have done, I may have ran as fast as I could to the priest and showed him that I was healed, completely healed. I would have asked him to make the big announcement that I was clean, so I could get back and see my wife and my children. But that’s not what the one does; he stops dead in his tracks and takes time to thank the one who healed him. That’s a problem area in many of our own lives, we are too quick to take care of our own needs and we don’t take time to thank God for his blessings.
Two men were walking through a field one day when they spotted an enraged bull. Instantly they darted toward the nearest fence. The storming bull followed in hot pursuit, and it was soon apparent they wouldn’t make it. Terrified, the one shouted to the other, "Put up a prayer, John. We’re in for it!" John answered, "I can’t. I’ve never made a public prayer in my life." "But you must!" implored his companion. "The bull is catching up to us." "All right," panted John, "I’ll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: ’O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.’" If there is one sin that is prevalent in our society, it’s the sin of ingratitude. Just think of all the things that God has done for us and continues to do for us. How do you respond to his blessings? Do you run and make sure all your needs are taken care of or do you spend the proper amount of time in thanksgiving to him? There are even many cases where we Christians do not give thanks to the Lord, like we should. I don’t have any scientific facts, but I would be willing to bet that there are many believers that don’t even take time out and thank God for the meals we’re about to eat. We cannot stand for that, we need to be extremely thankful to the Lord all the time and we need to show him that we really appreciate him. We need to act like this Samaritan and dive down to the ground and praise him and thank him for what he’s done for us. He sent his son to die for us, he created us, he provides us all our needs, he constantly is blessing us all the time and we cannot afford to just stand there and not thank him. I think that if we are truly a child of the King, we would be very thankful all the time, which at times I forget about that. I want to challenge you this week to really be thankful and to try and find 5 different things each day, which we can thank God for. It may be a challenge, but as we challenge ourselves, we will also become even more thankful as time goes on, it will serve as a great reminder to be thankful and it should strengthen our walk with the Lord. The second thing that I noticed in this passage was that when the man came back to thank Jesus his voice was restored to it’s previous state when he was healthy. It says in verse 15 that he came back in a loud voice. God healed him from the leper’s dry bronchial tubes, that we earlier discovered he had. Jesus completely healed his body, because of his faith.
Then comes the penetrating question in verse 17. Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Those questions really touched me this week, especially the one about where are the other nine?
The story is told of two old friends who bumped into one another on the street one day. One of them looked forlorn, almost on the verge of tears. His friend asked, "What has the world done to you, my old friend?"
The sad fellow said, "Let me tell you. Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me forty thousand dollars." "That’s a lot of money." "But, two weeks ago, a cousin I never even knew died, and left me eighty-five thousand free and clear."
"Sounds like you’ve been blessed...." "You don’t understand!" he interrupted. "Last week my great-aunt passed away. I inherited almost a quarter of a million."
Now he was really confused. "Then, why do you look so glum?" "This week... nothing!" That’s the trouble with receiving something on a regular basis. Even if it is a gift, we eventually come to expect it.
The other nine that were healed may have taken this blessing from Jesus for granted. They may have taken the attitude that they deserved to be healed because of their faith? Sometimes we can run into that same trap, we get a blessing from God and we say that it’s something we are owed. That is not a very healthy attitude to take, we need to be very thankful for all the blessings we receive from God. It’s not stated in the text about the nationality of the 9 that didn’t come back to thank Jesus, but it would be a good assumption that they were of the Jewish descent. The lack of gratitude by the other nine was typical of the rejection of His ministry by the Jewish nation. This may have been the beginning of the decline of the Jewish faith as far as belief in Christ as Savior. They would take his healings and his food, but they wouldn’t accept him as Savior. The one who did come back to thank him, according to the scriptures was a Samaritan or in other words a Gentile and the Gentiles have been more accepting of Jesus as Savior.
This may not have anything to do with this passage, but the Lord laid this upon my heart this week. Only ten percent of the lepers who were healed came back and thanked Jesus. Would it be possible that we as Christians only come back to Christ 10% of the time and thank him? I thought about it and I think that in some peoples lives that it’s true and extremely possible.
Jesus blessed the Samaritan even more when he came back with a thankful heart. Some bible experts think that he not only healed his physical difficulties, but he also healed his soul from the disease that is corrupting it. Jesus totally healed him and made him whole. Jesus enlarged his faith. When Jesus heals, he completely heals us, mind, body and soul. We need to call on God to bless us, but before we do that we need to be thankful people. Thank God right now for something. Take things into your own hands and when we hear his voice, we need to act on it in faith and God will heal you of your sins. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Be thankful people, not 10% of the time, but all the time.
Let’s Pray!
