Luke 17:11-13 NIVUK
[11] Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. [12] As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance [13] and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’
Have you ever felt like you are on the outside, looking in?
I was never really ‘in with the in crowd’ at school. Party invitations didn’t really flow in my direction. Invitations to celebrate my birthday with my family were frequently rebuffed. I was a bit of a loner in Primary School, and the subject of a lot of teasing, and occasionally malicious gossip.
I have to say, I didn’t expect it, but scars from this experience reared their ugly head when I travelled to a place where English was not the first language. It took me a while to trust that people were not talking about me behind my back.
And that’s it: when you are a bit of a social leper, you focus on yourself a lot, which ends up isolating you from others, because you are convinced their intentions towards you are always bad, which makes you more of a social leper, and your opinions of others makes your loneliness a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That cycle can be very hard to break.
So how do you do it?
We will now look at people who were not just social lepers, they were actual lepers. So, however we feel, our situation is immediately much better than theirs.
And that’s there we begin, by looking in detail at Their Situation.
Their Situation
In the Old Testament, we read this:
Leviticus 13:45-46 NIVUK
[45] ‘Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” [46] As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.
They may have actually had leprosy. Leprosy nowadays is known as Hansen’s disease. It is a viral condition that is very treatable with a course of antibiotics for around a year and a half. Those who contract it usually recover without any lasting damage, provided it is detected and treated as soon as possible.
But in Jesus’ day it was another matter.
Without treatment, it caused sores, affected nerve endings and eventually death. It was an ugly, horrific disease. Even nowadays, those who have it live in isolated camps, away from those who do not have it, to prevent it from spreading.
Infection happens only after prolonged contact with someone who has the disease, but you can fully understand the anxiety around this condition in Jesus’ day, when it was completely untreatable and a certain killer.
Of course, they may not have had leprosy. The Greek word could simply refer to a condition similar to leprosy that was less deadly.
Whatever their actual condition, we can understand why their community would not want to have contact with them.
However, as much as we can understand the community’s perspective, and why the law demanded their isolation, we can also see how this would be beyond hurtful for lepers.
Although the strong likelihood is that no-one reading this has had leprosy or will have leprosy, I’m sure there are many why can empathise with the idea of being treated like a social leper: of being isolated from their community because of who they are, where they have come from or what they have done.
Not necessarily because of an infectious, terminal medical condition.
Sad to say that even professing Christians can sometimes treat people this way. Not always deliberately. Sometimes it’s just because someone’s face just doesn’t seem to fit, or they are from a different social or ethnic grouping.
That doesn’t excuse it. Keeping people on the outside is wrong. We are supposed to be one body made of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 20, 27), not many bodies made up of one part.
We are supposed to be different. That’s the point.
It can have some very negative effects for the cause of the Gospel we say we love when we turn people away or put them off when they are honestly seeking to be saved, just because they are ‘not our kind of people’.
But there is a flip side to this.
Let me illustrate it.
I once met a girl at a student event who clearly had a lot of needs. She confessed readily that she was not living a good life and needed help to come off drugs and change her life. I suggested coming to church so that we could talk to my pastor and find out what help was available. She turned it down. She said she couldn’t come. She had been to a different church before and felt that everyone was staring at her and judging her, even if they had no idea who she was.
And that can happen with us.
We know we need help, but our own conscience is what stands in the way. We are ashamed of our condition and make social lepers of ourselves because we are afraid to be exposed to other people’s judgement – even when it isn’t going to happen because they have no idea who we are.
And that truly is a bad state of affairs.
But I want to point out something about these lepers:
Luke 17:15-16 NIVUK
[15] One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. [16] He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.
Nine of these lepers were Jews; one was a Samaritan.
The divide between them was one of the most hate-filled, sectarian divides in history. They quite simply despised one another – to the extent that Jews would not even use the same utensils as Samaritans, and Samaritans would not offer someone hospitality if they knew they were headed for Jerusalem.
So to see this group of people freely mixing across the divide was quite something.
Or was it?
You see, this group of ten lepers, outcasts of their respective societies, were bound together in their shared suffering. Their ethnic and religious backgrounds meant nothing to them. They were drawn together for friendship, companionship, even survival, by the one thing they had in common, which was more important to them than anything else: their shared identity and pain as lepers.
Now the church has much to learn from this.
You see, we are also drawn together by a shared pain and suffering – a deep and deadly imperfection, if left unchecked and untreated: sin. As Paul taught:
Romans 3:22-24 NIVUK
[22] This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
None of us are perfect. None of us are whole. All of us are just a little bit broken. And the shared pain we bear is entirely self-inflicted.
That pain of sin ought to bind us together, and that binding ought to be stronger than any other tie. The fact that we know how it feels to fail and to be saved by the grace of God ought to bring us low in humility and together in unity. It ought to make us a place where other people who are broken and in pain because of their sin can come and find forgiveness, grace and healing.
But too often we are not like this. Even though we ought to be.
Because we are too proud to admit who we are.
So we see their situation, and how, in a way, it can reflect our situation, even if we don’t have leprosy. But what follows next is Their Request.
Their Request
Luke 17:12-14 NIVUK
[12] As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance [13] and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ [14] When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.
Their request was simple: they wanted to be healed. They did not want to retain their identity as neighbourhood lepers. They wanted to be changed. They wanted to be whole.
They wanted to play an active, positive role in their community.
And for that to happen, they needed to be free of their disease.
‘Disease’ is truly a funny word. We use it to refer to conditions caused by viruses or germs.
Actually, it’s formed of two parts: the word ‘ease’ and the prefix ‘dis’, which negates it.
In other words, ‘disease’ in its purest meaning is something which causes us to be ill at ease.
It is something that causes us to be uneasy and separates us from our community – particularly the community of believers.
These men had a disease – a serious, debilitating, terminal disease. This disease kept them out of their community and out of Temple worship. They were considered as defiled, as ceremonially unclean (Leviticus 13). Anyone who came into contact with them would share in their uncleanness.
So how could such a person be healed? What hope was there for them?
The answer to both questions is Jesus.
These men called to Jesus across the street. They asked Him to heal them.
And then we see something absolutely pivotal – something that sets this miracle apart from all others:
Luke 17:14 NIVUK
[14] When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.
So when these men were stood across the street from Jesus, they were lepers, but when they walked away from Jesus, they were healed.
Why?
Because Jesus told them to go.
They were obeying Him. They were walking in faith and in the truth that He had healed them.
Now, here we see something very interesting.
Often one of the biggest effects of social leprosy is damage to our mental health: poor self-esteem, depression, despair.
If that is how you feel today, I want to tell you a wonderful, beautiful truth:
The cure for each of these dangerous, debilitating, destructive conditions is found in the Bible.
For poor self-esteem:
Psalms 139:14 NIVUK
[14] I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Zephaniah 3:17 NIVUK
[17] The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’
For depression:
Psalms 34:18 NIVUK
[18] The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Revelation 21:3-4 NIVUK
[3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. [4] “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
For despair:
Psalms 30:5 NIVUK
[5] For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Matthew 11:28-30 NIVUK
[28] ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’
But we can’t just know this intellectually. It isn’t enough to know it. It isn’t even enough to agree with it.
We have to own it. We have to walk in it. We have to believe it.
The sight of these ten men walking away from Jesus must have been absurd. There they were, covered in festering sores, likely with blackened skin and bandages covering open, festering wounds. Yet Jesus had commanded them to present themselves to the priests for cleansing rites that would be carried out if they were already clean.
But they weren’t. They were still leprous.
However, as they believed Jesus, obeyed Him and walked in the truth of His Word, the wounds dried up and were healed, blackened limbs were restored, sores disappeared, and these men were healed.
Often the issue with us is not that Jesus is unable to heal us, but that we are unable to believe that He can.
Or worse, we even treasure our wounds as part of who we are.
I know how this feels. I was raised in a struggling family in a poor neighbourhood. I was bullied in school. For years. Those wounds ran deep.
But when I left high school, I quickly realised there was an advantage to be had. Tales of my deprivation won me respect, admiration and sympathy. They helped me to gain friends, and, dare I say it, influence.
So I treasured those wounds.
However, God had other ideas.
He sent me to Romania, where people had deeper, more profound wounds.
My neighbourhood had been poor. Their whole country had awoken from a Communist nightmare and lost many of its core industries.
My father had spent seven years on unemployment benefit from our government. These people had seen their economy dive in a very short time and their government simply could not afford to pay liveable benefits to their people.
I had been bullied at school. They had been persecuted by one of the most brutal secret police forces in European history.
My wounds were nothing at all compared to theirs. It was like comparing a bruise to a tumour. There simply was no comparison.
And so everything I had clung onto was useless.
Now I had a problem.
And I knew it.
So did my team leader. On our train from London Heathrow Airport to the centre of the city for our transport back to Scotland, he verbally laid into me about having a victim mentality.
It may have been far from the right time or place, but he was right. Dead right.
Since then, I have had to go through a long process of walking in obedience and faith in Jesus and believing Him for healing. It didn’t happened right away for me. It often doesn’t.
But the more I obey, the more the wounds and scars I bore since my youth are being healed.
And so I am imploring you to walk this road with me. Believe Jesus. Believe His Word. Believe Him for your healing. Then obey Him.
And let Him heal your wounds. After all...
Isaiah 53:5-6 NIVUK
[5] But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. [6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Jesus performed an astonishing miracle in the lives of these men. There is little doubt about that. Without touching them, and with nothing more than words from His mouth, He banished a chronic condition that robbed them of their mental and physical health and restored them to their community.
He can do the same for you. He will do the same for you.
If you let him.
But we move from their situation and their request to something of a twist in the tale: Their Heart.
Their Heart
Luke 17:15-19 NIVUK
[15] One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. [16] He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan. [17] Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? [18] Has no-one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ [19] Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’
Ten men on the borders of Samaria and Judaea: nine Jews, one Samaritan.
Ten men united against the world around them by a dreadful, debilitating, dispiriting disease: nine Jews, one Samaritan.
One Jewish Rabbi, Healer, Saviour, who heals them of their chronic condition.
So who would you believe would return to thank Jesus: the Jews, with all their righteous religious background and their centuries of hope fulfilled in Jesus, or the Samaritan, who is a stranger to the covenant with God’s people and whose religion lacked many of the prophecies that pointed to the coming Messiah?
Yet it’s the Samaritan who thanks Jesus: the man whose mongrel race were only known for their syncretism and religious bet-hedging (2 Kings 17:24-41).
Would you have seen this coming?
Few would, to be honest.
That is why Jesus asks those three rhetorical questions.
But if we try to answer them, we will find truths that point to the secrets of their hearts, as well as our own.
‘We’re not all ten cleansed?’
Of their disease? Yes.
In their hearts? No.
‘Where are the other nine?’
The Bible doesn’t tell us, but Jesus knew and was asking this question to emphasise a serious point. They were likely heading to the Temple or to a nearby synagogue to carry out their cleansing rites (Numbers 19).
I have no doubt at all that this journey would be travelled with a certain excitement and glee, given that, after these rites were successfully completed, they could re-enter their cult, culture and community.
But in their fully understandable joy, they had forgotten one critical person:
The Person who had made it all possible,
Jesus Christ.
What does this tell us?
This little almost postscript to the healing allows us to peer into the hearts of these men in a way that could be quite uncomfortable for us.
You see, an attitude of gratitude is not just commended as a good thing in the New Testament, it is actually commanded:
Ephesians 5:17-20 NIVUK
[17] Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. [18] Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, [19] speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, [20] always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Philippians 4:6-7 NIVUK
[6] Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. [7] And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 3:15 NIVUK
[15] Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:17 NIVUK
[17] And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIVUK
[16] Rejoice always, [17] pray continually, [18] give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
We are not told to wait until our situations are favourable and then give thanks, we are told to give thanks in our situation until we see it as favourable.
These man have been released from a dreadful, debilitating, dispiriting, deadly disease. Their lives had begun again as ceremonially clean people, able to participate in all common acts of worship and prayer and commerce. This is a tremendous blessing, there can be little doubt of that.
Yet they are not thankful enough to thank Jesus.
Something is wrong. Very wrong.
You see, while the miracle of healing has removed these men’s medical and social leprosy, it has not healed their mentality. Thankfulness is an important buttress against negativity and complaining. If we lack it, even God's miracles can seem like a small thing that we disregard and replace with complaints.
Think about what happened after the Exodus. God had delivered a million Israelites from slavery in Egypt – an amazing miracle.
He had led them across the Red Sea and drowned the mighty Egyptian army – an amazing miracle.
He had provided them bread in the desert – an amazing miracle.
Yet they were not grateful. They grumbled.
That is why we read these words:
1 Corinthians 10:10-13 NIVUK
[10] And do not grumble, as some of them did – and were killed by the destroying angel. [11] These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. [12] So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! [13] No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
Consider this: these men were about to re-enter their community because Jesus had rid them of their medical and social leprosy. But what if normal life was not as thrilling for them as they’d have hoped? What if they had encountered problems and struggles that they did not have while they were leprous, but did have now they were healthy? What if their lack of thankfulness caused them to be bitter and complain?
What then?
Do people ordinarily seek out the company of someone who is a complainer?
No!
They leave their presence and go somewhere more ‘fun’.
And so our complainer would gradually find himself suffering from social leprosy once more.
Gratitude is winsome. Gratitude is critical. It shields our mind from negative thoughts. It fills our hearts with peace.
If you know, today, that Jesus Christ has healed you from your social leprosy, be thankful.
And tell Him.
‘Has no-one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’
These words should burn.
Nine Jews show no gratitude for their healing. A despised Samaritan does.
Why?
Because he had far less of a claim on Christ than any of these Jews. He had far less of a right to demand a healing.
He was further away from Jesus than any of them.
And I’m sure he knew it.
Yet he too was healed.
As Jesus explained:
Luke 7:40-43 NIVUK
[40] Jesus answered him, ‘Simon, I have something to tell you.’ ‘Tell me, teacher,’ he said. [41] ‘Two people owed money to a certain money-lender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. [42] Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ [43] Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.’ ‘You have judged correctly,’ Jesus said.
This man perceives the distance between Him and Jesus, receives the miracle and gives thanks.
I wonder, do we?
Or do we believe that somehow we have a claim on the grace of God?
Let me tell you: we do not!
Conclusion
We live halfway up a hill in one of the most affluent areas of our town. When I’m trying to walk up that hill and I’m being beaten back by the wind and the rain, I don’t quite feel so privileged.
But when I stand inside our house and survey the peaceful neighbourhood outside, I give thanks and praise to God.
Because I know what it’s like to live in a neighbourhood where you fall asleep to the sound of police sirens, or drunken fights, or are woken up to the sound of windows being smashed or burglars trying to enter your house, or leave the house to find out some hooligan has scrawled obscenities on your front door. I know how it feels to have to run the gauntlet of people hurling insults, or even stones, as you just go about your daily business.
I know what it feels like to have people disregard you, tease you, mock you, just because you live in the wrong postcode.
And where God has placed us now, we have none of that.
So I am profoundly grateful for that.
I also profoundly grateful for the way God has been showing me wounds that I have bore since those dark days and has gradually and gracefully removed them from me.
I don’t know what it feels like to be a medical leper. And God willing, I never will.
But I do know how it feels to be a social leper.
If you find yourself in that dreadful situation, if you are aware that you are separated from community life due to your own sins or the sins of others, then I have the greatest of news for you:
You are not too far gone for Jesus.
The same God who cast their illnesses from them with just His words can also heal and restore you. All you have to do is let Him, obey Him, and walk as if you are already healed.
I know.
Because this is what He has done for me.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I praise You for this wonderful message. So much had gone on in my life that now prevents me from playing an active part in my community. I am deeply ashamed of it. Forgive me for any part in it I have played. I believe You can heal me. I believe You want to heal me. I will let You heal me. I will follow and obey You. Amen.
Questions
Is there any part of these men’s lives as lepers that you can identify with? What, and why?
What is ‘social leprosy’? Have you experienced it?
What had these men to do in order to be healed? What must you do?
Comments