TEXT: Luke 17:11-19

SUBJECT: Luke #64: Ten Lepers

In his children’s book, The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis describes a stable as being "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside". . In another place, he makes the same point, this time comparing the world to an onion made up of many layers, except that the world—unlike the onion—gets bigger with every layer that is peeled away.

A scientific mind is blind to the images, but wisdom feels their truth and beauty—even if it cannot fully explain them. This is what we have in today’s story—a truth bigger on the inside than on the outside. It is a story shallow enough for toddlers to wade in, but also deep enough to drown an elephant. On a first reading, it seems to be just another miracle story—ten lepers come to the Lord for healing and get it.

But there’s more to the story than this. The deeper meaning is not hidden in a bizarre code, but is open to all who read the story with care and meditation.

We’ll get to that meaning shortly—the Lord willing—but first, the story itself.

The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, where He will offer Himself to God as a sacrifice for the sins of His people. He has a lot on His mind, of course, but He’s not too busy to think of other people—people He does not know and who have no special claim on His favor.

Ten sick men come to him and their sickness is not a sniffle or a low-grade fever. No, the men are lepers! There is no disease more terrifying than leprosy. It was incurable and not even treatable. What’s more, it was often a sign of God’s disfavor and excluded one from his family, his community, and the Holy Place where the Lord was enthroned on the shoulders of the Cherubim!

The Mosaic Law is so strict in its quarantine and the people are so scared of the disease that a leper has to stay more than one hundred feet away from others. Instead of greeting them with a warm kiss or even a courteous hello, lepers meet people with a warning—Unclean! Unclean! On hearing it, the others run for their lives. There was no pity for lepers and no help.

Except in the Lord Jesus Christ. When the lepers see Him, they feel at ease for the first time; here’s a Man who sympathizes with them, a Man who can help them if He wants to—and there’s good reason to believe He wants to!

And so, this time, they don’t shout out a warning, but a request:

We can’t say how much they knew about the Lord Jesus. Did they call Him, Master, because they believed He was God or was it just a respectful way of addressing a Rabbi? We don’t know about this, but we know this much: they felt He was a powerful Man who had a heart for people in distress. And so, having nothing to lose, they cry out for His help!

The Lord does not do what they expect Him to do. He doesn’t heal them with a word or a touch (as He so often did before). No, He issues a command:

This is both an order and a test. Under the Old Covenant, lepers were excluded from the People of God, but if the Lord healed them, they were welcomed back into the fellowship. But, of course, someone had to examine them and give them a clean bill of health. It was the priest who did this. You can read the details in Leviticus 13-14.

As I said before, this was a command, and evidently, if they had not obeyed the Lord, they would not have been healed. What David said about the Laws of God in general, is doubly true here:

But the command is also a test: the lepers know why they’re sent to the priest—to be pronounced clean—but they were not clean, not yet, at least, and so the Lord seems to mock them. But He is not! On their way to the priest’s home, they were all made well. Maybe at the first step in that direction or maybe as they knocked on the man’s door. But in any event, all ten lepers were healed by the Almighty Command of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But this is not the end of the story. All ten men were healed, but only one of them came back to the Lord to thank Him for His favor. Nine went away to their homes or jobs or somewhere else, but only one came back to praise God and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here’s the punch line: Luke says

We know this is the main point of our story because it is what the Lord picks up on:

How do we explain the difference between the one Samaritan and the nine Jews who were healed that day? The Lord says what made them differ was faith—the one had some and the others didn’t.

Here we have one of the Bible’s most glorious stories and also one of it’s most disturbing. Now, what does it mean?

Let’s go back to the image of an onion—a reverse onion—you might say. We’ll start with the meanings—things that are taught in the story and ought to be mulled over. We’ll begin on the outside—which, remember—is the smaller part of the interpretation.

The story means Most men are ungrateful.

Everyone in the world lives on the generosity of God—including people who say there is no God and live as though they believe it.

Yet, even to these people, the Lord is immensely good. He gives them the blessings of common grace—the rain falls on the just and the unjust and the sun rises on the evil as well as the good.

But not only does He give them these ordinary things without which they cannot survive, but He often sweetens the bounty by giving them far more than they have to have. Many unbelievers have good health and long lives; they have happy families and meaningful work; they take good vacations and have the taste and the means to enjoy the finer things of life—music and painting, the ballet and good books. They also have the simplicity to enjoy things more basic: a laughing child, a warm sun, a picnic, a game of cards and just plain fun!

How kind the Lord is to these people and yet His kindness is lost on them. They credit themselves or good luck or even another god—idols are praised and worshiped for the gifts Someone Else gives!

Martin Luther said the main difference between men and dogs is that men give thanks for their food! But think of all the times you’ve been in a restaurant and how rarely you see someone offering thanks.

Paul got it right: in describing the world all around him, he said of most men,

This is one of the lessons to learn from our story. Most men are not grateful and, hence, we shouldn’t be surprised at the griping we hear all around us and that favors we do others will often be unacknowledged.

The story also means most Christians are ungrateful.

If we take leprosy as a picture of sin and its healing as a sign of God’s grace, we see that many saved people are not very mindful of what Christ has done for them.

How can a believer receive the forgiveness of sin and not be thankful for it? How can he be given a good conscience and hardly notice it? How can he be brought into the family of God and not be praising the Lord for it every minute of the day? How can he snatched out of the fires of hell and put on his way to heaven and not feel something for Christ?

I cannot answer the questions, but I know believers can be this way because I’m this way! I give thanks but I don’t mean it. I feel discontented and I feel sorry for myself. I grumble and I envy; I feel jealous and I wonder why God has cheated me!

Am I the only one here who feels this way at times—more often than I like to confess? Or, are you with me? Are you also unmindful of what Jesus Christ has done for you?

If you’re with me, you ought to think about the story and ask yourself: Am I more like the nine or like the one? Are you an ingrate? If so, you need to go back and recall what Christ has done for you and meditate on it until the feelings of self-pity are replaced by feelings of gratitude? Like David, we should say (and feel):

The story means Jesus Christ is good to people who are ungrateful.

The nine ingrates were every bit as healed as the one, thankful Samaritan. Why? Because we don’t earn the Lord’s favor by being grateful, but we have it because He is so thoroughly good.

All self-congratulations ought to be laid aside. We can only say with the prophet,

The story means Jesus Christ is God.

The Bible doesn’t say much about Philip the Apostle, but it gives him the honor of making the silliest request ever: "Lord, show us the Father and it will satisfy us".

The Lord’s must have shaken His head at that one, but instead of ridiculing him, He simply says,

In other words, the Lord’s Divinity can be seen in His actions. What God is said to do in the Bible, the Lord does right before their eyes! And what does the Father do for rotten, lousy ingrates?

And so does the Lord Jesus Christ because He is God!

These things are taught in the story and are very much worth thinking about. But—so far—I haven’t gotten to the heart of the matter.

In one sense, the stories of the Bible are like a joke: they depend on a punch line. The funniest joke falls flat if the punch line is messed up by the teller or missed by the hearer. We often read Bible stories without an eye for the punch line. In doing that, we many learn many useful things, but we end up not getting it.

The punch line of the story is at the end of v.16. Speaking of the one grateful leper, Luke says,

Just in case we missed it the first time, the Lord repeats it in v.18:

This is what the story is about: Israel has long received the favor of God, but is not grateful for it. The Gentiles are now receiving it, and against what you would expect, they are thankful for it.

Thus Israel en masse (not every Jew, but the nation as a whole) will be cut off and the Kingdom of God will be given to people who are thankful to have it.

The lesson is underlined all over the Gospels. The Lord does not come to call the good Jews (scribes and Pharisees), but bad Jews (publicans and harlots). He passes by unbelieving Jews to help a Roman soldier, a Syro-Phonecian mother, a Samaritan adultress, and others who had no claim on His favor.

He made this point in His first sermon—and almost got killed for doing it:

God is no respecter of persons! Though Israel had more of His gifts than all the other nations put together, the gifts did not make the Jews acceptable to Him. They, too, must believe God and obey His Word. If they don’t, they fall under His curse as much as the most hideous pagan. And more, in fact, for "to whom much is given much will be required".

What does this say to you and me? It says that—though we ought to be thankful for our privileges, we must not put our faith in them as though growing up in a Christian family, knowing the Bible, being baptized, going to church, and so on, make us right with God. They don’t! No more than being born to Abraham, being circumcised, knowing the Law, and the like, made an unbelieving and disobedient Israel pleasing to the Lord.

What pleases God? Only two things: faith and obedience. And what displeases Him? Unbelief and disobedience.

This is bad news for the scribes and Pharisees then—and now. But good news—very good news—to the Samaritans of the first century and today.

There are no qualifications for coming to Christ! Offer Him your faith and obedience and He’ll accept them—and you. By His grace!