Ten lepers cried out for mercy, and all ten were healed. Only one came back — and he was the last man anyone expected.
If you received everything you ever asked God for today, would you be as quick to pray tomorrow? That is the question Dr. Toby Holt presses home from Luke 17:11–19, where ten lepers cry out to Jesus from the edge of an unnamed village — and only one of the ten healed men ever comes back.
Dr. Holt begins where the text does: with desperation. It is not the comfortable or the well who line the road to meet Jesus, but ten ceremonially unclean outcasts — men their neighbors regarded not merely as sick but as guilty, bearing God's judgment in their skin. Their cry, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”, makes no appeal to merit; they stake everything on the merciful character of Christ. And Christ, who has deliberately taken the road through despised Samaria on His way toward the cross, answers — but He answers strangely: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” The healing comes as they go, and Dr. Holt draws out the lesson that biblical faith is never a trial balloon tossed toward heaven, but trust married to obedient action.
Then the sermon turns on the detail Luke saves for last: the one man who returns, glorifying God with a loud voice and falling at Jesus' feet, is a Samaritan — the least likely worshiper in the story. All ten were surely grateful; only one was thankful, and Dr. Holt will not let us miss the difference. Preached in Thanksgiving week, the message ends with Christ's own haunting question — “But where are the nine?” — and His gracious verdict, “Your faith has made you well,” faith made mighty not by its strength but by its object.
Listeners will leave examining their own prayer lives, resolved not to keep God behind the emergency glass, but to return — again and again — to the feet of the One who heals.
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On His final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus passes through the midst of Samaria and Galilee and is met by ten lepers who stand at a distance, crying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” He commands them to go show themselves to the priests, as the law of Moses required, and as they go they are cleansed. One of the ten — a Samaritan — returns, glorifying God with a loud voice, and falls at Jesus' feet to give Him thanks. Jesus asks where the other nine are, then tells the man, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.” The account contrasts ten men healed with one man made truly well.
Dr. Holt argues that all ten were surely grateful — they had received their health, their families, and their very lives back — but only one converted gratitude into thanksgiving rendered to the Giver. The other nine received the gift and forgot the One who gave it, a pattern as old as humanity: people run to God in crisis and drift from Him in comfort. Nothing in the text suggests the nine lost their healing; the tragedy is that mercy so astonishing produced so little worship. Jesus' question, “But where are the nine?”, stands as a permanent examination of every heart that has received much from God and returned little.
Samaritans were the most despised people in first-century Jewish eyes — a community of mixed religious background from the exile era, regarded as standing outside God's covenant. When the Pharisees wanted to wound Jesus with the strongest insult available in John 8, they called Him a Samaritan. Luke saves this detail for the climax: the one worshiper in the story is the least likely man in it. Dr. Holt sees here an anticipation of the new covenant, in which God gathers a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Covenant privilege did not produce thanksgiving in the nine; sovereign grace produced it in the foreigner.
The law of Moses in Leviticus required a cleansed leper to be examined by a priest and declared clean before rejoining the community. Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to break it, so He sent the ten to do exactly what Scripture commanded. But the command was also a summons to faith: they were still lepers when they turned to go. Luke records that as they went, they were cleansed — the healing met them in the path of obedience. Dr. Holt draws the principle that God's blessings often lie on the far side of faithful response to His word.
It does not mean the leper's faith possessed healing power of its own, or that he believed more intensely than the others. Dr. Holt stresses that faith heals and saves because of its object: faith vested in anything created receives nothing, while faith fixed on Christ receives all that He gives. John Calvin makes the same point in the Institutes (Book III), teaching that saving faith is not bare assent to facts about God but a firm, Spirit-wrought persuasion of God's benevolence toward us in Christ — trusting not only that He can help but that He will. The Samaritan's faith was mighty because its object was; Jesus' words suggest he received more than clean skin — he was made whole.
Dr. Holt distinguishes gratitude as a feeling from thanksgiving as an act. All ten lepers were doubtless grateful — glad to have their health, their families, and their lives restored — but only one demonstrated it by returning to the Healer, glorifying God, and falling at Jesus' feet. Gratitude that stays locked in the heart honors no one; thanksgiving carries the heart's gratitude back to the Giver in worship, word, and deed. The application is searching: most people, including many Christians, know themselves blessed yet rarely bring specific, expressed thanks to God for specific mercies. Biblical thankfulness closes the loop between blessing received and glory returned.
Yes — this is one of the sermon's boldest notes. Dr. Holt even says, provocatively, praise God for leprosy, for cancer, for hardship, because the things we want least often have the capacity to do our souls the most good. The ten lepers sought Christ precisely because they were desperate; those whose lives were going well left Him alone. From his own pastoral and hospital-chaplaincy experience, Dr. Holt observes that far more people have come to Christ through heartache than through all the riches of the world combined. In God's wise providence, affliction strips away self-sufficiency and turns the eyes upward — a severe mercy believers later learn to thank Him for.
Dr. Holt uses the ACTS pattern — adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication — as a diagnostic. Analyzed honestly, most prayer lives are overwhelmingly supplication: we go to God when we need something, like the ten lepers, and fall silent once the need passes, keeping God behind the emergency glass until the next crisis strikes. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q98) teaches that prayer is an offering up of our desires to God in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies. This passage calls believers to be the one who returns — cultivating deliberate, expressed thanksgiving so that prayer becomes relationship rather than a vending transaction.
Luke notes that Jesus was heading to Jerusalem — late in His ministry, His face set toward the cross. Devout Jews, and certainly the Pharisees, avoided Samaria entirely, detouring toward the Jordan River rather than set foot among a people they despised. Jesus deliberately took the forbidden road. Dr. Holt underlines that this encounter was no accident: Christ sought out the ten unclean men every bit as much as they sought Him. Even en route to His passion, the Savior routes His steps through the places and people polite religion avoids — a living picture of grace that pursues the outcast rather than waiting for the outcast to qualify.
In Israel's thinking, leprosy was more than a disease. Because of episodes like Miriam being struck with leprosy in Numbers 12, many assumed every leper was under God's judgment, so lepers were counted both unclean and guilty — cut off from worship and community alike. Scripture does not teach that all sickness is personal judgment, but Dr. Holt presses the typology in his closing appeal: spiritually, we are all lepers — sicker and more broken than we know — unable to approach a holy God on our own. The gospel is that Christ, the physician of souls, approaches us first, and His arms remain open to all who cry for mercy.
1. God's Severe Mercy: Affliction Drives Sinners to Christ
Dr. Holt opens with a startling doxology: praise God for leprosy, for cancer, for hardship. He does not mean that suffering is good in itself, but that in God's wise providence the things we want least often do our souls the most good. The ten lepers sought Jesus precisely because they were the most broken men in the region; the comfortable and the well left Him alone. Dr. Holt observes that more people are walking with Christ today because of some heartache, past or present, than because of all the gold and wealth of the world combined. This is the Reformed doctrine of providence in pastoral dress: the sovereign God governs every circumstance, including disease and loss, and bends them toward the good of His people — above all, toward driving them to the Savior. Affliction strips away the illusion of self-sufficiency that prosperity breeds. When we cannot fix what is breaking us, we finally look up. Believers can therefore give thanks even for the hard providences that first brought them — and keep bringing them — to the feet of Christ.
2. Mercy Is the Only Plea a Sinner Has
The lepers' cry — “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” — contains no résumé. Dr. Holt notes that none of the ten jostled for position or argued that he deserved healing more than the others. They appealed to nothing in themselves, only to the merciful character of Christ. This is the posture of the gospel itself: sinners are not received by Christ because of their merit, their record, or their relative goodness, but solely because He is gracious. The scene also displays sovereign initiative. Jesus deliberately chose the forbidden road through Samaria — a route no Pharisee would take — so this encounter was no accident; He sought out the unclean every bit as much as they sought Him. Grace runs downhill: it finds the guilty, the outcast, and the ceremonially unclean, the very people the religious elite would never touch. Whoever comes pleading mercy on the basis of Christ's character rather than his own is exactly the kind of person this Savior stops for.
3. Faith Is Married to Obedient Action
Jesus did not touch the lepers or speak an immediate word of healing. He commanded, “Go, show yourselves to the priests” — the response the law of Moses required — and Luke records that as they went, they were cleansed. The blessing lay on the far side of obedience. From this Dr. Holt develops one of the sermon's sharpest applications: it takes no faith to throw trial balloons up to heaven — prayers detached from any willingness to act. If you pray for a difficult neighbor's salvation, yoke your labors to your prayers. If you pray for the growth and well-being of the church, lend your hands to strengthen it. True faith is never a wispy feeling floating in the inner chambers of the heart; it is trust that moves the feet in the direction of what the lips have asked. This coheres with the Reformed conviction that while works never ground our acceptance with God, living faith always works: obedience is the fruit and evidence of trust, not its rival.
4. The Thankful Samaritan and the Widening Covenant
Luke withholds the story's most scandalous detail until the healed man is face-down at Jesus' feet: “And he was a Samaritan.” Dr. Holt explains that no epithet in that culture cut deeper — when the Pharisees wanted to wound Jesus with the worst insult they could find in John 8, they called Him a Samaritan. Samaritans were regarded as syncretists from the exile era, thought to stand outside God's covenant, so despised that travelers detoured around their land entirely. Yet the one worshiper in the story comes from the last place anyone expected. Dr. Holt connects this to John's lament that Christ came to His own and His own did not receive Him — and to what is anticipated here: the new covenant's reach to every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth. Covenant proximity did not produce thanksgiving in the nine; sovereign grace produced it in the foreigner. The Samaritan's worship previews the ingathering of the nations, and it warns the privileged that nearness to covenant blessings is no substitute for personally returning to glorify God at the feet of His Son.
5. Faith Saves by Its Object, Not Its Strength
Why does Jesus so often say, “Your faith has made you well” — to the woman who touched His robe, to the blind man of Luke 18, and now to the returning leper — when He could truthfully have said that His own power made them well? Dr. Holt answers that the healing virtue never resided in the quality of their believing. It was not that they prayed harder or cried louder. Faith heals and saves because of the One in whom it is vested. Faith placed in anything within the created realm — Dr. Holt's memorable example is running to a cow on a hillside for help — receives nothing back, because the object can do nothing. But faith fixed on the Creator, on Christ, receives everything He is pleased to give. And genuine faith trusts not merely that God is able to help, but — as a son or daughter of God — that He is willing. Weak faith in a strong Savior is saved; strong faith in a false savior perishes. The Samaritan received more than clean skin: he was made well.
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online, Westminster Confessional theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. In this exposition of Luke 17:11–19, Dr. Toby Holt examines the healing of the ten lepers and the lone Samaritan who returned to give thanks. He shows how God uses affliction to drive sinners to Christ, how the lepers' cry for mercy rests on Christ's merciful character rather than their merit, and how their cleansing came as they obeyed His word in faith. Preached during Thanksgiving week, the sermon presses the difference between feeling grateful and rendering thanks, asking with Christ where the other nine have gone. Dr. Holt closes with Jesus' declaration that faith has made the Samaritan well — faith mighty not in its strength but in its object, the Savior whose arms remain open to every spiritual leper.
If you got everything that you ever wanted today, would you be as quick to pray to God tomorrow? The God of the Bible is not a genie. He's not a cosmic vending machine that exists to give us whatever we want. He's a relational being that desires a relationship with those that He has made. But is that what we want of Him? Two men stood on the edge of town. They were broken. They were desperate.
And then the most amazing thing happened. They saw Christ and He healed them. But what happened next? How did they respond? Stay tuned for the answer in this study from Luke 17. Ten lepers were healed. That's what we see in today's text. However, only one returned to praise his healer. When times are tough, people are far more inclined to seek out their God, their Maker, their King, their Savior, than those times when everything seems to be going great in their lives.
You see, when everything is going great, the inclination we have to look to an external source of help really isn't there so much. When things are going wonderfully, our tendency to look outside of ourselves for a source of help really isn't there. However, when things are going terribly for us, when a crisis hits, a calamity hits, there's a diagnosis we don't want, guess what our instinct is to do at those moments? To look up.
Our tendency, when heartache enters in, is to turn to God. Even as Christians, we look to God far more often when things are going rough than when things are going great. This has always been the case. This is not new. People tend to run to God, run to a source of external help when they encounter a problem that they can't fix on their own. Well, in Christ's public ministry, he was doing things that no one else had ever done.
In Christ's ministry, it's not just the things he said, which were on their own amazing. The things that he said, no one else had ever said. He spoke wisdom no one else had ever heard, but it wasn't just that that appealed to people. Honestly, what appealed to people even more was the miracles he was doing. Everywhere that he went, it was a blaze of miracles that followed. A blaze of miracles followed him wherever he went.
And so he was pursued by crowds. This is a guy who goes up on a hillside and thousands come to sit alongside him. He was pursued by crowds everywhere he went. But here's the thing. Consider the motivation of those who were pursuing him. They weren't pursuing him because life was going great. In today's text, ten men from this village are going to run to the edge and yell out to Jesus the moment that they see him.
These are the ten most broken, hurting, desperate people in the entire region. They're the ones who came looking for Jesus. It was not the wealthy, rich aristocrats. It wasn't those whose lives were going fabulously who just ran to the edge and just had to thank somebody. It was those who were hurting. However, once Jesus helped people, whether it was thousands on a hillside or ten people here, there's a cruel irony. People ran to him for his help, and when he helped them, the vast majority of them were never seen from again.
We all need help, but when we get that help, what's our response after having received it? Well, numerically, statistically, 90% of those in this story, they might have had gratitude in their heart. I'm sure they were grateful, but they didn't demonstrate that gratefulness, that thanksgiving, in any specific way to the one who had assisted him. They were long gone.
This morning, that's what we're going to look at. This Thanksgiving week, we're reminded that God has done so much for us. He's blessed us in more ways than we can possibly count. The question is, is our heart filled with thanksgiving for what he has done? Now, before we look at verses 11 and 12 and dive through our text, let me mention something I'm thankful for. That is not something you would expect that anyone would ever be thankful for. Praise God for leprosy. Praise God for cancer. Praise God for hardships. What do I mean by that? Sometimes the things that we want the least are the things that have the capacity to do our spiritual self the most good. In order for these 10 men to seek out Jesus, they needed a reason. And there's nothing that motivates us more in the pursuit of our God than when our lives are falling apart. There's nothing that motivates us more to pursue God than we have desperate heartache, terrible diseases, hardship. These are what God uses. There's more people who have turned to Christ because of those things today. There's more people that are walking with Christ as a result of having those things in times past than as a result of all the gold and wealth in the world combined. There's more people following Jesus.
There's more people running to Jesus. There's more people praying to Jesus. There's more people in church this morning on the basis of some heartache they've encountered in times past or present than all the riches and gold of this world combined. Ten men ran out to meet Jesus and they ran out to seek Him because they were hurting. Those who were doing fine left him alone. Praise God for those things that we would never call down upon ourselves, but he and his wisdom knows can be used to cultivate our spiritual self. Let's build on this point as we look at verses 11 and 12 and work our way through the text. Verse 11, now it happened as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then as he entered a certain village there met with him 10 men who were lepers who stood afar off. All right, at the outset of these verses, we see that Christ is traveling to Jerusalem. Now, if we just stand back from the text and don't fit it in its context, that won't mean a whole lot. He went to Jerusalem at various intervals in his life. Well, here, this is towards his Passion Week. He's heading towards Jerusalem. His face is set like flint because he knows what fate awaits him. And yet, as he heads towards Jerusalem in Luke chapter 17, as he does so, he takes a curious route.
He takes a route that others don't take. He took a route that would lead him right through the midst of a region called Samaria. Now, Samaria and Samaritans were not held in high regard with the Jewish community. This is a place of paganism and syncretism. This is a place that was considered by those in Jerusalem and elsewhere as being forbidden. You stayed away from Samaritans and Samaria. It's not a route, if you were a Pharisee, that you ever would have taken.
What happened if you were a Pharisee, if you wanted to go from Galilee and you wanted to go down towards Jerusalem, you took a route that went out towards the Jordan River, out towards the desert. You went a great way, out of your way, to avoid going here, where Jesus deliberately went. Now, when he arrives at this village, that must be small enough that it's not even named here in the text.
At this point, he's met by ten lepers. Now, when we say he was met by the ten lepers, a better way to say it is that ten lepers, they stood far off on the edge of town and yelled to him, Jesus, Master. Now, as lepers, these individuals were ceremonially unclean. They were physically unclean. These were folks with a contagious condition, and they needed to be kept outside of the community lest this were to be spread.
Now, leprosy is not, in our day and age, something we're that familiar with. However, we've seen Ben-Hur. We know that leprosy is not something that you necessarily want. And in the case of these ten individuals, there was rules that they had to follow. And one of those rules was this, that you could not approach someone like Jesus unless he was to approach you first. Now let me restate that, otherwise we'll miss the point.
Unclean people could not ever hope to approach Christ unless Christ was to approach them first. So you have these lepers, you have these ten unclean men. And one question we might ask as we consider them on the outskirts of town is how did they know even to be standing there in order to greet Jesus? Well, here's the thing. As we said a few moments ago, Jesus' narrative at this point, as he's heading towards Jerusalem, his narrative was very well known.
This was an individual. This was a man who was doing things that no one had ever done. This was a man who was doing things that no one had ever seen, that were miraculous upon miraculous. And somehow, these ten individuals who had a condition that meant that no one could really come too near to them, even they had heard about this Jesus. I don't know if someone had yelled to them or what have you.
You know, back then they didn't have the cell phones. They didn't have the Twitler and the interwebs and so forth. They didn't have all these things. Someone must have told them somehow, be on the lookout for this one. Well, whatever happened, rumors had spread, word had gotten to them. Maybe the Spirit nudged their hearts. We don't know, but they stood on the edge and they yelled out for Jesus to assist him. Now, let me share something else about leprosy. We tend to think of leprosy like cancer or like a cold or what have you. We tend to think of these things as just physical ailments. If someone has a particular diagnosis, we view it just as a physical ailment. That's not how the Jewish community would have viewed leprosy. You see, if someone was a leper, it wasn't just that they had this unfortunate physical condition. But their understanding was that if you contracted leprosy, it was because of something you did. That this leprosy was a sign of God that you were guilty of something.
Instead of just realizing we live in a fallen world where fallen things happen, where there's sickness and bugs and the like, they had an approach that says, hey, if Joe or Bob or Stu or Fred, if he gets leprosy, it's because of something he did. And that meant that if you were a leper. You weren't just physically unclean. When your peers in the community of the village up the hill, when they looked at you, it wasn't just that you were sick. Oh, poor Stu, he's sick. It wasn't just that. They looked at him and said, he's guilty. And this is God's heavy hand upon him.
Now, there is biblical precedent for that. If you remember the story of Miriam, Miriam was who? Was Moses' sister. You know, there's a time she accuses Moses. She's jealous. She's envious of but Moses, her pride gets the best of her, and she was stricken by the hand of God with leprosy for seven days. There are occasions in Scripture where leprosy is a sign of God's judgment. But the thing is, the Israelites assumed that was always the case.
So if Stu or Bob or Fred or Fran had leprosy, again, it was because of something they had done. They were both unclean and guilty. The last sort of people that the religious elite would ever have sought out, the last sort of people that a Pharisee would ever engage in any discourse with was the very ones that Jesus sought out. Because this was not an accidental encounter here. Jesus sought these individuals out every bit as much as they sought him out, even more.
And he brought healing in his wings. Let's look at verse 13. And they lifted up their voices and they said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. When people come to the end of themselves, it's typically then that they start looking for help from someone outside themselves. It's those moments when we realize, I can't fix this. I don't know how. I am unable that we reach to those outside of us. Well, that's what we see in verse 13.
They ran to the edge of town, they lifted up their voices, which is another way to say they screamed and they yelled. They said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. They didn't appeal to anything they had done. They didn't say, we're so great, we're so wonderful. They threw themselves down and said,
the only reason we have any hope to receive any help from you is based on the merciful condition of your character, not because we've earned it or deserved it or what have you. In any case, their bad circumstances prompted this. They sought out Jesus in a way that they otherwise wouldn't have if everything was going fine. Now, again, when you picture this, there was no one else there. There's 10 dudes. There's 10 guys.
It doesn't say there's 11 or 12. It doesn't say half the town came out. It said those who are in most desperate condition. There's no sign that the rich or the healthy or the powerful lined up to meet Jesus as these others did. They sought him out because they were hurting. There are people in our own lives who are going through hardships right now. And out of God's love for them, he will use difficulty to put a spotlight on their need for him.
That they otherwise would never notice if everything's going fine. When everything's going fine, again, we don't seek out Jesus. I've never, never, never had a moment or a case when anyone's called me up or come into my office, said, Pastor, just got to talk. I say, okay, what's going on? And they say, well, you know, Pastor, everything's just going so great. I just want to sit here and visit with you about it.
Now, maybe if I do this another, you know, 40 years, maybe it'll happen. But it hasn't happened yet. On the other hand, the multitude of times when someone has called me up or texted or we've met in the hallways or we've met in my office, done home visitation or hospice visitation or what have you, because things are going terribly. It's 101. There's not even a scale to measure. With that said, if that's true just of me, one pastor in Gulfport, Mississippi, then undoubtedly it's true globally. The amount of people who pick this up because they're desperate, the amount of people who walk through church doors because they're hurting, the amount of people who lift up their voice to pray and they don't even have the words to do it based on heartbreak a hundred to one million to one compared to those who everything is going wonderful here we see broken individual shout out Jesus master have mercy upon us and again there's no claim that He owes them anything no claim that this guy was better than that guy was better than that guy they weren't jostling for position and saying we should really help me because I'm so great and because before leprosy struck, I was just the nicest, best guy in town, did all manner of things.
No one, no one here out of these 10 makes any case for themselves. All they do is throw themselves down and ask for mercy. So let's see what Jesus does. Let's see his response to them in verse 14. So when he saw them, he said to them, go, show yourselves to the priests. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. Now this, this is fascinating. It's also even a little unusual.
Jesus, as we know, people had requests of him. I mean, he could snap his fingers. He could touch a little mud on their eyelids. He could do all manner of different things in order to affect their healing. Well, here he does something a little bit different. He says, go and show yourselves to the priest. The suggestion here is that there was an answer, a solution to their problem coming, but that solution would be a little further down the road. If these lepers were to be healed, then that healing would come by doing what he told them to do, to faithfully respond to his words. And so in verse 14, we see that that's what they did. They went, and as they went, they were cleansed. He told them to go, this comes from Leviticus, he told them to go and meet with the priest because that's what you did. Jesus came to fulfill the law, he didn't break the law, so he tells them, go and do it. And as they did it, as they were faithful, we find that they were healed. Those nerves, that skin, the sores, the nerve damage that occurred began to remarkably, miraculously heal, even as they were on the road. You know, God can, and even to this day, does miraculous things. God can do, is inclined to do, and even now does that which is miraculous, with the word of his power. Any number of wonderful things can and do occur in the world around us. We usually don't recognize them for what they are, and yet this is something that he can do. But in my own experience, my own experience, when I brought God a request, when something has weighed heavy on my heart, when God has affirmatively answered my own prayers, you know, the vast majority of those prayers didn't see a real significant fruit until I'd taken some faithful response, some faithful action in accordance with what I had prayed. Let me give you examples of that. Let's say you've got a neighbor, and your neighbor is all manner of trouble. Your neighbor lets the dogs run all over your property, lets the kids egg your house, all manner of things are going on. The grass is too high, he paints his house pink, all manner of things. And as a good believer, you know, you pray for this individual, and you know that unless God changes this individual's heart, he's going to continue to be kind of a jerk and treat you as such. Now, as you pray for this individual, does it not make sense that you would yoke your prayers for his salvation to some effort on your behalf to see that he gets saved? Does it not make sense that if you pray for something that you would lend your own labors to take a step in faithful response
and the direction of that which you have prayed for. If you pray for the growth and well-being of our church, as an example, it does not make sense that you take some sort of action to deliberately help strengthen it and build it. You see, it does not take any faith to just throw trial balloons up to heaven and see what happens. That is not faith. Throwing trial balloons up to heaven with that which you're not willing to engage yourself with, that's not God-glorifying prayer. It doesn't take faith to throw trial balloons up to heaven for those things that we are disengaged from or unwilling to act upon ourselves and just hope that He will. And that describes a lot of our prayer life. A lot of people that we pray God would heal. A lot of people we pray that God would save. We're not that engaged in actually being the human instrumentation by which that salvation is effected. Well, there's so many things we pray about that are just wispy trial balloons. We say it, throw it up, and then we go on our way. Well, in this case, the people had a petition, a request of Jesus. Jesus, will you do blank? Will you help us out here? And his response is, go, go, show yourself to the priest. He says, I want you to take steps that are in accordance, faithful accordance with that which you have asked me. I want the response of your feet to be in line with the words on your lips. I want you to act in a way, a faithful way, that is in concert with that which is most heavy upon your heart, and that which you have come to me with. Faith is not simply this wispy thing that floats around in the inner chambers of our heart, or that goes up as a trial balloon to heaven, but it's routinely married to action, and that's what we see here. Go. Demonstrate that you believe my words by going to the priest who otherwise wouldn't let you within a country mile of himself. You go right up to that guy. You pat him on the back and you say, check me out, I am healed. That's what he was telling them to do. He says, go. By the time you get there, all's going to be good. Now, I suppose they didn't have much to lose, and yet, and yet, there was a certain measure of discomfort that came with the journey and risk that came with being further ostracized by the population and yet they went they demonstrated this faith by going towards the priest let's look at verses 15 and 16 verse 15 one of them one of them when he saw that he was healed one of them as he went and the sores started to resolve on his skin his joints felt stronger and his nerves could suddenly have feeling they didn't previously have one of them when he saw when he looked at himself saw that he was healed he returned and with a loud voice glorified God. He was yelling and screaming about his enthusiasm and his excitement for God every bit as much as he was asking for help a few verses earlier. With a loud voice, he glorifies God and He fell down on his face at his feet. He could now come near. Healing had occurred. The man was healed and now he could approach. He could approach his Savior. He fell down on his feet and he gave Him thanks. Verse 16 concludes with this statement, and he was a Samaritan. All right, the previous verses up to verse 15. They said, all right, 10 guys, we've got 10 of them. 10 men had originally petitioned Jesus and he healed them all. Just like he fed all the thousands on the hills. In fact, there's no picture we have of Jesus kind of indiscriminately not healing people. If they came up to him, if they asked for help, if they were blind, if they yelled up to him, if they even touched his robe, they were healed. Well, here's what that same thing happens. Those who seek him out, they receive healing. But after having been healed, only one of them, only one of them had a response to go back and give thanks. Now, I'm sure all of them were grateful. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure all of them were like, hey, this is great. Woo. I can now go back to my family. I can go back to my job. I can have my life back. But they were all grateful. But they weren't all thankful.
See the difference? The world around us, we all know we got all sorts of blessings. Blessing upon blessing upon blessing. In our hearts, generally speaking, we're grateful. We don't always take that gratefulness, though, and give thanks to one who blessed us. This guy did. That was his response. And as wonderful as that is, the thing that stands out in this text is not so much that He came back, although that's wonderful and amazing. What stands out in this text is who this guy was. Verse 16 says, he was a Samaritan. There is not an epithet you could have used in this day that is stronger than to say that man is a Samaritan. Whatever foul language you can apply to someone you don't like. Multiply times 10, and this is what you get. And to prove that, you know
what the Pharisees, when they wanted to insult Jesus more than they could possibly insult him, do you know what the Pharisees said of Jesus in John 8? What they call him? A Samaritan. There's no stronger thing to say, no stronger insult than to call someone a Samaritan. And the very one of who this insult held true, the very one from this community that was ostracized and hated to the degree that people just went around, they didn't even set foot in their land, the very one who came back to Jesus was the least likely one to. He was a Samaritan. Samaritans were considered the worst of the worst. They were people with a mixed religious background. This stems from the exile and the return. A mixed religious background. They were thought of being outside of God's covenant. The worst of the worst. And because of that is true, it is ironic, for lack of a better Word, but it's ironic that it's a Samaritan who is the one who returned. You know, Jesus once said, I came to my own, and my own received me not.
He came to his people, the fulfillment of centuries and centuries of prophecies that said that this guy would come, and he'd do the exact things that he did. And when he showed up and did the things the Scripture said he would do, my own received me not. Now, while that's a sad observation, it's an encouragement to see that while some rejected him, not all did. And that some of the least likely to seek him out and show gratitude and thanksgiving and even love and affection for him for those who are from outside of this covenant community which is why God ushers in through Christ a new covenant which includes people from every tribe and every tongue and that's what's being anticipated here the expansion of the kingdom to every tribe and tongue and nation on earth all right let's look at verse 17 18 so Jesus answered and said were there not 10 cleansed but where are the nine were there not any found who are turning of glory to God except for this foreigner. As we said before, when things are going well for folks, their perceived need for God decreases accordingly. I've shared this story before, but when we were in wyoming, we were there for about five and a half years with a church plant beginning in about 2008.
And when we were there, I served for a period of that time in a hospital chaplaincy. I had the privilege and the opportunity to be with folks who were going through a crisis, either themselves based on their own health conditions, or more often, on behalf of loved ones and family and the like. I had a lot of opportunities to meet with folks in the ER and the ICUs. And what I found was, again, in those moments, even the most hardened Marlboro man of Wyoming will happily talk to the pastor when their son's ATV is rolled over on them, when some terrible thing has happened and they need help.
I met with all sorts of people in that environment who, in that moment, would absolutely accept prayer and would absolutely talk about God and would absolutely talk about matters of faith. But I'm sad to report that these same folks don't necessarily respond thereafter by running out and praising God for what God has done to answer their particular prayers after their discharge or after their health improves. It does happen at times, but I would say the ratio is probably not much different than what we see in today's text, maybe something around 10%.
Even as Christians, even we as Christians, sometimes we can act in a way that's ungrateful to God for all that He has done. If we were to analyze our own prayer lives, you know, we have an acronym. It's called ACTS. If you've been with us on Wednesday night, sometimes we use that in our prayer time. ACTS. The first A in ACTS is what? Adoration. So when we pray, we're supposed to give adoration to God.
That's part of a healthy prayer life.
What's the C? Confession. We confess our sins. So we adore God for who He is and for what He's done, and we confess our sins. What's the T? Thanksgiving we give thanks we say God I presented this issue to you and you have redressed it you've healed it what's s this is the tricky one supplication fancy way of saying this is when we ask God for things supplication as we say God I have this issue my aunt has this issue my brother has this issue my child has this issue would you please help now if you were to analyze your own prayer life the overwhelming bulk generally speaking of our prayers although theoretically they should be broken down. And in a perfect world, we do a lot of adoration, confession, thanksgiving. The reality is that our prayer life is overwhelmingly geared towards supplication.
We typically go to God when we need something. We typically go to God when we're looking for assistance. In that sense, we're not unlike the 10 lepers who lined up for Christ's help here. But the thing is, after we receive that assistance, many times, again, we just move on and keep God behind the glass in an emergency break, we keep him behind the glass until the next crisis strikes. If that's your tendency, it's a tendency you need to break.
If it's your tendency to keep God at arm's length except in those times when crisis strikes, again, this is unhealthy. Where are the nine, Christ asked. And we weren't there, so we don't know the look on his face, but I got to think it was a sigh in his heart. He knows what he's just done. He knows what's just occurred. Ten lepers were healed of the most hideous disease at that time that you could have. At least it was treated as the most hideous by the community around them.
And he gave them their lives back. He gave them their lives back. He gave them everything. It's not just that he healed their body. He gave them the ability to go and hug a spouse. He gave them the ability to go be with their children again. He gave them the ability to go pursue their vacation. He gave them their life back. Not just their health, but their very life. And in that moment, when you were going to expect 10 men to rush across the field, it wasn't that far. It's not like this was go 10, 20, 30 miles. It wasn't that far. He would have expected 10 men whose joints now worked, whose feet could now run, to rush across the field and fall at his feet. Only one did. And so undoubtedly, with a sigh, he says, where are the other nine? If you got everything that you ever wanted today, would you be as quick to pray to God tomorrow? The God of the Bible is not a genie. He's not a cosmic vending machine that exists to give us whatever we want. He's a relational being that desires a relationship with those that he has made. And he desires that we would always be at his feet. But is that what we want of him? My suggestion to you is don't let yourself ever be counted among the nine, but commit yourself to being the one who consistently returns through prayer, through scripturing, through devotionals, through church activities and the like, who consistently runs to the feet of he who has saved you. All right, let's look at the final verse now as we wrap up verse 19 verse 19 and he said to him arise go your way your faith has made you well you know throughout the Bible time and time and time again Christ would help people and heal them and then he would say this fascinating thing he would tell them upon healing them he would say your faith has made you well. Now why these words what's this statement mean why did he consistently yoke the people's faith as the predicate clause for their healing why did he do this when he had the woman who had the health concern for many years and she seeks him out in the crowd she just touches his robe seeking a power and the healing that would come from that in Matthew 9 why did Jesus turn talk to her smile and tell her this your faith has made you well
why, when a blind man cried out Luke 18 cried out to Jesus blind man knows he's going by cries out for his embrace. Cries after he would just stop and talk to heal him. Why did Jesus do so and then respond with these same words? Your faith has made you well. Why did this single leper who returned in today's reading be greeted with those same words? Your faith has made you well. Why?
What's the relationship here? Why did Jesus keep emphasizing faith? He could have said, my power has made you well. And he'd be right. Certainly that's true. I have made you well. Go. I have made you well. My power has made you well. Why, although all those statements would be true, does he draw out some acknowledgement that the faith in the individual played a part in their healing? Well, the short answer to that, we don't have time to explore this at great length, but the short answer to that is this.
It wasn't because their faith was that strong. It wasn't because they'd done all sorts of different things or because they prayed a little harder or cried out a little louder. It wasn't that. Rather, it was because of the object that their faith was vested in. You see, we can have faith in any manner of different things. If you have an issue, if you have a health concern, and you see a cow up on a hill, you could run up to that cow and ask for help, right?
What will happen? You'll have a moving experience. So you go up to the cow on the hill, and the cow, of course, does nothing. The cow can do nothing. The cow won't assist you in any way, shape, or form. What's the problem? The problem is this. If you put your faith in a cow, in a wreath, in a plant, in a chair, in a piano, in a God of stone and marble, you put your faith in anything else in the entire created realm other than the Creator, you will receive not a word back, because your faith is vested in the wrong thing.
You can have faith in all manner of different things. There are people this very day in the world around us who have faith in pagan false gods, of stone and marble. That faith is not yoked to the proper object of faith. Here, the people in this context, despite all the noise and confusion in their society and all the different sources they could have gone looking for help, all the different people who were telling them to just apply this or just do that or what have you, they went to the one source capable of effecting a miraculous cure.
And they trusted and believed that he could do it. More than that, they trusted and believed that he would do it. That's faith. Not simply trusting that God is powerful enough to help you, but trusting because you're a son or daughter of God that he has the desire to, that he has an inclination to. And it's those sorts of people that he looks out upon and says, your faith has made you well.
Too many people are looking for healing or hope, even this Christmas time, for the wrong source. Too many people are in desperate need of healing or hope. They're looking to the wrong physician. Still others don't even realize the scope of their need. If some people are going to the wrong source, then the other problem that some have is they don't even understand how broken they are. Some are lepers, spiritually speaking, and don't even know that they're lepers.
Well, to those in that state of confusion, I'll say this as we close. This morning, you're sicker than you know. This morning, you're more broken than you know. And in time, you'll discover that. And in that moment, when you need a physician for your soul, where will you turn? This morning, Christ's arms are open. He is seeking you out. His invitation is this, turn to me. Whether you're a new believer, whether you're a seasoned saint, take whatever hurts on your heart, receive the healing that you need.
Let's pray.
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
