Summary
Pastor Jon Noyes preaches out of Luke 17:11–19, showing that while ten lepers were healed, only one returned to worship Jesus—revealing that salvation comes not just through receiving mercy, but by responding with faith and gratitude. The sermon calls us to be like the one who came back: not content with the gift, but drawn to the Giver.
Transcript
We're gonna pick up in Luke 17. So if you open your Bible, it's just starting to Luke 17 and I'll read it and we'll see what happens. Who knows? Verse 11, "While he was on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met him and they raised their voices saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.' When he saw them, he said to them, 'Go and show yourself to the priests.' And as they would go when they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorified God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at his feet, giving thanks to him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered and said, "Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine, where are they? Was no one found who returns to give glory to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, 'Stand up and go. Your faith has made you well.' Our Father, we're grateful that we get to gather under your banner today. Call that a darkness and into your marvelous light. Thank you for the day that you've created perfect and right according to your will. I pray that you give us the strength and the endurance to walk in the steps that you've laid before us. And this morning would we be able to put the chaos of life behind us? Would you still our hearts and our minds allow us to focus in on the glory that's only seen in the face of your Son, King Jesus? As we experience you through the word "red," the word "preached" and the table, would we be forever transformed, more into the image of your Son? So that when we leave here, we look just a little bit more like Jesus. So that when we lay our heads down on our pillows tonight, we would just look a little bit more like your Son. We love you, help us love you more and each other better. In Christ's name, amen. Now by now we're deep in Luke's gospel. We've been traveling through it for the last, I don't know, like 17 years. So no, it's been a while. And the theme that we've been kind of chasing through the gospel of Luke is Jesus whose friendship and hospitality welcome the least of these to his table of companionship. And Luke, it's often known as the gospel of the outcast. It's in Luke where we see the poor lifted up. We see outcasts honored. We see women honored. Sin is forgiven. Outside is brought in to the story. And if you guys are guests with us, if you're just joining with us, or if you're like me and from week to week, I'm just honest with you guys, sometimes I cannot remember where we're at. I mean, I know the preaching's good. And then life happens. And I just want to draw us back to Luke's original purpose for writing this gospel. You know, he's not offering just us some random stories about Jesus. He's given us something that he's carefully investigated. And he's given us an orderly account. Why? So that we'll know with certainty the things that have been handed down. You see, in Luke, what we have in the other gospels too is we don't just have stories of Jesus. We have historical accounts of Jesus. These are biographies written about Jesus. And he's writing this with a purpose. He's telling the story of Jesus as the long awaited Messiah who brings good news to the poor, freedom to the captive and healing to the broken. And from the very stat, Jesus, he's been moving in a particular direction. He's been moving to Jerusalem. Not just geographically, but theologically. Jerusalem is where the cross stands. Jesus knows that he knew it before. He was Jesus when he resided in perfect unity from eternity past as a second person in eternity. He knew the road he had to walk and it led to Jerusalem. It's where the mission of Jesus will reach its climax. And that's exactly what Luke is reminding us here in chapter 17 while he was on the way to Jerusalem. This line, friends, it's not just filler, right? It's not just a obscure detail that Luke just decided to include. It's loaded with meaning. Jesus is on a mission every step, every story, every healing. He's taking us closer and closer to the cross. And along the way, Jesus keeps doing what he's always done, welcoming the outside, a lifting up the lowly and revealing the hat of God, not just through miracles, but through moments that reveal who truly knows him and who doesn't. You see, this story before us, this true account, this historical narrative, the healing of the 10 lepers, it might look like it's simply about something like gratitude or being thankful to God for what he's done and that's good, but I think that there's more here for that. I think there's so much more for us this morning in this account. The story of the 10 lepers isn't just about thanksgiving, it's about salvation. It's about those who truly see Jesus for who Jesus is. It's about the one outside of the Samaritan who returns not just to say thank you, but to fall at the feet of the King. So in verse 11, on the way to Jerusalem, he's passing along between Samaria and Galilee. Again, at first glance, this might seem like it's just a throwaway travel detail. Like, it's that travel. Have you guys ever been on a trip where you have the travel days and nobody cares about the travel days, right? You're going from point A to point B. Who cares what you're passing through on the way? But that's not what Luke is doing here. These details, they matter because Luke, he never includes geographical details for nothing. It's not random. This isn't just a map up at the date for us. It's a theological signal. Jesus is in the borderland. The space between Samaria and Galilee, between the familiar and the foreign, between the clean and the unclean. It's an in-between place, a kind of no man's lands, but it's precisely there on the margins that Jesus shows up. That's often where he meets people, not at the center of power or purity, but in the uncomfortable, the overlooked, the marginalized, the outcast places. This is where grace shows up time and time again. And Luke, he continues, "And as he entered a village, ten leperous men who stood at a distance met him, and they raised their voices." Some translations say, "And they cried out, saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.'" These men, they're physically disfigured, socially isolated, and spiritually cut off. You see, leprosy wasn't just a disease. Leprosy carried with it a sentence that I actually think is worse than just death. How much better would it have been if you just died? Because it wasn't just a disease, it carried with it a sentence of exclusion. According to Leviticus 13, right, the lepers, how did they live? They were pushed to these bad lands, the outcast people, the margins of society. And as if that wasn't bad enough, just being pushed out, whenever they saw somebody coming in the distance, what did they do? Unclean, unclean. Stay away. It's not good for you here. Turn back. They were alive, but they weren't living. They were cut off from family, from worship. They were cut off from hope. So they do the only thing they can from a distance. They cry out. And notice what they cried. This is amazing. Notice what they cried. Me, me? I see Jesus. Heal me. Heal me. These guys, they cry out, "Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me, Jesus." And this is significant. You see, mercy is what you ask for when you don't bring anything to the table. Mercy is what you ask for when you have no leverage in the situation. They're not negotiating. They're not demanding something of Jesus. They're pleading with Him. And they're directing that plea at the right person. Notice what they call Him. They call Him master. Master. Master. They call Him master. Surely with a Boston accent. How did they know Jesus was the master? How'd they know? They're in the outcast. They're way off in the no man's land. How'd they know? Well, maybe they heard of Him. Have you ever thought of this? Like put yourself in the shoes of these men. Maybe somebody was coming to deliver the food to them from afar. They said, "Hey, guys, there's something crazy happening. This rabbi, he's traveling around with a bunch of guys and he's healing people. Amazing things are happening." Maybe these lepers, these outcasts, they heard of Jesus healing the sick. They heard of Him helping the lame to walk. They heard of Him healing the blind, helping them see. And maybe they even heard of Jesus raising people from the dead. So maybe in this message that somebody delivered to them, maybe these lepers, they heard and maybe they have hoped that someday fortune would bring this rabbi to these liminal, these in-between lands. And then there he is. They see him in the distance. Can you see him? Can you see Jesus in the distance? And they cry out, "Have mercy on me." They need him so badly. And with their cries, they somehow, these lepers, they somehow have come to recognize not just who he is, but his authority. You see, these men, they may not have perfect theology, but they know enough to cry to Jesus. And friends, that's often where trust begins, not with knowledge, but with desperation, not with strength, but with surrender, not with a full understanding of who Jesus is, but with a desperate, humble cry, "Have mercy on me." That's how grace meets us. That's how grace meets us. And let me say this incredibly clearly. It's not the strength of our faith that saves us, but the object of our faith that saves us. It's not the strength of our faith, but the object. It's Jesus who saves us. In fact, we don't have faith until we're saved. And these men, they weren't spiritually mature, obviously, but they turned to the right person. And that made all the difference. You see, we live in a world that often believes that you live by the believe in yourself mentality. Just follow your heart, but the gospel, it calls us to something bigger, something better. Believe in the one who meets people in the margins. Believe in the one who hears cries from a distance. Believe in the one who responds with mercy. And then what does Jesus do next? It's shocking. Does he touch him? He doesn't touch him. Does he pronounce him healed? He doesn't pronounce him healed immediately. He simply gives him a command. He points him to the law. He points him to the Levitical law. He says, "Go and show yourself to the priests." You see, this is what would have been required of anybody who's unclean, but the leper especially. Having experienced the cleansing, the leper would have had the proven themselves clean by going to the priests. The priest was the one who could declare someone richly clean, and then it's only the priests that could restore them to community. But do you notice in the story something that doesn't make sense? Are they clean? Then why go to, why tell them to go get clean? Like, go, go get pronounced clean. He's not saying go to the priests to get clean. He's going, he's saying, go to the priests as if you're already clean. Me? I'm looking at Jesus, being like, "Homie, you got no idea what you're saying. I need something else to happen here, but I'm not them." And what do they do in response? You see, Jesus, he asks these men to do something incredible, to trust them and take that walk. They cry out, "Jesus, have a mask to have mercy on us," and his response isn't what they might expect. He doesn't touch them. He doesn't pronounce them healed. He simply says, "Go and show yourself to the priests," and that's it. And in that moment, there's still leprous. You see, in this story, it's reminiscent of another leper, this one from 2 Kings 5 with Naaman, if you remember. Right Naaman, he's leprous, and he wants to become healed, and he's confronted with a prophet of God, a lesser prophet than Jesus. Jesus is the truer, greater prophet, but Elijah is no joke in his own right, and Elijah shows him, to tell him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. And Naaman was offended by this. He's like, "Aren't these the rivers of Damascus? Aren't they better than all the waters in Israel?" If you remember this, he couldn't understand how something so simple, so ordinary, could bring about healing, but eventually he obeyed seven times. He went down seven times. He came up, and out of that water, on the seventh time, he was cleansed. Well, here's a similar story, a truer and greater prophet we see in Jesus, who does something truer and redder. Jesus doesn't even need the water, he just says, "Go." The same is true, they're healed, and we don't know what these 10 men might have been saying to each other as they walked away, but what they did, we know they went. And as they went, they were healed. You see, friends, there's something in this for us. You see, obedience precedes a miracle. Obedience precedes a miracle. When we trust God, then God moves. And the power of Jesus met them, not in the asking, but in the going. And here's the key phrase for us. And as they were going, they were healed. They were cleansed. In other words, the healing came in the going, and the power of Jesus met them on the path of obedience to obey before they see. They had to trust Him enough to act, while still visibly leprous. You see, that's what real trust, real faith looks like. It's not just belief, but it's trust in action. It's moving. And I know this just as much as anybody else. Perhaps some of you can relate to this. Trust in God isn't always easy. Trust in God is hard, even for the strongest of saints. Take, for example, John the baptizer, that same man who cried out, he was the forebearer of Jesus. He pointed people to Jesus, behold, the Lamb of God, pointing to Jesus, behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He's the one preparing the way, fulfilling the prophecy, but later, after John's in prisons and the storm of clouds of doubt, they start to gather all around him. And remember, he sends his messages to Jesus. He says, "Go ask Jesus. Are you the one who's to come or should we look for somebody else?" It's unreal. The man who once proclaimed Jesus with boldness, I mean, Homi was in the wilderness, dressed in like camel hair and eating locust and honey, weird, dedicated. And now, imprisoned, rubber meat in the road, death was imminent. He just wants to be sure. Hey, guys, can you go to Jesus? Just ask him. Are you him or should we look for somebody else? Because why do you ask that question? Because Jesus, he wasn't doing what people expected of Jesus. You see, John had envisioned fire and judgment, the winnowing sword in hand. Instead, all he's hearing are reports of dinner patties with the least of these, hanging out with the unclean and admonishing those who are least in the society, confronting the establishment. And Jesus, notice, sweet Jesus, he doesn't rebuke John for his doubt. He points him to evidence. He points him to the evidence of who he is. The guys come. Jesus, are you him? And Jesus says, "Yeah, go and report to John what you've seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those with leprosy are cleansed. The deaf here, the dead raised, and the Gospels preach to the poor." In other words, John, yeah, I'm him. You're on the right track, man. Tell them, "Yeah, I'm the Messiah. And I'm acting just as I've always been meant to act. Follow me." You see, even John needed assurance. Even you and me, no matter how strong we believe, sometimes struggle to walk by faith and trusting when what we see doesn't quite match what we expect. But Jesus is patient. You see, it's Jesus who meets us in the tension between what we hoped for and what he's actually doing. And he calls us to trust in him anyway. A trust built not on blind faith. It's not a blind faith, friends. It's a faith built on evidence of what's happened already, not to get ahead of myself, but Jesus has been raised. And the reason why that's significant historically, the reason why that's a significant piece of historical evidence is because if Jesus has actually been raised, that means everything he's said about himself is true. That means every promise he made is true. That means what he says about you is true. And these men, they walk away, still visibly leprous, trusting that somehow, in going, they'll be made whole. And they are. They're made whole. You see, faith is not just revealed in feeling, but in following. Obedience, like I said, often precedes the miracle. And this is the beginning of their story. It's not the end of their story. You see, all 10 are healed. It seems like miraculously, I mean, definitely miraculously, but it seems like instantaneously as they turn in that act of obedience, they turn and walk away, the 10 outcasts, the 10 cries for mercy, the 10 miraculously are clean. But now the story narrows from the 10 to the one. Now, one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorified God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at his feet, at Jesus' feet, giving thanks to him. And he was a Samaritan. You see, this moment is his breathtaking and its simplicity and power. While all 10 are healed, only one truly understands what's really happened. Only one turns back and gives thanks. Only one sees beyond the gift to the giver. Only one recognizes that something miraculous has happened. Only one doesn't keep going. Only one doesn't race to the priests to rush back to return to his family and friends and community. And notice the language Luke uses here. Glorifying God with a loud voice. Earlier he had cried out in desperation. Now he cries out in praise. And the loudness of his thanksgiving matches the intensity of his earlier plea. His gratitude isn't a quiet sentiment tucked away in a journal somewhere by his bedside. It's a full bodied, unashamed outpouring of joy. He falls at the feet of Jesus, giving thanks to him. This is the posture of worship. The same feet that carried Jesus along the borderlands now bear the weight of a man's gratitude in reverence. It's not just grateful for the healing. He's grateful for the healer. And then Luke adds a startling detail, the one that's giving this praise. Who is he? Surely he's a Levitical priest. Surely he's one of the established leaders. Surely he's a Jew. He's a Samaritan. He's a Samaritan. See, not only was this man a leper, he's a foreigner. A religious outsider, a Samaritan. And the Jews and the Samaritans didn't associate with each other. Centuries, centuries, centuries of hostility and theological division kept them a pat. And yet this outsider is the only one who returns back to give thanks to Jesus. Is this not shocking? This is a shocking, a stunning reversal. The religiously unclean, the ethnically suspect, the socially distanced man turns out to be the one who truly sees Jesus for who Jesus really is. You see, he doesn't just receive the gift, he recognizes the giver and responds in worship. And this is the kind of gratitude that springs not just from healing, but from humility. He knows he didn't deserve it. He knows he didn't earn it. And that's what makes his Thanksgiving so incredibly rich. His, his hat's been changed, not just his skin. The Samaritan, the doubly marginalized by disease and ethnicity receives more than healing. He encounters salvation. He's going to be there in glory. We're going to be able to talk to this leper Samaritan. Unbelievable. And this man, he shows us what a true response to Jesus looks like, a life turned around, a voice raised in praise, a posture of worship, and a hat overflowing with thanks. I'm so thankful for what Jesus has done. Have you guys ever just paused? Can we just pause and just be thankful for what Jesus has done? I'm so thankful. Such a wretch. I'm such a wretch. And he loves us. He loves us no matter what. Thank you, Jesus. So there's a vacuous silence from the other nine. And then Jesus, he asks these three piercing questions. We're not 10 cleaned, but the nine, where are they? Was no one found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? I mean, can you hear the sorrow in his voice? And Jesus, he's not sorrowful because he wants affirmation. He doesn't lack affirmation. He's not after affirmation. He doesn't need praise. He doesn't need the worship. He doesn't need anything. He already feels validated because he's validated in and of being himself. He's grieved. All 10 experienced the mercy of God in their bodies. All 10 were cleansed. All 10 were restored. All 10 given new life, but only one responded with gratitude. Only one returned to glorify God. The other nine, they were healed, but ungrateful. We don't know why they didn't come back. I don't want to impose on them something that isn't there and then put a wrong hat in their bodies, a wrong motivation. Maybe they were just excited to go see their wife, that they haven't seen for six years or whatever. Maybe they wanted to go to their families. Maybe they got caught up in the rituals of temple purification and maybe just feeling good for the first time in decades. Maybe they just assumed Jesus knew how thankful they were. But even so, regardless of what kept them away, their silence is deafening and Jesus noticed. You see friends, ingratitude is not the same as bad man is. It's a spiritual issue. It reveals a heart that loves the gift more than the giver, a heart that sees Jesus as a useful means to an end rather than an end himself. And perhaps the most important part of this scene that we're experiencing and looking at today is who does return, the foreigner. It's not the expected outsider, not the one with the right heritage or the perfect theology. It's the one who wouldn't have been even welcomed into a Jewish synagogue. This is who's falling at Jesus' feet. This is the one of Luke's persistent themes. This is what he carries through with his entire gospel. The outside of sees what the inside of misses. Those who are supposed to know God often miss him and he's standing right in front of them and they miss him. And those who are furthest off, like a Samaritan leper, sometimes they're the ones who respond with the deepest faith and the loudest praise. You see, Jesus doesn't deny the healing of the other nine, but he laments their ingratitude. And the implication is clear. You can be touched by God's power and still be far from his hat. That was a tough one. You'd be touched by God's power and still be far from his heart. You see, you can be physically healed and spiritually indifferent. The nine got what they wanted from Jesus, but only one got Jesus himself. In Jesus, he turns to the man still at his feet, the Samaritan who's been healed and he says something incredibly profound, "Stand up and go. Your faith has made you well." That last phrase is key. In the Greek, it literally means, "Your faith has saved you." This is more than just physical healing. This is spiritual wholeness. This is salvation. And the other nine, their cleanse, their skin was healed, but this one was saved. His whole soul was made right. Why? Because he didn't just receive a gift from Jesus. He returned to the giver. Gratitude was the evidence of saving faith. Worship revealed the changed hat. And he came back not just to say thank you, but to glorify God, to bow before Jesus and to give him the praise that only Jesus deserves. And this is the kind of faith that saves, the faith that sees Jesus not just as a miracle worker, not just as a spiritual vending machine, but as Lord and Savior. You see, Jesus, he didn't come to make people feel better. He came to make them new. Jesus came to save them from their sins, not just from their suffering, to reconcile them to God, not just to restore them to society. And that's what he does here, the once isolated, unclean man, becomes a picture of true discipleship falling at Jesus' feet, praising God and receiving a salvation. So there we have it friends. Ten men healed, one man saved. All were cleansed, but only one came back to Jesus and what set him apart? It wasn't his nationality. It wasn't his background. It wasn't his knowledge. What set him apart was his response. Oh, he recognized the grace only found in the eyes of Jesus. And he returned. And he came back to Jesus, not just with words, but with worship, not just with manners, but with his whole self. He fell at the feet of the only one who could do more than just restore his body, but who could rescue his soul. And that's the question for you and I this morning. Have we come back to the Giver? It's easy to enjoy the gifts of God and miss God himself. It's easy to ask for mercy and then forget about the one who gave it. It's easy even here in church to go through the motions and never bow our hearts to Jesus' feet. But that one leper, the outsider, the Samaritan, he shows us how to do it. He shows us the way. He turns back. He lifts his voice and prays. He falls down in worship. He receives more than healing. He receives salvation. And now, friends, we have the same opportunity here at this table in this moment of communion. This here before us is, in a couple of minutes, is our time to return. This here before us at this table is our time to come back to the Giver, to fall at his feet in gratitude and in worship. Because here at this table before us, we remember the mercy that we didn't deserve. We remember the body given and the blood poured out. Here at this table, we remember the cross, the place where grace flowed freely for us, the unclean, the outsiders, the spiritually dead. So today, friends, today, church, saints of God, brothers and sisters, loved ones, come today to this table like the leper humbly, gratefully, worshipfully. You see, the table, it's not for the worthy, it's for the worshipper. It's not for the healed, it's for the helpless, it's not for the religious, it's for the redeemed. So your faith is in Jesus. If you've turned back to the Giver, then come. Take the bread. Pass the peace. Drink the cup. And give thanks together. Because just like the Samaritan man, you've not merely been made well, you've been saved. Let's pray. Father, I thank you. You're an amazing God. In Christ's name, amen.