Wednesday, March 16, 2022 PM

Let's go ahead and begin with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for gathering us together tonight. We do thank you for the abundance of the food and we thank you for Wilbur's birthday. And we pray that she would bless us as we read your word now, and that she would instruct us and guide us as we follow Christ, follow the lamb wherever he goes.

And we pray these things in his name, amen. So Luke chapter 17, beginning in 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 him 10 men who were lepers, who stood afar off.

And he lifted up their voices and said, "'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.'. 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.

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, "'Were there not 10 cleansed, but where are the nine?

"'Were there not any found who returned to give glory "'to God except this foreigner?'. And he said to him, "'Arise, go your way. "'Your faith has made you well.'". The title of the lesson tonight is Doubly Clean.

Doubly Clean. Our attention is directed to these lepers and what was it like? What was it like to be a leper? An outcast. It's essentially what it comes down to. There were all sorts of instructions that were given in the Mosaic case law, the holiness code for lepers.

And Leviticus 13 is one of those fun chapters all about skin diseases. About scabs and sores and pus. Yes, yes. Makes you a little worried. You start looking for stuff, you know? Would I be an outcast?

But chapter 13, verse three, kind of gives a basic general interaction. And then we're gonna read verses 45 and 46 of Leviticus 13. Verse three says, "'The priest shall examine the sore on the skin of the body.

"'And if the hair on the sore has turned white "'and the sore appears to be deeper "'than the skin of his body, it is a leprous sore. "'Then the priest shall examine him "'and pronounce him unclean.'".

And of course, who knows what that is? But they just looked at the external evidence and said, okay, you're unclean. Until you get better, you can't be in the camp. So verses 45 and 46 of Leviticus 13.

Verses 45 through 46. "'Now the leper, on whom the sore is, "'his clothes shall be torn and his head bare, "'and he shall cover his mustache and cry, "'Unclean, unclean, he shall be unclean. "'All the days he has a sore, he shall be unclean.

"'He is unclean and shall dwell alone. "'His dwelling shall be outside the camp.'". So to be a leper means that you were cast out of the camp. You were not welcome in the camp. You could not be a part of the regular community of folks.

You could not enjoy time with friends. You could not be with your family. You could not participate in the feasts. You could not go through the process of offering up sacrifices. You were completely outside of the community, outside the camp.

And that's what it was like to be a leper. In addition to be a leper, meant that there was some concern of the judgment of God upon you. For instance, in Deuteronomy chapter 24, in verse eight, it says, "'Take heed in an outbreak of leprosy "'that you carefully observe and do according "'to all that the priests, the Levites, shall teach you, "'just as I commanded them, so you shall be careful to do.'".

And then verse nine, "'Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam "'on the way when you came out of Egypt. "'And you remember that Miriam became leprous, "'and that was an act of God's judgment upon her "'that was turned back by the grace of God.'".

Now, this is the background then when Jesus is in the midst of Samaria and Galilee, and he comes to a village, and then he sees 10 men who were lepers. So to be a leper was to be an outcast, to be a leper.

There was the idea that the judgment of God was upon you. It was a very sad and lonely and difficult life. And so they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. And indeed he does.

We read later that one of the lepers was a Samaritan, and the Samaritan was the one who came back and gave thanks to God and worshiped Jesus. So after we asked the question, what was it like to be a leper?

We then asked the question, what was it like to be a Samaritan? Well, was that better or worse? The Jews and the Samaritans, of course, did not get along. And the background of Samaria can be found in 2 Kings chapter 17.

After the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, the Northern 10 tribes, Assyria swept through their walled cities and destroyed that nation. And took them away captive and scattered them abroad. But they didn't want the land to be uninhabited.

It would be good to have the villages maintained and people living there. Too many important trade routes ran through there, the way of the sea and the way of the king. And of course there was the trade route that ran along the spine of the mountains as well.

So you have three important trade routes running through the area. And if you don't have people living there, then you have problems like, well, what they found. Wild animals just getting out of hand.

We don't really have that problem around here. But in their situation, if they did not have a good healthy population in an area, then the predators would take over and it'd be very difficult to travel.

Trade would dry up. Well, Assyria was not interested in that. And so in verse 24 of 2 Kings 17, we read that the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthath, Ava, Hamath and from Sepharim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities. And what followed was that the imported folks had no idea that God had made a covenant with Israel and had designated this land as his to be used by his people.

And there were certain ways you were to live and certain rules you were to follow. And if you didn't, bad things would happen. And once they figured this out, interestingly enough, these imported folks were taught at least the patterns of how to fear God.

And as we read through the entire passage, we discover that they went about trying to fear the Lord and learn his ways, considering this to be his land. But then they also kept worshiping their own gods and goddesses and kept on doing their own thing.

So in other words, they were pretty much like Israel. But the point is the folks that lived there intermarried and did their own thing. And later on, some of the folks coming back from the various exiles and drifting back into this area, intermarried with the folks there and ended up having what in the eyes of the Jews, they would call them half breeds or Samaritans.

You may remember Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. And she brought up one of their big doctrinal debates, whether you're supposed to worship in this mountain or that mountain, because the Samaritans still had a version of Judaism, but it was intermixed with all kinds of other beliefs.

So they were half breeds ethnically, and then they were half breeds doctrinally, and they just generally were not well-liked. Example, Jesus and his disciples often traveled through Samaria to make good time, not as the pious Jews who had to walk around Samaria, lest the air of Samaria contaminate their skin.

And so as they were going through, every once in a while, Jesus would have these interactions with Samaritans, but one village refused to accept them as they traveled through, because the whole village found out that Jesus and his disciples were headed to Jerusalem.

Well, that meant they were one of them stuck up Jews, you know, from Jerusalem, and they're trying to get back home, and we don't want any part of them. This did not go over well with two of Jesus' disciples named James and John.

And their solution that they lobbied Jesus for, was that he would call fire down from heaven like Elijah and totally incinerate this unwelcoming village. And then Jesus gave them a nickname, Boarna Jays, or Sons of Thunder.

Isn't it interesting that one of those Sons of Thunder, the Apostle John, has so much to say about love? You ever thought about that? As you read through the Gospel of John and the letters of John, he says a lot about love.

I'm glad the Lord worked on his heart. So imagine to be a leper, an outcast, considered to be under the judgment of God, to be a Samaritan. That's even worse, especially when you combine them together, a leprous Samaritan.

Well, they cry out to Jesus, have mercy on us, Master, they say. So when he saw them, he gave them straight Leviticus, straight Deuteronomy. Go to the priests, show them where you're at. Show them where you have your sores.

See what they have to say. He says, go to the priests. But this was not a hiding behind the letter of the law, for as they went, they were cleansed. As they went, the mercy of Christ indeed was upon them and they were healed as they walked towards the priests.

And one of them realized on the way, I've been healed. Obviously, probably they all realized that. And he came back and fell down on his face at the feet of Christ. Notice, with a loud voice, he glorified God and gave thanks to Jesus Christ.

This is interesting. It's a loud voice, by the way, is where we get our word made. Megaphone from. Phones megales. In other words, phone, big, voice, loud, megaphone. So this man came back and with a big megaphone kind of voice gave thanks to God, gave glory to God.

Now, this is interesting when we think about what happened. Jesus is in the midst of a growing conflict with the ruling Jews, the religious leading Jews, growing conflict as they reject him more and more directly.

As this happens, Jesus has begun to show that there's a greater influx of the Gentiles and the rejected and the outcast into his kingdom. And we're gonna read a lot about that in verses 20 of chapter 17 through the balance of chapter 18.

Jesus is dealing here with lepers, talking about outcasts. Why is he even having any dealings with outcasts at all? And in additional, one of them is a Samaritan. And when this man came back to give thanks, Jesus says to him, arise, go your way.

Your faith has made you well. And of course, we've just read that Jesus speaking to his disciples and saying, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you may say to this mulberry tree, be planted in the sea and it shall be done.

We've talked about that as well. So this theme here about the lepers, it's a story about faith, but it's also a story about how big Christ's kingdom is going to be. When Jesus sends the cleansed and healed lepers to the priests, this would be a sign to them of the power of Christ's kingdom.

They couldn't do anything for these lepers. All they could do is just take a look at how bad off they were and say, nope, still unclean. You're still outcasts. There's nothing we can do for you. In fact, if you spread your disease to other people, they're gonna be outcast as well.

That's all they could do. That was the extent of their abilities. But Christ, Christ cleansed these lepers. He had mercy upon them. He healed them and he sent them. Imagine 10 of them. Well, only nine made it there, but nine of them, all at once showing up at some poor Levite's door and saying, you know, and they're showing up and of course their heads are uncovered and they're wearing their dirty rags and you know, they're lepers, right?

But not anymore. And they all show up. We've been healed, we've been healed, we've been healed. The power of Christ's kingdom in contrast to what the Levite could do, what the priest could do. Also, we see this cleansed and healed well Samaritan is assigned to Christ's disciples.

They just said increase our faith, didn't they? Does Jesus answer their prayer? He answers their prayer. He says, okay, here you go. Look here, a leprous Samaritan made well. And he comes back and he's assigned to the disciples of the parameters of Christ's kingdom.

Jesus just told them, you can, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can plant a mulberry bush in the sea and it'll grow there, right? Same crazy notion. You could preach the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the son of the living God.

And you can preach that even to Gentiles and they will believe and come into the kingdom. This leprous Samaritan is a sign of the parameters of Christ's kingdom. All the lepers are a sign of the power of Christ's kingdom.

But notice this, all the lepers were cleansed. They were all freed from defilement. They were all purified. They were all healed. They were all made whole. But when the foreigner comes to Jesus and worships God with his megaphone, Jesus says to him, arise, go your way, your faith has made you well.

Greek word is sozo or saved. Your faith has saved you. Your faith has saved you. The Samaritan, after all, couldn't have gone to the priest anyway. You know, he's with the group and you know,.

Walk, I'm a Samaritan.

I'm healed of leprosy and I still won't be welcome. I'm healed of leprosy and I still won't be welcome. I'm still an outcast. Even with my leprosy gone, I'm still an outcast. So he turns around and goes to the only priest he can go to.

He goes to Christ. He goes to Christ. He shows himself to Christ and Christ says, your faith has saved you. Notice he's still a Samaritan, but he's saved from the stigma of being one. He's a worshiper of God, that's what matters.

So in this story, we see that Jesus is the master who has power to heal and cleanse and save. All by his word. Jesus accepts this worship from this man. He receives the glory of being offered to God because he is of course, not only fully a man, but he is fully God.

And we see that Jesus is priest to sinners in need of salvation. Jesus's mercy makes the sinner whole. Well, how are we encouraged in this passage? Well, we are to look to Christ as the master when we crave mercy.

How often are we in need of mercy? How often are we in need of mercy? Who are we gonna look to? How about we look to Jesus, the one who heals even leprous Samaritans and welcomes them to himself. God's, notice also that what we need is God's saving grace.

I'm glad that God's healing mercy is wider than his saving grace, but what we need is saving grace. He healed 10 lepers, but only one out of the nine got saved. Look at God's providential mercy, so wide, so broad, helping so many, and yet only this one trusted in Christ.

Jesus says to the man, arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well. Well, we can go our way in faith too. I think this is interesting. We have here the opportunity to make all kinds of distinctions in the groups.

We hear about Jerusalem, all right? That's where the really holy people lived. Distinctions were actually even made in the early church. They couldn't get past it. The fact that some of those who were saved were the Hellenists, and you say, well, those are Gentiles.

No, no, no, these were Jews. These were Jews, the Hellenist widows that weren't getting their share. These were Jews, but they had lived abroad instead of in Jerusalem, and so they weren't as holy. All right?

You have Jerusalem, and then you have Samaria and Galilee. People who lived in Jerusalem looked down on people who lived in Galilee. People who lived in Galilee looked down on people who lived in Samaria.

In addition to all that, you've got these lepers. Everybody got to look down on lepers, but even in that group, there was one that all the other nine could look down on. Well, I may be a leper, but at least I'm not a Samaritan leper.

And do you see what happens? At the end of the story, there's only two groups. Every other group gets cross-sectioned into two groups, and there's only ever really two groups. There are those who are made whole in Christ and those who are without him.

That's only two groups in the world. That's just the two groups in the world, and every other group is in some fashion a fiction. So you could be a Samaritan leper, but the point is, the all-important eclipsing point is, are you with Christ, are you saved in Christ, or are you not?

Well, I think we could take an example from this Samaritan with the megaphone. And with a loud voice, glorify God for his mercy and give him thanks for his mercy in our lives. All right, well, we're going to leave that lesson on doubly clean.