Real Meaning of the Passage (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Thanksgiving, Authorial Intent, and the Danger of Moralizing Luke 17

Well, it is Thanksgiving weekend, of course, and if you had to pick a passage from the Bible that you regularly hear on Thanksgiving from the pulpit, what passage would that be? What are the passages in the Bible that talk about thankfulness?

Certainly you could go to Ephesians chapter 5 to discuss it. Maybe 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, it's God's will for you to give thanks. But what's a passage that people regularly go to to preach you should be thankful?

Well, let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter 17 and find out if in fact this passage is talking about thankfulness for its key emphasis. This is going to be a test. Here's the test. Are you sure this passage is really about thankfulness?

Is that the primary thing that Luke the writer wants you to understand? When we go to the Bible, of course, here's what we're after. What's the main point? What's the author's point? Anything you read, you should say to yourself, what is the author trying to convey to me?

And the same thing happens in this narrative called the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke. So I'm going to read you these verses, 11 through 19, and then ask yourself as I'm reading them, and then at the end, what's the main point?

What's authorial intent? We finished Jonah last Sunday. I hated to leave Jonah. So the next few weeks, we'll just be in a variety of different passages doing some exposition. And since it's Thanksgiving weekend, I thought we'd go to Luke 17 verses 11 through 19.

What does Luke want you to understand? Verse 11, on the way to Jerusalem, he, Jesus, was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

When he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks.

Now, he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, were not 10 cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well. If you had to teach that passage, how would you teach it? If you've taught that passage, how did you teach it? And I'll let you know ahead of time, if you taught this passage with the emphasis, with the primary intent of the author, so that you would show thankfulness, that the people who listen to you would be thankful people, then you've missed the point.

Somebody just rolled their eyes. I won't tell you who. Let's think about hermeneutics, the science and art of biblical interpretation. Let's think about how we interpret the Bible, how we interpret epistles, narratives, the book of Revelation.

When you're trying to interpret, here's the goal. What is the author trying to say? We're trying to dig and find and ascertain the meaning of Scripture. What is the meaning here? And as you're pulling out the meaning, you're using your hermeneutical principles to actually do exegesis, exegesis where we get the word exit, to pull, to go out, to pull out.

What is the author trying to tell us? And as you do that, you can run into some problems. Let me just give you two out of the 20 problems when it comes to interpretation, hermeneutic, hermeneutical problems.

One is spiritualization. Matthew 28, the angel rolled the stone of way. You've probably got stones in your life that need some rolling away, and maybe it's doubt, maybe it's the stone of anxiety, maybe it's the stone of fear, and we're going to roll some of those away.

That would be called spiritualization. You've probably heard sermons like that. I've probably preached sermons like that. Jericho, seven times they march around, and the walls come tumbling down, and there's some walls around your life that need to be destroyed, and God's going to destroy these walls.

They're going to come tumbling down. He's going to knock them down. Jesus calms the sea's storm. You probably live a life that's got some stormy elements to it, and Jesus is going to calm the storms of your life.

That's a hermeneutical problem called spiritualization. But there's another problem that we tend to run into more often in our circles, and that's the problem of moralization, to make morals out of biblical stories.

Let me give you a couple examples before we look at our text today. Basically with moralization is you have a Bible text, and then you get some do's and don'ts. By the way, David, he picked up some stones, and he stood in front of Goliath, and he was so courageous, and he killed Goliath, and you need to be courageous too.

Five easy steps to be courageous. You know Boaz? He was such a nice man. He was such a kind man. Do you know it's nice to be nice, it's good to be good, and you ought to be like Boaz? And let me tell you a few reasons that you should be like Boaz, because I want you to be kind.

That's called moralization. I think I need to confront someone, so let's go to the passage where Nathan confronts David, and if you'd like to confront somebody, then you ought to craft your confrontation in a parabolic kind of way.

You are the man. This is how you should confront, four ways to confront someone. That's called moralization. Jesus cleanses ten lepers, one comes back to say thank you, and you ought to be thankful people, and that is called moralization.

What is the point of the passage? And the point of the passage is not primarily, you should be thankful. What is the point of the passage? I'm glad you asked. Let's take a look at Luke chapter 17, verses 11 through 19, and ask and answer the question so you can see with your very own eyes, and understand with your ears, that we're after authorial intent.

We're after what does the author want to convey to us? And if we're not careful, we could do moralization with nursery rhymes, with Esau's fables. We could go to Little Bo Peep. Remember, MacArthur would always do Little Bo Peep preaching.

Little Bo Peep lost her sheep. There are a lot of lost people in this world, right? Lots of lost people. Can't tell where to find them, but they'll come home, oh, they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

See, we don't want to be sloppy with the Bible. Cults are deceptive with the Bible, and sometimes we're just sloppy. But if we're not careful, the effect of the cult and the effect of sloppy hermeneutics is the exact same thing.

I was in New York City the past two or three days, and people on the streets sell DVDs of like brand new movies. They're not even released yet, practically, and they've got the DVDs out there. They're peddling fake things.

They're deceptive because, number one, they're illegal. Number two, they're not very good quality. And 2 Corinthians 2 verse 17 says, We are not like many, Paul said, peddling the Word of God. Deceitfully claiming one thing and delivering another.

That's what the cults do. But friends, moralization, in effect, ends up being the exact same thing. Ignoring sin, ignoring sovereign grace. So what does the text mean? Let's find out today, and I think you'll be thankful to know the text's real meaning.

Happy Thanksgiving. I mean, I did some study. Some people call this passage the importance of gratitude. By the way, I'm all for gratitude. Amen for gratitude. Some people say that this should make us truly thankful people.

I'm after that. But I don't want to miss the point of the passage. So let's think big picture for a second. Every time you see a passage in the Bible, in this particular case, Luke 17, 11 -19, you should ask yourself, what book is it in?

And it's in the book of Luke. What's Luke's real title? Well, the Gospel of Luke. Well, it's not really the Gospel of Luke. It's the Gospel, our good news, of Jesus Christ, according to St. Luke. And so Luke is going to be writing to us about Jesus.

Guess what Luke is about? It's about Jesus. Matter of fact, go with me, if you would, to Luke 1. Keep your finger on Luke 17. And the way you do biblical interpretation is the first thing you want to do is say, what's the context?

And so there's a close context. What does Luke 17 say just before it and just after it? And then there's a wider context, a bigger context, the context of the book. Why is Luke written? And Luke tells us why it's written in Chapter 1.

Sometimes there's a purpose found later, like in the Gospel of Jesus, according to John, that you might know, that you might believe in him. That's in Chapter 20. But here it's kind of nice. Luke 1 gives us, in his prologue, in his preface, why he wrote this historical account.

Remember, he's a doctor, and so everything's very much in order, very specific. He writes orderly, lucidly. And it says in Chapter 1 of Luke, verse 1, Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, and we're going to soon find out that these are the things that are accomplished by Jesus among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.

Verse 3. It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

I am going to write you, Theophilus, a letter, so that you might see the order detail of who Jesus is, what he's done, and in fact, that he's going to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the human, more than human, but still human Messiah.

And I'm going to write in an orderly way, so that you might have certainty, that you might know for sure, this is the God-man. I want it to be reliable for you. Now think about it. Matthew, the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

He's a King. Jesus is the King. The King of the Jews. Mark, no genealogy, Jesus is a servant. John, Jesus is God. Luke, Jesus, self-designation of Jesus, the most popular one that he called himself was the Son of Man.

Here is the Son of Man who, remember, at dinner with Zacchaeus, he said, I came to seek and to save those who were, what, lost. So let's go back to chapter 17 and say to ourselves, 17 fits into Luke. Luke's big purpose is a systematic, orderly way to show you that Jesus is the Messiah.

So Luke 17 must contribute to that larger picture. To persuade you that Jesus is the Christ. To persuade you that you should believe that the Lord Jesus is who he said he is. And if you're sitting here today and you're a Christian, you've been persuaded.

If you're not, I think this text will very much cause you reflection and I hope it persuades you by the Spirit's awakening power to say, nobody is like that. Nobody acts this way. Nobody talks this way.

Nobody does these things except God in the flesh. Now the far context is Luke chapter 1. The close context, take a look at chapter 17, verse 7. It's always good to read a passage, part of the passage before and after ours.

And so just let me read a few verses because you'll see a key word to tie in to the rest. Luke 17, verse 7. And then we'll get into the passage. Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and recline at table?

Will he not rather say to him, prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink and afterward you will eat and drink? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded?

So you also, when you have done all that were commanded, you were commanded to say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. And in Luke 17, we see the writer Luke tell us through the words of Jesus that no one's worthy.

God owes the sinner nothing. And then we jump into the passage. Look at verse 11. And it just flows. You just feel like you're sucked into the vortex of the passage. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing between Samaria and Galilee.

In chapter 9, verse 51, Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem. We see in the Gospel of Luke that there's a lot about his infancy. Why? Because this book is trying to show us that Jesus is human. It shows a lot with the genealogy because Jesus is human.

He goes to Galilee to minister and then in 951, he sets his face towards Jerusalem because he has a deadline with the cross. It's determined, it's set up, the time is exactly the way it's supposed to be and he will have to go to the cross and he's moving to Jerusalem.

But here, in this DMZ zone between Samaria and Galilee, he encounters some people. And typically, when you're in this area, there could be some trouble. Is there any trouble in the Gospel of Luke with Samaritans?

He sent messengers ahead of him, Luke 9, who went with him and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations. But the Samaritans did not receive Jesus. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume the Samaritans?

And then Jesus rebuked the disciples. What will happen here? Will there be a confrontation? Verse 12, as he entered a village, what village? It doesn't matter which village name it is. It matters who was in the village.

He was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Now, we're going to learn soon enough that Jewish lepers and Samaritan lepers get together.

They have a common bond. They have a common affliction. And so they're all together. And they're far off because, remember, what does the Leviticus say? When you're a leper and you see other people, you're supposed to cry out what to them, Leviticus 13?

Unclean, unclean. What is leprosy? Well, there's a variety of different kinds of skin diseases that would be under the rubric of leprosy. But leprosy, just in Greek, means scaly. Something scaly. Where did it come from?

Some people think that some kind of bacillus from an Egyptian mummy gave people leprosy. We don't really know. But it was a bad thing to get. One author describes leprosy this way. The skin, especially around the eyes and ears, begins to bunch.

Deep furrows between the swelling so that the face of the afflicted individual begins to resemble that of a lion. Fingers drop off or are absorbed. Toes are affected similarly. Eyebrows and eyelashes drop out.

And then you can tell with all your senses when you meet a leper. One can see the person is a leper. By touch of the finger, one could feel it. By even smell, you could know they were a leper because they emit a very unpleasant odor.

And the voice of the leper has a grating, rasping sound because their throat is affected. Their voice box is affected. Leprosy starts off simple enough. Some skin ulcers. Some skin diseases. Kind of leprous snow like white.

And then it gets inside your system. Mental decay. Coma. Ultimately, death. 10 years, 20 years, 30 years later, you're eaten away from the inside out. Numbers 12, when Miriam got leprosy, it said, Oh, do not let her be like one dead whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother's womb.

This painless hell that Dr. Brand describes is this eating away from the inside out. And here's the thing. You're not just ostracized socially from this, but you're ostracized in every other way, including religiously.

Standing at a distance, and doesn't that reflect itself in our text? 10 lepers, verse 12, who stood at a distance. Well, they're not supposed to get too close. I mean, even when you study Leviticus 13, burning their clothes, shaving their heads, covering their lip, quarantining them, basically.

Verse 13, what does it say, though? They lifted up their voices. They probably lifted up their voices together because it's hard to shout if you're a leper with advanced leprosy because your throat, your voice box, your vocal cords, it's all messed up.

And so maybe with all one accord, they're trying to get enough decibel level to make sure Jesus, who's far away, sees them. I guess they could wave banners, they could put up a smoke signal, or they could just all yell together, Jesus, and what do they call Him?

Master, have mercy on us. How did they know it was Jesus? Well, we have no idea. But these lepers seem to know. These Jewish lepers, this Samaritan leper, they seem to know who Jesus is. And there's a nice foil here in the book of Luke because there's lots of people who don't recognize who Jesus is, and they should.

But these people do recognize it. Gurgling throats. Maybe their palates have been destroyed. And they're saying, Jesus, Master. That word Master there, super rare word used in Luke 5 where Simon Peter said, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing.

It means this, you're superior, we're subordinate, and you have enough power and credibility that you could do something for us. We need help. Really, they're saying, heal us, have mercy on us. This is urgent request.

We think You can help us, Jesus. We think You can do something for us. I'm sure they've been to other doctors. And by the way, how do you treat diseases back in those days? It wasn't too pleasant. They would take from animals blood, urine, milk, hair, ground up shell and bone.

They would use minerals, salt and vitamin. They would have incantations, magic rites, prayers. They would use frankincense, myrrh, perfumes, herbs, wine. Jesus, help us. Verse 14. This is almost weird.

If you read too fast, you don't get it. Verse 14. When He saw them, He said to them, Be cleansed. Be healed. Come over here so I touch you and heal you like I did to that leper in Luke chapter 5. Remember Luke 5?

He touched the leper. If you're willing, cleanse me. He said, I am willing. You're clean. But that's not what the text says here. This is a weird one. When He saw them, He said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests.

It's funny. A little boy about three years old, the hallway in between services, came up to me and said, Pastor Mike, I'm like, yes? He said, You said a bad word when you were preaching. I'm like, wow.

Pray for me. I thought, well, what is it? He didn't want to tell me. I said, it's okay to tell me the word. If I said it when I was preaching, it must be holy. You can say it. I couldn't figure out what it was.

I thought maybe I said stupid, because that's a bad word for most kids. And so this is the only thing I could think of that He thinks when I said this is weird, that somehow I was talking about the Scriptures, that the Scriptures were weird.

This is the only thing I could think of. Pastor Mike. What I mean is this is unexpected. This is strange. So you're far off. You're with nine other lepers. Could you please heal us? You are a master. You're Jesus, the Messiah.

They get it. They've heard. They understand. They may even have seen. Jesus can heal people. Heal us, please. Jesus said, go show yourselves to the priests. What? Go show yourself to the priests? Why don't you just command it and I'm clean?

Why don't you just pronounce me clean? So what you're telling me is you will, and by the time we get to the priest to do what Leviticus says regarding kind of the health inspector role of the priest, by the time we get to the health inspectors, we'll be cleansed.

Yeah, that's exactly what the text is implying. And as they went, look at verse 14. They were cleansed. Wait a second. You mean you can heal people at a distance? It's one thing to heal people. It's another thing to heal lepers.

It's another thing to heal lepers at a distance. Who can heal lepers at a distance? Now, Luke has already told us in Luke 7 that Jesus healed the centurion servant at a distance. I'm Jesus. I'm under the law.

And the law says when you're healed of leprosy in Leviticus 14, go show yourself to the priest, go show yourself to the priest, and by the time you get there, you'll be healed. Ray Pritchard said, what if it went like this?

Why bother? Once a leper, we're always lepers. Off they go, shuffling band of sufferers, marching off to see the priest. Step one, still lepers. Take two steps, nothing happens. Third step, the leprosy clings to their limbs.

But on that fourth step, something wonderful, something unbelievable, something they never dreamed possible happened. With that fourth step, they were all healed. Instantly, miraculously, all at the same time.

Every single one of them. I imagine they looked different, they smelled different, walked better, cured. What's the point? What's the point of all this? If we only stop there, I think we would understand.

Luke is trying to show you that Jesus is the Messiah. That Jesus is the Messiah who can heal, He can raise from the dead, He can forgive sin. This is the Messiah. Do you believe that Jesus is the Messiah?

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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