We have a surprising story from Jesus ministry to consider this morning. It’s a story of Jesus miraculous healing, which is not surprising at all. We’ve seen plenty of that throughout the Gospel of Luke. What’s surprising about this story is that it wasn’t given to us primarily to teach about Jesus power. It does display Jesus power. And so we’ll talk about that. But this story is primarily about the reason Jesus does anything miraculous or kind or generous at all. When I was a missions pastor in Pennsylvania for, I guess about 15 years ago now, I worked a lot with the poor in our downtown community. We had a program called Circles, which partnered people from our church with those who were taking steps to work their way out of poverty. It was a fantastic program. I made a lot of friends. We saw whole families become financially independent and sustainable over time. And I got to share the gospel with a lot of people. At the same time that I was working in this, this ministry, I was also studying at Westminster Theological Seminary, writing a dissertation on the topic of how culturally middle class churches can lovingly embrace and include the generationally poor. And what I ran into over and over again in my research was the complex relationship between preaching the gospel and making disciples of Jesus on the one hand, and meeting the physical needs of people on the other.

There’s a slew of literature out there written for church consumption that says things like Jesus loved without an agenda, or Jesus calls us to be his hands and feet, implying that we are not also his voice as we share the gospel. And these writers focus on the parts of Jesus ministry where Jesus meets physical needs, but they generally leave out what Jesus has to say about his own ministry. For example, here’s what Jesus says when he’s confronted with Jewish authorities in John chapter five. “For the works that the father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the father has sent me.” So Jesus is very clear that everything he does throughout his ministry does, in fact have an agenda. He did not come simply to perform good deeds and to help people out of their problems as an end in itself. God the father gave Jesus these works to do to testify to the identity of Jesus as God the Son. They are pictures of a restored creation in the Kingdom of God over which Jesus reigns as king. So the intention is that when we look at the works of Jesus, we will not just see compassion for the sake of kindness, but we will see Jesus and some aspect of his gospel, some aspect of his good news. And the good works that God has prepared for us to do according to Ephesians chapter two should do the same.

They are also intended by God to point people to the wholeness, healing, love, and forgiveness that is found exclusively in Jesus. But as we’ll see today, the purpose of Jesus ministry doesn’t even end with seeing him for who he is. There is a step beyond that, even in what Jesus wants to see happen. The purpose of God’s compassion to us is to turn us into worshipers, filled with joy and thanksgiving for Christ. That’s what it’s about. It’s turning us into worshippers. Now, you might feel some tension with some of the things that I have to say today. But what’s new? Really? Right. What’s new? If you have developed over time a very strong feeling that a truly loving act would never have an agenda behind it. I understand that impulse in you. I understand, I get it. As a Christian. But let me just say, it’s not biblical. It’s not biblical. If we truly want to become like Jesus in every way, that would have to include seeing and doing compassionate work the way he sees and does it. And I believe that when we adjust our minds and our hearts to include Jesus purpose for his good works, we become more compassionate, not less. So when we’re in Luke chapter 17 today, we’re going to be in verse 11. I’ll take us through what happens in this account.

I’m going to show you Jesus response to what happens. And then we’re going to I want to end with a couple of thoughts on how this should impact our compassionate work as Christians. So, here’s what happened on the way to Jerusalem. He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered the village, a village, he was met by ten 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. So Jesus is traveling through the regions of Samaria and Galilee on his way south to Jerusalem, which is in Judea. So think of three regions. You got Galilee in the north. It’s pretty good. You got Judea in the south. That’s even better. And then you got Samaria in the middle. And that’s terrible. Nobody likes Samaria in that day. Many Jewish travelers even would avoid Samaria because they were racist. Jesus does not avoid it. Jesus does not avoid Samaria at all. He travels right through it because he isn’t racist, and because the message of the good news of salvation is just as much for them as it is for anybody else. So there’s a lot we can learn from Jesus about how we as Christians should treat all people. And this is a good this story is a good example of that.

So he enters a town near the Galilee Samaria border, and he’s met by these ten lepers. Now, these guys could not come near to Jesus for healing like so many people had come. Many people came right up and touched Jesus. They couldn’t do that because their skin disease required them to stay away. It’s a contagious disease. That was a big deal back in the first century and in ancient Israel as a whole. And in addition to being fatal, leprosy separated these people from being able to function within the community. So, these men would have been beggars on the street. No one would have wanted to come near to them. And that’s not just because people didn’t want to get sick, they didn’t want to get sick. But that wasn’t the only reason. They also didn’t want to become ceremonially unclean by touching these guys. To be unclean in the Jewish community meant that you couldn’t enter into worship at the temple. Now, that doesn’t mean that these men were unsaved the way we might talk about it or that that, they were, in some sense a god that God didn’t love them or something like that, but it meant that they couldn’t fully participate in worship. And that’s an important note. Okay. Remember that they’re not right now able to fully participate in worship. So, these men, they see Jesus.

They’ve surely heard about his ability to heal. So, they keep their Distance and they call out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Jesus, you can see our predicament from where you are. You can see what’s going on with us. We know you have the power to change us. Show us your power like you’ve shown to so many others. See, with leprosy, the typical scenario would run like this A person is diagnosed with the skin disease. By the way, if you’re really interested in all the details on this, check out Leviticus 13. Okay, step by step instructions as to what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this. The person would be diagnosed. The priest would examine the skin and determine if it’s leprosy or not through, through a series of quarantine periods. I’m sorry if that brings back flashbacks of Covid 19 for you. Okay. But there was there was this sort of a quarantine process they would go through, and the priest would see if it heals up, then he would declare that person clean again, which means that he can resume normal life and worship with everybody else. And that’s the scenario that everybody hoped for. However, those with incurable chronic leprosy would eventually just sort of slip into the homeless margins of society, and they would eventually die. And that’s where these men are. They’re out on the street. They’re in that incurable stage.

They keep their distance from Jesus, not because he’s special, but because they’re made to keep their distance from everyone. They need God’s mercy. There is no hope for them other than God’s mercy. And Jesus does something for them. And it’s fairly unique what he does for them. Usually people with leprosy would experience healing, and then they would go to the priest to be tested. But in this case, Jesus sees these men in their leprous state and he tells them to go to the priest. Notice that he doesn’t heal them and then send them. He just sends them, and on their way it says to the priests they are cleansed. So, faith in Jesus ability to heal came prior to their actual experience of healing. Basically, they’re saying we trust Jesus. We trust him. We don’t. We don’t need Jesus to prove himself before we listen to him. We listen to him because we trust him. And so as they are on their way to show themselves to the priest, they experience the mercy that they trusted Jesus could provide for them. And that would be a heartwarming story, wouldn’t it? If it ended there, if it ended there, that would be. We’d all feel good. We’d go out feeling warm on a cold day, right? We’d all feel much better about it. But not only does the account not end there, if it did end there, it would be incomplete because Jesus has more in mind than just helping ten guys out with their problem.

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. Okay, so one of these guys turned back. The way that it’s phrased, it sounds like he realized that he was healed as he was heading toward the priest. He then stops in his tracks before getting there, and he comes back to before he gets verification that he’s been healed. He didn’t go get declared clean first. He just knew that Jesus had healed him and he immediately went into worship, which is significant because you’re not allowed to do that under mosaic law. You’re not allowed to do what this guy just did here. See, in the law. The priest is key. The priest is key. The priest has to sign off before you’re allowed to do that. When I when I broke my clavicle, the doctor said that I couldn’t lift more than a coffee cup for six months. With this arm, I couldn’t. I couldn’t lift more than a coffee cup. Do you know how hard it is not to pick things up? Try it. It’s a pretty big part of every day. We’re always picking things up. Have you noticed? Oh, man. But I was told I could rebreak my bone if I didn’t wait for the doctor to sign off on examining by examining my x ray.

This guy has been warned by God’s word that he is not to go and make other people unclean, and that he can give them disease. Unless the priest has signed off and said, you are clean, you know what this man knows? He knows the priest has signed off. He knows the priest has declared that he knows the only priest that matters has made him clean. He is. He has been declared clean by the true priest and mediator, the one who merely has to speak. And he can declare a hopelessly unclean man destined to die, to be cleansed before God. Now, even though it is not written here, likely he would have then gone to the other priest at the temple after this to have himself declared clean for the community, which is the right thing to do. Jesus has done this with other people in his ministry, but for him to turn back and to throw himself at Jesus feet, to thank him and to praise him, shows that this man understands the barrier of uncleanness has been removed and he can now worship God again. This is a this is a vivid picture of what Jesus does when we trust in him. See the. This miracle cleansing, along with all of Jesus compassionate works is a display of the gospel.

It’s a physical picture of a spiritual reality. See, our sin is like leprosy. It’s it separates us from communion with God. Sin has to be washed away. God uses the broken things that are broken in this world, like diseases, to teach us about spiritual realities. That’s the reason for declaring things clean or unclean. It’s God’s way of teaching us the difference between sin and holiness. The theological term for sins being washed away is sanctified. That’s the word sanctification. It means washed and made holy and clean. You say, how are we sanctified? Hebrews chapter ten, verse ten is very clear. Quote. We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. That’s how we’ve been washed. One way of describing what Jesus does for us on the cross is that he removes our sins by placing them on himself. He becomes dirty so that we can become clean. When we when we trust in Jesus, we are saying the same thing as this one leper who came back. Thank you, Jesus, for your power to make me clean and restore me to wholeness. Thank you, Jesus, for reestablishing my ability to worship my Creator God. And the product of that spiritual cleansing is that I become a worshiper. Jesus doesn’t cleanse us of sins for no purpose. Do you know that there’s a purpose in his? In his cleansing, God cleanses us of our sins so that we become joy filled worshippers of Jesus, just like this former leper that is now at his feet.

That’s God’s intention in the healing. There’s a purpose in the healing. That’s the purpose of his compassion. It’s not compassion for the sake of simply being kind. It’s not. It’s not healing for the sake of setting a man free so that he can then go about his life and do whatever he likes. No, that’s not why Jesus did this. It is compassionate healing with the intended goal that this man would be restored in his worship to the one true living God and friends. That’s the same reason that God has saved you. If you put your trust in him, it’s the reason he saves all of us through salvation in the cleansing power of the cross. God is adding to the chorus of his worshipers. We join our voices and our lives with the kingdom people declaring the greatness of God. And that’s how we’re designed. That’s. That’s what you were made for. You want to know what this life is for? That’s what it’s for. You were made to worship. Sin disables us from doing what we were designed to do. It blinds us to that reality. But in Christ, we are restored to our proper roles as worshippers of Jesus. And we know that from this passage, not just because of what this one man does, but because of what Jesus says about the other nine guys.

Then Jesus answered, we’re not ten 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. You know part of me when I read this ending to the story, by the way, that’s the ending to the story. If you’re hoping for something different, that’s it. That’s how the story ends. And when I hear this, when I hear this ending of the story, part of me wants to say, hey, Jesus, could we look on the bright side here? I mean, I wish I could get a 10% return on my evangelism. I mean, this guy’s this guy’s worship. He’s pretty. This is pretty wonderful. Here’s this guy worshiping, praising the Lord, thanking Jesus by worshipping at his feet. And Jesus is looking around and he says, that’s it. Weren’t there ten guys? Where’d the other nine go? Why is Jesus so discontent here? The way he’s talking, it seems like he didn’t get what he wanted, doesn’t it? He even makes a comment that seems to imply that the guy who did come back isn’t who he expected to be there. He calls him a foreigner because he’s a Samaritan. Jesus is not putting this man down. He’s showing how surprising it is, because apparently at least some of the other guys were full blood Jewish men who should have recognized the significance of what Jesus has done.

And now, therefore, who Jesus is. But the only guy who came back is one who doesn’t even have full access to the temple in Jerusalem when he is clean. What is upsetting Jesus so much here? Well, what Jesus cannot understand is how 90% of the people who have experienced his compassion have failed to become his worshipers. The compassionate act of God was intended to restore them to be worshipers. But the guys just took that compassion and they left. They didn’t connect the dots. Okay, God has saved us through Jesus. Let’s worship Jesus. No, no. They took the healing, and then they got back to living life where they don’t recognize Christ as their Savior. They’re really no different from people who are in a tough spot. And they come out to the church because they need something. They want somebody to pray for them. It’s something to get. And once they get the thing that they got that they want, then life gets back to normal. They have no more need for Jesus anymore. It’s really what’s happened here. And church, don’t miss this. That bothers Jesus. That bothers him. Jesus is not indifferent about that result. He doesn’t just say, oh, well, you know, glad I could help out anyway. No, we’re not ten cleansed. Where are they? Jesus reaction tells us there should have been ten new passionate disciples of Jesus that day.

He got one and he’s not okay with that. Now, a couple of things to point out here. Okay, a couple things to point out. He is happy for that one Samaritan guy. Okay. He is he is happy for that guy. He tells him to go in peace because his faith has made him well. I believe the word well here is working kind of a two meanings, because this this man is, is not just physically. Well, now that he’s found his savior as a worshiper of Jesus, he is now spiritually well. So, Jesus is glad for this one guy who has become a disciple. And also, I want to point out to you that the other nine guys who were healed of leprosy appear to still be healed at the end of the story. We’re not told that Jesus revoked his healing. Okay, nine guys didn’t contract leprosy on the way home that day. They still had that temporary restoration of their lives to enjoy. It certainly helps them out for some amount of time before they die of something else. But the fact that these guys missed the purpose of their healing and didn’t become worshipers of Jesus means that they missed the significance of Jesus ministry. They failed to find the true eternal life. That was the point of Jesus compassion. And that’s the problem. It’s a problem for those guys, even though they don’t know it.

It is a problem that they missed it, and it is a problem for Jesus. Jesus ministry isn’t just about making people feel comfortable for today. Did you know that that Jesus doesn’t just want you to feel comfortable a little more comfortable today? It isn’t just about making people feel better. It isn’t just to help them along through the tough times on this grand journey of life. No, it’s to restore them, to become the worshippers of God that they were designed to be. And anything less than that is upsetting to Jesus, and it should be upsetting to us. I want to suggest two ways. Two ways. This this passage has to impact our compassionate work as Christians. I’m going to I’m going to summarize these two ways in two statements. The first is the goal of our Christian compassion must be worship. The goal of our Christian compassion must be worship. Again, as I said earlier, if you have bathed your mind in the idea that for love to be true, it must be driven by no agenda and no hope at all. This is this is probably the part that’s going to be hard, if that if you’ve latched on to that, if that’s your theology of loving acts, then this is a hard one. I have heard this expressed in so many ways in the church. Um, people who really love Jesus.

But they got this part wrong that people will say things like, you know, I don’t want to I don’t want to treat people like projects. If I if I do compassionate work, hoping for an opportunity to evangelize, then I don’t truly love that person. And I get it. If that’s you, I get where you’re coming from, if that’s you, but I want to press back on it, okay? If Jesus is God and His eternity, if salvation is truly found in no one else, if there is no other name given to us under heaven whereby we must be saved, wouldn’t it be the most unloving thing in the world not to share that? Wouldn’t that withholding that? Wouldn’t that be terribly unloving? The most loving thing that I can possibly do as a Christian is help someone with their problem and use that help to share with them. The most important help there is that all of us need. Because if I’m serving like Jesus served, then my goal must be Jesus goal. And his goal was to bring people into worship. Let me take you back to my time working in the poverty community. Um, there was no question that my heart was fully and totally committed to helping my friends climb their way out of the trap that is generational poverty. If you grew up in a home like I did where there was never. You never faced hunger or want or any type of need, it is very hard for us to understand the dynamics of generational poverty and the seemingly impossible obstacles that people have to overcome that stand in the way of climbing out of this, this life.

To understand this, to really grasp that world, I had to sit at the feet of my friends. I had to learn. I had to listen to their stories. I had to remove my assumptions about who they are and the choices they’ve made. And when I when I started to learn and really understand what they were, they were up against my heart just melted for them. My compassion for people in general, and these people specifically just rose exponentially. I mean, I was I was a pretty compassionate guy already. But when I started hearing these stories and truly understanding what they were up against, I was I was like the Grinch. My small heart grew three sizes that day, and all I wanted to do was see him succeed. I just wanted to see him succeed. I wanted them to achieve all that they had put their hearts on. But the truth was, some of them also didn’t know Jesus. Many of them did. And they were already my brothers and sisters in Christ. And we could just work on honoring the Lord by defeating poverty. But some of them didn’t. They wanted to get out of poverty because it was such a hard life.

And they were they were fed up with living so unsustainably. My friend Virginia captures this feeling very powerfully in a poem that she wrote. I believe Virginia knows the Lord, but she wrote this poem to try to capture her raw feelings of living in poverty, that she wanted to escape. And she agreed to allow me to use this poem in the front matter of my dissertation. I want you to listen to this poem, to read it for you. I want you to listen and listen to how she describes that, that experience, trying to get ahead. Some days I wonder if I’d be better off dead. Just trying to stay afloat. Wish somebody would throw me a boat. Running on this treadmill of life. While trying to be a good wife. Can’t be a good mother, mother. When I feel like I’m going to be smothered. Every day I pray. Even when life gets in the way. All the bills coming down the pipe feels like a flood with no end in sight. Trying to make a deal so we can get our next meal. Still can’t really get ahead. Maybe just better stay in bed. Listen to that church. Can. Can you. Can you hear that? That is not just a financial problem. That is. That is not just a money issue. There’s a gospel solution that is needed for the hopelessness of that problem.

Now, my friend Virginia, she knows the Lord. She has the access to that gospel, but she’s writing for everyone stuck in this treadmill of hopelessness. And lots of them don’t know the Lord. They don’t have that gospel. And if I were to walk with someone through the darkness of this problem and help them to get to a place of sustainability, but never show them that they were made for more than just financial success, I would simply be helping them to trade out the hopelessness of poverty for the hopelessness of godless middle class. And that’s no trade. I want my hopeless friends to find the one true hope for eternity. The one who wipes out all of our spiritual poverty by paying a debt that none of us can afford. And that’s true of all of life’s problems. All of life’s problems. Sickness, financial hardship, relational heartbreak, loss of a job, and any problem you can think of. Every broken thing in the world is intended to show us our desperate need for hope in Jesus. And I, as a follower of Jesus, whose compassion must be shaped by Jesus compassion, hope for more than just meeting the physical need. My compassion is to see my friend become a worshipper of Jesus and find true peace and joy for eternity with him. That’s what Jesus wanted in his compassion. That’s what I want as well. As John Piper once wrote, we care about all suffering now is special, especially eternal suffering later.

If you’re my friend, then I truly care about you. I hope you have friends that you truly care about. And if you’re my friend and I truly love you, I don’t want you to just to live. I want you to worship forever. And that means, secondly, that Christian outreach must be gospel centered. Christian outreach must be gospel centered. What I mean is every part of the strategy of outreach for us as a church and for you as individuals should have as its aim, sharing the good news of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. That should be right at the core. That doesn’t mean that all we do is share the gospel. Okay? God cares about our bodies and our souls. He made us embodied souls. That’s what we are. We as a church care about both. But this life is short and eternity is long. Human flourishing without eternal flourishing is a terrible trade. And that’s just as true for the rich and wealthy as it is for the sick and poor. How much do you have to hate someone to help them through the next few years but leave them in eternal jeopardy because you were too scared or couldn’t be bothered to tie spiritual help to the physical help. We would cease to be a church on Jesus mission. If we did that, we would be on some mission, but it would be one that we chose for ourselves.

It wouldn’t be Jesus mission. So, we have to be intentional. That’s the word I have for you. That’s the word I’m going to use to tie this all together. To summarize it. We have to be intentional. We have to think strategically how we are going to use our time and our resources to help the people we love and the neighbors in our community to hear the message of hope and to experience the Body of Christ. There are always going to be those who receive the help and then refuse to be worshipers. We know that it’s not what we want. We know that’s going to happen. And again, Jesus didn’t revoke any blessings. We want to be a blessing to others. Of course we do. But having true Christian compassion to the people around us means leveraging the brokenness to bring about the greatest number of worshipers, both for their eternal good and God’s eternal glory. Now, you may be very uncomfortable with phrases like that leveraging the brokenness. Is that what we really should be doing? You might be uncomfortable with that sort of approach to loving people, but I assure you this is not our idea. This is exactly what Jesus did. This is Jesus idea. It’s his strategy. And the beauty of Jesus compassion is that it invites all who receive it into a mercy that is eternal, and a mercy that never ends. Would you pray with me?