[To listen to this sermon, click on the link below.]
The Sermon for Sunday, October 12th, 2025, the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 113; Ruth 1:1-19a; Luke 17:11-19
The Text: Luke 17:11-19
INTRODUCTION
Today’s Gospel Lesson is about the Lord Jesus Christ’s miracle of healing ten lepers, their faith, and the gratitude of one of them who turned back to praise the Lord when he found out that he was healed. Gratitude to the Lord for all he has done for us should be at the center of our devotions. Here is a story about a missionary’s gratitude for even the sight of a cross.
James Baird tells this story:
When we started the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) in 1973, we had no money – not a dime – and we were going to start a new denomination. One group gave us $90,000 for world missions. The only two missionaries we had – Dick Dye and a young woman named Ellen Barfnett – were down in Acapulco.
Missionary Dick Dye had been in Acapulco for two months trying to start a church. Whenever he got discouraged, he looked up at a cross he could see on a nearby mountain. That encouraged him. Finally, he drove up the mountain to find out about that cross. And when he did, he found it attached to a big hotel. So Dye asked the secretary, “Can I speak to the man who runs this establishment?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No appointment, I just want to tell him something.”
“What do you want to tell him?”
“I want to thank him.”
The secretary got the owner. Dye said, “I am a missionary from the United States here in Acapulco. I’ve been discouraged. But I see that cross and it encourages me. I want to thank you for having it up there.”
The man looked at Dye, put his head down on his desk, and began to weep. He wept and wept. Finally he raised his head and said: “That cross has been up there for years. All I’ve heard is criticism. You’re the first man who ever said thank you. Now. Who are you and what do you need?”
“I’m just a missionary,” Dick answered.
“Where do you meet?”
“We don’t meet anywhere. I don’t have a place to meet.”
The owner said, “Come with me.” He took Dick to a beautiful chapel and said, “We have church here at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. From now on, it’s yours at 10:00 a.m. You begin services next week.”
That was the beginning of the first Presbyterian Church in America missionary plant. Within a few years, we turned four congregations over to the presbyterian Church of Mexico. How did it start? With one guy who said thank you.
– James Baird, in the sermon “To Be Thankful,”
Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia[1]
JESUS’ MIRACLE OF THE HEALING OF TEN LEPERS
Jesus was journeying between Galilee and Samaria on his way to Jerusalem and entering a certain village, when ten men who were lepers met him (Luke 17:11-12). They stood far from him since the Jewish Law required them to do so. No distance was specified, but they had to live alone and outside the Jewish community (Leviticus 13:46). They had to cry, “Unclean, unclean!” They were the marginalized, and the only way they could re-enter the Jewish community was if their leprosy were cured and they had shown themselves to a priest and he had declared them clean. After inspecting the person’s skin and being satisfied that his leprosy was cured, the priest had to offer a sacrifice of two birds. One had to be killed in an earthenware vessel over running water. Then the living bird had to be dipped in the blood of the dead bird, and the living bird had to be released into the open field. The person cured of leprosy had to be sprinkled seven times with the blood of the dead bird, and then declared clean. He still had to go wash himself and his clothes, shave off all his hair on the seventh day after this. Then he still had to bring offerings of a lamb and at least two doves to the priest to complete the process (Leviticus 14).
Now the lepers that met Jesus and stood at a distance from him cried out loudly to him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us” (Luke 17:13b, KJV). Perhaps they had suffered from leprosy for a long time, and had long endured their outcast state. Probably, they had heard of all the miracles and healings that Jesus was performing. Together they exercised the faith to believe that Jesus could and would heal them if they only called upon him for mercy. It is significant that they called upon Jesus as “Master” (Greek: epistates). This was a form of address used in classical Greek literature for a tutor or teacher. “Have mercy upon us” was a desperate call for help, deliverance, and healing. The first few words of a few psalms in the Vulgate (Latin version of the Bible) are Misere mei, Deus, which mean “Have mercy on me, O God.” Psalms 51, 56, and 57 begin with these words in the Latin version. Knowing the psalms as the hymn book of Israel, these lepers called upon the Lord out of the depth of their need.
THE LORD’S ANSWER
Then and there, the Lord could have made them clean by curing them completely of their leprosy while they were still standing there. But he did not. Just as Elisha the prophet required Naaman the Syrian, who commanded the Syrian army, to go and bathe in the Jordan River seven times to be cured of his leprosy (2 Kings 5:10), so now Jesus commands the ten lepers to go and show themselves to the priests (Luke 17:14). This was an action that required great faith! What leper would take the trouble to go and show himself to a priest if he still suffered from leprosy? However illogical these lepers might have thought Jesus’ command was, they all still obeyed him in faith. What did they have to lose? Some of them might have remembered that, though Naaman the Syrian had been angry with Elisha at first and had not wanted to bathe seven times in the Jordan River, he nonetheless listened to his servants, followed Elisha’s instructions, and was completely cured of his leprosy. As the lepers go to show themselves to the priests, they are completely healed on the way (Luke 17:14b).
SHOWING GRATITUDE TO THE LORD FOR HEALING
One of the ten who had been lepers, when he observed that he was healed, turned back, praising God in a loud voice, fell down and worshipped Jesus, and gave him thanks (Luke 17:15). He was a Samaritan, and not a Jew. Jesus asks a searching question: “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” (Luke 17:17b, KJV). The only one found returning to give glory to God was a stranger, observes Jesus. Then he tells the Samaritan to rise and go his way, for his faith has made him whole.
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THIS MIRACLE OF HEALING
As we examine our lives today, and how we live, do we show gratitude for all the healing that we have received from the Lord Jesus Christ? Are we grateful for the great salvation, and for eternal life, for the forgiveness of sins, for the hope in God that we have been given as a result of putting our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Before our salvation, we were cut off from God’s people, just as lepers were in ancient Israel. But having turned from sin and having believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have become the people of God, God’s adopted children (Galatians 4:5-7), created for the good deeds God has prepared for us to do, as St. Paul tells us in this passage:
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
(Ephesians 2:4-10. KJV)
When we consider the truths of this passage, we can begin to appreciate the deliverance from everlasting death and healing that God has given us through our great salvation in Christ, and how God has raised us up with the Lord Jesus Christ and granted us a place with him in heaven, in order to show the exceedingly abundant wealth of God’s grace in kindness to us through Jesus Christ. All this is the work of God, not our own achievement, and it is by grace that we have been saved, by grace we are being saved, and by grace we will be saved.
But how grateful to God are we? Do we praise God enough for all that He has done for us in Christ? If we reply honestly, we shall have to acknowledge that we ought to praise God far more and worship him more thankfully, more frequently.
[1] Quoted on p.44, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.