Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 17:11-19, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 61
- Date: Sunday, September 20, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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What Our Reactions Reveal
We can learn a lot about ourselves by how we react when we don’t get our way. If I don’t get my way and take all my toys and go home because I’m having a fit, that’s going to tell you something about me. It should tell me something about me as well. We can also learn about ourselves by who we are when we do get what we want. Are we a sore winner, for example? Are we entitled?
On Friday, I asked my wife if she would run a particular errand for me just because I didn’t want to. I said, “It’s not a big deal if you don’t, but I’d love it if you would help me out with this.” She was getting out anyway, and she did. Later on, I thought, I need to remember to tell her thank you because I don’t want to be ungrateful and entitled, and I’d like her to be willing to help out again.
We can learn some of these same things about our relationship with the Lord. How do we react to God when we pray for something and don’t get what we want? That sheds a lot of light on how we see ourselves and how we see God. Does He owe us? Has He wronged us by not giving us what we want?
We can also gain insight into our relationship with God by how we react when we’ve gotten what we want. Today we’re going to look at somebody who got what he wanted from Jesus, and how his reaction differed from the reactions of the other people around him who got what they wanted as well.
We’re going to be in Luke chapter 17 as we continue our study through the book of Luke. Luke 17 takes us to one of my favorite Bible stories. I was talking with somebody this week about the fact that we call them stories. “Narrative” sounds a little fussy, so when I say “story,” I don’t mean that I think it didn’t happen. I believe this happened.
It’s been one of my favorite Bible stories since I was a kid. I had a little storybook with this story in it, and it was taught in that book and in Sunday school as a lesson about being thankful.
As we read what Luke records about this man and how he responded to Jesus, though, I think there’s more at work here than just the importance of thankfulness. Our reaction, our thankfulness or lack thereof, tells us about the way we view Jesus. Starting in verse 11, Luke says, “While He was on the way to Jerusalem,” Jesus “was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered a village, ten men with leprosy 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 yourselves to the priests.’ And as they were going, they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan. But Jesus responded and said, ‘Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine—where are they? Was no one found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?’ And He said to him, ‘Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.’”
It’s a simple story. It’s a short story. These ten men are lepers standing outside a village. Jesus comes to them. They cry out to Him, and He heals them. But what makes this story stand out is not the healing. Jesus has done a lot of that. You leave it to Luke to notice all the medical stuff, but Jesus has healed a lot of people by this point in His ministry. Everybody knows He can heal. That’s why these men call out to Him as He comes through. What makes this story stand out is that it demonstrates how our reactions show what we believe about Jesus.
Ten Outcasts Cry Out for Mercy
We start at the beginning and see ten outcasts crying out for mercy from the Master. That’s what they called Him: “Master, have mercy on us!” It’s not the first time somebody has called Jesus that, and it’s not the first time somebody has cried out to Him for mercy. But if anybody Jesus encountered needed mercy, it was these ten men. They were complete outcasts from society.
First of all, they were scarred by a horrific disease. The descriptions of leprosy in the ancient world vary; it could have encompassed a number of skin ailments. None of them were pleasant, and many were fatal. What they’re likely describing here is an illness that would cause your skin to turn white, harden, and become brittle, cause body parts to fall off, and eventually cause somebody to shrivel up and die.
So they were scarred by this horrific disease. It was painful. I’m sure it was terrifying to realize that eventually you were going to start losing function, if not body parts, and eventually you were going to die.
They were separated because of it from their families and communities. When you were a leper, you were forced to stay away. That’s why verse 12 says they “stood at a distance.” They stood over there and yelled at Jesus because they weren’t allowed to get close to Him. They had to catch His attention before He went into the village, because they weren’t allowed to go into the village themselves.
It makes sense from the standpoint of the other people. This was a contagious disease. It was something nobody wanted, so you kept it over there. I’ve had people tell me, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t at church. I had a stomach bug.” That is fine. You keep that at your house. Don’t bring that. I don’t want any part of that. If I never get another stomach bug, I will die a happy man.
That’s how they felt about leprosy, only the stakes were higher because you didn’t typically recover. Nowadays, many forms of what they would call leprosy can be treated with antibiotics, but they didn’t have that. Apart from a miracle, it was usually a death sentence.
So they were forced to stay away. They stood at a distance and raised their voices, as verse 13 says, because they were separated from everyone and everything they cared about. Even their families had to say, “You go be over there.” That doesn’t mean they didn’t love them anymore. But they couldn’t be together. They might come and throw them some food from a distance, but there was a separation there.
They were separated from the temple, too. They couldn’t go to the temple and be part of worship. They were not able to participate in the sacrifices or in the things that gave somebody a sense of closeness to God. In the way people understood God at that time, they were separated from God.
On top of that, things like leprosy were seen as a sign of disfavor from God. The rest of the community might have taken some pity on them, but there was also the thought, “What did you do to put yourself in this situation?” The way people in that time and place typically thought of God has a lot in common with the modern prosperity gospel. If you’re rich and doing well, God must like you extra special. If you’re suffering, what did you do? How was your faith not strong enough? What caused you to suffer this way?
Jesus hit that head-on in another case where the leaders asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus said neither. Not that they hadn’t sinned, but that wasn’t the cause of his blindness. The blindness was there so that the power of God could be put on display when Jesus healed him. But people would look at somebody suffering from something as awful as leprosy and say, “What did you do to cause this?” In every conceivable way, these men were outcasts. They had undoubtedly heard that Jesus was coming and about the miracles He had performed. When they realized He was coming to a nearby village, they stood outside and cried out to Him like He was their only hope, because He was: “Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus did what Jesus frequently does: He showed them mercy.
Ten Are Cleansed as They Go
That brings us to verse 14: “When He saw them, He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’” We start with ten outcasts crying out for mercy, and then we see that ten were cleansed when they did as Jesus said. Instead of saying, “You’ve got it; you’re healed,” He tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” To us, that sounds like a strange command. But telling them to go assumes that they are going to be healed. It assumes that they are in the process of being healed already, because going to the priest was the next thing you had to do when it looked like the leprosy was gone. Apart from a miracle, that didn’t happen often.
The Old Testament, I believe in Leviticus 13, outlines how they were supposed to handle leprosy and what to do when somebody said it had gone away. You could imagine somebody suffering from leprosy and being an outcast wanting to say, “I can’t see any leprosy here.” They wanted some way to verify that before the person was let back into the community. The priests were the ones who were supposed to examine someone who claimed to be healed and verify it. So when Jesus tells these men to go and show themselves to the priests, He is in essence saying, “Go and act like you’re already healed.”
This is not a name-it-and-claim-it thing. This is them needing to get up, go to the priest, and do what Jesus is telling them to do. At least have enough faith to believe He can heal you, and go. He is asking them to show faith, and they are willing to comply. That doesn’t mean each of these men had enough faith in Jesus to recognize Him as their Savior. But they had enough faith in their desperation to believe it was worth a shot. So all ten get up and begin to go on their way to the priests.
Verse 14 tells us that as they went, they were cleansed. As they got up and went. Not later on, not after some discussion, not after a big sign. As they got up and went, they were cleansed. The leprosy went away. We see Jesus’ healing power on full display, the power He has demonstrated so many times already in Luke and will demonstrate many more times before His crucifixion. But that’s not where the story ends. Ten received mercy, but one returned to the Master.
One Returns to the Master
Look again at verses 15 and 16: “Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him.” This is the mercy they had begged for. This is what they had asked God to do for them, what they had asked Jesus to step in and do.
I don’t know that all of these men recognized Jesus as the Messiah at this point. They probably didn’t. But they had heard the stories of the healings, the miracles, and the teaching, and likely recognized Him at least as somebody sent from God. They were looking for God to do this incredible thing through Him. All of them received what they had begged for. It doesn’t say a few were cleansed and a few weren’t. As they went to show themselves to the priests, they were cleansed. But one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back.
“Healed” here is a different word from “cleansed” in verse 14. The Greek word for “cleansed” points to washing. They had been ritually unclean, and they needed to show the priests that they were clean under the law. But the word for “healed” points to what we ordinarily mean by healing. It doesn’t mean they weren’t healed before.
We’ve moved from the idea of ceremonial cleansing, and Luke makes it clear that this man was healed. This wasn’t just a legal declaration that he was clean. It was practical healing. His life had been changed. When he recognized that he had been healed, that his skin was no longer falling off and that this thing that was about to kill him was gone, he turned back.
As he returned, he praised God for the healing. Verse 15 says he was “glorifying God with a loud voice.” He had cried out for mercy with a loud voice, and here he is glorifying God for that mercy with a loud voice. Sometimes we pray fervently for God to do something. We pray fervently for God to provide something or to intervene in a situation. When He does, we need to praise Him just as forcefully as we prayed for Him to do it. So this man goes back glorifying God with a loud voice.
He comes back to Jesus, and verse 16 says “he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him.” This isn’t something we do regularly. I’ve been very thankful for many things, but I don’t think I’ve ever fallen on my face at somebody’s feet before. He did this, for one thing, because his life had been changed. His life had been given back to him. We have profusely thanked the heart surgeon who worked on one of our children because of what he gave back to her. But even at that, I didn’t fall down on my face at his feet.
This is a recognition of the power Jesus has and of who Jesus is. It doesn’t mean this man understands all the theological ins and outs of Jesus being God. But he recognizes that Jesus isn’t just any other man. He’s not just a prophet. He’s not just a healer. He’s not just a teacher. This is a reaction that we give to God.
He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet and gave thanks to Him. This is a sign of worship. This man had previously called Jesus “Master,” and now he’s treating Jesus like his Master. “Master” wasn’t just something he called Jesus to butter Him up so He would give him the mercy he craved. It’s something he lived out.
As much deference as we give to God when we want Him to do something, as much as we’re willing to commit things to Him when we want Him to do something, we ought to have that same commitment to Him after He’s done it. There’s a difference between wanting the benefits of having Jesus around and wanting to have Jesus.
Nine of these men—and I don’t fault them for being excited—had a new lease on life and wanted to go start it. But they were more interested at that moment in the benefits of having Jesus around than in having Jesus. I can’t say from the text that they didn’t care about Jesus at all. The benefits are what they prioritized because they didn’t come back for Jesus. This man did. We need to understand the importance of having Jesus Himself, not just the benefits of having Him around.
The One Least Expected to Return
There’s another part of this story that I think helps explain why Luke includes it. We believe the Holy Spirit inspired these things to be written. Within that, one thing that would have piqued Luke’s interest, aside from the medical aspects of it, is that Luke was concerned with making sure we understand who the gospel is for. The gospel is for the outsider. The gospel is for the Gentile.
Out of all ten men who cried out for mercy from Jesus, the one who returned was the one least likely to do so. He wasn’t just one of the lepers. Luke points out in verse 16 that he was a Samaritan.
The big deal about being a Samaritan was that the Jews and Samaritans hated each other. There were ethnic disputes going back centuries. The Samaritans were descendants of Mesopotamian people who intermarried with the ten northern tribes of Israel when they weren’t supposed to do that. There was resentment from the Jews in Judea, who thought, “These people are half-breeds, and they think they’re going to come in and be part of our covenant and take our promises and blessings.” A rivalry began because of that.
There was religious friction, too, to the point that the Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and assumed that God would work through them there and was done with Jerusalem. There was ethnic and religious fighting. They just didn’t get along.
The Jews in Jesus’ day would have looked at the Samaritans and said, “They aren’t part of the covenant with God, and they never will be. They’re cut off from God. God isn’t interested in them.” The Pharisees might have said, “Unless they go through our rituals, convert, and jump through our hoops.” But otherwise, God wasn’t interested in them. So it’s telling that the one who returns is the one they would have thought was separated from God by a gulf. It was this Samaritan who came back.
Jesus asks in verse 17 where the other nine are. Presumably, there should have been ten there to say thank you. There should have been ten who returned and recognized what God was doing through Jesus. This situation defies what we would naturally expect. I don’t think Jesus was surprised by it, but we would be. He says, “Was no one found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?” Jesus doesn’t ask questions He doesn’t know the answer to. He knows nobody else came back. But He asks so that everyone listening can see that the man everybody would think was hopeless and forever estranged from God was the one who came back.
By all accounts, it should have been the Jewish lepers who came back. Luke includes this detail, first, because it really happened. But it also fits a bigger pattern we’re seeing throughout his book. Israel is in the process of rejecting their Messiah. Jesus has spent multiple chapters in conflict with the Pharisees and pointing out how they’ve blinded themselves to what God is doing.
While Israel is in the process of rejecting their Messiah, the Samaritans and Gentiles who had been far from God are showing receptiveness to Jesus. From the standpoint of what everybody expected, it’s a world gone mad. The religious people aren’t interested in what God is doing, and the ones everybody thinks are distant from God are coming to Jesus.
It reinforces the point Luke has made throughout: Jesus didn’t come for Israel alone. He did come for Israel, but not just for Israel. The gospel is for everyone. It’s for those who are so religious they don’t think they need it, and it’s for those who are so openly wicked they don’t think they deserve it. This man was just as separated from God as the other nine. He was just as separated from God as the Pharisees Jesus had been talking to. Yet he cried out for mercy, Jesus gave it, and he fell down at Jesus’ feet and worshipped Him.
More Than Cleansing
The man who returned received more than cleansing in verse 19. They all received cleansing, as verse 14 says. They all received healing, the word we saw in verse 15. As far as the law was concerned, they were all clean and ready to go. From a medical standpoint, they were healed. But this man received something different, and depending on the translation you’re looking at, it may not be immediately clear.
Jesus told him in verse 19, “Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.” When we read “made you well,” the Greek word there is _sōzō_, a short word that refers to salvation. Can it refer to healing? It can. But I find it interesting that Luke uses three different words in this passage to describe what’s going on: legal cleansing, healing, and then this word that refers to being saved or rescued from something.
Jesus ties it to the man’s faith: “Your faith has saved you. Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you.” This man received mercy from the Master in his healing and cleansing. But he also showed faith in Jesus. For him, it wasn’t just about the healing or his new life. He looked at what had been done for him, and it dawned on him who Jesus is. It occurred to him what these blessings meant. He came back to Jesus and worshipped Him.
This is where we learn, I think, the important point of this passage: Jesus’ mercy shouldn’t just change our circumstances. It should lead us to love and worship Him. When He shows us mercy, we shouldn’t respond with entitlement: “That’s what You should have done,” or merely, “That was nice. Thank You for that.” Whether it’s salvation or one of the blessings He gives us every day—and they’re there if we look for them—we don’t look at God’s mercy and say, “Oh, that was nice.” It warrants a bigger response from us.
What Jesus has done for each of us, what He’s done for you specifically, makes Him worthy of our love and worship. We don’t want to take it for granted. We don’t even want to look at it and just say thank you. The way He cares for us, loves us, and shows us mercy should drive us to fall on our faces at His feet and worship Him. That’s what He deserves. Church, that’s what He deserves from us.
Let’s never get to a point where we take all He’s done for us for granted. Instead, let’s see in it reasons to worship Him. We will never run out of reasons to worship Him for His mercy.
The Mercy That Saves
If you haven’t trusted Christ as your Savior, there’s a lesson for you here about the mercy of God. Jesus doesn’t just bless us. This man’s circumstances were changed by a physical healing. That was a blessing from God. But Jesus doesn’t just do that.
He promises us salvation, not just changes in our circumstances. Sometimes our circumstances don’t change. Sometimes He changes us in or through our circumstances. But He’s not just here to make life better. He’s here to give us eternal life.
What He told that man is true for us. That man was saved by his faith. Today we can be saved through faith as well. The passage says Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem. He was on His way to be crucified, not because of anything He had done or anything He deserved, but to take my sins and your sins on Himself, take responsibility for them, and be crucified in our place. The punishment we deserve was poured out on Him so He could pay the debt that was owed and we could go free. He died for us, and three days later He rose again to prove it.
What’s left for us to do is the same thing that was required of this man: have faith. Stop believing, “I’m good enough as I am.” Stop believing, “I can just try harder,” or any of the other dozens of lies that distract us from the gospel. Believe that Jesus died to pay for your sin in full. That faith leads to salvation. It was true of that man, and it’s true of us today.
If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, you can have the eternal life He came to bring us. You can have the forgiveness of sins. You can have a relationship with God. You can have all of it because Jesus paid for it. Turn from trusting in yourself and put your faith in Jesus.
