Bible Text: Luke 17:11-19 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2021 | Dear Lord Jesus Christ, make us always thankful for the right things, both for the life and health you give to the body and for the salvation you give to body and soul. Keep us from chasing after earthly things or obsessing over the affairs of this world. Make us find our value and our worth in you and drive us by Your Spirit to find in Your mercy the goal of all our desires. Amen.
Jesus cares about your body. He wouldn’t have healed the ten lepers if He didn’t. He looked at them. That’s an easy detail to miss when you hear this Gospel. But don’t miss it. It’s essential. The Holy Spirit wrote it on purpose. Jesus looked at them and He saw something very pathetic. It wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t covered up. It couldn’t be. We dress up our faults. We put make up over our frailties. We put clothes on to mask some unsightly things. But the lepers couldn’t do that. They couldn’t hide it. In fact, their life consisted of bringing everyone’s attention to their very visible faults. “Unclean, unclean.” That’s what they had to shout every time anyone came near. And people would avert their eyes, look away, run away even, afraid that the nasty sores and the wasting of nose and ears and fingers and toes might be contagious, might be carried by the wind and land on them and uglify them too. But Jesus doesn’t turn away. He looks at them. Idwn in the Greek. One word. So powerful. Jesus looked at them. And you notice He doesn’t have to ask, “What can I do for you? What’s wrong?” He does that even with the blind Bartimaeus. He says, “What do you want?” And the blind man says, “Lord, that I may see.” But not here. Jesus doesn’t have to ask. It’s there in front of His eyes in all its ugliness and pain. And He has pity. He sees them and He loves them. He heals them. Because He cares for their bodies.
Why? Because He created these men. Because they aren’t the random result of evolution. They aren’t organic machines. He created them, to be beautiful, and so their ugliness and their misery pains Him. And they aren’t just bodies, just masses of material. They’re men, created in Jesus’ image, body and soul, created not to waste away in pain, not to be burdened day after day with worry and loneliness, but to enjoy perfect communion with God and with one another. This is why human life is valuable. This is why Jesus looks in pity on these miserable men. It’s not because we put some worth on their life. It’s because God does. The Lord Jesus does. He looks on them.
The issue of who determines the value of human life has again come front and center in our country this week, as the state of Texas has banned abortion once you can hear the baby’s heartbeat and the president of the United States has condemned Texas for protecting babies. The horror of the 20th century and the 21st is that we decided in no uncertain terms that we, human beings, were the ones to determine the value of human life. We could talk about the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in Russia and Asia, but it’s happened here too. We decided that babies don’t benefit us and may make our lives hard and inconvenience us and keep us from becoming successful and having money, and so we decide these little babies aren’t worth the trouble, we prevent them from being conceived in the first place, but when that doesn’t work we decide to go much further. We go to ridiculous lengths. We invent new meaning to words. We speak of “termination of pregnancy” and “abortion” so we don’t have to talk about the reality, the slaughter of little children in the womb. And we invent political rights like the right of choice to cover up the fact that what we’re actually advocating is tearing little children apart limb from limb and burning them alive until their little hearts stop beating inside their mommies. And, when states like Texas ban this barbaric practice, because they actually believe that God exists and that God determines the value of human life, we elect a president to defend every woman’s right to kill her babies, a president who proclaims with righteous indignation that it’s pernicious and bizarre – those are the president’s own words – to keep babies from being slaughtered. That’s what we do, when we humans determine the value of human life. That’s what America has done.
But of course Mr. Biden has not looked those babies in the face. God has and God has pitied them, just as He pitied those lepers. And almost every mother who is thinking about killing her baby and then is given a chance to look at an ultrasound and see her baby’s face, almost every one has pity and loves and keeps her baby and never regrets it. That’s the power of looking someone in the face and seeing the humanity that God created; and not like a base coward hiding behind laws and court decisions and presidential titles to advocate for the murder of innocent children. Those who show no mercy to the little ones will not receive mercy from the Lord on the Last Day.
But the lepers received mercy. Because Jesus looked them in the face. And Jesus knows the value of human life. Because He gives it. He spills His blood for it. Everything hangs on this. Everything in the Bible. Everything in your life. Don’t think for a second that abortion is just one political issue among many. No. The question is, what is human life worth? Who decides it? And that is a deeply personal question for you. What is your life worth? Who decides it?
Obviously you don’t want other people deciding the value of your life. But what if you decide? If you decide the value of your life, won’t that be nice? But no, you will end up just like the nine lepers who never return to thank Jesus. You’ll choose what you think – and you’re a sinner – is important in life instead of listening to what Jesus says is important. You’ll guard your own pride, you’ll judge by what you see, and since you can’t see Jesus, you’ll put everything above Him, the creation above the Creator. And because this kind of life is meaningless, you’ll do your best not to think about that, until the thought of death forces it on you. But by then, for so many, it’s too late. For too long they’ve lived for themselves. And they die in despair and false hope.
This is why Jesus is so disappointed when only one leper returns to Him. It’s not that He’s amazed at their lack of polite etiquette. As if all He’s saying is, How rude! Who doesn’t say thank you? No. It’s that He looked at those ten lepers and as horrid as the wasting away of their bodies was, more pathetic was what Jesus saw when His eyes pierced into their souls. And His having mercy on their bodies was a sign to them and it’s a sign to us, that He cares not only for our bodies, which He will raise up on the last day, but for our souls. He showed them not only that He was God, but that He was the God who had mercy on them while wearing their human flesh, who had drawn near to them, who was not far off, who wanted to be with them. And they knew it, for a moment at least, they knew it, because instead of crying, “Unclean, unclean,” get away, get away, they cried, “Have mercy, come near. Help us.” They knew for a moment at least the real value of human life.
But what they knew they so easily forgot. And this is the story of so many. How many believe and fall away. How many taste this beautiful reality that God so loves us that He becomes one of us and lives for us and dies for us and has mercy on us and wants to be near us, how many find relief and peace when Jesus looks on them, but then go their own way and forget. I hate the devil. He is a murderer. Faith is a powerful thing. It connects us to God. It is literally the difference between life and death, eternal happiness with our Creator and eternal despair away from Him. But it is also a very fragile thing. And like a plant, if it is not watered and if it is not guarded and if it is not shaded from the heat, it withers and snaps and is uprooted and dies; but if we care for it, well then faith springs up to bear the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
So this is a warning to us. A faith that is not practiced dies. A faith that goes on without thinking of Jesus withers away. A faith that isn’t thankful and doesn’t return again and again to Jesus isn’t faith. Faith knows the value of life. It finds it in Jesus, not in the stuff of this world, not in pleasing myself. No, My sheep hear My voice, Jesus says. Faith hears Jesus’ Word. By faith we live. Live real life, meaningful life, life with God. Because by faith we pray. By faith we love. By faith we humble ourselves. By faith we forgive those who sin against us. By faith we keep our flesh under control, and refrain from drunkenness and envy, and fits of anger, and sexual immorality. Because those who practice such things lose the faith and will not enter into the Kingdom of God.
But this, to enter into the Kingdom of God, this is and must be the great desire of faith, of our life. It is nothing else than to desire Jesus, who is our King and our God. To come back for more from Jesus. Day after day, week after week. Curiosity becomes bored with repetition, I know. But no matter how often the lover of beauty sees what is beautiful, he never grows bored, never tires of it. He can look at the sunset, look at the lake, look at the mountain that he’s seen a million times before and when he’s done looking at it, he’ll look forward to when he gets to see it again. So it is with beauty. And there is nothing more beautiful than Jesus. Nothing more beautiful than the truth.
It’s the Samaritan who practices this faith. He runs back to Jesus. Here is the Savior who gives value to his life, who gave him his body and takes care of it, who has come to restore him to fellowship with God. It’s amazing what faith knows. The Samaritan releases all inhibitions. He sings Jesus’ praises out loud, calls Him God, falls at His feet. He knows, faith knows instinctively, that Jesus won’t turn Him away, that He can now come into His God’s presence without fear, touch Him, that the God who has had mercy on his body will not reject the sinner. Here is faith’s logic – if God stands before me in human flesh and has so graciously taken away the corruption of sin in my body, He’s come to take care of the root of my problem, He’s come to take my sins away.
And this is what you see today. The value of your life, of human life. Your God is easy to approach. He is accessible to you. He doesn’t stand far off. He has seen you. Looked at you. From the womb of your mother to this day. He knows your worth. He established the worth of human life forever by living the human life in human flesh from the womb of His mother and bearing in His human body the sin that made us worthless, nailing it to the cross, so that we can find our worth in Him. It’s because He has looked on you and seen your need that He has given you every earthly blessing, every day of health, every bodily happiness. And it’s because He’s looked at you and not taken His gaze away, that you can now approach Him in thankfulness and praise, to fall at His feet and receive from Him double for all your sins, the body and blood of your risen Lord Jesus, by which He has sealed your life’s worth forever.
So what does life look like when you know what life is worth? It’s not worth something because you’ve done so much good. Because you’ve kept yourselves from all the works of the flesh or because you’ve done nothing but bear fruits of the Spirit. No. But it’s precisely because you see in your Lord Jesus’ love for you the worth of your life, that you won’t waste away a life worth so much, bought with the blood of God. You don’t waste that by living in sin. No. You live your life in thanks to Him and pray for the fruits of the Spirit so that in all you do, in body and soul, you may please your Lord Jesus, until He cleanses you completely and you gaze on His glorious face in the eternal day. Amen.