Luke 17

Luke 17:11-18

XII THE TEN LEPERS; WHEN AND WHERE OF THE KINGDOM; THE PARABLE OF PRAYER FOR JUSTICE Harmony, pages 128-129 and Luke 17:11-18:8.This section commences on page 128 of the Harmony (Luke 17:11-37) and includes three subjects:

1. The healing of the ten lepers

2. The when and the where of the kingdom and the king

3. The parable of the prayer for Justice

On the page immediately preceding this section we learn that “Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews, but departed thence into the country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there he tarried with the disciples.” That Ephraim is in the northern part of Judea. The first verse of the section says, “And it came to pass, as they were on their way to Jerusalem, that he was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee.” The question naturally arises: Why did not Jesus, being in Judea, go straight back to Jerusalem, why did he go through Samaria and a part of Galilee, both north of him, in order to get to Jerusalem south of him? The answer is: Jesus in making this last visit to Jerusalem wishes to fall in with the pilgrim throng from Galilee attending the Passover near at hand, and this pilgrim throng would not pass through Samaria to go to Jerusalem, but would cross the Jordan and pass through Perea to Jericho and thence to Jerusalem, the object being to avoid Samaria. The Samaritans were very hostile to all Jews going south to the feasts, but hospitable to them going north, because they claimed that theirs was the true temple in Mount Gerizirn.

THE TEN LEPERSIn John 20-21, we have these two passages: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25); and, “Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).

In other words, the inspiration of God leads each historian to record, not everything that Jesus said and did, but just such things as fall in with his plan and viewpoint, leaving the combined histories to show a larger plan. Therefore, when we come to consider this healing of the ten lepers we first compare it with the passage on page 31 (Matthew 8:2-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16) of the Harmony, where Matthew, Mark, and Luke give an account of the healing of one leper in the early Galilean ministry. I have already discussed all the general features of leprosy, so it remains now to consider only the distinguishing features of the two passages, which are these:

There, on page 31 of the Harmony, only one leper is healed, and here ten.

There, the leper was near at hand and was healed by a touch; here the ten lepers are afar off, in speaking distance however, and are healed by a word.

There, the healing of one leper was instantaneous; as soon as Christ touched him he was healed. Here the healing of the ten lepers is as they were going away obeying what he told them to do.

There, the healer enjoins silence on the healed because he didn’t want to spring prematurely on the unbelieving Jews the claims of his messiahship lest their hostility should hinder the laying of the foundations of his kingdom and the preparation of his disciples. But here no silence is enjoined.

Apart from these distinctions of the two lessons, we now note these special things:

1. Leprosy, as it outlaws a Jew, unites him in association with the Samaritan. One of these ten was a Samaritan. On account of the religious jealousies, only a great calamity upon all could associate them. We often see in life that the people who scratch and fight in the days of prosperity become bedfellows in the day of adversity.

2. One reason for recording a second healing of lepers is to show the exceptional gratitude of one of the recipients of the divine mercy. Jesus healed all the ten. One of them, feeling himself to be healed, rushed back and prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus and returned thanks and glorified God. Hence comes the great text from which many preach: “Where are the nine?” Ten were healed. Only one is grateful, which leads to another reason.

3. Both the judgments and mercies of God are given to lead to salvation. Paul says that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance. Now only one out of the ten who received this goodness, physical healing, was led to spiritual healing, and that one was a Samaritan. Nine Jews, one Samaritan. The one, following the leading of the divine mercy, is saved – saved spiritually as he had been saved physically. The nine were saved physically, but no hint of their spiritual salvation is given.

When any great trouble or any great blessing comes upon us we should stop right there and ask ourselves the question, What is the shortest road from this trouble or blessing to God? What did he mean by it, to me?

He meant good of some kind. He always means good. But some people both judgments and mercies harden. Leprosy was regarded as a special divine judgment, and its healing a divine mercy. Therefore, both the affliction and its cure should turn the mind toward God. In order that we may get vividly before us the fearful nature of leprosy and the blessedness of its cure, we should study the case of Job. His affliction was leprosy. The account in Ben Hur of Christ’s healing his leprous mother and sister, and N. P. Willis’ great poem on the healing of the leper are worthy of note.

THE WHEN AND THE WHERE OF THE KINGDOMThis part of our discussion is given by Luke alone (Luke 17:20-37). In the beginning of the paragraph the Pharisees ask, “When is the kingdom of God?” At the close the disciples ask, “Where, Lord?” So that this paragraph is an answer to two questions, “When” and “Where?”

If we turn to our Lord’s great prophecy on page 160 (Matthew 24:1-51; Mark 13:1-37; Luke 21:5-36), we find a similar question, last part of the third verse in Matthew and corresponding places in Mark and Luke: “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Mark says, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when these things are all about to be accomplished?” And Luke puts it: “Teacher, when therefore shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when these things are about to come to pass?” Again, on page 229 (Luke 24:44-49; Acts 1:3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:7) of the Harmony, near the bottom, Acts 1:6 f, “They therefore, when they were come together, asked him, saying, Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his own authority.” So, that first question is, When? It is the most natural question that comes to the mind. Jesus is talking about the judgment, about his final coming. They say, “When, Lord? Will it probably be tomorrow, or next week, or next year?” In both ancient and modern times experts have not been wanting to answer that question, When?

But notice that Jesus does not answer it. So we, when we preach, may safely imitate our Lord.

I heard an old Negro preacher say to an ambitious young Negro preacher, “My young brother, don’t you be cocksure about the time the Lord is going to come.” The Lord himself said that the angels in heaven did not know it, that no man knew it, not even the Son of man, Jesus himself, as far as his humanity was concerned. Of course, he knew it in his divinity. The Pharisees asked when the kingdom of God should come.

Now notice how he replies to questions of that kind. He says, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, there! for, lo, the kingdom of God is within you.” To Pilate he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Paul says that the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. In other words, instead of being curious as to dates, we should be concerned as to the spiritual nature of the kingdom, and our preparedness for it.

There was a kingdom set up and it was a visible kingdom, but the spiritual nature of the kingdom should concern us, and our preparedness for it, far more than to know the date. Keeping in mind the question asked by the Pharisees, he then turns to the disciples and begins to talk about the final coming of the Lord: “The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.” In other words, many sad things must intervene. “You will be discouraged at the delay of your vindication. You will be outcasts, persecuted, put to death, so that the souls of the saints under the altar will be crying out, ‘How long, Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ " So his answer here and elsewhere puts the When a long way off. Likewise as to the place, in answering the question, Where? Pay no attention to men’s “Lo, here, and Lo, there.” The Millerites in the United States were wiser than the Lord. They appointed a date for the Lord to come and a place from which they were to ascend to heaven.

He warns against such folly. When that day comes, it will advertise itself.

As a flash of lightning from one end of heaven to the other, in a moment of time, so will be the coming of the Son of man. There will be no need of human heralds to say, “Lo, here, and Lo, there.” Here and elsewhere many times, the New Testament teaches and warns that the necessary intervening things must precede his coming. Here he says, “But first must he suffer many things and be rejected of this generation.” In this great discourse on this subject, to be considered later, he warns: “The end is not yet . . . famines and earthquakes . . . are the beginning of travail.” Paul, in the letter to the Thessalonians, rebukes them for expecting the advent to come right away. He says that it cannot be until first the great apostasy comes, and the revelation of the man of sin. In other words, it comes at an appointed time.

It is not true that the final advent and general judgment may come tomorrow or next day – that it is always imminent.

Likewise, Peter explains the delay of the coming of the Son of man when they were saying, “Where is the promise of his coming?” i.e., “He said he was coming quickly and he has not come.” He explains that God’s delay is in order to the salvation of the lost; that we must reckon that the long delay of his coming meaneth salvation, i.e., he delays his final advent in order to save men, for after he comes nobody will be saved. This section does teach, however, that the coming will be sudden and that the wicked will be unprepared. It will be as in the days of Noah. Noah for 120 years had been preaching righteousness and telling them the flood was coming; at first, he may have attracted some attention, but after awhile they got to laughing at him, doubtless joked the old man for spending all that money building that huge old tub of a ship, and on the very last day the sun was shining as brightly as it ever shone, the wedding bells were ringing, people were marrying and giving in marriage, eating and drinking. The likeness of his advent to the days of Noah does not consist in the relative number of the saved and lost. Our passage does not mean that as there were only eight people saved at the deluge, so only a few Christians will be on the earth at the coming of Christ, as some premillennialists insist on preaching, but the likeness is in the suddenness of the event and in the unpreparedness of the wicked.

Similarly he compares the advent on these points, with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot, a preacher of righteousness, was vexed in his soul at their wickedness.

They did not repent and reform, so the very day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and those cities were buried under the Dead Sea. So, to the unprepared wicked the advent will be sudden. The great point of the passage is that there will be no chance to get ready after the coming. A man on the housetop has no time to go back into the house to get anything. If he is out in the field he cannot go back home. Whereover a man may be or in what engaged (he may be asleep; he may be traveling), when that great shout and the sound of the trumpet come, the preparation is ended forever.

This scripture teaches clearly that it will be a time of separation – very unexpected and startling separation. The very day that Christ comes two women will be grinding at a mill, one will be taken and the other left; two men will be in the field, plowing, grubbing, or harvesting, and in one flash of the eye one will be translated and caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord, and the other will be left. Nothing that has ever happened on this earth will equal the suddenness and sharpness of this separation: “When the Son of man shall come . . . he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats.” The father may be placed on the left, and the mother on the right; the daughter on the left, and the son on the right.

Now comes the disciples’ question, Where, Lord? “When he comes, to what place is he coming?” Man’s questions are, “ When is it? Where is it?” As he answered the “ When,” so here, the Where: “Where the body is, thither will the eagles also be gathered together.” He will not tell whether the place be Jerusalem or London or New York or Texas, but “wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered.”

THE WIDOWThis is a lesson on prayer. If the reader will take the Harmony and go through it on the subject of prayer, first, as to Christ praying, and what he prayed for; second, Christ’s lessons on prayer, what he taught concerning it, he will be wonderfully impressed by these prayers of Jesus.

Here are two of his prayer lessons. The first connects right back with his advent-teaching just discussed, that is, the relation of the prayers of his people to their vindication at his advent.

Because of this connection we must not construe the words, “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint,” as being equal to Paul’s exhortation, “Praying without ceasing.” Paul gives an exhortation concerning prayer in general, but this parable refers to praying for one particular thing. The idea here is that Christians ought to keep on praying that Jesus would vindicate them, avenge them on their adversaries and not become discouraged at his long delay.

This idea he illustrates by a story of how one on earth, persisted in her plea for justice, before a human court, until her wrongs were righted. Her persistence until successful under far more unfavorable conditions than those surrounding a Christian, constitutes the point of the story.

The judge before whom she pleads is far less approachable, far less disposed to hear, than the Judge to whom the Christian prays for vindication. The argument is, that by just so much as our Judge is better than the woman’s judge, on all the points of contrast, by just that much the Christian should be encouraged to pray in faith, and to keep on praying, nothing doubting.

But though this argument makes it certain that God will at last avenge the wrongs of his people, yet as faith in long deferred vengeance is difficult to impatient people, will the Lord at his coming find that faith on earth?

In general this is the idea of the parable. But let us note somewhat in detail the points of contrast between the human and the divine Judge. In both cases it is the office of the judge to right wrongs, to dispense justice. The Mosaic law sternly requires every judge to acquit the innocent and condemn the guilty and particularly enjoins him to protect the widow and the orphan from oppression. But this judge was unjust. The plea for justice did not move him.

This judge cared nothing for widows. He was not concerned to protect the helpless. Usually the fear of God hereafter influences men to do right in time. But this man feared not God. He was an atheist. Usually deference to public opinion somewhat constrains men to do right.

But this judge “regarded not man.” The case seemed hopeless. But the woman kept on crying out: “Avenge me of my adversary.” Every day she appeared in the court and renewed her plea: “I am a widow. I have been wronged. You are the judge. Avenge me of my adversary.” Perhaps she waylaid him on the streets or followed him home and stood under his window, if the door was shut in her face, all the time, everywhere crying out, “Avenge me of my adversary,” and so at last she found the one and only way to reach him. He loved himself and his ease, or feared danger to his person from a desperate woman, and therefore righted her wrongs.

But God is just; God loves his people. They are his elect. God has promised to right their wrongs. Therefore, shall not God avenge his own elect who continually, day and night, pray unto him, though he delay long to avenge? He will avenge them speedily, though not as we count speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh to avenge them, so long has he delayed to come, and so impatient are they, and so sick from hope deferred, will he find that faith on the earth?

Not, Will he find faith on earth, but that faith, faith in his speedy vengeance on their enemies, not saving faith in Christ. Indeed, not even faith that he will ultimately avenge them, but faith in his speedy vengeance, ten pistin, “that faith.” The article has all the force of a demonstrative pronoun. It designates a particular kind of faith. The difficulty in the way of exercising that particular faith lies in the two ways of understanding “speedily.” He promised to come quickly. But men construe the “speedily” and “quickly” from their idea of the meaning of the words. But God construes them from his idea of the meaning.

With him a thousand years are as one day. So when he said, “speedily” and “quickly,” though eighteen centuries have passed away, that is less than two of our days to him.

Bulwer, in his drama of Richelieu, represents that great cardinal as scornful of future judgments, to whom Annie of Austria replies: “The Almighty, my lord cardinal, does not pay every week, but at last He pays.” The German poet, Von Logau, well says: The mills of God grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small. Though with patience He stands waiting With exactness grinds He all.

All our premillennial friends should restudy on the “quickly” Peter’ s great argument on this point (2 Peter 3), and no longer allow their misconception of Luk 7:26; Luke 18:8 to fill them with pessimistic views concerning the progress of the kingdom and the fewness of Christians on earth at the coming of our Lord.

1. Why did Jesus go through Samaria and Galilee, which were north of him, on his way to Jerusalem?

2. What was the cause of the hostility of the Samaritans toward the Jews?

3. What two passages in John bearing on inspiration, and the individual plan and viewpoint of the several historians?

4. What did inspiration lead each historian to record?

5. What method, therefore, is adopted in the study of the healing of ten lepers?

6. What are the distinguishing features of the healing of the one leper and the healing of the ten?

7. What three special things noted?

8. What great text for a sermon in this connection and what is the point of application?

9. How was leprosy and its healing regarded in that day?

10. What Old Testament case of leprosy cited and what are the points of its illustration?

11. In what country was leprosy most prevalent?

12. What two instances of the healing of leprosy in current literature cited?

13. What two questions does Luke 17:20-37 answer?

14. What were the similar questions which brought forth “the great prophecy” of our Lord?

15. What similar question just before our Lord’s ascension and what was his answer?

16. How does Christ answer the question, “When the kingdom of God”?

17. What should be our principal concern as to the kingdom?

18. What statement of our Lord here puts the when a long way off, and what does it mean?

19. What illustration given of the foolishness of appointing the date and place of our Lord’s coming?

20. What of the warning of Christ against such folly?

21. According to Christ, what must first take place?

22. According to Paul, what?

23. What was Peter’s explanation of our Lord’s delay?

24. What two Old Testament illustrations cited by our Lord?

25. In what does the likeness of the coming of our Lord to the days of Noah consist, negatively and positively?

26. What of the likeness to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?

27. What is the great point of the passage?

28. What illustrations given by our Lord of the startling separations that will take place at his coming?

29. What was Christ’s answer to the question, “Where”?

30. What is the lesson of the parable of the importunate widow and how does it connect back with his advent teaching?

31. What is the principal idea in this parable?

32. Repeat the story of the widow and the judge. What is the point of the story?

33. What is the argument of the parable?

34. What is the relation of this argument to faith?

35. What are the points of contrast between the human and divine Judge?

36. What faith is mentioned in this parable and what is the difficulty in exercising it?

37. What is the meaning of “avenge them speedily”?

38. What is Bulwer’s illustration of this?

39. What is Von Logau’s?

40. What misconception of Luk 17:26; Luke 18:8 here cited and what u the result of such interpretation?