We'll turn with me now to Isaiah chapter 19. We're going to look briefly at Isaiah chapter 19. You'll find it on page 684 in the Bibles in front of you. Isaiah chapter 19. I'm going to read verses 18 through 25 to provide a little context for the sermon from Luke 17. Hear the prophet Isaiah. is speaking of what God will do among the nations. Isaiah 19, verses 18 through 25. Hear now the word of the Lord. In that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear by the Lord of hosts. One will be called the city of destruction. In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord at its border. And it will be a sign and for a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. For they will cry to the Lord because of the oppressors and he will send them a savior and a mighty one and he will deliver them. Then the Lord will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day, and will make sacrifice and offering. Yes, they will make a vow to the Lord and perform it, and the Lord will strike Egypt. He will strike and heal it. They will return to the Lord, and He will be entreated by them and heal them. In that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptian will serve with the Assyrians. In that day, Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed is Egypt, my people. and Assyria the works of my hands, and Israel my inheritance." Beloved, we have a sweet promise before us in this prophecy from Isaiah, that the days will come, and indeed, because of Jesus Christ, they already have come. We live in these days of triumph, these days of the King. when those who were once the oppressors of the church, the Egyptians, will now join the church and worship the one true God. Likewise, that those who once led the church out into exile, who once conquered her and abused her, the Assyrians, will now come and join her in worship. We live in this tremendous time, the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. in which he saves even his enemies. So turn with me to Luke chapter 17, and we will see Jesus coming as the King to save his enemies. Luke chapter 17, verses 11 through 21. This is on page 1028 in the Bibles in front of you. Page 1028. Luke chapter 17. Verses 11 through 21. Here again, the word of the Lord. Now, it happened as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, then as he entered a certain village, there met him 10 men who were lepers who stood afar off and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus Master, have mercy on us. So when he saw them, he said to them, go, show yourselves to the priests. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned with a loud voice, glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well. Now, when he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered and said, The kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, see here or see there. For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. Amen. On one beautiful afternoon, I trotted out after my brothers across the yard. And we passed through the fence into the heifer lot. That's the teenage cows who haven't had babies yet. And we went through their pen and into the next one, which was the dry cow lot. That's the pregnant cows who are not giving milk right now. And we passed through their lot and we climbed through the third fence and out into the hillside. We went down the steep hill to the little green pond at the bottom of the hill where the muskrats lived. We walked out and around the pond and started up the hill on the other side. And when we got to the top of that hill, I could look out into the valley below, the rest of the farm rolling out from behind that hill. There was a little stream that came down off the hill and ran through a grove of trees at the bottom, and it fed into the Rondout Creek. As I was standing there on the hill and sweat was dripping down my head and my mouth was dry and my feet were sore and my legs were wobbly, I gasped out to my older brothers, Where are we going? What are we doing? And they just laughed as they trotted down the hill and said, oh, just follow me. Do you sometimes feel like you're following a long-legged older brother when you follow Jesus, who just keeps calling after you? Just follow me. Just follow me. Even as your legs grow weak, And your heart grows weary. And even as you begin to wonder, where are we going? And why are we taking this route? Even as we begin to wander here and there through our lives and we look around and we say, I'm not where I thought I would end up. And I'm not surrounded by the people I thought would be here. And boy, the times have changed, the people have changed, and I have changed. And you step back and say, what is Jesus doing? We have a text before us that lays out gospel hope for such moments as that. When you realize you're out of breath and you realize you're weary and you realize you don't know where you are or where you're going. And Jesus holds out this truth and says, trust me. Trust me. I know where I'm going and I know where I'm leading you. You see, the reality is Jesus saves the strangest people in the strangest places. Jesus does some of his finest work in some of the weirdest ways. And though we wander and are confused, he yet gives us this comfort that if we heed the words, follow me, And we go with him anywhere and we share his love with anyone, we will yet find him wise. We will yet find him good. That he knows what he's doing and he's doing it well. Now at the beginning of our text, as Jesus is beginning to illustrate this point, we find him choosing an unlikely path. It says in verse 11 that he is on his way to Jerusalem and is passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Now this does not mean that he's actually going through the heart of them, but rather the midst of those two regions. That is the frontier, the no-man's land between those two regions. He is walking, as it were, down the border of Samaria and Galilee. It's a marshland. It's a swampland. It's a place that is generally uninhabited. Those of Galilee don't want to live that close to Samaria, and those in Samaria don't want to live that close to those in Galilee. And so there's this empty, unwanted space that sits between them. And it's Jesus who is making his way, in a very un-Jewish way, along that border. The Jews had faithfully in that day gone long around Samaria to get to Jerusalem. They had gone out of their way to avoid this piece of property. But Jesus went there willingly and intentionally. He had a purpose in mind. It was a place he was not afraid to go. And it was inhabited by the wrong kind of people, the rotten people that society wanted to avoid. Hopefully by now, by just my use of descriptions, you're envisioning those parts of Boston where Jesus is walking. Now, this is not to decry the installation of the turnpike or I-93. I mean, just this last Tuesday, I enjoyed going to and from South Boston on the turnpike. It saved me all the traffic of the surface streets. But you know what you can't do on the turnpike? See people on the streets and rub shoulders with sinners. And Jesus comes into the world to find sinners. And Jesus comes into the world to rub shoulders with the sick and the sinful. He is not afraid to traffic in the land that humanity would like to forget. He's not afraid to walk in the community that the rest of civilization has ruled out of bounds. And dear saints, if we would be his followers, we must follow him into places we don't want to go. and walk among people we'd rather pretend don't exist. This is the reality of his mission, that he has come into the world to help the filthy, to help the hurting. And if we would share his mission and be the church he calls us to be, then we must not fear the dark alleys and dirty streets of our city or of New England. Likewise, the session has actually asked us to consider about where we might pray that God would open a new work. Don't assume we should pick two locations full of good reformed churches or prosperous, well-due Americans. Perhaps Christ has something bigger in mind that he would lead us into a place that seems unlikely right now. that He might lead us into a region of New England that is full of hurts and wounds and grief because He's come for just such people like you and me. He was not afraid to walk in our neighborhood. He was not afraid to visit our broken homes. He was not afraid to come knocking at the door of our hearts with all of its wounds and filth. And dear saints, if He could love a sinner like you, then know for sure he would call you to love fellow sinners, too. This is what he holds out, these places where we should go. But not only does he want us to go into these unexpected places, these needy, hurting communities, he wants us to go and pay attention. What's the first rule of walking the streets of downtown Boston? Don't make eye contact. Jesus does not obey this rule. Jesus goes into this place, this no-man's land that the world has forgotten and neglected, that is inhabited only by those who have been abandoned by society, and there are lepers gathering. They hear the Great One has come, the Messiah has come, and so they gather together these ten lepers, and they form a little choir along the road. They stand shoulder to shoulder there on the hillside where they have a full view of Jesus' path, and He cannot miss seeing them. And the lepers begin to cry out with one voice. They begin to lift up their voices and shout loudly, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Now, throughout this sermon, I primarily want to preach from Jesus' perspective, but I cannot resist having us learn from the lepers how to pray. Notice, first of all, that when the lepers pray, they pray together. They gather together. The leper does not straggle along the street. Ten of them come together so that their voices might be raised in unison, so that their cries might be loud and intense and fervent. Dear saints, do you pray with one another? Do you call upon God with someone else present? Secondly, they're loud. They pray together and they pray loudly and they lift up their voices and they echo through the streets and they cry out in the hills. Are we a loud congregation when we pray? Do we express the fervor of our hearts, the intensity of our pleas? Are we afraid to be real and emotional with God? These lepers know their needs, and so they are not afraid. And so they pray with intensity and volume, but notice the content also thirdly of their prayers. They call him both master and merciful. They see the God of heaven as sovereign, the master, the Lord, but they see him also as the merciful, the kind, and the compassionate. They see him as able to help and willing to help. They see him as a good father on whom they may call. Dear saints, let us learn to pray like lepers. To pray with one another, to pray with intensity and volume, to pray with a heart of faith that says, my God reigns and he loves me. But back to the point about Jesus, he hears them. He does not stop up his ears. He has not come into this wasteland of the world in order to pass through as swiftly as he could. He's walking through with open ears. He's wanting to hear their cries. He is listening carefully to their voice. And in verse 14, it records that he saw them. Can you guys remember how many sermons I've paused and said, did you notice that? He saw them. In nearly every recording, of a healing by Christ, Luke mentions again and again and again, he saw them. That Jesus takes the time to notice needs. He is racing to a cross. He could easily be overwhelmed with the darkness he is facing. He is marching to his death. to be an atonement for sin, to be slaughtered by his own father at the hand of the Romans. If anyone could have been caught up with all of the fear and the drama and the chaos of his own existence, it was Jesus. And yet he was not. And yet even in that dark and despairing land, he was listening to others and he was looking for needs. We were driving out of a Walmart parking lot when we saw perhaps the finest sign we have ever seen a beggar hold. Bet you can't hit me with a quarter. That's what the sign said. Lydia scrambled for the change drawer. Give me a quarter, give me a quarter. We threw a quarter. We missed. We threw a second quarter. I think we hit him. And then we said, this guy's too funny. Let's get him lunch. There is something important about seeing needs. There is something important about seeing the needy and saying, you know what? I have an hour. Let's get him lunch. Because nothing matters right now like showing someone the love of Christ. Jesus is walking to the cross and there is nothing more important than him hanging on it. For all of salvation depends on it. But he is still not too busy to listen to the cries of lepers or to look on the needs of those who are hurting. Dear Saints, if he could do this, then we have no excuse. There is nothing we do that measures up to dying for sinners. And so we have no reason not to hear the cries all around us or to see the needs all around us or to escape that inner pressure of our own life that causes us to ignore one another. Beloved, follow Jesus in seeing others, caring for others, and meeting their needs. But thirdly, notice that Jesus not only is willing to go and occupy their space and invade their land of hurt and of woe, he is willing to see them and hear them and have a relationship with them. He thirdly is willing to command them. and to give them orders. When he saw them, he said to them, go show yourselves to the priest. And so it was as they went, they were cleansed. It's a remarkable command because as Tom read earlier, it's right out of Leviticus 14 with one problem. The healed leper was to go and show himself to the priest. These guys weren't healed. They would have very legitimately looked down at the road and said, but Jesus, There's still leprosy. How could I possibly go and show myself to the priest? Some would have even rightly sort of had this spirit of arrogance that says, well, that's a fool's errand. Why would I go and show my diseased body to the priest? All he's going to do is tell me I'm sick. And yet these lepers do not do that. They go. In faith they obey, but notice that Jesus does not command them to believe his power. He commands them to demonstrate their faith. He doesn't say just believe. He says, show me you believe. Go to the priest as if you were healed. Act as if you were cleansed. Behave as if you were forgiven. Live out this obedience to which you lack the power. And in faith, I will give it. To put it this way, it's a good follow up to Friday night's conversation, I understand. Paul says, it is faith without works. James says, but it is faith that works. Dear saints, Jesus is not afraid to give commands. He is not afraid to say to the poor and the needy, to say, rise up, my power and blessing are with you. Go and show yourselves to the priest. Follow the law for those who are forgiven. There's a beautiful line in Calvin's commentary on this, in which Calvin acknowledges, when we, by faith, dare to obey God, we show that we believe in the forgiveness of sins. When we dare, by faith, to actually advance as lovers of a hurting world and to care for others, we show that we know we have healing, that we have strength and peace through the gift of Jesus Christ. I remember, and I think I've told this story briefly before, my missions professor in seminary Before that was a missionary and he went into a closed country and was of course immediately arrested at the airport when he arrived. And they brought him before the military dictator who said, why are you here? And he smiled and said, I'm here to plant churches so that people can worship Jesus. This is generally not how you get into closed countries. And the dictator just kind of scratches his head, and he's like, you've got to be kidding me. You just come in and admit this? And he's like, yes, I am here to build the church. I am here to preach Christ. And then he leaned across the desk and said, will you help me? Beloved, we have a king, a king of kings, of whom should we be afraid? Who should we fear to help? Who should we fear to love? To whom should we fear to preach? Who is there among the human race that we cannot say, repent and believe as Peter did at Pentecost? To whom could we not cry out the gospel commands, come and worship my Savior? He is worthy, truly. We could have the courage of Christ and follow him, that out of the fullness of his love, out of the completeness of his salvation, we could see any sinner on any street and say, you're not too far gone. I know a Christ who can save even you. Beloved, we must follow Jesus. Let us follow him into weird places. Let us follow him right up to the face of weird people and let us believe he is sufficient, that he is a good savior. The reason for risking this, there are three actually, is then given in the rest of the story. In verse 15, Jesus is continuing along the way. Having given his command, having seen the ten depart over the hillside, he continues his journey to Jerusalem. When there it is, as he's walking down the road, one comes running to him. And Jesus recognizes him. Ah, this is one of the ten lepers. He must have made his way to the priests and has now at last come back. Notice the leper has volume control issues. Having cried out in a loud voice, he now cries out in a loud voice again. But this time he is not begging for his master to have mercy. No, in verse 15, he is glorifying God. And he falls down at the feet of Jesus and he gives him thanks. Notice that Luke equates the two. that glorifying God is giving Jesus thanks. This man has become persuaded that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the Savior come into the world, and he is giving him thanks and he's crying out the praises of God. His heart is bursting with joy and with gratitude. He is down on his face. Oh, and he is a Samaritan. A Samaritan. And this would set back Jesus' audience. This is the wrong guy. He's not supposed to be the hero in this story. This is not the figure we were looking for. Yet he is like a leper, a group of lepers we have seen before back in the books of the kings. Do you remember when the Syrians had besieged and bottled up Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom? And they were starving inside, and they were crying out for relief. And the king had finally got to such a point of desperation that he was ready to behead Elijah. And outside at the gate sat the lepers, starving and hungry. And the lepers look at one another and they say, you know, if we stay here, we will starve and die. Because we can't go into the city, and they're all starving anyway. So let's go over to the camp of the Syrians. What's the worst thing they could do? Kill us? So they go into the camp of the Syrians, and no one is there. And they start grabbing all the fancy clothes and the jewelry and eating all the good food and drinking all the good drink, and all of a sudden, they look at each other and go, oh, this isn't right. God has done great things. We cannot keep them to ourselves. This is what the leper knows. I have been healed. I must cry to the heavens. There is a healer. I know someone who heals. Are we bursting with the praise of God? Do we know the riches of His gratitude and His grace? Do we say to other people, I know a good God, a loving Father, a merciful Master? I know a Jesus who heals and who saves, who's not afraid to go into your hurting world, who's not afraid to join you in misery, who's not afraid to see you, hear you, and touch you. He is a good savior. Are we not the people full of all his grace and therefore spilling forth in gratitude? This surely is how we should be. A people that are so grateful for his grace that we glorify him openly in the streets. Even we, the most unusual suspects, like Samaritans. Jesus notices that this odd thing has transpired. Calvin jumps to the conclusion that the other nine were Jews. I don't know that. Know that, the text doesn't say it. Rather, in verse 17, Jesus simply notes that his return on investment is pretty low. That he has healed ten, and one has come back. And he, a foreigner. Jesus answers, that is he responds to the man glorifying God. He responds to this outpour of gratitude and says, but were there not ten? Where then are the other nine? Was it only this foreigner? This is the wrong guy. Was he the one who would come? Isn't this alarming? Isn't this surprising? You'll notice that Jesus is going to start taking a sarcastic tone of voice here in the rest of the text. He's like, isn't this alarming? Only the foreigner, only the Samaritan would come. Do we find the grace of God a surprising thing? That God saves the most unlikely of people, and that it seems like our efforts are not worth making in a particular area with a particular people, and yet Jesus works there. I remember very fondly when I was in seminary, having an interaction with a drug-addicted neighbor. And we would speak about many things, and I would attempt to share the gospel. And finally, one day, I was presented with an opportunity to just lay the gospel out for him. I discovered that he was on his way to buy more drugs. And so I intervened, and I confronted him. And the whole time, I'm thinking, this is such a waste of time. And sure enough, After about 10 minutes of confrontation, he passed me by and went on his way. And we went on our way, frustrated, confused, like this is for nothing. Can you imagine our alarm when six weeks later we walked into the church building and there he sat? Why should we go to the most unlikely places in New England? Why should we build relationships with the most unlikely people in New England? Because Jesus saves unlikely people. Because Jesus works in the lives of sinners. Because He came for lepers. Because He came for sinners. Because He loves the lost. Dear saints, do you believe in the power of the Gospel? If we have experienced the power and mercy of Christ, then we, above all people, should, out of a heart of gratitude, be willing to follow Him anywhere, and to share the Gospel with anyone. But what is more, if we actually believe in the power of the gospel, that it actually saves sinners, then we should be in the lives and world of sinners, and not afraid to build relationships with them. Then last of all, Jesus has the intervention of the Pharisees. Now, you have to imagine that the Pharisees are not terribly happy with being in this place at all. These are the Pharisees who got the bum assignment. They've been commanded by the higher ranks, the supreme commander, to track Jesus wherever he goes. They're stuck hanging out with his disciples. They're stuck following him through this wasteland of no man's land, full of lepers and vagabonds and villains. And as they wander along with him, they see this interaction. They see the return of the Samaritan, and all of a sudden, the Pharisees go, hey, Jesus, when's the kingdom coming? This is what we call a pivot. They don't like where this conversation is going. They don't like the idea that Jesus is saying, even the Samaritan can get grace. That even the leper can get healing. That there's no human that you can stick in a box and say, they don't deserve the love and grace of Jesus Christ. For all humans are in that box. None of us deserve it. And yet, the Pharisees are ready to make a change. So Jesus, talk to us about the kingdom. Tell us about this wonderful restoration of the Davidic kingship. Tell us about the kingdom of the Jews. The reestablishing of our ancestral land. And Jesus says, well, you aren't going to see it. It doesn't come with observation. This is a harsh comment. Well, you're not going to see it. It's not you're going to say, oh, they're there and you're not going to see it. It comes within. It starts in the heart. It's this faith that you see in the Samaritan. It's the gratitude that you hear from the Samaritan. It's the transformation of a heart that has found God loving, that has found Christ forgiving. It is that transformed heart where you see the kingdom coming. It's this kind of picture. The Samaritan has risen from his feet. And Jesus has thrown his arm around the Samaritan and is like, my brother, welcome to the kingdom. And the Pharisees rush up and push them apart and say, Jesus, what about the kingdom? When is that going to come? And Jesus turns to the Samaritan with this confused look. Did you not just see the kingdom come? They ask Him in the face of the healed leper, when will the kingdom come? In the face of the worshiping Samaritan, who has just cried out, this man is God, come in the flesh. And the Pharisees come up and say, so when's the kingdom coming? And Jesus says, it's right here. It's right here in the heart of the Samaritan. It's right here in his praise of God. It's right here in his spirit of gratitude. It's right here in his love for others. Dear saints, the kingdom has come. Because the king has come. Because Jesus walks among us and he walks the streets of Boston. The burning question this morning is do you walk with him? Jesus is on the move, and he is saving sinners. The question is, will we join him? As we were trudging down the next hillside into the valley, and I felt like any minute my knees were going to buckle and I was going to go flying down, we got to the grove of trees at the bottom of the hill. And all at once I realized, They were all apple trees, and they were all ripe. And for the rest of the afternoon, we sat in the branches, picking apples and eating them until our faces and hands were sticky with the sweet juice. Dear saints, Jesus has us wandering in hard and weary places, and it is confusing, and it does hurt. But it is not without purpose or point, and it is not without good, that there is an end, a kingdom to which he is bringing us, a kingdom which he is descending upon this city with, and he is establishing his reign and his love here. The question is, will we partake of its sweet fruits? Will we lie back and enjoy the rich treasures of the King and say to others, come, come and find my sweet Savior, sweet. Beloved, Jesus saves all kinds of people. So follow him anywhere and share him with anyone. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we rejoice. that you are willing to come into our wicked world and you are willing to listen to our cries and to see our needs and to die for our sins. Our Father, forgive us for keeping so great a salvation a secret. and give to us a true gratitude for Christ that is evident in how we work and how we worship and how we play and how we love. Give us a true belief in the gospel that brings it to our lips and to our conversations. Give us, O God, the grace of Jesus Christ to become a grace-filled, grace-giving church. Our Father, we rejoice that these things that we ask now are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, and that he has already been pouring out this grace which we now ask. And so we give you thanks in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.