You are listening to Heed the Word with our pastor and teacher Ken Davis. Pastor Ken is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Southwest Metro in Burleson, Texas. Please join us as we study the Gospel of Luke verse by verse.

We have a tendency to hang around people who share in the same particular sins that we do, and aside from that sin, they're people that we might not normally associate with. Not that that's right, I'm just saying that's the truth of the matter. And the deeper we get into sin, the less particular we seem to be about our company, isn't that true? The Bible tells us that bad company corrupts good morals. I would say sometimes that bad morals corrupt good company. Amen?

The Gospel of Luke is the third account in the Gospels of the life and teachings of our Savior, Jesus Christ. As believers, there are few studies that will benefit us more spiritually than studying the life and teachings of the Master. While it's important to go into the world and spread the gospel to others, we need to remember one thing. As believers in Jesus, we need to make sure we are surrounding ourselves with other believers, with those of like minds. Stay in connection with those in the body of Christ, not just for fellowship, but also for accountability. Don't forget to stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Heather Word, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, please open your Bibles to the book of Leviticus, chapter 13, verse 1. We'll begin there and then continue in the Gospel of Luke. Now, here's Pastor Ken.

Our study today takes us to Luke chapter 17, verses 11 through 19. But before we go there, we need to really begin in the book of Leviticus. So if you'll turn with me to Leviticus chapter 13, there are some things we need to observe here before we can continue with understanding in Luke. Leviticus chapter 13, starting in verse 1. How many of you have gone through a time when you decided you were going to try to read through the Bible from beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation? And some have even boasted, I'm going to do it in a year's time. Yeah, and you start out great, right? Genesis, fascinating stories of creation and the first families that dwelt upon the earth and how they began to walk with God and how God began to reveal himself to them through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph and the others. Wonderful story. The flood, wow, how exciting was that, right? And then you get into Exodus and you're like, whoa, this is cool, man. The story of God's deliverance of his people from Egypt and the beginning of those wanderings in the desert. And then all of a sudden you hit Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, and you're like, whoa. Suddenly your progress is slowed just a bit. Anybody ever get bogged down in Leviticus? Be honest. I know I have. And sometimes we look at that and we say, God, why did you have to give us so many details about all of the religious requirements of the Jewish nation? How do those really apply to us? And are is it really important for us to know and understand? And you know, the answer to that is, yeah, it really is that important for us to know and to understand. Because it begins to reveal to us things about the nature of God and about his care for his people. And the law is so specific and so incredible that we begin to realize as we read through it our complete inability to meet its requirements. And so as we begin today in Leviticus thirteen, we're going to be reading through some things that might seem to be a little boring. But if you put yourself in the position of the person that this is written about, then you begin to have a greater understanding of the import of these words. Chapter thirteen verse one And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, When a man has on the skin of his body a swelling, a scab or a bright spot, and it becomes on the skin of his body like a leprous sore, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests. The priest shall examine the sore on the skin of the body, and if the hair on the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a leprous sore. Then the priest shall examine him and pronounce him unclean. But if the bright spot is white on the skin of his body and does not appear to be deeper than the skin, and its hair has not turned white, then the priest shall isolate the one who has the sore seven days. And the priest shall examine him on the seventh day, and indeed if the sore appears to be as it was, and the sore has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall isolate him another seven days. Then the priest shall examine him again on the seventh day, and indeed if the sore has faded and the sore has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean, it is only a scab, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean. But if the scab should at all spread over the skin after he has been seen by the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen by the priest again. And if the priest sees that the scab has indeed spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is leprosy. When the lepros soar is on a person, then he shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall examine him, and indeed if the swelling on the skin is white, and it is turned the hair white, and there is a spot of raw flesh in the swelling, it is an old leprosy on the skin of his body. The priest shall pronounce him unclean, and shall not isolate him, for he is unclean. And if leprosy breaks out all over the skin, and the leprosy covers all the skin, and the one who has the sore, from his head to his foot, whoever the pro wherever the priest looks, then the priest shall consider, and indeed, if the leprosy has covered all his body, he shall pronounce him clean who has the sore. It has all turned white, he is clean. But when raw flesh appears on him, he shall be unclean. And the priest shall examine the raw flesh and pronounce him to be unclean, for the raw flesh is unclean. It is leprosy. And it goes on. It goes on to give us detail after detail after detail about how the priest is to examine the one who has the leprous sore and is to determine, based on that observation, whether he is clean or unclean. And if he is determined to be clean, then there are certain procedures that have to be taken, and if he's determined to be unclean, there are certain procedures that have to be taken. Now, if in the event that someone through the intervention of God were healed from leprosy, they actually did indeed have leprosy, they were indeed cast out, but then they were healed. What was to happen? Let's look at Leviticus 14, starting again in verse one. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper, for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him. And indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in the earthen vessel over running water. As for the other bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water, and he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp and shall stay outside his tent seven days, but on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head, and his beard and his eyebrows, all his hair he shall shave off. He shall wash his clothes and wash his body in water, and he shall be clean. And it goes on, there are even more requirements that it lists there. Now you think, why is all that important to me? Well, I want you to observe a couple things. First of all, imagine that one day you wake up and you're living in the time of the Exodus, during the time of Israel when this law had been given, and you're going through the wilderness, through the wilderness for 40 years with Moses and the children of Israel. And one morning you wake up and there is a sore on your arm. And you think, oh, well, you know, hey, that's there's a sore on my arm, but I'm sure it'll get better. But you know what? It doesn't get better. It begins to spread, and you begin to wonder what it is. And so what would we do today? Well, we would go to the doctor, right? Well, in this day and age, the priest basically was in that role, and they would go to the priest, and the priest would examine him, and he would isolate him for a period of time, and then he'd bring him back and he would examine him again. And the priest then would determine whether this was leprous or not. Now, if it wasn't leprous, then wow, what a thrill that was, right? Oh, wow, I'm okay. But if it was leprous, you would be isolated from your family. You couldn't go to work, you couldn't go home. When the children of Israel would travel, you'd have to walk behind everybody else. You couldn't be among them because there was the fear that it would be contagious, that there would be an uncleanness among the people. And so the ramifications of leprosy were severe for the people of Israel. Leprosy is representative of sin, guys. It's something that is infectious, that spreads from one person to another and all over the body of the one that has it. And the thing that is interesting to me as we read through Leviticus is that the priest could do nothing to help. You see, the priest didn't treat the leprosy, he merely diagnosed it. The priest's role in dealing with someone who had leprosy was either to say, you're clean or you're unclean. That was it. To act as a judge. And in the same way, that is all that the law can do with sin. You see, the law can't cleanse your sin. All the law can do is either tell you in a particular area if you are in sin or if you are not. That's it. The law can't redeem you, the law cannot save you. The Bible tells us that there's no one who'll be saved by the works of the law because the bottom line is, guys, we can't keep the law. And so the role of the priest here was simply to pass judgment. Either you're clean or you're not. One of the two. That's it. And the ramifications for someone who was deemed to be unclean were just terrible. Turn back one chapter to Leviticus 13 again. Let's look at verses 45 and 46. Now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, unclean, unclean. He shall be unclean all the days he has the sore, he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. And so not only were you cut off from your normal relations with all of your family and loved ones and friends, but you were cut off from the very society of Israel and you dwelt alone. And whenever you would approach someone, you'd have to call out before they would even get close to you, unclean, unclean, so that they would know, don't get near me, because I am unclean. And it's a group of men, ten of them in all, who were in this very situation that Jesus encounters in our study of Luke 17 today. Let's turn to Luke 17, starting in verse 11. 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 ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off, and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. So here Jesus enters the village, and these ten men who were gathered together, they're standing far off, just like they're supposed to, and they call out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. What's interesting is where Jesus is, he's in a region where Galilee and Samaria border one another, right there, and there's this group of lepers. And what's interesting is we read on is we find that these men are not all Jews. Some of them are Jews, certainly, but at least one of them, maybe more, but at least one is a Samaritan. And Samaritans and Jews have nothing to do with one another, do they? They hate each other, they despise each other, but this just shows you how vile leprosy was. That the bond of their leprosy or the bond of their sin overcame even their natural animosity towards one another. They had to hang together because they couldn't hang with anybody else. There wasn't anybody else who'd have anything to do with them. You know, sometimes sin is that way, isn't it? We have a tendency to hang around people who share in the same particular sins that we do. And aside from that sin, they're people that we might not normally associate with. Not that that's right. I'm just saying that's the truth of the matter. And the deeper we get into sin, the less particular we seem to be about our company. Isn't that true? The Bible tells us that bad company corrupts good morals. I would say sometimes that bad morals corrupt good company. Amen. And so here these lepers were together, and they call out to Jesus. Now, obviously, they had heard of Jesus. And when he came into the town, they knew who he was. And not only had they heard of him, not only did they know who he was, but they knew that he could help them. The scriptures tell us that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. These men had faith that Jesus could heal them because they had heard the word of God that said that he had healed others. They had heard the testimony of those perhaps who had been healed by him or who knew those who had been. And so when they see him, they do exactly what they should do. They cry out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Do you notice they say Jesus Master? They don't say Jesus healer, they don't say Jesus provider, they don't even say Jesus Savior. They say Jesus Master, have mercy on us. They're acknowledging the authority that Jesus has. And in acknowledging that authority, they cry out for mercy from the only one who can give true mercy. And how does Jesus respond? 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. Now there are some interesting things we want to look at here. You remember back in the Old Testament, Naaman had come to the prophet Elisha and he had had leprosy. And what is it that Naaman had told him to do? He said, Go and dip yourself seven times in the Jordan River. And when Naaman obeyed and went and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan River, Naaman was healed. He didn't want to do it. He didn't like the idea of doing it. He thought going and doing that was ridiculous. He thought, aren't there rivers in my home country that are just as good as this little muddy stream that you have called the Jordan? He wasn't going to do it. And his servants said to him, Come on, Naaman, look, if he had told you to go and do some mighty deed to be healed, you'd have done it, right? And he's like, Well, yeah, I'd have done that. And he says, Well, how much more should you go and do this little thing of dipping yourself seven times in the river? And so Naaman went and he did as he was told to do, and he was healed, wasn't he? And then he came back and he came back to show his appreciation to the man of God. But he had obeyed. Now, this time Jesus simply tells them, go show yourselves to the priests. Isn't that exactly what they were supposed to do according to the Levitical law when they had been healed? But what's interesting is Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, not having healed them. Now, in times past or in other situations, Jesus had worked miraculous healings with lepers in very different ways. It's interesting that Jesus rarely performed any miracle the same way twice. I didn't say never, I said rarely. Let's look at Matthew chapter 8. Hold your place here in Luke, but just go to the left here, a couple of books, and let's look at Matthew chapter 8 very briefly. Matthew 8, verse 1. When he had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And behold, a leper came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Then Jesus put out his hand and touched him, saying, I am willing, be cleansed. Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, See that you tell no one, but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them. So in this particular situation, Jesus, when approached by this man, who with great faith comes to him and says, If you are willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus says, I'm willing. And he touches him and he's cleansed immediately from his leprosy. You know, there are times when we come to God and we're bringing to him a particular request. Maybe it's for healing, maybe it's for deliverance, maybe it's for the salvation of a loved one, maybe it's pick your thing, anything. Maybe it's for peace in our hearts or deliverance from a particular sin in our lives. And we come to God and we say, Jesus, if you're willing, you can set me free from this thing. Or you can answer this request, or you can answer this need. And immediately Jesus reaches out and he touches our life, or the life of our friend or our loved one. And immediately there's that healing, that evidence of the divine power, just like that. But then there are other times when we come and we pray, and it doesn't happen immediately, just like that. But Jesus gives us the promises of his word and he says, I'm going to heal you. Now go and show yourself to the priest. And so we have to begin in that time to obey God, believing his promises, before we see the results of those promises in our lives. Sometimes the healing is immediate, sometimes it's over time. Sometimes the healing that we pray for doesn't come until we're reunited with Christ. But we know this that it's by his stripes that we are healed. Amen. And so in this particular instance, Jesus says, Go and show yourselves to the priest. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. You see, it wasn't just that they were having faith in their faith. That's not what I'm talking about. It's not as though they called those things that were not as though they were. That's not what I'm talking about either. What I'm talking about is this they came to Jesus saying, Lord, have mercy on us, asking for healing. Jesus Told them to do something. He didn't just say believe. They already believed. They were asking him to heal them. That's why they were asking, is because they believed he could do it. So he wasn't asking for faith in this instance. What was he asking for? Obedience. He told them, he said, go show yourselves to the priests. And as they did what he told them to do, he healed them. Now, does that mean that God's healing is based on our obedience? No, it's not. But our walking continually in fellowship with him is, isn't it? Day by day, when we choose to disobey God, we're choosing to break fellowship with him. I'm not talking about losing your salvation. I'm talking about experiencing the fullness of what God has for you in your life. Sometimes we pray and we say, Lord God, would you please show me your will regarding this particular area of my life or this particular decision? Or Lord, give me guidance, whether it's relating to a job or a move or a relationship or a decision or any such thing. And it just seems like God isn't answering us. You ever have that experience? Can I tell you that very often when we come to God and we say, Lord, what do you want me to do about this, that, or whatever? We don't hear an answer because what he's really saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Before I tell you anything else that I need you to do, there's this other thing I've already told you to do that you haven't done yet. Go back and do this other thing I've already told you to do. And then once you've done that, then come and ask me about what it is you want me to do here. You see, if we are walking in disobedience to God, why should he give us any other guidance? He has told us at some point in our lives what it is he wants us to do. And very often we don't want to hear about that. These guys right here could have said, Well, Lord, yeah, oh, that's nice. Go show ourselves to the priest, sure, but could you heal us first? And we'll be happy to go show ourselves. Jesus says, No, go show yourself to the priest. And they did it. And the Bible tells us that as they went, they were healed. You see, Jesus did what the law could not do. Jesus did what the priests could not do. In keeping with the law, each of these men, prior to having been cast out, would have gone to the priest for that diagnosis, right? And could the priest do anything for them other than to say, yep, that's leprosy. Nothing. And yet they come to Jesus and he has mercy on them. You see, the law is justice, it gives us what we deserve, but the grace of God is mercy that gives us what we do not deserve. And that is forgiveness and healing and fellowship with him. And so it was that they went, that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. Now there's an interesting point here that doesn't necessarily fit into the context of the message that I'm sharing with you today, but it's important. It's important enough for me to take this little rabbit trail to show you something about Jesus right now. This Samaritan comes to Jesus and he's glorifying God, he's giving glory to God, he's praising God, and he falls down at Jesus' feet. This man is worshiping at the feet of Jesus. He's worshiping. How many of us when we are healed, when we are touched, when we look and we see that God has healed us? How many of us go back and give glory to God? Give praise to God, magnify the one who has done so much for us. How many of us give thanks to Jesus and bear witness, bear testimony of what God has done?

Truly, these are some of the most difficult times that many of us have ever seen. The economy is bad, work is sparse, and there's no shortage of strife throughout the world. But as believers in Jesus, we've been given many great and precious promises. For instance, listen to this verse, taken from our current study. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. You see, it doesn't matter how bad things get, God has promised to take care of us. Today's teaching was only part of a full-length message taught by Pastor Ken Davis on a Sunday morning at Calvary Chapel Southwest Metro in Burleson, Texas. To hear this message in its entirety, log on to heedheword.org. That's heedtheword.org. Once you're there, select the listen online page. Or if computers aren't your thing, that's okay, you can always call us. That number to call is 817-447-5675. That's 817-447-5675. Even if you're not ordering a copy of today's study, we'd love to hear from you. Knowing that God is using He, the Word for His glory, and to encourage His saints is one of our greatest joys. So call us today. This study through the Gospel of Luke has been a real eye-opener. Maybe you've been challenged in some areas in your walk with Jesus. Well, we want to exhort you not to just hear God's word, but to do it. Begin to walk in obedience to the things you're learning. From all of us here at Heather Word, we want to say thank you for tuning in, and may God richly bless you as you seek his face.