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November 16, 2025 - Dr Joel Gregory - Where Are The Other Nine?

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November 16, 2025 - Dr Joel Gregory - Where Are The Other Nine?

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:48 Setting the Scene: Thanksgiving Message
01:11 The Story of the Ten Lepers
02:54 Prayer and Reflection
03:53 The Cooties Analogy
04:39 Jesus' Encounter with the Lepers
06:53 The Journey to Jerusalem
08:48 The Power of Mercy and Healing
20:31 The Importance of Gratitude
28:53 Final Reflections and Prayer

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introductions

Well, good morning Chapel. It's good to, good morning. Good to be back. See such a wonderful crowd here. This on the eve of Thanksgiving. I thank everyone who's responsible for me getting you to come by here, the Denison Forum. Jim Denison and Mark Turman, who's a long time friend and student, and the Carters and all of you.

If I started calling names, I'd probably leave somebody out. So good morning to everybody. Uh, I don't know about that reference to Bobby Dagal, uh, diagonal reminds me John Beno was Pastor First Baptist Houston. John used to say, I never lie. I just remember big And, uh, Dagal. Dagal must be remembering big.

He's a dear brother and friend. It's good to be back here. 

[00:00:48] Setting the Scene: Thanksgiving Message

I wish you'd join me today and drop our anchor over in the Gospel of Luke. This is a message here on the eve of Thanksgiving to prepare our hearts, uh, to be ready for a day of. I have granted you, if I were to put a title on this, I think I'd call it, where are the Other Nine?

[00:01:11] The Story of the Ten Lepers

Over in Luke 17, there's a story that we owe only to Luke. Interestingly, at the front porch of his gospel, he says he investigated everything carefully from the beginning and some of the things he found only Luke writes about. And here we have on the way to Jerusalem in verse 11. An encounter of Jesus that we'd know only because of this gospel.

In Luke 1711, on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, 10 lepers approached him, keeping their distance. They called out 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 went, they were made clean.

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, were not 10 made clean, but the other nine were. They was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner.

Then he said to him, go up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well. 

[00:02:54] Prayer and Reflection

Would you pray with me? Eternal God, heavenly Father, God, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We him today to praise you, to magnify and make great your holy name. We thank you that you inhabit the praises of your people. Now we wait before you as believers do all over this planet today to hear your holy word.

We pray that your spirit might visit us as we hear this story long ago and far away, but just as real today as ever. I pray for my words, Lord, that I'll tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as I seek to speak from your word. In Jesus' name, amen.

[00:03:53] The Cooties Analogy

I don't know whether I have them still or whether I gave them away. I can't remember because it goes all the way back to elementary school. You probably had them too at one point. Does anybody remember the cooties? All right, we've got a crowd remembers them. You know, you could touch somebody on the playground and watch, so you got the.

Coo, it was an invisible infection. You, you gave it to somebody and it was obligated to them to give it to somebody else. I remember the best place was in class. If you gave them to somebody in front of it, there wasn't anything they could do about it, right? Yeah. It was an invisible infection. Fiction. 

[00:04:39] Jesus' Encounter with the Lepers

The 10 persons we encounter here had something far worse than the cooties.

It was visible. And it was a strong infection. We meet here on the borderland between Galilee and Samaria. Uh, 10 10 lepers. That was a collective name for a number of kinds of skin disease in that, in unsanitary environment where every road was clogged with all kinds of imaginable. Refuse, and here were 10 of them.

We don't know how many of them were Jewish and how many were Samaritan. In fact, we don't even know. This man was a Samaritan, the end of the story. So reading back into it, there was at least one Samaritan among them, but they'd gotten together. 10 of them, I don't know if they were Jews and Samaritans, they were natural enemies.

They wouldn't even be in the same place with one another. Do you know when there's a flood and there's only hilltops left? They say that sheep and wolves will get there together, or cats and rats because there's a threat. Maybe they got together against all odds because of their problem, or maybe they thought if they came to Jesus as an aggregate rather than one at a time, if 10 of them came, he might have mercy on them.

Just a footnote, the Samaritans is an old word now. Right in the middle of Israel, which even today is the size of the state of New Jersey, there were a group of folks that were left behind when the Assyrians carried off all the Northern Israelites and they resettled Samaria with, uh, Assyrian idolaters and they intermarried with the Jews.

And by the time of Jesus, uh, that group of people were considered other. Don't be around them. Remember Jesus famous. I interview at the well with a Samaritan woman, and she said, literally, Jews and Samaritans don't drink out of the same cub. Jesus was on the borderland there. 

[00:06:53] The Journey to Jerusalem

Our story begins on the way to Jerusalem in this section of Luke's gospel.

Over and over, you read that phrase on the way to Jerusalem. It's a reminder that Jesus' last journey was intentional. He'd already predicted at least three times that the son of man, he himself must go up to Jerusalem, be arrested, tried, crucified, and on the third day rise of again and over and over. Luke wants us to know there was no accident.

It wasn't God's patch up plan when Plan one didn't work. He was intentionally going to Jerusalem. When I pause there, I think about how distracted I am with minor things. Wouldn't you think when crucifixion was just a few weeks away that you might be consumed with it? Cruelty, mockery, beating crown of thorns?

Wouldn't you think he would be consumed with a distraction but not so all the way he had time for folks who cried out? For mercy. Distraction's an interesting thing, I, I made a little study of it a while back, different things that distract people 2023 at level grade crossings where railroad just, you know, level with the road there were 2,150 accidents and whoever it is, it studies, that sort of thing says it's way out of proportion.

Too many than ought to be. They looked into it and they said, when a 400,000 pound locomotives coming towards you, the mass of it makes it seem slower, so people miscalculate the speed of it. I was pondering that in connection with this. 

[00:08:48] The Power of Mercy and Healing

Jesus had something massive out in front of him, but it'll distract him here in this borderland when these 10 cried out.

He had time to stop and to hear, could I take that out of thinness and put it into nowness? Sometimes in our own finite, difficult, problematic, confused, ambiguous situations, we think surely he must have more important things to do. I've got a good word from this. That is, he's never distracted either then or now.

There's not too much in his inbox to hear from you. In fact, Saint Augustine, Augustine, the famous Augustine, I dunno if he gave us the name for the grass, but Saint Augustine, north Africa, the great ancient Christians said he knows you so well that it is as if you were the only person he ever made.

Wouldn't we call out? We can be certain from stories like this and many others that he hears. One, somebody you, well, he heard this and it's obvious from this story, that he dared to draw close to these people. Everybody wanted to stay away from. There's a whole chapter of the Old Testament given on how to handle lepers if you want to get into it.

Leviticus 13 in detail. They had to cry out leper. They had to stay a certain distance away, and yet Jesus, over and over, not only approached him, he'd even touch them. Go back. At the end of the sermon on the mound, one of them ran up to him. Everybody I'm sure went, oh, don't touch him. And Jesus reached right out and touched him.

See, the good news of Jesus is he's more contagious than anything he touches. You don't give him leprosy, he gives you wholeness. I'm so glad for that. I bring all kind of message to him sometime covetousness. If, if I say, touch me Lord, I don't make him the covetous Jesus, he makes me generous. If I've lost my way, uh, I don't make him lose his way.

He's more contagious than anything. That he touches. That's why he could get close, uh, to these lepers. They, uh, they cried out to him, all 10 of them. We don't know how many Jews, how many Samaritans? At least one Samaritan the shortest of prayers. Jesus, master have mercy on us. Could I camp out there just a moment about the history of that prayer?

We can read it or read over it. Uh, it's the prayer that that Jewish Benedict Arnold sellout quizzing in that parable, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collect tax collector was a Jew, sold out to Rome traitor, stood afar, said, Lord have mercy on me. Same thing these folks say. Now it's interesting if, if you're from a liturgical church out of high church, you've heard this song in the original language, just like it's in the New Testament Curer Alia song in uh, box mass in B Minor.

There's a great chorus in which they sing this in just the words outta the New Testament curan, Lord. Have mercy. The great Quaker, a spiritual formation helper, Richard Foster says, if you can't think of anything else to pray, you can be sure that this is a prayer that works. Lord have mercy on me. You can't find a single time in the New Testament, in the Gospels when someone came to Jesus and cried that out.

That he passed them back. Now, now, that's good news to me. Now, I, I know many of y'all are glorified and sanctified and don't need to say that I need shipping containers full of mercy. I'm so glad that when I can cry that out, put my finger on these words, he's a Lord who responds. Jesus, master have mercy on me.

And I'll tell you a travel story a while back. Uh, I was taken to a tiny, uh, Greek island. I'm, I don't hang out in Greek islands at, uh, there's a ti There were no tourists there. Not a single tourist. It was all Greek folks. And, uh, you know, Sunday I wanted to go to church. Well, they didn't have any Baptist churches there.

I went to the Greek Orthodox Church, only church around ancient Christian faith. An hour and a half. I didn't understand a thing going on an hour and a half a priest, investments I'd never seen. They have a lot of liturgical actions and he's waving holy smoke around from a censor. I was clueless. Kissing icons.

I said this, this not like folks back home, but then in that service, hour and a half into here, he started to say over and over. And a chant,

and I thought, well, I at least understand two words in this thing. Lord have mercy. That's an assurance to us that whatever we bring to him, leprosy itself when we say that he's the Lord who. Here's this. You know, I'm also pleased. He's a lord of many methods. He didn't heal anybody else like he told these people.

He didn't reach out and touch them, or he said, go and show yourself to the priest. Now, that allowed for some volition, some willingness, and some discernment. On their part. They knew who he was. They called him Jesus Master, I guess some other leopard told them or somebody. He's running around Galilee and Samaria healing people.

They said, Jesus, master have mercy. And he said, you go show yourself to the priest. That's a strange thing, isn't he? Go back to Leviticus 13 if you want to, and you'll find out that the priest was kind of the public health department and they said, you got leprosy or. If you ever got over it, which nobody did, they said, you're now clean.

And the amazing thing about this story, it says, as they were going, they were cleansed. Can you put some holy imagination there? Leprosy disfigured your face. It took away sight sometimes hearing it rendered your voice. Horse whisper. You were marked by leprosy. Can you imagine the 10 of them? They couldn't see them.

One, they couldn't see themselves, but they saw one Another one of 'em said, Lehigh, you're looking better, Abraham. What's happening to you? You, you look, well, I guess they told one another on the way. As they went, they were healed. When you study Jesus' methods, there's, there's quite a group of them in the New Testament over in Mark.

First thing he did, this man with a withered hand was in the synagogue, and Jesus said, stretch it out. And his word healed him. He touched people like the leper. After the sermon on the mound. Strangely, over in Mark eight, a man who was blind, he spit in his eye. That must have been a surprise. It's what it says.

I guess the guy just needed the help. I don't know what he spit in his eye. Mark five. The woman with an issue of blood grabbed the tassel of his garment. That is, he had more than one way to do what he does. Could I just say this as a, a pastor and trying to be a shepherd of people over years. There's a sense in which the gospel, the good news is the same for everybody and different for everybody.

It's the same story. Jesus Virgin born son of Mary, sinless life, substitutionary death, really dead, buried, the third day, raised and ascended. It's the story. It's what you trust. It's the same for everybody. It was a different for everybody. When you look at the ways he deals with us, they're just as different as your thumbprint.

They say out here on the extremity of the human being, everybody's different. Uh, he knows how to deal with you, and believe me, your situation did not make him dizzy and quit being Lord. Some people feel like, well, you just don't know how complicated and convoluted and difficult my situation is. He doesn't resign.

He specializes in individuality. And as these 10 were going, each of them as an individual was made whole. You know, I'm glad he specializes an individual. I, you know, when I look back over my life. Uh, I could consider, you know, this might have just scrambled his brain. No. The same gospel applied to different people.

These all 10 were made whole. Now they please come to Mary. Let me say this. Sometimes it's better to act yourself into a new way of feeling, then feel yourself into a new way of acting. Now, here's what I meant. He said, you go to the priest and as they were acting on what he said, everything got better.

You know, I find that in my own spiritual life, it is easier for me to act myself in a new way of feeling. Some days I get up just full of the spirit and I say, good morning, Lord. A lot of other days I say, good Lord, it's morning.

I am just telling you the truth, but you know what? If I make myself find a quiet corner and pray when I don't feel like it, and even more than that, read holy scripture. When I don't feel like it, I act myself into a new way of feeling. That's part of spiritual discipline. But this whole story really wasn't told for what I've said so far.

[00:20:31] The Importance of Gratitude

The reason for this story is the unwinding of it. One of them a Samaritan, and remember, he had two strikes against him with a Jew. Jesus was Jewish. His followers, his 12 were Jewish. He had two strikes against him. He'd been a leper, and he was a Samaritan double problem. One of them. Came back to thank Jesus.

In fact, he was dramatic about it, said he shouted out loud and fell on his face at Jesus' feet. Do you ever notice in the gospel's, only two things ever surprised Jesus. The disciples tried to get him to be surprised at things. One day they pointed at, at the temple, Herod built, said, oh, look at this. He said, nah.

He said, that won't be here in 70. It didn't surprise him. Two things surprised him over in John's gospel when a pagan Roman centurion had faith in him and said, you don't even have to come to my house. If you'll just say the word, my servant will be healed. And he says he was surprised. He'd never found faith like that among the Jews.

And here was a pagan Roman. The other thing that surprised him is in our passage, he was surprised. 10 people had something to thank God about and only one of them came and did it. There's really three questions. Weren't there 10? How is it? There's only one who came back

in gratitude surprises him. He's said in his famous sermon on the mountain, a a, a heavenly father makes the sun shine and the rainfall on the just and the unjust his half. Brother James. In his letter, his letter, every good and perfect gift comes down from above from a father of light. Jesus was surprised at in gratitude.

I was thinking the other day pondering this passage about those nine who didn't come back and thanked, they got healed. Surely they did something. Maybe Lapper number one said, man, I, I've never looked this good in my life. And had somebody be an oil painting of him hung it in the di. Nothing wrong with that, but he didn't go back and think Jesus.

Maybe leper number two, started an institute for the study of leprosy. That's okay. But he didn't go back and think Jesus, maybe leper number three, got on cable TV and said, for $19 a month you can help a leper. That's okay. But he didn't go back and think, Jesus, I don't know what all of them did, but. Nine of them didn't go back and the least likely one, among them a Samaritan double stigma went back and thank Jesus.

You know what that suggests to me? It's a good thing That's Thanksgiving. To find something to be thankful about. You might say, if we sat down together over a cup of carpet with Joel, you know, the 2025 been the worst year I've ever had. Somebody here may feel like that listening beyond here. I can't think of his, you know what'll help you?

Thank him. Let me give you something to prime the pump. Just read the newspaper and thank him for everything that didn't happen to you that happened to somebody else that might get you started. You could have been in that headline. I know that sounds silly, but I've actually done that sometime. Lord, thank you.

Thank you. Go over to the obituary. Thank you.

It will help you. Lemme tell you somebody who helped me with this. Some of you might remember this name from back in Fort Worth in the seventies and eighties. John r Claypool for a while. He was a Baptist in for later became an Episcopal preacher. He wrote a book that sold millions of copies. It's called Tracks of a Fellow Struggler.

John wrote it about his 10-year-old daughter, Laura Lee, who contracted, uh, leukemia. He preached a sermon to his church after that, very honestly, how shattered he was, went into remission and he preached another famous sermon that's in this book. Four sermons in the book when she went into remission and praised to God and thanks to God.

But then she came out of that and God eleg, he preached another sermon. And then tragically at 12 Laura Lee passed away sharing his brokenness with the church. He preached that tracks of a fellow struggler. I've given them away to people. But you know what John decided out of all of that, how did he survive?

He survived it by understanding that everything in life is a gift. He said, the only reason I didn't die with bitterness about the loss of Laura, least to recognize having her 12 years was a gift. You know, if you look through life, I and I, this is out of my own heart and experience and struggle with this.

If I look at everything good, that came to me as a gift, it'll lead to gratitude. I don't wanna be like the princess and the p, you remember that story? Hans, Christian Anderson, the princess, and the P. Now he wrote that because the prince was looking for, uh, was looking for a real princess and he didn't know how to give the princess tests.

Somebody showed up at his door in a storm, you remember, wet and cold, and said she was a princess and he came up with a test. He put one P under 20 mattresses and 20 feather bed quilts on top of it. And when she laid down on it, she complained there was a pee there. And that's how he knew she was a real princess.

She said it kept me awake and it bruised me. Now, Hans Christian Anderson wrote that so we'd know who was a real princess. I take something else away from it. Some of us got one P under the mattress and it ruins everything in life. No, there's always gonna be a pee under the mattress. Don't let that keep you.

You know, I wonder if leper number five. I never got over it. He said, I'm healed, but look at how many years I lost being a leper. There's a lot of ways not to be thankful, but I want to encourage you this Thanksgiving. Don't be like these other nine. I'm sure they went and did other good things, but they didn't do the one thing that mattered most.

They came back, one of them came back and literally with a loud voice. Thanked Jesus and fell at his feet. A lot of different words For Thanksgiving, our Latino, Latino friends say Gra French, say me. Sibo coup German. Say Cusine. I don't care what language you say it in. I hope you'll find a time this Thanksgiving.

To say I'm not gonna be one of the nine. I'm gonna find a way to thank him. 

[00:28:53] Final Reflections and Prayer

Would you bear with me? Just a moment in holy reflection and maybe an inventory.

Let me just be a moment of spiritual guide here. I don't wanna be presumptuous, but. What can you thank God about right now?

You see this one who came back, got a different blessing from the others. Jesus told him, your faith has made you whole. We call that salvation rescue. Redemption

is one thing. To receive God's blessings is quite another. To come back and fall at his feet in worship and surrender and hear him say, your faith has made you whole.

Lord in this holy moment, in the beautiful gift of this place for which we're thankful. May your Holy Spirit speak to each one of us As the individuals we are

walking and talking bundles of challenges. Needs, hopes, anxieties, fears, aspirations, plans, the whole bundle of things. We are. Give us the faith to know, you know us better than we know ourselves. And in the midst of that grant to us, the discipline that the apostle mentions in, not for everything, but in everything.

Give thanks. May these days ahead be Holy days. Not just a holiday, but holy days. As we render to you Thanksgiving, for all your goodness to us, and we would pray with this ancients, maritan, Lord Jesus, master, have mercy on us. In Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen.