March 8, 2026 Gerald Griffin - Between Samaria and Galilee

Gerald Griffin — 2026-03-08

Chapters:

• 00:00 — Welcome & Introduction
• 03:05 — Scripture: Luke 17
• 05:12 — The Borderland's Meaning
• 10:24 — Heart's Spiritual Borders
• 14:34 — Leprosy's Desperate Reality
• 19:24 — Jesus Commands & Heals
• 24:04 — The One Who Returns
• 28:49 — Challenge to Worship Jesus

Transcript

0:00

You saw the brands of the, uh, of the Denison Forum, all the different things, the Denison Ministries. One thing that was not on there is that there is a podcast called Faith and Clarity. Any of you listen to podcasts? Okay, you may be interested in that one. Um, Mark Turman runs that every week. He asked me last week to join him. Excuse me, as we interviewed uh Hormoz Shariat. He is the uh director, president of Iran Alive Ministries. Really neat ministry. You everyone check that out. That's that's worth looking at. And uh, we were asking him questions because, of course, Iran is his beloved country. He's been over here since 1979. Came over here to go to Caltech, I think it was, to study and got a PhD in artificial intelligence. Smart guy. Uh, great guy. And we interviewed him. One thing I was thinking about while we were praying, I asked him the question. Since Americans, as we pray for people pretty much the way our culture has prepared us to pray for people. We have certain ways we do it. And so I asked him, I said, "Well, what would be something outside of our norm? What might we pray for with Iran?" And his first response was definitely not what I expected. He said, I would pray that with the new regime, the new government, there will not be a spirit of murder. Okay, I had to think through that one a little bit, but he explained it. He said, it seems that in our country for the past uh 50 years, 70 years, whatever, uh, because it goes back before the revolution. He said, "Our way of dealing with something was just to kill somebody." So it's a murder. I would like for that to stop. And I thought, "Wow, what a what a great prayer." It's it's a it's a little bit more of a gut prayer than what we usually pray on Sunday mornings, right? Pray that that murder will stop. Um, hey, I I've got a new sermon for you this week. I wrote it this week. I don't write a sermon every week anymore. Can you believe it? I mean, all those years, every week, it felt like I was writing a book. I had to write a chapter every week, no matter what. And then I had to deliver it in front of people. So, um, Mark, I think still writes one every week. I do not. But this last week, and I've written several for down here, but you you're going to get to be the guinea pigs on this, okay? And the good thing's about what we are able to do now is I go to different churches so I can try it out again. So when I get through, if you want to mark notes and say change this part, just send it to me. And I'll I'll I'll change that out. We'll we'll do it a little bit differently next time. I'm glad to be here with you. Uh, Tammy and I'll always love being here. Next week, uh, this coming week, actually, I'm traveling traveling to Oregon to help, uh, a pastor, train him a little bit, help him with, uh, several things. And, uh, then I'll be preaching on Sunday and then I will be back and then I'll be in Austin next week to meet with some other pastors in a in a conference there. And so it's it's pretty pretty busy week, the excuse me, month, the month of March. Well, let's go ahead and turn to Luke 17, if you have your phone with you, your Bible with you, your iPad or whatever you might want to carry, notes in your pocket. Or if you have the whole thing memorized, turn in your mind to Luke 17. And we're going to read a a familiar text, one that you will know. And as I was studying it this week, I found some new things in there. In fact, I found so much new that one thing I do need to do when I finish this sermon is edit it again. I edit my sermons probably about 10 times before I ever preach them. I start off with something that's really, really big, and then I try to just keep making it smaller and smaller. Don't y'all like that? Make the sermon smaller and smaller? And so I still have a few things to edit out. Apologies. Uh, but here we go. We're going to start in verse 11. And as I said, you'll know this. It says, "On the way to Jerusalem," talking about Jesus, "he was passing along," and here's the phrase that I took my sermon uh title from, "between Samaria and Galilee." That is an important note in this text."As he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance. They lifted up their voices saying, 'Jesus, master, have mercy on us.'" So standing at a distance from him, they're yelling this to him. He, when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. We just read Jesus was between Samaria and Galilee. This guy's a Samaritan. Jesus answered, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?""Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" That phrase right there may stick in your craw a bit today, especially in our environment that we have, right? We Jesus pointed out we's a foreigner. I will explain that in just a minute. And he said to him, "Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well." Our story begins with a small detail. In fact, the detail looks almost like Luke is just simply giving us directional points. Because Luke says that they were traveling between Samaria and Galilee. And at first, as I said, it might just be a reference. He's saying, "I want you to know where they were when this happened." But that's not all he's doing, because we need to remember not only is this book holy scripture, but also the Holy Spirit has inspired this book. And Luke is a very careful writer. So when he puts a detail like this in here, it's not a throwaway phrase. It's not a few words that don't mean anything. He wants us to notice something, more than just a location on a map. He's describing a place where two very different worlds met. Jesus is walking the borderland, the borderland between two regions, along the uneasy line where Jewish territory touched Samaritan territory. Do you remember when Jesus said that he needed to go through Samaria and he met a woman at a well, a Samaritan woman? And the disciples didn't really want to go to Samaria. You can tell that from everything in it. Uh, all the way to when Jesus is talking to her and he sends them for for, uh, for supplies. This is Samaria. This is where people did not like to travel. And in that day, this boundary represented a lot more than geography. I remember years ago, I went on a mission trip to a European country, a small one. I'll leave the names out so there's not any uh bad feelings about the country. But as I was being led by uh the young lady who was who was my translator who was going to help me that week. We were driving down a road and I saw that these uh beautiful sunflowers were everywhere. And all of a sudden they just ended and I saw a different land look altogether. And I said, "Is that part of your country?" And she said, "No. That's a different country." And I said, "Okay, what's the name of that country?" She said, "It's just a different one." That's the way she felt about that country. She didn't want to talk about it. And so when the Jews talked about Samaria, they didn't. They didn't want to talk about it. It was two totally different worlds. For centuries, the Jews and the Samaritans had lived with a deep hostility towards one another. How did that happen? Well, it happened all the way back in the Old Testament when the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. For you Old Testament buffs, you remember that quite well. And when they when that happened, the Assyrians did what a lot of conquering people do. They brought in foreign people to populate among the Jewish people so that the Jewish people wouldn't feel quite so Jewish. It's taking away uh patriotism is what they were doing. And so intermarriage happened and when intermarriage happened, inter blurring of religion also happened. So much so that the Samaritans were not quite Jewish in their theology anymore. In fact, they didn't even worship in the same place. And that's the woman at the well was she started talking to Jesus about wanting to argue with him about. So over time, the relationship between these two communities deteriorated very badly. And by the time Jesus was here, many views, uh, many Jews viewed the Samaritans as religiously compromised and socially unclean. In fact, Samaritans rejected the temple worship in Jerusalem and worshiped on their own mountain. The distrust was so deep. Now, get this. The distrust was so deep that if someone was going from Judea to Galilee, there were a couple of ways to go. There was the easy way, and that meant you went straight through the middle of Samaria. And there was the hard way. And that meant that you went down to the Jordan River, you crossed the Jordan River, you traveled along the eastern side far enough you came back over the Jordan River to get to Galilee. So what's the difference? I'll put it to you this way. When our youngest daughter wanted to move to San Francisco for her first job from Frisco, Texas. She said, she said, "Dad, will you drive me there?" And I said, "Sure." Anything for my baby. You bet. I'll drive you there. So we drove. It took about three days. Those are three easy days. That's driving for about eight hours. That's stopping to get lunch. That's driving to where when you get to the hotel, hopefully you can get there before or the motel before it's it's pitch black outside. It's getting dinner. It's it's not a big deal. Three days is still a lot of time on the road. But three days turned into five days. That's a rough drive. That would be the difference between going through Samaria or going around it. And they were walking, not driving. So you can walk for three days or walk for five days. And many chose to walk for five days. So when Luke says Jesus is traveling between Galilee and Samaria, he's describing a place where two cultures touched, but did not mix. And that image, that image, where the reason I'm pushing so much time on that is to prepare us for what happens next. because what happens in this story, what unfolds in the story of the lepers is not just about the border of geography, it's about the borders of the human heart. It's the way that we let things in or don't let things in. In one way or another, every person eventually finds themselves in a spiritual borderland, somewhere between Jerusalem and or Samaria and Galilee, somewhere between Jesus and not Jesus, somewhere between desperation or faith, between wanting relief and wanting redemption or denying it, between seeking Jesus's help or seeking Jesus. Those are the borderlands. I lived in those borderlands for three years. And you say, "Well, why only three?" I, well, I came to Christ at 13 and up until I was 10, none of that even mattered to me. I didn't even think about it. But about the time I hit 10 years old, I started having questions. I started wondering what was up with life. My parents had divorced. I was kind of bounced around a little bit. I didn't understand things. I didn't like being separated from half of my family. I didn't understand why all these things were happening. And I began to hurt. I began to wonder what I could do. And for years, I traveled in that little borderland of not wanting to do anything that would trust Jesus, but also wanting to have some help. And that borderland's what a lot of people go through. And so let me describe one more thing. I've I've talked now about the difference between the heart and trusting and not trusting. But let me go one step further.

This is happening while Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem. Luke takes this passage. It starts in Luke 9: 11:57

51. Let me read it to you. It says, "When the days drew near for him to be taken up," talking about Jesus to be taken up out of this world, "he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Why? Because Jerusalem is where it would accomplish what would happen that would take him up. And that's the cross. It says that he he set his face. Another translation, he set his face like a flint. And he's traveling to Jerusalem. Why? He's going to Jerusalem for the cross. Jesus knows it's time for the cross. He knows where he's going. He knows what he's going to do. He knows what's going to happen to him. He understands that in Jerusalem, something amazing is going to happen. People are going to crucify the son of God. And just like Isaiah 57 says, "I have set my face like flint." Flint is a hard stone. It does not bend easily. The image describes determination in the face of suffering. So this is during that time.

During the time from Luke 9: 13:08

51 following, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He's on his way to the cross. And during that time, there are only four miracles. Now, why's that, why is that important? Because there's a lot before then. Jesus is is healing the sick, Jesus is helping the lame walk, Jesus is giving sight to the blind, Jesus is even raising the dead. But when he says he's going to the cross, the miracles no longer have the front scene anymore. Miracles are only to point people to the message. We're in one of those. The miracle that happens here is only to point to the message. And that message is one of discipleship. Jesus is going to the cross. He's trying to leave those that are following him the words about how to truly follow him, how to be a disciple, what it's going to cost you. So we call this, theologians call this the journey narrative. And this journey narrative is filled filled with some of Jesus's most famous teachings while the miracles take the back seat. Earlier, as I said, there were a lot of miracle, but Jesus is moving to Jerusalem, something begins to shift. Miracles become fewer. The emphasis turns towards preparation for his his departure. They reveal more about following Jesus. Which is really no no surprise. Discipleship teaching happens on the way to the cross. And that is exactly what happens in the story before us. So Luke says Jesus is traveling along the border and ten men suffering from leprosy approach us, or approach him, excuse me. In the ancient world, leprosy was far more than a medical diagnosis. Today, if you got a diagnosis and it was a horrible diagnosis, we might see you here next week. You might not look any different than you did the week before. We might talk to you. You might say I need prayer for this. You might say I need to talk to somebody. When you have leprosy, none of those things can happen. You can't be here next week. You can't talk to someone. You can't go to someone and say, "I need your prayer." Will you hold my hand and pray? No, it's over. because to have the diagnosis of leprosy meant social separation also. There's were enormous consequences. It mean the person could no longer live within the community. You had to move out. It mean you could no longer participate in an ordinary life of a society. It means you were forced to live outside of the town, out in the wilderness. And this is why they clumped together. There was nobody to be with them. And so these folks who were diseased with leprosy, who were dying of leprosy gathered together. And in fact, it was so bad, they could not see their families. I've heard, I've read traditions where they would find places where they could yell across great distance to their families, but they could not get anywhere near them. They couldn't go to the temple. They could not worship. And you need to remember that for just in a moment. They lived on a crazy, lonely borderland where life faded and death waited. This is where Jesus finds these lepers. And the law even required them, when they saw someone coming towards them to get out of the way, to cover their mouth. Isn't that interesting knowing what we've seen in the last few years about mask. Cover their mouth and to yell these words, "Unclean, unclean." Which was the warning, "Don't get near me. I'm trying to stay away from you. I'm trying to warn you. Don't come near anyone." Imagine living that way. Imagine your entire life going on. Imagine not seeing your kids grow up any longer. Imagine not seeing your wife, your husband, having no one around you, no one that you love. And so it is these men who gather together and they yell to Jesus from a distance, "Have mercy on us." Notice what they're asking for. They're not actually demanding healing, they ask for mercy. And whatever course mercy may take. An immediate death would be mercy. Leprosy, to describe it a little bit further, is when the extremities of your body develop no feeling. And as they develop no feeling, you do cuts and scrapes and these cuts and scrapes become infected. As they become infected, you begin to basically rot a part of your body at a time. That's leprosy. It's a horrible thing. And they knew that they had nothing and they had no more and they were at the end of their resources. And when we are at the end of our resources, when anybody's at the end of our resources, the same thing that happens here needs to happen to us. We need to let our needs drive us to Christ. There's a time, guys, when we finally realize, I just can't do it. I just am not enough for everything in life. I can't handle this one thing. It's amazing we think we can handle so much, but there comes a time when we realize I just can't do this. You know you need help. And if one thing that human be as human beings we know is that we do have needs and we try to hide it, and we try to manage it, we try to convince ourselves we're doing fine. But life has a way of reminding us how fragile we are. Eventually, every person reaches moments when self-confident gives way. And then you have desperation. And when that happens, people begin searching for mercy. So that's exactly what these men are doing, what they cry to Jesus for. And in many ways, this is how people first come to Christ. I was asked one time, said, when you came to Christ, did you come because you loved Jesus? No. I didn't love Jesus when I came to Christ. What I loved was mercy. What I wanted was forgiveness. What I wanted was assurance of heaven. When I received Jesus, I began to love Jesus. Many times when we come to Jesus, it can be for what we would call very selfish reasons. I just don't want to live this way anymore. So sometimes it is pain that God uses to awaken us to our need for Jesus. But the story is about to show us something important. Coming to Christ because of need may be the beginning of the journey, but it's not the end. And so as Jesus response responds with a command, he says this. Go show yourselves to the priest. If you think about all the miracles that Jesus has done throughout the book of Luke and throughout the other gospels that we will see. He does miracles in different ways. There is never a formula. Never. There is never, okay, step one, okay, step two. Sometimes Jesus looks down to the ground, spits in it, takes the spittle, wipes it in the mud and puts it on a guy's eyes. Other times he says something and it's over. At this time, from a great distance, Jesus doesn't give them any commands to do except go to see the priest. Why would you go to see the priest? The priest is the stop gap, the door. The priest in this day was like the doctor's office who would look at you, they knew how to do this. It was it's given all the way in the in the Old Testament, exactly how to inspect someone and to look at them and to tell them that they were no longer unclean. About a month ago, I went to a dermatologist. I went because I realized I had not gone in quite a while. The reason I realized that is because my internal medicine doctor looked at me and said, "You haven't gone in a long time. When are you going to go?" So I decided to do it. I didn't have a dermatologist anymore. So I started looking online, and I did what anybody does nowadays. I I asked chat GBT who I should go to. And it said, "Here's some really good ones in your area." And I dug down into that a little bit and I made a a choice and I went to see a gentleman and I went to his office. And when I first walked in, I went to the office and it had beautiful pictures everywhere of all these beautiful women. and it was telling all the procedures they could do for me if I was a beautiful woman. And I asked that lady, I said, "I'm here to see Dr. So- and- so." She said, "You're on the other side of the clinic." "Oh, I'm not in this beautiful area?" "No, you're over there." So I I walked over there and there was another sweet lady there. She said, "What are you here for?" And I said, "I'm supposed to see Dr. So- and- so." And she said, "Okay, just sit here." And I was 20 minutes early. And and uh somebody came to the door and said, "Come on back." And I realized I'm the only one on the side wanting to make sure I'm not going to die of cancer. Everybody else is getting beautiful. So anyway, um, I walked in, he never one moment looked at me and said, "I think I can make you beautiful" because he knew better. Uh, instead, what he did, I said, "I want a, I want a full scan. I want you to check me out." And so, uh they told me to to uh disrobe to a certain degree. And they came back in, he and his assistant, and he took a little uh like a, almost like a pin, and he went line by line doing this over my body and looking. And when he got through, he pronounced me clean. It wasn't leprosy I was looking for. It was something a whole lot less, and I'm glad it wasn't. But he said, "No problem, see you in a year." Well, I walked out of there thinking two things. Number one, I don't have to worry about it number uh anymore. Number two, I can tell my doctor, yes I have. So those two things happened. But to go to a priest with leprosy? The priest starts looking at you. And he's looking at you closely. He's looking, if you look in the Old Testament, for certain kind of blemishes. He's looking for a certain kind of discolorations. He's looking for all this stuff. And he's going to check you much more completely than that dermatologist checked me. Because it's life or death. You cannot put that person back in the community. It will spread. But do you notice what happens? Jesus tells them to go in their state of leprosy to see the priest, which is absolutely ridiculous. He hasn't healed them. But as they are going, the Bible says, they realized they are healed. What's that like? If you have a hand that is more than just an age spot, it's leprosy. There's these just unbelievably ugly blemishes all over you because that's leprosy. And you're walking and all of a sudden you look at your hand or all of a sudden you look at your friend who is also walking, "Wait a minute." Man. You look different. And one by one they stop and they gasp and they start yelling and and shouting and laughing. And they all run to the priest except for one. One. The Bible says this guy knows he can go home again. He knows he can see his family again. He knows he could return to the temple and to worship after he goes to to see the priest. But nine kept walking, ten received mercy, and one goes back to see Jesus. This guy does something that he didn't do just a few minutes earlier. A few minutes earlier, when I read you the text that said that they were a long way away from Jesus and they screamed for mercy, he goes straight to Jesus. He falls on his knees, and he's he thanks Jesus. He at that moment falls and what he's doing is worshiping. He didn't have to go to the temple. He didn't have to wait. He's worshipping Jesus. Earlier in the text, it says all 10 were cleansed, but when Jesus speaks to the one who returned, he says, "Rise, go your way, your faith has made you well." The word translated made you well is a Greek word sozo. You may know that word. It's the word the Bible, the New Testament uses over and over again for salvation. Ten were cleansed, one was saved. That's what happens in this borderland. That's what happens. One man wants more than just what Jesus can do for him. He realizes he wants Jesus. Luke tells us that when this man realized he had been healed, he turned back. Instead of continuing down the road with the others, he reversed direction. And when he reached Jesus, he fell on his face. And at the beginning, when he couldn't get close, now he can, because faith does not remain distant. Faith turns, faith bows. Luke began the story by telling us where it happened, between Galilee and Samaria, a borderland. Two men stood together there in their suffering, but when the mercy of Christ entered their lives, they did not remain together. Nine went down the road, one turned back. And that's why Jesus's question still echoes to us today. Where are the other nine? All throughout our country, there are a lot of people who are the other nine. There are a lot of people who've received something from Jesus. They may have received salvation, they may have received his blessings. I promise you they have. I was listening to a story the other day, and someone was complaining about all the things that were happening to them. And it reminded me today of how that we can easily let something begin to change our whole life, our whole day. This morning, I made a tragic mistake, tragic. I got up and where we stay as the pastors when we come to stay, there is a Keurig there. And I looked at that Keurig and it's changed a couple of times and so I always have to put my glasses on, look at it, see how do I work it today? If you've ever noticed Keurigs, I think if you go to buy one every week, they're different. So I looked at it. I'm measuring out the water and I pour all that and I got it ready and I put the K-cup in and I pushed it down. I put the mug under it, then I pushed it down. And it brewed and I thought to myself, "It doesn't smell right." I just about ruined my whole day. I made caffeine-free coffee. I smelled it. I think I was thankful to God that I did not actually taste it. poured it down the drain, rinsed my cup out from that foul stuff, and started again. You know, that's if if that's the worst thing that ever happened in my life, man, I would be a blessed man, right? But we live as though those little bitty moments are huge. All these moments we think are such a big deal. And I'm teasing, obviously about the other. I don't care. I just made another cup. But it's amazing what we let bother us. It's amazing how we simply become the other nine without even thinking about it. We take time for everything but Jesus. This man came back. When we receive the mercy of Christ and simply continue down the road of our lives, that's not worship. So, will we turn back to the one who gave us our life? Because mercy of Christ is meant to bring us somewhere. It's meant to bring us to his feet each and every time. Every person must eventually decide what they will do with Jesus, or we remain in another borderland, a borderland between discipleship or serving ourselves. At falling at his feet or staying on our own two feet going wherever we want to go. Today, the challenge for this text is simply this. Will we truly be the one that falls to worship Jesus? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, as we look at your word, we're challenged each and every day by understanding that you cross all boundaries. You cross the boundary between life and death when you died on the cross and after that death, rose from the dead. Your whole time on this earth is about crossing boundaries. It's about talking to spiritual sounding people, religious people, and telling them that they still need God's grace. It's about talking to people who thought they could not have God's grace and telling them that God's grace was readily available. It's about crossing over to reach disciples, your disciples, that no one else would have chosen as disciples. It's about offering grace and peace. It's about offering deliverance. And today as we look at your word and we understand all that you have done for us and we remember that and that is the key that we think about it and we remember. May we be the ones who fall and worship you. May we be the one out of ten that truly, truly gives back our thanks. We're thankful we can be here today. Thank you, Lord, for these these great folks. I pray that you'll give us a good rest of the day. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.(Background murmuring)