Where Are the Nine?
Where are the nine?’’’’ — Luke xvii. 17.
ERE is a house, a palace, the palace of the Great King; and there is a window in it — a window of transparent glass. You are looking towards it, but you see nothing. Many rich and glorious things are within, but you see none of them. All that you behold is a sheen of sunlight glittering on the glass. You see the window, and you see it bright; but you do not see through the window into the dwelling — you do not see through the window the Indweller.
Come nearer: look long and steadily. Shade the glare of the outer sunlight from your eyes, and continue looking. The precious things that lie within will begin one by one to appear, until at last, seeing no longer the window, through the window you see treasured up within all the jewels of the kingdom, — see within the King himself looking in love on you. That window is the Word. Many people see it, and recognize a certain purity and brilliancy in its teaching; but they do not see through it; do not through it look unto Jesus, whom it contains and reveals. Ye “search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life.” Ye look towards the window, and when the western sun is beating on it, you behold a shining golden glory, and you think you have used the window well, and obtained the benefit it was intended to confer. Ye “search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: but they are they which testify of me, and ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.” Not those who look to the Scriptures and own them sacred, but those who through the Scriptures seek and find Christ, shall have life. Here is a window in heaven at which the Saviour shows himself. Come near; look steadily. Shade ofi* from the mental vision the disturbing glare of the world’s busy day, and to them that look for him he will appear, — appear altogether lovely.
“Where are the nine 1” It is the turning-point of a tender story. Ten leprous men applied for help to Jesus of Nazareth. He directed them how to obtain a cure. They did as he bade them, and were all restored to health. Of the ten, one returned to thank his Benefactor, while all the rest went off, enjoying the gift but forgetting the Giver. To the one grateful patient who returned, the Physician put the question, “Where are the nine t” He received no answer to his question, and immediately thereafter the scene closed. We learn nothing more of the course or the fate of these nine healed lepers. Tender, touching story; and this question constitutes its
3i6 WHERE ARE THE NJNE?
turning-point. Touching story; we have heard it now. Let us pass on to the next.
No, friend; we have not yet got all that lies within that story. We have seen as yet only the window, with a certain pleasant thrilling sheen dancing on its surface. We have seen the glass darkly beautiful itself; but we have not seen, through the glass, the face, the form, the heart of Jesus.
Fix your regard on the spot a while. Draw near: look steadily in. Adjust your mind and affections: shake them out of the frame which they have taken from the burning cares of the world’s week. Let the walls of this house, and the solemnities of the Sabbath, and the sounds of praise, and the company of worshippers, constitute a veil wherewith the mere disturbing rays may be kept at bay. Look thus, and in secret pray for the Spirit, whose mission it is to reveal Christ to men.
He is near. He has come from heaven and taken his stand behind this transparent glass. He is wistfully looking after the giddy multitudes who are shooting past like a rushing stream, seeing not his loving look, hearing not his pitying cry. He is near to-day: he is within this veil. Through that transparency, if we adjust our eyes and shade off the outside glare, we may see into his heart, and mark there the throbbing of a love that passeth knowledge. Out with the world’s blinding light, and gaze not idly on the shining surface of the Bible, but through it on the Beloved who shows himself at the lattice there.
Through this brief text I beh’cve we may perceive much of the mind that is in Christ Jesus towards sinful men.
As the Lord was about to enter a certain villacre on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem, ten lepers met him, and besought him to cure their disease. Their case was sad. They were incurables. They were shunned by their neighbours. They saw their own flesh wasting away by inches, and could look for no deliverance except in the grave. What none other could do for them Jesus did. He acceded to their request, and healed them all. This act was of a piece Vvith his whole life. He went about doing good. His hand was always stretched out to save, never lifted up to smite. His whole history teems with tenderness. He was a man, and nothing human lay out of his way. He had sympathy for every sorrow, balm for every wound. No human being did this man Christ Jesus ever hurt. When in the overflowings of his love he needed an example of stern judgment to enforce his warnings, he chose a tree as the object of the curse. He would not permit the curse to fall on men. Even fruitless human lives he spared. To show the righteous judgments of God, he smote a barren fig-tree; but he left barren souls unsmitten, that they might get in full their day of grace, — that they might turn and live.
This Physician, however, looked to the whole man, while his patients for the most part looked only to the lower half. They sufl“cred: they felt the suffering, but not the sin. They were eager to get healing for their bodies; and if they could gain this object, were willing to go away with the sting of the second death still in their souls. The blind men at Jericho cried vehemently, “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on us.” When the people rebuked them, and enjoined them to hold their peace, they cried so much the more, — as a stream of water rushes more impetuously down when efforts are made to obstruct its course. Thus men in need cry for a cure when there is sensation in the seat of the ailment. In the same way these lepers entered with their whole heart into the business of applying for a cure.
But while the patients generally thought of the bodily ailment only, the Physician looked to both the disease of the body and the sin of the soul, — the sin of the soul mainly. To heal this disease was the end of the Lord. Other healings he made the instruments, the stepping-stones whereby he might reach his goal. He was always passing through time’s affairs towards the interests of eternity. Those with whom he dealt continually vexed him by attempting to detain him among the stuff of the present:” Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone y bid her therefore that she help
me Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled
about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke x. 40-42).
Let us look now, in the light of these examples, to the spirit and conduct of the lepers. They were all weary of the loathsome disease, and all desired to be healed.
As Jesus passed by, having previously heard of his compassion and his power, they united in a fervent appeal for help: “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.”
He healed them, in compliance with their request; but he sent them out of his sight to be healed. He tries them: he desired that they should return to himself with thanks; but the Lord loveth a cheerful comer as well as a cheerful giver. He does not, in this department, accept of forced or formal offerings. By arranging that the cure takes effect while they are at a distance, he tests effectually whether a true, grateful love, is burning in their breasts. If they desired only the bodily boon, they will go away with the healing and forget the Healer.
Nine of the lepers, on discovering that their leprosy had left them, went their ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise. They were glad, no doubt, when they felt their flesh coming again like the flesh of a little child; — they were glad, but not grateful. The spirit of these men, like the spirit of the beast, goeth downward. They rejoice in their whole skin, as the ox rejoices in green pastures; but as to recognition of the Giver, they are as dull as he.
One of the healed men came back to praise the Lord; and he was a Samaritan. Incidentally we obtain a glimpse here of the hardness that had befallen Israel, as well as of the tenderness with which fhe Good Shepherd sought to restore his own. He receives with open arms the stranger; but he laments that the lost sheep of the house of Israel did not return too to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls.
In the act of calling some of the twelve from their employment on the Lake of Galilee, the Lord had said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He made them what he already was himself His command, “Follow me,” went deeper than the act of walking behind him on the same path: he invited them to do what he was doing — to be his colleagues and successors in the ministry of the gospel, in the work of the kingdom. In general, he came to seek and save the lost; and in one particular aspect of his saving work, he was a fisher of men.
When he cast his line into the world’s great sea, to win souls from it to himself, he put on it a bait that was pleasant to nature. Healing for the body was the enticement which he employed. Many a poor diseased creature, drawn to him as the curer of disease, was caught, and won, and renewed. The woman who was bowed down with her infirmity, and impoverished by unsuccessful efforts to obtain a cure, was in this way brought to Jesus. For help to her body she came; and having come to the Saviour, she found life for her soul. Her long agony had worn her shame away and given her boldness: she pressed through the crowd, and touched the hem of the Physician’s garment. She seems to have been much amazed at the result. The healed was filled with wonder, and the Healer with delight. I scarcely know any occasion in the gospel history in which the Lord manifested an intenser pleasure, than when that poor woman drew from him both the hcaHncs at once. I think I see him standing; still, and turnincr round, weary of the plaudits of a sycophant multitude, and seeking out this one suffering sinner who came to him that she might have life. Remember, in such a case, the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” He gave her pardon and eternal life, — and to give was his own delight.
But the nine! How wistfully Jesus looks after them as they go away! As a fisher, who has cast his line into the sea, is peculiarly disappointed when the fishes approach and carry off the bait without being taken, — so he looked on the healed lepers as they receded from his view. They had greedily swallowed what was sweet to nature, — the cure of their bodily disease; but having obtained the boon they sought, they did not permit themselves to be pierced, and held, and brought back by that which lay behind and within the bait, — the pardoning love and renewing power of the Saviour. Ah, lepers, lepers, if you had known in that day the things that belonged to your peace! You have got quit of the leprosy; but you have not escaped the grave and the judgment-seat. You have put off the leprous skin; but you have not put off the old man. You took greedily the temporal benefit, and despised the precious gift which the Lord was longing to bestow. You made a deep mistake in snatching merely the lesser gift, and leaving the greater behind.
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We are not left to conjecture what the Lord would have said to the nine, if they had come back to him with tender, thankful hearts. We know what he said to the one who did return: “Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole.” The expression which has been translated, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” is simply, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”
The expression occurs (ch. vii. 50) in a case where no bodily disease intervenes, and where, consequently, the meaning is not complicated by the occurrence of a bodily cure. The woman who washed his feet with tears in Simon’s house laboured under no bodily ailment. Jesus did not in that case perform a cure. He found the body sound, and healed the sin-diseased soul. He said to her, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” The phrase in the original is precisely the same as in the case of the leper; but as there was no physical cure to which it could be referred, the translators have rendered it literally, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”
Now, it cannot be meant here that his faith had healed his leprosy. His leprosy was healed before that particular exhibition of faith which consisted in returning to Jesus. Moreover, the nine were healed as well as this one; and manifestly the Lord intends to intimate that the Samaritan had faith, in contradistinction to the nine who lacked it. The faith, whatever its nature may have been, was peculiar to the one of the ten; but all the ten alike were healed of their leprosy; therefore it cannot be the healing of his leprosy that his peculiar faith obtained.
He had another faith, and obtained another cure. He believed to the saving of his soul.
In this man the Redeemer sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied: in the other men he sees no fruit, and therefore complains. The plaint is tender and human, and brings Christ’s compassion very close to us. It is as if he saw the prospect of winning ten, to add to his crown of joy and rejoicing; and missing all but one, he looked after the nine with tears as they went away. In the light of his whole life and ministry you may easily read that the reason why he lamented the absence of the nine was, that their return with thanks would have shown them to be tenderly receptive, and have afforded him the opportunity of bestowing pardon and peace. It was with an eye to an opening into their souls that he had healed their bodies. With liberal hand he had poured out on them the goodness of God, that it might lead them to repentance; he was disappointed, accordingly, when these nine needy men left untouched the treasures of his grace.
Such was the heart of Jesus then; and such also it is to-day. Such was his longing to save the needy then; and such is his longing to save still.
His methods, too, are similar. He has all power in heaven and on earth. He employs the powers of Nature and the facts of Providence to further his spiritual kingdom of holiness and love. In particular, it is the Lord’s way, alternately or simultaneously to administer two different, opposite applications, with one and the same end in view, — -to lead sinners to himself for the saving of their souls: these are the goodness and the severity of God. Mercy and judgment alternate in the dispensations of God, and in the songs of his people. (Ps. ci. i.)
When the Lord relieves a pain, or confers a bounty, he expects that the delivered man will come back to him with praise. We need here a living faith in the Ruler of the world. We miss many specimens of his kindness, through a careless habit of mind. “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even he shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord.” He restores you to health after sickness; or he maintains you in health unbroken for many years. He blesses your business, so that from comparative poverty you come to plenty. He surrounds you with a loving circle, supplies a nursing for you in sickness, which the wealth of a kingdom could not buy. He casts your lot in a pleasant place, where civil and religious liberty is over all, like the air over the earth. He is pouring out his goodness; but remember, he rules with intelligence, and for a purpose. You may see clearly in our text that Jesus healed the lepers in order that his goodness might draw them back tender and receptive to himself. He changeth not: for the same object he lavishes his kindness on you. Oh, if we could hear the word from high heaven — the word would still be, “Where are the nine y”
This grateful spirit, like other spirits, needs to be embodied in order that it may be of substantial use. It should clothe itself in thank-offerings. There are many gifts coming down from the “Father of h’ghts:” there ought to be many thank-offerings contributed to his service. Plentiful showers are dropping from the skies: many springs should be bursting from the earth. Good works that we have in hand — works really needful and wisely planned — should not be starved for want of means to carry them on. “Freely ye have received, freely give.”