How do faith, forgiveness, healing and thankfulness go together?

If illness is caused by sin, maybe healing is caused by forgiveness. But if illness is just a fact of life, a random chance pandemic perhaps, who do we thank when we're healed? We should all be thanking doctors, nurses and all those front-line helpers risking their lives at this time. Will we pray for them too? And will we thank God as well?

(74) Giving Thanks

Jesus reminded the disciples that God forgives, we must forgive, and forgiving doesn’t make us heroes. Now he passes into Samaria again, at least according to our chronology. He’s not too far from Jerusalem. The lepers he meets would probably be a mixture of Jews and Samaritans, as they’d got more than enough problems without religious argument.

1.       Read Luke 17:11-19.Lepers generally lived outside towns and villages, perhaps forming communities together. If they know anything about Jesus, they’ll know he is a Jew. What does their crying out to Jesus in verse 13 tell us about them?

2.       Jesus sends them to the priests. What priests do you imagine they went to – Jewish or Samaritan?

a.       How willing are we to believe God uses “others”—perhaps even those others we rebuke and struggle to forgive (as in last week’s study)—instead of our own kind of Christians to do his work?

b.      Where do we see this kind of working together in modern life?

3.       The one who returns (verse 16) is a Samaritan? What about the others? (What makes us think some were Jews?)

a.       Who would the disciples have expected to be more grateful?

b.      Who would we expect to be more grateful?

c.       How does this tie in with last week’s parable of the unforgiving servant?

4.       Jesus says “your faith has made you well.” How do faith, forgiveness, healing and thankfulness go together?

Judea and Samaria represented God’s divided kingdom. What might represent God’s divided kingdom today? And what might represent his united kingdom?

For the Pharisees, the coming kingdom of God meant Jewish self-rule and, hopefully, Jewish rule over the whole world. The first Christians looked forward to a kingdom coming with the return of the risen Lord. Read Luke 17:20-21

1.       What kind of kingdom of God do we look forward to?

2.       What do we understand by the “the kingdom is within you”?

3.       What might this have meant to the Pharisees? Was Jesus the kingdom? Or was it “within your grasp” if only…?

4.       If the kingdom is “within you” why might you not experience it? What might get in the way?

But there is another “kingdom of God” still to come. Christians, just like the Jews, have always looked for a kingdom here and now, and a kingdom at the end of the world. Read Luke 17:22-25. (We’ll read Matthew 24, Mark 13 later on.)

1.       How eager is our present generation to see the days of “the Son of Man”? How eager should we be?

2.       Does verse 25 apply only to their generation, or does Jesus’ suffering and rejection continue?

3.       Read Luke 17:26-30. Does this encourage us to look forward to the end, to be prepared, or to ask God to wait?

4.       Read Luke 17:31-33. What “life” does the man who goes back inside seek to save? What do we want to keep?

5.       Read Luke 17:34-37 What do you think the disciples meant when they asked “Where?” (as opposed to When?)

6.       What do you suppose Jesus meant when he answered?

7.       Eagles gather over dead (or dying) bodies in the desert:

a.       How do we stay alive? How did the lepers stay alive—do you suppose eagles gathered over them?

b.      How do we stay in the kingdom (or keep the kingdom in us)?

c.       How does this relate to end times? Or to present times?

d.      How does it relate to thanks?