Amen. All right, turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke. Chapter 5, in Luke's Gospel, chapter 5, we're looking at verse 12 through 16. And while he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one but to go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing. as Moses commanded, for proof to them. But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he withdrew to a desolate place and prayed. Lord God, once again we come before you, beseeching your spirit to illuminate for us the text that you would give unction, an anointing to my mind, my heart, my lips, to speak forth, O Lord, Your will and Your purposes through this passage. We pray that You give us ears to hear, hearts to understand, that which is for us to know, and that we would not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. O Lord Jesus, we ask for You to be with us at this time. In Christ's name, Amen. Several years ago, I had to go for a routine cancer screening for colon cancer, which is a strong family trait. There is a history of colon cancer in my family, and from a young age I've been going for screens. When I was at the age of 35, I was told by my doctor after the colonoscopy that I had a precancerous tumor that needed to be sent out to a lab determine if it was malignant or benign. For the days that went by between the understanding that I had this tumor until I got the report, I can tell you was a nail biter. And you could imagine the relief I felt when he told me it was benign. I am sure that most of you here either have a loved one or you yourself have also had a similar experience where some abnormality in your blood work or in your body was discovered and a biopsy was taken and you had to await for the results. Some of you here, like myself, might have been relieved to find out you were in cancer and some of you here may have heard the news of cancer and have either recovered from it or fighting it or you know someone who went through this. And I suppose that there's nothing more angst ridden than to anticipate the potential or possibility of being diagnosed with cancer. Why is that? Because depending on the cancer, it can be a death sentence to us. It is a dreaded disease. It is awful. I've watched many people over the years die of cancer, and it is an awful and painful experience. a loved one who has gotten cancer, you know how awful it could be. Now in ancient Israel, they didn't have a way to understand and diagnose cancer like we do. But one of the most dreaded diseases in ancient Israel would have been leprosy. So much so that Jewish historian Josephus called it a living death. Now we hear often about this disease in the New Testament, But I'm afraid our understanding of it is limited. What was leprosy? Well, in modern times we refer to leprosy frequently as Hansen's disease. It was named after the doctor who studied and classified it. And it is a disease of the nerves, where the nerves can no longer feel pain. And as a result of a lack of sensation, multiple injuries are are taken to the body, digits are reabsorbed, the nerves in the eyes develop corneal ulcers, people go blind, and it is a dreaded disease. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easily spread or contagious. But most certainly in biblical times, and when we're looking at leprosy here in this particular passage, I do not believe and I'm not convinced that Hansen's disease is what is being described In fact, leprosy was a broad category to describe many common skin diseases today, which we would see as easily treatable, like psoriasis or eczema. And so in the Old Testament, if you were to wake up one day and discover a rash on your body, it would be the most terrifying thing that could happen to you. because just like going to an oncologist to get a cancer diagnosis, that rash now meant that you needed to go to the priest and you needed to discover if this was leprosy or not. There was a very tedious process. In the book of Leviticus, extensive instructions were given for the priest for diagnostic purposes. If a rash, a scab, or a lesion on a person's skin was found, whether it was a harmless problem or deemed to be leprosy, the priest was given the task to make the definitive diagnosis. But if a Jew in that day discovered this, it was, in a sense, a very angst-ridden experience, just like getting a cancer diagnosis. For Jews, it was a death sentence. It was a death sentence, not only to be dealing with a physical illness, but to be cast out of society and be called unclean. The lot of the leper can be summed up in Leviticus 13.45. The leper's person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose. And he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean. And he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone and his dwelling shall be outside the camp. The diagnosis meant you were cast out of your family. You were cast out of your community. You could no longer work. You could no longer socialize. You could no longer worship. You had to live in isolation and humiliation. Whenever someone came near you, you had to cry out, unclean, unclean, unclean. They were outcasts. They lived in colonies and were beggars. It was the most miserable existence of loneliness, worthlessness, and suffering. It was not just a physical suffering, but a psychological and emotional suffering of an intense reality. And this is where we come to our passage, where Luke introduces us to a man who was in quote, unquote, full of leprosy. As a medical diagnosis, Luke is telling us this was not a man with just a little skin disease. This was a man who was filled with leprosy from head to toe. He had an advanced case of the disease. And clearly, anyone who would come in to contact him would have been terrified. But this man came into contact with Jesus and it would reverse his fortunes and change his destiny forever. And so let's examine what this text is saying to us today and how it applies to us. Number one, the first thing we want to look at is the leper's faith. The leper's faith. The leper in our story is in one of the cities that Jesus was visiting. We are not told what city, but we do learn in this passage this man was a man of great humility and faith. He was a man who knew that Jesus was the only one who could heal him, and he did whatever he had to do to get an audience with Jesus. Now obviously Christ was well known for his ability to heal. We learn in these opening chapters that his fame spread through the region. People came to Simon Peter's house to be healed. We're hearing about the miracles and the works that are a display of the kingdom, power and authority of Jesus Christ. And so when this man finds Jesus, we want to see what he does. The first thing we notice is that he fell on his face. He fell on his face. This is a posture of worship. To fall on one's face was a posture of a menial servant. before a king. In fact, the word worship in the Old Testament in Hebrew literally means to lay prostrate on the floor before a king. It was an expression of total unworthiness before someone who is worthy of far more glory and honor of yourself. It was an expression of brokenness. It was an expression of humility. And this was a man who had no nothing to stand on, no pride, no ego. He was already reduced to the worthlessness and isolation of leprosy. He was under a curse, so to speak. He was considered unclean and he had no problem throwing himself at the feet of Jesus. Notice also he begged Jesus. This was a man who was desperate. He was desperate. I want you to consider that the lepers were required to stay outside of the cities and towns. You were not allowed to come in town and walk around amongst the people. But when he heard Jesus was there, he didn't sit there and say, I'm going to follow the rules. He was willing to break the rules. He was willing to break the conventions. He was willing to come into a place where he did not belong because he was desperate. And he knew that Jesus was the only one who had the cure. He had been cast out. He was hopeless. And so he knew there was only one thing to do and that was to beg for mercy. Now lepers were used to begging because they could not work, they could not earn a living, they depended completely on the generosity and alms of faithful spiritual people who loved God. And so they were used to begging. Begging is something that reduces a human to a place where we are totally dependent on others. No one likes to beg, right? No one likes to beg. We all like to have a sense of self-sufficiency. We all like to have a sense of independence. To beg for anything, to beg for food, to beg for money, to beg for sustenance, is a reduction of our human dignity to the lowest point. This shows that this man had nothing to offer Christ. He had nothing to offer anyone. He was a beggar. He was poor. He was miserable. And finally, he makes the request, if you are willing, you can make me clean. There's some important aspects of the statement. The first thing is, he says, if you are willing, This is a reminder that whenever we pray to God or ask God for anything, we should always preface it by, if you are willing, if thou art willing, if it is your will that you should do this. And I think that this is far different from so many who say that we should come to God demanding a healing, demanding a blessing. claiming it, proclaiming it in the name of Jesus. I do not think that we as Christians ought to come to God with that posture. The Bible does not give us any indication that we have a right to demand anything from God. The only thing we could request of God is if thou art willing Oftentimes I hear people say that God hasn't answered my prayer. Let me tell you this, there is no such thing as an unanswered prayer. God answers all of our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. And it is no because God knows what is best for us. And sometimes saying no is the answer we need. It may not be the answer we like. but it is the answer we need. Finally, look what the man says. He says, you can make me clean. Notice he didn't say, you can heal me. He says, you can make me clean. He's not even asking if saying Jesus, can you make me clean? He knows Jesus could make him clean. But his real issue in life is not to be cured of leprosy, but it is to be made clean. It is to have the stigma removed of being under this curse and being removed from society. You see, under the Old Testament, the concept of clean and unclean was two distinct categories. And if you were considered unclean, you were considered, You were considered unacceptable to God. You were considered unacceptable to God's covenant community. You were cast out. The concept is rooted in the holiness of God, that God is holy and he's pure. And those who approach him must be holy and pure. And so there were ritual cleansings that priests and the worshipers had to go through to cleanse themselves of the defilement of sin in the world. And the camp had to be clean and ridden of defilement. And the articles of the tabernacle were determined clean. And they had to be richly cleansed, and this whole concept. So to be said that you as a person are hopelessly unclean meant that you were under a curse. You see, for the leper. The disease was only part of the issue. The bigger issue is he's been cut off from God, from his family, from his community. And he knew there was only one person who could change that, and it was Jesus. You can make me clean. His confidence was that Christ could do it. You see, What made it so bad for lepers is that many Jewish people had this presupposition and this understanding that if you were a leper, it was a judgment from God. You go back to the Old Testament, Miriam, who was Moses' sister, was judged with leprosy when she had reviled and resisted Moses' authority. Uzziah the king, who was one of the kings, was struck with leprosy in his arrogance and pride for his sin. And Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the prophet, was also struck with leprosy as a result of his greed. And so it was a common assumption among Jewish people that if you had leprosy that it was a judgment of God and it was a verdict of some sin in your life that had brought this evil upon you. Now clearly these assumptions were made based on false theology and I think it's a warning to us to remind us that not all sicknesses that we get are a result of sin. As I was just talking with someone outside and said, you know, we live in a broken world, and in a broken world, we have broken bodies, and as a result, people get sick, and people get disease, and God's people are not immune to it. Just because a Christian gets a sickness, or a disease, or a cancer, or heart attack, it is a horrible assumption to say, well, they must have done something sinful to get that. That is a horrible assumption, because we might be bringing that same judgment on ourselves in our own egotistical view. It's a reminder that any one of us is susceptible to disease, any one of us is susceptible to sickness, and there is no necessarily a correlation to sin. Sometimes there is, but not all the time. Despite the misunderstanding of leprosy, one thing is clear is it does paint a picture of the terrible effects of sin. Although it is not correlated to sin, it is a reminder and it is a metaphor of how awful sin is and what it does to us. You see, sin, which is, we are born in sin, we have sinful natures, and it is sin, original sin that dwells in us, is what makes us unclean, it's what makes us defiled. We are defiled within our hearts and it defiles our thoughts, it defiles our mind, it defiles our actions and defiles our words. J. I. Packer describes sin like dirt on the soul. Sin is filth and dirt and defiles us to our core. It makes us foul, it makes us unclean, and it makes us disgusting in the eyes of God. Sin is a soul-rotting disease. It destroys us from the inside out. We cannot necessarily see the effects of sin immediately, but over time it ravages us inwardly and outwardly turns us into ugly people, far from the image bearers of God we were intended to be. It is a remarkable thing how when you see people young and beautiful, and over time we all age, but I have noticed that when someone is a very sinful person and they're really engrossed in wickedness and sin and pride, they get very ugly as they get old. The soul, rotting disease of sin inwardly, expresses itself outwardly. Sin destroys us. Sin also alienates us. It separates us from God. Just as the lepers were cut off outside of the camp, we are cut off. Sin alienates us from God. It alienates us not only from God, but it alienates us from the people of God. It causes us to live in isolation, cut off from God, cut off from the blessings of the covenant community. That is what makes excommunication so powerful in the New Testament, that when one is excommunicated from the people of God, from the church, they bear the curse of sin. They come outside of the umbrella of God's covenant people, and they live in isolation. They live outside the camp, bearing the weight of their sin. But moreover, sin, like Josephus said, is like leprosy in the sense that it's a living death. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 says we were all born dead in sin and trespasses. If you do not have Christ and you do not have the Holy Spirit, you are a walking corpse. You are like the living dead. People that don't have Christ and not born again and where sin reigns and rules in their life are walking around in a living death. Although they seem alive physically, spiritually, they're cut off from God. They are dead in sins and trespasses. You see, the leper, in his desperation, realized only Jesus could make him clean. That is the cure of the disease that had stigmatized him and made him an outcast. And the same is with us. The only way that a person can find healing in their life for the devastating effects of sin is to look to Jesus. The only way we can become alive is to be born again of the Holy Spirit. The only way that we could be restored into relationship with God and to be restored into relationship with the people of God is through repentance and faith in Christ. The only way we can find healing for our soul, for that sin rotting disease in our soul, is to be cleansed by the power of Jesus. And when Jesus says we're clean, no one can dare call us unclean. Only Jesus can take the shame, the scandal, the guilt, and the loneliness of sin away. Why? Because when he went to the cross, he bore our shame, he bore our scandal, he bore our guilt, and he bore our loneliness. How does Jesus respond to this poor leper? Look at verse 13. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. And just a couple of things to note as we're looking at this. Consider the fact that this leper, maybe decades in living in leprosy and isolation and loneliness, had not felt the touch of a non-leprous human being in years. Maybe at one time he was a father and held his baby in his hand. Maybe at one time he was married and felt the embrace of his wife. Maybe a time he himself can reflect upon the loving touch of his family members, but for years and years he had lived in utter isolation without feeling a human touch. There is something about the touch of another human being, the touch that of a hand that caresses someone who's in pain, or to hold someone and embrace them in a time of love, or to simply put our hand on someone shows that we love and care for them. This man had not felt that in years. The man had done nothing but rejection for years. You see, anyone who would touch him would be at risk for contamination. Moreover, The Bible forbade anybody from touching or going near a leper. And so it would be a sin for anyone to go near him. So could you imagine what this man must have felt? Jesus could have just said a word and said, be healed. But Jesus reached out and touched this man. Consider that. Not only did he touch him, but if you understand the original Greek here, it says he grabbed him and May took hold of him. He had to reach out, he had to, it wasn't like he just went like this. He put his hands and embraced this man. He took hold of him. He did what no one else would dare even think. At that moment, Mark 141 in a parallel text says, he was moved with pity. The love of Christ was on display, his compassion, his mercy. He saw this man's life who had been devastated. And he touched him in a way that no other human being would even consider. While others kept their distance, Jesus bridged that gap. The remarkable thing is that rather than the leprosy contaminating Jesus for the first time in history, there was a reversal. The power of Christ flowed through him to the leper. And rather than Jesus being contaminated the purity and the holiness and the power of Jesus instantly cured the leper. Rather than Jesus becoming unclean, the leper became clean. And miraculously and instantaneously the man's condition was transformed. His flesh was instantly to see. I can't imagine the power of this event. I can't imagine the emotion of this man who took the risk. He came into town and risked being stoned to death and threw himself at the mercy of Christ. And Christ reached down and grabbed him and held him as if to say, I love you, I understand you, I'm with you, and I will for you to be made clean and touched him. What a powerful display. And yet, there's a bigger overarching theme here, isn't there? The touch of Christ's pure hand touching the rotting leper's hand is a parable for us of the incarnation in the cross. You see, Jesus became a man The Son of God took on sinful flesh, or the appearance of sinful flesh, I should say. He became one of us. He became a human being. He knew the pain, the limitations, and the suffering of human flesh. He came to relate to us, not just to understand us, but He came to take our sins, our guilt, our filth, the contamination of our sin, our shame, our uncleanness, our curse, and He took it on Himself on the cross, all of it. But it didn't overwhelm Jesus. He bore it for us and He satisfied the judgment of God for us on the cross. And He cleansed us. He took away our sin. He made us whole. He restored us to fellowship with God. And He restored us to our broken relationships, and more importantly, he gave us his purity and his holiness. To be summed up in 2 Corinthians 5.21, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That is the message of the gospel. It is the message of the incarnation of the cross. It is a message about redemption. It is a message about the cleansing, atoning power of Jesus. Finally, Jesus restores the leper in verse 14. And He charged him, Go and tell no one, but go show yourself to the priests and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for proof to them The Lord was conscious of what the law required. And if someone was deemed a leper, they could not just reenter society. But there was a process in which one must be readmitted to Jewish society. And that's outlined for us in the book of Leviticus, chapter 14, verses 1 through 30. There's 30 verses there. I would not read it all for you. But I'll read the first three verses and it says this, it says the Lord spoke to Moses saying this shall be the law of the leprous person 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 look and if the case of the leprous disease is healed in the leprous person. And so what would happen is if you were cured of leprosy, which we know is very rare, the priest would have to go outside of the camp. You could not come in the camp. The priest would go outside of the camp and risk contamination themselves to make a determination and to validate whether this person had indeed been cured of leprosy if the uncleanness had been taken away. And it was an elaborate process that would last eight days, but ended with joyful celebration. First, the priest had to verify that the leper had indeed been cleansed. And once that was validated, two birds were presented with some cedar wood, some hyssop, and scarlet yarn. One of the birds was killed in a clay pot so the blood would not be lost. And this was done over fresh water to symbolize cleansing. The other live bird, some wood and yarn, were dipped in blood. And the blood was sprinkled on the leper seven times as he was pronounced clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Imagine the words. clean after saying unclean all your life, hearing the pronouncement. The ceremony ended with the live bird being set free to fly away, symbolic of the leper's freedom, no longer bound to this curse. And as a result, the blood-sprinkled person was now able to be reunited with his family, his community, and worship God again. What a powerful image set before us. After the bird's release, the man would wash his clothing. He shaved the hair from his body, bathed, and then entered the camp where his family and friends rejoiced for seven days. It was a seven-day celebration. And what reason to celebrate? On the seventh day, his head, his eyebrows, and his beard were shaved, and he took another bath. And like a newborn baby entering into a new phase of existence, he was essentially born again. Have you been washed in the power of the blood of Jesus? We were singing that song. The blood of Jesus speaks of better things than that of Abel. The blood of Jesus is the only thing that could sprinkle us, and to purify us, and to cleanse us, to renew us, and to bring about a new life. 1 Peter 1.18 says, knowing you were ransomed from your futile ways, inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Or Hebrews 9, 11, when Christ appeared as high priest of the good things to come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, not of this creation, he entered once and for all into the holy place, not by the means of the blood of bulls and goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood. thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the sprinkling of a defiled person with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? In Hebrews 9.22, Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. There is power in the blood of Jesus. When Christ died on the cross, he shed his blood because in his blood is life. And it is not just human life, but the life of God, eternal life. He took all that we deserve. And in the gift to us, he gives us his life, eternal life. He makes satisfaction. He makes atonement. He reconciles us to God through his death on the cross. That is the gospel. That is the good news. And it is a reminder to all of us that we are like the leper. We are outcasts, outcasts from the kingdom of God. We are unclean, we are defiled, we're dirty. We have a hopeless disease and a hopeless future. But we who were once without hope now have an eternal hope in Christ. I want to make this clear to you. that there is no way outside of dealing with sin except through Jesus Christ. All of our problems in life, all of our problems can be summed up as a result of sin. Everything. And I think we're living in a society today where there's so many problems, emotional problems, psychological problems, people with all kinds of dysphoria and confusion. And it's all because we've lost a sense of who God is. We've lost a sense in reality of the fear of God. We're a society that's forgotten God. And when you forget God, you turn into hell, you turn into a disaster. Society crumbles in on itself. Look through history. If there's ever a time that people need Christ. It's now. We live in a country full of lepers, in a world full of lepers. And we need the power of Jesus. Let me conclude. When Peter was on the boat with Jesus, we saw last week, if he saw the power of Jesus in the miracle of the fish, he said, Jesus, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Much like the leper, it was his way of saying, unclean, unclean, unclean. When he came into the presence of Christ, he knew how defiled he was. This leper already knew he was defiled. He already knew he was done. He heard about Jesus and risked everything to leave His desperate situation, his miserable condition. He could have been stoned to death, as I said earlier, but he threw himself at Christ. Rather than run from Jesus, he ran to Jesus. This is a picture of salvation. See, Jesus didn't just heal him. Jesus saved his life. You see, that's what salvation is. This is a picture being rescued from the curse of sin and death. Three takeaways here. You're sitting here today and you're saying, what must I do to be saved? Maybe you're already saved, maybe you're not. Take a lesson from the leper. The leper understood salvation. Number one, the leper didn't just say he was unclean, the leper knew he was unclean. There was no pretense about his condition. He didn't say, well, I just have a little rash on my arm. Luke says he was full of leprosy. This man from the crown of his head to the tip of his foot had been devastated by whatever disease was destroying his body. There was no way he could justify or rationalize his condition. He was done. He was hopeless. He was destitute. He was broken. He suffered years of isolation and sickness and it destroyed his life. In all those years of crying, unclean, unclean, it did something to him psychologically. It made him know his true condition. It isn't until we are broken with our sin, until we realize how awful our condition is, how desperate our condition is, how hopeless our condition is, that we cannot experience salvation. true humility and repentance cannot come about unless there is a sense and acknowledgement of how utterly sinful we are. Not just a little sinful, but we are utterly sinful. That sin has defiled our entire being. Secondly, worshipful submission. When you realize how sinful you are, you will throw yourself at the feet of Jesus. It is an expression of humility, as I said earlier. You know, when you're humble, you don't care about what others think of you. You care about what God thinks of you. You're not worried about, well, should I throw my hands up in worship? Maybe people look at me like I'm weird. No, because you are so overtaken with a sense of the awesomeness of God that you don't care if everyone laughs at you. You just care that God receives your praise and your honor. This is a man who had lost all sense of dignity and self-respect. He threw himself as a beggar at the feet of Jesus, begging for mercy. And it isn't until we come to that point where all pride is out the window. Remember, God gives grace to the humble, but he resists the proud. You know what that means? It means this man came to Christ realizing he had nothing to offer Jesus. He had no righteousness. He had nothing to offer. He was destitute. And it isn't until we come to Christ realizing, Jesus, I have nothing to offer you but my sin, and my filth, and my dirt, and my shame, and my guilt. Oh, Lord, help me. Take it all away from me, Jesus. And we worship him. we will find that in our humility and our brokenness, Christ will reach down and touch us. Have you been touched by Christ? Has he touched your life? I don't mean in the physical sense, but when you've been touched by Jesus, when he grabs hold of you, he makes you clean, he makes you whole, he makes you new. 2 Corinthians 5, 17, those who in Christ are new creations. Behold, the old is gone, the new has come. He renews us. He breathes on you and says, be clean. We are sanctified by his blood, by his word. And like that leper who took that last bath and came out and rejoiced with his family, The angels in heaven rejoice for one sinner who repents and receives Christ. When you come to Christ and he touches your life and you're changed, it's time to party. It's time to rejoice. It's time to peace because I once was dead and now I'm alive. I once was filthy and dirty and unclean, and now I've been made clean. I once was on my way to hell, and now I am saved. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Amazing grace, how can it be? Have you been touched by Jesus? Look to him. He's the only one who can make a change in your life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Almighty God, I thank you for this word today. I thank you for this model of the leper. And this man, he's nameless, but he's in the Bible. He's in the three synoptics. As a lesson to us, oh Lord, that he was probably one of many lepers healed by you in those times. Oh Lord, we're spiritual lepers. And we thank you, Lord, that you healed us, for those of us who've been touched by you. And if there's anyone here who does not know you, who has not felt your healing touch, who has not been born again, O Lord, we pray that you would reach down, touch them, renew them, change them. Be glorified, O Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.