We left off last time with Jesus outside of town. He snuck out there for an extended time of prayer, but all the people in Capernaum now are clamoring for Him to come back. They're out there looking for Him. They want Him to come back into town, which is a great thing, right? A whole lot of people seeking Jesus Christ. That sounds perfect. But Jesus' response is shocking. In verse 38, Mark 1, verse 38, Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So He traveled throughout Galilee preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. So not only does Jesus say no, but He seems to imply that going back into town by popular demand would violate His very reason for being in the world. It's like, this is the reason I came. I can't go do that. I'm going to go do this because this is why I came. The reason for coming into the world is so he can go preach in all the towns in Galilee. So which is it? Does he want to reach lots of people or not? Do you want to keep a low profile or not? I mean, he says, no, I can't go in there, but I'm going to go to all the towns. So Mark just leaves that hanging as a mystery for us. He doesn't answer that and moves on to another event. So we're going to move on now in verse 40 to a new event. But at the end of this event, we're going to see that Mark hasn't moved on. Jesus resisted the crowds. He's going to show us why Jesus resisted the crowds in these kinds of situations, and yet still in other kinds of situations, He wants to reach the crowds. And we'll understand why that is at the end. So Jesus and the disciples leave from that spot, Jesus' prayer spot outside of town, outside of Capernaum, and they start walking. They make their way down the road until they finally arrive at the next village. Sabbath day comes, Jesus preaches the gospel in the synagogue, demons show up, he drives them out, then they're off to the next town. Sabbath day, preach the gospel in the synagogue, perform miracles, on to the next town, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and he just kept doing that. Preach the gospel, this gospel that demands people repent and believe in him, and then do miracles to prove his authority to demand, make those demands, and then move on and do it all again. So that's what he's doing, he's on the speaking circuit. How long does that keep going before we finally reach verse 40? Weeks, months, I don't know. I don't know how long, but however long it was, at some point in this circuit, Jesus is in the middle of doing this, and out of nowhere, something very unpleasant happens. Verse 40, a man with leprosy came to him. And there was no disease at that time more feared than leprosy. Lepers were disgusting, defiling, and contaminating. They had grotesque, oozing, bloody, open sores all over their body from head to toe in the advanced stages. Their hair would turn yellow and then white and then fall out. The smell was terrible. It was considered highly contagious, and so lepers were outcast in society. Leprosy would just absolutely destroy a person's life. This is the one disease you do not want to catch. You don't want your spouse or kids or anybody to get it. In Luke's account, it says this man was full of leprosy. So advanced stages. Now, there was another occasion where 10 lepers came to Jesus and they stayed at a distance, which is what lepers are supposed to do. But this guy, he just walks right up close to Jesus. And so you can imagine his disciples, they're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's happening here? I mean, he's just coming right up close to him and they're backing off. Verse 40, man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, if you're willing, you can make me clean. So how's Jesus gonna respond to this guy? One thing that the disciples learn about Jesus is he's really big on obeying God's law. There's just something there that they're gonna learn and we're gonna see throughout the gospel is He obeys the Word of God. And the Law of God is very clear about lepers. They are to live outside the camp and remain separated from the population. They were the epitome of uncleanness. Jesus was the opposite extreme. He's the epitome of holiness. And so how is Jesus going to handle this situation where uncleanness approaches holiness and the Law of God says they're supposed to be secluded? Notice what this guy asks for. He doesn't say, you can heal me. He doesn't say, if you're willing, you can heal me. What does he say? If you're willing, you can make me clean. Because I just described all these physical ravages of leprosy, which are horrible, horrible. But that's not even the worst part. The worst part was the uncleanness. Let me read Leviticus 13, 45. Leviticus 13 is a whole chapter on leprosy. And verse 45 says, "...the person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face, and cry out, unclean, unclean. As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone. He must live outside the camp." So he was unclean. Now, cleanness and uncleanness were ceremonial conditions that dictated whether you could enter the temple and approach God, okay? If you were in a ritually unclean condition, you could not go in the temple. If you were in a ritually clean condition, then you could go into the temple and you could approach. God made it that way to remind the people about his holiness. That's the purpose of the uncleanness code. So let's just talk about that for a minute. In Exodus 33 20, God said, no one can see me and live. Nobody can survive the presence of God. God, in His holiness, is like the sun. And man, in his unholiness, is like a piece of paper. It's never good to fly too close to the sun, especially if you're a dry piece of kindling or a piece of paper. It's not good. You'll just be incinerated. That's the holiness of God. And we all understand that that's true. God is utterly unapproachable. But why? Why? And here's something I don't know if you've thought about, but if you ask the question, why is God so unapproachable, so dangerous, so threatening in his holiness? Because if the sun burns up some piece of passing debris in space, it's not because the sun has anything against debris. It's not personal. The sun isn't angry or upset. He's just sitting there being the sun. But the reason a sinful creature would be destroyed in the presence of God is personal. It's very personal. God hates sin. It's an emotional response. You look at the things that God uses in the Bible as object lessons to illustrate what sin is like in His eyes, and they're always horrible, disgusting things. Why? Because God's teaching us You know how you feel when you come across something really, really disgusting and like smelly and putrid and gross? That's how I feel when I look at sin, okay? That's why he gives us that illustration. So I won't, I mean I could just really gross everyone out, I won't. We just ate, so I'll let you use your imagination. Just think up the grossest thing you can imagine, whatever it is you're thinking of. That's what it's like when God looks at a person who has sin in their heart. It's disgusting. And it's important to understand this about God's holiness. I wonder sometimes if people who write modern praise songs know what the holiness is. Because it's like they use God's holiness as a synonym for his love and kindness or something like that. I don't think they understand that holiness is what makes him dangerous to us. People talk about God's love as if God were just kind of looking down at the earth and saying, oh, look at all the old people running around. They're so adorable. That's not the view from heaven. What God sees when He looks down is not adorable, it's revolting and nauseating to Him. And that's why mankind cannot approach His presence and survive. Habakkuk 1.3, your eyes are too pure to look on evil. Psalm 51. the model prayer of repentance in the Bible, right? The best place to go if you want to learn how to repent. It's David's prayer of repentance after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and tried to cover up with murder. And the thing that's striking about that prayer is how often he begs God to cleanse him. Right. He keeps referring to that. Psalm 51 one. Have mercy on me, O God. Blot out my transgressions. Verse to wash away all my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. Verse seven. Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I'll be whiter than snow. Verse nine. Hide your face from my sins. Blot out all my iniquity. Created me a pure heart. OK, so over and over he begs God. Wash me. Wash me now. All my life I've read that and I've always thought, oh, that's because David felt dirty on the inside and what he's praying for is to feel clean. He'd committed gross sin, he felt disgusting, he was asking God to cleanse him, he wanted to feel clean. That's not what it says. He never says that the problem is how he feels. He didn't say make me feel clean on the inside. He says make me clean. Wash me. So the problem isn't that he felt dirty. The problem was he actually was dirty. But what does that mean? What does it mean that he was dirty? I mean, obviously it's not literal dirt, right? He didn't have literal dirt on his heart. It's a metaphor. Describing what? It's a metaphor describing repulsiveness in God's sight. David was pleading for God to make him clean and acceptable in God's sight, because David knew that right now he's disgusting and filthy in God's sight. And that's part of his prayer. That's the part of his prayer that repeats more often in Psalm 51 than any other part. That's the number one request David had. I want to be clean in your sight. It's a it's a miserable feeling to feel dirty. In your own sight, right? It's horrible. But it's infinitely worse when you know that you're dirty and repulsive in God's sight, and that He's disgusted. But that's exactly what sin does. It makes you so repulsive to God that if you were to enter God's presence in that state, you would die. When God visited His people in Israel, the people of Israel, He didn't come into the camp, because if He would, nobody would have survived. So He came down on top of Mount Sinai. And the mountain couldn't handle it. The mountain almost died. I mean, it started on fire, plumes of smoke, it shook to pieces. I mean, it just rattled that mountain. They put up a fence around the bottom to keep people out. And if an animal so much as touched the fence that was guarding the perimeter of the bottom of the mountain where God was, the animal would die instantly. That's the holiness of God. And even Moses said, I'm trembling with fear. It just scared everybody. It was so terrifying. And we have a hard time appreciating God's holiness because we weren't there at Mount Sinai. I think if we were there at Mount Sinai, I don't think the praise songs about holiness would come out the way they do now. But after terrifying the people with his holiness on Sinai, God did the unimaginable. He came into the camp of Israel in a tent known as the tabernacle. If you want to know what the tabernacle was all about, and later the temple, later it was a building, it became the temple, if you want to know what that's all about, just imagine this. Imagine some brilliant scientist today somehow invented a structure where you could safely put the sun You could get the sun, and you could put it in this structure, and you could have it right next door. With all of its gravity and everything, the whole thing, this building could somehow contain the heat, contain the radiation, contain all the explosions, and contain the gravity. And so you could just walk on the sidewalk right in front of the building. You'd be just fine. Now, if that sounds to you like ridiculous, silly science fiction nonsense, That's nothing compared to how unthinkable it is that you could do that with the presence of God, that you could have the presence of God inside the Israelite camp in a tent, and people could just walk by it and not die. The temple is the greatest, most astonishing, most mind-blowing miracle that had ever happened, ever. Bigger than the creation itself. God in a tent and people aren't dying. And to make sure that his people never forgot what a mind-blowing miracle that is, God gave us reminders in the form of these cleanness and uncleanness codes. So he set up a system of cleanness and uncleanness that governed when people could approach that tent or the temple building. when they could approach Him in that building. He picked out various different physical things from day-to-day life that, for one reason or another, made a good illustration of sin in some way. Now, these things are not sinful. It's important to understand. These things are not sinful in themselves, right? They're just illustrations. They're like a parable, a metaphor describing something about sin. They're just physical realities that, in one way or another, illustrate something about sin. And you can read about them throughout the Old Testament, especially in Leviticus 12 to 14. That's where a lot of them are enumerated, this whole system of cleanness and uncleanness. And of all the various illustrations of sin, the one that comes out as the most profound and the most detailed is leprosy. With other forms of uncleanness, you could, you might be unclean, you know, you could like touch a dead animal, you're unclean, you can't approach God, but you could, you might be unclean for a matter of hours, and then that evening you go through a ceremony, you do a little ritual, and you're right back into a state of cleanness and you can go right into the temple, it's no problem. With leprosy, you were so unclean that you had to go live in isolation outside the camp by yourself in most cases for the rest of your life. There are all kinds of prescribed ceremonies for how to make you clean after you've been made unclean for various other things. But the one kind of uncleanness that had no ceremony for that was leprosy. There was no prescription in the Old Testament for how to make a leper clean because it couldn't be done. It couldn't be done. There were no rituals for now. There were some rituals for how to examine a leper. If God miraculously healed a leper and you're examining them to see to verify that they've been healed, then there was some rituals for that. And we'll see that in a minute. But there was nothing to there was no way to make a leper clean. Being cured of leprosy required a miracle to illustrate that. You might remember the story in Second Kings five with Naaman member military commander from a neighboring Gentile country had leprosy. And he hears this rumor from the servant girls like, oh, in Israel, they've got a guy there. They got a prophet there that could probably heal you. Because these are the days of Elijah when he's doing all these miracles. And so she's thinking of Elijah. So so he's like, yeah, this guy, he probably heal you because he does miracles. And so so the king sends a letter to the king of Israel. asking that his commander be healed of leprosy. And the king of Israel gets that letter, and you're like, what is this? So in 2 Kings 5, 7, as soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he said, am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of leprosy? And the king of Israel just thought he was trying to pick a fight or start a war or something, because it's like, why would he, he's asking me to do a miracle? I can't raise the dead. I can't heal a leper. What is this? So healing a leper was something only God could do, it was on the level of raising the dead. You can read about the diagnosis of leprosy in Leviticus 13, the whole chapter, very detailed. There were other skin diseases that were similar. they turned out to be more superficial and temporary. And so if you got one of those, if you got a really bad rash or boils or open sores or something on your skin, what you would do is you had to go to the priest and he would pull Leviticus 13 out and start going through the process. Leviticus 13 just reads like a medical diagnosis sheet for dermatology. It's all about skin problems. And so he goes through this very difficult process and has a diagnosis process that takes about two weeks. very detailed, a couple of weeks. You come out the end of that two weeks and it's clearing up. You're good. You don't have leprosy. You're good. Um, but if it comes back leprosy, uh, if they can find out that it's, it's systemic, that it's deep, it's not just skin deep. It goes down. It's, it's something goes down to beyond that. Then you've got leprosy. Uh, so Of all, again, of all the things that can make you ritually unclean, of all the illustrations of sin, the most severe was leprosy. It brought the most extreme level of ceremonial uncleanness because it was such a comprehensive illustration of sin. It illustrates sin in so many different ways. It was disgusting and repulsive physically, just like sin is disgusting and repulsive spiritually. It was systemic, it was not just superficial or skin deep, but it was just deep down, like sin is not just superficial, but resides way deep down in the core of your being. Leprosy was physically contaminating, just like sin is spiritually contaminating. It was physically destructive, just like sin destroys us spiritually. Leprosy was defiling and alienating and isolating, just like sin. It's just the perfect physical illustration to teach us what sin is like spiritually. And like our sin problem, incurable. outside of a special act of God. Otherwise, it's totally incurable. We can't see sin. It resides in the heart. But we can see leprosy, and so God used that as an object lesson or a parable or a metaphor to show us what our sin is like. So the Old Testament is filled with these kind of pictures, right, and shadows of spiritual realities. And what happened in Jesus' time? The religious leaders in Jesus' time the ones that he confronted would routinely major on the pictures and completely miss the spiritual realities that they're trying to illustrate, right? They majored on the external and missed the internal. And this was just another example of that. When the Bible said lepers are to live outside the camp, the spiritual leaders Instead of looking at the spiritual reality behind that and saying, wow, my sin alienates me from God. They never thought that. They just like, oh, ostracize those people? Yeah, and they were just like all over that. They took that and ran with it. So in the Talmud, it says you're not allowed to get ahead of these rules. You can't come within six feet. You know, they always put figures on everything. Can't come within six feet of a leper. If it's breezy, then 150 feet from a leper. One rabbi said, when I see lepers, I throw stones at them lest they come near me. That's in the Talmud. And that's not a confession of sin. That's boasting. This is how holy I am. This is how ceremonially pure and holy I am. I will throw rocks at lepers. So they use the Levitical codes as excuses to just be mean and treat lepers like garbage and hate them. Okay, so all that's background. Now back to Mark 1. The people there on the scene look at this man and all they see is a person who is utterly unfit to approach God. Nobody is less able to approach God than this guy. But not only does Jesus allow this man to approach Him, and get close, but he responds favorably to this man's approach. In fact, I believe that this man's approach of Jesus is presented here in Mark as an example to teach us the right way to approach God with a request. Take a look at this guy. I mean, verse 40, it says, the man came to him and begged him on his knees. In Luke's account, Luke 5.12, it says he also fell on his face to the ground. He's got these festering sores on his skin and he just drops those right into the ground and his face down in the dirt. This is reverence. This man had an incredibly hard life, right? But he's not mad at God, he's not shaking his fist at Jesus, he's reverent, worshiping. That's the first thing I noticed. The second thing, humility. He takes a posture of abject lowliness and humility before Jesus. He had an acute awareness of his own loathsomeness, right, of his own disease. He knew that. And so he has no concern for his dignity at all. He just begs Jesus on his knees. Then he says to Jesus, if you are willing, you can make me clean. That's what I see there is submissiveness to the will of Christ, right? It's just if you're willing. He doesn't demand anything. He doesn't claim anything. He just acknowledges this is totally up to your will, Jesus. It's just up to your will. And then fourth, faith. He came in faith. He doesn't know if Jesus is willing or not, but he knows Jesus. There's no question in his mind Jesus can. It's like, you've got the ability. I know you can do it. Later, somebody asked Jesus, if you can, will you heal my son? Jesus is like, if you can, what are you talking about? But here, this guy doesn't say that. He's saying, I know you can. Perfect picture of how to approach God with a request. Come to him in reverent worship. lowly humility, complete submissiveness to his will, and unquestioning faith." Right? That's just the model of how to approach God. Which is ironic, because the Pharisees would have looked at this guy as a model of someone who can't ever approach God, and Mark presents him on the page of the Scripture, I think, as a model of exactly how to approach God. And yes, it's true, he is disqualified physically from going in the temple, as an illustration. But spiritually, this man is fit to approach God because he came with reverence, humility, submissiveness, and faith. And we're going to see that again and again with Jesus, where he takes someone who looks one way on the outside and shows us that on the inside, he's the exact opposite, both good and bad. He'll show us some religious leaders that are amazing on the outside, and on the inside, they're filthy and disgusting. And then we're going to see people like this, who on the outside are horrible, and on the inside, beautiful and worshiping. And of course, that's what matters, right? The inside is the only thing that matters. All right, so back to the story. This wasted away, decayed, rotting mass of putrid human flesh comes walking up, this walking corpse just appears out of nowhere. Everyone there instinctively just backs away in alarm, and they're kind of anger, and they're moving back, and they're just like, why didn't you say unclean, unclean? And everybody's moving, except Jesus doesn't move. This man keeps approaching and Jesus doesn't move. And this man comes within arm's reach of Jesus and then falls down on his knees and then down onto his face. And it turns your stomach when you hear this raspy, grating voice, you can make me clean. And look at Jesus' response, verse 41. Filled with compassion. Not revulsion, not disgust, not anger, not fear. For years, everyone had looked at this man as if he were just nothing but a walking disease. Now, for the first time, someone is looking at him as a person talking to him, loving him. Not afraid of him, not repulsed. But filled with compassion. Now, here's a question. How do they know that Jesus is filled with compassion? What's a feeling inside you? How do they know? Evidently, there's some. Visible indication, right? A tear in Jesus eye, maybe. Look on his face. Somehow it's obvious to the people that Jesus had deep compassion for this man. The word for compassion refers to a visceral reaction in the stomach. It's a strong word. Have you ever seen someone hurt so badly that it hurts you in your stomach? You just feel it like that. That's what Jesus felt. Looking at this man's condition moved Jesus to the point where it physically hurt him. It hurt Jesus. I asked the doctor how that works once and he told me that your intestines just secrete some acids that just inflict pain on you. I'd love to know from an evolutionist how that ever evolved. But it makes perfect sense in creation, right, that God would create us and put a stamp right in our stomachs that reflects his character of compassion. Because Jesus is God, and God is the God of all compassion, right? All through the Old Testament, the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious. Over and over it says that. He's infinite compassion, beyond human comprehension. And you take God, God the Son, and you let him love like that, and you let him have compassion like that, and you take God and pack him down into a human body, and it will wrack that human body, that level of compassion. What a contrast that is to the religious leaders of the day who pride themselves on throwing rocks at this guy. Jesus has compassion. Now look at what Jesus' compassion drives him to do. The unthinkable, verse 41. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. And you could just add, and the whole crowd gasped. and Peter passed out, you know, I mean, just like, as a Jew, there is nothing worse in the world you could ever touch than a leper, nothing. Even if you're a kind-hearted person and you had compassion for that leper, even if it's your spouse or your child or your family member, you don't ever, ever touch a leper. And Jesus didn't have to touch this guy to heal him, right? Very often Jesus healed people with a word from a distance. He didn't choose to do that this time. He touched him. And I don't know if any of us can imagine what that would have been like for this man. Psychologists have done studies on the devastating effect it has on people when they go without any human touch at all. I recently heard of one man who goes and gets a haircut every week just because that's the only time anybody ever touches him. This guy may have gone years, even decades, without ever being touched. by anyone. Jesus reaches out and touches them. And the reason that would have been so shocking is because one of the most basic principles in the Old Testament holiness codes about cleanness and uncleanness is that uncleanness is passed on by touch. That's how you become unclean. Leviticus 5.2, listen to this. If a person touches anything ceremonially unclean, even if he's unaware of it, he has become unclean. Even if you accidentally bump something, a leopard touched this wall and I bumped the wall, I'm unclean, even if I don't even know what's going on. If you ever touch anything unclean, the uncleanness of that thing immediately passes to you. In fact, there's kind of a funny little pop quiz that God gives the priests in Haggai 2.11. This is what Yahweh Almighty says. Ask the priests what the law says. If a person carries consecrated meat, holy meat, in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew or some wine or oil or other food, does it become consecrated? The priest answered, no, of course not. Cleanliness isn't passed by touch, everyone knows that. And they're right, they're exactly right. And then question number two in the quiz, verse 13. Then Haggai said, if a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of those things, does it become defiled? Yes, the priest replied. It becomes defiled. Everyone knows that. I mean, they score 100% on this quiz. They get two out of two. And the point of that is to show which direction the current travels when there's contact between clean and unclean, right? Unclean, clean, it travels this way, from the unclean to the clean. Rather than cleanness being transferred this way. Everyone, it's obvious, obvious. And if you're wondering why the pop quiz and Haggai, God goes on to actually give them the worst news they could possibly ever hear. Verse 14, Then Haggai said to them, So it is with this people and this nation in my sight, declares the Lord. Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled. What he's saying is, guess what, Israel? You're so worried about never touching anything unclean. Guess what? You're the unclean thing. You're so worried about becoming racially contaminated. Turns out you're the source of contamination. So anyway, that's Haggai, but the point, the reason I bring all that up is just to say, uncleanness passed by touch. Very, very clear, obvious thing, uncleanness passed by touch. The current goes from uncleanness to cleanness. That's the direction. And so as I was reading the various commentaries on this passage and listening to sermons and stuff, they were all saying, this is an amazing thing because Jesus is willing to become ceremonially unclean just because to teach us that human need trumps ritual rules and procedures, ceremonial procedures. And I agree with that about priorities. Human need does trump ceremonial procedures. We learn that in scripture, that's true. But I don't agree that Jesus became ceremonially unclean here. Jesus would have if he touched a leper. But I don't think Jesus touched a leper. Verse 41, Jesus said, I am willing, be clean immediately. The leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Jesus didn't touch a leper because the moment Jesus touched him, he wasn't a leper anymore. With every other human being, the current of uncleanness flows from unclean to clean, but with Jesus, that current is reversed. His cleanness flows from him into the unclean person and instantly cleanses him. So Jesus can't touch anything unclean, because as soon as he touches it, it's clean. It says immediately. It doesn't say the leprosy gradually started clearing up. Immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. I don't know what that's like, what that was. This guy, this is advanced stages of leprosy. I don't know if this guy, you know, fingers just started, you know, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you know, and there's a reappearance, just like he looks down at his stumps and there's perfect hands and smooth, clear skin, like a baby's skin, and just eyelashes are back, eyebrows back, hair on his head, and it's all the right color, and every trace of leprosy gone immediately. Now this guy, he can go into a city, a walled city. He can go into a market and buy food. He can be around people. He can touch people. He can give his friends hugs. He can get married. And most importantly of all, he can enter the temple and approach God and worship him. He's clean. He's clean. Imagine the ecstasy and the joy just coursing through his entire being at that moment. Spending the night with family, you know, just staying up late marveling about the whole thing, just talking about, you know, the sun came up this morning, this guy's this miserable creature, just more dead than alive, hopeless mass of sores and corruption, very existence of burden on him and everyone. Now, normal, clean as the wind-driven snow. Remember I told you before that all of Jesus' miracles are parables of the kingdom. They're teaching something. He doesn't do just random acts of power. Each miracle is to teach us some principle about the kingdom. What is the healing of leprosy designed to teach us? It teaches us that Jesus came to make us clean before God spiritually, right? He came to do spiritually what he did for this guy physically. And we're going to see that more clearly in the very next paragraph. Mark is very, very intentional about the order that he's given us. These things we're going to see in the very next paragraph. They're going to bring Jesus, a guy, a paralytic to be healed. And instead of healing him, Jesus forgives his sins. And it really rattles the Pharisees there. But but this is what Jesus came into the world to do, because we're all born spiritual lepers. And we don't think of ourselves as being this hideous spiritually because we've lived in a leper colony all our lives. But Isaiah 64 6 says, all of us have become like one who is unclean. We're all in that situation. So this man is a perfect picture of what all of us are naturally, spiritually. Our sin makes us utterly detestable to God and bars us from the presence of God. And Jesus is going to explain this whole principle in a lot more detail in chapter 7, where He explains, listen, you don't become unclean by touching. Spiritually, you don't become unclean by things on the outside. It comes from the inside. It comes from your own heart. He's going to explain all that. And so we're just like Israel and Haggai. We're the source of the uncleanness. We're like the leper. Everything we touch is unclean. And there is one solution, and one solution only, the cleansing touch of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the only hope. Well, it's a beautiful story, but a horrible ending. Verse 43, Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning. See that you don't tell this to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them. Now there was, like I said before, there's no prescription in the law for cleansing a leper, but there was very specific commands for the procedure once a leper has been cleansed to verify that. And so that's all in Leviticus 14. It's all laid out in detail. And, and Jesus wants to follow that. Jesus routinely stepped all over the Jewish traditions of the elders and all their, all that stuff, but never the actual law of God. The religious leaders then didn't even know the difference. They had so many, they were so immersed in all their traditions, they had lost sight of which ones were human rules and which ones were the actual law of God in the Bible. But Jesus made, one of his biggest emphases in his teaching was to make that distinction clear. So he'd break their rules and follow God's law all the time. And so he commands this leper, do what the Bible says lepers have to do when they're cleansed. Go to the priest, do the procedure. Go, do it now, don't talk to anybody. So what does this guy do? Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. The exact opposite of what Jesus commanded. Very sad, tragic ending to the story. And I read and heard multiple commentators and preachers on this passage who would say, well, this is understandable. We would. I mean, who wouldn't have done it? You can't fault this guy for just telling what happened. He's been cured of leprosy. We all would have done that. And who can fault him? Who can fault him? He disobeyed a direct command from the Lord Jesus Christ. What this guy did was inexcusable, blatant disobedience. It was a horrible thing to do. When Jesus commanded this guy to say nothing to anyone until he went to the priest, he didn't say that with a wink, you know? It's not like... And when Jesus gave those commands to not to talk, it wasn't like just a hollow command, I don't really mean this, you know I don't mean this, go ahead and talk. It wasn't like that. Jesus was serious. In fact, the language here couldn't be stronger. In fact, it's so strong it's a little surprising, a little bit hard to explain. Because verse 43 says, He sent him away at once. That word sent him away, ekballo. It's the word for casting out a demon. Like, Jesus kicked this guy out, right? at once, and then with a strong warning, see that you don't tell this to anyone. Don't tell this to anyone. It's an emphatic negative. Say absolutely nothing to anyone. And then with the word strong warning, That's a little, kind of a soft way to translate this word because it usually refers to a rebuke. Originally it was the word for to snort like a horse. And later in Mark when the disciples thought that a woman had wasted a bunch of money and they rebuked her, so they rebuked her harshly, Mark 14.4, that's this word, it's translated rebuked her harshly. This is all terminology that's normally used in the context of anger or hostility. Now, was Jesus being hostile and angry towards this guy? I don't think so. I don't think so. But the use of this strong language tells us that Jesus was not messing around. He wasn't saying this with a wink. It wasn't implied, oh, you know, I'm not too serious about this. He was serious. When he told this guy to be quiet, keep it quiet, he was urgent about it, he was strong about it, he was serious about it. Don't tell anyone, go to the priest. And he says, the reason why, he says, do it as a testimony to them. Or it could be a testimony probably against them. And already now we're seeing the beginnings of this kind of us and them. Because people read this and they're like, them? Who's the them? The priest, the word priest is singular, Who's this them that came out of nowhere? It's like the them that's going to be against Jesus, and that will clarify who that is in the next chapter. It's the religious leaders, Jewish religious leaders. But if this man would have obeyed and just kept quiet, gone to the priest, the priest would have done the examination in Leviticus 14, officially pronounced him clean, There would have been an official priestly verification of this miracle that would have been absolutely undeniable. They'd be trapped in their own examination. That would have been a great thing if it would have happened, but it didn't happen. This man disobeys. Very disappointing and yet common reality that we see with people when they encounter Jesus. This man, he's right on the money when it comes to the right way to approach God when you want something from him. When you're asking for something, he's right on the money. He had all the reverence, the humility, the submissiveness, the faith, everything, said all the right words, everything right out of the textbook. He knew how to ask for something from Jesus, but once he got what he wanted, What happened to all his humility and faith and reverence and submissiveness? It's gone, right? It's gone. He got what he wanted and he's not interested in obeying Jesus. Now he's on his way. They say that's understandable. It's not understandable. It's not justifiable. It's despicable. Jesus gave this man his life back. The least the guy could do is obey a very simple command. It's not even that hard of a thing. And this is a comment. So often you see people that got all the right religious answers, but when it comes to actually obeying God's Word, you find it was just all skin deep. It wasn't real. It wasn't deep down in them. And I think you start to get an idea here why Jesus was turning away the crowds. Remember at the very beginning of the message I mentioned that? Jesus did want to publish the Gospel far and wide. He wanted to reach as many as possible with the Gospel. That's a reality. But He was not interested in catering to people who just wanted to use Jesus to get physical benefits, and they weren't interested in repenting and following and believing. That's the issue. Jesus doesn't want to be the one who provides you with the stuff you want. He wants to be what you want. He's not interested in being used by you to get something else. It's fine to ask Him for things if you're asking for those things as part of your pursuit of Him, but He will not be used by people who are not drawing near to Him. All right, so what happens? This man's disobedience has some dire consequences for Jesus. Verse 45, as a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. That's a little weird. Why can't Jesus enter a town openly? Because of crowds? Towns can handle crowds. Didn't Jesus say the whole reason for coming into the world was that He could preach the gospel in all the various towns? So if He enters a town and there's already a big crowd automatically gathered, isn't that perfect? That's ideal, right? Why is that not a good thing? It's not a good thing because it's the wrong crowd. It's a crowd full of thrill-seekers who are interested in Jesus' miracles but not interested in His message. And those people clog up the process and crowd out the people who actually have ears to hear the gospel. It's kind of like what I experienced when I was a teenager trying to find a youth group. I went from church to church trying to find a good youth group when I was a teenager. And every ministry was all about attracting students, unbelieving students. It is called an outreach. And so they would have fun events and free food and celebrity speakers and skateboard parks and whatever they could do to bring in huge crowds of teens. But they would draw teens who weren't one bit interested in the gospel. They just wanted to have fun. And the result is you go to youth group and the culture there is exactly like going to a public school. And if you were interested in learning from God's word, you're an oddball in that youth group. Jesus was not and there's whole churches now that took that youth model and they do it churchwide, the seeker movement. Jesus model was to send those kind of people away, to get away from those kind of crowds and devote his attention to this much smaller crowd of people who have ears to hear the gospel. So that's why he tells this guy to be quiet. This guy's not preaching the gospel. He's just stirring up and gathering the wrong kind of crowd. So this guy goes out and gives his testimony, but not in connection with the gospel, and the result is the throngs of the wrong kind of people come to Jesus and crowd out the kind of ministry that Jesus came to do. So because of this guy's disobedience, Jesus' entire ministry is curtailed. And you have to wonder about those poor towns that Jesus would have entered, but now he can't enter those towns. I mean, these people would have had a visit from the Lord Jesus Christ, but now they didn't because of this guy and his disobedience. Tragic for those cities. And look at the impact it had on Jesus himself, verse 45. Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. There's that same word for desert again, or wilderness. That's that same word. There he is again. There Jesus is out there again. And isn't that striking? Because at the beginning of the story, Jesus is in all these population centers, and the leper is out there secluded, right? Now, at the end of the story, the leper is going around talking to everybody, and Jesus is out there. See what he did? He traded places with this guy. He exchanged roles with this leper. That's a profound picture. Is it easy for Jesus to heal a spiritual leper? Yes, easy, but not cheap. It costs him. What happened here is a profound illustration of how Jesus would cleanse us spiritual lepers. He's able to cleanse us. But to do that, it meant trading places with us. And so at the end of the book of Mark, we're going to see Jesus hanging on a cross, suffering the punishment that we deserve. He's going to be there in our place. Because he touched our spiritual leprosy. And that is an act that enabled him. The most inconceivable of all miracles, we can approach God. and not be consumed. So Jesus can no longer enter towns openly, stays in secluded areas, verse 45. And yet the people came to him from everywhere still. And you know, when Jesus keeps telling everyone to be quiet, when you're reading the story, you're kind of thinking, Jesus, that's going to, that's no good. We want you to become known far and wide. The strategy worked though, because It becomes another evidence, think about this, it's another evidence of the greatness of His miracles, if you think about it, because Jesus didn't shout in the streets or cry aloud, publicize Himself, and yet there was still no preventing the Word from getting out to the whole world. If someone runs for President of the United States, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning and advertising just to get name recognition, to even be in the running. Imagine if there was a candidate, it's like the next presidential election, suppose there's a candidate who doesn't spend one penny, and he refuses to do any campaigning, strictly forbids all of his volunteers from talking about him, and yet he's such an amazing candidate that word just gets out and he wins in a landslide. That would be quite the amazing candidate, right? Imagine a man who rejected the crowds and forbade people to tell of his miracles, and yet they were so awesome that 2,000 years later, millions of people are worshiping him. How astonishing must his miracles have been? Well. Some of us have done some pretty horrible sins, right? And we've got some deep, deep stains on our soul. Some of you may have had some sick, disgusting things done to you, and you feel dirty because of that, even though you didn't even do anything wrong in the first place. Or in some cases, maybe horrible things were done to you, but you also did some things that are wrong and you've never figured out where the line is between the two. And so you don't even know what to confess and what not to confess. And there's so this is just sort of generalized, confused sense of dirtiness. Or maybe you've got the most disgusting kind of filthiness of all self righteous pride, but whatever it is, whatever the variety of uncleanness you might have in your heart, no matter how deep it runs, Jesus can make you clean with just a touch. 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I mentioned David's prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, where he keeps asking, cleanse me, cleanse me, wash me, wash me, wash me. But I love verse seven, where he says, cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. So often, people, Christians pray the first half of that, but they can't pray the second half. They say, cleanse me, God, but they can't say, if you do, I'll actually be clean. They don't believe that they're actually clean, even after God forgave them. We say, God cleanse me. Why can't we affirm the rest? Do you really believe that if God cleaned you, you're clean? You're clean? Whiter than snow, completely pure, pleasing in His sight? So come to God. Like this leper did with the deep reference, profound humility, total submissiveness, unwavering faith. That's right on. Come to God that way. Ask for cleansing. He will make you whiter than snow. Then express your gratitude and joyful obedience to his commands. Unlike this guy. And you will be able to boldly draw near to the presence of God. And he will take delight in your coming. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, thank you for this, the most astonishing of all miracles that we could approach your presence, just talking to you right now in prayer. Unthinkable that you would be with us here in this room. And we're not consumed, even after all the sins we committed just today. And yet, because Christ took our place on that cross, He made a way for us to stand right next to the sun and not be burned. Oh, Lord, thank you so much. And it's with deep gratitudes in our hearts we pray and we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. And in His name we pray it. Amen. What happened to the leper? Did he get killed later or something? Yeah, he died of something. See, that's a whole other question of what happened to this leper. That's another reason why ministries that focus on just meeting people's physical needs are so temporary. Because you meet their physical needs and you make them a little bit more comfortable for a few more years, but you don't give them the gospel, then they're comfortable for a little while before going to hell. What good does that do to make people comfortable on the way to hell? That's why Jesus healing people, it didn't really do them that much good if they didn't look at that as a sign that pointed to Christ and then respond to Him in faith and receive eternal healing. If all you get is physical healing, it's just temporary and then something else catches up to you and you die. So yeah, that's exactly what happened to this guy. Okay, so there's a correlation in our having leprosy, Jesus touching us, Him taking our place. Is there a correlation in Jesus giving this guy a command and giving us a command? I'll say two things about that. First, there's a general correlation in He does give us commands and we must obey them. And so that's the part that I brought out in the message. As for the specific command, and I'm a little bit hesitant to give this away, but since this could be years away, since we'll get to the last verse of the book, I'll go ahead and give it away. You read through Mark, and you're scratching your head. He keeps telling them, keep your mouth shut. Keep your mouth shut. Don't tell. Don't tell. Don't tell. Don't tell. And they always just obey, and they always go tell. Oh, I don't even have my Bible. What kind of Bible study is this? Can I borrow a Bible? So you get to the end of the book, and I know that most Bibles have some extra verses tacked on that came later, but I believe the most reliable manuscripts end the book right at 16.8. So here's how the book ends. Jesus dies, he rises from the dead. The women go there and they see a young man sitting on the right side dressed in a white robe. They're alarmed. He says to them, this is an angel, he says, do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen, he's not here. See the place where they laid him, but go. Tell. Go and tell. His disciples, and Peter, that He's going before you in Galilee, and then you will see Him just as He told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonished, astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." End of the book. The one time Jesus says, okay, now go and tell, and then they don't. Now we know that they actually eventually did. At first they didn't, and then they finally got over it and they went. And Mark's readers know that, they know the whole story, but I think Mark is just being very, he's putting all of us in that last verse of the book. He's like, what are you gonna do? I would not grant the privilege of announcing the truth about me to demons. I wouldn't let them do it. I would not grant that privilege to the people during my ministry, because they wouldn't get it right. They didn't know the third leg of the gospel. They didn't know about the cross. And they would do it the wrong way. So I wouldn't let them do it. They didn't get the privilege. It's a high and holy privilege. But after the resurrection, finally, he says, OK, ladies, finally, you can go. Go and tell. And they're like, nah. They're not going to say anything to anybody. And it's a question for every Christian. What am I going to do? Am I going to? Because I'm living there in that verse after the resurrection. Am I going to go and tell? Am I going to take this privilege that everybody wanted to do prior? I get to do it now. Am I going to do it? So it's really climactic. People think that's such an anti-climax, the way that Mark ends so abrupt. But it's really climactic if you see the contrast with the not telling and then the go and tell. So, it's just the opposite. The command for us, go and tell.