Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Perhaps you saw this article as I did. Maybe it grabbed your attention. It is entitled, Why Americans Are Leaving Their Churches. It's one more of those headlines which grips our imagination and our thoughts because it chronicles what we already know to be true from our own experience, which is that the church and Christianity in America is shrinking. And what makes this analysis so intriguing about this shrinking church today is that the author demonstrates that the shrinking of the church is due to non-version, the opposite of conversion. He shows from the relevant statistical data that the reason why the church today is shrinking is because people who grew up in the church and who were nourished spiritually within its walls have left the church to no faith at all. Of course, in an article like this, there's all kinds of analysis and reasons presented for why it is that this non-version is sweeping across the land. And some of them seem to have at least a ring of plausibility to them. But it seems to me what is not mentioned in the article, and which is so obviously at the core of why people are leaving the church today, is because they never believed at all. You see, going to church is not the same thing as believing in Jesus Christ. And perhaps one reason why people who were nourished within the walls of the church walk away from the faith is because they were never taught the gospel in the first place. And that the word of God wasn't preached in a saving power and efficacy as it was supposed to be. You see, they never really were challenged. with the Christ of Scripture, and the truth of the Gospel, and with the power of the living Word of God in all of its authority and sufficiency. And so with those thoughts in mind, I invite us to approach our passage this morning as we receive testimony here in the narrative of Jesus' cleansing of the leper that the Christ is testified to and is affirmed for who He is. The Word of God. And He demonstrates the divinity of His person by the power of His Word. Such that as he commands the purification of the leper, his body physically responded. And so in doing that, Christ not only gives testimony to his person, but he also gives testimony to the authority. of God's Holy Word. See, our text this morning challenges us with the truth about Christ, the truth about the Gospel, and the truth about the Word of God. Let's think about those things as we move forward in our text. And first of all, we're going to see here the need for cure. And we are confronted with the need for cure, being cured by the Word. in this leper as we read in verse 40, and there came a leper to him. Luke's account in the parallel version is even more descriptive because it says in Luke chapter 5 verse 12, he was covered with leprosy. And not only does it say he was covered with leprosy, but Luke uses a particular word to spotlight it as he gives testimony to the leper saying, behold, You see, the point that Luke makes here is he draws attention to the misery of the incurable condition of this leper. One of the things we want to think about here is that leprosy was miserable. It literally means in the Greek, scale, or to peel off. And what it indicated was a certain kind of skin condition that typically began with the head or the scalp and moved to the eyeballs and down the face and throughout the body. And then over time began to penetrate to the internal portions of the person, rotting them all the way down to the bone. And so it was a condition of walking around as a rotting, stinking carcass. while you were still alive. It was miserable. And it was incurable. There was no known cure for leprosy. If you were to read the rabbinic literature of the day, you would encounter many remedies, ointments, and soups, and all kinds of things that were prescribed. And the reality is, none of them ever worked. Once one contracted leprosy, the cure rate was zero. There was as much expectation of cure for leprosy as there was for death. And you all, being students of the Word of God this morning, know that there are only two examples in the whole of the Word of God where leprosy was actually cured. The first was that of Miriam, Moses' sister, and the second is that of Naaman the Syrian. And in both instances, it was so palpably evident that the cure was by the hand of God and miraculous. So the need for cure begins with the misery and incurable nature of leprosy, but it also comes from this, which is it made the leper's life miserable socially. You know, if somebody was declared to be a leper and found to be a leper, the first thing that they experienced was forced quarantine. They were locked into their house until it could be proven after seven days that they indeed did have leprosy. And once that was documented, they were thrown out of town to live the life of a vagabond or what we might call today a homeless person. And their whole rest of their life, what they practiced was what we call today social distancing. They could not walk within six feet of another human person. And when they did, they had to cry out loudly and vocally, unclean, unclean. And immediately people knew that this was a leper. It was a life of social isolation too, because they were cut off from regular fellowship of the people of God when they met for worship. A leper could go into the local synagogue, but he had to be the last one in and the first one out, and he sat in a box of isolation. So there was literally no meaningful contact or fellowship or communication with the people of God, and certainly they were not permitted into the temple. And worse yet, socially, for the leper to have the condition was meant that that person lived under the specter that they were under divine judgment. The Hebrew term for leprosy means strike. And it was the opinion of the people of God, whether rightly or wrongly, was the idea that the person who was a leper had been smitten by God. And so that leprosy was really an external indication of the corruption, the sinfulness, and the judgment worthiness of that person's life. And so not only did they have to social distance and keep themselves outside of the bands of normal community life, wherever they went and wherever they were beheld, they were constantly walking around under the cloud of the darkest suspicion that they were harboring sin and guilt in their life. And they deserved the misery that was their experience. So when we read about this leper here in the outset of our text, we need to see, first of all, there's a desperate need here. And that desperate need now is confirmed in the whole form of the appeal. As you read on into verse 40, here's what the text says. And there came a leper to him, beseeching and kneeling to him and saying to him, if thou wilt, you can make me clean. We can feel the intensity, right? The language of beseeching is perhaps a word we don't use. It's a King James-ified English, right? But I think we can figure it out. Maybe imploring. Maybe pleading. But whatever word you need to plug into that, the sense of the term is that of asking for something with great earnestness and zeal. And the verb here is in the present tense, and so the suggestion is that this leper didn't just come and quietly just sort of ask Jesus for something. The language of the text suggests that he repeatedly cried out, beseeching with earnestness and sincerity. And all that is reinforced with the nonverbal actions, of course, of him kneeling. and bowing before Christ. But what really grips us here in the appeal is the challenge. Notice what he says here. If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. This is not a challenge of Jesus' power. Notice it's stated in the plainest possible terms by the leper that he believes in the heart of his hearts that Jesus has the power because it's an indicative clause. You can. He doesn't come to Jesus doubting. He doesn't come to Jesus as if he's trying one more thing. Well, I've tried the pharmaceuticals, I've gone to the best doctors, I've gone to the spas, I've received acupuncture, I've gone the alternative medicine route, I might as well try you. That's not the approach here. He comes and very bluntly asserts his confidence. You can. You're able. The word in the original is power. But the challenge of the appeal here is will. Notice what he says. He challenges Christ's will. He says, if you will, if you desire, if you are pleased to make the determination, Notice, that is the hinge upon which the request swings back and forth here, is this leper comes with all of his need, with all of his misery, with all of his social isolation, with all of the stigma, with all of the dark cloud over his head, and he is pleading with Christ to do one thing, make a determination for him. And I can't help people of God to take a moment here to think about how this is a model of appeal to God, isn't it? It is a model of appeal. This is not half-hearted, mealy-mouthed praying. This is prayer on fire. You see, He says everything rests in the sovereign hand of God. And yet as He says that, He does it with the greatest fervency. He was beseeching. He was kneeling. He was pleading. You know, people of God, those who know us and who know our faith and the sovereignty of God and His foreordination of everything tell us we really can't be very good at praying. In fact, we really shouldn't even pray at all, right? If God's already determined the end from the beginning, just let the chips fall where they may. We're told that being reformed leads us to a life of coldness spiritually. That no closet is needed for our prayers because no praying is necessary. If God's already got it under control, we just wait for it to happen. But what this leper shows us here is you can have the deepest commitment and belief in the sovereignty of God in all of life, and yet you can plead and pray with God with the deepest sense of fervency and submission, knowing prayer is the means ordained by God. for the accomplishment of His will. And so we learn today from the leper people of God that when we pray, thy will be done, it isn't done with a cold heart. It's praying from the depths of our being, knowing God is pleased to hear and answer prayer. And so we see here this appeal and we move now in to what begins to be the heart of the text, which is the declaration. The declaration of cure in verse 41, Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand that he touched him and he saith unto him, I will be thou clean. Now the words of Christ are remarkable here, but one of the things that we need to make sure that we do is pay attention to the preface to the declaration. You know, if you were approached as a text in the original, it's almost as if the entire narrative just slows down. And all of a sudden, what Mark does is he focuses our attention upon Christ. And one of the things here that we see about Christ is what cannot be seen with the visible eye. He tells us, Jesus moved with compassion. And that word for compassion flows from, literally, language about the inward organs. He takes us down to pass the service into the depths of Jesus' being, into his soul, and the thing that Mark says is something we couldn't know apart from the testimony of the Word of God. Jesus had compassion. Right next to that picture of compassion, we begin to see a hand reaching out. And it's very interesting how this is set forth in the original side by side with a testimony of being moved at the same time. When we see Jesus being moved, we see Jesus stretching forth his hand. And so the picture then is almost of the hand as an extension of the heart. The hand as an extension of the heart. See, our text moves inside out as we get to the declaration and then we read Jesus seized him. But you know, people of God, that wasn't the means of healing. There are all kinds of ways in which Jesus heals in the Gospels. And sometimes He does heal by a touch. Sometimes people are healed by actually touching even the hem of His garments. But that's not this text. That is not the testimony of the healing of the leper. The testimony of the healing of the leper is that we see Christ compelled and He's moved. But the means here of the healing is the declaration. I want you to notice here how the very words of Christ echo the words of the leper. The leper comes to him and he is beseeching him with repetition, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus' verbal response now to this leper having been moved from the depths of his heart, having reached out and having touched him with his hand, makes the definitive move here. He says, I will be thou clean. Notice you remember that the appeal of the leper to Jesus was the appeal to his self-determination. It wasn't an appeal to his power because he already believed in it. It was an appeal to his self-determination and the very first thing Jesus says here is I determine. I choose. And then he makes the proclamation, you be clean. And it's an imperative mood command. And it's in passive form, which means that this is something that comes from without. It's something that comes upon. It is something done to the leper. It's not something he has a hand in. The declaration is spoken and the effect is caused. Because as we see in verse 42 now, and I hope your translation has it this way and I've consulted some others and they don't. But here's what it says in the original. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately, The leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed. You see, this is not accidental how Mark has framed this. The effect was caused in the very moment that Christ spoke and the very way that Mark sweeps it out here by way of commentary shows us that the word affected the determination of Christ. The Word affected the determination of Christ. And just to underscore the immediacy of it, He doesn't just tell us as soon as He had spoken, He adds to that immediately, and then it tells us that the leprosy fled from Him, all at the command of Christ. You see, the clear picture here then in Mark's narrative is that Christ, by His Word, accomplished what was impossible. Go back in your thinking to the thing that we said at the outset here, when we highlighted the need for cure, which was not just the misery of the condition of leprosy, but the incurable nature of leprosy. The incurable nature of leprosy. And as we begin to think about all of this, I am struck by how this passage presents us with a beautiful and powerful and heart-wrenching picture of the Gospel. Because this morning, people of God, we are to identify ourselves with this leper and all of his isolation. This is what we are before God in our sin. Cut off! from the life of God which is in Christ. Isn't that how Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter 2, as he speaks about the plight of the Gentiles? At the heart of the things that Paul says is wrong with the Gentile people is that they are cut off from the life of God in Christ, and that's precisely symbolized in the social isolation of the leper. Yet here he comes to Jesus with all of his sin, with all of his corruption, and we see a picture of gospel grace as Jesus is moved with compassion, and he speaks a word, and he touches him, and he heals him. John Calvin's quote here is interesting to us. It said, he applied at the same time the touch of his hand to express the feeling of compassion. Nor ought this to excite our wonder since he chose to take upon him our flesh that he might cleanse us from our sins. The stretching out of his hand is an expression and token of infinite grace and goodness. I probably haven't shared it with you. I haven't preached here too often. I had a professor in college. I went to Sac State, so not a Christian school. But a professor teaching a class on Reformation history tried to explain to the rest of my classmates, once he knew I was Reformed, what a Reformed or Presbyterian church looked like. And he tried many different ways, and he finally said, I've got it. Four walls in a sermon. No pictures of Jesus. No extravagant ceremony. Pastors are not wearing really interesting looking gowns. No incense, no smells, no bells. It's very cerebral. Very word centered. And our churches reflect our theology. Our worship reflects our theology about the way God connects with us and the way God changes us. And he does it through the preaching of his word. But within that word, people of God, there are pictures which are authorized for us to look at and to have our faith nourished by. And here's one. And the picture is the heart of Christ, as he says here, Jesus moved with compassion, touched him. This is an image of the gospel, as Calvin even points out, the reaching out of the hand to touch that miserable leper is a symbol of the identification of Christ with us in our sin. One of the wonderful things that we celebrate in the communion of the Holy Supper is the visible nature of our redemption, the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the cup. All of this indicates to us what happened to save us. Is that Christ identified with us in our sin and our sins were given to Christ and His righteousness is given to us. And the result of our sin being imputed to Christ and Him identifying with us in our sin is that His flesh was broken and His blood was shed. That is the power of the symbol here. Moved with compassion, He reaches out and He touches him. As Calvin says, a token. of infinite grace and mercy. That's how you have been saved. Christ identified with you in the corruption and the guilt of your sin in order that you may have life. And the image here of its cause takes us to what theologians speak of as the moving cause of the gospel. God so loved the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Remember, Jesus says, he who has seen the Son has seen the Father. To see the Son moved with compassion and to reach out and to touch this man and identify with him and his sin is an image of the love of God. which motivates the gospel. And so for you people of God as you come here this morning to hear this word about Christ, you need to be assured that whatever sin you brought into this room this morning, whatever thoughts and actions and attitudes which you're ashamed of, that you hide away in isolation in the depths of your heart. Those are covered by Christ. He has identified with you in your sin. He has taken your sin upon Him and He has washed you clean in His precious blood. We see finally the confirmation of cure here in verse 43. We have some very interesting words of preface as we get into this confirmation. Verse 43 says, and he straightly charged him, and forthwith set him free. You know, I don't know if you have this in your translation, but some translations say sternly, and the verb sternly means to snort. Now, if somebody's so angry that they're snorting and snarling, I'm assuming we all would believe that that person's pretty ticked off. It's an expression of, well, emotion, let's say. And so it's a strange moment in our text. After the beautiful picture of the gospel and of the healing, Christ turns to this man and he sternly, tells him not to go speak about it. And of course, you can see in verse 45, he immediately goes and speaks about it. And the oddest thing in the world is, why wouldn't he? Why would Jesus tell this man to not go talk about it? I mean, the most radically life-changing thing has happened to him. Why wouldn't he go to the rooftops and speak about it. And there's other points in the gospel when Jesus actually does tell the healed. The gathering demoniac comes to mind, and he wanted to come follow Jesus. And Jesus said, no, you go to your people and you tell them about Christ. But you see here, he tells all these people, and the fact that he tells them, and that the testimony is winsome, which we all know it would be, because what he had was impossible to be cured of, and yet he was cured. And so everybody in this vast community knows it's true. Everybody knows a miracle has occurred. And the proof that everybody knows a miracle has occurred is because we read here that as he blazed it abroad, Jesus couldn't go in this city because everybody was thronging him. So he had to go out in the desert. And even their people were seeking him. So what you have is a whole multitude of witnesses now. But Jesus didn't want that. Because this text and this action was designed to testify of Jesus in a different way. Look at verse 44. See that you say nothing to any man, but notice now the prescription. Go thy way, show thyself to the priest. and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." Notice what Jesus says to this man. He says, you make a beeline for Jerusalem, you go directly to the temple, and you grab the first priest you can find by the hand, and you show him that your leprosy has been cured. And when He looks upon you and He sees that your leprosy has been cured, you offer the sacrifices prescribed in the law. And Moses here speaks of that. Those things which Moses commanded. You can read for yourself in Leviticus 14. It's the slaughter of a couple of birds. And one live bird is dipped in the blood of the dead bird. And there's an elaborate ritual and sprinkling. And then after seven days they were to come back and offer another lamb. So that's what he was supposed to do. And I want you to notice the reason why he was supposed to do it. It's encapsulated in the very last clause of verse 44. Testimony. And the word means incrimination. Legal evidence against somebody in a court of law. That's what Jesus is requiring. to go to the priest and to present to the priest the testimony of his cure as a legal indictment against the priests. You say, well, how would that be an indictment? And the answer is clear, because it was incurable. The law couldn't cure it, it could only prescribe. The law could tell you what to do if you found a leper, that's quarantine him, and after seven days kick him outside of the camp. And the law says, if on the chance you ever get healed, here's a ceremony of cleansing and renewal and restoration to the worship and fellowship of the people of God. But they all knew it had never happened before. You see, and this gets us into the heart of our passage now. I've entitled it, if I didn't mention it already, Cured by the Word. There's a reason why this event occurred according to God's sovereign will. There's a reason why it's recorded in the Word of God. There's a reason for why Jesus does what He does here. And one of the things that Jesus wanted to show is that the power of His healing by a word was to be a sign that He was the Messiah. You might remember that John the Baptist's disciples told John that Jesus and His disciples were performing miracles and speaking boldly John sent his disciples to Jesus with one simple question. Are you the One? Capital O. The One. And Jesus' response to John was this. You go and report to John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." Essentially, his response to John the Baptist's disciples is this. What does Old Testament prophecy say is going to happen when the One comes? And the answer is plain enough, Old Testament prophecy says, when the one comes, the blind will receive sight, the lame will walk, the leper will be cleansed, the deaf will hear. The priests know that. They know their Bible. They know that Jesus is the Christ. This is an indictment against their unbelief. You see, what Jesus has done is planted a seed in our passage this morning for the confirmation of our faith. By not telling this man to go spread the word far and wide, but instead to go take it to the priest as a testimony, as legal evidence, as that which establishes something to be valid and true and certain. He has placed a seed in our text this morning for us. He has placed a declaration in our text to build faith on. You see, the point of the curing of the leper by the Word is to testify, first of all, to us this morning that He is the Word. The point of the healing of the leprous man by the verb or the word spoken is to confirm that he can do what no man other do, which is to speak and cause something to take effect. By healing an incurable disease by the spoken word, Jesus has confirmed his messianic identity. He has confirmed that He is the Word, the Son of the living God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. The other thing that He has confirmed for us this morning, people of God, is that His Word is sufficient. His Word is powerful and authoritative. insufficient. We started by thinking about those who are nonverts, people who grew up within the walls of the church and just decided to leave and go to no faith at all. How is it that people can sit in the church their whole life until their 30s and just depart and go to nothing? And the answer is they never believed, but probably secondly, they never heard. I am deeply disturbed about a trend that is sweeping over the entire church, but even the Reformed church, which is that emotion seems to have taken the place of truth. Words like grace and mercy have been disconnected from cross and blood and spoken of as pious platitudes that you could stamp on Hallmark cards. and speak softly and serenely and kindly to people about, but have absolutely no meaning at all because they are not connected to the offense of the cross and the shedding of Christ's blood. Gone is the language of substitutionary atonement. Gone is the language of being washed and cleaned in Christ's blood. And now we have a lot of talking about grace and a lot of talk about mercy and a lot of forgetting about sin, but very little about Christ, the eternal son of God, who took upon our very flesh and blood so that he could go to the cross, bearing our sin and dying there. If that doesn't happen, mercy and grace is a figment of pious imaginations. People of God, when we read texts like this, it is our solemn obligation and opportunity to have faith grounded. Faith grounded, faith grounded that Jesus is indeed the son of God and he shows it to us here this morning as he heals by the mere speaking of his word and then sends the leper to the priest as a legal indictment against them as proof that he indeed is the one, the Christ. And the second thing he does is show us by the power of his spoken word, the authority and sufficiency of scripture for our spiritual need. As a young man, I used to love watching the salmon go up the tributaries, the small creeks up the Sacramento River. They were gigantic. They could be 50, 60, 70 pounds. And since the water was more shallow, their backs would stick out of the water. And the thing that always stuck out in my mind was they had bruises everywhere. They were severely discolored because they fought their way, their entire way up from the ocean through the Sacramento to get to the tributaries to spawn and to die. And when they went to death, they were bruised from head to toe. That's how our faith gets. True, sincere, living faith gets bruised. Through our spiritual altercations with the devil, the world, and the flesh, our constant encounter with an unbelieving world, It's quite happy to let us have our religion, and I don't know how much longer that's gonna last either. But they used to be quite happy for us to have our non-offensive Christianity, as long as it didn't make grandiose and bold claims like it was true, like Jesus actually is the Son of God, that he did die on a cross, that he was raised from the dead bodily on the third day. Don't go getting that radical. They were fine if we held these as sort of spiritual things that spiritual people just kind of say. But you see, we're constantly being undermined. People telling us you can't prove the Bible historically. That's why I love texts like this, where the seeds of the truth are so firmly planted in them. They allow us to linger over them and to let our faith be nourished and strengthened. Jesus has included in the word this morning testimony about the truth of his identity. So you can be confirmed in your faith. So that you can walk away believing indeed he is the son of God, the Messiah, the one. And that his word is true, and that His Word is powerful, and that His Word is sanctifying. And so I just invite us to take this message away and reflect upon it as we have opportunity today and maybe the next, and think about the wonder of this passage, which is all about being cured by the Word. Father, we thank you for Holy Scripture. We thank you that within it, it contains the marks of self-evidencing authority and truth, that Christ is indeed the self-attesting Christ. He did not receive testimony about the authority of his being from human reason or a college of elite thinkers. but the validity of his claims is proven on the very face and stamp, speaking healing miraculous words and declaring boldly his identity so that it will be unmistakable. Help us this morning, O Lord, to bring our weak and bruised faith to this word of promise and hope, and may our hearts be encouraged. May they be fueled with spiritual strength so that we will have the grace to walk forward in another week to give bold testimony of the true Christ and of the Christian faith to a world that so desperately needs it. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.