Jesus and the Leper

You have your Bibles. Turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 1, and we're going to be looking at verses 40 through 45. Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them.

But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. Come with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you today with several requests. We pray, Father, for June Morgan, who's Mindy Turner's mom, who's en route to the hospital right now having trouble breathing, and they think it may be a heart condition. We ask, Father, that you have mercy on her, and touch her, and help her, Lord, that she might be made well and able to breathe. We continue to pray for Eugene as he is recovering from the surgery that he had this past Thursday. We thank you, Lord, for the success of it, but pray, Father, that you would help him with pain, help him to recover quickly and be able to be back with us. Father, I continue to pray for my brother Randy Presley as he is still experiencing deep grief from the passing away of his wife, Joanie. Father, I thank you for the peace that passes all understanding that you've given to Randy.

I thank you, Lord, for the testimony of Joanie, and I ask, Father, that you would bless Randy and his family in a very powerful and strong and mighty way. Heavenly Father, today we look at leprosy, that terrible disease of the ancient world that would eat a man's flesh to the bone. We see the results, pain, numbness, physical, emotional, and spiritual isolation. What does leprosy symbolize?

It symbolizes sin. In today's scripture, we see that there was only one answer to leprosy, and that was Jesus. Jesus touched the leper, and the leprosy was no more. The leper became physically and emotionally whole. Lord, in this story, everyone except Jesus ran from the man.

They feared contracting the disease themselves. They had no power to help with his sickness, but Jesus did not run from him but to him. He touched him, and the man was healed instantaneously. That's what happened at our conversion. You touched us.

You became our substitute. You took our sin and gave us your righteousness. Father, help us to view sin in the same way the leper viewed his leprosy. May we hate it, and may we run to Jesus for help. For it is in the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Do we have recorded for us in scripture all the miraculous healings that Jesus did? And the answer to that is absolutely not.

It's very interesting. In John's gospel, he comes to the conclusion of that gospel and talks about this very thing in chapter 20 verse 30 through 31. He says this, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. And then in John 21, 25, he added, Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.

Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. John was saying there is no way in this world that he could write down and tell us about all the miraculous healings that Jesus did. Sometimes Jesus healed hundreds in one day.

Sometimes thousands in a month. And brothers and sisters, can you just imagine the impression that that must have made on Israel? The commoners, the common people in Israel got excited and filled with joy over this. And the religious leaders got mad and they got jealous.

But no matter what, no matter who you were, this was something that absolutely could not be ignored. Now I want you just to picture if this could happen in our day and time. That Jesus could come over to our house, meet with us, and we would take him up to the hospital. And he would go through the intensive care unit. And in that intensive care unit, many people are unconscious and they're in comas and they are getting ready to die. And Jesus goes to each room, one by one, walks into the room, reaches over and touches that person. And as soon as he touches them just like that, they jump up out of the coma, totally cognizant, and they're perfectly healthy. And they reach up and they grab the oxygen mask and they rip it off. And they grab the tubes in their arms and rip them out.

And they start screaming to the nurses, get my wife or get my husband on the phone, telling them to get up here and get me. I've never felt better in my life. Wow!

That sounds impossible, I understand. Because we haven't seen anything like that in the last 2,000 years. But in Mark chapter 1, the perfectly true, totally inerrant Word of God tells us that that's exactly what took place in Galilee. People that were on their deathbed, people that were getting ready to die, are all of a sudden made totally well. The blind now have 20-20 vision. The lame are walking and leaping and praising God. The dumb are speaking 100 miles a minute.

The deaf are hearing perfectly clear, this cannot be ignored. And as I said, there was joy and shouting among the commoners, but there was jealousy on the part of the religious leaders. The religious leaders can't deny that these miraculous healings have been done because they've got all of Jesus' followers out there, and so many of them have been healed. I mean, thousands and thousands of them. So they can't ignore that. They can't say it didn't happen, because it did happen. And all of them give testimony to that.

So they decide to try another angle. And this is what they say, Jesus did this healing by the power of Satan. I can imagine the reaction from the followers of Jesus, all those people that had just been healed.

And I would imagine they responded with mocking sarcasm. Oh, this is what you're saying. That the thief that is Satan, who came to kill, steal, and destroy, has changed his tactics. And now he wants us healthy, strong, and alive.

Come on! You can't believe that! What's wrong with you? How did Jesus deal with that? How did Jesus deal with these false allegations about him? What did Jesus have to say when they accused him of healing people by the power of Satan? I can just imagine Jesus shaking his head in disgust, saying, Guys, could you not find a better lie than that? And in Matthew chapter 12 verse 25 through 26 is Jesus' response. There was no valid excuse for the attitudes of the religious leaders.

The scribes and Pharisees were used to people coming to them for help and asking for guidance and counsel. They weren't coming to them anymore. They were coming to Jesus and they didn't like it.

And so what did they do about it? They took Jesus' perfect love and they nailed him to a cross. What was wrong with these people? Why did they resist Jesus? Why did they not bow to the truth? Why didn't they repent of their sins and get saved and come to know the Lord? Their sin nature was too strong. They were spiritually dead so they did what their flesh wanted to do. They hated Jesus so much they nailed him to a cross. I talk to people all the time who try to convince me that man is basically good and that he is totally free in his will to do what he wants to do and that man has the power within himself to choose for Jesus and be saved.

Well, there's a problem with that. That's not what the Bible teaches. In Ephesians chapter 2 the scripture teaches us that we are dead before we come to know Christ, that we are spiritually dead, dead in our trespasses and sins, that we are controlled by three things, the world, the flesh, and the devil, that we are by nature children of wrath. But God, who is rich in mercy, hath quickened us and seated us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves.

It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Now who wrote those words? Those words were written by Paul, who at one time was a spiritually dead Pharisee. He hated Jesus. He was putting Christians in prison. He was killing other Christians. He just absolutely hated Jesus with all of his heart. And so what changed?

Why did he change? When he was walking on the road to Damascus to get letters of permission to persecute more Christians, all of a sudden as he was walking that road, the Lord Jesus stepped out in front of him in his glorified body. And Paul saw him. The Holy Spirit of God did a work in Paul's heart.

We call it regeneration. He gave him eyes to see. He gave him ears to hear. He gave him a heart to respond to Christ. And there on that road, as he's lying down there in the dust, he looks up to Jesus and he calls him Lord. In one split second, all of this took place.

All of this took place. He has turned from a sinner who hates the Lord to a Christian who loves him. In one split second, he went from being an enemy of Christ to a disciple of Christ. Now, did Paul accomplish that by an action of his free will?

Absolutely not. God gave him faith. God birthed him into the kingdom. Well then, why didn't all these Pharisees have that experience? Why didn't all of these, the ones that actually crucified him, why didn't they have that same experience that the Apostle Paul did?

Because God, in his wisdom, let them do what their wicked hearts wanted to do. And brothers and sisters, that ought to humble every single one of us. It sure humbled Paul.

For in Galatians chapter 6 verse 14, Paul said, For God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world. Now, during Jesus' ministry, Jesus healed a number of lepers. You remember the ten lepers he healed at one time, and only one came back to give him thanks. That was a Samaritan. He probably healed Simon the leper.

That's, Simon the leper had him over for supper after that, probably as an attitude of thanksgiving to him for what he had done. But in this story, we see a leper that's healed, and it's mentioned not only here in Mark, but also in Matthew and Luke. This is a very important healing that takes place here. And we see that by how often it's mentioned in the scripture.

Why is this so important? Because after this healing, the popularity of Jesus absolutely skyrocketed. And that popularity became so great that Jesus couldn't go in the cities anymore.

He had to stay back in the unpopulated areas. With that said, I want you to look at the text. Three points that I want to share with you as we look at Jesus and the leper. Point one, the leper's problem. Look at verse 40. And a leper came to him, imploring him and kneeling, said to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Mark gives no details about this man except to tell us he was a leper. Go over to Luke's gospel.

Luke tells us a little more. He tells us that he was covered with leprosy. This word leprosy comes from the root word lepros that means scaly skin. And there's different categories of leprosy.

Some of it is not dangerous at all. Some of it's like psoriasis or eczema or maybe a scalp fungus. But what this man had was called Hansen's disease. And it was the worst form of leprosy. They've gone back in archaeological studies and they traced it all the way back as far as Egypt, where they were able to tell that with some of these mummies that these people had this terrible, horrible disease.

One commentator described Hansen's disease this way. It said, one of the most feared diseases in the ancient world. It was a communicable infection that could be spread both through the air and through physical touch. Even today there is no cure for the disease, though it can be controlled with medication.

Symptoms include spongy, tumor-like swellings that appear on the face and body. As the bacteria become systemic, it began to affect internal organs while causing bones to start deteriorating. It also weakened the victim's immune system, making lepers susceptible to other diseases like tuberculosis. In Leviticus 13, the Lord gave Israel strict regulations concerning leprosy. Anyone suspecting of having leprosy were required to go to the priest to let the priest examine them. The priest would examine them, and if they saw that this was more than just a superficial skin condition, then if it was more than that, then they had to be quarantined for seven days. And then they'd come back and get examined again. And if it was still there, or if it was worse, then they were quarantined for seven more days. After 14 days, the priest would have to make the decision either to declare them clean or unclean. If he declared them clean, then they went on their way to live their life to do what they wanted to do. If they were declared unclean, then it was a problem, for it was going to be a long-term quarantine. If a person had Hansen's disease, there was no temporary isolation. It was always absolutely permanent.

How bad was it? It infects very quickly. It is extremely contagious. It eats holes in the flesh, starts usually with the face, and those holes are oftentimes, they go all the way down to the bone.

There is no medical cure for it, and it always led to death. In Leviticus 13, 45-46, the Lord gave this instruction. 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. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean, he shall live alone.

His dwelling shall be outside the camp. According to the Talmud, they incorporated social distancing. What they said was the leper had to stay at least six feet away from everybody that was not a leper.

I guess that's where Anthony Fauci got his numbers. But if the wind was blowing, then the social distancing moved from six feet to 150 feet. But the horrible truth is these lepers were most often sent to the leper colonies, and it was a death sentence when that happened. They could not go home, they could not see friends, they could not go back to work. So besides the pain of physical suffering, there was the horror of social isolation. If the priest sent you to a leper colony and you had a pretty good idea that you weren't going to make it, that you were going to die, and one of the worst things about it was that you were not going to be able to say goodbye to your loved ones. You couldn't get in contact with them.

They wouldn't let it happen. I think we have experienced some of that with this COVID mess that's taken place in our nation and across the world, where the hospitals will not allow us to get up to see our loved ones, and many have experienced not being able even to tell them goodbye. One more thing. Hansen's disease, the worst form of leprosy, causes numbness. You may think, well, that might be a good thing. At least it's not so much pain.

Well, that's not necessarily true. In Philip Yancey's book called Where Are You, God, When It Hurts, he spoke of Hansen's disease today and said this. A horrible side effect is numbness. In the villages of Africa and Asia, a person with Hansen's disease had been known to reach directly into a charcoal fire to retrieve a dropped potato. Nothing in his body told him not to do that. Patients at Brand's Hospital in India would work all day gripping a shovel with a protruding nail or extinguish a burning wick with their bare hands or walk on splintered glass. The daily routines of life ground away at the patient's hands and feet, but no warning system alerted him. If an ankle turned, tearing tendon and muscle, he would adjust and walk crooked. If a rat chewed off a finger in the night, he would not discover it missing until the next morning.

So consider the leper's problem. He is physically disfigured. He's socially isolated. He is religiously cut off. He can't go to the temple and sacrifice and worship his God. He can't go to the synagogue to hear the Word of God preached. He knows that death is certain and there just is absolutely no hope. So what happened? Somehow, this leper, this guy, slipped out of the leper colony. I don't know what he's thinking.

Maybe he's saying to himself, what does it matter? What are they going to do to me? Are they going to kill me? I'm getting ready to die anyway.

It may be better to just go ahead and let this happen. So I'm getting out of here. And I think somebody told him about what Jesus was doing. When he heard about Jesus, it was a flicker of hope. Now, can you imagine this guy and what he must have looked like as he finds out where Jesus is and he's walking up toward the crowd. The crowd looks around. They see him coming.

He's got deep holes all the way to the bone in his face. The stench of the decaying flesh is just so terribly, horribly awful that people are just retching. And he can hardly move and his legs are numb so he just falls and they crumple up under him and he has to drag himself over to Jesus. By this time, the crowd's getting out of the way. Man, they don't want to get anywhere near him so they're moving out of the way and he tries out, Master Jesus, have mercy on me.

Have mercy on me. And then he gets right in front of Jesus. Everybody else has just moved way out of the way and he's lying prostrate before the Lord. His actions may have been socially unacceptable but his attitude toward Jesus was reverent and very respectful. In Luke 5, 12, we are told that at this point he called Jesus Lord. And he then expressed his faith. He's not cocky and he's not demanding. He doesn't believe that Jesus owed him anything. He's just humble and he's hopeful. Look what he said.

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. He did not doubt Jesus' power. He did not doubt Jesus' authority.

What he doubted was his own worthiness. Now there's a reason for this. The leper had been taught by the Pharisees that this sickness, this leprosy that he was battling with, was a judgment from God on his sin. And this is one of the reasons that they had very little compassion for the people in the leper colonies. They said, oh, we know why they're there in the leper colonies. They've committed some terrible, horrible sin and God's judged them by giving them this leprosy. And so they had to put them there.

And so we don't really care too much about them. It reminds me of the Friends of Job. Remember the Friends of Job? They saw Job in his condition where he had lost his children, where he had lost his health, where he had lost all of his wealth. And they said, oh, we know what's happened to you. God is judging you.

And they just blistered him with criticism because they looked at his sickness and his misfortune as a judgment from God. Folks, we need to be very careful when we criticize people about a certain lifestyle. We need to remember this, except for the grace of God, that could be me. I used to have a smugness about people who were addicted to drugs or alcohol, and I would want to say to them, you've got no one to blame but yourself. You don't need to worry about this.

If you hate this addiction, then just walk away from it. Forty-five years ago, my pastor, Thurman Stone, called up Gordon Weekly, who was the director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, and he asked him if I could come and preach at the Charlotte Rescue Mission. Gordon Weekly was a very prominent pastor at one time in Charlotte. He got hooked on alcohol. It totally destroyed him. He lost his ministry. He lost his wife. He lost his children.

He lost absolutely everything. And he went to the Charlotte Rescue Mission. He got sober there. He never drank again until much, much later in his life, and it happened again. But he went for years as the director there and did a mighty and a wonderful job. He called me up and asked me if I would come and preach at the Charlotte Rescue Mission.

Not once, but he did this many, many occasions. And I'll tell you, I never stood in the pulpit of the Charlotte Rescue Mission without feeling the very powerful presence of the Holy Spirit of God. And it was nothing to do with me. It had to do with God's honoring the ministry of the Charlotte Rescue Mission. The first time I preached there, there was a young man that came up to me and just was absolutely broken over his sin. I had the opportunity of just sitting down with him. We went through the gospel, shared the gospel with him. This man trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior. About two and a half years later, this man sent a letter back to the Charlotte Rescue Mission, and it had my name on it, so they forwarded the letter to me. By this time, I was in seminary, and in the letter, he wanted to just thank me for preaching the gospel. And then he said that he has not had a drink since that time, and he said, I praise God for the Charlotte Rescue Mission because they did not give up on me.

And he said, I've just been elected as a deacon in a Baptist church in Columbia. I praise God for that. The Charlotte Rescue Mission taught me this truth. Except for the grace of God, that could be me. So don't give up. Folks, as long as somebody has breath, there is hope.

Don't give up. Well, what the Jewish community was doing was even worse. They had no compassion on this leper at all because of a horrible, inaccurate theology that told them that this man deserved what he was getting because the reason that he had leprosy was because of his sin. So the leper came to Jesus, believing that about himself, and so he wasn't asking Jesus for justice. He was asking Jesus for mercy. He said, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

I can imagine the crowd just kind of backing away and backing away, putting their hands over their mouth to be sure they wouldn't catch what he's got. Maybe picking up stones to drive him back to the leper colony. That was the leper's problem.

Alright, secondly, I want us to look at the Lord's provision. Verse 41 through 44. Moved with pity, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. The crowd was moved to fear and loathing toward this man. Jesus was moved with compassion toward him.

The crowd ran away from this man. Jesus ran to the man. And Jesus said, I will heal you.

Be cleansed. Touched him, touched him. This is the first hand that has touched this leper since he was diagnosed with leprosy. He thought before he met Jesus that nobody would ever touch him again, that he would die being untouched. In Leviticus chapter 5 verse 3, the Mosaic law included a regulation forbidding the Jews from touching anything or anyone unclean. That included a leper. And yet Jesus reached over there and touched him anyway.

I like what John MacArthur said about this. He said, but Jesus could not be defiled by anything. Certainly he could have healed him with a simple word. The Lord wanted to make a point, one that would have left a lasting impression. The infinite compassion of Christ was dramatically illustrated in that profound act of kindness. His love was such that he was willing to touch those whom no one else would even come near. He touched this untouchable man and said to him, I am willing. Be cleansed. There's no period of recovery.

There's no rehabilitation time for him. The leper was immediately transformed into a man of totally perfect health. Imagine this, that he had holes all the way down to the bone in his face. And all of a sudden they are filled in and his face looks perfect. His skin was falling off the bone. And now the skin is as perfect and clean and pure as a little baby's skin. All that terrible, horrible smell is now totally absent. And now he doesn't stumble and fall anymore, for his legs are perfectly well.

And he can run, he can leap, and he can jump. So, what did Jesus tell him? Jesus said, now you go to the priest and have him examine you and declare you clean. Where was the priest? The priest was in Jerusalem. How far away was that?

About a hundred miles a long way. But then Jesus gave the leper instruction. Not only was he to go to the priest, but secondly, he was to keep his mouth shut.

Look at verse 44. And said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. The leper was given two stern instructions.

Go to Jerusalem, show yourself to the priest. That was part of the law. It had to be done because of the law. But it was also a testimony to these priests. These priests are the ones who told him to go to the leper colony to begin with. And they thought that he was probably either dying in the leper colony or maybe that he'd already died. They'd seen some people healed of eczema or the lightest forms of leprosy. They'd seen that before.

They'd never seen anybody that was healed of Hansen's disease. And not only was this man healed of the disease and better, but all the deformities, all the things that were wrong with his skin, all the things that were wrong with his body had been made totally and completely well. The leper obeyed the first command. And the priests were blown away by what Jesus had done. But the second command the leper did not obey. That takes us to the third point and that is the Lord's predicament.

Look at verse 45. But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter. The Lord's instruction to the leper was clear and it was totally unambiguous.

Do not talk about this to anyone. The leper was so happy and he was so excited he couldn't keep it quiet. And he starts going out to everyone that he knows and he just starts sharing it. He said, look at me.

He said, I was a dying, sick, stinking leper and Jesus touched me and he made me completely well. Now my body is well. Now I've got my relationship back with my family, with my friends. Now I'm gone back to work.

Now I can enjoy life. This is so good and Jesus did it all. I'll be honest with you. If I'd been in his place, it would be hard to keep your mouth shut. I mean, my goodness what Jesus had done for him and how much he wanted to tell everybody about it.

I think about my own self. Jesus forgave me of my sins. He imputed to me the righteousness of Christ. He made of me a new creation. He saved me from eternal hell. What if Jesus had said to me, now don't tell anybody about it? Whew, that would have been tough.

But here's the kicker. This man ran off telling everyone when Jesus said don't do it. The result was that Jesus' popularity skyrocketed so much that he couldn't go to the cities anymore. He couldn't go to the big towns anymore because the crowds were too big waiting on him so he had to spend his time out in desolate places so that the crowds couldn't get to him. People wanted his healing.

But you know what? They didn't really want the gospel. And Jesus, his purpose was to get the gospel to them. He knew that they needed more than just to get physically healed. What they needed was to be spiritually healed. They needed to know Christ. They needed to know who God was and they needed to be saved for all of eternity.

They needed that. And this man messed that up. He messed it up by his disobedience. Folks, the story is recorded for us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That tells us that it's important. So what's the message to us?

I think part of the message is this. Be obedient to Jesus. No matter what your feelings or your emotions or what excites you and what thrills you, no matter what all that says to you, be obedient to Jesus.

Why? Because Jesus knows best. Folks, the Scripture says that obedience is better than sacrifice. Jesus said, if you love me, then keep my commandments. How important it would have been, Jesus could have done so much more gospel preaching if this man had been obedient.

But he wasn't. And it cost. And it cost greatly. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this story makes us sad. The leper was healed. He wanted to rejoice and tell everyone about it. He wanted to share with the world that Jesus was the healer.

That Jesus had power that no doctor or physician ever imagined. That Jesus told him to keep quiet. The leper did not take Jesus seriously. He did not obey. And this hindered the ministry of Christ. Jesus wanted the world to see its need for a Savior, but the world only wanted a Messiah that could meet their physical and emotional needs.

The leper's disobedience hindered the ministry of Christ. Father, help us to leave this place today with the resolve not to do that. Help us to be obedient to whatever your call is to us. For it's in the precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.