When Jesus met a leper on the road, the leper said, if you are willing, you can heal me. I don't know how developed this leper's theology was at this point, but he certainly got it right.
If you will, you can. And he said to him, I am willing. Be cleansed. Well, that leper demonstrated incredible faith, didn't he? He didn't wonder if Jesus was able to heal him. It was just a matter of Jesus' willingness to do so.
Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul returns to our verse-by-verse study from the Gospel of Luke, and as we'll discover, Jesus' ministry to the needy leper was immediate and complete. Now, Luke has told us repeatedly already that multitudes of people were brought to Jesus and that He healed them of all kinds of calamitous diseases and afflictions.
But on a few occasions, Luke isolates specific cases where Jesus manifested this ministry. And in this case, he singles out the occurrence of the healing of this leper. Now, when we encounter lepers in the New Testament, we understand that the concept of leprosy among the Jewish people was not as specifically defined as what modern-day leprosy or Hansen's disease represents. There were a multitude of serious afflictions that were subsumed under the general category of leprosy.
So, we don't know exactly the type of leprosy with which this man was afflicted. But if you go back to the book of Leviticus, you will see extensive instructions given to people for diagnostic purposes to find out if the rash or the scab or the lesion on a person's skin was a harmless problem or was one that was more serious and deemed to be leprosy. And of course, it was the priest's task in Israel to make the definitive diagnosis as to whether the person's condition was simply a minor skin affliction or was the dreaded form of leprosy.
And as you read those texts, they seem so foreign to us, and many people grumble at sacred Scripture and lose their interest going through all these detailed matters. But to the Jew in that day, if he woke up with a rash and he didn't know what it was, and he was reading those instructions carefully, he knew that his life was at stake. And it was, in a sense, much worse for the Jew going through this process of diagnosis than it is for a modern person who is weighting the results from the lab of a biopsy that may indicate a malignancy. For a person to be diagnosed with leprosy was not only a sentence of a miserable illness, but it was considered among the Jews to be a kind of living death for the simple reason that one who was diagnosed with leprosy was not simply confirmed to be ill, but rather he was considered now to be unclean. Notice that in the other diseases that Jesus confronts, He heals them. But the leper that comes to Jesus doesn't ask to be healed. He asked to be made clean. That is, He was asking to be healed, but more than to be healed, to be healed of a disease that made Him an outcast from the covenant community of Israel where the lepers had to live outside of the camp, outside of the community, outside of the church as it were, and outside of the town.
Sometimes they gathered together in colonies because the only people with whom they were allowed to have contact was, of course, with other lepers. But this man is by himself, and obviously somehow the Word had gone around the countryside about the power of Jesus' ministry, and this was his last hope in order to get rid of this walking death. Now Luke tells us about this man that he wasn't merely afflicted with the beginning touches of leprosy, but his case was severely advanced. As Luke the physician tells us that the man was full of leprosy, full of it, all over it, and in a most miserable condition. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face in front of him and begged him. Now what I want us to notice at first this morning is what this leopard said when he was begging Jesus. He said to him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
Lord, if you are willing, you can. So the leper made a distinction between Jesus' power and His willingness to exercise that power in behalf of this poor wretch. Now at this level, as badly mangled this man's health was, his theology was sound. It was absolutely correct in his assessment that Jesus could make him clean. And in his whole life, he had never met anyone else who had the power to make him clean.
And in your whole life, you will never meet anyone else who can make you clean or can make me clean, save this one, Jesus, who met this poor leper on that day. But notice that when he begged him and made his request, he said, if you are willing. He didn't say to Jesus, I know you're willing to heal me if you can. But that's not where he put the question. I know you can.
I don't know if you're willing. Another way we can see this is that the leper is saying to Jesus, if it be Thy will, please make me clean. Now, there are all kinds of healing ministries sprinkled across the Christian landscape in our day, and we're going to be talking about the leper.
And various types of these movements have come and gone in the past. But one of the most dangerous concepts that we hear in these circumstances is the idea of faith healing that means that in order for you to be healed, a necessary requirement or a necessary condition is that before you are healed, you must have faith that you are going to be healed. And if you don't have that faith that you're going to be healed, then the lack of that faith will be probably the fatal impediment against your becoming healed.
I've heard this again and again and again and again, and it goes along with this thinking that if you ask for healing or for mercy from God, and you preface your request by saying, if it be Thy will, that somehow you're manifesting a lack of faith, and actually in the very request you are committing a sin. Years ago I told the story of a young man I met back on our campus in the mountains of western Pennsylvania where Ligonier ministry began. Every January we had a one-month course of collegiate studies called a January term because many of the colleges and universities in the eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania area had divided their calendar years between two major terms plus the intercession, as they called it, the January term.
And actually, our January term at Ligonier was begun at the request of one of the local colleges, and several colleges then gave academic credit for work done at the study center for the January term. So we would have a flock of students coming from all different colleges, and among them was our dear friend Harvey Watson. And Harvey was an exceptionally bright young man, alert and contagious with his loving spirit and attitude, and deeply devoted as a Christian. He suffered from a severe form of cerebral palsy.
In fact, he used to laugh at himself when he would try to negotiate the pathways on the campus during the snow because it was always a matter literally of touch and go for Harvey. But he had a great spirit. And then one day he came to me the second time he came for the second January term, and he was very distressed and upset. And he looked at me and he said, R.C., do you think that I'm demon-possessed?
I said, what? He said, do you think I'm demon-possessed? I said, Harvey, what in the world ever gave you the idea that you might be demon-possessed? And he went on to relate the story to me that he had some friends, there were zealous Charismatics in his dorm, and they had prayed together and decided to come to pray and lay hands on Harvey that he may be healed of cerebral palsy. And so they came, and in the name of Jesus demanded that Harvey be cured of cerebral palsy.
But Harvey wasn't cured of cerebral palsy. So the next thing these students did was they told Harvey that the reason why he wasn't cured of cerebral palsy was because he didn't have the faith. He needed to have faith believing, and then he would receive his healing. And they explained that you had to believe that you were healed before you could actually be healed. They would talk to a blind man and say, if you want to have your sight back, you have to believe that you can see before God will open your eyes. Can you imagine these poor souls, these blind people who were told that, and they said, okay, I believe, I believe, I believe.
And they opened their eyes, and only darkness. To believe that you can see when you can't see is not faith. It's credulity, and it's destructive to the soul. But anyway, these students became more and more harsh with Harvey chastising him for his lack of faith, which had to be the reason that he hadn't been healed. And finally, when he persisted in his unbelief, they accused him of being demon-possessed. So these young students went from the virtuous posture of concern and compassion for one of their fellow students to serious intercessory prayer for that student, and ended up in the point of accusing this poor soul of being demon-possessed and leaving him in a state far worse than he was before they began their intercession. So that was the story that Harvey gave me and asked me again if I thought he was demon-possessed.
And I said, of course not. And I prayed with him, and I prayed for him. And as I was praying for him, I noticed that this burden was being removed from him, and when I was finished praying, he was weeping. And I said, what's the matter? And he said, I thank you not only for praying, he said, but do you know what happened when you prayed for me? And I said, no, what's that? He says, when you prayed for me, you said to God, Lord, be merciful to this man who suffered in this manner. And he said, R.C., nobody's ever called me a man before.
Wow. Well, I'm happy to report that Harvey, who's still burdened with cerebral palsy, has not let that become a real impediment to him. He's had a very productive Christian life in the business world and continues his devout faith and brilliant testimony to the Lord. Because when he would pray, he would say, if it be Thy will.
And he was happy with whatever God responded. The same testimony is heard from Joni Eareckson Tada again and again and again, who in her crippled and paralyzed condition remains triumphant in her faith, and she trusts God that God is good, even when God does not answer our prayers the way we might want them. I often hear people talk about the difficulty of dealing with unanswered prayer, and I'm not really sure what that is. I've never had an unanswered prayer.
Well, sometimes the answer is no, but that's an answer. And if the answer comes from the Lord God omnipotent, who is more compassionate than any of us could possibly be, then it's a good answer, because He is saying that's not My will right now for you, at least in the immediate circumstances. His promises remain for the glory that awaits Him, that awaits us in heaven, and He tells us that the afflictions that we have to deal with in this world aren't worthy to be compared with the glory that He has laid up for us in heaven.
But in the meantime, in between time, we may experience great pain, great suffering, and great affliction, and it's according to the sovereign will of God. Yesterday morning, Vest and I were at Florida Hospital visiting our son who was there with their daughter who has been suffering from birth and is a special needs child, and has already far exceeded the normal life expectancy of a child with less encephali. But she became very ill this week, and she's been in the intensive care unit at Florida Hospital. And I went in, Vest and I went to see Shannon and R.C. Jr., and he mentioned that the chaplain had been in, and made some small talk with him and asked him how he was doing.
And R.C. said to him, he said, well, you know, he said, I'm a Christian, and I'm a Christian of that particular stripe that's Reformed in our theology, and we're those people that really believe in the sovereignty of God. And I said, well, what did the chaplain say?
He said, well, he didn't want to discuss that, so that was over. But I mean, some people act like they're stoics and not Christians, like they sing queso rasa ra as if they're victims of some fortuitous fate and so on. No, no, no. To believe in the sovereignty of God is to believe in the sovereignty of a holy God, a righteous God, a good God who does all things well, and a God who is filled with mercy and compassion. That's the God whose sovereignty we trust.
Well, I don't know how developed this leper's theology was at this point, but he certainly got it right. If you will, you can. And so we see how Jesus reacted to that when He said to him, I am willing, be cleansed.
I am willing. I hear your prayer, and my answer is yes, be clean. And it's not as if, as we hear with so many modern faith healers that are of the name it and claim it variety who say, though the healing maybe isn't evident right now, but we've prayed the prayer of faith, and your healing has begun, and you just have to wait a little while for it to be manifested. In this case, just like in every case that Jesus healed people, the response and the reaction was immediate and complete. Immediately, the leprosy left this man, and he was cleansed. And then He charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing as a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded. Now what was Jesus referring here? He said, look, you've been made clean, but just because I've cleaned up your body does not mean that the church, as it were in Israel, knows that you have been cleansed and will welcome you back into the fellowship of the village and into the synagogue and into the temple. Before those things can happen and before your exile from your family and your community is lifted, you have to follow the prescriptions of the law that God gave through Moses in the Old Testament, and that means you have to go and see the priest. I can cleanse you, but only the priest can verify that you have been cleansed and that you are now legally permitted to join your family and the community.
And you have to go through all of the ritual that's involved, including the offering of the sacrifice. Well, let's take just a moment and look at a bit of that ritual cleansing that we find in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus. We read this, Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him. And indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedarwood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedarwood, the scarlet, and the hyssop, and dip them, and the living bird, in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water.
And he shall sprinkle it seven times, and so on. Then after this cleansing rite, the man can be determined to be clean and has allowed now to come from the wilderness back into the camp. And we have to understand this language of the Bible of being clean and of being unclean, as we've seen dramatically how the most unclean, the leper, is now made clean through the power of Christ. And so we come back to the text, and he said, The report, however, went around concerning him all the more, and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. So he himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.
When my car runs out of gas, or almost runs out of gas, before it runs out of gas, as it is running out of gas, I go to the gas station, because I know it won't work once it's completely out of gas. Well, Jesus wasn't driving around Galilee in a Honda Accord. You know the Bible says that in the book of Acts they were all together in one accord, and some people argue that therefore they were driving Hondas. No, Jesus wasn't driving a Honda. But every time He healed somebody, it cost Him.
On some occasions we read explicitly that the power went out of Him. And the more the people came, and the more they demanded from Him, the more important it became for Him to withdraw, to get alone with the Father, to have His strength recharged. And I close this morning by simply saying to you that if it was necessary for the Lord Jesus to find that strengthening and intimate power from being alone with the Father, how much more important is it for us to be before the Father, gaining strength from His Spirit. What a wonderful reminder for us today from Dr. R.C.
Sproul. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Sunday. I'm Lee Webb, and I'm glad you could be with us today. Each Lord's Day we continue Dr. Sproul's sermon series from the Gospel of Luke, gaining insight from each passage. Luke was a physician and a great historian, so as we study, we are learning important and intriguing details that we don't find in the other three Gospels. We invite you to continue your own in-depth study of Luke. When you contact us today with your gift of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we will be glad to send you a digital download of Dr. Sproul's commentary on this Gospel. It's nearly 600 pages, our offices are closed on this Lord's Day, but you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. Ligonier Ministries exists to support believers and churches around the world. Teaching series like this one bring sound biblical doctrine to people you and I may never meet, but we do know that the Word of God is living and active. So we thank you for your financial support of our ministry. Well, next Sunday, Dr. Sproul returns to take a close look at a controversy that arose among the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They were incensed that Jesus claimed to have the power to forgive sin. I hope you'll join us again next week for Renewing Your Mind. you
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