"Touching Lives with the Love of God"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now let's get to the Word of God. When I say the name Eric Clapton, what image comes to mind? Well if you were raised in the 60s and the 70s the way I was, you get an image immediately of Eric Clapton. The image of a long-haired, guitar-playing, defiant, irreverent, self-assured, maybe even cocky musician.

And this is how we knew him. This is how I knew Eric Clapton. Recently, however, he's had a hit song and a hit video entitled, In Heaven. But it's very much out of character for the man that I think of when I think of Eric Clapton.

Because it's kind of a melancholy, kind of a plaintive, kind of a heavy-hearted song. The line goes like this, Will you know my name if I see you in heaven? Will you be the same if I see you in heaven? You see, several years ago, Clapton had a little boy, age two as I recall, who fell through an upper story window accidentally in his home and plunged to his death in the street below.

And Clapton was so stricken with grief that he literally disappeared for months, like fell off the end of the world type thing. And when he finally re-emerged from his self-imposed exile, he re-emerged with this song that he had written to his little boy. Will you know my name if I see you in heaven?

Will you be the same if I see you in heaven? And as the song goes on, you realize he doesn't have any answers to all these questions that he's asking about heaven. And as you listen, you feel the man's pain, you can feel his confusion, you can feel his grief coming through every note and every word in this song.

Not too long ago, I was watching on television when the video came on of this song. And as I sat there watching him sit and strum his guitar and sing this song to his little boy, I was really kind of overcome with emotion. I was moved to tears and I thought what I really wanted to do was kind of reach right through that picture tube and put my arms around this hurting man and give him a big hug and look him right in the eyes and tell him about the love and the assurance that he could have in Jesus Christ.

Well now obviously I can't reach through the television set, neither can you, to touch the life of Eric Clapton with the love of God. But every day, folks, you and I pass hurting people on the street, in our offices, in our neighborhoods, every day that we can reach out and touch with the love of God. In fact, we've made this the mission, the stated mission for our church. You know what our church's mission is? Touching lives, what? With the love of God.

You read the front of your bulletin this morning? Yeah, touching lives with the love of God. And this morning we're going to see Jesus Christ do this very thing.

And I hope that his example will be a great source of motivation for you and me to follow in his footsteps. Let's look, Luke chapter 5, verse 12. While Jesus was in one of the towns, meaning one of the towns around the Sea of Galilee, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. Now it will really help us understand this passage if we understand leprosy and if we understand what it was like in ancient Israel. Leprosy is a bacterial disease. It's often called by another name Hansen's disease.

It's contagious. It's caught by touching the discharge that comes from the nose or out of the skin sores of people that have the disease. Today, leprosy can be treated with modern drugs. It cannot technically be cured, but in most cases it can be made inactive by these drugs. However, in ancient Israel there was no treatment for leprosy.

There were no drugs that could stop its progress. And people who contracted leprosy lived miserable lives. The leprosy, the bacteria would slowly eat away at people's skin, making them deformed and hideous looking.

What's more, as the bacteria ate away at people's skin, it destroyed their nerve endings, meaning that people couldn't feel with their fingers or their toes or their nose, for example, and that made them very prone to injuries that would then get infected and would then cause the loss of limb because they couldn't feel that they were hurting themselves. Leprosy was literally a living death. And to make it even worse, there was the rejection that went with the disease because since it was a contagious disease, the fear of getting leprosy was a downright paranoia in ancient cultures.

It was in Israel. The Old Testament says that anyone with leprosy had to live outside of the city. They had to live segregated lives. They were literally isolated and blackballed from all of society. And what's more, in ancient Israeli culture, a person with leprosy was under the obligation to warn other people that he had leprosy or that she had leprosy, and the way they did it is by having to cry out, unclean, unclean, about themselves whenever anyone approached them.

Now, can you imagine having to walk around and whenever anybody got near you, any other human being, you had to yell unclean about yourself. The way these people made a living, the way they survived is either by begging from a distance or scavenging. And apart from a miracle, this is how they would spend the rest of their lives and how they would die. And this man who came to Jesus, we need to understand, did not have a minor case. Look at verse 12. It says that he came along and he was covered with leprosy. The Greek word here means that he was full of or filled with leprosy. He probably had parts of his fingers and his toes and his nose eaten away already by the disease.

He probably had open sores all over his arms and his legs and his face, just oozing bacteria laden pus. This is the man that Jesus met in one of these little towns around the Sea of Galilee with no hope other than Jesus himself. Verse 12. And when he saw Jesus, he fell with his face on the ground and he begged him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. This is a great prayer. If you are willing, you can make me clean. Did you notice he did not say, Lord, if you are what?

Able. He didn't say that. He said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And the reason this is such a great prayer is because this is a prayer that presents Jesus with the right kind of faith. As a Christian, when we're asking him to change something, you see, the issue with this leper was not God's ability, but God's will. He didn't ask whether God was able. He asked whether it was in the will of God and whether it was best for him to get what he wanted, which was healing. And I believe when any of us come to the Lord as Christians and ask for things, we need to take this man's prayer as an example of how to approach the Lord and ask for something. It's not a question of whether God is able. God is able to do anything. It's a question of what's best for us in the will of God. I don't know what you're praying for, that God would change in your life.

Maybe your life's perfect and you don't need any change, but mine isn't. And one of the things that I'm approaching God on and asking God for is to heal my daughter who has epilepsy and to change that part of our lives and our family. But, you know, I have to constantly remind myself when I ask the Lord about this, that the issue is not whether God is able. God is able. The issue is...