Take your Bibles and turn this
morning to Luke chapter 5. I call this bowing to the truth. Bowing to the truth. If you'll
look down with me, at verse 12. It says, And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city,
behold, a man full of leprosy, who seeing Jesus, fell on his
face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and
touched him, saying, I will. Be thou clean. And immediately
the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no
man, but, Go, and show thyself to the priest, and offer for
thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto
them." I want you to hold your place
right there and turn over also to 2 Timothy and the 2nd chapter. And look down with me at verse
24. Paul writing to Timothy, says,
and the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto
all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those
that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance
to the acknowledging of the truth. Repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth. Men and women do not realize
what they have set themselves against. when they set themselves
against the truth of God. The truth that is in Christ Jesus. And even more than that, Christ,
the Son of God, who is Himself the truth. The truth concerning Christ,
who is himself the truth, is likened to a stone. Christ himself said unto some,
did ye never read in the scriptures, the stone which the builders
rejected The same is become the head of the corner. This is the
Lord's doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes. He said, did you
not ever read this? That the very one, the very stone
that these so-called builders have said it not. That's the
one. He's the one that God has made
the head of the corner. But listen further. And whosoever
shall fall on this stone shall be broken. But on whomsoever it shall fall,
It will grind Him to powder. That is the relationship and
the consequence of all men and women to Jesus Christ, to the
truth in Christ. We will either fall on Him as
those broken, as David said, of a broken and a contrite spirit,
or he will fall on us, grinding us to powder." You see, repentance has something
to do with a rejection of and a renunciation of error. but not just any error. It has to do with us repenting
of and renouncing error concerning God. It is called repentance
toward God. And as Paul said to Timothy there,
it is repentance which is an acknowledging of the truth. When we repent, we renounce error,
but we also acknowledge the truth of the gospel as it is in Christ. And Paul says that the servant
of the Lord is to preach the truth as it is in Christ, and
to wait upon God to give the faith and repentance to those
who hear as He will. I am to preach the gospel, but
I cannot give you the gift of faith nor the gift of repentance. They are, as the Bible says,
gifts of God. They are not things that you
of yourselves or anyone is able to do. Isn't it amazing that
the very thing which is to believe God, to believe on Christ, the
very thing that men in our day say is the very easiest thing
you can do, the Scriptures say that without God giving you that
faith, you cannot believe on Him. And unless he gives you
that repentance, that gift of repentance, neither can you repent
toward God. But he gives it as a gift. And
so he sends out his messengers to preach the gospel, and there
is no greater example of such a servant as the one who is himself
called Jehovah's servant, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew it says that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my
soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him,
and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive
nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break,
and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment
unto victory." And in his name shall the Gentiles trust. And so here in our text this
morning is Jehovah's servant. And he is walking in this world
in human flesh and going about among men without any fanfare
that he himself has created. And as he comes through this
world, we find here a sinner who has found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, vowing to the truth. There is not a big show going
on. Just the man, Christ Jesus, walking
down this street, when God brings to him a man that he has enabled
to see him for who he is, and he falls down before him. He is a leper that the Spirit
of God has been at work in his heart. And he comes to Christ,
and by the gift of God's grace to him, he acknowledges Christ
and the truth. Do we know anything about the
truth? The first thing, or I should
say maybe the first truth he bows to is the truth about his
own self. He acknowledges himself to be
just exactly what he is, a leper. A leper. You see, leprosy in
the Scriptures is used many times as a picture of what we are spiritually
as sinners, a picture of sin, leprosy. And this was one of
the most dreaded and most horrible and most incurable diseases of
that day. And the Bible says he was full
of leprosy. In other words, he came to find
out just exactly what his condition is, and that is who always is
found coming to Christ, those who are brought to find out exactly
what their condition is. And while they are not full of
leprosy as it is, they are full of sin, absolutely full of sin. And God uses this to describe
us in Isaiah a very picture of this leprous man and at the same
time a very picture of what we are as sinners. He says they
are a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of
evildoers. children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One
of Israel unto anger. They are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any
more? Ye will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick. and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even
under the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment." That's an awful picture. That is a person who with this
leprosy, it has so engulfed their whole body that in describing
them from head to toe, they are nothing but a big sore, a big
running and untreated sore. And that is exactly the picture
of us as sinners. Because sin, after the fall of
Adam, So came upon all our race that the Bible says not only
that all sinned in Him and became sinners in Him, but as David
said, they are also born in sin and shapen in iniquity. And what this means is that sin
has so permeated our whole being that we cannot be described in
any other way in ourselves as anything but sin. Now, I know there are some people
in this world who will admit, maybe grudgingly, they will admit
that sin is what we do. But more than that, what the
Bible sets forth is the fact that sin is what we are. In other words, the reason that
we do what we do is because of what we are. We don't have a
good heart but sometimes make mistakes. We have an evil heart. And it has its root in our hearts. and manifests itself in every
thought, every motive, every word, every deed. It taints everything we do. Absolutely. There is none good,
no, not one. There is none that seeketh after
God. There is none that understandeth. There is none that is righteous,
no, not one." And here's this man. He's a leper. And he has been brought to see
the awful state he's in. And like every sinner that comes
to Christ, they're brought to see how corrupt and vile that
they are in their selves, and that there is no pretty way in
which we can be described other than that. We are what God says
that we are. As a matter of fact, sin has
so affected us. that we cannot in any way make
an accurate judgment as to our own condition and our own state,
and unless God opens our eyes and enables us to see and brings
us to bow before this truth, that this is what we are, we'll
perish. And not only will we perish,
we'll perish thinking that we're really great folks. We'll perish
with a false view of ourselves because we'll have a false view
of God, and only in His light can we see light. How many times in your life maybe
have you walked outside to an old building or an old shed or
something like that? And as you begin to open up the
door, you see all the cobwebs and all the dust and all the
filth and maybe all the snakes and spiders and such as that.
They have been there all the time. But what made them manifest?
The light. When you opened the door, and
the light began to shine in that place, it revealed the awful
state and filth, and that is exactly what the truth does. And I'll tell you this, I would
never stand before you, I would never, by the grace of God, stand
before you and make such statements, looking down my nose at you,
because I in myself am exactly the same thing, and if it can
be measured, worse. Worse. God uses this picture This leprosy
to show how sin has affected all of Adam's race. Miriam, who
was Moses' sister, was smitten with leprosy. Uzziah, who was
a king, was a leper. Naaman, who was the captain of
the great Syrian host, was a leper. Elisha's servant Gehasa was smitten
with leprosy. Four men outside of the city
of Samaria, they were smitten with leprosy. And more, and more,
and more, because all have sinned. all have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. And sin, just like leprosy, is
never cured until it is acknowledged. He could have walked the streets
the rest of his days, and he could have noticed the sores
and the blemishes on his body as a leper, and he might have
said, well, I think it's looking a little bit better. But it was
deadly. He could have walked and said,
well, I think I'm improving a little bit, or maybe this is where I
stood too close to the fire or something like that. His family
and friends could have said, well, I believe it's not really
leprosy, it's probably that other skin disease. And that's just the way we are
as sinners. That's what we say concerning ourselves. Well, I'm
not as bad as I used to be. Or I'm not as bad as so-and-so.
And somebody else will tell us the same thing. But we are absolutely
sinners. And sin is unto death. Isaiah. In Isaiah 6. He says, Then said I, Woe is
me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Now, when did Isaiah say that?
when he saw the King, when he saw the brilliant white
holiness of the Lord of glory. The next word in the next verse
is this, Then, then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having
a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from
off the altar." What was that all about? That's where the sacrifice
had been offered. That's where the finished work
had been done. That's where God had consumed
the sacrifice offered. And of those coals, of that finished
work, the seraphim took that coal from off that one altar
that God had accepted, and he laid it on my mouth and said,
Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away,
and thy sin purged. Why then? Because he had been
brought to acknowledge what he was. Job, he says to God, I have heard
of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. What's that? The eye of God-given
faith. Wherefore, I abhor myself and
repent in dust and ashes." I'll tell you, I know this. Whenever
a man or a woman has been brought to see the Lord God of glory,
Have they been brought to see Him as He reveals Himself to
be in the truth? They quit bragging on themselves. Somebody says, well, I don't
know about those folks down there. They've got a real negative kind
of view of themselves. They don't have very high hopes
for humanity. Amen. That's a fact. They've been brought to see the
need of the grace of God. You find out you're sick, you'll
be seeking the doctor. If you find out you've got a
serious disease, that there is only one doctor in this world
who has the cure and remedy and treatment for it, you'll do everything
you can to get to where he is. And you'll be like this leper
if necessary. You'll be down begging him to
help you. Christ said the well man doesn't
have the need for a physician. He said, I didn't come to call
you who think you're righteous to repentance. I came to call
sinners to repentance. Jeremiah, he says, only acknowledge
thine iniquity that thou hast transgressed against the Lord
thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every
green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice saith the Lord." Acknowledge your ways. Hosea,
I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense
and seat my face in their affliction. They will seat me early. You see, the Gospel is a message
for needy folks. The church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is a hospital for sinners. Isaiah again, he says, But we
are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities,
like the wind, have taken us away. Hold your place here and look
back at Leviticus chapter 13. Leviticus chapter 13 and verse
12. You see, there was under the
law all of these laws pertaining to health and sanitation within
the camp of Israel, but they are all spiritual pictures. Look at what it says in Leviticus
13 and verse 12. The law says, And if a leprosy
break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the
skin of him that hath the plague, from his head even to his foot,
wheresoever the priest looketh." Now, what does the law say here? If it is total, head to toe,
every way. And the priest, wherever he examines
it, that man is covered with leprosy. All right, listen. Then
the priest shall consider, and behold, if the leprosy have covered
all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean, that hath the plaque,
it is all turned white, and he is clean. Now, that just sounds
strange. it isn't until he comes before
the priest, shows himself in the condition he is, submits
to a total examination by the priest who determines that that
is exactly his condition, then the priest pronounces him clean. You say, well, I still see a
little blemish here and there. The priest, under the authority
of God, has said he's clean. Well, you say, I don't really
think he's clean. It doesn't matter what you think.
The priest of God has said he's clean. Well, sometimes he gets
to worry and he sees a little blemish or something on his skin,
he himself begins to wonder if it doesn't matter the priest
said he was clean. And every sinner that comes confessing
that all have sinned, in Adam all sinned, come forth from the
womb speaking lies, knowing and doing no good, the wages of their
sin being death, the soul that sinneth shall surely die." Everyone
who comes to Jesus Christ confessing this, He pronounces them clean. Actually, that's what the Gospel
does. The gospel does not make us clean. But the gospel is the good news
that Jesus Christ, in his sacrifice and bloodshedding and death,
provided that cleansing for all of God's elect, and he sends
to them this good news that they're clean. But before he does, he uses the
truth to make them see and know and feel their infirmity, their sin. You see, the only forgiven people
in this world are those who have been brought to know their sin.
The only people in this world, I don't care if they sing for
days and shout for days and jump and hoot and holler for days,
whatever they do, the only persons in this world who actually can
praise God and thank Him are those who are broken in spirit
and appreciate the mercy of God because they feel the weight
of their sins. You remember around here when
they, you always saw that sign that the Marines were looking
for a few good men. That's about the case of religion,
not God. He came into this world to seek
and to save that which was lost. And our natural mind, Paul says,
the carnal mind, the very mind that we're born with, the heart
that we're born with, he said, is enmity toward God. And the only one who in this
law ever determined Who had leprosy and who was a leper was the priest. If you look down in verse 45 of
Leviticus 13, you see it says, "...and the
leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and
his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip,
and shall cry, unclean, unclean." Lepers were cast out of the camp. And lepers, if they ever came
in contact with any other living soul They were required to put
their hands over their mouth and cry out as a warning to everybody,
unclean, unclean. That's what God brings every
sinner He saves to do. to acknowledge and to bow to
that truth of what they are, nothing but sin. But he bowed
to another truth too. He bowed to the truth of who
Jesus Christ is. Not just a Savior, not just a
healer, or a miracle worker, or a teacher. But when he came to Christ, he
acknowledged Him as the Lord. He is nothing less. Jesus Christ
is nothing less than the Lord, Jehovah God. You see, he didn't just bow down
before Him as a beggar trying to get a healing or something.
He bowed down before Him acknowledging Him in the truth of who He is. He is the Lord. As a matter of fact, His bowing
down here is worshipping Him. That word means to worship Him
as a deity, as God. I remember a woman telling me
one time, who had claimed to be a Christian ever since she
was a little girl, I guess. She said, you know, I didn't
know that Jesus Christ was God. Well, why would you ever want
to cast all your hope and your eternal soul and destiny on anyone
who is anything less than God? God was manifest in the flesh. The Word that was God was made
flesh and dwelt among us. He reverence Christ, not as his
friend or his good buddy or his newfound pal, but as the Lord. That's why I don't believe there
are many people who know him. They can talk about him like
he's a rock star or something, but he's the Lord. How can you
ever even speak that word without having a reverence in your heart.
He's the Lord. The Lord of lords. The Lord of
glory. And not only that, He bows to
this truth, and that is the ability and power of Christ. He said, if you will, you can. You can. It's not a matter of whether
you can or not. It's a matter if you will to or not. It's not
a matter of ability, because he's able to do whatever he would. He's only governed by two things. Somebody says, God can do anything
he wants to. Yes and no. He has the ability
to do all things, but he must always act in a way that's consistent
with himself, with his holiness, with his righteousness. He is
not going to be unjust. If he justifies a sinner, it's
going to be in a just way in Christ. If He saves you and me
from our sins, He's going to do it in a way that honors everything
about Him. And the second thing is this,
He's going to do what He says. The reason why people like to
say, well, God can do anything He wants to, is because they
don't want to believe that He's done what He says He's done. You can. If you will, you can. That's just all there is to it. You can't go to a priest or a
rabbi or any religious person, and you can't go to any preacher
who can. But he can. Peter said, who his own self
bear our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead
to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed. Not you might be healed. You
were healed of this great malady of sin. Then he bows to another
truth. It's amazing, isn't it, how just
a few words so clearly declare what takes place. He bowed to
the truth of Christ's sovereignty. He said, if you will. This isn't about man's so-called
free will. This is about his will. He works all things after the
counsel of his own will. He does whatsoever he wills. You see, his will to do a thing
is a thing done. When He, in the natural creation,
spoke this world into existence, that's all He had to do. He had
to simply will it, command it, speak it into existence. Let
there be light. And there was light. He will. He can make it clean. I don't know about you, but I
tried a lot of reformation in my time. I tried a lot of men
in my ways and trying to do better and all this kind of stuff. Turn over a new leaf and all
that stuff. But I was like the woman with
the issue of blood. I went to all those doctors,
but only grew worse. You see, he's owning these facts.
Lord, you don't have to. You don't owe it to me. I don't
deserve the cleansing. I certainly can't claim a cleansing. But if you will, you will have mercy on whom you
will have mercy. you will be gracious to whom
you will be gracious." Once in a while somebody will
ask me, why do you all call that church sovereign grace? I say, because that's exactly
the kind of grace the Bible teaches. That grace belongs to God who
is the God of all grace. And he is gracious to whom he'll
be gracious, and whom he will he hardeneth. He can leave a
person to the just consequences of their sins, leave them to
their own selves and their own evil imaginations and inventions,
or he can reach out the strong hand of his mercy and pluck them
as fires out of the brand. out of the burning. That's how He likens our state.
We're like a piece of wood or a piece of
metal in a fire burning. And we'll be consumed. But He
reaches down and He plucks us out of that fire, if He will. And I'll tell you,
when you bow before that truth, Ben, that's a different story.
When you find out what you are and that it's totally in His
hands, that He's the only one who can save your wretched soul. You see, in coming to Christ,
He bows to this truth also. that he is the only way, God's
only way to cleanse and save and heal sinners. He's the only
one. That's why he's called the way, the truth, the life. He said, if you believe not that
I'm he, you'll die in your sins. He's the only remedy, if you
will. He's the only deliverance. And His deliverance is totally,
thoroughly in that work that He Himself has done. He doesn't
help you to save yourself. He doesn't offer you something.
He doesn't make you better. He makes you perfect in God's
sight or you perish. Somebody says, how good do you
have to be to go to heaven? Well, you have to be perfect. You have to be as good in one
sense of speaking as God Himself. You have to be holy. And you'll
never be holy by anything you quit doing or start doing Holiness
is in Jesus Christ alone. He is, as was prayed, the Lord,
our righteousness. Isn't there any other righteousness?
Isn't there any other hope? Isn't there any other cleansing? Look back in Luke chapter 14. Luke 14, just the next chapter
from where we read. And here is how a leprous sinner is spiritually cleansed in a
picture. Well, under the law, the priest
said who was a leper. The priest pronounced clean.
But when this man got the word from Christ, what did he do? He said, you go back and you
offer that sacrifice that was according to Moses. You show
to all these who will see you, your family, friends, and everybody,
that this is the way and that this is the one. who alone can
cleanse. All right, look here in Leviticus
14, verse 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his
cleansing. He shall be brought unto the
priest, and the priest shall go forth out of the camp, and
the priest shall look, and behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed
in the leper, then shall the priest command to take for him
that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedarwood,
and 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, and the cedarwood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop,
and shall dip them, and the living bird in the blood of the bird
that was killed over the running water." And he shall sprinkle
upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times,
and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird
loose into the open field." How was he cleansed? Two birds were to be taken, and
one of those birds was to be killed in his bloodshed
in a vessel over running water. Somehow I just believe that that
running water is typical as the water of the word of the gospel.
Flows as a stream. It's going to keep right on going,
this message that's represented here. Here's a bird killed. His
blood is poured out. And the living bird is taken
and dipped, along with a little piece of shrub called hyssop,
into that blood. And that living bird is turned
loose in the field. He flies away a blood-spattered
but living bird. And the priest takes that blood
that's on that little piece of shrub and sprinkles it on that
leper and pronounces him clean. And this is nothing less than
a picture of the shed blood, of the cross work, of the dying,
of the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ for
sinners on that cross outside Jerusalem. And the Spirit of God takes the
gospel of God And for that guilty sinner, sprinkles
their conscience, brings to their mind, enables
them to believe and trust in and be comforted in the death of Jesus Christ. It is only by a sacrifice for
sin, only by the imputation of our sins to our substitute, the
Lord Jesus Christ, only by his death in our place, all of these
things which are represented in these verses, including his
resurrection and ascension back to heaven, that we can ever be purged. from this leprosy of sin. But I can tell you this. The
gospel pronounces every man in Christ, every woman in Christ
clean. And everyone in themselves. all their righteousness they
seek to establish as filthy, vile, sick, with an incurable
disease. Because Christ accomplished the
work of redemption, because He offered Himself to God as a sacrifice
in the place of His people, Because he satisfied that holy law and
inflexible justice of God in their place in the matter of
their sin, God can justly pronounce every
believer clean in Christ. Clean. What are you in yourself? Unclean. What are you in Christ? Clean. Clean. None but God can heal, but to His people. It is said
of him that he who in his own body bore our sins on the tree, it's by that sacrifice, he says, by his stripes you were
healed. You were healed. What we are enabled to do when
God gives us faith and we hear the gospel and believe on Him,
we experience the joy and the benefit and the comfort and the
peace of that healing. I'll hush. He said, if you will, you can
make me clean. When he said, if you will, you
can make me clean, he's acknowledging his own filthiness, his vileness. He's acknowledging who he is.
His sovereignty, his power. You know what the next thing
he hears is? I will. I will be thou clean. That's why we don't have trips down the aisles. I couldn't
tell you that the Lord has saved you if my life depended on it. I couldn't pronounce you clean
in God's sight. I certainly wouldn't do it on
the basis that you'd prayed a little rehearsed prayer or gone in somebody's
pool of water or shook my hand or something like that. You're
going to have to go to the priest himself. But every sinner who's ever come
to Him, He says, I will. I will. I like what He says in
John 17, Father, I will that those that You've given me be
with me where I'm at. You can have all the free will
you want to. That's what I'm going with, the
I will. I will be Thou clean. Be thou
clean. You just go and acknowledge the
only way any sinner is clean. And that's by the sacrifice of
Christ. God help us to look to Him, to
bow to the truth about ourselves, about Him, about the one way
He saves sinners. And what a sweet thing it is
when he says to us, I will. You see, we talk about justification, which is simply this, God declaring
a sinner to be righteous in Christ based on who he is and what he
did. There it is. I will be thou clean. Now that happened to him physically,
but I have a feeling more so. I will be thou clean, because
I'm good to that cross, and I've already taken your sins as your
surety upon me, and I'm going to put them away, make an end
of them. You're clean. God help us to look to Him. Our Father, this day we give
You thanks. We give You praise and glory
and honor. You're worthy of far more than
we could ever speak. But we pray that you'd help us
to bow to the truth, to be broken in spirit, to be
contrite in heart, to acknowledge the truth as it is in Christ, that we might hear the sweet
promise and word of the gospel in Him. that we are clean, accepted in the beloved, washed in his blood, that he
has by himself purged our sins and is now set down at the right
hand of the majesty on high. Lord, above all things that we
could and should and do pray for this day, we pray that in
this place you would take this gospel and make it good news to each
and every one for the glory of your name. For we pray in Christ's
name, amen. Amen.