Well, good morning. I'm told
there's a train electrical line down over the road. So Eric was
reminding me now, if somebody comes in late, don't stare daggers
at them, because they couldn't help it. If you would open your Bibles
with me to Mark chapter 1. I have been anxiously looking forward
to teaching this lesson all week. So I pray now that we've got
here that the Lord will bless it. Let's bow before him. Our Father, how we thank you
for this morning that you've given us to meet together with
your people and to worship your matchless name. Father, what
a great blessing. How we thank you. Father, I pray
that you would send your spirit upon us this morning. Enable
us to worship you in spirit and in truth. Enable us to forget
about the temporary goings on of this life. Enable us to forget
about ourselves and look out of ourselves and look to Christ
our Savior. Let our hope and trust and faith
be found in him and him alone. Let his name be glorified in
everything that we say and do here this morning. Father, what
I pray for our class here this morning, I especially pray for
our children's classes. Father, that you be pleased to
use this time to plant the seeds of faith in their hearts. Father,
enable our teachers to rightly divide the word of truth and
point them to Christ and make them, like Timothy of old, that
from a child that they've known the Holy Scriptures, which are
able to make them wise unto salvation. how we beg mercy for their souls. Father, again, in this hour,
I beg of you that you'd show us your glory. For it's in Christ's
name, for his sake, and his sake alone we pray, amen. I've titled
our lesson this morning, Lord, If You Will, You Can. Now there is a poor leper who's
on death's doorstep, and he came to the Lord. And he made an all-important
statement when he came to the Lord. Lord, if you will, if you
will, you can make me whole. The Lord can do whatever it is
he wills to do. Look here at verse 40, Mark chapter
one. And there came a leper to him,
beseeching him and kneeling down to him and saying unto him, if
thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. I will confess to you
I have a lot of favorite stories in the scripture, but this certainly
is one of them. What we read about here is a
needy sinner coming to the Savior. He came in contact with the sovereign
Savior. And I love this story because
it gives a good hope to this poor needy sinner. I hope it
will you too. Now there are several good lessons
here. There are pictures of a sinner coming to Christ for mercy. and
salvation. And this account of how the Savior
dealt with this poor sinner, this helpless, sick, dying sinner,
should make every guilty sinner have a good reason to run to
Christ. Number one, this man was a leper. Now throughout scripture,
leprosy is given to us as a picture of sin. Leprosy is to the body
what sin is to our souls. You know, leprosy was a particular
mark of God's wrath. Remember King Uzziah, he went
in one day to offer burnt incense without the priest. He was going
to offer it himself. And what did God do to him? He
struck him down with leprosy. He went to God without a high
priest. That was a particular mark of God's wrath. Well, you
and I have sinned against God, and we're under God's wrath because
of our sins. Leprosy has no human cure, at
least it didn't at that time, I don't think there's treatments
for it today, but this time leprosy had no human cure. As a matter
of fact, the law made it unlawful for you to try to cure your own
leprosy. Well, sin has no human cure, does it? And the gospel
of Christ, the gospel of God's grace actually makes it unlawful
for us to try to cure our own sin, to try to put our own sin
away, doesn't it? Only God can forgive sin. Only
God could heal the sin sick soul. And third, we think of leprosy
as a disease of the skin, but leprosy is not a disease of the
skin. Leprosy rots the body from the inside out. Leprosy attacks
the bone and the flesh and the organs, the eyes, the ears, the
fingernails, the toenails. It just rots the flesh away till
all the extremities fall off. And we think of it as a disease
of the skin because that's what we see it attacking is the skin
and the flesh. Well sin is not a disease, it's
outward. Sin is who we are. Sin's in the
blood, sin's in the nature that we receive from our father Adam.
Sin rots us and kills us from the inside out. And it affects
our whole being. It affects our senses, our heart,
our nature. It affects our understanding.
It destroys everything. Fourth, a leper was cut off from
society. He was cut off from everything
holy. He was not allowed to go to the temple. He wasn't allowed
to go where people gathered together to worship God. Well, that's
our sin, isn't it? It's our sin that separated us
from our God. Our sin is what made us unfit
to be in his holy presence. That's why we're cast out of
the garden in Adam. We couldn't be in God's presence
anymore because of our sin. The people that lived in this
day, fifthly, called leprosy the living death. Someone could
live with leprosy for a while, but this is what you know. That's
a dead man walking. He's gonna die soon. That's what
sin is to us. It's the living death. Now we're
all alive physically, aren't we? But we're born with a dead
sin nature that soon is gonna kill these bodies. Where there's
sin, there must be death. So we have to cry out, who shall
deliver me from the body of this spiritual leprosy? Who shall
deliver me from this body of sin? The Jews did not consider
leprosy to be a sickness at all. They consider it to be an uncleanness,
uncleanness. Well, that sin, sin's not a sickness
that we can overcome. You can't take a pill or a shot
or something, you know, to get rid of this thing. Sin is an
uncleanness. It's a defilement of our soul.
And that sin, not only does it have to be paid for, not only
does it have to be forgiven, it has to be cleansed. It has
to be cleansed away before God could ever accept us into his
presence. This seventh, a leper, was not
sent to the doctor. You know, someone came up, they
had sort of had these spots on their skin, and you know, they
think, that could be leprosy. They didn't send him to the doctor,
because the doctor can't do anything for him. They sent him to the
priest. But you know, that priest, who
was the one who observed the law and all the ceremonies and
all, the priest couldn't do anything for him either. All the priest
could do is say, you're clean or you're unclean. That's all
he could say. Well, sinners, if they would
be cleansed, if they would be made whole, you better not send
them to religion. You better not send them to the
law. You better not send them to their works of their morality,
because those things can't do anything for us. The only place
for us to go is to Christ. He's the only hope that we have. Aids. We can hope to escape being
a leper today. I bet you not one person today
has worried about getting leprosy, have you? Not one of us have. But sin, nobody can escape that. No one is exempt from Adam's
sinful nature. We've all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. And then last, lepers went around,
they had to cry unclean. unclean so nobody came close
enough to them so they could infect them with their disease.
Well, you and I can cry unclean all we want, and we are, but
we wouldn't be lying, would we, to cry unclean. But you know
what? If you have children, it's already
too late. You've already infected them
with your nature, the nature of their father. Our children
are in the same boat we're in. Our only hope is Christ. Our
only hope is Christ. And in our three children's classes
going on this morning, that's what our teachers are trying
to drive home to them every week. Our only hope is Christ. This
man was a leper. In Luke's account of this story,
Luke says this man was full of leprosy. There wasn't a healthy
spot of skin you could find anywhere on his body. He was full of leprosy. Now that's both awful and very
important. You see, in order for a leper
to be pronounced clean, he first had to be full of leprosy. If he had just one healthy spot
anywhere on his body, one healthy spot of skin, and then the rest
of the leprosy went away, he could not be pronounced clean.
He could not be pronounced clean Until he had been full of leprosy. Not a healthy spot anywhere on
him. Now I'll show you why that is. Remember, leprosy is a picture
of sin. We're all full of sin. And we have to see ourselves
as full of sin. Completely covered with sin.
From the sole of our foot to the top of our head, there's
no sound of sin. There's nothing but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores. We have to see ourselves as full
of sin. Because if we think there's one
spiritually healthy spot left in our bodies, we'll never be
made clean. Because if there's one spiritually
healthy spot in us, you know what we'll do? We'll say, I had
something to do with that. I wasn't as bad as old Joe. He
was full of adversity, but not me. I'll take some credit, some
glory, if I wasn't totally, completely filled with sin. Salvation is
not by works of righteousness that we've done, but it's according
to God's mercy. And the only people God has mercy
on are sinners who completely covered with sin. Because salvation
has to be all Christ. It has to be all grace. It has
to be all mercy. It has to be all the righteousness
of Christ. It has to be all his blood. It
has to be all by faith and none by works. That's the sinner's
only hope. That's this man, he had no hope.
That's why he came to Christ. Well, number two, this man, this
leper who had no hope, he came, Mark says, beseeching the Lord.
He came begging the Lord to heal him. Now I'll tell you why he
came begging. It's because he had no other
option. There's no other option for this
man. He's powerless to help himself. Everybody else is powerless to
help him. The only hope he had is that Christ would heal him.
And that's why he came begging. Now, if the Lord ever saves you,
if he ever saves me, I'll tell you what he's going to do first.
He's going to make us beg him for mercy first. Now, this begging,
it's not bargaining with God. God, you know, if you'll do this,
I'll do this. Now we're on a bargain. We're
gonna beg for mercy. We're gonna beg for forgiveness
that we cannot earn. Now here's something encouraging.
This man came begging. Here's something encouraging
that would encourage a guilty sinner to come beg the Lord to
save me. The Lord healed others, didn't
he? Maybe he healed me too. The Lord saved others. Maybe
he healed me too. The Lord forgave the sin of others.
The Lord had mercy on others. Maybe he willed me too. Look
back at verse 34 of chapter Mark 1. And he healed many that were
sick of diverse diseases and cast out many devils and suffered
not the devils to speak because they knew him. The Lord healed
so many others and this leper thought, maybe he'll heal me
too. Maybe he will. I'm gonna come
beg him to do it. Now Mark says this leper begged
the Lord. Matthew says this leper came
and kneeled before the Lord and worshiped him. Worshiped him. But you know, Mark and Matthew
are both saying the same thing. Do you know begging the Lord
for mercy is bowing at his feet and begging him for mercy? Do
you know that's worship? That's the only place we can
worship the Savior is at his feet. You see, me begging God
for mercy, that puts me in my right place, doesn't it? If I'm
begging God for mercy, I'm admitting I've got no hope of myself. I've
got no way to help myself. I have no other place to look
but to you. I'm in my right place in the
dust at the feet of the Master. And me begging God recognizes
Him for who He is. He's the Sovereign. He's the
one I've seen. He's the only one that can forgive
me. He's the only one that's got blood to cleanse me. He's
the only one that's got the right to forgive me. He's the only
one, and he's sovereign over me. That's why I've got to beg. I can't bargain with him. I can't
give him something he wants, you know, in exchange for him
forgiving me. He's sovereign over me. And whatever he does
with me is right. Now I'm going to beg him. And if he saves me, he'll be
right to do it. He's gonna make it right for him to save me and
have mercy on me. And if he dams me, he'll be right
to do it and I can't argue against it. He's sovereign over me. I'm in his hand to do with as
he pleases. That's why I'm at his feet. That's
worship. That's what worship is. Worship
is not worshiping and praising God because of what he's done
for me. Worship is me taking my proper place before God. Him
on the throne, me in the dust. That's worship. That's worship.
See, this leopard didn't worship the Lord because the Lord already
healed him, did he? He didn't come to the Lord, the Lord healed
him, and then he worshipped the Lord. No, he came and worshipped
the Lord. Then the Lord healed him. He
wasn't worshipping the Lord because of what the Lord had done for
him. He worshipped the Lord because of who God is. Who God is and
who he is. That's why he's at his feet,
begging for mercy. admitting who I am and humbly
begging God to forgive me, humbly begging God for mercy. That's
at the very heart of true worship. And I'm sure of this too. You
know why this leper came to the Lord? I'm just sure of this. The Lord had said, told his,
those disciples, those first four disciples, he called, he
said, let's go into the next towns. so that I can preach,
because that's why I've been sent here. I'm going to go preach.
I'd bet anything this leper snuck close enough to hear the Lord
preach. And that's what drew him to come to begging for mercy. I'm just sure of it. If hearing
the master. Preach grace, not law. If you
hear that. That'll draw you to come begging
for mercy, but. All right, here's the third thing. This leper knew
something. He knew that mercy had to be
sovereign mercy. Here's what we've established
so far. Man is sinful. He's completely filled with sin. He's hopeless because of his
sin. God is holy. He can't look on sin. God is
sovereign. He can do as he will. He always
does his will. God is merciful, isn't he? But
God is also just. Everything God does has to be
right, has to be right. I'll tell you what that means.
Salvation is God's choice, not mine. That's what that means.
I can't decide to let God forgive my sin. I got to beg him to forgive
my sin. Forgiveness, that's God's to
give or God's to withhold. He's the one we've sinned against.
You know, I don't decide to let God save me. If God ever saves
me and tell you how he's going to do it, he's going to do it
against my will with my full concern. That's exactly how he's
going to do it. And God saved you, you know exactly
what I'm talking about. He saved me against my will,
my full concern. Worship, that's admitting God's
crown rights to do with me as he pleases. Whatever he does
is right. And if he shows me mercy, I can't
brag about it. And if he doesn't show me mercy,
I can't complain about it. True worship is saying, Lord,
if you will. See, there's no doubt about the
Lord's ability to save, is there? None whatsoever. Salvation is
a question of God's willingness. It's not a question of his power,
it's a question of his willingness to show mercy to me. Salvation
is not a question of my willingness to accept Jesus. That's why there's
not gonna be anybody ever staying here begging you to accept Jesus,
because that's not the question. The question is, is God willing
to accept me in Christ? Now that's the question. Now
that's the truth of all scripture. And every page of this book,
this is what this book says, salvation is by the will and
purpose of God. and it's all in Christ Jesus.
That's the message of this book. Now what happens when a guilty
sinner meets the sovereign savior? What happens? What happened right
here? Begging in worship. That's what
will happen every single time a guilty sinner meets the sovereign
savior. All right now, Hang on to your seats. This is
so good. The character of the sovereign
savior. Now we've established this, haven't
we? God can do with me as he will. He can save me or he can
damn me. He's right either way. And we've
established that. If you think about somebody with
that power, with that authority, here's his personality. Verse
41. In Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth
his hand and touched him, and saith unto him, I will, be thou
clean. And as soon as he had spoken,
immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed. Now this is Christ the Savior.
This is the Son of God who so far above us Human language can't
draw a comparison to how far above us God is. I heard my dad
say one time, if you compare a maggot to a full grown man
and try to say that's the difference between sinful man and God. My
dad said, he said, that'd be an insult to maggots everywhere.
I mean, the difference between a maggot and you is nothing compared
to the difference between you and me and God. Absolutely nothing.
This one who's so far above us, who is in need of nothing, was
moved with compassion for a poor, dying leper. You think about
this fella. He'd been outcast from society
for years, probably. Hadn't taken a bath in years,
more than likely. I mean, if you're a leper, you
start taking a bath, stuff starts falling off. I mean, he probably
hadn't bathed. This man smelled of disease and
death. And the Savior felt compassion
in his heart for the suffering of this poor man. And you know,
the Savior feels that same compassion for every guilty sinner who comes
to Him begging for mercy. They're suffering in their sin,
they're full of fear and shame and doubt. And he has compassion
in his heart, the emotion of compassion for that poor sinner. Now I'm telling you, if that
doesn't move your heart to want to run to Christ to beg for mercy,
I don't know what will. The second thing I see about
the character of the Savior here is union with his people. You
notice the Savior didn't just speak and say, I will be thou
clean. He reached out his hand, and
he touched that leper. Now remember, this leper's full
of leprosy. There wasn't a spot the Savior
could touch him that was healthy skin. He put his hand, and his
whole hand touched leprosy. Dry, fevered, cracked skin. touched that leper. You know what? I don't read this,
but I'm, knowing human nature, I'm 100% sure this is true. Other
lepers wouldn't touch this leper. It's just too gross. I mean,
if there's a leper that had some leper spots and some healthy
spots, he ain't touching that guy. I mean, that's too gross. I'm better than you. The God
of heaven and earth and human flesh reached out and touched
that man. It was a touch of compassion. Can you imagine what that felt
like to that poor man? But here's another thing. The
law forbid the Savior to reach and touch that man. If he did,
he'd become unclean too. But that's how the Lord saves
his people. He touches them. He has union with them. So he
touches them, he takes their disease. He takes their sin away
from them and takes it into his own body on the tree so that
he can put it away by the sacrifice of himself. You won't find anybody else willing
to do that for you except the Son of God who came in human
flesh. Now if that doesn't make you
want to run to Christ and beg for mercy, I don't know what
will. Well, here's the third thing
about the character of the Savior. It's his power. Now, I love what
the leper said, Lord, if you will, if you will, you can make
me clean. I don't know if you'll have mercy
on me, but I know you can. I know you have the power. I
know you have the power. And then he didn't say one other
thing, did he? He just stayed at the Savior's feet, submitting
to whatever the will of the Lord was. If we would be saved, I'm telling
you, we must come to the sovereign Savior, the one who does not
have to have mercy on me. He'll have mercy on whom he will
have mercy. The Savior felt compassion for this man. What'd he say?
I'll have compassion on whom I will have compassion, on whom
I will. Here's what I know. God's gonna
have mercy on somebody. Maybe it'll be me. I'm gonna
go ask him, if he will. I'm gonna go beg him to give
it to me. He doesn't owe me anything but wrath, but he's gonna have
mercy on somebody. Maybe he'll be merciful to me. I don't know
if he will, but I do know this, he can if he will. He's got the
power to do it. See, there can't be any question
about the power of Christ to put away my sin. There can't
be any question about it. There's power in the blood. The blood
of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from what? All sin. There's no sin so great the blood
of Christ can't cleanse it away. So there's no question about
his power to save. Lord, I don't know if you will,
but I know you can. And I'm gonna beg you for it.
I'll tell you this, if I'm gonna perish, I can tell you where
I'm gonna perish, at the feet of Christ. Begging him for mercy,
because there is no hope anywhere else. Now, I love what this leper said,
Lord, if you will. But I tell you what I love even
more. I love the Savior's answer even more, don't you? I will,
I will. Be thou clean. And he touched
that leper and made that statement, and immediately that leper was
made whole. It didn't take two weeks for
it to start clearing up and taking a bunch of pills and a bunch
of horrible side effects to make the leprosy go away. Immediately,
that leprosy was gone. This man's skin was just as fresh
as a newborn baby's. That's God's power. Immediately,
he was cleansed. You know, when God saves a sinner,
he moves with that same power. And he makes that dead sinner
immediately alive, immediately to have eternal life. They're
immediately, completely holy and utterly redeemed from all
of their sin. They're immediately made righteous
and holy. They're immediately, immediately
accepted in the beloved. No trial period. No probationary
period. Immediately accepted. This old leper could say what
the songwriter said. I'm sure the songwriter was thinking
about this very story. He wrote this song. That leper
could say, I don't know what happened. I don't know how he
did it. But something happened. And now
I know he touched me. He made me whole. That's this
power. The one who has the power to
save is also willing to save. I will. I will. Be thou clean. I'll say it one more time. If
that don't make you want to come to Christ begging for mercy,
I don't know what will. Now here's the last thing, and
this is something we shouldn't skip over by any means. When
God saves a sinner, the law's gonna agree with it. Verse 43. And he straightly charged him,
and forthwith sent him away. And saith unto him, see thou
say nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the
priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded
for a testimony to them. But he went out and began to
publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that
Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without
in desert places, And they came to him from every quarter. The
Lord sends this leper to the high priest. The law must be
fulfilled. If you want to read about this
afternoon, Leviticus chapter 14 gives us the law of the leper.
And that leper had to go to the high priest and the high priest
would examine him. I mean, every inch of him is
examining closely. And the high priest would say
whether he's clean or unclean. The high priest. who hated Jesus
of Nazareth probably as much as anyone or anything on this
earth was gonna have to be the one to say, this man's clean.
This man is whole. Now the picture here is God's
salvation satisfies his law. The law is going to announce
that everyone, to everyone, this leper's been cleansed. And that
same law is gonna announce to all of God's creation that everyone
for whom Christ died is not guilty. righteous and spotless. I've
examined them with a bright light, every inch of them, body and
soul. There's no sin in them. They're
not guilty. When Christ shed his blood to
justify sinners, almighty God said, they're justified. And
the law agrees. The law says they're justified.
The law says they're righteous. They're blameless. They're spotless
because of the blood of Christ. But now why did the Savior tell
this leopard, don't say anything to anybody? I don't know. I don't know. I've looked and
looked and looked at it. I don't think anybody else knows
either. It could mean the Lord meant, don't talk to him. Don't
stop and talk to anybody until you go to the high priest and
the high priest announces that you're clean so that they can't
say somebody else made you clean, that something else happened
to you. You're gonna do this in such a way, the Lord says,
I get all the glory, all the credit for doing it. It could
mean he's telling this man, tell the story. But you tell it right. You tell it so that Christ gets
all the glory. Don't you be telling people that you were healed because
you came and begged right. Don't you be telling people,
I came to Christ, that's why I was healed and you didn't and
so that's why you're not. Don't you be taking any credit
for any of this God healed you for this simple reason. He delights
to show mercy. That's the whole story. And I ask you, how could he not
tell? You reckon this leper, I don't
know how long he lived after that, but however long he lived,
do you reckon the rest of his days, do you reckon he ever got
tired of telling the story of how Christ made him whole? I
bet he started that story, his grandchildren. Here he goes again,
here he goes again. Well, maybe the grandchildren
got tired of hearing that story. You know who didn't? Other lepers. You know they love to hear that
story. They enjoy hearing that story the same way believers
do today. Enjoy hearing over and over and
over again the story of salvation. by God's grace in Christ Jesus. Now, I read some folks that are
kind of hard on this leper for blazing abroad, you know, what
the Lord done to him after the Lord told him not to do it. And
they said, well, the Lord couldn't go back into that city. He couldn't
openly enter that city anymore because everybody was just flocking
him, you know, and he couldn't go into the city anymore. Well,
you know what? The Lord has to stay out there
in those desert places. He couldn't go openly into the city anymore.
But you notice that didn't stop sick folks from coming to him,
did it? They came to him from every quarter,
from every walk of life, every generation, every age, every
gender, every race, from every quarter. But if they needed Christ,
that desert place didn't stop them from going to him, did they?
And I just, you know, Scripture doesn't say, what happened here,
that they went out to this desert place, they came to him from
every quarter. But I do know what happened.
When they came to him from every quarter, begging for mercy, they
received mercy just like this poor leopard did. I told you that was the last
time, I'll say it one more time. If that don't draw you to come to
Christ begging for mercy, I don't know what will. All right, God
bless you.