Luke chapter 5 and verse 12. And I'm just going to read a
few verses, but I trust that we will have some blessing in
considering them together. Luke 5, verse 12, 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. But so much the more went there
a fame abroad of him, and great multitudes came together to hear
and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew
himself into the wilderness and prayed. Amen. May the Lord bless
this short reading to us. This miracle that is recorded
here by Luke is also recorded by Matthew and Mark, so it clearly
had a strong influence on the gospel writers, the evangelists,
and it has been given to us by the Holy Spirit on several occasions,
no doubt for our greater consideration and reflection. And it tells
the account of the healing of a leprous man by the Lord Jesus. Leprosy was a terrible disease. It seems especially amongst the
Hebrew people of the Old Testament. And there are famous examples
of sufferers of leprosy. Moses suffered leprosy at one
time, as did Miriam, his sister. Naaman the Syrian, you will remember,
is a famous example of a man with leprosy, as was Elisha's
servant Gehazi. and also the king that was alive
at least part of the time during Isaiah's ministry. King Uzziah
was a man who suffered from leprosy. And it's not altogether clear
if the leprosy of the Old Testament is the same disease that takes
the name leprosy today, though it's probably similar in some
senses and some of the ways in which that manifests may well
be the same. But the leprosy that was common
amongst the Old Testament Jewish people is spoken about extensively
in Leviticus chapter 13 and 14 where it is described and rules
are given for its identification and for washing and cleansing
practices and for the outcomes of having leprosy. Interestingly,
in scripture there's no direction given to try to cure or medicate
leprosy and If someone had leprosy and it was cured, if they were
healed from it, that healing was always attributed to the
Lord. And that's an important point
to understand, I think, because it is evidence of Jesus' divinity
and messianic identity. The Jews were taught to understand
that only God could cure a leper. And yet, Jesus of Nazareth cured
lepers. And the implication was clear
to those who witnessed the Lord's ministry and his miracles in
this wise. A leper was excluded from family
life, excluded from civic service, and from working and employment,
and he was excluded from religious fellowship. The disease of leprosy
and its consequences serve in scripture as a picture of sin
and the effects of sin in an individual's life. Leprosy was
a corrupting and a consuming disease. It was repugnant, it
was obnoxious, it was disfiguring. And so too, sin is repugnant
and obnoxious and disfiguring in the soul of a man and a woman,
and it is offensive in the sight of God. A leper who was healed
in the Old Testament was required to be ceremonially washed and
to offer sacrifices to God. And both of these activities
typified the cleansing sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
death of the animal, the shedding of the blood, was a picture of
the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ in his messianic role
would perform. in a day to come, and those who
were cured of leprosy in sacrificing this animal pointed to the coming
of Christ and the cleansing from sin. And also, because their
leprosy was cured, was healed, It pointed to the new life and
the restoration that they had within the family and within
the service and ultimately within the worship of God. And that
speaks about the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. So from these pictures, these
Old Testament analogies, we learn that leprosy, Its effects and
its healing have strong gospel parallels. And I think that these
are in view in these verses that we've read together. The evangelists
have given us a beautiful account of the loving care and tender
mercy of the Lord Jesus to this poor man, who is said to be full
of leprosy. just as we are full of sin. And as he came to Christ for
help, so we too can come to Christ for help. And there's a few features
of this miracle then that I just want to mention as we share together
today. And the first one is this. Here
is a man who is aware of his need. We're told by Luke he was
full of leprosy. He knew the corruption and the
bitterness of this disease. It ravaged his body and it destroyed
every social and family tie that he had. And he came to Christ,
therefore, as a man in need. He came to Christ as one who
could do nothing to heal himself, to remedy or improve his state
and condition. And this is how a sinner comes
to the Lord. We come acknowledging our need. We come knowledgeable of the
fact that we have a need. We come acknowledging the true
state of our heart before God and our complete inability to
deliver ourself. And only then will we truly seek,
only knowing that state, knowing that condition, will we truly
seek deliverance and redemption in Christ. There are many, many
people who are religious. There are many, many people who
go through a form of religion. but it is only those who truly
understand their sinful state before a holy God that come to
Christ seeking cleansing and healing and redemption and deliverance. That's how this man came. And
we note that he came to Jesus. Matthew suggests that this event
occurred just as Jesus was coming down from the mountain where
he had given the Sermon on the Mount. And here is this man coming
now to the Lord Jesus and seeking his help. And I think in reading
this and reflecting on it a little bit, I think that this man is
giving us here a testimony to his faith. I think this man was
a man of faith. The first thing we're told about
him is that he came to Jesus and he fell on his face. He had an awareness that Jesus
was no ordinary man. And indeed, we might wonder if
this act of falling on his face was not more than just honouring
a great man, but in itself an act of worship, having faith
that Jesus was God. He believed that Jesus could
help him. As a leper, he believed that Jesus could take away his
leprosy and there was no precedent for that. Remember, only God
could heal leprosy and yet here was a leper saying to Christ,
if you will, I believe you can cure me. And I think again that
this suggests that this man had a clearer understanding, a clearer
apprehension. of the true identity of the Lord
Jesus Christ than most others did. And we ought not to be surprised
that there were people like that. We remember that even when Jesus
was born, there were those in Jerusalem who were waiting for
the coming Messiah. And it may well be that there
was a continuation of this strand of elect remnant throughout the
people of Israel. And if that is indeed the case,
and this man was one of the elect of God with an understanding
of the true identity of the Messiah, even before this miracle was
performed, then I think if we had more time we could open up
some ideas about the fact that here was a man who was an outcast
in Israel for the disease that he had and yet a true believer
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's for another day. What
I think this does indicate is he was a man of faith. He did
not doubt Christ's power to heal him. all he came with was an
anxiety as to whether Christ would do it or not. And this again is a feature of
a sinner coming to Christ. No sinner applies for salvation
wondering if Christ can save. Rather He comes and applies to
Christ, hoping that he will save, and perhaps fearing that he will
not, because our sin is too great, because his patience is too stretched,
because our coming is too late, or even that we might not be
one of those blessed few for whom salvation has been obtained. This man came believing that
Christ could cure him and asking that he would. What a beautiful
approach to the Saviour. And then there was the wait. Will Christ heal? Will he grant
this request? And I think there's something
very precious in the action of the Lord in this moment. First, he touched the leprous
man before agreeing to his appeal. Did you notice that? The first
thing the Lord did was to touch him. Christ put forth his hand
and touched him. I wonder when this man had last
been touched. I wonder when he last felt the
hand of another human being on his shoulder, or stroking his
head, or holding his hand. The Lord Jesus was not afraid
to touch his leprous skin. The Lord Jesus was not unwilling
to embrace his infected body or reluctant to stand with one
who came to him for help. It speaks about the Lord's identification
with his people. Indeed, it speaks about the Lord's
union with his people. Is it not a lovely thought for
a sinner that when we come to Christ, we discover He not only
takes our part, He takes our place. He not only shares our
burden, He assumes it completely and He carries it away. He knew
how offensive sin was, more than any other man who ever lived,
and yet repugnant and obnoxious and disfiguring as our sin is,
he reached out and he embraced us and he touched us and he took
away our sin and our infectious, corrupting disease, carrying
it in himself, becoming sin for us that we might be whole and
clean and righteous in him. And then the Lord says to this
man, don't tell anyone. In verse 14, we read, and he
charged him to tell no man, but go and show himself to the priest
and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded. The man was
sent away to the priest, presumably to the temple in Jerusalem, although
this took place in Galilee, beside the Lake of Galilee, possibly
in Capernaum. but be that as it may, he was
sent lightly to Jerusalem. And this shows us that the Lord
was eager to fulfil the conditions of the law with respect to the
washing and the sacrifice. The Saviour honoured and fulfilled
all the law. of God during his life and his
ministry, thereby proving himself to be a worthy substitute and
a worthy saviour, a lamb without spot or blemish, having perfect
obedience to the law and will of God. One commentary on this
passage points out that The Lord was instructing this cleansed
leper not to broadcast that he was the healer of lepers because
the clear implication of that was that Christ was divine. And
because this was still early in the Lord's ministry, and because
the high priest was the one that the man would be going and speaking
to, and Christ's enemies were centred in Jerusalem, they need
not be appraised prematurely of the true identity of the Messiah.
Now, whether that's right or not, the reality is that it is
hard to stop a new convert from telling what the Lord has done
for him. And whether by this man or by
others, we find so much the more went there a fame abroad of him,
and great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed by him
of their infirmities. And the last thing I wanted to
point out, I just wanted to mention one thing about the immediacy
of the fact that this leprosy went from him. And it is a blessing
for us to realise that when we liken sin to leprosy and the
Lord Jesus Christ comes and takes away our sin and heals us, There
is an immediacy about that work. The Lord is gracious to his people,
and when we come to him, he will hear, and when we ask him, he
will fulfil. The man, we're told, was a leper,
and he was full of leprosy. I want to go back to some of
the Old Testament references and just make my final point
to be this. to be completely white with leprosy
was to be completely clean. And it's remarkable, I think,
that in the Old Testament descriptions of leprosy, while the white marks
of the disease partially covered the skin, the sufferer was considered
unclean and had to say so to everyone he met in order to warn
them of the danger of infection. Just like sin is infectious.
It damages not only the perpetrator, not only the sinner, but those
sinned against and all those connected with him. However,
when leprosy covered the whole body and there was no unaffected
area left, the sufferer was regarded as clean. Now that seems counterintuitive
to us because we think to ourselves, the worse the covering of leprous
infection is, the greater the uncleanness of the person would
be. If it was just a spot that could be hidden, then the person
might be regarded as largely clean. But the point seems to
be rather that in this analogy, this type of leprosy being like
sin, the reason is that the sufferer
was no longer infectious. If we feel that we have any good
in us, any part of us that is not infected by sin, we will
continue to harbour these ideas of self-righteousness. And thereby
we continue to prove ourselves unclean before God because we
do not consider ourselves completely sinful and totally corrupt. So that the picture is that when
we see ourselves totally corrupt, completely covered in this leprous
disease, it is then that the cleansing blood of Christ purifies
and perfects us in the sight of God. It's a strange puzzle. It's an enigma. When I am weak,
then I am strong. When I am utterly condemnable
in my own sight, then I am justified fully in the sight of God. When
I'm at the lowest in my own estimation, I am the highest in Christ's
esteem. In such a way, a healed leper
and a cleansed sinner have much in common. May the Lord bless
these thoughts to us today. Amen.