Open your Bible, please, to Leviticus. Leviticus. I want to talk to you this morning
about leprosy. Leprosy. I knew a man one time
that was a missionary in Brazil. and had a huge leper colony. And he joined himself to those
lepers and became a leper himself. But he brought many. Through
his instrumentality, God brought many. to a saving knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ. What a missionary. I haven't
seen many of those like that lately. That's what he did. God bless. Let me begin by just
making a few statements and then we'll read a few verses. When you look at leprosy in the
Bible, you find that it's an awful, horrible, dreadful disease. Awful. You don't want it. You don't want it. It is a loathsome, contagious, Incurable, stinking
disease. The smell of rotting, decaying
flesh. Flesh rots and dies and falls
off the bone. Terrible disease, terrible. Men must be educated to understand
the symptoms You read about chapter 13 here in Leviticus. Man 14,
men must be educated to understand the symptoms and the seriousness
of this awful disease. It may appear to be something
else, something minor, causing its victims to treat it lightly.
when all the while it's serious. Because it causes only little
or occasional pain, it's often ignored for too long. It may have periodic remissions,
but if you've ever had it, you've still got it. It never goes away. Leprosy is one thing certain
about it. It will slowly or more quickly,
depending on the case, bring its victim to the grave, kill
you dead, bring you to the grave. Leprosy is a dreadful, debilitating,
deadly disease, debilitating. It causes all kinds of deformities
in the body. It causes sometimes the eyes
to become deformed. It can cause the eyes to become
insensitive. They can't see hardly. It causes sensory loss. so that
the nerves don't work properly and you have pain you don't feel.
The nerves don't work. That's not all leprosy. It's
an alienating disease. Alienating disease. That's what
we mean by leper colonies. They were cast out. They were
put away. They were shut out, locked away
from society. In the Bible, the leper was judged
and treated as defiled and unclean and contagious. Lepers were cut
off from human society. Lepers were cut off from the
house of God, the worship of God, the people of God. In the Bible, according to the
Scriptures, the leper defiled Every place he lived, the clothes
he wore, everything he touched, he defiled it by merely touching
it. Leprosy. When anyone draws near
the old leper in the Old Testament, think about this. He had to put
his hands up to his mouth and cry, unclean! Unclean! And the people would know to
stay away from him. Awful dizzy, you wouldn't want
that, would you? How humbling. There was no possible way, no
possible way, absolutely no way, a leper could change what he
was. He could not change himself.
He could not cure himself. He was a leper. And that leprosy
would bring them to the grave, naturally. They just lived out
their days with leprosy, eating away at their life. Some people
have described it as a living death, and others a dying life. But leprosy would bring you to
the grave, kill you. Absolutely no cure, as far as
men were concerned. Helplessly dying in sickness
and shame. Shame, shut off. Shame being
shunned by people. People trying to look at them,
don't get near them. Shame of it all. Leprosy. Question that I have for you
this morning to begin with, wouldn't you hate to have such a terrible
disease? I've just begun describing how
awful it is, but as far as what I've said so far, wouldn't you
hate to have such a terrible disease? Leprosy. Unclean. Cast out. Ostracized. Don't get around it. What terrible humiliation and
shame. I've wondered how they must have
felt. I sympathize with them. how they must have felt. People shying away from them. Here come some people walking
out through the field, but they see this leper and they go around. How they must have felt. And to see people staring at
them. Standing at a distance, just staring at them. Leprosy eating away at them,
people staring at them. People looking at them with disgust
on their face. Cannot stand to look at them. Well, all those things having
been said, dear friends, leprosy is set forth in the scriptures
as a type of sin. And we all have that dread disease. No way we can cure ourselves.
No way we can better ourselves. It's going to kill us. Naturally
speaking, it's going to kill us. Unless God happens by, unless
God passes by, speaks to us, and says, Live! We're going to
die. We're going to die. In His Word, God uses this dreadful, horrible,
awful disease to preach to us, to teach us something. And I
hope He'll visit us this morning and teach us. If He doesn't, it won't do me
any good to stand up here and say what I'm saying, what I'm
trying to say, what I hope to say, unless God makes it real. lest he cause it to be the engrafted
word, unless he makes it to be reality in your own case. May
God visit us this morning. God visit us this morning. I
pray he'll teach us through this disease how we appear by nature
in the eyes of God. It's a very important thing to
have the correct diagnosis. It may appear to be leprosy,
but it's not. You read the first few verses
of chapter 13 here, and that's what he's talking about. Only
the high priest and his sons could make this determination.
whether he was clean or unclean, whether he was a true leper or
whether he wasn't, whether he just had leper-like symptoms
or whether he really had leprosy. And they did it. They did measure
in every case by the Word of God. They didn't go by their
feelings. They went by the Word of God.
They went by the Word of God, not their thoughts, feelings,
or natural wisdom. And they went by the Word of
God, and their judgment was final, because the Word of God is unchanging. Whatever God says, it's so. It's
unchanging. And so it is with us today, as
we stand before God, His Word is our judge. His word. Back in this Old Testament, days
of leprosy, that could have been a disease showing in the skin. Many a man sees the workings
of sin in his flesh, brought to someone for a cure of sin. I did this thing or that thing.
You've never seen what leprosy really is. Leprosy of sin is
not what you do, have done, it's what you are. You're a leper. You're a sinner. If you've only
broken the law in one small point, you're just a lawbreaker. Lawbreaker
in the eyes of God. Aaron had to make these decisions. In this 13th chapter, may only
look like leprosy. May only be skin deep, verse
5. May only need to wash your clothes,
clean up. And then this is, that's deeper
than the skin. It's not just something on the
surface. It's not just skin deep. It goes to the bone. That's leprosy. And what we have is our nature. It goes all what we are inside,
outside, upside, down. We're sinners. We're lepers in
the eyes of God. And can you imagine how these
people look to their neighbors and the people from the temple
and the priests, how they must have appeared in their eyes?
You can't even begin to imagine how you appear by nature. in
the eyes of God. Loathsome! Despicable! In the eyes of God, by nature,
everybody. Why, you can dress up and buy
a $600 suit and a $100 tie, $200 shoes. In the eyes of God, if
you're not in Christ, you're a leper. You're diseased. You're a sinner. Filthy. Your best righteousness is the
very best you ever do. Filthy rags in the eyes of God. That's what we are by nature.
In the eyes of God. Real, real sin goes to the very
nature of a man. Romans 8, 7, Ephesians 4, 18
and 19 has to do with the heart. These things that come out of
the heart, Matthew 15, that's what defiles us in the eyes of
God. If you've never learned that,
you've never learned anything. If you've never seen yourself,
As God sees you, you've never learned anything. Sinners in the eyes of God. Now, I want to show you something. Isaiah chapter 1. Isaiah chapter
1. To really get an emphasis on
this, I want to begin reading with verse 2. Hear, O heavens,
give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. And this is what
God says. He says, I have nourished and
brought up children, and they rebelled against me. My children. I nourished them, I made them,
I created them, I brought them up. I made them my people. Oh sinful nation. No. Verse 3, the ox knoweth his owner,
and the ass his master's crib. But Israel doth not know, my
people doth not consider. And as I said in a Sunday school
lesson, I wonder how much the United States of America considers
our origin, the blessings of God, the hand of God upon us. And then it says, our sinful
nation, people laden with iniquity, weighed down with iniquity, a
seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They've forsaken
the Lord. They've provoked the Holy One
of Israel's anger. They are gone away backward.
And God has poured out judgment and judgment upon them. But He
says, why should you be stricken anymore? You'll just revoke more
and more. The whole head is sick. The whole
heart is faint from the sole of the foot, even to the head.
There is no soundness in it. This is how they appear in the
eyes of God. Wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores that have not been closed or bound up or mollified with
ointment. how they appear in the eyes of
God. They've got that leprosy called sin. That leprosy called
sin. What an awful sight in the eyes
of God. And if you ever see it, what
an awful sight to oneself. David saw it. He said, my sin
is always before me. Paul saw it. He said, I have
to live with it. In me, that is in my flesh, there's
not a good thing I can find, because there's nothing there
to find, no good. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Oh, vile, incurable leprosy. Then the priest, the priest,
they shall pronounce him clean. When he's got leprosy, when it's
all the way to the bone, when he's really got it, truly got
it, the priest shall pronounce him clean. This is amazing. Do you know how a man can be
justified in the eyes of God? You can't until you become guilty.
You can't until you see your leprosy. When you see your guilt,
God will forgive you. God will cleanse you. That's
the way it works. The man with just a rising, just
a scale, he's not a leper, just kind of like a leper. And that's
what a lot of sinners are in our days. They just got a blemish
or two. They're not perfect, but they're
not bad, you know. They're not lepers. The old bonafide,
incurable head to toe leper is pronounced clean. Pronounced
clean. The publicans and the harlots,
Christ said. That's what I'm talking about.
Christ went before the Pharisees, the religious men, the religious
leaders, the religious teachers. He stood before those men and
he looked them face to face. And he said, the publicans and
the harlots, the thieves and the whores, enter the kingdom
of God before you do. That's what I'm talking about.
So many today have never had leprosy. They don't know what
sin is. They just think about things they did they know they
shouldn't have done. But sin is not just things we
shouldn't have done. Sin is that which causes us to
do those things. Sin is something in here that
works its way out from the mouth the heart speaks. I didn't mean
to say that. Yes, you did. Came right out
of your heart. I'm saying this. Paul said, where
sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Where sin does not
abound, grace doesn't stop to visit. That's just the way it
is. On what ground is a leper cleansed? That's the issue. Some of you
here have leprosy, not just blemish on the skin, but it's to the
bone. Some of you know what it is to
be a leper, a real sinner in the eyes of God. Thankfully,
you know that God came to save sinners, not righteous folks,
but sinners, to call them to repentance. Look at verse chapter
14. When you get home, I'd urge you
to read chapters 13 and 14 together. But in chapter 14, the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the
leper in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest. applying to sinners, us here
today, we shall be brought to the Lord Jesus Christ, our great
high priest. And the priest shall go forth
out of the camp, and the priest shall look and behold, if the
plague be leprosy, he healed the leper. He healed, be healed
in the leper. 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. That's what the priest shall
say. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed
in an earthen vessel over running water. Blood mixes into the water. As for the living bird, he shall
take it, the cedar wood, the scarlet, 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 this
living bird, that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times,
And sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy
seven times. Shall pronounce him clean. Let
the living bird loose into the open field. And he that is to
be cleansed shall wash his clothes and so forth and so on. Two birds.
Two birds here represent the Lord Jesus Christ. These two
birds. What does all this mean? Verses
4 through 7. Two birds. Well, these two birds represent
Christ and the work He did for us on the cross and in our experience. Jesus Christ is represented by
two birds. He became a leper with our leprosy
and died the death of the unclean. That's the dying bird. He died
under our curse. He was a clean bird, but he died
under our curse, our sin, our disease. And he arose, ascended
into the heavens. free from sin. It takes two birds
to represent the Lord Jesus Christ. He died. Our sins were put away. He arose from the grave and went
back to glory. One bird was killed. His blood
was sprinkled on the people of God. They were cleansed. Christ
went back to glory where He is supplying His redemption by the
Holy Ghost. He arose and ascended into the
heavens free from sin. This is the key to the gospel.
This is the gospel. That we both die and live in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sin has to be paid for. We've
got to die. And we did. Thank God in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to this. I through the
law. Paul said, I through the law.
He met the Law. He said, I through the Law am
dead to the Law, that I might live unto God. How did that happen? Through the Law, dead to the
Law. How do you satisfy the Law? He said, I am crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. The life which I now live in
the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. who loved
me and gave himself for me. I've satisfied the law. When
Christ was crucified, my sin was punished. I was put to death. My sin was punished. Dead to
the law. Now I can live to God. Free to
serve God. Free in the Lord Jesus Christ. Free as a bird. Free as a bird. Free as a bird. In me, Paul said,
dwelleth no good thing, but sprinkled in the dead bird's blood, I soar
freely with the living bird. I soar freely with God in Christ. I'm free in Christ. I'm cleansed
in Christ. In Christ, my leprosy is gone.
As He is, so am I in this world. I have His righteousness, the
righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, the
great high priest, the great high priest, the exalted Christ,
stands before this leper colony. You know what He did here in
this book? He came where they were and called them out to Himself.
The Lord Jesus Christ came from glory down here to this earth
and became one of us and said, come unto me. Lepers, come to
me. Come to me. I'll cleanse you. He said, bring them before me.
Some just scabby. They just got a little case of
immorality. He has nothing for them. And
some just, they have a rising in the flesh, a blemish or something.
He has nothing for them. Some are not a speck of health
in their whole body. They're just full of sin. He
said, be thou clean. Be thou clean. Boy, that's grace. That's grace. The priest came down here where
we were, called us to himself, and no man can come except the
Father Droid. and cleanses us, washes us, clothes
us, sets us free. That's the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Some just have a rising. They're
not religious, you know. They know they ought to be. Some,
they don't have a speck of health, and He said, be thou clean. He
said, I came not to call the righteous. I came to call sinners,
sinners to repentance. sinners. He told the religious
leaders in his day, and I wish he'd tell the ones in our day,
he said, you need to understand that I didn't come to call the
righteous but sinners to repentance. Go learn what that means. They
didn't know what it meant to be a sinner. They taught about
sin. They were teachers of the law,
teachers of the Word of God, but they didn't know by experience
what sin was. They talk about things they used
to do or didn't do, and omission and commission. Sins what they
were. Sins what they were. Sinners. Lepers. One time, our
Lord was in a big crowd, and this leper had heard about Jesus. Oh, and it cheered his heart. And when they came near, he never
stayed back. He never cried unclean. He ran
through that crowd. Can't you see him spreading and
getting out of his way? Ran through that crowd and kneeled
down at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and worshipped. And worshipped. That's the first
word. And worshipped. Then I can see him as he lifted
up his face somewhat to the Lord Jesus and said, Lord, if You
will, You can make me clean." Christ said, I will. I will. The same thing is going on in
this world today. Those who trust the Lord and
trust Him wholly, trust Him alone, they see how He heals lepers,
how He makes the sinners clean. Just trust Him. In Him. Trust in Him. Not in yourself. Not in your faith. In Him. And come to rest. Rest your soul
in Him. Rest your soul in Him. You know,
you all look at these chairs here on either side. I firmly believe they can hold
me up. I believe I can sit in that chair
and rest. But you know the wonderful thing?
It's when you actually sit, actually rest. And that's what we need
to do. Rest. All you that weary and
heavy laden come to me, rest. Rest in me. Can you trust in
me so much, so fully that you can rest? I'm going to sit in this chair
because I believe it will hold me up. Do you believe Christ
can hold you up? Do you believe Christ can save you? He will
save you. He has the power to save you. Then come to Him and
rest.