multitudes of people were following
Him. So when He came down from the
mount and began to work His way toward the cities, multitudes
of people were following Him. Now they followed Him because
they were astonished, according to this passage of Scripture
in chapter 7, they were astonished at his doctrine. They were astonished
at his doctrine, at his teaching. And the reason was that he spoke
with authority. He spoke with authority and not
as the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes and the Pharisees,
they sat down to teach, but they were interested in glorifying
themselves and doing what they did to be seen of men. And so
they were taken as having no authority, though their words
where they spoke were the words of God. But no man ever spake
like this man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that was actually
said of Him. No man ever spake like this man. No man ever spake
like this man. And the reason for that is the
words that He spoke are the words that He Himself by His Spirit
inspired. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable for doctrinary proof, correction,
and instruction that the man of God might be truly furnished
unto all good works. He was the Word made flesh that
dwelt among us. He is the Word of God. And when
He spoke the Word of God, people understood it and grasped it
in a way that had never been understood before. Now whether the leper had heard
his words or merely heard of him is not revealed, but as he
pictures the ruined sinner, he likewise pictures one who's been
taught and drawn by Christ. We don't know why this leper
came to Christ except that he pictures a ruined sinner. and
he had a great need. That we know about him. But we
know also that when people come to Jesus Christ, they come because
they are drawn of God and taught of God. They are indoctrinated
by God. Look over at John chapter 4,
or excuse me, John chapter 6. Verse 44, our Lord says, ìNo
man can come unto Me except the Father which sent Me draw him,
and I will raise him up in the last day.î Now this book was
the inspiration for Arthur Pinkís book, ìThe Sovereignty of God.î
ìThe Sovereignty of God.î No man can come. Men by nature are
unable to come. God must enable a person to come,
and He enables a person to come by teaching him, and that teaching
is the drawing of that man to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we're
not talking about some wooing of the Holy Spirit. The word
draw is heilko, which means to drag. Now, we know God doesn't
grab people by the neck by the neck and drag them to Christ.
But the language implies this. Would God not bring them, they
would never be brought. They must be brought. They must
be brought by God. It is written, therefore, in
the Prophets, in verse 45, and they shall all be taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath
heard and hath learned of the Father, or from the Father, or
learned what the Father has to teach, all of them, every one
of them that the Father has taught, comes to Christ. They are drawn.
So we know something about this leper, that he was drawn to Christ. that he was taught of the Father.
When he came, he had some understanding of his own condition and some
faith or belief that when he got there, the only place he
could get help was right there. This disease of leprosy is particularly
important in Scriptures, used throughout Scripture as a picture
of the ruined nature and the ruinous nature of sin. Now, it seems easy in this day
for men and women to say that they are sinners, and men do. They'll cop to that. Yeah, I'm
not perfect. Nobody's perfect. I'm a sinner.
Everybody's a sinner. And they seem to say it with
ease. And they say it with ease because they don't understand
until they are awakened by God what sin really is. Leprosy,
that horrid disease, that incurable disease, that deadly disease
of the Old Testament and the New Testament teaches us about
sin. Men used leprosy to describe
their sin before God. They use leprosy under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah wrote in the 6th chapter
that his sin was accounted as leprosy when he said he was cut
off or undone. What he was saying was that I'm
like the leper. I need to go about casting dust
in the air and saying, I'm unclean. Don't speak to me. I'm cut off
from society. I'm the worst of the lot. When he spoke of unclean lips,
he was speaking of the practice of the leper of putting a cloth
over his face. to guard people from smelling
his horrid, horrid breath, because his breath brought forth the
stench of his disease. In Psalm 14, it says, Our Lord
looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there
were any that understood, if there were any that sought after
him. And he says, They have all together become filthy. And the
word there is stinking. And that's a reference to leprosy. Leprosy represents a stench before
a holy God. Your sin and my sin is a stench
in the nostrils of God. It's foul and ruinous. In Isaiah 1.18, the language
employed when our Lord compelled His people to reason with Him. Come, let us reason together.
He said, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white
as snow. That's a description of the healing of the leper.
Because he doesn't say, You will be white as snow. He said, Your
sins will. That's a very important distinction
here. How can sins be white as snow? They are white as snow
in reference to leprosy being a picture of sin. You see, when
the leper went before the priest in Leviticus 17, if the leprosy
presented itself in one small spot, or one pimple, or one scabby
pimple, that person was doomed. He was declared unclean. Just
one little place. But if you went before the priest
and he was covered from head to toe with leprosy, from the
soles of the foot to the top of his head, he was white with
leprosy, the priest declared him clean. Now that was a proclamation,
if you will, a declaration. It was not a true cleansing,
nor was it a true healing. He was merely declared or pronounced
clean. Our Lord said of our sins, Though
they be scarlet, like a pimple, which means we're dead, we're
doomed, they shall be white as snow. You can be pronounced clean
if you're fully and wholly ruined by sin. Now if you just got a
little bit of disease, A little bit of an ailment. Something
that religion can put a band-aid on and make you feel better,
that'll work for you. Works for a lot of people. You're
like those at the Pool of Siloam, where the first one who got in
the water got healed. That required human effort, didn't
it? And you had to be able to have human effort to get in the
water. That's a picture of the Old Covenant. Under that you
could be healed. You could be made better under that Old Covenant.
But you weren't cured. The one person who was cured
that day never made it to the water. The water made it to him. The water of life came. Jesus
saw him and said, Take up thy bed and walk. The lepers, the
leper, that's our sin before God. That's what we are. And
God only saves sinners who are utterly ruined. He only saves
sinners who are utterly ruined. This leper was utterly consumed
from head to foot. And even to those around him,
to society in general, he was beyond help. He was a pariah
and an outcast. It is no wonder then that the
word behold is used to describe his arrival on the scene, this
coming of this diseased ridden soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. This was indeed an astonishing
thing. Remember, this was not a one-on-one meeting. He wasn't
hiding behind the rock and the Lord walked by and He said, psst.
This leper, who was an outcast, who was required by law to cry,
unclean, unclean, didn't do any of that. He came right in the
midst of a multitude of people to the Lord Jesus Christ. Multitudes
followed. And this leper showed up right
in the midst. Right in the midst. It's an astonishing
thing. This ruined one, he had no right
to come. He had no invitation to come.
For him to come into this midst of this multitude was against
the law. He was actually breaking the
law. to get to Christ. There was no precedent for him
to come. There was nowhere in Scripture
that allowed him to go to anywhere for cleansing except for proclamation
or pronouncing of cleansing to the priest at the temple. That's
the only place he could go. There was no precedent for him
to come. The law required him to go to
the priest for the pronouncement that he was clean or unclean
and to perform rituals attached to his cleansing. He, however,
didn't do any of that. He came to Christ. He came to
Christ. Why? Because His need was more
than a ritual pronouncement could fix. He needs more than blood put
on His ear and His thumb and His big toe. He needs to be cured
of His ailment. That's what you need. That's
what I need. We need to be cured. A pronouncement
won't do for a sinner. It'll do for a lot of folks.
But it won't do for a sinner. Religion is big on pronouncements.
It is. If one follows religion's instructions
to walk an aisle, to publicly confess, to air their dirty laundry,
to join a church, to be sprinkled, or to be baptized, to be catechized,
or to show evidence of remorse and guilt, to show signs of reformation
and penance, then the pronouncement of religion is that they are
saved. I know. I was saved so many times
that way. hundreds of times in my youth
I was saved exactly that way. I was pronounced saved once I
did what religion told me to do, once I did the rituals. Ruined
sinners have neither time nor desire. I'm talking about ruined
sinners now. Have neither time nor desire
for some man to give them assurance. None whatsoever. They need to
be healed They need to be saved and they will come to Christ
and religion be damned if it interferes with their flight
to the Lord Jesus Christ. This man came to Christ, not
to religion. He came to Christ and he did
not come with a sense of entitlement. He did not come to invite Jesus
into his heart. Can you imagine that? Now just
think about that. This diseased, leprous creature
who's dead to the world and to society, who's dead before the
law, who has to cry unclean, unclean every time he comes out
in public, who has to wear a mask over his face, who's rotting
by the moment, his limbs falling off. Can you imagine him coming and
saying, I think I'll make Jesus Lord of my life. What life? I'm going to invite Jesus into
my heart. What heart? A leper's heart? A leper's heart? He did not come to let Jesus
be his Lord, as men say today. He did not come to socially enrich
his life for all practical purposes. He's already a dead man. Leprosy
says you're a dead man. Now, if your need is greater
than the band-aid of religion, If it is such that none but God
can help, then I'm going to tell you something about you. If that's
your case, you will come to Christ. You will come to Christ. Behold,
there came a leper. There came a leper. And what
did he do? Did he offer up a bargain? Did
he say, if you'll save me, I'll serve you forever? It's a man
here in Cherokee. I guess he's still living. I
don't know. But he wrote the book on soul winning for Jerry Falwell,
who now dead also. He was a big soul winner. And
he told me his conversion was that he bargained with God one
day and told God that if God would save him, he'd serve God
with as much zeal as he had served the devil all those years. And
he was a big evangelist. And I told him, I said, if that's
really true of your conversion, you've never been converted.
We don't bargain with God. Scripture says, He came and worshipped
Him. He worshipped Him. There's that
old word again. I love that old word. Proskuneo. Hound dog licking. Hound dog licking his master's
hand. He came like a dog to his master. Came like a dog comes
and licked his master's hand. He did not come with a lamb or
a bullock. the prescribed manner of worship. He did not come doing
some sort of penance in order to impress the Lord with his
sincerity. He did not come with many tears.
He came to the Lamb of God to be healed, to be saved. And He came with words of worship. Words of worship. And His words
were an attribution to the glory of Jesus Christ. He came attributing sovereignty
to Christ. The first word out of his mouth
was Lord. Lord. Now he physically came to Christ.
Moving from place, some place, to the feet of Christ. He came
from somewhere, because you can't come to somewhere if you ain't
never been somewhere. You got to be somewhere to go somewhere.
And men have invented ways of doing this too. They've invented
the isle trot to mimic this man's action in this day. And they
say that the walk down the isle is a public thing and must be
done in order to make a public confession. But you see, Christ
is not down at the bottom of this mountain anymore. He's in the heavens. He's seated
at the right hand of the Father, and He's there for a particular
reason. He's there because He's the Lord. He earned the right
to be there, for He both died, rose, and resurrected. He might
be the Lord of the living and the dead. And if you approach
Him today, you're going to have to approach Him where He is.
Now we know that in Him we live and move and have our being,
so He's everywhere in that sense. He's omnipresent. But that only
means you don't have to go nowhere to find Him. You don't have to
go from a place to a place. In fact, you won't if you truly
come to Him. One man said, Come to Christ
and don't move a muscle. And that's right. Come to Christ
and don't move a muscle. Come to Christ where He is on
the throne. Look over Romans chapter 10. Verse 5 says, For Moses described
the righteousness which is of the law. Now what is that righteousness? If you are going to be righteous
by the law, how do you have to do that? The man which doeth these things
shall live by them. In other words, Paul goes on
to say in Galatians that if you do one of those things, you are
bound to do them all and do them perfectly before God to be accepted.
And even then, you still have the problem with the Adamic sin
that you are charged with from all eternity. That's what the
law of Moses says. But the righteousness which is
of faith, received by faith, speaketh on this wise. This is
the way the righteousness which is by faith speaks. Say not in
thine heart, Who shall ascend to heaven? That is to bring Christ
down. You don't go somewhere to get
Christ. They don't go up to get Him. People think, I'm going
to climb my way. I'm building a bridge. No, you're
not going to go to get Him. Or who shall descend to the deep?
I'm going into the deeper life, the more spiritual life to get
Him, than to bring up Christ from the dead. But what saith
this law of righteousness? What saith this righteousness
that is of faith? The Word is not of thee. Even
in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which
we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus Christ, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised
Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. That's what it says. For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation. Boy, you've got to be doing that at the feet of Christ. Where's
that? Where you are seeing Him enthroned
and attributing sovereignty to Him alone. The first word out
of this man's mouth was, Lord. And he also came to Christ attributing
sovereign prerogative to Christ alone. He said, Lord, if Thou
will. Now who's got to be the actor
here? Who's got to be the Savior here? Lord, if Thou wilt. He did not come presuming that
He would exercise His will and accept Jesus. That can't be made
to fit here. His will was a puppet to His
need. It was a parrot of His need. He chose to come. Of course He
chose to come, but only because His need was such that He had
no other choice. I've been convinced for many
years I can preach until I'm blue in the face. Nobody's ever
going to come to Christ until they have to. Until they have
nowhere else to go. Because if you've got somewhere
else to go, you'll go. Water always seeks the lowest
course and you're an unstable as water just as I am. Christ, coming to Christ was
not one of many options for this man. Shall I come to Christ?
Shall I go to the priest? Shall I go to the temple? That
never entered his mind. There was only one choice for
him. There were no options. Religion's
salvation is about many options. True salvation is about absolute
necessity, need. The kingdom of God suffereth
violence, Christ said, and the violent take it by force. What
do you have to do to get a person saved? You can't do nothing to
start with, but just don't get in their way if they're headed
for Christ. You're going to get run over.
You're going to get trampled underfoot. This man did not presume that
Christ would heal him, but rather came knowing that
if Christ was so inclined, He could heal him. That's attribution
of prerogative to God. No ruined sinner speaks in such
a derogatory manner as saying, just name it and claim it. This man didn't name it and claim
it. He came saying, if you will, Lord. If you will. You're the
Lord. If you will. You can, if you
will. He came to Christ knowing that
His life and His cure was solely in the hands of a sovereign. Also, he came believing. He came
in faith. If thou wilt, thou canst. He believed Christ could do it.
He believed. This is the language of submission
to the will of the sovereign. He believed that Christ could
heal him. He believed that all hope was
in the man from Galilee who was Lord of the living and the dead.
And those who come to Christ believe that He is and that it
is the reward of them that diligently seek Him, according to Scripture.
He didn't even ask to be healed. Do you notice that? He didn't ask. I believe there
was a sincere plea in the words that He spoke. But He didn't
ask. He said, Lord, if You will, You can. If you will, you can." Why didn't he ask? There was no need, was there?
Pretty obvious what he was. He was a leper. He was a leper. His need was obvious. His doom
was sealed. It was not necessary for him
to ask. His utter ruin was without question. He was in a fix. in a real fix, and he came to
Christ. The poet wrote, perhaps he will
admit my plea, perhaps will hear my prayer, but if I perish I
will pray and perish only there. I can but perish if I go, I am
resolved to try, for if I stay away I know I must forever die. But if I die with mercy's salt,
when I the king have tried, this were to die, delightful thought,
as sinner never died. Salvation is of the Lord. He
is gracious unto whom He will be gracious, and merciful unto
whom He will show mercy. But I'm telling you this, be
thankful of the fact that He will be gracious and He will
show mercy. Some like to say, well, God didn't
have to be gracious. I beg to differ. He said He's
going to be. That means He's bound Himself
to His own words. He's going to be gracious. Somebody
is going to be graced by God. Some sinner is going to be shown
mercy. Here's the question you ought
to ask yourself. Why not me? If you saved this leper, why
not me? I'm leprous. I'm unclean. I'm undone. It is
not of him that willeth, nor him that runneth, but God that
showeth mercy. But he showeth mercy. Will the Lord save you? That's His business. It's up
to Him. But as Scripture teaches us anything,
it teaches that those who come to Christ in true need, every
one of them, not one of them was ever sent away. empty. Not one. The Lord said to this
man, I will. It doesn't mean much for me to
say that. But oh, for the Lord of glory,
whose will is always done. For the Lord Jesus Christ to
say, I will. But wonder of wonders, before
our Lord said, I will, He put forth His hand and touched this
vile, wicked, Dirty, diseased creature. Jesus Christ touched
him. He wreathed forth his hand and
touched him and said, I will be thou clean. I will be thou
clean. The Immaculate Son of God, who
knew no sin, who did no sin, who was without sin, reached
out his hand and touched the vilest of the vile. This is the great high priest.
No need for that priest in the temple. No need for Caiaphas
or whoever was running the show at the time. This is the great
high priest, the mediator between man and God touching the sinner.
Remember that old song, He Touched Me? Oh, He touched me. He touched
me. There's a poem written. I've
always loved this old poem. It's called The Touch of the
Master's Hand. It says, It was battered and scarred
and the auctioneers thought it hardly worth his while. To waste
his time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile. What
am I bid, good people, he cried, who starts the bidding for me?
One dollar, one dollar, do I hear two? Two dollars, who makes it
three? Three dollars once, three dollars
twice, going for three, but no, From the room, far back, a gray-haired
man came forward and picked up the bow. Then, wiping the dust
from the old violin and tightening up the strings, he played a melody
pure and sweet, as sweet as angels sing. The music ceased, and the
auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low, said, What
now am I bid for this old violin? As he held it aloft with his
bow. 1,000. 1,000. Do I hear 2? 2,000. Who makes it 3? 3,000
once. 3,000 thrice. Going and gone,
said he. The audience cheered, but some
of them cried, We just don't understand. What changed its
worth? Swift came the reply, the touch
of the Master's hand. and many a man with life out
of tune, all battered with sorrow and sin, is auctioned cheap to
the thoughtless crowd, much like that old violin, a mess of pottage,
a glass of wine, a game, and he travels on. He's going once,
he's going twice, he's going and almost gone. But the Master
comes, and the foolish crowd never can quite understand the
worth of a soul and the change that is wrought by a touch of
the Master's hand." He touched him and said, I will. Be thou clean. Be thou clean. And here's the Word immediately. Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. This is no ritual ceremony, no
pronunciation. It's salvation by the touch and
the will of the Master's hand. Then in verse 4 it says that,
Our Lord said to this man, See thou tell us no man. Well, why
did He say that? He was in among a multitude of
people that had already seen it. The word is going to get
out, it always is. See thou tell no man, but go
straightway to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded
for a testimony unto them. Why would the Lord say such a
thing? Well, first of all, the gift was a gift of praise and
thanksgiving for having been healed. and cleansed. So our
Lord says, you go to the priest, you show them what I've done.
You offer the gift of praise and thanksgiving. Praise and
thanksgiving for a testimony to them that that priesthood
is over. The high priest who's touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, who reaches out and touches the
worst of the vile is a friend of sinners. is on the scene,
you tell Him, the Kingdom of God is come. You sinner, ruined and undone,
come on. Right where you are, in your
heart, you come to Jesus Christ. Father, bless us to our understanding,
we pray in Christ's name, Amen. Today, God bless you.