So we have in this passage two
healing miracles, and it is clearly evident from the scriptures before
us that the Lord healed many people of various conditions,
from the seemingly insignificant healing of fever to the raising
of the dead. The miracles the Holy Spirit
has chosen out of this multitude of miracles to reveal to us must
have a significance beyond the wonderful fact that Jesus exercises
effortless authority over disease, demons and death to show that
He is Lord of all. So there are very important lessons
God the Holy Spirit wishes for us to learn from these two particular
miracles. As we said earlier that when
the Old Testament was closing there was a great prophecy of
the coming of John the Baptist and then the coming of the Lord.
And he will rise with healing in its wings and his people will
go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. And so
Jesus was famous. He was incredibly famous, wasn't
he? Immediately the news spread about him everywhere into all
the surrounding districts of Galilee. And so there was a time
of great expectation in Israel at the time. They knew from their
understanding of Daniel that the Messiah was to come. God
had sent John the Baptist and so huge crowds went out to John
the Baptist. So these were huge events and
so fame, spread of him all into all the surrounding district
of Galilee. But then in this another word, Mark, is a book
of great action. And it says immediately after
they came out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon
and Andrew with James and John. And so there we have this inner
circle of the Lord's people. Now Simon's mother-in-law, verse
30, was lying sick with a fever, and immediately they spoke to
Jesus about her. Simon's mother-in-law. Some of
the apostles were married. Roman Catholics claim Peter as
their first pope, and teach celibacy for those in their priesthood.
On both counts they are wrong. Peter may have died in Rome,
but as for being the first pope, he would have been the first
in proclaiming that system as blasphemous idolatry and the
work of Antichrist. Peter clearly was married and
those who forbid people to marry are teaching according to God
a doctrine of demons. You can read about it in 1st
Timothy chapter 4. But then we see something else
about the apostles and all of God's people will learn that
as soon as they are confronted with a situation They come in
prayer to God. Immediately the apostles spoke
to Jesus about her. And as he goes about his three
years of ministry, and Mark's Gospel will show this over and
over again, there is one consistent thing that Jesus was always about,
and that was to plant faith, to grow faith, and to nurture
faith. Everyone who came to him in faith
was rewarded. Take everything to Jesus in prayer,
especially the things that may seem insignificant. And why should
we take insignificant things to the Lord Jesus? Because nothing
in our lives is ever insignificant to our God. Even the little things
are incredibly important to him. And we have in his word that
he delights in us and it's good for us to develop habits of being
reminded continually of his presence with us and that without him
we can do nothing. So there's no event in our lives
about which we can't pray. Colossians says in 4.2, devote
yourselves to prayer. And so when Jesus has his people
come to him, he responds. He came to her. He raised her
up, taking her by the hand, and the fever left her, and she waited
on them. So Jesus answers their prayer. He comes, as we have seen earlier
in the Gospel, He's the one who moves towards His people. He
raises her up. He takes her by the hand. So
often in Mark we will see the Lord Jesus touching people who
are in some need. And it's a picture of wonderful
intimacy. He who was touched with the feeling
of our infirmity is one with his people in their suffering.
He's not distant from us. He knows about our pain and our
suffering and he's there with us and he'll never cast any away
who come in faith. They're not bringing their deeds,
but they're bringing their needs to Him. And Jesus' healings are
always perfect. You may well remember the feeling
of recovering from fever, and still we're often left weak for
some time. But here, this woman is immediately
well, and she serves Him. And so the psalm says, Cast your
burdens upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you. He shall never
suffer the righteous to be moved. Mark 1.32 is an interesting verse
because it says, When evening came, after the sun had set,
they began bringing to him all those who were ill, and those
who were demon-possessed. When evening came, after the
sun had set, at Sabbath's end, Jesus had just shown by the healing
of Peter's mother-in-law that he was willing and able to heal
on the Sabbath. and even do so publicly, as he'd
done earlier in the synagogue, just on that same day. But these
Jews show the bondage that law and works religion is. Jesus
was in their midst. He had a healed in their synagogue.
He'd healed the woman. and yet slavery to the traditions
of men had restrained them, and so much so that even though the
Lord was there, they were kept from coming to him by human tradition. Can you just think of some of
the conversations that people in that town might have had during
that day? Imagine a little girl coming
to her dad. Mummy is very sick. Jesus is
across the road and he has shown us his power. Let's go to him
and he will make her better. No, my child, says the father. We must wait until the sun goes
down. But why? Well, my child, we have
a tradition. that says that we must not do
any work on the Sabbath. And walking is work if we walk
any further than 750 paces. And the child would say, but
this is not work, it's healing. Why should my mum have to suffer
all day just because of some tradition? I hope you see that
when Jesus proclaimed in Isaiah 61 that he had come to fulfil
that prophecy, of freedom for the captives and opening of the
prison for them that are bound, he was referring to those that
are trapped by the traditions of men. Taste not, touch not,
handle not, what a dreadful burden works and law religion is. Please
remember, true Christianity is a matter of the heart. It does
affect our actions deeply, but first and foremost it concerns
our heart. Just as in the parable of the
prodigal son, there was another son who was even more lost, just
as these people who were bound by their traditions. And the
question and challenge for us is, isn't it, if our experience
of the Lord Jesus has not led us to rest and freedom, or if
the teaching you receive has not led you to see the Lord Jesus
as all your righteousness, all your sanctification, all of your
redemption, that Christ is all and in all, If you are looking
inwardly to a work you think must be performed in you rather
than a work performed by God on your behalf, may God help
you see this morning both yourself and His Son afresh. And it's
relatively easy for us to look at the traditions of these people.
They had the most extraordinary set of rules for how they were
to live. You couldn't move a chair on
the Sabbath because by moving a chair you accidentally might
create a furrow which is ploughing the ground. As I said earlier,
you couldn't walk any more than 750 paces in Israel today, I
believe. They have the lifts programmed
on Sabbath because to press a button is to make something work. And
so the lifts in hotels in Israel, they go to the first floor and
the doors open and wait for people to come in and go out and then
they close and lifts go up to the second floor. So you can
travel in the lift, but you can't press the buttons. It is just
unbelievable, the trap that works religion, that man's tradition
bring to people. And it's easy for us to poke
fun at them and to look at them and say they are silly. And millions
of people around the world are practising these things all of
the time. Isaiah said of the Jews, he said,
Because these people draw near with their words and honour me
with their lip service, but they remove their hearts from me,
and their reverence for me consists of the traditions learned by
rote. But if we look at their traditions,
we must also look at ours. If we examine what goes on around
us in the name of Christianity and try to find words from God
to support it, we might find ourselves just as surprised as
we are when we look at the practices of others. Our traditions might
not lead to having people titled as priests, but we have created
over the past few hundred years the tradition of men. where we
have people that are going to work for the Lord. They must
go to Bible college. They're going to be missionaries.
They must go to Bible college. And then what do they learn in
the Bible colleges? They learn a gospel that says
Jesus loves everyone, Jesus died for everyone, the Holy Spirit
is trying to save everyone. Salvation is a choice. Sanctification
is the ongoing work of man in which he is instructed to try
as hard as he can and even though he fails all the time he's just
got to keep on trying. Sanctification is aided by going
back to the Mosaic Law to find out rules about how we have to
live. All of them except the Sabbath one which we don't keep
but we've moved it a little bit and we change it. And so Bible
difficulties are now mysteries which are left in the hands of
trained experts to be able to unravel. You cannot be a missionary,
as I said, unless you've actually been to some of these Bible colleges
and been trained as a well-organised theologian. And so we have a
whole bunch of rules, don't we? We have rules about all sorts
of things. We impose a set of Christian rules upon ourselves
and others around us. Quiet times, witnessing, tithing,
practical Christianity, human intellectualism over the plain
words of scripture. And I hope that the verses before
us will help us to see through the fog of our traditions and
may God show us the things that we do as Christians which are
based on the traditions of men. They often start, as the Jews
did, with really good intentions and then all of a sudden the
tradition becomes the thing that we are focused on. And sadly
the object of worship is no longer the Lord Jesus and what He has
done, The object of the worship is what other people are doing.
And so, when Sabbath had finished, finally these people, by the
sun going down, were released. And then the whole city was gathered
at the door. So all day they'd really wanted
to come, but fear had kept them away. And so, the Lord Jesus still
showed great compassion on these people. He healed, in verse 34,
He healed many who were ill with various diseases, cast out many
demons and he was not permitting the demons to speak because they
knew who he was. Again, as we saw in the last
few weeks, he just deals with these things with effortless
authority. It takes nothing from the Lord
Jesus to bring about healing and to control and rule demons
and to shut their mouth. Early the next morning, verse
35, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house
and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. So the
best prayer Jesus shows us so often in the Gospels, the best
prayer and the truest prayer is private. Go to a place where
it is just you and your God and in that place with you and your
God just lay your life openly before him, like an open book.
There's nothing that he does not know. And the Lord Jesus
leads us by example in prayer. And he stands ready, it says
in heaven, always interceding for his children. At the beginning
of a new week, He begins alone with His Father. And we'd be
well advised not to begin our activities, individually or collectively,
without laying all of the things before us, before the Lord, and
all of what comes from it must come from Him. Our Saviour never
seems to have begun anything without praying. When he was
baptised, Luke says he was praying. When he was transfigured upon
the mountain, he was praying. When he was choosing the apostles,
he continued all night in prayer. When all men spoke well of him
and wanted to make him king, Matthew tells us that he went
away by himself to a mountain to pray. When he was being harassed
by Satan in Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples,
you stay there while I pray. And so Jesus hides himself, takes
himself away from the commotion of the world and goes to spend
time with his father. Verse 36, Simon and his companions
were searching for him and they found him and said to him, everyone
is looking for you. Those searching for the Lord
always found him. But what were they looking for?
What were these people looking for? Were they looking for a
miracle worker or a preacher? Verse 38 is a very challenging
verse. He said to them, Let us go somewhere
else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there. for
that is what I came for. We have looked at this important
verse recently but it's significant to grasp what Jesus is saying
here. Gospel ministry is a preaching
ministry. The gospel, the proclamation
of who the Lord Jesus is and what he has done for his people
is according to God, God's power unto salvation. And we would
do well to examine all of our activities in light of this verse.
If God has called us to be his witnesses, then this must be
our priority. Jesus had multitudes to heal
and to feed, but they all had a greater need to hear the word
himself be proclaimed. As he says in John 5, when he
is lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. And so he went
into their synagogues. He left this crowd of people
who wanted to witness miraculous events. And he went into their
synagogues throughout all of Galilee preaching and casting
out demons. And so at this time the Lord
Jesus still had a freedom to go into towns, to go into synagogues
and to proclaim the Gospel. And then the section I'd like
us to focus on most this morning is in verse 40. And a leper came
to Jesus, beseeching him and falling on his knees before him
and saying, If you are willing, you can make me clean. God the
Holy Spirit chose this particular story to show us something beautiful
about the Lord's way of saving his people. and may we who care
for the souls of people around us learn the lesson he would
have for us in these verses. I say the Lord's way of saving
his people because we live in a world where so many believe
they have greater wisdom than the Lord and many around us are
trapped as we were by the traditions in this area, and we're as much
poor victims as these people were in Jesus' day. If we would
be wise, as the wise man says, and save souls, we must not be
wise above the counsel of God Almighty. Salvation is of the
Lord. Salvation comes to God's chosen
children in His ordained way. And we do well to compare the
actions of the master with common actions of those claiming to
represent him in our day. A leper. This man came as a leprosy. Leprosy was considered a curse
from God, as it was when Miriam, Moses' sister, was cursed, when
Gehazi, Elisha's servants, was cursed. when Naaman the Syrian
was cursed. And it's a terrible, terrible
disease. Some of you here have been to India and we have seen
leprosy. To talk about it and to see it
are two radically different things. There was a famous book written
by Mr Thompson called The Land and the Book and he describes
lepers in Israel. He says, the hair falls from
the head and eyebrows, the nails loosen, decay and drop off. Joint after joint of fingers
and toes shrink up and slowly fall away. The gums are absorbed
and the teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue
and the palate are slowly consumed. The leper was a loathsome, miserable,
outcast creature. He was walking death. And Leviticus 13 and 14 give
us graphic pictures of what was involved in leprosy. The man
had to be brought, anyone who was suspected of having this
disease was actually brought to Aaron the priest or one of
his sons the priest. And then the priest had to examine
the sore on the man's body and then he pronounced him, if it
was leprosy, he pronounced him unclean. Unclean. 11. It says it's chronic leprosy
on the skin of the body. The priest shall pronounce him
unclean, and he shall not isolate him for his unclean. But later
on, if that continues, then they are isolated. Unclean. A leprous man is unclean. And
then in verse, at the end of chapter 13 of Leviticus, you
have the, in a sense, the saddest judgment of these people. As
for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, the
hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his moustache,
and he shall cry unclean." Seventeen times in Leviticus 13 the priest
says to the man, unclean, unclean. And now the man has to tear his
clothes, and he is the one who must pronounce to everyone around
him, unclean, unclean. And then he shall remain, verse
46 of chapter 13, he shall remain unclean all the days during which
he has the infection. He is unclean. He shall live
alone. His dwelling shall be outside
the camp. And so the priest proclaims uncleanness
17 times. The man proclaims uncleanness
for himself. He is cut off. from God's people. He is cut off from the sacrificial
system. He is cut off, as Ephesians says. He is now without hope and without
God in this world. But the Holy Spirit has chosen
the healing of this man to show us something far more significant. Because this is the state of
all people, and especially God's chosen ones. We are the lepers. We were the lepers. Defilement
is total and shuts people out from the presence of God, who
is of two purer eyes than to look on sin. So the leprosy was
considered incurable by any human means. In fact, it was considered
a presumption of the Jews upon God to attempt to heal it. So there was no care for them.
And everyone infected by this filthy disease had to show himself
to the priest. And so there was public exposure
as well as public denial of fellowship and association, all under the
judgment of God. So all people know that they
are sinners. But really, only people know their leprosy when
God the Holy Spirit comes to them. As one of the hymn writers
said, a sinner is a precious thing. The Holy Spirit has made
him so. And so this man is in a state
that all of God's children are in before they come to the Lord
Jesus. They are cast out. They are leprous. Their sin is more than skin deep. It's a sin. It's a sin of the
soul that is the biggest problem. But here we see the actions of
this man who has no hope, who should not be in this company
and should not be in a public place where other people were.
But he comes to the Lord Jesus. There's no other place to go
and he has nothing to lose. He comes to Jesus. He doesn't
come to men. He doesn't come to religious
ceremonies or institutions of men. Jesus says, come to me all
who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. He
comes as a helpless man. There was no cure. Luke says
that he was full of leprosy. He comes as one cut off from
God and under his judgment, and with no access to the sin-cleansing
atonement at the temple. And he falls down on his face
before the Lord. He pleads with the Lord, acknowledging
that only if he is willing can he be cured. He acknowledges
that the Lord can heal him of his defilement. He says to the
Lord Jesus, you can make me clean. And we need to compare the healing
of this man to the evangelism that we have become so familiar
with. One of the things that saddens me so often are the stories
of people whom I know and love and have some understanding of
God and the Scriptures and then go through the normal Christian
exercise of making a profession and choosing God and then spending
some time with great zeal and excitement and witness to many
and then fall away. You know many of them. A large
congregation could be made from them in this town alone. Billy
Graham said that if 5% of those who came forward at his rally
remained Christians in churches, he would be pleased. But what
about the 95% who have been given some assurance of God's love
towards them and Jesus' death for them, and their ability to
choose when they will become Christians, and then they go
away living in unbelief? Are they now worse off than if
they'd never heard these false gospels? God says this leper
was a leper because of God's action. God left this man in
this state as an outcast from Israel, without hope and without
God in this world. This man was left by God in a
state of being under God's judgment and without any means of being
able to help himself whatsoever. He shows us that he does not
believe the modern gospel of God loves you, Jesus died for
you or God has a wonderful plan for your life if you will only
let him and allow him to be Lord of your life. He doesn't come
before God with good works, or deeds, or his mighty free will
to exercise. He is in the hands of Almighty
God, who can with justice choose to save him, or damn him to hell,
and both without any harm to his perfect holiness and justice. And he acknowledges that any
help he may receive is because of not the will of man, but the
will of God. He says to Jesus, you can make
me clean. Not that you can make me clean
enough to finish the cleaning by my own efforts. Jesus can
make me clean completely. And so there is a sense in which
the scriptures again and again remind us that God's gospel and
God's message is a cutting message, that hearts are circumcised and
we do well to leave God, the Holy Spirit, doing His work of
conviction in the lives of people and His work and His alone of
bringing healing to the people. Jeremiah 6 is one of the many,
many passages in the scripture which is a warning to those who
are involved in evangelism and teaching. Jeremiah 6.13 says,
From the least of them to the greatest of them, everyone is
greedy for gain, and from prophet even to the priest, everyone
deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness
of my people superficially, saying, Peace, peace, but there is no
peace. And then God came to them by
his prophets and his word, but were they ashamed because of
the abomination they have done? not the abomination of the sins
of people, but the abomination of the false teachers who come
and proclaim peace, peace to people when the Prince of Peace
himself is the one who will bring peace. And so they have healed
the brokenness of my people superficially. So woe betide us. God warns us
today, and he continues to warn throughout his scriptures, that
his gospel is precious, his gospel is not to be tampered with. We
are God's ambassadors, we keep saying. We deliver God's message
and leave God to sort out the pain that it brings, and the
result that it brings, and the comfort that it brings. So I
do pray that the Lord would bring us to a clear conviction. We're
not to join the rest of them, the rest of people who defame
our Saviour and bring great harm to people, both His people and
others. Please, Lord, make us faithful
witnesses to who You are as You are revealed in the Scriptures.
Every atom of my flesh wants to reduce the seriousness of
what is happening around us all the time. I don't want to be
out of favour with people who have been my friends for so long.
I don't want to stand against popular Christian leaders and
say they are wrong. I want to say peace, peace to
people, to smile sweetly and let them believe by my actions
that the problem is not so serious. I don't want the warnings of
Scripture to be so clear and damning. And may God give us
wisdom and compassion for the souls of people that we love,
and not just seek for something that brings us comfort for a
short time. So we do well to lay no foundation
other than that laid by the apostles of the Lord Jesus, so that those
we care for have their faith built upon the rock, and not
upon the shifting sands of anything other than the perfect finished
work of the Lord Jesus. And as the Lord Jesus was healing
this man, he was teaching his disciples how they are to continue
in his work. As Hudson Taylor said, God's
work done God's way will never lack God's provision. And so
the Lord responds. Jesus was moved with compassion. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
He was moved with compassion. Almighty God is moved with compassion. The Lord Jesus is moved with
compassionate love for His bride. And His love moves God. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
moves God. What a wonder of grace! God is
moving in our midst because of His compassion. We often ask,
why doesn't He fix the pain and suffering in the world? But who
are we to tell God how He should work? His love is particular
and purposeful. He foreknows his people, he loves
them intimately. He then predestines all that
will befall them. He then at a time of his love
comes calling them and he justifies them and he glorifies them. And
Romans 8 puts them all in past tense. God is moved with compassion. And then the Lord Jesus did something
even more remarkable. He reached out his hand and touched
him. Isaiah says that surely he took
up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. So when the Lord
Jesus touched the man, two things must happen. Either Jesus will
be defiled or the man must be made perfectly well. Robert Hawker
says, observe with me not only the gracious act of Christ healing
him, but touching him also and doing it. touching a leper. Yes, Jesus, though made in the
likeness of sinful flesh, contracted none of our pollutions when taking
our flesh. His unspotted purity could not
be defiled by a union with our nature. The sun shines and imparts
all its warmings, healings and life-giving properties. but yet
contracts no defilement from the dunghill object to which
it communicates those blessings. And Jesus sheds his blissful,
sin-withering, soul-cleansing influence without being tainted
with the maladies of defiled churches and defiled souls into
which he shines and on which he rises as the Son of Righteousness
with healing in his wings. And so we have the wonderful
cure, isn't it? That immediately in verse 42, the leprosy left
him and he was cleansed. So when the Lord heals, there
is complete healing. And he sternly warned him, immediately
sent him away. He said to him, see that you
say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest,
and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony
to them. We don't have time today, but
if you read Leviticus chapter 14, you'll see just the most
beautiful pictures of the work of the Lord Jesus in the ceremony
for the cleansed leper. It's just a wonderful picture
of the sacrifice of the Lord. bearing the sins of his people
in the dove that was slain and dying for his people and then
the blood of that dead dove was actually the wings of the other
dove were placed in that blood and that dove flew off as if
to heaven with sins taken away completely and righteousness
restored. And this man didn't do as the
Lord told him and sometimes in our great zeal we can do things
that cause harm to God's people so often we are prone to jump
in and instead of waiting on the Lord and this man was naughty
because at the end of this chapter it says that Jesus could no longer
go into those public places but also you can't blame the man
too much for what he had come from to what he is now is what
we should do, shouldn't we? We proclaim the wonders of what
the Lord Jesus has done for us. But there is in the story of
the leper great comfort from our God to all of his children. God, our Father, for his good
and wise purposes, has left his children in this world where
our sin, the sins of others, Satan and his devices, and the
world and all its pleasures come upon believers in constant waves. We let our friends down. We are
hurt by them. Families cause great hurt, but
mostly our indwelling sin drives us to feel that leprosy is a
good description of us. Just this week I wrote a long
overdue letter to a friend who was hurt by my seeming and real
neglect of her years ago. Sometimes there is pain that
festers and spreads like leprosy, and we feel helpless and cast
down. My brothers and my sisters, there
is just one cure for your disease. As a young girl said to Naaman,
there is a God in Israel who can And when this prophet heals,
he heals completely. There is no defilement left.
Fellowship is restored. Communion established. And so
let's remember as well when we confront the sins and the sad
things that are in our lives all the time, that it was this
leprous sin that drove this man to the Saviour. When we feel
the corruption and the defilement of our flesh, the sins we really
commit now and again and again, our indwelling sins, are purposed
by God to drive us to Him not away from Him. He came for the
sick, He came for the sorrowing, He came for the helpless, He
came for the sinners, and by faith we keep coming to Him for
everything. And I'll just finish with two
wonderful verses from the New Testament that talk about the
completeness of cleansing. 1 John 1.7 it says, But if we
walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all
sin. Hebrews 9 says, For if the blood
of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those
who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,
How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And may the Lord grant us the
grace to go away from here with consciences cleansed.