So, Lord, may you graciously
help me, I turn your prayerful attention to Matthew's Gospel,
chapter 8, and particularly looking at verse 2. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 8,
and reading verse 2 as a text, but we want to look at the account
of the leper and the Jesus cleansing of that leper. Matthew 8, verse
2, And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Jesus had just finished his sermon
on the mount. We read already that they were
amazed at his doctrine because as in the end of chapter 7 verse
29, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the
scribes. He showed in that Sermon on the
Mount how he had authority over the doctrines. He had a grasp
of the doctrines and the true meaning of the doctrines. But
then in chapter 8 and onwards, we read of many of his miracles
that took place, showing that he had not just got a grasp of
doctrine, but he was indeed the son of God, the God who created
all things, the God who could command, and it stood fast, and
who spoke, and it was done. And therefore he goes on to demonstrate
his power with many of these healings and we read of some
in chapter 8. First of all of this leper that
was cleansed, then of the centurion's servant who was sick of the palsy,
paralysis basically. He was a paralysed child or young
man. and was cleansed by or made right
by Jesus's power. And then the fever that left
Peter's mother-in-law, God, Jesus was able to have power over that. And also we read that many brought
their sick and he healed them all. And it was a fulfilment,
you see, of Isaiah 53, where it says, himself took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses. He came to fulfil all the Old
Testament, all the prophets, and he was showing here his demonstration
of his power. And I think it's important to
understand, as we begin this, to paint the picture of what
leprosy was to the people of the day in which this was written.
You see, if we look up what we call leprosy today, which may
not be identical, but obviously is somewhat similar, Hansen's
disease, as it's called, you can go and read about that, and
if you take medication fairly early on in that illness, you
can be cleansed of it, you can be... got better from it, basically,
you can recover. It's a bacterial infection. But
you see we have now in medical science has moved on a long way
and many things are possible which were completely impossible
naturally speaking in the day that Jesus lived. And I think
that's very important to understand this. If you were you see if
you were if you have a disease you have a problem. Why do you
go to the doctor? You go to the doctor because
first of all you want the doctor to diagnose accurately, correctly,
the problem that you have. And why do you want him to do
that? Well, you want him to then use his medical knowledge and
medical skill to show you what you need to do and what tablets
you need to take and what operations you need to do and what radiotherapy
you need to do and what chemotherapy needs to be taking place and
all these things to correct the problem that you have. That's
in a nutshell, as it were, how we work today. I realise that
not all diseases have been cured and I realise that some amongst
us are suffering, as it were, with things that the medical
profession cannot completely eliminate, and as much as they
try. And I realise that we've not
got to a stage where we can eliminate all illness with our medical
science. But what I am saying is there's
a lot that can be done. If you get told that you've got
cancer, you go to the doctor and there's loads of things that
they can try and do on your behalf. I want to contrast that with
leprosy, because I think the contrast is stark. If you go
and read in Leviticus chapter 13, it takes nearly a chapter
to describe how somebody with leprosy needs to be diagnosed. It needs to be made sure that
it really was leprosy, this skin complaint, And it was a skin
complaint that started in the skin and it meant that you got
lack of sensitivity to your nervous system. In other words, you lost
feeling in your limbs. And therefore, if you lose feeling
in your fingers, you end up burning your fingers and damaging your
fingers without realising that that's what you're doing. And
therefore, you get disfigured and your whole body becomes disfigured
as a result of a lack of feeling and lack of sensitivity. But
in Leviticus, if you were diagnosed, you see, or if you thought, or
people thought, or you were told to go to the priest, there was
a whole thing that the priest had to go through to determine
whether it really was this terrible plague of leprosy or no. And
he had to shut you up for seven days in quarantine to see whether
this really was leprosy. And you might say, well, yes,
this is good, I need to get to the bottom of it, I need to find
out really what I've got. I just want to read in Leviticus
what the end result of the diagnosis of leprosy was. And this was
the end result. This is what, as it were, the
priest would tell you if he was obeying what God had told him.
This is Leviticus chapter 13, verse 45. And the leper in whom
the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and
he shall put a covering over his upper lip and shall cry unclean,
unclean. All the days wherein the plague
shall be in him, he shall be defiled, he is unclean, he shall
dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be." That's
the end of your visit with a priest. You've been diagnosed with leprosy
and that's That's what you've been told. There's no treatment
whatsoever as to how to be made better. You see, today we have
treatment for leprosy and therefore we lose the impact of what it
was to be diagnosed as a leper. You've been diagnosed to go round
crying out unclean until you're being diagnosed to live outside
the camp. And that, if you kept the law
as the law told you what to do, that's what you would do. And
that would be, as it were, what you'd benefit from keeping the
law. In other words, you'd stay an outcast. I think perhaps you
can start to understand why being diagnosed as a leper was tragic. There was no known cure. I know
it goes through later on and says what it should be, what
should happen if somebody who was a leper then thinks that
they no longer have leprosy. There was a whole procedure to
go through. But that procedure never cleansed them from leprosy. What it did is give an outward
approval of the fact that leprosy had been cleansed. There's a
subtle difference between those two things. So leprosy was something. that if you were diagnosed by
the priest for, it meant you were unclean, you could not go
into the temple, you could not go into the worship, you could
not go in contact with people because it was a contagious disease,
it was also disfiguring, it defigures your body, and it meant that
you had to keep outside the camp. You were an outcast. Well you
see, the scripture uses leprosy, you see, as a picture of sin. a picture of what sin does to
us. It renders us, you see, unclean.
It renders us that we must be without the camp. We must be
separated from communion with God. Leprosy had, in the Bible
times, there was no cure for it. Now, there was cures. There
was... Naaman, of course, was cured,
you might say. Moses had leprosy temporarily before the Lord reversed
it a few times, and also Miriam. But there was never a course
that you could be set on, as it were, to get you better. A rehabilitation course, as it
were, from leprosy. There was no such thing. And
I see in this, if we think of leprosy as a type of sin, we
see here in the keeping, as it were, of the laws in Levitical
times of how you should treat leprosy. It's a picture, you
see, of the law. The law had something to say
about leprosy. It was very wise, really, what
was being said. It says it's a contagious disease,
and the best way to deal with that, which we'd completely agree
with in medical terms, you need to isolate that person. And we
know today, if there's something very dangerous to other people,
we isolate that person because they're contagious, and it would
be terrible to spread to other people. We understand those laws,
in a sense. But for the person who had it,
it was devastating. There was nothing they could
do. There was no prescribed remedy. All they had to do was go around
crying out unclean, constantly feeling their defilement and
loss, as it were. All their reputation, as it were,
was in ruins. And of course they would have
been ashamed of themselves. People wouldn't have wanted to
see them, would they? Because if you saw them and you had contact
with them, probably you might get leprosy yourself. And then
you've got to join their club and carry on like that yourself.
No. Leprosy was a dreadful thing,
and we must picture it in biblical terms. It was a devastating thing
to be a leper. And there was no cure, as it
were. But you see, and that's like
the law. Keeping of the law will never... If that leper kept that
law of being without the camp for all his life, what reward
would he get at the end of it? Death. It would not bring him
out of his leprosy, would it? And you see, so is the keeping
of the law. We cannot keep the law, as it were. And the law
never, as it were, would bring us back. It never takes away
the defilement. The law, it shows that sin needs
to be separated from. The law shows what sin is. It
showed what leprosy was. It showed that leprosy had to
be kept separate from the rest of the population. But it didn't
cleanse anybody. But you see, the Lord Jesus was
able to do that. which the law could never do. He was able to take that handwriting,
and you think of that if you were a leper, what a handwriting
that would be against you. It would be against you for the
rest of your life. Outcast. Keep away. If you come
in contact with people, you'll ruin them. This handwriting that
was against that leper, the Lord Jesus was able to take that handwriting
and take it away and render them clean. I think we need that background
to understand something of the miraculousness of the miracle
that was taking place in this time. Because we think, well,
yes, medical science can do this, can do that. Having said that,
I'm not saying for a moment that we could change a leper with
antibiotics with all his disfiguration in a moment. We could not do
that. I'm not trying to say we can. But there is cures, there
is things that can attack, as it were, the bacteria. But in
Jesus' day, you see, I mean, Alexander Fleming, his finding
of these antibiotics and so forth was only just over a hundred
years ago. So it's only very recent that
we've had this sort of ability to do these things. I want to
bring you back to the biblical picture of what leprosy was,
what leprosy meant, and how this man was delivered from his leprosy
because it gives us a picture of how each we need to be delivered
from the ugliness and the uncleanness of sin. And behold, there came
a leper and worshipped him. So the first point we want to
notice, there came a leper. He came. He didn't stay where
he was. He should have, as it were the
law, had one thing to say to him. Keep away. Keep away. Keep away. That's all the law
could say to him. But he came. Why did he come? Not because he didn't, as it
were, wanted to infect the other people, but he had a great deep
sense of his utter need to come to this one who could cleanse. The law had nothing helpful,
as it were, to say to the leper. The law could not stop the leper
being a leper. The law could but condemn. And
it's the same today with us, beloved friends. We cannot get
to heaven by keeping the law. We need to realise that keeping
the law will never get us to heaven. Now, don't misunderstand
me, I haven't got some problem with keeping the Ten Commandments.
What I'm saying is, in and of that self you can see it pictured
so beautifully with the leper. The leper keeping that law, keeping
away from his family and being an outcast, how could that save
him? How could that take away his leprosy? But we read that the leper came.
He came. He didn't stay away. But you
think of all the reasons he could have had to keep away. Well,
the people wouldn't have been pleased to see him. He looked
disfigured. And we read in Luke's account,
he was full of leprosy. He wasn't just didn't have it
in one place of his body. It had disfigured him and so
sin does, you see. Sin disfigured us. It numbs us
to the damage we're doing to ourselves. It's so typical of
sin, isn't it? You see a seared conscience. We go on in sin and
sin and don't realise the damaging effects of leprosy and in our
case sin in our lives. But he came, you see. He came. I believe he would have come
perhaps similar to Esther. I will then go in unto the king,
which is not according to the law. And if I perish, I perish. There was a, who can tell? Who
can tell? There was a necessity. There
was a venture in. He came. No doubt the people
probably get out of his way. Oh, a leper in the way. Keep
away from him. Why is he here? Lord. Sorry. And behold, there came
a leper. And the next words are amazing,
aren't they? And worshipped him. And the other
accounts, one of them said he fell on his face and the other
said he knelt down. No doubt he did both to worship
the Lord. So this one, who was an outcast,
came to Jesus and worshipped him. Just think about that. This
man, you could have said, well, he could have had a chip on his
shoulder. Why haven't other people got leprosy? I've got leprosy.
I've had it for so many years. They haven't. I've got a problem
with this sovereign God. Why has he done this to me? Nothing
of that. There came a leper and worshipped
him. He worshipped the Lord Jesus
Christ. No doubt, you see, many saw nothing
in Christ, but this man, he saw one to be worshipped, one to
be exhorted. This is why he came. This is
why he pressed through the crowd. If unto Jesus thou art bound,
a crowd about him will be found, attending day and night, a worldly
crowd to din thine ears, and crowds of unbelieving fears to
keep him from your sight. But he pressed on. He came. with
all the reasons, and if you've got some disfiguration on your
body, you don't like to show other people, not normally, that's
not normal, to want to show yourself. I've known people who've had
disfigurations. I always remember Amy Ward, she
had a very curved back and she was so ashamed to appear as it
were in public, that people would see how curved her back was.
It was such a sense of shame to her. Well, this one. He pushed through that, didn't
he? Yes, he looked ugly. Yes, there was a stench, well,
we sung about it, the loathsome stench, you see. There's a loathsome
stench of death and sin about the leper. It was a slow-dying
disease that worked its way through the body, ruining every part
of the body, and so sin does. It's a stench. And people don't
like to smell a stench, do they? They like to put on a nice deodorant
and nice things to make them smell acceptable, but this man
had a stench about him. He was a leper. Behold, there came a leper and
worshipped him. He worshipped the Lord. He came with humility. He came
with reverence. He came with reverence. And this,
you see, is a picture of how we should come to the Lord Jesus.
We should come in all our defilement. You see, there's two aspects
that we can have to sin. One idea is that, well, only
the righteous go to the Lord Jesus, which is, Jesus said,
they that are whole have no need of a physician. It's those that
are sick. And when we realise our sickness,
when we realise our far-offness, when we realise the seriousness
of our condition, There's two aspects we can take. Either we,
as it were, hide it, and as it were, cower in a corner, and
die as it were in that state. Or we come and confess our sin.
We come and show the malady in all its ugliness, in all its
foulness. If we confess our sin, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sin. But that takes a
loss of a great sense of pride. You see, coming to Jesus is not
some pride thing. It's not some great thing that
we can put on a feather on our cap, as it were, and walk in
pride about. It's to come to Jesus as I was,
weary and worn and sad. He wasn't a proud man coming
to Jesus, was he? He wasn't proud at all. What
is he to be proud of? All his uncleanness, all his
loathsomeness, But he came and he worshipped. I think of those
wise men that came to that house in Bethlehem. They had come and
they'd come to seek the child that had been born. And they
went to a palace. They thought that's where this
child would be. But no, they came to a house
in Bethlehem. And we read, they fell down.
and worshipped him. There was no, as it were, argument
in their minds. They didn't say, well, why are
we worshipping somebody who has no outward glory about them whatsoever? They worshipped and so did this
leper. He came and worshipped him as
God. Not as just a man, you see, many thought that he was just
a man, just a good man perhaps. He came and worshipped him and
said, Lord, if thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. This is
his plea. He comes with great humility.
He does not demand. You'll notice that he does not
say, it's your job to make me clean. He doesn't say that. He
doesn't say that he deserves to be made clean. He doesn't
say that he'd been a leper so long that it was now due time
that God should cleanse him from his leprosy. He uses none of
those arguments. He merely states this fact, that
he believes that Jesus is who he is. He worshipped him, you
see, and to worship somebody rightly, as it were, we're only
to worship God, we're not to worship one another. And he worshipped
God, worshipped the Lord as God, and he realised that this man,
though the priests could not make him clean, Nobody else could
make him clean. He didn't know how to be made
clean. There was nothing that the law had to say to make him
clean. But he came and sought for the
one who could make him clean, who could cleanse him from all
sin. And therefore he comes, saying,
Lord, if thou wilt. You see, this is faith, isn't
it? It's coming with faith. If thou wilt, thou canst. A realisation of who God is. Not all of them came. If you
remember, one of them said, if thou canst do anything, help
us. Well, his faith at that moment in time, although he did come
to be a believer as it were, but his faith at that time, it
wasn't quite sure whether Jesus was able to. Well, this man is
quite sure. that Jesus is able to heal him.
But what's very interesting, he also acknowledges another
attribute of God, which is that God is sovereign. God is sovereign. You see, when Paul had that thorn
in the flesh, he besought the Lord thrice that the Lord would
take away this thorn from him. But it wasn't God's sovereign
purpose. It wasn't God's sovereign purpose at that time to do that
for Paul. And you see, we need to realise
and we need to pray. You think of that saying with
the three Hebrew men that were going to be cast into the fiery
furnace by the Babylonish king. Well, they said, we're not careful
to answer thee. Our God is able to deliver us,
but we're not sure whether at this moment in time it's his
purpose to do so. You see, that's humility, isn't
it? That's submission. It's like that also when Eli
got told that his sons would be killed. It is the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good. That's very different than banging
your fists down and saying, I deserve, I demand that you cure me. No,
there was no command. There was no demand. He came
as a suppliant seeking mercy. And you see, that's how we are
to come if we are ever to be saved in the Lord with an everlasting
salvation. We cannot command it. We cannot
demand it. We have no reason for God to
do it for us. But we do know that he delights
in mercy. We do know that him that cometh unto me, I will in
no wise cast out. We do know that. But our pleading
ground is mercy. A pleading ground is to have
mercy. And he put Jesus, and behold
there came a leper and worshipped him saying, Lord, if thou wilt
thou canst make me clean. So he had this living faith mixed
with humility, mixed with reverence in falling down to worship him. And he came over all his obstacles. Well, can we see that in our
lives? Is sin such a loathsome stench
to us that we cannot continue an outcast? We cannot, as it
were, though that would be more, it would save our face, as it
were, better. We would not get the ridicule
that would have come to this man for exposing himself, as
it were, showing his face in the city. No, he had to. Because the case was so urgent. Has the case ever got to that
urgency level with you? You might say, yes, but I haven't
got leprosy, you see. I haven't got leprosy. It's alright,
this man had leprosy. He had all the awful stench of
sin about him. If I was a leper, I would have
done that as well. Do we realise that sin disfigures
us in actually a more solemn way? Because you see, his outcastness
was an outcastness for the rest of his life. Well, I don't know
how long he lived, but let's say it was an outcastness for
50 years at most probably. If we're outcasts because of
sin, it is an outcastness which will not be for 50 years. It
will not be for 500 years. It will not be for 5,000 years.
It will not be for 5 million years. It will be forever. and ever. That's the solemnness
of this situation. And this is the situation. He,
by the grace of God, realised the necessity to go to this one,
this one, this man that receiveth sinners and eateth with them,
this one who had mercy, who was the Son of God, who could touch
the unclean and not become unclean himself. He ventured. with humility, not with demand,
with humility. And Jesus put forth his hand
and touched him, saying, I will. So simple. In one of the other
Gospels that we've mentioned, Jesus had compassion on him. Compassion on this leper that
had a lifetime, a death seal upon him that he had to be outcast
for the rest of his life. He had compassion. on him. Compassion. And Jesus put forth his hand
and touched him. Well, nobody else would want
to touch him, would they? They were not allowed to be touched.
And if they were, they'd be ceremonially unclean. And they would have
to go and go through a process to be made cleansed again. But
Jesus, you see, was willing to do that. He was able to touch
that which was unclean, and instead of the uncleanness communicating
itself to him, he, as it were, sent healing and cleansing. We
think of that with the Lord Jesus, what he does for his people.
He takes their sin. He was made sin, but he never
got contaminated with that sin that he bore. The whole sin of
the entire church was heaped on Christ, and yet he himself
was never contaminated by that sin. It didn't make him sinful
himself. It made him the sin bearer. The
one who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, remained
so, and yet carrying the burden of sin for the entire church.
That's what he was on his way to do. This was, as it were,
the beginning of his ministry. He was yet to perform that and
to accomplish that great deed at Calvary. Be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. Immediately. And we read that
he was full of leprosy. Immediately, his disfigured hands,
disfigured feet, disfigured face as it were, because I understand
as well it causes blindness as well, because we lose the reflex
action of our eyes as it were to blink. And of course if you
stop blinking, because you don't feel the pain of wanting to blink,
then your eyes then suffer and get dried out and get ruined.
Oh, that's what it did. It ruined everything, you see,
because of a lack of feeling of the effects and the awfulness
of that plague. The sin, you see, the rebellion
that is in our hearts by nature against God is like that. It's
against God, and we don't realise the damage, the awfulness it's
doing to us, the way it's making people who are formed to glorify
God, to make them live to His glory, to spend their lives living
to themselves, living perhaps for the form of godliness, but
denying the power thereof. What a disfiguration sin does
to us each. Well, here was one that could
reverse this awful effect, the only one. the only one in their
day that they lived, the only one that could reverse those
awful effects. And that's why it's a God-given
similarity to sin. It was awful disease. There was nothing the law could
say to it. And Jesus saith unto him, Thou
tell no man. So he was healed of his leprosy.
Well, of course, the man was amazed. The man was, as it were,
overjoyed. Now he was no longer outcast.
Now he was no longer a leper. And Jesus said unto him, See,
thou tell no man. Perhaps you might say a very
strange thing to tell somebody. Surely he wanted to publish abroad
the goodness of God. Well, Jesus gave him, and in
the other Gospels, a very, very strong command not to do that. Jesus saith unto him, See thou
tell no man. But he gave him something to
do. And you see, if the Lord has
touched us and he becomes our Lord, then we need the first,
as it were, outworking of that is obedience. We need to obey
him. We need to do what he says. see
thou tell no man but go thy way show thyself to the priests and
offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. Now
that's covered in Leviticus 14 and the whole process they had
to go through with a live bird and two live birds one getting
killed and the other one flying away free looking at symbolising
of course the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. All this symbolism that was to be carried out in Leviticus
14 we can read of it. Show thyself to the priest and
offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. See
Jesus said clearly early on in his Sermon on the Mount I came
not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it." He wasn't destroying
the law, he'd done nothing against the law. The law said outcasts
must be outside. But Jesus had taken that devastating
handwriting that was written against this leper, nailing it
to his cross, and he says, you're cleansed, and you are now to
go and demonstrate that you have been cleansed. by going through
the God-appointed, law-given way of showing and demonstrating
that that cleansing has taken place. That is what the Lord
Jesus tells this man to do. Show thyself to the priest and
offer the gift. Depending on how rich he was,
it differed. There was a poor man's version,
as it were, and a richer man's version, depending on how much
they had. that there was to be this ceremony
they were to go through. But as I say, that ceremony never
cleansed them. It was an outward, as it were, form, an indication
that they were now to be considered clean, considered past that state
of leprosy. And you might say, well, why
did Jesus not want him to go and tell everybody en route to
going to the priest? Well, we have, interesting, in
all three accounts that I read, it says pretty much the same
words. Offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto
them. Unto who? Who's the them? Well, he was going to go and
show the priests. He was to go and show the priests.
The priests, did they like the Lord Jesus generally? Did they
think his teachings were great? No, they despised him. He hated
him. So if a man comes to them claiming
that he'd been cleansed, and a whole group of people are making
a big noise about the fact that Jesus had cleansed this man,
when he came to the priest, how interested would the priest be
in declaring this man to be cleansed? Surely he's confirming his own
foolishness, isn't he? He's giving a point to the other
side. Now this man, you see, was to go silently and go and
go to the priest, go through all the ceremony which would
take more than eight days, or eight days, and go and demonstrate
to the priest that he was truly cleansed. The priest would look
over him and check all the things that he needed to do to check
that leprosy truly had departed from him. And then, of course,
there would be a witness, you see, a testimony. How did you
come to be cleansed? How did this happen to you? Well,
the one that cleansed me was the Lord Jesus Christ, for a
testimony unto them. Of course, sadly, this man did
not obey that command. He thought it would be far better
to go around shouting about what God had done without being obedient
to what God had said, and of course as a result of that Jesus
had to withdraw himself from that area, had to go out in desert
regions as a result of his disobedience. Now I'm sure he did it from a
good motive as it were, he did it out of delight as it were
to spread afoar his fame, but here we have an interesting example
of how obedience is better. than sacrifice. It's better,
as it were, to be obedient to the Lord. And you see, somebody
might say, well, you're saying all this about you've been cleansed
of leprosy and you're saying all this noise about I've been
cleansed and so on, but why don't you do what somebody who's been
cleansed should do? What's that? Go to the priest.
Demonstrate it. And you could say that with those
that come to know the Lord. If we're going to go around shouting,
oh, the Lord's cleansed me. He's changed my life and everything.
Well, surely we are to obey what God has said, and then people
will see for themselves. that our life has been changed.
They will see. Now, there is a place to witness, I'm sure.
But in this particular case, the Lord Jesus, particularly,
and you can see why, it was meant to be a demonstration, a testimony
to the priests, to those who were so against Jesus that this,
in a sense, they would be trapped in their own conclusion. They
would conclude that this man was cleansed if they were obeying
the law. And then when they found out that he was cleansed, then
they would be trapped to have to admit that Jesus, the one
they hated, had cleansed this man from his leprosy. But you
see, if it started off with this great big media attention, as
it were, of the cleansing, well then they would never want to
go through with admitting that he had been cleansed. They would
try and deny it. So we need, you see, to be obedient.
And as Christians we need to walk worthy, you see, because
if we say, oh Jesus has done this and Jesus has done that
and Jesus has done something else in my life, but there's
no evidence, we don't walk in his ways, we don't hear his voice,
we don't listen to his commands, we take no notice of the Ten
Commandments, we take no notice of his Word of God, where's the
evidence? There's no evidence, is there? The evidence is, if
you love me, keep my commandments. That's the evidence. The evidence
is a humble walking. There will be a speaking. Don't
misunderstand me. I'm not saying all speaking. There is a time
to declare and others were told to go and tell your friends what
great things the Lord has done for you. So there are times as
well. But clearly in this example there
was a time to go ahead and show that they were cleansed. And
you see, we need to be cleansed. We need, as it were, the Lord
Jesus to cleanse us. We need to come with humility.
We cannot come and claim, as it were, that we deserve to be
cleansed, that we deserve for the Lord to look upon us. No.
We're to come in all our need. Come with all the things that
would pull us back and stop us coming and saying, oh well, surely
people won't like us doing this, or people will laugh at us, or
people will despise us. You see, there is that, the despised. We read that Christians are despised
for His dear name. And the Apostles were at times,
and they counted it joy that they were counted worthy to suffer
for His sake. We are to suffer. And Paul the
Apostle, you might say, what a glamorous experience and conversion
he had. He was met by Ananias and he
was told, you shall show him how great things he must suffer.
for my sake. Why? Because the servant is not
greater than his Lord. And if we, as it were, are going
to think that we can, as it were, make a profession and then have
no suffering, then have no problem, then have nobody against us,
we're not following the Master. He was baptised, came out of
the water and was immediately led of the devil, led into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He had a difficult path,
but yet it was the right way, and it was a good way, and it
was a way that brought glory to God. And behold, there came
a leper. A leper. And we think of that
then, the devastating effect that that was to that man, to
be told that there was no cure. There was only separation. There
was only to be kept without the camp. You think of that. so different
today, we have a problem, we go to the doctor, we expect him
to give us tablets or something to help us. No such things were
there, the only the priest was doing was applying the law, applying
the fact that you did have this terrible disease, you did have
this contagious problem and therefore the result was separation, outcastness. Well it's a wonderful thing if
we see then that Jesus was this one that could step in to this
devastating situation, touch this man in all his need and say, I will, be thou clean,
I will. He was sovereign, sovereign ruler
of the skies, but here he sovereignly says I will. And of course there
are so many invitations in the word of God, come unto me, all
ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
You see, this one, this man received sinners and eateth with them.
He's one that loves, that loves to speak, and loves to show mercy
to sinners. But it was a demonstration, you
see, of his power. to heal from sin, which is a
much greater malady, has a much greater sentence against it.
These people were sentenced for 50 years perhaps, or however
many years they lived, beyond being diagnosed with leprosy.
But if we continue with the loathsome disease of sin, as it were, which
is rebellion against God, which is we will not have this man
to reign over us, that attitude in our lives. I'm king of my
lives. I do what I want in my life for my glory, for my end,
for my fame, for my enjoyment. No. If that's the way we live
our lives, then, you see, this is the devastating effect. We
will be an outcast, not just for 50 years, not just for 500
years, but forever. Well, may we be amongst those
then that come in all our need, fall before Him as Lord, the
One who can do this. Nobody else could. The One that
could cure in an instant. And you see, He can cure us from
all sin. The justification, as it were,
we can be pronounced clean. Yes, there's the ongoing sanctification.
But in the eyes of God, as it were, as we are pronounced clean,
as we justified in Christ, it's a once off, as it were, once
declaration that we're now clean. Well, may we know the cleansing
power and then not walk in disobedience. not do the opposite to what God
has told us to do, but that we may walk in obedience. If ye
love me, keep my commandments, that we may declare with a meek
and quiet testimony that this is the one that has saved me,
the one whom I love. Well, may the Lord add his blessing
and encourage us each to come as lepers spiritually and really
have that healing which will do us real and eternal good.
For Christ's sake, amen.