I want to read to you from the
scripture in a couple of places before we begin the sermon this
morning. You want to turn to 2 Kings chapter
5 so you get the background. I
want to have this text of scripture before your eyes and in your
mind. It's one that I remember even as a young boy hearing and
just Thinking about it over and over again and turning it over
in my mind. And it's meant to teach us some things. 2 Kings
chapter 5, I want to read to you the whole account until verse
19. We won't read beyond verse 19.
This is about a man named Naaman. He was not an Israelite, he was
a Syrian, and he was a captain in that country, the army of
that country. Syria was an enemy of Israel,
and so it's a little puzzling when you first begin this chapter
to find what you find here, that Naaman is featured. So let's
read it here. Verse 1, Now Naaman, captain
of the host of Syria, was a great man with his master. His master
considered him to be one of his chief captains, his trusted soldier. And it says, And he was honorable,
because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. Strange
that God would give deliverance to Syria, because Israel was
God's nation, not Syria. Yet you see in this that the
Lord not only sets up good for His people, but He brings them
down. And in this case, Syria was the enemy of Israel. And
it was at God's hand that they encountered this trouble. They
experienced this trouble from their enemies. And that's an
encouragement to us to trust God in every circumstance, knowing
that His hand is is in control. He says here, "...by him the
Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. He was also a mighty man
in valor." A leper. The words, but he was,
are in titallics in the King James Version. It just says he's
a leper. He was a leper. He happened to
be a leper. He thought he happened to be
a leper, but in his own mind he was very proud. People highly
esteemed him. And it's evident from his titles
here. But his leprosy brought him low,
and he probably thought, I would be a great man, even greater,
if it weren't for this leprosy. But the fact of the matter is,
he was a leper. who happened to be, for a short time, a great
man in this world. Because, compared to others,
he had other talents. But God had given him this ability. So let's read on. Let's find
out about this man who was a leper. Leprosy is a terrible disease. You don't hear so much about
it nowadays. It's featured prominently in the Old Testament. And it's
there for a purpose. It teaches us many things. We're
going to learn about it today. One of the things about leprosy
is it afflicted you so that you had sores all over your body.
And they were evident to you and evident to everybody else.
And those sores were painful and they caused your flesh just
to rot away. And there was no cure for leprosy.
And so in verse 2 it says, "...and the Syrians had gone out by companies
and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little
maid, a little girl." Maybe, who knows how old she was, 8,
9, 10, 12, we don't know. But she wasn't married, she was
a maid. And she was little, so she was very young. And she waited
on Naaman's wife. That was the way of war back
then, is they would take captives, make them slaves. And this girl
was young enough that she could serve the captain's wife. So
he saw her and made her a slave to his wife. And that too was
in God's providence. Verse 3. And the little maid
says, she said unto her mistress, that would be Naaman's wife,
would God, my Lord, were with the prophet that is in Samaria."
Samaria was the capital of Israel and her Lord was Naaman, the
captain we just mentioned. So she was a servant to his wife
and her master, who she called her Lord here, she said, oh,
that he were in with the prophet in Samaria, for he, the prophet,
would recover him of his leprosy. Verse 4, And one went in and
told his Lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that is of
the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go
to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And
he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand
pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment." A huge amount of
money and a lot of clothes. In those days clothes were like
money. They were very expensive and ten changes was a lot. And
so here we have the king of Syria sending a large gift with his
captain, Naaman, to the land of Israel, to the king there.
And the king sends Naaman with this letter. And the request
is that you'll see in verse 6. He says, "...and he brought the
letter to the king of Israel, Naaman did, saying, Now when
this letter is come to thee, behold, I have therewith sent
Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his
leprosy." The king of Syria assumed the king of Israel had control
over these things, and so he sent the letter to the king.
It's natural to start at the top. Verse 7, It came to pass,
when the king of Israel read the letter, that he rent his
clothes and said, Am I God to kill and to make alive that this
man doth send to me to recover a man of his leprosy? In other
words, only God can heal a man of his leprosy. Wherefore, consider,
I pray you, the king of Israel said, that see how he seeks a
quarrel with me. He's trying to pick a fight.
He's just looking for an excuse to come and have war with us.
They were already under subjection, evidently. Verse 8, And it was
so, when Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel
had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore
hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him come now to me, and he
shall know that there is a prophet in Israel." A prophet is someone
who speaks God's Word. And Elisha said, Send Naaman
to me, and he'll know that there's a prophet in Israel. And of course,
if he knew there was a prophet, he would know he is a prophet
of the true and living God. In verse 9, So Naaman came with
his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the
house of Elisha, and Elisha didn't go out. I don't imagine Elisha's
house was nearly as big as our homes. He probably had like a
little one-room home. And so when the captain of the
Syrian army shows up at your door with all these horses and
chariots, you know that he knew what was going on out there.
There was a huge sound and commotion. And Elisha just stays in his
house. No biggie. This guy's out front. He thinks
he's something. So in fact it says, Elisha sent his messenger
out to him saying, this is what his messenger told the king,
I mean the captain, Naaman. He said, go and wash in Jordan
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou
shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, it means
he was very full of wrath and full of anger, and he went away
and said, behold, I thought he will surely come out to me and
stand and call in the name of the Lord his God and strike his
hand over the place and recover the leper. Naaman was so proud
that he was willing to go away with this disease of leprosy
rather than to simply obey the word of Elisha. Because it seemed
to him disgusting to go down to this river in Israel, this
filthy Jordan River. The place that he just thought
it was awful. Verse 12, And so Naaman said,
Are not our Banna and Farpar, rivers of Damascus, better than
all the waters of Israel, places in my own country? May I not
wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in
a rage. And his servants came near. Now notice what's happening
here. This man is arrogant. He's a
leper. And yet, notice the grace of
God here towards him. First this little maid that he
had taken to be a slave, and now one of his servants came
near and spake to him and said, My father. He speaks very respectful
of him and calls him his father. He said, If the prophet had bid
thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much
rather than when he saith to thee, Wash and be clean? Then
Naaman went down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according
to the saying of the man of God. And guess what happened? His
flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and
he was clean. I look at my hands, I think they're
a long way from being the flesh of a little child. But this man,
he came up and not only was his leprosy clean, but his flesh
was restored. to the flesh of a little child,
just as smooth and clear and youthful. Verse 15, And he returned
to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood
before him. And he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God
in all the earth but in Israel. Now therefore, I pray thee, take
a blessing of thy servant. But Elisha said, As the Lord
liveth before whom I stand, I will receive none. Naaman wanted to pay for the
healing. And Elisha said, no, it's not
going to happen. And Naaman urged him to take
it, but Elisha refused. And Naaman said, shall there
not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant? This is what
he asks for. Now he's a humble man. Could
I just take two bags of dirt from this place on my mule's
home? He said, two mules burden of
earth for thy servant. for thy servant will henceforth
offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods
but unto the Lord." He realized there was only one God, and he
was at that point convinced that the God of Israel, the one who
healed him of his leprosy, the Lord Jesus Christ was the only
God that he would serve and worship. And so he said, I'll just take
some dirt from here and I'll make an altar and serve him there
in my own land. In this thing, and then he goes
on and asks Elisha's forgiveness in advance. He says, in this
thing, the Lord pardoned thy servant that when my master goeth
into the house of remnant to worship there and he leans upon
my hand and I bow myself in the house of remnant, which was a
God, an idol. When I bow myself down in the
house of remnant, the Lord pardoned thy servant in this thing And
Elisha said to him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little
way." What a story, huh? It says in Luke chapter 4, if
you want to go to Luke chapter 4, Jesus had just come off of His
temptations, and He returned in the power of the Spirit of
God in Luke 4, and He's reading in the synagogue, and He finds
the passage in Isaiah, and He reads it about Himself, and He
says, "...this day is this fulfilled in your ears." And the people
wondered at Him, and then He said, in verse 25, He says, "...but
I tell you of a truth, many widows," because He says no prophet is
accepted in His own country, the people would reject Him,
He says, "...many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah,
when the heavens were shut up three and a half years, when
great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of those
widows, none of them was Elijah sent, save unto one." And guess
where she was? In Sidon. A wicked, idolatrous
city. save unto Sarepta, a city of
Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow." And then he says in
verse 27, and many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha,
or Elisha as it says in the New Testament, the prophet, and none
of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian. Amazing. And the people understood what
he meant. All they in the synagogue when they heard these things
were filled with wrath. Let's ask the Lord to be with us this
time. Dear Lord, we pray that you would give us grace now as
we look into your word concerning the cleansing of the leper, and
you'd help us to understand your great grace toward sinners. In
Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now, I read those for background
because I want to go now to the text for our scripture, for our
sermon today, Matthew chapter 8. In Matthew chapter 8, in verse
1 it says, When Jesus was come down from the mountain, great
multitudes followed him. And behold, there came a leper,
a leper, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou
canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand
and touched him, saying, I will. be thou clean." And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. Two short verses here that tell
us so much encouragement to sinners
to come to Christ. I've entitled this message, Saved
by His Will His touch and His word. Saved by His will, by His
touch and His word. The healing of this leper, this
man here, provides us the greatest encouragement for foul and shameful
and helpless and hopeless sinners to go to Christ. In the pollution
and the loathsomeness of all of our sin, As this man was in
his leprosy, he teaches us to go to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Old Testament, there were several notorious lepers. Notorious means someone famous
for something bad. These notorious lepers, the first
one was Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses. Remember Miriam? She's the one who waited to find
what the daughter of Pharaoh would do when she discovered
Moses in the ark, in the river. And Miriam was older than Aaron,
older than Moses. And Aaron and Miriam, in Numbers
chapter 12, came to Moses and they said, They complained about
the fact that he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they
said, hasn't the Lord also spoken by us? And that was enough. Right then and right there, a
cloud immediately came down from God and spoke to them. You three,
come out. And God, when the cloud was lifted,
Miriam was covered white with leprosy. And Moses immediately
prayed, and Aaron pleaded with Moses to pray to God. Because
Aaron knew that God heard Moses. But Miriam was covered with leprosy
for her insubordination. Her attempting to position herself
as being equally capable of speaking God's word as Moses. It wasn't
up to her to make that decision. She wasn't chosen by God. And
besides the fact that she was a woman, and God forbids women
to teach and preach men in the church. But she was a leper because
of her sin. That was the point I would like
to make. And then there was another case. The king, his name was
Uzziah. And Uzziah the king wanted to
go in and offer incense on the altar of incense in the tabernacle,
a job that only the priests were allowed to do. Because no one
could approach God without a priest. But Uzziah took it upon himself
to offer incense, and he went in with a censer. And the priests
withstood him, the king. The priests, several of them,
withstood Uzziah and said, it is not for you, King Uzziah,
to offer incense. God has only given it to the
priests. Uzziah attempted to approach God without a priest.
And at that time God smote him with leprosy. And he himself
and the priest thrust him out of the temple. And he was outside
in a leper house the rest of his life. And he died a leper,
Uzziah. And it was of him that Isaiah
in Isaiah 6 spoke of and he says, In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and His train filled
the temple. And there were seraphim that
flew over him with six wings, two covered their face, two their
feet, and two they flew and they cried, holy, holy, holy is the
Lord God Almighty. The Lord of hosts, it says there.
Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is holy.
He's the only king and he's the only one through whom we can
approach the throne of God. And so Uzziah was a notorious
leper. And then there was another man
named Joab. Joab was the captain in David's
army. And Joab conspired treacherously
to kill Abner, who had been a captain in Saul's army, after David made
peace with Abner. And so, Joab and his brother
Abishai took Abner out and they talked to him like they were
going to just have a conversation. And while they were talking with
him, Joab took out his sword and killed him. And David said, this is not...
A sin that can be attributed to me and my kingdom. This sin
is going to be on Joab and on his seed forever. Let there not
depart out of the house of Joab one who is a leper. Or has an
issue or all these different things he named them. So leprosy
came on Miriam and on Joab's children and on Uzziah the king
because of their sin. So leprosy was a disease associated
with sin. The consequences of sin. And
so we see in several places what leprosy is. If you were to look,
and I won't take you there right now, in Leviticus chapter 13,
there's three things, or at least four things that stand out about
leprosy. The first thing is that leprosy
was a plague. A plague is something that God
sends in order to bring A compensation, a punishment upon people, a plague. That's the first thing. Leprosy
was a plague. The second thing is, leprosy
was something that was deeper than the skin. You showed up
on the skin, but it was deeper than the skin. And the third
thing about leprosy is that it would spread. Not only was it
deeper than the skin, but it would spread throughout. And
then the fourth thing was that it had this appearance of raw
flesh in the body. It wouldn't scab over like regular
sores. It just stayed raw. And leprosy
is a representation of our sin in all those ways. Solomon said
in 1 Kings 8, he said, He understood that sin was like a plague in
the heart of man. And Jesus said, it's not what
goes into a man that defiles a man. It's what comes out of
a man that defiles him. He said, out of the heart of
man comes fornication, and evil thoughts, and adulteries, and
all kinds of things. He lists them because it's the
heart that's the factory for sin. The heart of man. So that's
what it is, it's like a plague. And then it's deeper than the
skin. Because leprosy, I mean sin,
like leprosy, is something that I don't just do it on the outside.
Sin is what I am. Sin is, I do what I do because
I am what I am. And when I commit sin, when you
or I do what we know is wrong in the light of the truth that
we have, and we don't just do it once but repeatedly, that's
supposed to be a testimony against us of the plague of our heart
that what we see on the outside goes deeper than the skin. And that testimony is against
us so that it will drive us like it drove this man to Christ.
Only God can heal a leper. And if God doesn't heal the leper,
he will die in his leprosy. And then the third thing, as
I mentioned about it, is that it's a spreading kind of a disease. Because sin is like that. It
affects everything about us. Our body, our soul, our mind,
our affections, our will. Everything about us isn't just
tainted with sin. It's sinful. It's full of sin. So that we cannot do right. It
says in Jeremiah 13, 23, Can the Ethiopian change his
skin? No. Can a leopard change his
spots? No. Then God says, then no more
can you who are accustomed to doing evil do good. That's what
leprosy is. It spreads throughout our whole
person. It infects us and controls us.
It says in Romans 8 that the carnal mind is hostility, enmity
against God. It's not subject to the law of
God and it cannot be. That's the way we are. Sin isn't
just something that we do occasionally. Sin is what we are. Sin is what
we are. Our mind is hostile to God. It's opposed to God. There is
no fear of God before our eyes. That's what it says in Romans
3. There's none that do us good. Not one. And not only is it deeper
than the skin and a spreading thing, but it's raw flesh. It's
raw flesh. It's a wound that cannot be hidden. We can't hide what we are. It
comes out. And a leper was required to go
to the priest, not a doctor. You would think that if someone
was sick, they would go to a doctor. But God said, no, this is a sickness
that has to do with the soul. And this sickness, leprosy, he
was required, the person with it, was required to go to the
priest. And the priest would examine
him, and if he had leprosy, God said the priest would say, you're
unclean, you're a leper. To be unclean before the priest
is to be unclean before God, because the priest is the one
who would go to God for the people and bring the message of God
back to the people. He was the mediator between the
people and God, and between God and the people. He would bless
the people in God's name, and he would offer sacrifices for
the people. And if a priest said, you're
unclean, that was equivalent to God saying, you are unclean. Leprosy was like that. The priest
would look at him and pronounce him to be unclean. So leprosy
was a disease which before God's law was either pronounced as
you, yourself, being clean or unclean. And the leper was required.
He was an outcast. He was separated from the people
and from all of the contact with people. And he was required to
tear his clothes, to leave his head bare, and to put a covering
over his lip. And if anyone came to cry out,
unclean, unclean, to let people know. He's full of sin. It's a shameful thing. It's a
filthy thing. It's a loathsome thing. So this
is what we see here in Matthew chapter 8. Jesus came down from
the mountain from teaching and preaching in the Sermon on the
Mount. And this leper comes to Him having
heard what He said in public. He comes to the Lord Jesus Christ,
this one who was unclean, he comes to Christ. Because, perhaps,
this leper had heard about Naaman. Not a notorious leper, but a
notable leper. Here was a man who was a notable
leper. Sure, shameful, yes. But God
doesn't go into the account of Naaman to describe the sins that
he committed, by which he contracted leprosy. It just says he was
a leper. And God healed him. Isn't it
amazing that God healed Naaman? I find that just amazing as everything
could be. And that's what's going to happen
here. This man. This leper. He comes down. And
it says in verse 2, look at it carefully. It says, And behold,
there came a leper. A leper. The word behold. What does it mean? Look. Look. Take notice of this. Be very
careful to think about what you're seeing here. Learn from this. And take comfort in it. Admire
it. Behold, there came a leper, one,
the law would say, unclean, full of disease and plague, and this
plague that represented our sin and all of its defilement. A
leper came to him. It's the same thing as saying
a really notable, bad, filthy, loathsome, sinner came to the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it's saying. And
I find that so encouraging, don't you? That if this man could come
to Jesus, then I can come to the Lord Jesus. I can come. It was said, Spurgeon, in a sermon
that Spurgeon preached, he says, there was a poor woman once,
And she was in great doubt and fear whether she should be saved
at all. And she said this in her prayer.
Lord, if you will save me, only one thing I can promise you. If you will take me to heaven,
you shall never hear the end of it. For I will praise you
while immortality lasts, and I will tell the angels that He
saved me." And that, I'm sure, is what this leper was going
to do. As we read about it in the other accounts in Mark and
Luke, this man comes to Jesus. Look what he does. The leper,
the sinful man, the foul, whose wounds are open and running and
spreading. He came to Jesus and He worshipped
Him. He worshipped Him. Naaman, it said in Luke 4.27,
was the only leper that was healed in the days of Elisha. And there
were many lepers in those days. But Jesus said only Naaman was
healed, Assyrian. How could God pass over all the
lepers in Israel? How could he do that? Passing
over all of the lepers in Israel and only healing this one leper
in the land of Syria. A captain who was the enemy of
God's people. I'll tell you how. Because he's
the Lord. And so this man, this leper,
comes to Jesus. He knows he is the Lord. And he worships him because he
is the Lord. First, we see a sinner coming
to Jesus. Second, we see the way the sinners
come when God's Spirit draws them. They come acknowledging
and owning that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord. He has absolute
control over me. He alone is the one who determines
whether I'm healed of my sin or not. It's in his hands. I cannot manipulate him. I can't
convince him to save me. If he saves me, it's because
he's the Lord and he did it of his own will. And that's why
he says here, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. He laid
the whole matter in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because
you see, everything God has, has been put into the hand of
the Lord Jesus Christ. John 3.35, it says, "...the Father
loveth the Son, and hath committed all things into His hand." Jesus
said in John 17, He says, "...as thou hast given Him, the Son,
power over all flesh, that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him. It's
all in His hands. Jesus says in John 5, 21, "...as
the Father hath life in Himself, even so hath He given to the
Son to have life in Himself, so that He quickens whom He will. And God has committed all judgment
into the hand of the Son, that all men should honor the Son,
even as they honor the Father." John chapter 5. This man understood
what the thief on the cross understood. When Jesus hung next to that
thief, and the thief said to his fellow, we deserve what we're
getting, but this man has done nothing amiss. And then he turns
to Jesus and he says, Lord, he was bloody. He was nailed to
the cross, helpless and weak and obviously dying. spit from
men, and blood and sweat and everything mingled together.
His form was marred more than any man. Isaiah 52. And he looks
at him and he says, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Your kingdom! You're the king!
You're hanging on the cross! And Paul says in Galatians 6.14,
God forbid that I should boast in glory. In nothing except the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified
to me and I to the world. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lord. He's the one the leper worshipped. And he said, Lord, if you will,
you can make me clean. If you will. It's in your hands.
We are in the hand and at the mercy of God. We're in His hand. And when God teaches us to come
to Christ like this leopard did, we will come to Him knowing that
our salvation is in His hand. And sometimes we think, well
won't that make people fatalistic. Won't that make people think
apathetically and indifferently towards God? They'll presume
on the grace of God, well if God's just going to save me at
His will, then I don't have to do anything. I don't have to
pay any attention to the whole thing. I can just go my way,
live my life, and God will save me if He will, or He'll damn
me if He will. He's God. Not if you're taught
by God you won't come that way. Because God shows a man his leprosy
and shows him that Christ alone can heal that leprosy. It makes
him want for nothing more than to have the Lord Jesus Christ,
with his will, save him from his sin. And he'll come to him. That's what God does. But what
if some do that? What if some are indifferent?
What if some don't believe? What if they don't come to the
Lord Jesus Christ as he's commanded us? God says in Isaiah 45, 22,
Look unto me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved. There's
a command. That's our warrant to come to
God. Every one of us. Come unto me,
all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved, sayeth the Lord.
And so when we say, well, if God's going to save me, he will,
that is a direct affront to God's command to you as an unclean
leper to come to him. But on the other side, it's the
greatest encouragement. Because if my salvation depends
entirely, and it does, on the will of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that means there's no case too difficult, too vile, too bad
for Him to save. Look at the Psalms with me. Look
at Psalm chapter 25. Psalm chapter 25. I refer to
this verse often. And I think of it often. He says
in Psalm 25, verse 11. For thy namesake, for thy namesake,
O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. If my iniquity was little, I
wouldn't need more than a little Savior. But my iniquity is great,
so I'm going to go to the Lord of glory, the God of heaven,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm going to say, for your name's
sake, take glory to yourself. Like the woman we read about,
he'll never hear the end of it. I'll tell the angels, he saved
me. He saved me. I was talking to
my sister on the phone and I was telling her, I was thinking of
that verse in Revelation where it says, "...and he shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes." There's never a day that goes
by when I don't, in my heart, find myself in tears because
of everything, because of my sin. because of my inabilities,
because of the frustrations of life in every way, in my relationships
with my brothers and sisters in Christ, in my worship of God,
in my understanding, in everything. It's just full of tears. And
He shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. I think when
I reach glory, the first thing I'm going to say is, it's true.
It's true. It really is all of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It had nothing to do with me.
He saved me by Himself. For Thy name's sake, O Lord,
pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. How does the Lord Jesus
Christ do this? How can the Lord Jesus Christ
simply, by His will, heal a leper? Can He just do that? Can God
just do that? Look at Psalm chapter 41. And this psalm is a psalm about our
Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the psalms, perhaps all
of the psalms, are about our Lord Jesus Christ in one way
or another. And here we see that this is
about the Lord Jesus Christ because in verse 9 you see he refers
to Judas. But look at verse 4 of Psalm
41. I said, Lord, Be merciful unto me. Heal my
soul, for I have sinned against thee." How can the Lord Jesus
Christ be the one that's praying a psalm like this? How can He
be the one featured here? Well, for this great and glorious
truth, there's two things in Scripture that are both a mystery
and the most wonderful things possibly revealed by God and
done by Christ. First, is that the Lord Jesus
was made sin for His people. 2 Corinthians 5.21, "...he hath
made him sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him." He was made sin for his people.
And secondly, in Galatians 3.13, it says that Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. God made him sin, the sins of
his people, and for those sins, God's law cursed him. And here
we see in this prayer, in Psalm 41.4, the Lord Jesus is praying
for himself and for his people, because his people were considered
in him, just like all in Adam died, all in Christ are made
alive. Just like Levi was in the loins
of Abraham when he paid tithes to Melchizedek. Everything Abraham
did to Melchizedek, Levi was counted as having done. So, when
the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin, He took our obligations,
He took everything that we owed to God, on account of our sin,
received from God the penalty of that. And not just the penalty,
but the sin itself, so that He cries out, I have sinned against
thee, heal my soul, be merciful unto me. Look at verse 8. An
evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast to him, and now that he
lieth, he shall rise up no more." He died, sure, but he died because
God afflicted him, like Job's friends. The reason you're sick,
the reason your kids have died, and your wife is telling you
to curse God and die, and you've lost your servants and all your
animals, and you're lying here with boils on the ash heap, scraping. God has afflicted you because
of your sin, Job. And that's what they said to
the Lord Jesus. It's because of your sin. It's because of
your sin. We, it says in Isaiah 53, we
despised Him. We said He is afflicted of God. Let me read it to you. Isaiah 53. He's despised and
rejected of men, acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were,
our faces from Him. He was despised and we esteemed
Him not." So the Lord Jesus Christ is the
one spoken of in Psalm 41. But look over also at Psalm 38. Look at Psalm 38. This is how
the Lord Jesus Christ could heal the leper. Verse 1 of Psalm 38,
O LORD, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in
thy hot displeasure, for thine arrows stick fast in me, and
thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh
because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones
because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone
over mine head as a heavy burden. They're too heavy for me. My
wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I'm
troubled. I'm bowed down greatly. I go
mourning all the day. For my loins are filled with
a loathsome disease and there's no soundness in my flesh. I am
feeble and sore broken. I have roared by reason of the
disquietness of my heart. "...Lord, all my desire is before
Thee, and my groaning is not hid from Thee." In Hebrews 5,
7 it says that He prayed with strong crying and tears unto
Him that was able to save Him from death, and He was heard
in that He feared. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered
in the place of His people. He was made sin for them. And
with that sin, He felt it in His own soul. And he says in
Isaiah 53, if you want to turn there, in Isaiah 53, I just read
verse 3, he's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted
with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He
was despised and we esteemed him not. But look at verse 4,
Isaiah 53, surely he hath borne our And the word is griefs in
the King James, but it's the same word that's translated as
diseases. He has borne our diseases and
carried our sorrows, infirmities, and our sicknesses. Yet we did
esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. We considered
him to be afflicted of God. And he was. But why? He was wounded
for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement of our peace
was upon Him. And notice, with His stripes,
we are healed. Now look back at Matthew chapter
8. At the leper. He came to Jesus. He was full
of sin. Represented by his leprosy, this
is something God draws attention to with his word, Behold. And
he bowed down and worshipped him, and cried to him, Lord,
if you will, it's in your hands, you can make me clean. And notice
in verse 3 of Matthew 8, he says, And Jesus put forth his hand
and touched him. What a word. He put forth his
hand and touched him. Isn't that amazing that the Lord
Jesus Christ would touch? The Lord Jesus Christ is holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and here the Lord
Jesus Christ puts forth His hand and touches this pitiful, shameful,
guilty, filthy sinner. Mercy is Christ's response to
the misery of guilty, filthy, unclean, helpless sinners who
are brought to Him by the work of the Spirit of God. John 16
says that when the Spirit of God comes, He'll convince the
world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Of sin, what? Because
they don't believe Me. If you are a leper, You can't
cure yourself, and no one else can cure you. If you're a leper,
you have no hope unless God heals you. And leprosy, as the representation
of sin is saying, our sin is so deep and part of us, and vile
and filthy. It's not that we just sin, it's
that we cannot not sin. And God is saying that we... Sometimes you wonder what faith
is. I interrupted myself on purpose. Sometimes you wonder, what is
faith? Can I believe? And we begin to
hear in modern religion what faith is and how to believe.
You just need to believe. And we think it's an exercise
that we need to do. And we think after we hear those
messages that somehow we can turn the crank on the faith generator
inside of our souls and finally believe. But a true leper understands
not only does he not believe, but he can't believe. And until
you can't believe, you won't believe. And I know that sounds
like some kind of a confusing dilemma. But if you understand
the gospel, you realize that God brings a sinner to the absolute
end of himself. And leaves him helpless and hopeless
before the Son of God. Needing everything. Having nothing. In the hand and at the mercy
of Christ. And then he lifts his eyes to
see that Christ has done everything. And he's not even thinking about
faith. And he's fully persuaded that what he promised, he's able
also to fulfill. He's fully, he judges God faithful
like Sarah did in Hebrews 11, 11 and says, he is faithful who
promised. He's the one. Who the burden
has been laid upon Him and He Himself took our sins. He took
our infirmities. He touched the leper. It was
His compassion that led the Lord Jesus Christ to look at this
poor, foul, miserable, loathsome. His breath was probably so offensive
that it would gag you when you came near Him. And His wounds
were open and He was ugly to look upon. He was dying. And
the Lord Jesus Christ, with all the compassion of one who understood
firsthand what it meant to be foul and loathsome before God,
in compassion, he reaches out and he touches this leper. Mercy. Mercy is first of all made known
to the soul of a man, not in the relief that it gives, but
by the desperation it leaves the man in before the Son of
God. And when mercy causes us to find ourselves acknowledging
in the depth of our conscience that our salvation is entirely
in the good pleasure of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we come and
we worship Him. And then we say, Lord, if you
will, you can make me clean. And that is the place where God
brings us. Haven't you found it to be so,
Lord? How many times have you said,
Lord, save me? Save me for your name's sake,
Lord. Save me for your name's sake.
My iniquity is great. Do it. Find a reason to bring
glory to the Lord Jesus. I don't want any credit for anything
I might have thought I could do in order to say I've become
a Christian. I don't want any credit for what
I've done afterward. Not even one moment in my life
can I find one thing I've ever done that I could ever think
of as bringing credit to myself. Let the Lord Jesus Christ take
all the glory for saving a foul, helpless sinner. That's what
it means to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Something like
that. The Lord Jesus Christ does this.
So many things that speak of the compassion. Remember the
boy who was being carried in the coffin. He had died. He was
the only son of his mother. And his mother was a widow. She
wasn't married anymore. Her husband had died. And here's
a procession going through the streets. And this woman is lamenting
her son, her only son, died being carried. And Jesus looks at her
and it says, and he had compassion on her. And he came and he touched
the coffin. And he said, young man, I say
unto you, arise. And the man sat up and started
talking. That's compassion. Remember when
Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, it says that he wept. What is that? Is it not the compassion
of the Lord Jesus Christ? Because the consequences of sin
are what we see. But he sees the root problem. He sees our sin as our enemy. He sees our sin as our disease
that we've been plagued with. And he sees the misery of it
because he felt it in himself. And he took it himself. And so
he sees that and he has compassion. And he takes it himself. And he prays it makes it his
own. He says in Psalm 142, 4, no man
cared for my soul, but he cared. And Charles Wesley wrote in his
song, the hymn that says, Depth of Mercy, he wrote this verse,
he says, If I rightly read thy heart, if thou all compassion
art, bow thine ear, in mercy bow, pardon, and accept me now. You see, this is what it means
when in Ephesians chapter 2 it says, When we were dead in sins,
but God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith
he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened
us, made us alive together with Christ. This is what he's talking
about. The Lord Jesus Christ touched
the leper. And He took our sins. Look over
at verse 17 of Matthew, chapter 8. "...that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took
our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The sympathy, the
compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ as a man. Look at Hebrews,
chapter 4. This is our hope. that he who
is God is touched by the feeling of our infirmities as our high
priest, so that when he goes before God, he pleads not only
for his people, but as his people, having bore their sins. And he
says in Hebrews chapter 4, look at verse 12. The Word of God is quick, it's
living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart. And as soon as you hear those
words, I don't know about you, but I wish there was a place
to hide. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest
in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the
eyes of Him with whom we have to do Seeing then that we have
a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the
Son of God, let us hold fast our profession, for we have not
an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, but was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet
without sin. Let us therefore come boldly
unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find
grace to help in time of need." Do you see the compassion of
the Lord Jesus Christ? Our high priest, he can be touched
with a feeling of our sicknesses, our diseases, because he himself
bore them. And so Jesus says, when he touched
him in Matthew 8.3, he put forth his hand and touched him saying,
I will be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. When you come to the Lord Jesus
Christ and you lay your case before Him, you know what happens? Immediately you're cleansed.
The leper came perhaps doubting and reluctant. If you will, you
can make me clean. And Jesus says, I will. Be thou
clean. It reminds me of John 6.37. You
might want to turn there. John chapter 6. We need these
promises because we're lepers and we're reluctant. We think
that the Lord Jesus Christ can't find anything in us that would
cause Him to save us. And so we think we can't possibly
be one that Christ would save. And it's true in ourselves, but
we have to step outside of ourselves with the eyes of faith and look
to Him. The virtue is not in us, it's
in Him. In verse 37 he says, "...all
that the Father giveth me," John 6, 37, "...all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out." What a blessing! Isn't that the greatest news
you've ever heard? "...him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out." Not for any reason. Not now, not ever. Now, when Naaman the leper was
healed of his leprosy, did you notice what happened? Look at
2 Kings chapter 5. I want you to see this. 2 Kings
chapter 5, and we'll close with this. It says that, 2 Kings chapter
5, and verse 14, Then Naaman went
down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to
the saying of the man of God, And it says, and his flesh came
again, like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. You see that? Two things there.
Number one, he was clean. When the Lord Jesus Christ touched
the leper, he said, I will, be thou clean. He was cleansed. He was cleansed. When Naaman
went down for the seventh time and came up, he also was cleansed. But not just cleansed. When he
looked at his... It's not that he didn't just
have leprosy. It was that his flesh was brand
new. Like a little child. And what this is teaching us
is that when God saves us by His grace, because of what Christ
has done for us, we're clean before God. Jesus immediately
sent the man to the priest and said, go show yourself to the
priest and offer according to the offering that God commanded
by Moses. Because whoever Christ heals
of his leprosy, when the law looks at them, they're clean.
When the priest compares them to the law, he says, he's clean. He's clean. But not only clean,
but his flesh was like a little child. He was like one born new. Isn't that what the scripture
says? When we're saved, we're not only justified, but we're
sanctified by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
God takes what Christ has done, He shows it to us, persuades
us of it, and causes us to rest in Him. And that is having flesh
like a baby. Because we're born of God. God
teaches us by His Spirit to trust Christ only. And that's like
having brand new flesh. I can't wait to have new skin. Nothing like this. But I think
what a wonderful blessing it is that we have this account
for sinners, for lepers in our sin. That we can go to the Lord
Jesus Christ and go to Him. Remember, the whole matter rests
on Him. I didn't invent this story. God
put it in His Word. And God put it in His Word to
glorify His Son in saving sinners. Sinners who feel the weight of
their sin, come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And coming to Him, look
to Him only. And say, Lord, if You will, by
Your will, by Your touch, and by Your Word, You can make me
clean. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you
have, by your will, sent the Lord Jesus Christ into this world
to save sinners. What a faithful saying we find
it to be. And take it and draw it near
to our bosoms and cling tightly to it that you came to save sinners. Each of us find ourselves to
feel ourselves to be the chief of sinners. And so we pray, Lord,
if you will, you can, you can, you have the ability, and you've
revealed in your word that it's the merit of your blood that
cleanses us from all sin. And so we pray, Lord, would you
wash us clean so that when we stand before the throne we can
say, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his
own blood, unto him be glory forever and ever and ever and
ever, amen. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.