The Lord was in a certain place and this man comes to him. He was full of leprosy. It says, behold, a man full of leprosy. But when he saw the Lord Jesus, he fell on his face, he fell on his face and he besought him, he beseeched him, he begged him saying, Lord, That's how you addressed him, Lord.

If thou wilt, thou can make me clean. And the Lord put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will. Be thou clean. And immediately, immediately, the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him, tell no man, but go and show thyself to the priest and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded, according to the law, for a testimony, a witness unto them.

Our subject is the healing touch. Now the only way for a sinner to be healed is by the great physician, the Lord Jesus. That's the only way. There's no other way. The only way for a sinner to be saved is to do what this leper did. That is to come to Christ and bow down before him and beg him to have mercy and save you. And for you and me that do believe, every trial that the Lord puts us in. The only way we can be saved is by the Lord, by us coming to him and bowing down and begging him to be merciful. Salvation beginning to end is of the Lord.

Beginning to end. Now we're gonna see every sinner's condition right here. We're going to see the way that God brings his child to him. We're going to see the healing touch that heals, and we're going to see the witness, the testimony declared in this.

Now, first of all, the condition of every sinner. Every sinner in this world is pictured and illustrated in this leper. This leper illustrates you, me, and everybody that has ever been born in this world and shall ever be born. This leper was full of leprosy, full of leprosy.

We are full of sin. Sin is what we are. Sin is what we are as we come into this world. The Lord said in Isaiah 1, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, there is no soundness in us. From the bottom of your foot to the top of your head, wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

That sounds bad, doesn't it? Putrefying sores. One year I wrote an article every day And I sent it out every day. I wrote an article, sent an article out every day. And in one article, I tried to sound, I tried to find things that would just about turn your stomach to describe the sinner. And somebody told me that they found that offensive. It just, it was just too, sounded too bad. And I said, do you realize that's what the Lord's doing in Isaiah 1 when he describes us as being putrefying sores? You can't speak bad enough language to declare what we are by nature.

Putrefying sores. They've not been closed. They've not been bound up. They've not been mollified with ointment. No man can heal. We can't heal ourselves, and no other man can heal us. No sinner. And this leprosy, the thing about leprosy is it began within, and then it spread all over a man. And our sin is in our nature. It's within. It's within. Listen to David, Psalm 51. David said, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity And in sin did my mother conceive me.

You know what that means? That means she was doing something sinful. It means when he was conceived in his mother's womb, that embryo in the mother's womb was nothing but sin. Because it came from another corrupt sinner, born of corrupt seed. Flesh produces flesh, that's what Christ said. He that is of the flesh is flesh. Sinful, sinful. Therefore, Psalm 58 says, the wicked are estranged from the womb.

We're strangers to God the moment we're born. Estranged from the womb, we go astray as soon as we be born speaking lies. It's not that we spoke lies, and then we became sinners because we spoke lies. We spoke lies because all we are is a sinner. That's all a sinner can do.

Leprosy was a death sentence. When somebody was pronounced as having leprosy, they were gonna die because there was no cure. Well, brethren, we come into this world spiritually dead. Spiritually dead, with as much ability to do anything as a dead man. We can't do anything spiritual. We're dead by nature. Totally dead. Leprosy made a man stink. And everything he touched was unclean. Or anything that touched him became unclean.

You know what the scripture says that we are to God by The way we come into this world, we are an abomination to God. That means a stink, a stench. It says the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. All the things that religious men, self-made religious folks, all the wonderful works that men are doing, God says the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. It stinks. The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord. That's scripture. Everyone that is proud in heart, and that's everybody by nature, everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.

We can't come to God by the works of the law because when we touch it, when we put our hand to it, we defile it. It becomes unclean by our touch, by us. That's why the Lord said, when you build an altar and you take stones to build it, don't you put your tool on it, you'll corrupt it. This is what the Lord required in the law.

He said he shall, this is for the leper, he shall put a covering upon his upper lip and he 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. That shall be his habitation. He has to be separated out and if he comes anywhere near anybody, he has to yell before he gets there and tell them, I'm unclean.

See, our sins separated us from God. God's holy. He is absolutely holy. We can't even fathom what that means. And we're sinners. We're unrighteous, unholy sinners. He's holy. And he can't receive us. He cannot receive us by nature. Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. Try to come to God in any work you've done, and it is a leper, stinking leper, trying to present to holy God stinking, defiled, putrefying works. God won't have it. He won't have it.

He's holy. He cannot let us come to Him. He cannot receive us because He's holy. The Son of God coming in human flesh and going to a cross says that very thing. It says God can have nothing to do with a sinner because that whole work that the Savior came to do was to make it so God could accept us. No man could cure leprosy. No man could heal himself and no other man could heal a man. No earthly physician. And then here's another thing. Leprosy destroyed the nerve endings in the body so that a man went numb and he couldn't feel it anymore. He couldn't feel it.

Sin numbs us to the point we don't even recognize it. Think about it. When you were a little child, and your conscience was still a little tender, and you did the least little thing that was wrong, and you knew mom and daddy didn't approve of it. Oh, it hurts your feelings so bad, and you felt so bad. Do those things bother you now? No. You can do far worse now, and it not faze you. We get numb to sin. It takes something really incredible in this world for folks to be shot.

It was the high priest who declared a man to be a leper. That's who, they brought him to the high priest and he examined him and he declared him to be a leper. And the picture in that is this, because sin makes it to where we can't know we're sinners, deny we're sinners, lie about the fact we're sinners, deny that it's all we are, because that's true.

No man has a need of Christ. No man thinks he needs Christ. So it takes Christ, who is the high priest, to make us know we're the sinner. That's what the picture is of the high priest making a leper know he was a leper. We need Christ to reveal to us we are the sinner before we'll need him. That's how bad sin is. That's how bad sin is.

Now look, secondly, let's look at the way that God makes his child come to Christ. And it's God who does it. Because everything I just said is us. Dead. So if you come to Christ, God did it. The Lord did it. Just like we saw in the first hour. Now look what this man did. Luke 5, 12. Seeing Jesus.

Somebody had told this man who he was. No man comes to him except you hear him. Read Romans 10. The only way a man believes is if you hear of him and he's revealed to you. And so when this man saw him, he knew who he was. And he fell on his face and he begged him. He besought him saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Now the first thing to get here is he came to the Lord Jesus.

There's nobody else to go to. Don't go to a preacher, don't go to a so-called priest. There are no priests in the world. Not the kind that they say they are. There's priests that he's made priests, but that's a whole different thing. But no man in this earth can help you.

Go to Christ, go to Christ. And it says here that he came there Begging him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can. This man believed Christ. He believed that he could save him. And so, believing him, this man knows something about his condition. And he knows Christ is the physician. And so, how do you come to Christ when you know that? This man came to the Lord and fell on his face. That's what he did. He fell on his face.

That's what worship means. The word worship means to fall on your face. It's not enough for you to take physically, fall down on your face and go through a show. It's gotta be something that's going on in the heart. This man did it outwardly, but he was doing it in his heart. That's what the Lord, the Lord's looking on the heart. And it's far better to bow and hit your face in your heart than it is to do it outwardly. I've done it outwardly too, because the Lord brought me to that place. But what I'm saying is, it's gotta be a heart work. And this man, he was on his face before God. He bowed, he worshiped the Lord. And that's the posture of faith. Absolute dependence on the Lord Jesus. That's the posture of faith.

The leper came beseeching, beseeching, begging, not commanding, begging. God had given him faith to believe that the Lord Jesus could heal him. He besought him saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. He didn't come standing tall, stiffening up his neck and having his back arched. He came bowed down, begging. He didn't say, if you can. He believed he could. He said, if you will. He believed the Lord Jesus could heal him if he was willing. If he was willing. The leper's cry wasn't a demand. The leper's cry was submission to Christ's sovereignty. Lord, if thou will. See, the unregenerate, the unholy, the unrighteous sinner is full of leprosy.

And so he's full of sin, which means he's full of pride. He's full of pride. When you hear somebody say, well, I'm not perfect, that's pride. That's pride. Well, I mean, I try to do the best I can, but I know I'm a sinner, that's pride. Well, I'm not as bad as so-and-so pride. That's pride. That's our worst sin of all, is self-righteous pride.

This man, a natural man comes and he's stiff-necked. The Lord's child's gonna come with a broken heart, a bowed down, broken contrite spirit. He comes begging. The unregenerate, the unholy boasts in his will. I made myself be born again. I came to Christ. I got saved. Pride. God's child says, Lord, if you will, if you will. That publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, the sinner. See, God's not at our mercy for us to accept him. We're at his mercy, whether he's willing to save us. There's where we gotta be brought. So we're brought to that place, we're totally upside down in this thing of approaching God. Number three, now let's see the healing touch. Verse 13, and the Lord put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean.

Mark says, and Matthew says, he moved with compassion. He moved with inward affection. He moved with love. Listen to this from Jeremiah 31 3. The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, With loving kindness have I drawn thee. See, the Lord had compassion on this man before he ever created a grain of sand. He loved him. The father loves whom he will, and he loves them in his son. He loves them in his son. And the Lord Jesus loved this man before he ever came to him that day. And who the Lord loves, the Lord draws to himself.

What can a dead man do? Nothing. It's gonna take the Lord drawing us. Does everybody come to him? Those who come to him come for one reason. He loved them. and He had compassion on them and He drew them. That's so of you that believe. The only reason He loved us, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son, the propitiation for our sin, and then He drew us to Him. He drew us to Him. No sinner makes the first step. No. The Lord gives us life and He draws us. He said, no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me. Draw him. That includes this leper. That's why this leper came. That includes you and me.

That includes any sinner he saves. No man can come to the Father, or can't come to Christ, but by the Father. And the Lord said, it's written in the book, all the Lord's people shall be taught of God. And he said, and everyone that is taught of God comes to Christ. See, salvation's of the Lord.

That means he does the calling. He does the drawing. He makes us come to him because we're just full of leprosy and we can't do it. We can't do it. Then the Savior did for this man what no other man would do or could do. It says, he put forth his hand and touched him and said, I will be thou clean. Under the law, if a clean man touched a leper, the clean man became unclean. He became in the same shape as the leper. And yet here the Lord Jesus reached out and he touched the leper. I bet that was shocking to people that was around him, to see the Lord Jesus reach out and touch this man. Now, what's being declared in that, this touch, the Lord Jesus touched him?

First of all, the Lord Jesus is the righteousness of his people. matter that had to be dealt with. The Lord's the righteousness of his people and he touched this man to show us he's the one who took the place of his people and bore all the sin of his people and then went on to the justice of God for us and bore the second death of hell that we deserve. He bore the punishment, the wrath of God to satisfy divine justice. He bore that for his people.

We saw just the other day when the Lord healed Peter's mother, Peter's mother-in-law. We saw this, it said, he did it that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, himself took our infirmities and bear our sicknesses. Peter quoted from that, go to 1 Peter 2, and I'll show you how Peter worded that. 1 Peter 2, 24, this is just what Christ did right here. 1 Peter 2 and verse 24. This is what this touch is symbolizing.

1 Peter 2.24, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. That's speaking from Isaiah 53.

Here's how Paul quoted it in 2 Corinthians 5.21, he hath made him sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The Lord Jesus had to take the place of his people. He had to be made the sin that his people are for God to be just to pour out judgment on him instead of his people. God said, the judge that clears a guilty man and the judge that condemns a righteous man. He said, he's an abomination to me. That's an unjust judge.

And God came, he sent his son to manifest the righteousness of God that God judges rightly. So the Lord would not pour out wrath on our Savior because he knew no sin. He's righteous. He had to be made sin for us, then he justly poured the wrath on him and poured the judgment on him until he satisfied the justice of God.

That's what he did for his people. That's what he was manifesting when he loved this man and touched him, that he was identifying, I've made myself one with my people to bear their sin, bear their curse, and put it all away. And then look what happened when he touched this man.

Verse 13 says, and immediately the leprosy departed from him. The Lord said, I will, he touched him, and he said, I will be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. The healing was not a process that took place over time. Immediately, he was healed. The Lord spake. He said, I will be thou clean. Only God can say, I will. He teaches you and me. He says, we have to say, if the Lord will. God can say, I will. And Christ said, I will.

And when he did, that disease departed from that man, and he became whole. See, he's God. Jesus is God. And when the Lord spake, there was an instantaneous healing in this man. Immediately, the leprosy departed from him. God said, let there be light, and there was light. This is power. This is God right here. This is how he saves. Now what's this showing us? Christ Jesus is the holiness of his people. He's the righteousness of his people, and he's the holiness of his people. His word is spirit and life. He said, I will be thou clean. His word is spirit and life. And when he speaks, immediately there is a new holy heart, a new holy spirit, a new holy man created in the center with no sin.

Listen, John six, let's go there. It's just not very far. John six and verse 63. He said, this is Christ speaking, it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. That's mine and yours brethren, we don't accomplish anything, nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.

So just like the Lord said let there be light and there was light in creation, when he said I will be thou clean, that man was clean. That man was clean. It wasn't a process of progressively getting holy by his works. No, it was Christ our holiness saying, I will be clean. Bam, he's clean. That's the new birth. That's what happens in the new birth. He said, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper into the thing whereto I send it. What did he please to do, that man? What did he send that word to do? Be clean. Bam, that man was clean. Ask Christ, I'll sprinkle clean water on you, that's his gospel. That's the spirit of the Lord coming in, and you shall be clean. He said, from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you.

A new heart will I give you, a new spirit will I put within you. I'll take away that stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I'll put my spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statute, my law, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. And men think that means that when he gives you this new spirit, he brings you under the law of Mount Sinai.

What that means is, he brings you to see, I have fulfilled the whole law of Moses. You trust me, I'm your righteousness before the law. And he makes you willing to believe him. He shows you, I'm your holiness. I fulfilled the law of God from a holy heart, and I've made you holy by one offering. And he gives you a willingness to trust him that it's so.

And from that day forward, he says, you'll keep my judgments. When you see your sin and you see your brother's sin, rather than pining away and acting ugly and trying to affect something yourself, you'll do righteous judgment and you'll know if he's the Lord, that old man of his died in Christ on Calvary's tree and arose when Christ come out of the grave. And my Lord who called me and saved me with his gospel is gonna save him with that same gospel and grant him repentance and keep him because he's not losing any of his people. If you know him, you know that's good judgment. And that's the judgment he makes you walk in. No matter what, you know the healing word is how he said to you, I will be thou clean.

So you want him to speak to your brother, not you. So you go to him and you beg Lord Please save my brother, please speak into his heart, please make this gospel effectual in his heart, and then you wait on him, just like we saw this morning, till you hear the rushing in the mulberry bushes, because you can't make that happen in his heart, only he can. I'm telling you, he's the righteousness of his people, he's the only one that can speak and absolve your sins. That's what Catholic priests claim to do.

No man can absolve another man's sin but the God-man, because he bore them and put them away, and then he can speak and make you holy. Holiness is not something that we progressively produce by our works. The holiness without which no man shall see the Lord is the Lord Jesus himself. He's called the sanctifier, and he is the sanctification. And of God, he's made sanctification to us. That thief on the cross had the holiness without which no man will see the Lord. It was Christ Jesus, his holiness. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. If you can come to him seeking mercy, I can guarantee you this, you will find it. You will find it.

Lastly, the testimony. What was the testimony? Verse 14, and he charged him, tell no man, we'll deal with that another time. I don't have time in this message. But go, he said, and show thyself to the priest and offer for thy cleansing according to, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony to them. When you get home, you can read the law that God gave Moses in Leviticus 13 and 14.

There was a lot that a leper had to do. I mean, you talk about a yoke, it was a lot. And folks that claim they want to be under the law have no clue whatsoever what they're asking for. You go home and read Leviticus 13 and 14, but in the law, the high priest and the sacrifices all foreshadowed the Lord Jesus Christ. They foreshadowed Christ. And our Lord Jesus, he commanded this leper to go to these priests as a testimony to them. A witness of what? To show them. That's the shadow. The real thing has come. He's come. And you know how that would be a testimony of these priests?

Because these priests knew this man was a leper. That's how he had been pronounced a leper. And so when they go to this priest as a leper, no priest had ever healed a leper. They couldn't. And so when he went there and said, I was a leper, and this man said, be clean and made me clean. When they went there, he probably didn't tell them that up front. He probably went there and let them examine him and say, your leprosy's gone. You're healed. And then he could say, That man right there did it. Now they gotta admit, you healed him? That's why he sent him there. And here's what it all pictures us.

What the law could not do and that it was weak to the flesh, God sent in his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. He put away the sin of his people and made us righteous in him. And here's what it means, Romans 10, This is what the Lord's bring, the reason he makes us holy within. It's not just so you can go around acting holy, and the Lord's people don't do that. He makes you holy to make you see he's your righteousness. To make you see what he accomplished on Calvary's cross.

And here's what it means right here. This is what he, him bearing testimony that he fulfilled the law. He is the express image of that law. He's what the law was talking about. He's the high priest, he's the sacrifice, he's the tabernacle, he's the mercy seat, he's the ark of the covenant, he's the testimony, he's everything. And he's come now. If you want to still hold on to a picture after the image has come, there's a problem. He's the real thing.

And here's what it teaches us, Romans 10 verse 4, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. when you've been brought to Him, to believe on Him, you're righteous before God, and God will never, ever, ever, ever charge you with sin ever again. There's no more condemnation. That's the good news. Now go with me to Hebrews 13. This is my last scripture. Hebrews 13.

The leper was separated without the camp, outside the camp, And the sacrifices that they offered, and the burnt sacrifices that they offered, they would take all the carcass and the parts they didn't use, and they would take them outside that camp, and they'd burn them. That was a disgusting place out there. They went out there, that's where the leper had to stay, because he was no better than an animal carcass. Nasty and so they put all that out there. They burn it.

They put the leper out there with them Here's what the witness testifies Hebrews 13 10 We have an altar Where if they have no right to each would serve the tapernacle in other words? We have an altar which people who are still coming to an earthly altar Down at the front of the church. They have no right to this altar. We have our altars Christ When you put something on the altar, the altar makes it holy, and Christ has made us holy. We have an altar, they can't eat it, they're still serving the flesh, they can't come.

For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned without the count. That's where that leper was too. That's where me and you were too. That's a picture of us. not fit to be within the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. He came to where we are and became what we are, the refuse and the abomination and everything we are, bearing our sin, and he bore our curse. And here's what he tells you to do now. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the count bearing his reproach. He's not in religion. He's not in this world's religion. He's outside of it. And he's gonna bring his child outside of it too.

And you're gonna be reproached when he does. People's gonna speak bad things about you. Holy people, people that call themselves holy, they're gonna speak Bad, bad thing, they gonna murder you in their heart. But you have to bear that, because he did, and he'll make it light. He'll make it light.

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. That means Jerusalem, just like the tabernacle's not our salvation, and that earthly altar's not, neither is that earthly city. It all pictured our heavenly Jerusalem. We're seeking that. By him, therefore, here's what, here you wanna serve him? Here's what pleases Him. You want to serve Him? Here it is.

Let us therefore offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, the fruit of our lips given thanks to His name, because He came and made us lepers absolutely whole, clean, righteous and holy, and accepted of God. You go to Christ. That's what He's saying. You go to Christ. You hear me say it all the time, go to him. Go to him.

If you can, really come to him with a broken heart, bowed down, begging mercy. If you can, you will receive mercy. And I'll tell you why, because the only reason you can do that is because he drew you. And he says, God says, test me. He said, prove me and see if it ain't so. He delights to show mercy.

He said, come to me, listen to this, from Malachi 3.10, prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. That's what he said, come on. See, election don't close the door. Election opens it to sinners that otherwise could have never entered in. And the blood of Christ makes it so that God can receive us And the holiness that he works in the heart makes you see it also and makes you come to him, bow down, saying, Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you for making me whole. Amen. All right, Brother Adam.