I want you to turn with me to
Mark's Gospel, chapter 1. I'm going to look at a very familiar
incident that took place when our Lord was upon this earth.
And to be honest with you, I have no idea if the Lord intends to
do anything with me or this message this morning. I have learned
through the years, many times to the breaking of my own heart,
that the Lord frustrates my purposes to death. I have many counsels,
and I trust not all of them are bad in my heart. Some are, maybe
most. But there have been times when
I earnestly thought and believed, and perhaps so, that I was going
to do something for God's glory. And I had it all figured out
only to see him burn it in ashes and lay it at my feet and leave
me in nothing but tears. And I know that may happen this
morning. But I've also learned something else that's comforted
my heart, the counsel of the Lord that shall stand. And I'm content with that this
morning. If he's pleased to use his word through me, And bless
your heart for his glory. I'm content with that. If he
uses his word to further someone's condemnation, I'm content with
that. His word will not return to him
void. And I'm glad for that. This is
a very familiar text. One of the best messages I've
ever heard from this was preached by Brother Todd years and years
ago. And I want to look at it this morning. Beginning in verse
40 of Mark's Gospel, chapter 1. And there came a leper to him,
begging him, beseeching him, kneeling down to him, and saying
to him, If thou wilt, if you are willing, you can make me
clean.' And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand,
and touched him, and said unto him, I am willing, I will be
thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken,
immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. And he straightly charged him,
and forthwith sent him away. and said unto him, See thou say
nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest,
and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded
for a testimony unto them. But he went out, and began to
publish it much, and to blaze abroad the man, insomuch that
Jesus could no more openly enter unto the city, but was without
in a desert place, and they came to him from every quarter." This
is one of my favorite incidences of all our Lord's miracles that
he did when he was upon this earth. Probably the most miraculous
thing other than the raising of the dead physically that he
did. And one of the reasons I like
this incident so well is because we learn so much from this. I studied this passage for years
before I even considered the occasion of this miracle that
our Lord did, and it was very interesting and very telling,
I think, and we learn so much from it. You'll remember the
occasion that this miracle took place. Our Lord Jesus had been
teaching up in the mountain. We call it the Sermon on the
Mount. You remember that very well in Matthew chapter 5 through
verse 7. And when he had finished that
message, he comes down off the mountain and he meets this man
that the Scripture says is full of leprosy. And he heals them. That's the occasion of this miracle. But as I read that, I thought,
what What a difference there is in this occasion and the Lord
Jesus teaching and what He did to this man full of leprosy as
opposed to another mountain that you and I read about in the Old
Testament. You remember the mountain that
we call Mount Sinai when the Lord appeared to Moses and said,
I'm going to meet with the children of Israel. And I want you to
speak to the men and speak to the women. I want them to wash
their bodies. I want them to have on clean
clothes. I want them to separate themselves
one from another. And on the third day, I'm going
to come down upon this mountain and I'm going to speak with the
children of Israel. Remember that occasion? And the third
day, Moses went to the children of Israel and said, If you will obey His voice and
keep His covenant, you're going to be a peculiar people to Him.
You're going to be a kingdom of priests. God's going to bless
you. And they said to Moses, all that
He's commanded us will do. We'll keep His covenant. So God
said to Moses, then you bring them at the bottom of this mountain
and I'll meet with them and I'll tell them what I require of them.
And you make sure they're clean, they're holy, they're separate
people. And they came there at the bottom of that mountain.
And God came down upon that mountain. And it was a dreadful sight.
There was a thick cloud. And the mountain began to shake
and there was fire and smoke and this trumpet exceeding loud. And God Himself began to speak
to those people. Moses had begun to tell them
what God required. He'd had little effect upon them.
Made them so presumptuous. Everything He said to do, will
do it. But now God speaks. And He says, don't you ever,
don't you ever, from your youth to the day of your death, don't
you ever have any God before Me. Don't ever make a graven
image, a picture of anything. Never carve anything out. The
likeness of heaven are in this earth. Don't you ever bow down. Don't you ever use my name in
your thoughts, in your lips. Don't ever take my name in vain. My name is holy. And if you ever
do anything contrary to my will and my nature, I'm a jealous
God. And I'll deal with you. And I'll
not hold you guiltless." And boy, they heard that. And they
saw this lightning and this thunder. And the Scripture says they become
exceedingly afraid. They said, let not God speak
with us lest we die. If a child crawled up and touched
the mountain, they stoned it. If an animal touched the mountain,
they thrust it through with an arrow. He was a dreadful sight. And Moses, the great man of God,
says, when I consider this, I exceedingly fear and quake. But now contrast that mountain
and that time. And hear God in our humanity.
He's upon this mountain. And He begins to speak. And the
words that He speaks aren't repulsive at all. Nobody flees from what he's saying. And he speaks like this. And
it's still, and everything around him is quiet. And he says, blessed
are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those
who are in poverty, that have nothing to offer God. That look
to Him to supply everything that He requires. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst after righteousness they don't have in and of themselves.
And he speaks such gracious words. And they're so anxious to hear.
And he comes down off of this mountain. And nobody runs from
him. Nobody's fearful of him. And
who's the first man that he meets? It's not a holy man at all. It's
not a clean man at all. It's this vile leper. It's this
unclean man. And what does he do? He reaches out and he touches
this filthy man and he heals him. Now, brothers and sisters,
isn't there a vast difference between the law and the grace
of God in Christ? Those who want to face God in
His holy demands, and they think they are able to meet those demands
and provide what God requires, they are welcome to do so. But
just hearing the preacher tell you what God requires and having
God to tell you what He requires is a vast difference. Luther said, if we want to see
God's good side, we must look to Jesus We look to the Lord
and we see what He requires. But when we look to Christ, we
see what He's provided. God in His humanity coming down,
speaking to us, not to require of us, not to demand of us, but
to provide for us. And it's here we see God's amazing
love, isn't it? God's grace. Oh, how can it be? How can it be that thou, my God,
should die for me? Depths of mercy, depths of love
divine, a vast difference in this mountain as opposed to Mount
Sinai. Here are some things we learn from
this. I read not long ago someone gave a description of this man. The
Scripture says he was full of leprosy. Full of leprosy. And a man gave this account of
what this man looked like and what he was undergoing in his
body. And he said if you saw this man,
he'd had running sores that had spread all over his body. And
they dried up only to revive. And they kept dying and reviving
until finally all over this man's body was nothing but a scab. A hard scab that you could hardly
penetrate with a needle. And that if you had pulled on
his hair, any at all, The whole skin would have come off exposing
the bare scalp. That the cartridge in his nose
had decayed and finally the skin had fell off and all that was
in his face was two holes. His ears had decayed and fell
off. His private parts had decayed
and fell off. And his body was so wracked with
fever One man said that a man who was in the last days of his
leprosy, you could put a ripe apple in his hand and his fever
was so high, within an hour the apple would be cooked. That is
the condition of this man. And it not only affected the
skin, but it affected the blood. There was white things in the
blood that couldn't be strained so thick. And this is where this
man was. This is what he looked like when
he came to the Lord Jesus Christ. His skin and his blood. He was
a man full of leprosy. John Gill gives five ways in
which this leprosy is likened to our sin. I thought this was
very interesting. He says this, sin like leprosy
is a very filthy and unclean thing. It's of a defiling nature. That's why they put lepers without
the society. You weren't allowed to come into
the worship service. You weren't allowed to come into
the temple. You weren't allowed to be in the presence of healthy
people. Leprosy was a defiling, unclean
thing. That's why they had to put this
rag over their face and decry unclean, unclean. And what does
the Scripture say about us? We all as an unclean thing. All our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags. It's of a defiling nature. And
Gil said, secondly, leprosy, like sin, is very nauseous thing,
a very loathsome thing. In God's sight, sin is a loathsome
thing. And I tell you this much, when
God opens our understanding to see the nature of our sin as
it is, it becomes loathsome in our sight, don't it? David said
this, my wounds stink and are corrupt, and my loins are filled
with a loathsome disease. What is sin? A loathsome disease. And Gill said this thirdly, sin,
like leprosy, is of a spreading nature. If it didn't spread,
it wasn't leprosy. If they shut you up and brought
you back again next week to look at it, and it was just a scab
that had stayed in the one location, he said it's not leprosy. Because
leprosy is a spreading thing. Leprosy, when it got in the skin,
spread until you were full of leprosy. Is sin not a spreading
thing? Where does it begin? It begins
in the heart. And where does it spread? Our
understanding, our affections, our will, our motives, our tongues,
our deeds, our families, our communities, the world. Sin has
spread and defiled everything we are and everything we do. We're full of it, aren't we?
Is there anything in you where you cannot put your finger and
say, there's sin? It's spread through our entire
being. We're full of it. We're full
of it. And Gill said this about it.
It's of a consuming nature. It eats like a canker. Sin will ruin us. Sin will destroy
us. The wages of sin is death. And he said this, sin like leprosy
is incurable. There was no medicine to cure
leprosy. There was no relief from it.
That's why they never sent men to the doctor that had leprosy.
They sent them to the priest. They sent him to the priest because
he was trained in identifying leprosy. So when he identified
it, he said, there's no help for you. This is a death sentence. You're just to remain outside
of society until you die. Because die you will. There's
no cure for what you have. Is there a cure for sin? Not
in and of us, sister. Not in and of us. But thank God
there is a cure. And he's provided it. And that's
what we see in this man here. There is a cure for sin. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanses us from our leprosy, our sin of leprosy. There is a cure for leprosy. There is a cure for sin. Listen
to Isaiah chapter 57, verse 19. Peace, peace to him that is afar
off, and to him that is near, and I will heal him." That's
what makes salvation so wonderful. That's what makes cleansing from
sin so wonderful. We can't cleanse ourselves. We
can't save ourselves from it. It's impossible. It's a death
sentence from us. There's only one healing. There's
only one cleansing. And that's in the Lord Jesus.
Unto you that fear my name shall the Son of Righteousness arise
with healing in his wings." The law comes to us and it exposes
us. It exposes our sin. It doesn't
give us leprosy any more than the priests give those men leprosy. It simply identifies it. It points
us out. sends us out lost and undone
in our dying, condemned state. But the Son of God comes and
He cleanses us. He saves us from our sin. And
only He can do it. Someone told this story, and
I thought it was Brother Henry. I was going to ask him to say,
but I'm not for sure if it was him or not. But someone told
the story about a missionary, maybe it was in Africa, it was
one of the third world countries. And they were out one day in
the country, and they heard this groaning, and they couldn't tell
what it was, but they went around some bushes to hear this man
finally, they could distinguish a word he was saying, help me,
help me. And the man said as they got
closer, they saw this man. And he was eat up with leprosy.
His hair was white and his skin was scabby and sore as running.
And he was just sitting there on the ground saying, somebody
help me. Somebody help me. And the man
that told this story said that his heart went out towards this
poor dying man. And he wished that he could discard
him and hug him up to his self. And let all that leprosy and
all those running sores and that death go into my health. And
all my health and all my life and all my strength go into Him. But He said I couldn't do that. But there is One that did that. That's what Jesus Christ did,
was it not? He took our sin, all of it. He took our leprosy
to Himself. And all the consequences of sin,
the corruption of it, the guilt of it, the death of it. And He took it to Himself. And
His virtue, His health, His life comes to us and we live. Here's a beautiful picture of
Salvation 8. It's an amazing thing to me that
this man who was commanded never to come into society, he wasn't
to touch anybody. Nobody was to touch him because
he was defiled. He was unclean. They had to do
this to keep leprosy from spreading all through society. But here
is the Son of God, Jesus Christ in our humanity. And what does
He do? He touches this man. He puts
His hands right on those swords. And He's not affected by it.
But that man is affected. Isn't that a wonderful thought?
There is so much merit and so much worth and so much life in
the Son of God. That He's not affected by what
we are. But we're affected by what He is. And who He is. Just let Him touch us. Just let
Him speak to us. And we're clean. Oh, we sit here
today in our misery, aren't we? We just sit here and we're so
affected by sin. Everything we do, we see sin
mixed with it. And sometimes it so discourages
us. But dear soul, look yonder again
at the cross. Look where Jesus Christ in all
His love, all His compassion, took what we had done, took what
we were, and bore it away by the sacrifice of Himself. Look
out of our misery and our leprosy and see Him there. And you'll
hear Him say, Be thou clean. Be thou clean. You never get tired of looking?
He never gets tired of saying it. Be thou clean. Never get tired of believing
it, and he'll never get tired of saying it. Be thou clean.
Be thou clean. How often do you and I feel this
corruption of sin running all through us? There's one or two times in my
Christian experience that I've been without a knowledge of sin,
just one or two times. And that's when I saw myself
utterly in Christ that I had no sin. I saw myself in such
union with Him, I had no sin. The rest of the time, my heart's
so full of unbelief, I just can't get a hold of it. But in Jesus
Christ, there is no sin. There is no leprosy. It's gone. Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world. I will be thou clean." And immediately,
this man who was full of leprosy, he was cleansed. What a beautiful
picture of salvation. I want you to turn over to Matthew's
account of this, because here in Matthew's account, I want us to see a couple of
things quickly. that this incident teaches us. Here in Matthew's account, I
think he teaches us of the nature of true worship. Not only of
the nature of salvation, but the nature of true worship. Here
in verse 2 of Matthew chapter 8, here's the same account, Matthew's
account. This is where the Lord Jesus
came down off of the mountain. And behold, there came a leper
and worshipped him saying, Lord, if thou will, thou canst make
me clean. We see two things here about
the nature of worship. The first thing about worship
is this, utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ to do for
us what we cannot do for ourselves. Lord, if you will, You can make
me clean. Lord, you can make me clean. Isn't that a wonderful statement?
You can do for me what no one else can do for me. I cannot
do it for myself. If you make me clean, it's a
miracle. It's something that's divine.
When we realize in our hearts, brothers and sisters, that were
utterly and totally dependent upon Him. That's worship. You got up this morning, all
of us did, and we got ready to come here. We took our showers,
put on our clothes, got in our vehicles, and here we sit. And
we're here because of the strength and the life, physically, that
He's given us. We have jobs. We have houses. We enjoy God's creatures. We
live, we move, we have our being. We have our grandbabies that
we love, what health we enjoy. Everything in this natural realm
we have because He gives it to us, saved or unsaved. We are utterly dependent upon
Him. Every breath, every single breath we take, We're utterly
dependent upon God for it. Our last breath is in our nostrils. And if He don't give us another,
we die. If you suck in a breath and you can't blow it out, you're
dead. Your heart may skip four or five times and pick up again.
But if He don't give you every single breath, you die. And when
we realize this, we worship. We worship. And it's that way
in the spiritual realm, isn't it? We can't repent. We can't believe. We can't love. We can't do anything. He gives us everything. He not
only gives us, but He must work it in us. We can't come except
He draws. What do we have? What can we
do? We're utterly dependent upon Him. Let Him move His hand from
us. And we fall. And when we know this, and we
confess it before Him, we worship. That's worship. Utter dependence
upon Him. Lord, if You will, You can make
me clean. And here's the second thing about
worship. Lord, if you will, if you will,
you can make me clean. What is true worship? The knowledge
of, faith in, absolute submission to his will. If you will, you
can make me clean. If He hasn't brought us there,
brothers and sisters, we cannot worship. The will of God is so
involved in our worship, without a knowledge of His will, we cannot
worship. One man said, and I thought this
is a marvelous statement, but I think it's true. He said, I'd
rather be in hell if it's God's will, than to be in heaven contrary
to it. That's submission to His will.
I had an opportunity to spend a weekend with an old, real old
couple. And we were going to worship.
I was preaching for them that morning. And he wanted to ask
the blessings over our morning meal. And I never will forget
this. It's been years ago, but I never will forget this. We
sat there and prayed. And I worshiped as he prayed.
Because everything he prayed, he said, Lord, Would you bless
our food this morning if it be your will? Lord, we're going
to worship this morning if it be your will. Would you meet
with us this morning if it be your will? We have children that
are lost. Would you call them if it be
your will? That's worship, isn't it? That's
worship. Here we sat this morning. Look
at our troubles that we have. Look at our trials that we go
through. Family trials. Heartbreaking trials. But do
we rush into His presence and say, at all costs, deliver me
from this? Do we do that? We don't do that
at all. We come into His presence knowing
whose presence we're coming into. And we say, Lord, Thy will be
done. If You will, You can deliver
us from this. You see the work of grace in
this man's heart, don't you? There in his leprosy, he has
a work of grace in his heart because he's already been conformed
to the image of Christ. This is an amazing thing when
you think about it. Because here was a man full of
leprosy in his dying days and perhaps hours. And he says, whether I live or
die, I want it to depend upon this, Your will. Your will. Wasn't that what the Lord Jesus
Himself said in the garden? When He anticipated taking that
cup? Father, Your will? If it be Your
will to remove this cup, nevertheless not My will, but Yours be done?
Here was a man and he was being conformed to the image of Christ. Thy will be done. Thy will be
done. And he worshipped. He worshipped. Look over here in Romans chapter
9, right quickly with me, in verse 15. Romans 9 and verse
15. Those that don't believe in the
sovereign will of God, they're either afraid of it or hate it.
Now, they don't like this verse. They don't like this verse at
all. But I tell you, those who know that the will of God is
the deciding factor in their salvation, they love this. They love this. I just wonder,
I wonder if that leper, and I don't know this, this is speculation,
but I wonder if when this leper came to the Lord, if he remembered
there were many lepers in the days of Elisha, that only one
was healed? I wonder if he had that in his
mind. If he did, he realized he doesn't have to heal me. The
only way I'm going to be healed is if it's His will. And it's
not His will to heal everybody. Now that may not sound good,
but our Master said that, didn't He? He said there were many lepers,
but He only healed one. Why? It just wasn't His will.
We can argue that. But you can't argue against facts,
can you? There are many sinners, brothers and sisters. They're
in our families. We love them. We work around
them. We're involved with them. But
it's not God's will to save them. If you've seen And you know,
and He's taught you, that your salvation is utterly dependent
upon His will. You know that to be a fact. And
look here what He says in verse 15. Verse 14, He says, Is there unrighteousness
with God? Certainly not. God forbid. For
the Lord saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy. And I will have compassion. Out
of compassion, He touched him. I'll have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. There's what decides a man's
salvation. It's the will of God. Lord, if You will, if You're
willing, I'm willing. Be thou clean. And you know what? There was two things that made
this man exceedingly happy that he could not keep this to himself.
One was the fact that he cleansed him. But don't you think the
other was the fact knowing that it was his will to do it? And
isn't that what fills your heart with such joy? Not just that
he saved you, but he saved you according to his own will. You're
saved by the will of God. That's why you're saved. That's
why you're cleansed. And if he hadn't been willing
to do it, you'd have still been in your sins and not even cared. If you will, I'm willing. I'm
willing. That don't keep anybody out,
does it? That just makes you know, if you're taken in, it's
his will. Then come like this leopard.
Is there anybody here today that's utterly lost and undone? Then
come like this man. Your will can do you no good.
Come and cast yourself upon His will and say what this man said. If you will it, Lord, I have
sent away any claims that I ever had upon you. If you will it,
save me. If you will it, save me. I never
knowed Him turn anybody away come like that. And I doubt if
he ever will. One last thing in closing is
this. The Lord sent this man to the priest. He sent him to
the priest. This is an amazing thing because
it was the priest who sent him away to begin with. He went to
the priest and said, You know, I may have some problems here.
He said, you've got a big problem. You've got leprosy. You get out
of here. You get out of here. And now the Lord cleanses him
and sends him back to that fellow again. And don't you think maybe
just knowing how we think sometimes, he was maybe just a little bit
hesitant to go. Well, he looked at himself. Man,
you know, I'm clean. I'm really clean. I feel clean.
But then he maybe began to think within himself That priest can
see me where I can't see myself. And I can't find leprosy in me
anywhere he might be able to see. He saw it to begin with. See what the Lord does when He
saves a man. He's not hesitant at all to send
you to the law. He's not hesitant at all to do
that. You go to the law and see what the law says about my redemption. See what he says about my cleansing. I'm not going to save you contrary
to the law. I'm not going to save you at
the expense of it. I ain't going to save you by
it, but I'm not going to save you at the expense of it. You
go there to the law and see what the law says about it. And that's what he did. That's
what he did. He went over there to the priest. He didn't go wash himself. Well,
he may have. I don't know. I can't say for
sure he didn't. I can't say for sure he didn't go get out of
those old leprous clothes and put on some beautiful white linen.
But that wasn't what the priest wanted to look at anyway. It
didn't make any difference if he went to that priest in his
leprous clothes and rags, unclean, dirt on his hands, or if he went
there in white linen. As soon as he went into the office,
the priest said, strip off those clothes. I'm not concerned with
those things. I'm looking for leprosy. I'm
looking for leprosy." And he looked on his back. He looked
everywhere, on his scalp, on the back of his scalp. He said,
you know, I used to have leprosy. But you know, I've been cleansed.
He said, I'm not concerned with that. I'm not concerned with
who you are or what you are. I'm looking for one thing, and
that's leprosy. If I find it, you're out of here,
bud. If I don't, You can go back to
the temple. You can go back to your family.
The law is looking for righteousness, brothers and sisters. It's not concerned with where
you got it. It's not concerned with what you are, what you've
been. It's looking for righteousness. And the Scripture says Jesus
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Not our. But in others, it's looking for
perfect righteousness. A righteousness that it's satisfied
with. And that's why this is called
the righteousness of God. And He'll withstand the inspection
and the scrutiny of the law, will it not? And the law don't
care where you got it. He's just concerned that you're
righteous. And when it sees you in Christ, it says, oh my, oh
my, you're so white. You're so clean. You're so pure.
You go out of here and go where you want to. Do what you will. You're righteous. But what about my sins? What
about my sins? I feel them. God said last night.
He reminded us that I feel them. I feel them. But let's be honest,
brothers and sisters. Luther made this statement. He
said it like this. When the devil comes to your
conscience, has in His hand the Law, and
He begins to accuse your conscience and tells you that you are the
greatest sinner that ever lived, just agree with Him. And say,
that's right, I am the greatest sinner that ever lived. But Jesus
Christ in the days of His flesh has fully satisfied for my sins. And in Him there is no sin. That
He by Himself purged that sin. That He took it Himself and made
it His own. And put that sin away. And hold
right there. Don't move from that. Don't make
excuses. Don't try to mend your ways.
Just believe that. Just believe it. And He'll have
to flee from you. Ain't this a wonderful incident
that took place? We learn so much from it. I hope
God's pleased and blessed it to our hearts. Thank you, Brother
John.