Let's turn to Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5. I want to read verses 12 through 14. Luke chapter 5. And it came to pass when he was
in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy, who seeing Jesus
fell on his face and besought him saying, Lord, if thou wilt,
thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand and
touched him saying, I will be thou cleansed. And immediately
the leprosy departed from him. And he, that is the Lord, charged
him to tell no man but to go and show thyself to the priest
and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded. for a testimony
unto them. There were certain procedures
under the law that must be observed and our Lord would have them
observed. And so he tells this man to do
that. The story here recorded is one of the many instances
of our Lord's tender mercies toward hopeless sinners. That's why these things are preserved.
They're not preserved to prove to us that Jesus Christ or the
apostles could perform miracles. That's not why these things are
preserved. They're preserved to show us God's tender mercy
toward sinners. And we're not told who this man
was. We're not told anything much
about his past. Only that he was a leper. and
that he was full of leprosy. He didn't just have a touch of
it. It didn't just begin to show on his skin. He was full of leprosy. And that from the testimony of
others, this man came to Christ with the full confidence that
Christ would restore him and make him clean. That's why he
came. Nobody came to Christ not expecting
to be healed. They were convinced if they could
get to Christ, healing was in him. He'd healed others, why
not themselves? I don't know why we don't think
that way, do you? He healed others, he saved others,
why not me? Why not me? And I'll remind you
and myself that all these healing miracles and all the casting
out of demons, these things all had a twofold purpose behind
them. In Acts 2.22, Peter tells us
that Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved of God. How did God
approve him? How did God say, how do we know
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God? How do we know that he
was sent of God? Well, he says here that he was
a man approved of God among us by miracles and wonders and signs,
now listen, which God did by him. He did these miracles with
Christ, though Christ is the God-man. Had power of himself
to do anything God could do. And yet God would have us know
that this representative man would do these things by faith.
And God did these miracles, is what it says here, which God
did by him in our midst. showing that he was a man approved
of God. He was approved as the Christ.
He was approved as a preacher sent from God. And he was approved
as God's son in the person of a man. He was approved of God. And then secondly, he gave us
these miracles of healing to picture the present condition
and salvation of children sinners. He's showing us what we are. He's showing us our absolute
need of Christ. Nobody else could do a leper
any good. Are we lepers? Then nobody else
can do us any good. He's showing us these things
in a picture so simple to perceive, so simple to understand. This
man had nowhere else to go. He was dying from the inside
out. He had a disease that was rotting
his body from the inside out. There was no reversal of it.
There was no overcoming it. There was no cure for it. He was shut up to Christ. He
had to go to Christ. Whether Christ healed him or
not is the only place he could go. Nowhere else to go. And no
one illness is sufficient to accurately picture sin. But all
of these things together set before us a picture of fallen
man. He's demon-possessed. You know
what Paul said? Before God quickened you, you
who were dead, you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and
sin. You walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air. That's possessed, ain't
it? That's possessed. He's demon possessed. He's a
lunatic. You remember that young boy,
his father said he's a lunatic. He's a lunatic. Casts himself
in a fire, throws himself off a cliff, tries to drown himself.
He's a lunatic. Tries to destroy himself. Solomon said, the heart of the
sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart
while they live. And after that, they go to the
dead. They go to live with others like
them. They go to be with others like them. And like Mephibosheth
of old, he's crippled by the fall. He's unable to care for
himself. Left to the handouts of this
world and to the mercy of God, he's blind. Sinners are blind. They walk in a vanity of their
mind, is what Paul said. God saved you Gentiles. He brought
you out of idolatry. He brought you out of a false
hope and a false religion. And don't you go back there because
they walk in a vanity of their mind, having their understanding
darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance
that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. They're
blind. They can't see. They can't see. And they're dead. They're dead. Sinners are dead. That's a hard
one for us to perceive, but we are. We're dead. Unclean, like that woman with
the issue of blood, continually unclean. And all that we've ever
experienced in our life is just treatments for it, just like
her, wasted all of her living. And she was none the better. And then we're lepers. And what
our Lord pictures here in our text is a disease most associated
with sin throughout the scriptures. Leprosy, you remember when Miriam
contradicted Moses, her brother, said some things in rebellion
against her brother Moses. God smote her with leprosy. And
Moses went in and interceded for her life. And God said, well, if she'd
have dishonored her mother, her mother would have slapped her,
her mother would have punished her for a short time so she could
bear this leprosy for a little while and then I'll heal her.
I want her to learn. I want her to learn. Leprosy
is most associated with sin throughout the scriptures. I'll never forget
Brother Mahan had an opportunity to go to Africa. visit our missionary
over there. And while he was over there,
they had walked a pretty good trek, and they were down by the
river in their camp. They would had to went way on
up the river and around to do that, but he said, we're gonna
have to do that, the missionary said, because there's a leper
colony up here. And he said, I won't go through that leper
colony. He said, no, no, you don't. This thing's extremely
contagious. You don't want to go up there.
He said, just take my word. He said, yes, I do. Yes, I do. And he walked through that leper
colony, and he saw them and smelled them and looked upon them. And
I'm telling you, when he come back, there wasn't a preacher
in this country that could talk about sin being compared to leprosy
like Henry Mahan. He'd saw it. And this is exactly the condition
of every son of Adam. Isaiah describes them, in Isaiah
1 verse 6, he said, from the sole of the foot even to the
head, there's no soundness in it. Just wounds and bruises and
putrefying sores, neither been bound up, neither mollified with
ointment. They're unsound, and except the
Lord of hosts, he said, it left us a very small remnant. We'd
been like Sodom and like under Gomorrah. Just a heap of burn
up ashes. And leprosy is a disease that
leaves man forbidden to associate with the children of God. It
bars him. It bars him from the worship
of God. And sinners by nature are barred
from the worship of God. They can't enter into it. Their
heart is not right with God. God has to enable a man and make
him able to worship. Give him a love for him. Give him a knowledge for him.
That's eternal life is to know God. Not just know there is a
God. The devils know that and tremble.
That's not salvation. Salvation is to know God in a
saving way. To see the glory of his mercy
and grace. to experience that grace in your
heart. He enables us to worship. He
gives us a want to, to be here. These old lepers, they were forbidden. They must finish out their days
with others of lack of affliction until they die. And if they venture
out a little and they see another man or a woman approach, They
had to cover their mouth with that old rag and they had to
cry out loud, unclean, unclean, unclean. And I can almost picture
that crowd who thought themselves needy sinners seeing this old
leper coming and giving him a wide berth. I can just see that crowd
just peeling back when this man came. Oh, they didn't want what he
had. So here's the first question
that comes into my mind. What brought this sinner to Jesus
of Nazareth? What made him overcome all the obstacles that
stood in his way? What caused this man to come
to Jesus of Nazareth? I know he had a complete and
perfect understanding of the scriptures. I'm talking about Jesus Christ.
He could open all the mysteries hidden of God. I know he had a complete and
perfect understanding of these things, but what brought this
dying sinner to Jesus of Nazareth? It says, he seeing Jesus. Have you ever saw him? You ever saw him? You ever saw
him in the word of God? You ever saw him like Isaiah,
high and lifted up, his train fills the temple? The angels
of God covering their face? crying, holy, holy, holy, the
whole place is full of his glory. You ever seen him as God has
set him forth? This leper saw him. He saw him
as God set him forth. He didn't just see him as another
man, he had other men all around him. He saw him as God set him
forth. Somebody told him that this man
was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Somebody told him
that Jesus of Nazareth could and did heal every sick sinner
that was brought to him, lepers included. Luke 4.40, in the evening,
it says, all that had any sick with divers diseases Brought
them unto him and he laid his hands on every one of them and
healed them. Blind, halt, lame, made no difference. Demon possessed, dying of the
fever, unclean. He cured them all. He received
them all. And he blessed them all. Now
listen to me. I preach. I preach to you, I
make every effort to do this, to preach, as I'm sure my Lord
did, the doctrines of Christ. I preach election without apology,
particular redemption, imputed righteousness, irresistible grace,
and the total depravity of man. I preach these things without
apology, but no man is going to press his way to Jesus of
Nazareth until his condition is brought to him as a living
reality. There was people in his days,
there is in ours, that would sit at home or somewhere else
in a restaurant and they'd argue with you all day long over elections. They show you in the scriptures
where elections stated. but they don't come to Christ.
They don't worship Christ. They don't come to him. They
don't obey him. Very familiar and flippant about
him. This old man, this leper, he
didn't just believe that his leprosy was a picture of sin.
He was the leper. And you can, and people often
do talk about the depravity of man, ruined by the fall, death
passing upon all men, made sinners, and so on. But I'll tell you,
when you see the blisters on your skin, it's a whole different
ballgame. My wife and I talked about dying,
we talked about death, we talked about how we were gonna die,
all of these kind of things. We thought we were prepared for
death. And one day she walked into the doctor's office and
the doctor said, you have a year. You have a year. With treatment,
you have a year. Boy, I tell you, it's a whole
different ballgame now. Reality sets in. That's the way it was
with this man. He didn't want to talk about
leprosy. He was a leper. He knew more about leprosy than
anybody else in that crowd. He was a leper. Look at me, he
said. Look at the blisters. Look at
the balls. Look at my flesh rotting off
my face. I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. When sin becomes a reality to
you, And you can truthfully cry out with Paul, oh, wretched man
that I am. You believe that? Now come on. You're about halfway up the scale,
ain't you? You can find plenty out here worse than you. Yeah,
blisters hadn't come out on the skin yet. But they will. If you're his, they will. My heart, my mind, my will, my
thoughts, my works, filthy rags, open running sores. God said
those who have a holier than thou attitude are a smoke in
my nose, a fire that burneth all day long. You know what he's
talking about? I got a neighbor that still likes to burn his
garbage. And he'll wait till just after
it turns dark, just about the time I wanna go out and sit down
and hand me a cup of coffee and just sit outside, he'll light
that thing up. I'd just stinking his thing,
sitting over burning that old aluminum and plastic bottles
and all that. That's what God said sinner is
to him, or these self-righteous men are to him. They're a smoke
in my nose, he said. A fire that burns all day long. That's man. That's a leper. He's rotten from the inside out.
Old smelly leper. But this man saw Jesus as he
truly was. And when he saw Jesus as he truly
was, he saw himself as he truly is. God come into the flesh,
the Lord of glory. How do you know that? Because
he fell down before him on his face. We have to think a long time
before we even tell anybody that we really believe. This man fell
on his face, Jesse. He was serious. He fell on his
face in the dirt. Put his face in the dust at the
maker's feet. I'll tell you something else
he said. He wasn't talking about me and Jesus got a good thing
going. He didn't come in there talking about deals, trying to
bargain with the Lord. You cleanse me and I'll serve
you every day of my life. What a lie. Here's what this leprosy, Lord. Lord, that's what every, every
chosen sinner says when God does a work in him. You don't call
him Jesus anymore, you call him Master. You call him Lord. He wasn't Dr. Jesus, not sweet
little Jesus boy, not the Jesus of which this world has become
so familiar. In fact, not Jesus at all, but
Lord. Lord, and those who see him,
truly see him, they address him as Lord and Master. This was
the Lord of glory. And this old leper knew it. And there was only one in all
the population of the world that could do him any good. And he
was convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was that man. Was that man. What a difference in the approach
of so-called Christians today to this sinner. That old sinner
couldn't get himself low enough. He couldn't get himself low enough
or exalt the Son of God high enough. He saw Jesus as God set him forth. He saw him having no equal, no
higher authority than himself. He saw him in the glory of his
mercy and love and grace, healing poor sinners just like
himself. That's how he saw him. What brought him here to this
place? His disease. And a knowledge of the only one
that could do him any good. Somehow religions, they've lost
that. It's not there anymore. It's
just not there anymore. You see, the truth of the matter
is not all that complicated. We're dying. We're lepers. We don't have a future. God may
tolerate us for a little while and then it's hell. We're lepers. Life's in Him. Only in Him. There's no cure outside of Him.
There's nowhere else to turn, nowhere else to go. Nobody else could do Him any
good. Well, what'd this man say to this man, Jesus? Now, Lord, you know I have a
free will. That ain't what he said. That's what religious people
talk about, but that ain't what sinners talk about. He said,
Lord, if you will, if you will, if you be willing, If it suits
your purpose, if this is pleasing to you. Religion says name it and claim
it, don't they? Oh, that makes me shiver all
over when I hear men say that. Religion said it's all up to
the sinner. God's done all he can do. And religion pleads with the
sinner. Can you imagine the Lord standing there talking to him
and saying, well, you're really not that bad a shape. Pleading
with the sinner. But that's not the picture here.
I see the sinner prostrate on the ground pleading the will
of God. And this is how sinners are brought
to Christ. They come pleading to him, desperate,
hopeless, helpless sinner, facing the dust, hoping in his mercy. Now mercy means something to
him. Now it does. You may not know it, but you're
his right now. Whether you believe it or whether
you don't, he's Lord. He's Lord. That's the one thing
that man could say, Lord. He was his Lord. Whether he healed
him or whether he didn't, he was Lord. Shut up to the will
of God. Shut up to the Savior. Shut up
to the mercy and grace of God. Do you understand that God in
all that's going on, in all that's ever gone on from the beginning
of the world, God is accomplishing his redemptive will. That's what's
going on. Everything that's going on is
within the will of God. Nothing happens apart from the
will of God. All of these things are going
on. And at the same time, he doesn't violate your responsibility. That's how wise our God is. He's
able to do all that he pleases, all that he will, all that he
said he was gonna do from eternity past without violating your responsibility
and without compromising his will. Oh, if you will. And then thirdly,
the Lord said, I will. Why is there sweeter words anywhere
in the world than that? Not to a sinner. Oh, he said,
I will. I will. Oh, I don't know how
I'm gonna cure this leprosy, be thou claimed. Immediately, ain't that what
that says there in our text? Immediately he was cleansed,
the leprosy was gone. Immediately. Is there anything anywhere that's
not subject to the will of God? Without any understanding of
it, Satan and all of this present evil world are doing what his
hand and his counsel determined before to be done. He points
that out to us in the death of Christ. But it's also working
in everything else. The heart of the king, Solomon
said, is in the hand of the Lord. He can turn it any way he wants
to. Just like those rivers and waters out there, God set the
course of those rivers, he sets the course of that king's heart. He endures those vessels of wrath,
fitted for destruction, and even uses them to police the world.
They become ministers of God's justice to his elect. And he
uses them to sustain his elect, uses them to give his elect a
job. Nebuchadnezzar come down there and totally annihilated
Jerusalem. He tore the temple down. He desecrated
all the things of the temple. He took everything to himself
and took it back up to Babylon. But you know what he did? He
gave jobs to Daniel. A high position. He gave jobs to Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego. High positions. He put them to
work. And paid them. Paid them to do
it. That's this world. They hate
the God we believe in, but God uses them, and they don't even
know they're being used. And he uses them to sustain believers. All that the Father giveth me
said shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will, and
no wise cast out. I will, he said, be thou clean.
It's not of him, the sinner, not of him that willeth, not
of him that runneth, but it's of God that showeth mercy. And
it's the will of God that brought that old leper to Christ. He
was taught of God and being taught of God was drawn by the Father
to come to Christ. And what a miracle of grace this
thing of faith is. Maybe, maybe, just maybe, the
Lord will bring another leper to Himself. He brought this one. He brought this one. And if He
can save me, He can save anybody. He can save anybody. Thank you.