No man, but go thy way, show
thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded
for a testimony unto them. If you'll give me your ear for
just a minute, I'll do my best to paint you a picture of what's
taking place here as our Lord came down from His sermon on
the Mount. Israel was a people who looked
for the coming Messiah. They were the only nation on
the top side of God's earth who had any knowledge, any promise,
any idea of what the Messiah was. They looked for a man. They
looked for the coming of a man that was promised of God. And this man they called by different
names. They called him the Messiah.
They called him the prophet that should come. They called him
the Christ. But they look for a prophet,
not as God set him forth, but they look for a prophet like
unto those who came before him. They look for a man like Isaiah
or Jeremiah, a great prophet, one recognized. These are one
of the what's called the major prophets, Jeremiah and Isaiah. They look for a man like David,
who come out of obscurity and God raised him up to the throne,
seated him on the throne. They look for a mighty man like
Elijah, who do wondrous works before them, that God would give
signs and evidences of His approval. They look for a man, a man anointed
of God, approved of God, but they look for this man to lead
them out from under their Roman bondage, out from under their
captivity, as He did in days gone by, and restore them again
unto earthly glory and earthly blessings. One that would raise
them up again and give them respect among all nations. And then suddenly on the scene
comes this man called John the Baptist. And he begins to preach
and talk about this coming Messiah as though He'd be here any minute.
He's coming. He's coming. Make ye straight
the ways of the Lord. And he preached and talked about
this coming Redeemer. And then one day as he was preaching,
he took his finger and pointed and he said, Behold the Lamb
of God. This is Him. This is Him. And he identified Him as the
Lamb of God, the sin-bearing substitute, the Christ. And Jesus
was a great man. He was a great man. There'd be
no doubt about it. Just single him out as a man. As a man among men. Forgetting
everything else that we know about him. He was a great man. Never a man spake like this man. This man spoke in such a way
as to be understood. He spoke in wisdom. He spoke
in power. And he spoke with authority.
Even the devils were subject to it. And he went about doing
good. Not just a little good here and
there, but good everywhere he went. Everything he did, everything
he said, everything he was, was good. He went about doing good. And he healed the sick and the
lame. And He seemed to be the one they
looked for. And great multitudes came out. They heard of the miracles. They
heard of the healing. And they came out for various
reasons. But mostly they came out because
men were saying, this is the Christ. This is the Christ. And
so they come out to hear Him. Great multitudes. But very soon,
these multitudes would thin out. And these crowds of thousands.
would dwindle down to just a handful by comparison. Because they all
followed Him for the wrong reason. And I seem to see this in the
way that these verses read. He said, Behold, there came multitudes
which followed Him when He came down from the mountain. But,
He said, a leper. A leper came to Him. He didn't
follow Him from a distance. He came to him, and he came worshiping,
and he come bowing, and he come believing. A leper. A leper. He just preached to
them the straight and narrow way. He just shown to them the
differences between hypocritical ceremonialism and a genuine work
of grace in the heart. Now he's going to example to
them what he just taught them. He's going to do by example exactly
what he declared to them in the Sermon on the Mount. And he'll
do this in his providence by calling to himself a leper. And multitudes like Ben claim
to follow him today. And they seek the same thing
Israel sought. They seek for those temporal
blessings of life in this world. They want success. Who don't? They want respect. Who don't? They want reputation. They want
ease of life. They want a rest from war. They
want peace. They want a godly king. And the
problem is, salvation is not a temporal thing, it's a spiritual
thing. It's not a, the kingdom of God
cometh not with observation. You don't see this. You can't
see that, what I'm talking about, with these eyes. The only way
these things can be seen is to be seen by faith. We look not
on the things which are temporal, but upon the things which are
spiritual. And you can be truly blessed. Now I want you to listen
to me. You can be truly blessed of God and be absolutely miserable
in this world. You look at Job. Nobody could
figure out what was going on with Job. His wife couldn't figure
it out. His friends of years couldn't figure it out. They
sat there silent for so many days in absolute amazement of
Job. And there he sat in bowls. He'd
lost his children. He'd lost his money. He was the
greatest man in the East. He was no pauper. This man was
a prince. And here he sat, covered in bowls,
covered in rags, sitting out on the dung heap, taking a piece
of glass and scraping the bowls from him, trying to cleanse himself. And there he's free and set,
didn't even know what to say to us. There wasn't one of them
considered Job blessed. Every one of them tried to convince
Job that he was cursed. He was cursed. And that's exactly
what his wife told him. She said, why don't you just
curse God and die? You can be miserable in this
world and be blessed of God. I've often told you about the
fellow up at 13th Street who had MS. His name was John Howsam. I'll never forget him. He moved
to Ashland. If it hadn't been for multiple
sclerosis, that man had never turned his TV on to listen that
morning. But he did, and he listened,
and he heard Henry preach, and he listened to him preach, and
he came to visit with him, and visit with the church, and heard
him preach on several occasions. Finally, he bought a house there
in Ashland, and he died a member of that church. And I used to
hear him all the time. He'd hug my neck and he said,
thank God for MS. Thank God. He was absolutely
miserable. This man was a, he was a, he
worked for big aeronautical companies and he was an engineer. He was
a brilliant man. And now he couldn't, he couldn't
do anything with his hands. He couldn't, the simplest thing,
opening a door, he had no muscle control at all. had a hard time
talking to you. Miserable in this world, but
blessed of God. And that's the way with this
leper. Salvation is not a temporal blessing, it's a spiritual blessing. Most of God's elect, or a lot
of them I should say, are miserable in this world. And the longer
you walk by faith, the more miserable it gets. Even if you got good
health, you're miserable. God feeds His people. God clothes
His people. He makes them productive in this
world, but not in such a way as the multitude would look on
them and say, that man's blessed of God. Not one among this whole
multitude. I'm going to read between the
lines and make this statement. I think I can be justified in
it. Not one person in that whole multitude would look on that
leper and say, now there's a man blessed of God. Not one. But he was. He was. And yet he was truly blessed
over the multitude. Now if time will let me do it,
I'm going to give you three things about this leper. Talking about
lessons from the leper. Let me give you three things
that I believe glow with the blessings of God's saving grace
concerning this leper. And the first thing is this,
it's his disease. It's his disease. While the multitude
followed at a distance, the leper came to Christ. Why did the multitude
stay way back and the leper come down to his feet? What brought
him there? His leprosy. His leprosy. And that's the first of God's
provenient grace that brought him to Christ and brought him
to his feet was his disease. Had this man not been a stricken
man, a doomed man, a man dead while he lived, he'd have never
came to Christ. He'd have hung back with a multitude.
He'd have hung back with them. And leprosy is a disease, if
I understand it right, just from what I've read on it, that causes
a person to rot from the inside out. You get this disease inwardly. And this disease does its work,
and it doesn't even begin to show until it's too late. Once
the spot appears, it's too late. It's too late. And it rots a
man from the inside out. He's eaten up with it. And leprosy
in the Scriptures is often associated with the curse of God, with sin. Miriam, the sister of Moses,
you remember she rebelled against the authority of God in Moses
as the shepherd of Israel. And God smote her with leprosy
because of her rebellion. And leprosy, had left this man
with no hope. He didn't have any hope. Leprosy
had left this man here with no hope in his flesh, no hope in
religion, no hope in this world. He didn't have any hope. The
only hope he had was this man. This man. Leprosy. His disease. What a blessing. God spoke to this man with leprosy
and it brought him to his feet. This man was banned from worship.
He was alienated from Israel. The law condemned him, made him
to live outside the camp. He couldn't even come near to
a traveler if a stranger was coming into the camp. And he'd
come anywhere near him, he had to hold that rag up over his
face and cry, unclean, unclean, unclean. The law prevented him from fellowship
with the Israel of God. And even so, it is the convincing
of sin. This leprosy is a picture of
the sinner. It's a picture of the reality
of sin in us. We're eaten up with it. It's
a leprosy of God in us. But we don't know we have it.
And only God can convince you that you do have it. And by the
time it finally appears, it'll be too late. It would be too
late. Only God can reveal to a man what he is, as He did with
this man. It's the convincing of sin that
brings the sinner to Christ until he understands what he is by
nature. What he is under the curse of
God. What he is before the holiness
of God and the justice of God. What he is by nature. It's his
will to sin. I hear people talk all the time
about changing their mind and turning over a new leaf. The
problem is man's not willing to do that. He's not willing. He don't want to. He don't want
to change. God has to change his want to.
He's not going to strive for holiness. He's not going to strive
for goodness. He's not going to strive for
knowledge. He wants just enough to keep
him out of hell. That's all he wants. That's exactly
the truth. Only God can convince you of
what you are. And when he does, you'll take
sides with him against yourself. You'll justify God and what he
said about you. You'll say he's right. He's right. I am a leper. This leper didn't
argue with anybody about his leprosy. He knew he was a leper. He can come to Christ and say,
now Lord, I ain't always doing the right thing. One thing I
can say. No, he didn't have one thing
he could say. He just fell down a leper. Man's got to be made to see himself
as he is. God has to show to him and manifest
His curse to him and in him. He's got to come to see himself
obnoxious and without hope. No one in this world can help
him. All my life I've been raised
to believe that you could. They had a little altar up in
front of the church where we went. I'd see people come up
there and pray and then I'd see them go back and testify and
talking about being saved and talking about all these different
things. I'm just a kid. I'd sit out there about Kelsey's
age and I'd sit out there and I'd listen to this. I'd listen
to it and wonder about it. But that's the way I was raised.
And the first time guilt pricked my conscience, that's exactly
what I did. I come down there. But one day
the Lord began to show to me what I was. And I ran up that
little old altar and I prayed and prayed and cried and did
all them things and went back to sit down and they said, everything
okay? And I said, no sir, it ain't.
It ain't. You see, when the leper understood
that no man could help him, All the ceremonies of religion
couldn't help him. All of the things that they did
couldn't help him. All that he knew couldn't help
him. Nothing could help him. He was a leper. That's what it
means to be convinced of sin. It means to come to that place
where nothing and nobody can help you. There's only one can
help you, and that's Christ. That's Christ. Find me a woman or a man convinced
of sin, and I'll show you somebody that'll seek the Lord." He'll
seek the Lord. And then the second thing that
set this man apart from the multitude and distinguished him as blessed
of God was his understanding. He had understanding. The multitude
didn't have any understanding. They were still looking at Christ
with their contemporary views. They were still looking at Him
as a man like David or Solomon or Isaiah or one of the great
kings of the past that would come up and deliver Israel. They
were still looking at Him with contemporary views. But this
man looked on Him with understanding. Matthew writes by divine inspiration
and tells us that this leper came and worshipped Christ. Wow! He worshipped Him. The multitude
followed Him. They didn't worship Him. This
man worshipped Him. He worshipped Him. He saw in
Him something divine. He saw in Him something godly. Something not of this world. And we're strictly forbidden
to worship angels or men. And Christ told the woman at
the well, He said, you worship you know not what. You don't
know what you worship. But this man understood. This
man came with understanding. He understood who this man was. He understood who he was. In
Philippians chapter 3 verse 3 it said, For we are the circumcision
which worship God in the Spirit. Now that's not a capital S. That's
not talking about worshipping Him in the Holy Spirit. That's
talking about worshipping Him with spiritual understanding,
which being taught of the Holy Spirit. Anytime you see that
little s, that's what it's talking about. Spiritual knowledge, spiritual
understanding, being taught by the Holy Spirit of God. And 2
Corinthians chapter 2 is a good place to go look at that if you
want to see it. It's capitalized in places and
places it's not. Places where it's not, he's talking
about the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The author of it, it's
always capitalized and talks about the Holy Spirit. But Paul
said, we worship God in the Spirit and we rejoice in Christ Jesus. Why would you rejoice in Him?
Because you can't worship God apart from rejoicing in Christ.
It's in Christ that you come to see who the Father is, that
you come to understand. And we had no confidence in the
fledge. Now he didn't come to Christ,
this leper I'm talking about, he didn't come to Christ purely
out of desperation. I've come to see that out of
cancer victims. When I go over there and see
them in there and listen to them talk, a cancer victim out of
desperation will seek anything. Somebody called me about this.
stuff that my wife takes to drink, and he said, I've got no proof
to this. I can't really tell you. I said,
well, we'd be willing to eat fishing worms right now if we
thought it'd do any good. But when this man came, he didn't
come with that kind of desperation. This man, he was desperate, but
he came understanding. He came with understanding. He
came and worshiped Christ. And he came to Christ understanding
who he was, and why he came, and who he came for, and he came
worshiping him. This controversial figure. You
see, established religion had already turned thumbs down on
him. He'd already begun to expose them for who they were, and they
were angry at him. The day he announced his call to the ministry,
who he was, and read from Isaiah and told them this day the Scriptures
fulfilled on him, they would have took him out and threw him
off the brow of the hill on that day. Let alone the days that
came after. But this man came and worshipped
him. He worshipped this one who was a controversial figure, this
one upon whom they turned thumbs down on, and he worshipped him
as the son of God. Only God can save a leper. Only
God. And this leper did what the crowd
could not do. He worshipped the Son of God. The crowd had zeal. The crowd
had curiosity. The crowd had temporal hopes
and religious excitement. But only the leper could worship. And he worshipped. Whether he
cleansed him or not, Whether he received him or not, whether
he'd hear him or not, he worshipped him. There's the difference. You know, we like to make deals.
God heal me and I'll follow you. God don't make deals. You follow
him and he might heal you and he might not. That's the way
that goes. Whether he cleansed him or not,
he worshipped him. And I'll tell you this, a desperate
sinner will not come to one he does not worship. He won't do
it. He won't do it. When he finds
one who is God and man and one glorious person, one glorious
union, one sympathetic to man, but uncompromisingly God, he'll
worship him. And only those who come with
understanding come worship. Let me give you a few things
here. He worshipped Christ because he saw in Him God his Savior. That's why he worshipped Him.
And he worshipped Him because in Him he saw God's willingness
to save sinners. This man opened the eyes of the
blind. All of these men that religion
called cursed of God, he was healing. He was restoring, casting
out devils in these men. And he worshipped him because
the God-man was the only one who could meet his needs. Nobody
else could meet his needs. So what singled this leper out
from the crowd was that he saw in him, he saw
in him one able to meet his needs. He came to Christ as he was.
A desperate, hopeless, helpless leper. And he came with a spiritual
understanding of who Christ was. And he worshipped Him. And then
thirdly, he came in submission. In Mark 1, verse 40, it says
he came to Christ kneeling and beseeching. In Luke's account,
it said he fell on his face and besought Him. Can you imagine
that? And here in Matthew 8, it said
he called Him Lord. Call Him Lord. This smelly old
rotten leper had a heart knowledge of the authority of God vested
in Christ. And he saw in Him one who could
but will it to be done, and it be done. Men don't believe that. They believe that will rests
with them. They believe the outcome of this
whole thing rests in their hands. When you come to Christ as God
has set Him forth, you're going to have to come to Him and acknowledge
Him as Lord. It's His will that will put an
end to whatever it is that causes your need. If He's willing, that's
the only thing that stands between you and God, is the willingness
of God to save your soul. That's right. He saw in him the authority of
God to release him from his curse, to command his disease to leave
and it be gone. And it wasn't an abstract, thoughtless,
careless sovereignty, but one clearly connected with both the
will of God and the salvation of his soul. You know, in the 17th chapter
of John, a comment was made by our Lord in His prayer. That's
the Lord's prayer, John chapter 17. And our Lord made a comment
right up at the front of his prayer about this authority that
God was going to vest in him as our representative, as our
substitute, as the Christ, the God-man. He's always had the
authority of God as the second person of the Godhead. But as
our surety, as our substitute and representative, God commissioned
him, gave him authority. And he tells why that authority
was given him there in that prayer. It was to give eternal life to
as many as the Father had given him. That's what that authority
is all about. That's what this leper is saying.
This one in whom God had vested this authority was an authority
given to save his worthless soul. That's what he saw. And in that light, he bowed to
him as Lord. He saw Him sovereign to save. He saw in Him nothing to hinder
except His own purpose and will concerning Him as an individual.
If you will, if you will. And you know what the Lord said?
I love this. We complicate things. The Lord
was so simple in His responses and in His teaching. Here's what
the Lord said, I will. I tell you, if you ever seek
Him, there are just two words you're going to want to hear.
I will. I will. And all that seek Him,
who seek Him as God has set Him forth, who seek Him with their
disease of sin, all who seek Him will find Him. And they'll
all hear those two words. I will. I will. Lord, bless the
message, the lesson this morning, for Christ's sake.