The Gospel of Matthew chapter
8, and I want to read concerning this incident that took place
with the healing of this leper. Here in the first portion of
Matthew chapter 8. And when he was come down from
the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And behold, there
came a leper, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt,
thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand,
and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said unto him, See
thou tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest,
and offer the gift that Moses commanded thee for a testimony
unto them." My title this morning of this
message, I think, will be, There Came a Record to Him. became
a leper to him." Now, that's amazing in itself, and I think
we'll see that in a minute. But verse 1 here, I thought,
was very important for us to look at just for a thought, when
he came down from the mountain. Who is this? And I say this because
he had just preached this message that you and I spent so many
Sundays on, the Sermon on the Mount. And an amazing statement
was made concerning him after he had preached this sermon,
and you probably remember it. In the last verse of the last
chapter, chapter 7, it was said when he finished his message
that he taught them as one having authority. He taught him as one
having great power. And we looked at the reason for
that, and some of you may remember that. He taught them with authority
because of who he is. Who is this that's coming down
from this mountain? Well, he's the Lord of Glory.
Remember we studied that in chapter 7? And that message where he
said, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we
not preached in your name? He'll be in the Day of Judgment,
this Jesus of Nazareth. He'll be there in the Day of
Judgment, and people will address Him as He really is. He's the
Lord. Lord, Lord. And we saw that,
didn't we? And we saw something else there.
The reason He taught men with authority is because He holds
the destiny. This man that came down off of
this mountain holds the eternal destiny of every individual in
his power. Now think, think of the authority
that this man has. He said, Then while I professed
unto them in that day, I never knew you, depart from me. See what he says? He says to
his people, come ye blessed in my Father. He says to the others,
depart from me. He holds their eternal destiny
in his hand. No man comes into heaven, no
man goes into torment, but at his word. He's the Lord of Glory. He's the King of Kings. He's
the Son of Man. He is all of that. But He's more
than that, isn't He? He's God. That's who He is. That's who He is. Matthew began
in his own book telling us that. You remember the account how
the angel came there to Joseph and said, Don't be afraid to
take this woman to be your wife. She's conceived of the Holy Ghost.
And she's going to pray for the son and call his name Jesus.
And you're going to name him Immanuel. Wasn't that what the
angel told Joseph? What does Immanuel mean? Well,
the Holy Spirit interpreted that there in that verse. He said,
His name shall be Immanuel, God with us. And that's what makes
this so important here. He came down from the mountain. God came down from this mountain.
And the reason I stress this this morning, because when I
read this, it reminded me of another occasion when God was
up on a mountain. And you and I remember it very
well. We have it recorded in Exodus chapter 19 and chapter
20. You remember when God was going
to give the law to the children of Israel. And he told Moses,
he said, you gather the tribes of Israel together down to the
foot of this Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai was a large mountain
range, but it just went way up into the sky. And it was almost
a solid rock. Just a humongous mountain. And Moses gathered those tribes
down there to the foot of the mountain. And the Lord said,
I'm going to appear to the children of Israel. God is going to appear
to the children of Israel. He's going to reveal Himself
to them. So He told Moses to set these dams down at the foot
of the mountain, where they couldn't come up and touch the foot of
the mountain. And He says, you make sure they wash their clothes.
They take baths and make sure the men don't come near their
wives and their wives near their husbands. Because he said, I'm
going to appear unto them. Well, he didn't do that. Remember the occasion? When the
scripture says, God descended upon that mountain, and there
was fire, this rock, this huge mountain was burning, and the
smoke was ascending up like a furnace. And there was a trumpet wax exceeding
loud, and the voices of words, and the scripture says that great
mountain, it shook. The whole mountain quaked. And
it tells us why all these things were going on. The Lord descended
upon Mount Sinai. And he called Moses, and Moses
made his way quickly up into that mountain. And as soon as
he got up there, the Lord said to him, said, Moses, get down.
You get out of this mountain, and you go down and make sure
that no one touches the foot of that mountain. If a man should
break through those bounds and touch the mountain, he was to
be thrown, stoned, or thrust through with a dart. And Moses
said, we've got those bounds set up. They can't get through.
And the Lord spoke to him this way. He said, Away! Away! And He's cured Moses. He's cured
him. And he tucked up the skirts of
his loins, and you can almost see him in his sandals, headed
back down the mountain. He was in such a hurry. The scripture
says Moses feared, and he trembled. And he got back down there to
the mountain, to the bottom of the mountain. And all the people
had removed themselves. And they said, Moses, don't let
God speak with us anymore. Lest we die. Lest we die. That's the difference in the
God that we see there upon Mount Sinai. He came down upon that
mountain and appeared to the people, and they said, surely
this is God. We're going to that. But brothers
and sisters, this is the same God. Here he comes down from
heaven, and here he comes down upon this mountain, and now he
comes down in the midst of the people. Is this the same God? It's the same God. It's just
a different side of this God, isn't it? It's a different side
of it. You go there upon Mount Sinai,
and we see a side that's not good. I've often said, I've often
said, there's a bad side of God. And I don't mean bad in a bad
way, but it's bad for us, if you and I have to stand before Him. His holiness, that's like
white light. His justice, the eyes of His
justice. that can see every sin within
a man? God standing there with a sword
of justice ready to revenge himself of his enemies? That's the God
that we see on Mount Sinai. That's his bad side. That's the
side of God I don't want to have anything to do with. We can't
stand before Him. This holy prophet, this great
prophet said, I cannot endure to see this sight. He said, it
makes me fear and quaint. I cannot stand before Him. But
oh, here we see Him coming down from this mountain. This mountain. And what happens when He comes
down from this mountain? Well, it says here that these
multitudes followed Him. Multitudes follow Him. This is
the same God. But what do we see in Him here?
We see His good side going. We see His face and His smiling
and His gracious and His loving. That's what we see in Him here. He comes down and this great
multitude follows Him. You know what we see here, brothers
and sisters? This multitude comes up to Him,
and they feel like they can be free to handle Him. Be free to
come right up to Him and look at Him and listen to Him without
fear, without being filled with dread. And what is it? Well,
here's the difference. Here is the same God. There's
no doubt about that. But He meets these people in
Christ His Son. He meets these people in his
holy child, Jesus. God descends down from heaven,
not only upon a mountain, but he descends into the womb of
a virgin and is made in our bones and flesh of our flesh. He becomes
one of us, sin accepted. And He said to these people and
He said to us, this is my friendly side. This is my loving face. This is my gracious face. Come
and approach Him to me without fear and without being filled
with dread. And that's what they did. The
whole multitude approached unto Him. Oh, we can't approach Him to
the God we see on Mount Sinai. We'd be destroyed there. He would
break through upon us there, and we would perish. So He says,
I have this other side, this reconciled side. I'm a Savior. And let the poor fallen humanity
approach Him to me without fear of being consumed. Ain't that
amazing? That's the difference in the
medicines. One, you see an absolute God outside of Christ, as it
were. Disjustice and holiness and wrath
upon sin. But here, here you see God in
Christ. A Savior. A Reconciler. There's a phrase that we often
see. in connection to the incarnation of Christ, the birth of Christ.
God coming down and joining and said to our likeness. You often
see this phrase in the Gospels. And it's this. Fear not. Fear
not. I remember John Claude said the
other night, when MacPhyllis approached him to David, the
first thing David said to him was what? Fear not. And he said,
that's the gospel. That's the gospel then. Fear
not. But this raises often, let me just hit three, two, three
questions. Joseph, when he found out Mary
was pregnant, He was mindful to put her away. He was so fearful
about what was going on, he had no idea about what was going
on. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him to announce
the birth of Christ, and the first thing he said was, Fear
not, Joseph, fear not. When Elizabeth was ready to conceive
John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, the angel of the Lord
appeared to Zachariah, and what's the first thing he said to him?
Zachariah, fear not. Fear not. When the angel appeared
to Mary to tell her she was going to have a son, and she was troubled
in her spirit, the angel said unto her, Mary, fear not. The
shepherds were watching over their flocks by night, and suddenly
this heavenly host was above them, and the glory of the Lord
shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel
said, Fear not, until you is born this day in the city of
David a Saviour." which is Christ the Lord. See the difference?
On that mountain way back yonder where the children are buried,
we have an absolute God. You and I cannot approach Him
with that God. He will not allow it. He would
consume us. But here we have the same God
coming down from this mountain, but He's in our humanity. Bone
of our bones, flesh of our flesh. Glenn, he's one of us. Showing
us that we can indeed approach unto Him. He's made that possible. He's made it possible, yes. Till God in human flesh I see. My thoughts no comfort find. The holy, just, and sacred three
are terrors to my mind. But if Immanuel's face appears,
my hope, my joy begins. His name forbids my slavish fear,
and His grace removes my sin." We can approach unto this Jesus,
can't we? God in our likeness. God in our
likeness. Therefore the multitude, they
followed Him. But not only that, look here
in verse 2. Look here in verse 2. Not only the common people,
but this is something very amazing. When God incarnate came down
from this mountain in verse 2, behold, there came a leper. Now that's amazing still, that.
For well people to follow Him, clean people to follow Him, that's
amazing. They felt they had the liberty
to do that. But here now comes a leper. And he uses this word
as Matthew often does, behold, would you look at that. Here
comes a letter, would you look at that. Would you look at that. There's two words synonymous
in the scriptures, believe and come in. And they're the same. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. And
here we find another word now that's synonymous with coming,
because Matthew says this leper worshiped him, and Mark says
he came to him. What is it to worship Christ?
It's to come to Him. We don't come to Him, we don't
worship Him. We come to Him, we worship Him.
Worship and coming to Christ is all I want. But Matthew uses
this word here, behold you. Why does he do that? Well, let
me explain it to you this way. This disease of leprosy was an
awful disease. There was no cure for it. If
you have leprosy, you usually died of it. And the only way
you didn't die of it is if you were healed, if the Lord healed
you. And if you had this leprosy,
there were certain things that you were required to do, by law. The law required you to do certain
things, and you could be stoned to death if you disobeyed these
laws. One was, when you discovered
you had leprosy, you were to tear your clothes. You were to
take your sleeves and rip them up, and rip your collars and
rip your breeches up. It made you to appear a beggar
and destitute. Then you were to take this cloth
and put it over your lip. And then you had to leave the
towns and cities. You weren't allowed to go into
Jerusalem. You weren't allowed into the temple. You were to
dwell without, in a solitary place. You weren't allowed to
mix with society. And no one was allowed to approach
into you. If you saw someone getting too
close to you, you were to raise your hand and cry unclean. Unclean. And you were never allowed
to approach into anybody else. You were put out. You were put
outside the cabin. Here's the thing that I'm saying.
This letter came to the Lord Jesus Christ contrary to the
law. If he had to. If he sat there
and said, well I can't come or I'll break the law. If he sat
there, he would die. He either had to come contrary
to the law or he could never come at all. I was reminded of that old song
when I thought of that. I can but perish if I go. I am
resolved to try. If I stay away from Him, I shall
forever die. What does this teach us when
we consider this this morning? Here's a leper who came and approached
contrary to the law, and he was healed. You know what this teaches
us. If you and I come to the Lord Jesus Christ, we must come
to Him contrary to the law. What does the law teach us? This
do, and thou shalt live. Isn't that what it teaches us?
Moses describes the righteousness that's of the law. The man that
doeth those things shall live by doing them. He's going to
live and do. The Lord gave the law to the
children of Israel, and he said, if you keep my covenant, and
you keep my laws, and you keep my statutes, and you walk in
them, and you do them, then you'll be my children, and I'll be your
father. But he says, if you break them,
I'll curse you. And what the children of Israel,
some of them, come to realize was this. We can't keep these. We're in big trouble. Because
this law is too strict, and we're poor fallen sinners. We can't
keep the law. What are we going to do? Well,
what are you and I going to do, brothers and sisters? This is
the question I put to you this morning. Do you know anything
about the nature of God's law? Have you loved God with all your
heart, mind, soul, and strength? Have you loved Him perfectly?
Have you served Him perfectly? Have you rendered to every precept
and ordinance and commandment perfect obedience? Then how are
you and I going to come to God? To be accepted of Him? And have
Him to be our Father? There's only one way to come.
And it can't be according to this law, can it? We're going
to have to come contrary to the law. You cannot come to Him and
say, I'm going to keep it. No, we've done broken it out.
Yes, yes. Look over here with me in Romans
chapter 3. Look in Romans chapter 3 just
for a minute in verse 19. Old Matthew chapter 8. Look here
in Romans chapter 3. And look in verse 19. There's two ways that men seek to approach unto
God. Two ways that men seek to approach
unto God. One is by this law, and I mean
when I say by the law, their own words, by their own obedience,
by doing certain things or abstaining from doing certain things. They
seek to approach Him to God that way. Well, let me say to those
this, if that's the way you're going to approach Him to God,
by what you're doing, or what you're not doing, you best remember
that element. Way back there in Exodus chapter
19. And remember that holy man Moses himself who said, I have
seen Him in fear and quake. I can't stand before that God.
I can't approach Him to that God. There's one way that men
seek to approach Him to God. But here's another way, not on
what they do at all, but through the Lord Jesus Christ
and His obedience and His merits. in his intercession. Let's read
that in chapter 3 of Romans, verse 19. Now we know that whatsoever
things the law sayeth, it saith to them that are under the law,
that every mouth may be stopped. And all the world become guilty
before God. Therefore by the deeds of the
law there shall no flesh be saved, be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin." And there we are. There we are left shut out. And the law says, don't you dare
approach anybody. You're a leper. You stay right
here and you die. And that's where we are here.
We're guilty before God. How shall we approach this? We
must come contrary to the law. By the deeds of the Lord, no
flesh shall be justified. How then can we be justified?
Well, let's read on. But now, but now, the righteousness
of God, that righteousness that Jesus Christ brought into this
world, that righteousness that He gives poor sinners who believe
on Him, the righteousness of God, let's see it, without the
law. See that? What's he meaning? Without our obedience to the
law. We cannot keep the law. It proves
our guilt. It's the strength of sin. It
reveals the wrath of God. Therefore, we must come to God
apart from the law, without the law. And it's manifested, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets, even that righteousness of God,
which is by the faith of Jesus Christ. unto all, and upon all
them that believe, because there is no difference. For all have
seemed to come short of the glory of God, being justified freely
by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." How
can we come there? We can't come through the law.
We're condemned. It's not by our works. We're guilty. We've
got to come through another means, through the Lord Jesus Christ,
through His blood, through His own obedience, through His own
righteousness. He is able to save them to the
uttermost that come to God by Him. By Him. And you know you can't mix these
two, can you? The leopard basically had this
choice. He could either stay there on the side of the road and die
a beggar and a leopard, or he could acknowledge that I'm a
lawbreaker and I'm going to the Lord by another name. I'm going
for mercy. I'm going for grace. And there's
the two ways of being approaching to God. By what I'm doing, by
my own obedience and my own worth, or by His grace and by His mercy
that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you can't mix these two.
You ain't going to hold on to both of them. It's impossible.
You're going to let go of the law. You're going to let go of
your own works and your own goodness and your own merits and all that. And you're going to leave that
all back there at the side of the road. And you say, I'm going
to be saved by another way. I'm going to be saved with grace.
I'm going to be saved wholly by Christ. I was seeing some pictures. Jean-Claude
brought some pictures over from somewhere over in Africa. I was
amazed. He brought a bunch of pictures,
and we were looking at them, and there was an old metal hut. I mean, it looked like if a puff
of wind come through, it just scattered everywhere. The ruggedest
looking place you've ever seen in your life. And it had some
scribbling over that little piece of tin, something scribbled on
it. I said, what's that say? He said, that says, grace alone,
scriptures alone, and the cross alone. Oh man, they believe that
over there too. Come over in the dark places
of Africa, Here's a man who's seeking to be saved by the obedience
and righteousness of somebody else. That's the only way to
approach Him to God. I'm a leper. I'm a leper. I'm a lawbreaker. And now I'm
saved contrary to the law. Not at the expense of it, because
it was fulfilled by somebody else. But now I'm not saving
my allegiance to the law, and you can't be either. But there
is salvation in one who has fulfilled the law, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that meant we came that way.
Hey, you lawbreaker! Get out of here! You're breaking
the law! We're going to stone you to death! I'll take my chances. I'm going to die out there anyway.
Yeah, I'm a lawbreaker. I expect to be saved that way. Look back over here in our text
again. Look in the second part of verse
2. This is getting very interesting here. There came a leper and
worshipped him, came to him saying, Lord, if thou will, thou can
make me clean. And notice what he did here.
I think this is very important. He surrendered His will up. He
just gave up on His will. And He surrendered Himself to
the will of Jesus Christ. He's saying here, basically,
Lord, I can't earn anything. I'm not here because I deserve
to be cleansed. I can't command you to do anything.
And He just surrendered Himself up to the will of Christ. And
He said, if you will. If you will. You can make me
clean. Imagine this man here full of
leprosy, and I'm telling you he was ready to die a horrible
death. And he acknowledges this. This
is amazing to me. He acknowledges this. Whether
I die a horrible death, or whether I'm healed of this leprosy, it's
going to be according to your will before whom I stand. Ain't
that amazing? My will has nothing to do with
it. It's your will. It's your will. Have you understood
that, dear soul? Have you understood that? You know,
it wasn't an issue of power. He said there, if thou wilt,
thou canst. You're able, you have the ability
to heal me. It's not a matter of power, is
it? Free willers. Poor things. The
issue with them is not the power of Christ. They sing about it
all the time. There is power, power, wonder-working power in
the blood of the Lamb. And I love that. And I agree
with them on that. Power to sing. But what they
deny the Lord in salvation is His will. This leper acknowledged both,
didn't he? You have the power to save me,
and it's going to have to be according to your will. And here's the consolation of
coming to the Lord Jesus Christ like me. You'll never be turned
away. You'll never be turned away.
You come to the Lord Jesus Christ this morning like this leopard
came, And you say to him, Lord, my heart, as the best I can discover
it, is just as rotten as this leopard's flesh was. And my sin in my own sight stinks
to leave, just as this man's rotten flesh stinks to him. But I come to you this morning,
and I know that there's power enough in you, And there's merit
enough in you. There's ability enough in you
to heal men. But Lord, it's in your will. If you will, you can save them. And dear soul, if you come to
Him that way and He turns you away, you can leave with this
much confidence that you're the first one He ever turned away. And you can spread it all over
hell when you get there. I came to the Lord Jesus as a
sinner that I am. And I cast myself upon Him to
be saved by His power if He was willing to save me and He wasn't
willing. And He sent me away just like
I came. You'll be the first one. And
I'll tell you what the devil will do. He'll hook you up with
a big team of chariots and he'll ride you around all over hell.
Because he'll know that I've got somebody down here very unique. Here's a man who came to Christ
as a sinner, and the Savior turned him away. He'll parade you all
over hell so you can tell everybody that. But you know something?
It'll never happen. It'll never happen. Lord, if you will, you've got
the power. You've got the ability. You can
do it. But I tell you, it's very important
what He said. It's very important what He didn't
say. He didn't say this, I've decided, Jesus, to let you heal
me. He didn't say, I now receive
my healing. He didn't say that either. He didn't say, I stand here before
this multitude and make a decision for Jesus and my decision has
healed me. He didn't say that either. He
didn't say, I confess that I'm a leper and I receive Jesus to
heal me and someday I might think about receiving Him as my Lord. He didn't say that either. If this leper had put his confidence
in such strains, what do you think would have happened to
him? Can you see him running off into
town? I made my decision for Jesus. And you know what's going
to happen by the time he gets to that gate? These bunch of
men are going to grab a hold of him and take him outside the
town and say, you sorry leper, you ain't allowed in here. Oh,
but I made it, you're still a leper. Brothers and sisters, what I'm
trying to drive home this morning, let a man make all the decisions
he wants to. Let a man claim everything he
wants to. But a man is not saved until the Lord of glory saves
him. When is a man saved? When he
does this, when he does that? No. When the Lord saves him,
that's when he's saved. Lord, if you will, if you will. Oh, you're a blessed man this
morning. You're a blessed woman. If God's made you to know and
believe that it's His will to save you. You're a blessed person, I'm
telling you. That's a secret that nobody knows until God reveals
it. He's made known unto us the mystery
of His will according to His own good pleasure which He purposed
in Himself. Everybody's salvation is just
like this leper's healing. You do not know if it's God's
will to save any man until God reveals that will. We have such a good example of
it here in this place, don't we? Lord, if you will, can you
imagine this crowd? You understand, this few. Well,
Matthew said it's a great multitude. And here they are following the
Master, and suddenly this leper comes out of nowhere. And he
busts through this crowd and he falls down before the Lord
of Glory. And he says, Lord, if you will,
you can make me clean. And this hush goes over this
great crowd. You can hear a pin drop. Well, they look back at this
leper, and there he lays, his filthy sores running. And they
look at the Lord of Glory, and they say, what's he going to
do? What is his will? If He wills, nobody knows, and
they wait with expectation. And nobody knows what the will
of the Lord is concerning the healing of that man until verse
3, and Jesus put forth His hand and touched him and said, I will,
be thou clean. And it's the same thing with
you and I. We don't know. Until God makes
a man to know, it's my will to save you. Ain't it a blessing to know that?
Ain't it a blessing to know it's your will to save you? You and
I look underneath us, as we sometimes do, and consider we know that
hell is full of people. It's full of people, many that
we've known and walked with in our lives. And it's enlarging
itself, wherever it is. And we look around us and there's
people all around us without God and without hope. And here
some of you are sitting here this morning. And you have a
good hope. Christ the Lord is in your heart. He's given you life. And you
trace it all right back to this, don't you? It's His will. And
He made you to know it's His will because He saved you. And
He saved you because it was His will. Lord, if thou wilt. This poor lamb was made to rest
upon the will of Christ and the power of Christ. I will have mercy. upon whom
I will have mercy. So then it is not of him that
runneth, but it is God who wills to have mercy." I used to go
to jail with the Gideons. We had a man there that was always
saying to those prisoners, just exercise the power of your will. Why didn't the leper do this?
Why didn't he do such silly things as that? You know why? He was a true leper. He was a true leper. He may have
tried those things before. He may have tried all kinds of
man-made gimmicks. They don't work. They don't work. I'm going to the Savior. I'm
going to the Lord to be healed, to be saved. Forget these gimmicks. I need a Savior. If you will, look in verse 3. Lord, if you will, I will. That's what he said. Jesus put
forth his hand and touched him and said, I will. Oh, it's a
humbling thing, I know that, and somewhat fearful, to stand
before the Lord and know that whether you're saved or damned,
it's going to be according to His will. That's somewhat of
a humbling thing, isn't it? But I tell you, if you'll stand
there, what you're probably going to find is Him saying this to
you, I will. I will. I will. Something else
here in verse 3, and I want to notice it, and I'll hurry and
I'll close. I noticed this as I was reading. Verse 3, it says
that the Lord put forth His hand, Jesus put forth His hand, and
He touched him. Now, if you'll read this account
over in Matthew chapter 1 verse 42, you'll realize that the Lord
touching the man wasn't what healed him. He often healed men by laying
his hand. He laid his hand on folks and
healed them. But that wasn't the way he healed this man. Mark
tells us that as soon as he had spoken to him, he was healed
by speaking to him. Well, why did he put his hand
on him? And that's amazing to me. It
would be amazing to you. You and I can't relate to leprosy.
It was a horrible thing. I have a little printout that
I keep around sometimes of John Gill. He gave an eyewitness account
from someone who was back in the Old Testament that witnessed
first-hand what it was for men to live and die with leprosy.
And he said, they get these old officers. that start on their
body and begin to spread. They're greenish and they're
white and they dry up and then they bust open again and feed
off of each other and they get from the top of a man's head
to the soles of his feet. And when they burst and dry up,
they get like fish scales, just scaly. And then they burst open
again. And their flesh begins to decay
The cartridge of the nose is one of the first things that
begins to decay, and their nose sinks in, and then their nose
completely rots off. Gil said the eyewitness account
was there was just two nose holes, and the ears had completely rotted
off. And he said if a person tried
to scratch his scalp because it was a terrible itch, he would
not only take the hair off, but he would take the scalp with
him. And the liquid that came out
of these ulcers were so stinking, he said, that you could hardly
endure to pass by these men who were dying of leprosy. And their
eyes were flaming red, and their skin got a glowing white. And
finally, if they lived long enough, their feet would nearly rot off,
and their membranes would fall off. And they lived that way.
And the last thing that happened, their body would be full of temperature.
Gil said, this one eyewitness account said, that he put an
apple in a leper's hand and timed it, and he said one hour, him
holding that apple. It was completely withered up. One hour. Can you imagine this? And this is the man that Luke
said was full of leprosy. That means his leprosy was extreme.
And here the Lord Jesus is, the Scripture said. He reached out
and laid His hand on this man. And it wasn't to heal him, because
He healed him with His Word. Why did He do that? Did He actually
put His holy hands on those ulcers that were running? The flesh
that was rotting? That's what the scripture seems
to indicate that it is. Why would he do that? Well, you
know what Mark tells us. Jesus was loathed with compassion. Now, brothers and sisters, that's
affection, isn't it? That's love, isn't it? God in
heaven, there with the worship of the holy angels. God so pure
He cannot look upon sin. Up on Mount Sinai with all those
angels flying through the fire and the smoke. And now here He
is in our likeness. And He has those holy hands laid
on those running ulcers, those sores. Ain't that amazing? You
and I are in this world, and I'll be the first to admit it,
it's not like it used to be before the fall. It can be a heart-wrenching
place to live, can it? We have no idea what's coming
tomorrow. We're healthy today. Tomorrow, Carl, we may lie in
a coma in the hospital. We don't know this. Disease and
heartbreak and sin and a world full of devils and who knows
what all. And I think sometimes if I did
not have, and if you did not have, a sympathizing God, a high priest who could be touched
with the feelings of our infirmities, to sympathize with us in our
awful fallen state, my heart would be overwhelmed with sorrow. No, He didn't have to reach and
put His hand upon this filthy flesh. But He wanted you and
I to know how He sympathizes with us. And don't you love Him
for it. Yes, I'm sick. And you're sick. What are we going to suffer before
we leave this world? But what did He say about when
we peel off our dying heads, Who did he say would make our
sick bed? He said, I'll make it. I'm as
a nursing father to you. Paul talked about the gentleness
of Christ. Well, here He is. And you know something about
our Savior? He's so holy, and He's so full of merit. It didn't
affect Him at all. He didn't contract this disease.
It changed him nothing at all. But I tell you what it did. It
sure changed the man who came into contact with that touch,
didn't it? And he can dwell in our hearts
in this sinful world as we go about struggling with sin. And
it doesn't pollute him, but his dwelling there sure lifts us
up. For instance, And he said, I will be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. That's what salvation is. We
don't have a class here to teach men into the kingdom of God.
You're barred into it. We don't set up next week to
baptize you and wash your sins away. You don't have to wait
and go through this. No. As soon as the Lord speaks
to you, you're clean. He washes you. He gives you a
new life, a new birth. And verse 4, and I'll close with
this, Jesus said unto him, See, can you imagine this, just imagine
this, see that you tell no man. He doesn't listen. Lord, please
don't say that. You know he can't do that. Here's
a man dying of leprosy, and you tell him not to tell anybody.
Besides, what would he need to tell anybody? This poor man probably
sat on the side of the road, unclean, unclean. And now here
he is, back in society again. Everybody knows him. Look at
that. Is that that leper that sat outside
of town and banged him? Well, I'm sure that's him. He
don't look like him, but I'm sure that's him. That's him.
What's happened to that man? Oh, that's Jesus of Nazareth.
He's done it again. Brothers and sisters, it's not
so much as what we say. We don't have to go around talking.
This world is so sick of talk, isn't it? This world is so sick
of people telling, well, I'm a Christian. So what? Let me see it. Let me see it
in your daily life. Let me see it on your job. Let
me see it in your families. Earth's where Christ shows, ain't
it? Lord, we're lepers. We're all
lepers. Do for us what you did for this
leper. Our Father, gracious and wise
Father, thank you for your dear Son. Thank you, Lord, for revealing
your glory. You're the Lord God of heaven,
and there's none else beside you. There is no God like you. There's none beside you. You
are our Creator, You are our Sustainer, and You are our Savior,
our Lord, our King, our Shepherd, our All-in-all. Lord, we all
bow before You this morning. We surrender ourselves up to
You again and render the praise of our lives. What else can we
give? We were lepers and You cleansed
us. We were sinners and You saved
us. lost and you found us dead and you give us life. We have
nothing, Lord, to repay you. We just render to you the praise
of our lips. Bless your message this morning
to your people. And, Lord, bless it to some poor
lost soul. May they this morning approach
unto you and find rest and find cleansing, find salvation that
this poor leper found. In the name and for the glory
of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.