And hold your Bibles there while
I make some comments to you about preaching. I've been doing this for a long
time, and I thank God I've never yet
come close to getting over the burden of preaching. and to preach
the gospel, the most awesome responsibility any man can carry
in this world. I have this responsibility to
speak to you, eternity-bound men and women, in God's stead. And it's my responsibility to
do so in the power of God. And I'm totally incapable of
doing so. Only if God speaks through me
can I speak to you in God's stead. And I am confident also that
the next greatest responsibility in this world is the responsibility
you have right now. Hearing the Word of God. hearing the Word of God. If all you're hearing is the
opinions of a man, if all you're hearing is theological jargon,
if all you're hearing is wrangling of religious theory, then there's
nothing to it. But if God Almighty speaks through
these lips of clay, and you hear the Word of God, you're going
to answer for it. one way or the other you will
answer for it. In the day of judgment every
sinner will give account of every word heard from God and every
word you had opportunity to hear but didn't. Every true sermon, every true
sermon is the proclamation of the Word of God. It is not the
preaching denominational creed, it is not the preaching of denominational
dogma, it is the proclamation of the Word of God. But not just
the letter of the Word, though certainly it involves that. It
is the declaration of that which the Word of God declares, the
spirit and the intent of the Word given. Any man can read
the letters and give them back to you. But finding what the
word means, what the word says, what the word teaches, is another
story. For another thing, all true preaching,
all true preaching, all of it, I can't stress this enough, all
true preaching is the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified. There is no preaching of the
gospel, no preaching of the word of God, no preaching of a message
from God that is not the preaching of Christ crucified. When Paul
said, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and
him crucified, when he wrote to the Corinthians, he was saying
exactly the same thing as he did when he spoke to the Ephesian
elders and said, I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. Jesus Christ crucified is the
message of Holy Scripture. Jesus Christ crucified is the
revelation of God's Word in all its parts. This book is not simply
Christocentric, that is, it is not just that Christ is the center
of all, Christ is all. He's the essence of all. Everything
given in the book is designed to show Jesus Christ crucified
as the sinner's substitute. For another thing, biblical preaching.
If you read the New Testament, if you read the pattern given
of the preaching of the apostles in the book of Acts, the pattern
given of the preaching of our Lord, for that matter the pattern
given of the preaching of the prophets in the Old Testament,
all biblical preaching is plain, sensible, simple, forceful preaching. It is preaching that folks can
understand. If I stand up here and talk to you in language you
don't understand, I haven't done you any good. I might have impressed
you a little bit for a little while with something I might
have convinced you I know, but I haven't done you any good.
Preaching is simple. the simple declaration of the
most profound mysteries in the universe. The preaching of the
Trinity, my soul, what's more profound than the Trinity? What's
more profound than the incarnation of Jesus Christ? What's more
profound than the message of substitutionary atonement? What's
more profound than the everlasting purpose of God Almighty, His
absolute sovereign providence? But in preaching, we don't delve
into the mysteries, we just declare the revelation. We just declare
the revelation. This is what God says. And we
bow to what God says. In fact, when Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, now remember, this man Paul was probably, in all
probability, the most well-educated man. He had the best education. possible for a man to receive
in the age and in the circumstances in which he lived. He was not
only well educated, he would bring it. He didn't just get
the degree, he got the learning. He was a sharp, sharp cookie.
But when he preached to the Corinthians, he said, my preaching was not
with enticing words of man's wisdom. I didn't get up and put
on a show for you. I didn't come and talk to you
in words of eloquence and use, fine speech so you'd be impressed
with the way I talked. I spoke to you plainly so you'd
understand what I said. I spoke to you in power and the
Holy Spirit so that my preaching stood before you, not in the
power of man's words or man's wisdom, but in the power of God. So what I preach to you, if God
writes it on your heart, you've got it. You've got it. If you're just convinced because
I said it, or because of the way I said it, or because of
the proof I gave for it, you haven't gotten anything. And
preaching, true preaching, is carrying a message from God Almighty
to you. The Lord God says in Isaiah 40,
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem. And the word comfortably, It
means, Bill Raleigh, I have the responsibility of speaking to
your heart. Well, no man can speak to another
man's heart. His passions, yes. His emotions,
yes. But not to his heart. Oh, but
if God puts a message from His heart into my heart, He'll give
me grace to give it to your heart. That's what it is to preach.
It's carrying a message from God. not delivering facts, not
delivering theories, not delivering dogma, but a message. A message
that calls for an immediate response from you. Where there's no summons, there's
no sermon. Where there's no call for a response,
there's no message delivered. Now I've got a message tonight.
I'm confident I have a message. I pray God will give me grace
to deliver it, and if he does, I will be successful. I will
accomplish exactly what I came here to accomplish. Now I don't
know whether that will result in your everlasting salvation,
or in your everlasting damnation, but I know this, if God speaks
through me, the word I had to speak to you tonight will either
be your saver of life unto life, or of death unto death. according
to the purpose of God. All right, now let's look at
the text. Luke chapter 5. My subject is this. How does
a sinner approach the Lord in order to obtain mercy? God Almighty
is absolutely sovereign. He can save you or damn you.
It's up to Him. He can have mercy on you or not
have mercy on you. It's up to him. What you read
or said just a little bit ago in your prayer, not of him that
willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.
Well, how on earth does a sinner who deserves God's wrath, a sinner
unclean, unfit to even be looked upon by God, how on this earth
does a sinner come to this holy sovereign God and obtain mercy? How do you get it? Luke chapter
5 verse 12, 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 clean. And immediately the
leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no
man, but go and show thyself to the priest, and offer for
thy cleansing according as Moses commanded, for a testimony to
them. But so much the more went there
a fame abroad of him, and great multitudes came together to hear
and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew
himself into the wilderness. and prayed. Here is an unclean
leper, seeking mercy from the hands of the sovereign Christ,
and he obtained the mercy he sought. The Lord made him whole. Now we're not told anything else
in the Bible about the history of this man. He's mentioned by
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. His healing is mentioned by all
three. But we're not given any information at all about him
except that he was a leper. He came to the master and he
walked away, made whole. We don't know who he was, we
don't know who his parents were, we don't know where he was from,
we don't know how old he was, we don't know what became of
him after this. It seems therefore obvious to me that he is sent
before us for just one reason. We have this story given for
just one purpose. This sinner shows us how sinners
must come to the Lord if we would obtain mercy. Now let me show
you five things from this story. Number one, this man came to
the Lord Jesus with a deep, deep sense of his desperate need. You're familiar with the scriptures,
the declarations concerning leprosy. A few weeks back we read in our
daily readings The laws given in the book of Leviticus, chapters
12 and 13 and 14, I believe in there, where he deals with the
laws of uncleanness and deals with the laws of leprosy. Leprosy
was a loathsome disease. It was common during the days
of our Lord's earthly ministry. And it fitly represents and is
used throughout the scriptures as a picture of that sin which
the sons of Adam have in them. That sin which is the incurable
heart disease of mankind. In his famous work, The Land
in the Book, Thompson describes lepers like this. He said the
hair falls from the head and eyebrows. The nails loosen and
decay. They drop off. Joint after joint
of the fingers and toes shrink up and slowly fall away. The gums are absorbed and the
teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue,
and the palate are slowly consumed. The leper was a loathsome, miserable,
outcast, unclean creature. He was walking death. Death smelled
all over him. Leprosy, like sin, is a loathsome,
unclean thing. Leprosy, like sin, is incurable
by any human means, even to this day, so far as I've been able
to discover, there's no cure for the disease. Like sin, leprosy
is consuming it. It consumes all of a man's being
until at last he dies, for leprosy is the sure forerunner of death,
as is sin. This man in our text had a keen
sense of his desperate need. He was a man whose body was covered
from head to toe with leprosy. His disease was constantly before
him. He was in such a horrible plight,
such a horrible condition that there was no hiding what was
wrong with him. His body was covered with ulcers,
oozing with a liquid stench that you could smell when he was way
off from you. This man's body was wracked with
pain. Luke tells us plainly he was
full of leprosy, just full of leprosy. He knew he needed help. And he knew no man could help
him. But here was a man who was more
than a man. Here was a man whom he recognized
by some means or another is himself God Almighty. He needed supernatural,
merciful, divine help. He needed help from God Almighty. And without it he was sure to
die. Now this is the very reason why many, perhaps some of you,
have never yet come to Christ. You don't need him yet. You don't need him yet. If you ever need him, you'll
come to him. Perhaps some of you here had
begun to see and to feel and to know your need of the Savior.
The plague of sin in your heart causes your very soul to burn
with fever, you're lost and helpless, unclean and doomed, and you know
that without Christ you'll surely die. You need him, and you know
it. From your heart you continually
cry, give me Christ or else I die. You need his power to save you,
to heal you of the heart disease that's in you, his blood to cleanse
you, his righteousness to cover you, his grace and mercy to save
you. That's the first step towards
salvation. Those who sense their need of
mercy will soon obtain mercy. The hymn writer put it this way,
all the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him. That's
it. Do you need him? Do you need
him? Oh, I need him. I need him. I've got to have him. I've got
to have him. I have no hope of acceptance
before God Almighty, but Him. I have no hope for eternity,
but Him. I have no righteousness, but
Him. I have no cleansing for my soul, but Him. Only Him. All right, now here's the second
thing. This leper came to Christ in great humiliation. Luke says,
seeing Jesus, he fell on his face. Mark's account in chapter
1 of Mark tells us that he came kneeling. In Matthew chapter
8, Matthew tells us he came worshipping. Now that's just the way you've
got to come to Christ. You can't come and you won't
come anyway except kneeling, falling down, worshipping him. It's the only way a man ever
comes to Christ. I see these television productions and religious
shenanigans that go on in our day. You know, you have these
huge crusades and coliseums and ball stadiums filled with people
and folks are given an invitation as though somehow you can get
to Christ by walking out of a seat somewhere down a path to the
front of a building. Such nonsense, such stupidity,
such idolatry. But they're coming, you know.
They come sipping on a Coke. They come chewing gum, looking
around, seeing who's watching them. They're just coming in
which way they want to. No, oh no. Now if you ever come
to Christ, you'll come to him right where you are, in your
heart, falling down, kneeling, worshipping him. Worshipping
him. The only way up is down. You're gonna have to come down
from your pie. come down from your self-righteousness,
come down from your self-sufficiency, you must come down in your own
eyes, down, down, down, down in the dust, at the feet of the
sovereign Christ, or you will never obtain his mercy. In Luke
chapter 18, you don't need to turn there, very familiar story. The Pharisee and the publican
went up to the temple. The Pharisee, he was right at
home in the temple. He was right at home in religious
stuff. He was right at home acting religious. He was right at home standing,
you see. I walked right up to the front
and lift his eyes and said, God, I thank you. I'm not as other
men are. I'm not perfect by a long stretch,
but I'm not like anybody else. I fast twice every week. I pay
tithes of my chickens and their eggs. I pray three times every
day, and I'm not like him, that publican over yonder. And the publican, standing far
off, just as far back in the far corner of the temple as he
could get, wouldn't even look toward God's holy place, wouldn't
even look toward the altar, wouldn't even lift his eyes to heaven
because he was overwhelmed by his corruption and guilt. And
he just cried, beating on his chest, God, be merciful to me,
the sinner. The sinner. And the language
of the text appears this way. If you could read it just exactly
as it originally appears, God, be merciful to me, I am the sinner. as if to say, this man is what
a sinner is. I'm the lesser, I'm unclean,
I'm unfit, I'm the sinner. And the Pharisee went home praying
thus with himself, and the publican went down to his house justified.
If ever you see who and what you are, you will come down. If ever God makes you to see
your sin, What you are, you'll quit boasting about what you
are and what you do. You'll quit boasting about what
you wouldn't do and would do. You'll recognize that you're
just pollution, corruption, uncleanness. If ever God makes you to see
who and what he is in Christ, God almighty, holy, righteous,
just, sovereign, the great Lord God, make you to see what Christ
has done for sinners and that God in Christ delights in mercy. And this great holy Lord God
now for Christ's sake receives guilty sinners and makes them
perfectly free. He takes lepers and makes them
perfectly clean. He takes the vile and washes
away their corruption. He takes the unrighteous and
makes them righteous. Can you go with me that far?
Do you feel your desperate need of Christ? Has your heart been
broken and humbled at the feet of Christ so that you can say
with Job, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but
now, now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself. I repent in dust and ashes. I
hope you can go so far and follow me here as well. This man came
to the Lord Jesus in great faith. Now, I don't know where he got
his faith. I don't know how he came to have faith. And there's
a sermon in this, but just take it for this one statement. It
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where he got
it or how he got it. He just got it. He came to the
Master believing, believing Him, believing Him. You see, this
is what the book says, without faith it's impossible to please
God, but for he that cometh to God, whoever comes to God must
believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him. Now this is the main thing. Perhaps
this leper heard our Lord Jesus himself preach. Perhaps he was
familiar with the Old Testament prophets and had heard the prophets
expounded all his life. Perhaps he had heard the fame
of our Lord from others who had experienced his grace. But this
much is certain. He knew who Christ was. He believed
his claims. And he came to the Savior believing
him. Believing him. The leper came
to the Lord by himself. We read in the scriptures, throughout
the gospel narratives, we read how that others had been led
to Christ by another. You remember the Lord found Andrew
and then Andrew found his brother and brought him to the master.
There were others who had been picked up by their friends and
carried to the master because they couldn't come. There were
others who couldn't come and the master came and visited them
to show them mercy. But here was one. Everyone had
given up hope. Here was one everyone considered
hopeless. Here was one nobody picked up
and brought to the master. Here was one nobody encouraged
to come. Here was one nobody touched.
This is a man nobody had anything to do with. But he came breaking
out of the crowd crying unclean unclean and the crowd made room
for the unclean lest they be defiled. He came to the master
believing him. No man cared for his soul, no
man could or would take him to the Savior. But our Lord Jesus
delights to save hopeless, helpless, friendless sinners. That's just
the kind he calls, just the kind he calls. Not only that, but
this leper came against many obstacles. People tell me all
the time, you know, you got to give folks a chance to get saved,
as if somehow salvation depended on chance. This leper, he didn't
have any precedent to follow. He didn't have anyone look and
say, well, that was a fellow in the same position I was in,
I'll follow him. He not only didn't have any precedent, he
had no promise of cure. Nobody said to him, come to the
master and he'll cure you. Nobody ever said that to him.
This leper had no invitation to come. And he had no legal
right to come. In fact, the law said you can't
come. The law said you can't come. What did he do? Well, if
I die, I'm not going to die here. If I die, I'm not going to die
without seeking mercy. If I die, I'll die, but I'll
die at his feet. And he came. And the leper came
to the master just exactly like he was, in all his uncleanness, in all
his corruption, in all his filth, in all his disease. He came to
the Master, fourthly, in utter submission. He recognized that
the whole issue was in the hands of the one before whom he knelt.
And he said, Lord, if you will, you can make me whole. If you
will, you can make me clean. You see, salvation depends entirely
on his will. entirely on his will. But recognizing the sovereignty
of Christ, acknowledging his power as the sovereign God, sovereign
Savior, with sovereign power, whose sovereign will holds him
in his hands, he submitted to the Lord Jesus and cast himself
down before him with hope. There he was in total surrender
and just throws himself at the feet of the sovereign Christ. Can you do that? Will you do that? Lord, here
I am. I've been your enemy all my life.
I deserve your wrath. I deserve to go to hell. If you
send me to hell right now, it's not too quick. But I beg for
your mercy. I hear you're a merciful God.
I hear you delight in mercy. And if you will, you can even
make me whole. He did. And I want to tell you
something. The Lord never refused such a
request. You can't find it in this book.
I love that hymn. Perhaps he will admit my plea. Perhaps he will hear my prayer.
But if I perish, I will pray and perish only there. I can
but perish if I go. I am resolved to try. For if
I stay away, I know I must forever die." If he died there, it's just as
good as dying over here. If he got to die, who cares where?
But if he died at the Master's feet, he died where nobody ever
died. And I'm telling you, if you die
at the nasty feet, you'll go to hell where nobody ever went
to hell. Nobody. Nobody. One last thing. He got what he needed. The Lord Jesus touched him. And he said, I will be clean. He showed him compassion. He
didn't just speak to him, he touched him, identified with
him in his uncleanness, even as he did us. For to touch him
was to be made unclean himself before the law. And our master
made himself to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. And he healed him
immediately and completely. And get this now, better he did
it legally. He said to the leper, you go
to the priest now and offer a sacrifice according to the law and the
priest according to the law will say to you, you're clean. You're
clean. I'm telling you, every sinner
healed by the hand of God's omnipotent grace standing before God's holy
law, having a sacrifice, the law must accept Jesus Christ
himself. And the law says you're clean.
You're clean. You too may obtain mercy at the
Master's feet. You too. How do you know he'll forgive
sin? Because he said it. His name
is forgiveness. My name is forgiveness. Read
Exodus chapter 34. He died to accomplish it. He
sent me to preach it. He lives to do it. You know the story, I'll tell
it one more time. long time ago, a missionary in
India came giving a report of his work to the church where
Brother Mayhem was pastor. I believe it was when he was
pastor at Poverty Church in Ashland. And the missionary said once
while he was walking through the brush he heard a faint raspy
cry. He could barely make it out and
he walked toward the sound and as he approached a little I saw
the most horrible sight I've ever seen in my life. There was
a man who was a leper. His fingers were gone. His face
was eaten up with leprosy. And he was sitting out in the
middle of that clearing, just alone. And he was crying, help
me. Help me. Somebody please, please
help me. And the missionary said, as I
looked at him, utterly helpless, I thought to myself, if I could
just go over and put my face on his face and breathe in all his corruption
and uncleanness and breathe into him all my health, that's exactly
what Christ did for me. That's exactly what Christ did
for me. Lord, if you will, you can make
me whole. And here I stand, a leper, touched
by his hand, completely clean before God Almighty. Oh may God
grant you such grace, for Christ's sake. Amen. Number 249. Okay.