Well, it's good to see you all
out. I want to have some sick folk. Loretta's sick. She's not feeling well. Theresa OK? Oh, I'm sorry to
hear that. Remember, those are requests
for prayer. Congratulations to Lindsay and Zach and Bertha.
Harper Quinn, I love that name. What a good name. That's a good,
strong name, isn't it? Harper Quinn. Happy birthday
to Peggy Hill Curbo this week on the 17th. Remember those who
requested prayer. Seek the Lord's help for them.
Let's begin our worship service with hymn number 235, Pass Me
Not, O Gentle Savior. Pass me not, O gentle Savior, ? Hear my humble cry ? While on
others I would call thee ? Do not pass me by ? Savior, Savior
? Hear my humble cry While on others I were calling, do not
pass me by. Let me at the throne of mercy
find a sweet relief, kneeling there in deep contrition. ? Am I unbelieved ? ? Savior,
Savior ? ? Hear my humble cry ? ? While on others I were calling
? ? Do not pass me by ? ? Trusting only in thy merit ? Would I seek
thy face ? Heal my wounded broken spirit ? Save me by thy grace
? Savior, Savior ? Hear my humble cry ? ? While on others I were
calling ? ? Do pass me by ? ? Thou the spring of all my comfort
? more than life to me. Whom have I on earth beside me? Whom in heaven but thee, Savior After scripture reading and prayer,
we'll sing hymn number 42. If you have your Bibles, turn to
Matthew, the 8th chapter. We'll read verses 1 through 4. When he was come down from the
mountain, that is the mountain where he gave the Sermon on the
Mount, 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 for a testimony unto
them. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven,
we are thankful that we can read such things as this and know
that these things, these miracles that our Lord performed were pictures and types of the
experience of salvation had by your children when they hear
the gospel and the Holy Spirit causes them to hear the voice
of Christ and they come as ruined sinners taught of God without
hope and without help seeking mercy at the seat of mercy our
propitiation the Lord Jesus Christ We thank you that we can read
such things. We can find ourself in these pages. We know that
in and of ourself there is no good thing. Left to ourselves
we would plunge further and further in a course toward eternal perdition
and hell. But we are thankful by your grace
and according to your good pleasure You stopped us in our course
and opened our ears and our eyes and our hearts to receive the
gospel. We bless you for that. Pray for those who are sick and
going through trials. We're thankful for their healthy
birth. Harper Quinn, we pray that you'd
be with Lindsay and Zach as they begin their lives as parents. We ask the Lord you'd watch over
them. I'll be with their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents
as they love this youngin'. Help us, Lord, today to remember
each other. Call our names out to the Lord.
Help us to worship you now, even as this old leper came and bowed
down before our Lord and attributed sovereignty to
him worshiping Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou couldst make
me clean. Help us now, we pray in Christ's
name and for His glory. Amen. Hymn number 42. Hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem
and crown him Lord of all. Lord of all, bring forth the
royal diadem and crown him Lord of all. He chosen seed of Israel. Hail Him who saved you by His
grace and crowned Him Lord of all. Hail Him who saved you by
His grace and crowned Him Lord of all. Let every kindred, every
tribe, To Him, O Majesty, ascribe and
crown Him Lord of all. To Him, O Majesty, ascribe and
crown Him Lord of all. that with yonder sacred throne
we at his feet may fall. We'll join the everlasting song
and crown him Lord of all. I'm gonna ask Grandpa to take
up the altar this morning. Let us pray. Father, again we
approach in the name of Christ, our blessed Savior. the unspeakable
gift that you've given to your children. We know with him you've
freely given us all things. We have nothing that we have
not received. Let us not boast as if we've not received it.
Knowing this, that all things belong to you, for you're the
creator, sustainer, consummator of all things. All the earth
is yours and all the inhabitants thereof belong to you. Let us
return to you what you have given us freely and kindly. and do
it with a heart full of joy. We pray in Christ's name, amen. you This is a familiar story. The
leper who came to Christ for healing. It is recorded also
in Luke. Luke says that this leper was
full of leprosy. That means he was covered from
head to toe. He was white from head to toe. When our Lord performed miracles,
healing people, giving them sight, giving them hearing, raising
them from the dead, curing their palsy, straightening out the
withered man's hand, a withered man with a withered hand, straighten
out his hand, those type things, they all represent an aspect
of the salvation of God's elect. They're not about what Christ
accomplished on Calvary. They're about the experience
of salvation, the experience of when a sinner hears the gospel,
one whom God has chosen hears the gospel and finds out by the
Holy Spirit that he is without hope and without help in this
world. That his only hope is that somehow someone greater
than he is able to help him and to save him. This is where this
leper is at. Leprosy in scripture pictures
sin because it speaks of those who are outcasts and helots and
have no hope of joining reasonable society. There are people who
the world is done with. The world cannot help them. Religion
cannot help them. Going to church is forbidden
for them. They are without hope and without
help in the world. This man came to the Lord Jesus
Christ at the end of our Lord's teaching on the Sermon on the
Mount. And I often wondered if he was sitting there at the foot
of the mountain while everybody was gathered up on the mountain,
listening to our Lord Jesus Christ teach the things that Scripture
meant. Several times in that passage
of the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord said, You heard the Bible
say this, but this is what it means. He said that several times. He also said, blessed are you
when men shall persecute you and revile you for my name's
sake. Great is your reward in heaven. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek. Blessed
are the peacemakers. All these things, I wondered
if this leper was at the bottom of the hill listening to that,
knowing that he was persecuted and he was reviled and he was
poor. and he was helpless and he was
me he had uh... he's so big he had to tell everybody
he was in the area he had to cast dirt up in the air and call
out leper unclean unclean unclean so people would not come near
him because the leprosy that is spoken of in scripture at
least at that time was an incurable disease and it was not let long
ago when uh... none Mother, what's her name? I can't
think of her name. Sister what? Yeah. She worked with the lepers, so
the people still have leprosy. You can get leprosy in the United
States if you mess around with armadillos. Yeah, they have leprosy
in them. But it's curable now. But then
it wasn't. It represented the absolute most
helpless state of a human being. was this leprosy was this leprosy
and this leper was not allowed to do what he did that's why
the word behold is there behold wait a minute look at this here
in the midst of this group of people that have sat and listened
to Christ for hours And now they're saying, never a man spake like
this man. They were astonished at his doctrine
and his teaching. They never heard anything like
this. And the reason is because his
doctrine was from his book, his words that he wrote, that he
penned in eternity for us to have. Now this man comes to the
Lord Jesus Christ, and he comes as one who is aware of his condition. That's why I say when the Lord
healed these people, they represent the sinner whom the Lord has
awakened to find out what he is. A sick person knows that
he's sick. A blind person knows that they
can't see. A deaf person knows that he can't
hear. You know, the woman with the
issue of blood, she had tried everything for 12 years and still
had the issue of blood. That meant, according to the
law, the political law, she was accursed. Everything she sat
on had to be cleansed or burned. She was not welcome into society.
Before she could come into society, her blood had to stop. And then
she had to have an atonement made for her before she'd come
back into society. In this 12 years, she's been
an outcast. So people who had the Holy Spirit spoken to through
the Word of God, through the preaching of the gospel, understand
and know that they are sinners. And not in a general sense like,
I know I'm a sinner, but I'm not as bad as somebody else.
No, it means you know you're hopeless and without help in
this world. That's what being a sinner is.
The old Puritan said the sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost
has made him so. If you really know you're a sinner,
you didn't come by that by yourself. Many years ago, a man wrote me
a letter or actually called me on the phone. He was Nigerian
living in England and he talked about wanting to be saved by
God's sovereign grace. He didn't know whether he was
one of the elect. He didn't know whether he could. I said, I said,
first thing, those thoughts that you're having toward God are
not natural to humanity. Natural men don't think thoughts
like that. And so I said, to me it's obvious
that the Holy Spirit is moving you and working on you, dealing
with you, because you're having thoughts about things that natural
men can't even perceive or understand according to Scripture. They're
foolishness to them, but it's not foolishness to you. He's
a good friend and a brother in Christ, still living over yonder. I get an email from him every
once in a while. But it's those who know that
they have a great need and know that they themselves cannot help
themselves. This fellow, if he could have
willed to be better, he would have, but he couldn't. All he
knew was that he could not help himself. Now, a leprosy in Scripture
is a very important thing. Because it teaches us about sin. In fact, Isaiah, when he wrote
about our sins being washed away, our sins being cleansed, he said
our sins were cleansed. That's what he says. He said,
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
That's a direct reference to leprosy. Because leprosy was
an interesting disease. When our Lord told this man to
go to the priest, it meant he had to go there because in order
to be accepted back into society, the priest has to say he's cleansed. He could be cleansed, but he
would still, to the rest of the people, he was a leper. He had
to go to the priest. When a priest looked at a leper,
if he had one little blemish on his skin, he was condemned
and said, you're unclean. You have leprosy. But, if he
was covered with leprosy from the top of his head to the bottom
of his feet, snow white like, the priest would pronounce him
cleansed. And that shows you the difference between what people
think sin is. People think sin is telling a
white lie. That's a little red pimple. They're ruined from top
to bottom. But when they realize that they're
a sinner from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet,
that's a work of the Holy Spirit, and they know. And God says,
You're clean. And the reason He says that is
because He's made you to come to that place. Now, how do you
come to that place? How does a sinner come to the
place where he sees himself as such without hoping about helping
the world? Isaiah, look over at Isaiah chapter
6. Isaiah spoke in the language
of leprosy in Isaiah chapter 6 when he saw the Lord. Now if
you read Isaiah 1 through 5, Isaiah was one tough prophet.
He didn't let nobody off the hook and pronounced woe after
woe upon Israel, just letting them have it. And then in chapter
6 he saw the LORD. It says, In the year that King
Uzziah died, now he was kind of the PR man for King Uzziah, I saw also the LORD, and the
word also means that his eyes were upon Uzziah. and during
that time when Zio died, when did he die? Zio died as a leper. He died as a leper. Why? Because
he decided that he was going to do the job of the priest and
he was a king and a king was not allowed to do the job of
a priest but he's going to take a censor and he's going to the
holy holy and he's going to act like a priest. Eighty some men
tried to stop him. Eighty some priests said this
does not pertain to you. This is not your job. Your job
is government to be the king. Our job is to handle the spiritual
things in the tabernacle and temple. God is appointed that
way, and you're not to be here. He said, Get out of my way, I'm
the king. And so he went in there. God smote him with leopard, and
he was a leopard until the day he died. In the year the king
Uzziah was considered a leopard and died. He said, I saw the
Lord. I saw also the Lord. And when
I saw the Lord, I saw him high. and lifted up, and his train
filled the temple. Here he's pictured as one with
a huge robe trailing behind him, so huge, it's voluminous, it
just fills the temple. And above him stood seraphims,
seraphims, creatures. Each one of them had six wings.
With twain they covered their face, with twain they covered
their feet, and with twain they did fly. One fellow says, this
is a picture of the preacher of the gospel. He covers his
face and says, don't look at me. He covers his feet and said,
don't look at my work. Don't look at my walk. And with
two wings, he flies wherever God sends him. Whom shall I send? Here am I,
the Lord, Isaiah said, send me. And one of them cried to another
and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole
earth is full of his glory. Holiness is the essential character
of God. The essential character of God.
It's the only characteristic and attribute of God's sacred
sovereignty that you can apply to every aspect of God. Holy love, holy wrath, holy vengeance. The word holy, the book you're
holding in your hand, what does it say? It's a holy Bible. It's
a holy Bible. and the posts of the doors moved.
The whole house was shaking and he cried and the house was filled
with smoke. Why? Because man can't look headlong
at the shekinah glory of God. Remember, he's talking about
the whole earth being full of his glory. And then I said, woe is you. No, woe is me. I am undone And
that word is unclean or cut off. Who's cut off? Lepers are cut
off. For I am a man of unclean lips. This is an attribute of
leprosy. They had to put a towel over
their mouth because their breath was so horrendous that people
couldn't stand to be around them. So they had to put a towel over
their mouth. He said, well, it's not only my problem, it's everybody's
problem. and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."
And here's why he saw himself as a sinner. And here's why every
sinner who is indeed a sinner, or revealed to be so by the Holy
Ghost, here is why he will see himself. He'll see himself in
light of the glory and majesty of the King of Kings. He said,
I dwell among a people of unclean lips because, for, Because mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. If you ever see
Christ, that's what you're going to see. People talk about Jesus
all the time. People see Him in water tanks. Somebody saw Him in a water tower,
the face of Jesus. I saw the other day on Facebook,
somebody had put something on there that said, See Jesus' Face.
Now there in Georgia, there's some Commerce, Georgia I think
it is, there's a woman that supposedly speaks for Virgin Mary. Once a year people come to Commerce,
Georgia and in her screen door supposedly there's the face of
Jesus. The face of Jesus. Nobody knows what Jesus Christ
looks like except those who walked with him in those days. and this
picture they have of him today is embarrassing. He's a Caucasian. He's a eunuch with a red beard
and hair and blue eyes. Christ was a Jew. He was an Arabian,
born in Arabia. So that means he had dark skin,
probably jet black, maybe curly hair. And scripture says he wasn't
good looking. There is no comeliness about
him that men should desire him. What was it about him that drew
men to him? his words his words and what he did he saw himself as a sinner when
he saw the King of Glory that's pictured by this leper who hears
the Lord Jesus Christ in his preaching probably but he sees
himself as a sinner because the Holy Spirit has said something
to him about this man that's up there teaching on this mountain
And he says, I'm going to get to him. Sink or swim, I'm going
to get to Christ. I've said this all along. We
don't need to invent ways to get people to come down to the
front of the church or as Crow says, the back of the church,
because that's really the front of the church where the door
is. We don't invent ways to get people to make professions of
faith. We don't pressure people. We don't try to gang say people.
Why? Because if a person meets Christ, through his word by his
spirit just get out of his way he gone get to christ for scripture
says all that the father had taught all of them come to christ
everyone that is taught and has learned of the father john six
forty five comes to the lord jesus christ and here this leper
comes this leper comes a man of unclean lips dwelling among
a people of unclean lips And it says, Behold, there came a
leper, in verse 2, and worshipped him. Worshipped him, saying. You'll find these two, three
words together quite a few times with those who come to Christ.
They worship him saying something. They have something to say. And
what they say means something. He came to him worshipping. The woman with the sick child,
the Syrophoenician woman, came to him worshipping him, saying,
Lord, my daughter is sick, can you help her? Please help me,
Lord, help me." And when the Lord told her about election,
that didn't stop her. When the Lord said, I only come
to feed the household of Israel, that didn't stop her. She worshipped
Him saying, when He said, You're just a dog getting crumbs from
the master's table, she said, But I'm your dog, feed me. I
need your help. He worshiped Him saying, How
do we worship God? I don't think there's a better
way to worship God than this way. Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou
can make me clean. Worshiping is honoring God, first
of all, with an attribution to His absolute, unconditional,
unqualified sovereignty. if thou wilt he didn't say Lord
I invite you into my heart Lord I accept you as my Lord
and Savior he didn't say that he didn't say Lord do you have
an aisle that I can walk down he said Lord it's up to you if
you will if you will you can make me whole He attributed sovereignty
to God, and everybody who comes to Christ,
that's how they come. This other mess that people talk
about, it's another Jesus they're coming to, because this one is
only approached by those who have nowhere else to go. They're at the end of their rope.
They're gone, Jesse's. Their life is over if he don't
do something for them. This is what it is to be a sinner
in need. He worshiped him saying, Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And our Lord said to
him, but before he said anything to
him, our Lord did the unthinkable. This man could not be touched
by society. This man had to holler at society
and say, stay away from me, don't touch me, you will be infected. And our Lord reached out and
touched this man. I wonder what that meant to him.
How long he'd have been a leper, I don't know. But I know it'd
been a long time since any human being had touched him. We're made to be touched, you
know that. uh... the largest organ in our bodies,
our skin. And it's made to be touched.
That's why we enjoy a good hug. That's why a hug really does
something. Not only psychological, but physically when you get a
hug from somebody that loves you, you know something's going
on. We're made that way. Our Lord
reached down to this vile pariah, this outcast, This nobody, this
one who society wouldn't even talk about. And touched him. He touched him. Wonder what it
meant to that boy. He touched him. He said, Lord,
if you will. The Lord said, okay, I will.
I will. Be thou clean. Be thou clean. and immediately not after six weeks of watch
care immediately right now at that moment our Lord cleansed
him of his leprosy his leprosy was cleansed now he stopped being
a leper at that moment he was no longer a leper no longer a
leper he was a A child of the King. And though you are a sinner,
you are a sinner saved by grace, before God you are not a sinner.
He will remember your sins no more. You have been perfected
by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and you stand before God
as a righteous son. You are no longer a servant,
you are a son with all the privileges that go with being a son of God. Then our Lord says to him in
verse four, See thou tell no man. Now he doesn't mean don't
tell anybody about what's happening. He says before you tell anybody,
you got something else that needs to be done. I have cleansed you. You are clean. But this crown
to this crown, you're still a leper. Because that's what you've been
designated. You have to go to the priest to get him to tell
you that you're clean. And once the priest tells you,
then the rest of these people will have to accept you into
society. But that has to happen first,
and that's covered in Leviticus chapter 14. Leviticus chapter
14 and several verses there, and the system is what I told
you before. The leper comes before the priest,
and if he's got just a blemish, he's declared unclean. Because all the diseases on the
inside just haven't come out yet, haven't presented itself.
But once the disease has presented itself in every facet of the
body, it's come out complete and the person is covered from
head to toe in kind of a white crust. You think, well boy, that's like
the elephant man. The priest looks at him and says,
you're clean. You're clean, you can go. And
it says, Luke said this man was full of leprosy. That means he
was covered from head to toe. And when you see that in scripture,
know this, that when a person is covered from head to toe,
that's really a special place because he is pronounced clean
by the priest. Now maybe he thought, this leper
thought that Christ was a priest, I don't know. Maybe he did. Christ IS the high priest, the
great high priest who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
and he was touched with the feeling of THIS man's infirmities. Maybe he thought he was, but
according to the laws of the land, which TEACHES us something,
that though we are children of God, we are SUBJECT to the laws
of the land. Romans 13. that the law can't
tell us not to do. The law can't make us not preach
the gospel. That's where the child of God
says, I'm not obeying that law. Every other law is put in there
for our good, is what scripture says. The police forces are there
for our protection or to punish us when we do wrong. The magistrates
and such read Romans chapter 13 verses 1 through 8 and find
out what I'm talking about. But the law has to say, You're
no longer a leper. The law has to let him go. The
Levitical priesthood has to say, You're clean. And that's what
happens to you. The law must search you from
head to toe, and if there's one fault or one
sin there, you must be punished and put in hell. But Paul says
we are by the law free from the law. How are we by the law free
from the law? Christ has fulfilled the law
for us completely and perfectly, dying in our room instead, so
much so that the law looks at us from head to toe, deep in
our heart and in our soul and our mind, and can find not one
thing to hold against us. No grounds upon which it can
accuse. You must be cleansed. You must
be declared clean by the law. And so this man is sent to the
priest. And the priest looks at him. Well, it ain't no red
spot. He's covered from head to toe.
The priest says, you're clean. You're clean. You're cured. You're no longer a leper. Miriam,
remember Miriam? She lied on Moses, she was a
child of God. She lied on Moses, tried to worm her way in where
she shouldn't and God smote her with leprosy. With the language
about Miriam, she was a leper. As white as snow. What does that mean? She's clean. She's a sinner, saved by grace. We sing a song, let not conscience
make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream, all the fitness
he requireth, that you feel your need of him. This is what I find
about every sinner that comes to Christ. God has made him realize
he's a sinner. That's why he comes. He's taught
of God. But every sinner comes to Christ because he must. That
old song, I must have Jesus. He must come. He has nowhere
else to go. We can't pressure people into
it. If we do, we've probably messed up their life forever. Just leave them be. Preach the
gospel. Tell them the truth and back
away. And if that blessed Holy Spirit, who is himself the sovereign
God, touches that person's heart through the preaching of the
gospel, the first thing they're going to realize is this. I have
no hope in this world. in myself, in anybody else, I
must find the Savior. Father, bless us to our understanding,
we pray in Christ's name, Amen.