- Text: Mark 1:40-45, KJV
- Series: Jesus Is Stronger (2016), No. 4
- Date: Sunday evening, November 13, 2016
- Venue: Trinity Baptist Church — Seminole, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/rejoicingintruthpodcast_202011/2016-s11-n04z-stronger-than-our-imperfections.mp3
Listen Online:
Transcript:
We’re going to be in Mark chapter 1 tonight. Mark chapter 1. Just to get right into the story, a man came to Jesus with a serious problem, realizing that Jesus was the only one who could help him.
And there’s not a problem identified in Scripture that Jesus can’t help with. But this man was very early on in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus, at this point, had probably only done a few of the miracles, at least relative to what we see recorded throughout all the Gospels.
And so this man was in a desperate situation that he was willing to say, you know what, I’ve tried everything. He probably had tried everything. And for his problem, there wasn’t really a cure readily known.
And yet he heard about Jesus. He’d heard of a few of the things that Jesus had done. Just before this in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law.
He had cast out demons from a man in Capernaum. As far as Mark’s gospel records, that’s really all Jesus had done. Now, if you go and look at Matthew and Luke and John, there are some other things before this.
But still, the point is very early in Jesus’ ministry. And this man catches wind that there’s somebody who might be able to help me. I’ve got this problem that nobody can seem to fix, and yet there’s a man over here who’s able to cast out demons and heal the sick.
and maybe, just maybe he can deal with my problem. See, the man was a leper. And thank goodness that’s not a problem that we’re tremendously familiar with nowadays.
I mean, we know of it, but I’ve never met anyone with leprosy. Odds are you haven’t either. There are still places in the world where there is leprosy, but it’s not the death sentence in all cases that it used to be.
With leprosy, and most of you all know this, your skin would become infected with this disease, and your skin would turn white. That was one of the noticeable aspects of it. And eventually it could get so bad that people’s fingers would fall off, people would lose ears, other extremities.
There was no known cure for it. It would eventually kill you, and it was intensely contagious. And they’ve had this problem in the Middle East going back millennia, back even to the time of Moses, if not before, where in the law of Moses, there were all these laws about leprosy because it was such a problem, and God, in order to protect his people from the leprosy, set up these laws of when you had leprosy, you had to go outside the community.
You had to be considered unclean. You couldn’t come in contact with people. You had to warn people of your presence.
I don’t remember if the thing with the bell was part of God’s law, if it’s just a tradition that had come up over the years, that they would go through the city ringing a bell and telling people unclean sort of to announce their presence so everybody could get out of the way. You didn’t want to be around a leprous person. And so imagine what it would be like to be this man that he is estranged from his community, from his family.
He’s stuck living by himself. No family, no friends, no help. He’s got this illness that is going to cause incredible suffering in his lifetime and possibly even kill him.
And not only that, but he’s considered unclean under the law of God. You see, when they thought somebody might be healed of leprosy, they had to go and be checked out by the priest and make sure that they were clean and that they were cleansed and they had to undergo these sacrifices just before they could even participate in the nation’s worship of God anymore. So imagine that for a minute.
Imagine being cut off from your family, your friends, your neighbors, your community. You might die from this. You don’t know.
But also you feel like God is further than at arm’s length. And then he hears that there’s a man in town who’s been healing the sick and casting out in that person. And he thinks to himself, what have I got to lose?
And so we start in verse 40, where it says, And there came a leper to him, to Jesus, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him. A couple things, we’re not even all the way through the verse, so there’s a couple things going on here. First of all, it’s incredible to me that the leper came right up to Jesus.
It seems like he’s breaking all the rules just to do that, but when you have nothing left to lose, you pretty much just don’t care about the rules. The leper comes to Jesus and that word beseech. I love that word beseech.
We don’t use it so much anymore. But it works just so much better than beg. It’s so much more forceful than beg.
And yet if we use the word beseech nowadays, people will look at us funny. But it tells the story so much better. This man wasn’t just begging.
He’s throwing himself on Jesus’ mercy. Please, please, please help me. If you don’t help me, nobody will.
You are my only hope. He is throwing himself on the mercy of Jesus. And kneeling down to him, he is humbling himself.
He’s humbling himself before Jesus. This is an act of humility. You know, we’re not in the habit of kneeling before people, are we?
Probably the last time I kneeled before another human being was when I asked Charlotte to marry me. We don’t do that very often. It is a humbling, and then being surprised when she says yes.
But we’re just not in the habit of humbling ourselves before somebody in that way. And even today, it’s still a humbling gesture. That’s why at various times, I mean, we see it in the world.
When George W. Bush bowed at that Japanese shrine, so many of us were bothered, those who knew about it. and Obama bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia, knelt before him, whatever it was.
With both of those, we were just incensed. He’s the president of the United States. He doesn’t kneel because it’s a humbling, it’s an expression of humility before that person.
And for him to come to Jesus, he doesn’t know Jesus is the son of God. He doesn’t know all the miracles that Jesus has done throughout his ministry. He hasn’t heard all the teaching.
He doesn’t know about the resurrection. But this man was in such dire straits that he came to Jesus, And he humbled himself anyway. Just at the possibility, just at the glimmer of hope that this man might be able to heal me.
He comes and kneels down before Jesus. And he more than begs, he beseeches him. He pleads with him as though his life depends on it.
And saying unto him, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Already he’s got a ton of faith in Jesus. I think he’s got probably more faith in Jesus at this point in Jesus’ ministry so early on than sometimes I am able to exhibit, even with the benefit of seeing, in hindsight, all of his ministry and all of how it works out.
Because I get into problems in life and think, oh, nothing can fix it, nothing can solve it. And this man, with only having seen a few of the miracles Jesus did, looked at him and said, I’ve got leprosy, but if you will it, I’ll be healed. You can make me clean if you want.
You can fix this if it’s your will. Not just there’s a possibility that you might be able to make an impact on it, but he says you can do this. I know that you can do this if you will it.
So when he says if thou wilt, he’s not saying if you’ll do this, you can’t. He’s saying if this is your will. See, we use that word will in different ways.
If this is your will, if you will for this to happen, you can do it. I know you can. and it worked.
Because in verse 41, Jesus, it says, he moved with compassion, or he was moved with compassion. Moved with compassion, he put forth his hand and touched him and said unto him, I will. Now again, that’s not saying I will do something.
That’s saying I will this. This is my will. Your healing is my will.
I will be thou clean. That’s it? It’s amazing to me, and I still don’t understand the rhyme or reason behind it.
I know that God has a reason for everything he does. But I still don’t understand why in Scripture, some people Jesus just looks at and says, you’re healed. Have a nice day.
Some people he looks at and says to their illness, get out of there. And it’s done. And other people he makes go through these dramatic experiences.
Think about it. The blind man. And there are multiple instances in the Bible where he heals blind people.
And some people he just reaches out and touches them. And some people he just says you’re healed. And then there’s the guy that Jesus spits in the dirt and makes mud and puts it on his eyes and tells him to go wash and then he’s healed.
Now we know that Jesus can heal people with a touch or a word because he did in other circumstances. I still haven’t figured out the reasoning for why Jesus healed the way he did. But some people, you have to work for it a little bit.
But other people he just spoke to and said, you’re healed. Unless, unless maybe it was a test of their faith. But I’m not even sure about that.
That’s just my guess. And this man, there’s no dramatic moment. There’s no, you’ve got to go down to the river and wash seven times.
No, you’ve got to fill your pockets with cooked spaghetti and go jump on a pogo stick. There’s nothing here. He just says, be clean.
Really? That easy? Well, it’s Jesus.
I mean, for him, it’s that easy. If Jesus wants you to be clean, if Jesus wants you to be healed, you’re going to be healed. He created the whole universe with his mouth.
He just told it to exist, and it existed. And that illness being part of the universe and these bodies being something he created, why would we doubt that he could speak things to happen in this circumstance? Be clean.
and as soon as he had spoken, immediately, immediately, not an hour later, not next Tuesday, not once he goes down to the river, but immediately, right then, the leprosy departed from him. Jesus said, you’re clean, and the leprosy had no choice in the matter. The leprosy just had to wait bye-bye and be gone.
Immediately, the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed. And he straightly charged him and forthwith sent him away. This means Jesus is telling that he straightly charged him.
Jesus gave the leper instructions and sent him away. And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded for testimony unto them. And there are circumstances, again, where Jesus, none of these, no two stories are exactly the same.
Now, we may see the same story covered in multiple Gospels. But none of these events are exactly the same. Jesus does something a little bit different every time.
And there are times that he says, go tell people what happened to you. And there are other instances, like now, where Jesus says, don’t tell anybody what I just did for you. I don’t think this was Jesus saying, don’t tell anybody, because if I do it for you, I’ll have to do it for everybody, and I don’t want to get mixed up with lepers.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus was saying. But Jesus, all through his ministry, was driven by obedience to the Father. And I’ve got a certain amount of time here on earth to accomplish a certain amount of things that the Father’s given me, and I need to be able to go and accomplish that.
And Jesus knew, I believe, that if word got out about what just happened, he was going to be inundated with a crowd. He would not have the freedom to move about the way he needed to to accomplish what the Father had sent him to do. And so he tells the man, keep it quiet.
And the reason I think this is because of what happens in the next verse. But he tells the man, go and don’t tell anybody, but go show yourself to the priest. And for all the ideas that Jesus came to abolish the law of Moses, he sure did have a lot of respect for the law of Moses, because he’s been cleaned, the leper’s been cleansed, he’s been healed. And the God of the universe just healed him, and he knows good and well that he’s clean.
And yet the law of Moses, God’s law, says that they’re to go present themselves to the priest and go undergo a sacrifice. So Jesus says, you still need to go do that. See, Jesus didn’t come as a radical, as a revolutionary, to overthrow the law.
Jesus came to fulfill the law and fulfill the demands of God’s righteousness because we could not. And so he went out, the leper went out, and in direct violation of Jesus’ instructions, began to publish it much. Began to tell everyone.
Now, I don’t think the leper here was being disobedient. I don’t care what Jesus said. I’m going to do what I want.
I’ve got to imagine it was one of these situations where I’m just so excited about what he just did for me that I can’t not tell everyone. Have you ever had news that you couldn’t not tell everyone? Is that just me?
Am I just a blabber now? Y’all are looking at me like, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Okay, I’ve had news that I can’t not tell everyone.
You realize there’s a reason why y’all already know about the baby, right? It’s because of me. Charlie came into this marriage saying, I don’t like telling people about pregnancies until later on until you’re sure everything’s going to be all right.
I’m saying, you’re never sure everything’s going to be all right until they’re here and maybe not even then. I want people to know so they could be praying. So almost as soon as we found out, we told y’all it, what, before four weeks, I guess.
Because I’m sitting there telling her, I can’t not tell people about this. You’re putting way too many constraints on me. I’m just going to hold it in, and then it’s just going to explode.
So I’m going to tell everybody about the baby. Okay. Maybe I’m just a blabbermouth, but I think that we all have moments like that, where there’s just news so exciting that we can’t not tell people.
And so even though Jesus told him, go tell nobody, he said, oh, yeah, tell everybody? Okay, I can do that. And he began to publish it much.
And to blaze abroad the matter. One of the things I love about Mark is he’s just so excitable. Everything is immediately.
And then the next thing happened. And he doesn’t just say, and the news began to spread. He said, and to blaze abroad the matter.
There’s this picture here of a fire catching and spreading everywhere. Mark is just so excited. He says, basically, the word of what Jesus did spread like wildfire.
In so much that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city. Everybody heard what Jesus had done, and suddenly everybody wants to see Jesus. And suddenly, Jesus can’t even get into the city anymore, because the people are there thronging him at the gate.
that was without in desert places, and they came to him from every quarter. So he’s still out there ministering in the wilderness, and yet people are still coming out to find him and seek him in the wilderness. So this man has come to Jesus with a serious problem.
And as I’ve been talking to you about these miracles of Jesus, six that I picked out that I think are representative of the six major strains that I saw, of six different kinds of miracles that I saw in the Gospels. You’re probably thinking, well, we’ve already heard a healing story. Somebody was sick, Jesus healed him.
See, this is not quite the same thing. Being blind didn’t necessarily put a separation between you and God. Being unable to walk didn’t necessarily put that separation, that uncleanness there between you and God and between you and the people under the law of Moses.
Not being able to hear didn’t put you in a separate category off to the side. I mean, yes, you were disabled. Yes, you might not be able to work.
Yes, you might have to live off of the kindness of strangers. You might have to beg. But you weren’t kept at arm’s length from the rest of society.
And you weren’t cut out from the nation’s worship of God. You weren’t segregated over here as being unclean. So this man had more than a health problem to deal with.
This man also had a spiritual issue. This man had the problem of being considered unclean before God and before the nation. And it’s a problem that he could not fix.
It’s a problem he could not solve on his own. And he’d probably tried everything. He’d probably tried everything within his power or others’ power to get rid of it.
I know I would have. If I found out I had something like this, I would go see every doctor who would see me. I would be, they didn’t have Google back in their day, but I’d be looking up every herbal remedy.
I’d have Charla trying to figure out what oils can deal with leprosy. I mean, we would leave no stone unturned. I would try everything in my power to deal with this.
And yet there was nothing he could do. And it was as much a problem about his standing before God as it was a physical problem. That doesn’t mean he was being punished with leprosy, that he’d done something so serious that he’d been given leprosy as a punishment.
That just means once you had leprosy, you were cut off. You were segregated off from the nation of Israel. Couldn’t go to the temple, couldn’t participate in the worship.
And the reason I think that the New Testament talks so much about lepers, and I think the reason we see so many lepers in stories about Jesus, is because that illness had those two dimensions to it. The need for physical healing and the need for spiritual restoration. And it’s an excellent picture of the condition that we’re all in.
It’s an excellent picture of the condition we all find ourselves in, all of humanity. Spiritually, we’re lepers. We are separated from God by our uncleanness before the law.
Now, the difference is the leper hadn’t done anything usually to deserve it. But the leper’s cut off and he’s separated from God and he’s separated off from the people. And by God’s law, all of us are separated from him.
We’re all separated from his holy of holies and from his temple by the law. Because we’ve all sinned against God. We’ve all violated his law.
I mean, excuse me. You look at the Ten Commandments and we can’t even keep all of those. And those are just the ten really big ones that he seems to have outlined in bold at the beginning, that they were just a jumping off point for the law, because after God reveals the Ten Commandments to Moses in Exodus 20, he goes on and spends most of the rest of the book of Exodus, and then parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, most of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as a matter of fact, going through and elaborating on that.
Here’s all the things that you’re supposed to do, and it covers civil law, it covers ceremonial religious law, it covers moral law, And you look at that and it’s just piling on. And realizing we can’t even keep all of these Ten Commandments. We have no hope of keeping this whole law on.
And I’ve given you the example before, the examples that they use in Way of the Master. Have you ever told a lie? And if you say no, you’re probably lying then.
That makes us liars. Well, there is a commandment in there about lying. Not to bear false witness against your neighbor.
Some people say, well, that’s perjury. Well, perjury is lying about someone. And if we’ve told a lie, we’ve probably told a lie about someone.
The seventh commandment, shall not commit adultery. Okay, that’s easy. I’ve never done that.
But when Jesus says, if you’ve looked on a woman with lust, okay, suddenly we all find ourselves in that category. It says, thou shalt not murder. No, I’m sorry.
That’s the sixth commandment. Thou shalt not murder. thou shalt not kill.
Okay? I haven’t killed. Despite what I said this morning about Greg, I have not murdered anyone.
It’s never happened. And yet Jesus said if you’ve been angry with someone without cause, it’s the same thing. I still get angry and I used to be a whole lot more high strung.
So that’s happened. And suddenly I realize even these big commandments that I’d like to look at and say, I’m such a good person, I’ve never broken knees. No, not so much.
And the Bible teaches that our sin has separated us from God. And what we see is we’re not so different from that leper after all. Our sin has separated us from God at more than our sins.
And just like him, I can try whatever I want. I can do everything within my power to heal myself of leprosy, and he wasn’t going to heal himself. At the same time, I can do whatever I can within my power.
everything. I could spend the rest of my life trying to do good things and it wouldn’t erase this stain on my soul. It wouldn’t undo what was wrong.
It wouldn’t heal me of this uncleanness before God. So we find ourselves just like the vet. We’re being in a situation where there’s no hope for us until one man comes along.
We think maybe just maybe we can do something about it. We run to him and we throw ourselves on his mercy and we beg him to do whatever he can do. Thank God, literally I mean thank God, that that man is Jesus, the Messiah, God in human flesh, who God the Father sent to deal with our uncleanness.
Because there’s not anything I can do. There’s not anything I can do to fix my standing before God and make myself acceptable or clean in his sight. But Jesus did it all when he said it is finished.
In that moment he had shed his blood and his life was nearly gone. and cried out, it is finished. Meaning, everything that was necessary for our sin to be cleaned, for us to be cleansed, everything was accomplished.
It was all paid in full. And just like the leper, the only option that anybody has today is to throw ourselves in the mercy of Jesus Christ. And thank God, again, literally thank God, that He’s able to heal our sinful condition, our unclean condition, just as much as He was able to heal the unclean condition of this nephra who came and threw himself on Jesus’ mercy. So there’s no sin, there’s no problem that’s, excuse me, there’s no problem that we have that separates us from God that is so big that Jesus can’t fix it.
There’s no uncleanness before God that is so great that Jesus can’t make it clean again. And he offers that forgiveness to us and he offers that forgiveness to a world outside that desperately needs to hear about it.