Cleansed from the Curse

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

Well, I made a mistake. I made a mistake in marking my spot here, apparently. I made a mistake a few years ago, a huge mistake that I am still paying for with my wife.

I let her know that I know how to clean bathrooms and kitchens. Man, that was a mistake, right? She was kind of shocked because you don’t, especially new husband, you don’t expect them to be able to do that.

She tells me, Or she’ll have me do it because she says, I clean them better than she does. Now, that might be true, or it might just be her appealing to my male ego to get me to do it. I don’t know.

But I remember her early on saying, how do you know how to do this? Because I will deep clean, I will scrub. It may take me three hours, but you’ll be able to eat off of those surfaces.

And I don’t do it all that often either, but she’ll every once in a while say, people are coming over, I need you to take care of that. She’ll say, how do you know how to, why are you so thorough with that? It just shocks me.

Because although I’m a germaphobe, I’m not necessarily a neat freak in every area of the house. I explained to her that, you know, at one point I was raising two small children, two very small children all by myself. That, you know, at some point they go to bed and that doesn’t leave a lot of opportunities to go out and have a life.

And I can’t just sit and watch TV. So I learned to do all sorts of things. And I remember just repeatedly deep cleaning the kitchen.

And so I brought that skill with me into our marriage, and now she’s glad that I have it. And there is one thing that I had to learn after we got married, though, because this house that we have here is the first house I’ve ever lived in that has a tile shower. And there’s some tricks to cleaning a tile shower, I learned.

It does not matter how much you scrub that tile shower if you’re not using the right cleaner. And all my tricks that I’ve used in other places, in other rooms, it doesn’t work. All the Lysol in the world is not going to get that shower clean.

All the Windex, you can do. . .

My big fat Greek wedding was right about one thing. You can do a lot of things with Windex, but it’s not going to clean that shower. Vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, salt, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what you use or what you scrub with, that grout is going to be gross. All right? You have to use a purpose.

Now, somebody’s going to come up to me afterwards where I’m going to get an email tomorrow and say, no, you use this. Here’s what you do. Don’t tell me you’re destroying my illustration here.

You need a purpose-made shower cleaner with bleach. All right? And y’all may have a trick that’ll get you by, but I’m telling you, for all the time I spent trying just, I think it was right before you had Abigail, trying to scrub that shower and get it clean.

And by the way, palm olive doesn’t work either. All right. You can try all sorts of things.

It’s not going to work. The stuff I ended up buying at Walmart, I don’t know what it’s called, but it was like a nuclear bomb for that stuff. I stood in there and sprayed it and scrubbed until, just until I died and came back out because I had to have it closed up.

Jojo was sleeping in our room couldn’t let her breathe in the fumes. So I scrubbed just until I was about to die and then came out and got fresh air, went back in 15 minutes later and rinsed it off, and that grout was as white as snow. It was incredible.

There are some messes that require certain cleaners that can only be cleaned or that can best be cleaned in one way. And the book of Mark talks about a man who was in a mess that could only be cleansed one way. And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight.

This man who needed a deep cleansing and it could only come from one place. Mark chapter 1, where we’re going to pick up this evening, where we left off last week. And here in Mark chapter 1, we’re going to be in verse 40.

Some of you are turning there already. If you don’t have your Bibles, if you’re using a phone, you can find a link to it in our bulletin or it’ll be on the screen for you. But we’re going to start in verse 40 tonight.

If you would stand with me as we read word, if you’re able to, without too much difficulty. Mark chapter 1, starting in verse 40, and we’re going to go through verse 45, the end of the chapter here. It says, Now a leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him, If you are willing, you can make me clean.

Now, that word is leper there, and I emphasize that because Madeline asked me what I was preaching on tonight, and I told her leopards. So, leper, Somebody with leprosy. If you are willing, he says, you can make me clean.

Then Jesus moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I am willing, be cleansed. As soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. And he strictly warned him, Jesus strictly warned him and sent him away at once and said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go your way, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places and they came to him from every direction. And you may be seated. So in this story, Jesus miraculously healed a leper.

And what he did was so remarkable, what he did was so remarkable that he had to command the man not to tell anybody because he knew if word got out what he had done, that he wouldn’t be able to freely move about and minister the way he had been doing and the way that he needed to. And I know you and I, especially if you’ve been in church for any length of time, we take it for granted, oh yeah, Jesus healed the lepers. We forget what a remarkable thing this was.

This would be like if somebody said, I have found the cure that you can take this pill. And by the way, I’m not saying this exists, so Facebook and YouTube don’t cancel us here. But if somebody came to you and said, I have a magic pill that today can knock out all COVID and cancer and everything else and it can heal all of it, we would be, I mean, we’d be astounded by that, right?

We’d want to, I think we would be skeptical, but we’d want to hear more. We’d be interested in this, especially as news got around that it actually worked. In their day, that’s what they were looking at.

People didn’t just get healed from leprosy. And so Jesus told the man, don’t tell anybody. Now, Jesus being God, I’m sure he knew that the man was going to go tell anyway.

But he’s telling him, don’t go tell anybody. Because if we see what happened, he could not freely enter the city. He was being thronged by people.

He was being overwhelmed by crowds that were there to see. We want to see the guy that healed the leprosy. Because if he could do that, he could heal us, or he could do other things, or just we want to see what he’s going to do when people show up.

He could not move around anymore. So that’s why he tried to tell the man. Throughout his early ministry, Jesus was telling people, don’t tell everything you know about me.

Now, some of us have kind of taken that in our day and run with it. We’d rather have teeth pulled than tell people what we know about Jesus. All right, but that was early on.

He wasn’t ready for people to know all of his glory and completely understand his identity because it threw wrenches into his ministry plans. So he told the man, don’t go tell anybody. But he did this miraculous thing of healing this man with leprosy.

And we’ll talk a little bit more in a moment about why it was so miraculous, why it was so incredible. But we need to understand, first of all, that Jesus was motivated by compassion for this leper who approached him. It says here in verse 41 that he was moved with compassion.

Now, I read different things this week about different translations, and somebody said it should read, actually several things said it should read that he was angry. Now, I looked at the Greek, and I don’t see any, I’m not a Greek expert, but I don’t see any reason for that. If he was angry, I think he was angry at the disease, not at the man, because we see no indication here that he’s angry with the man.

I think moved with compassion is a fine translation for this. He was moved with compassion. Folks, this is a sympathy that he felt deep within himself.

Have you ever helped somebody just to get them away from you? Am I the only jerk in the room? Jesus said that this happens sometimes.

Even you could pester a judge and eventually he’ll give you justice just to get you to go away. I will admit I have helped, sometimes I have helped people just to get them to leave me alone. I’ve also helped people because I’ve genuinely cared about what they were dealing with.

Jesus was not helping this man. We need to understand the distinction. Because Jesus was not helping this man just to get rid of him.

Just, fine, if it’ll shut you up and send you on down the road, fine, you’re healed. God bless. The Bible says here that he was moved with compassion.

He felt deeply within himself about this man’s need. And so it says in verse 41, he stretched out his hand and touched him. He was so moved with compassion that he did what nobody else in their right mind would do.

Leprosy. Part of the reason it was such a big deal is that it was contagious and there was no known cure. And it was one of those things, if you get near the leper and you run the risk of catching it, you run a very real risk of catching it, and then you get sick and it’s incurable for you and your life is ruined because not only are you now an outcast from society with the leper and the rest of the lepers, but parts of your body are falling off and eventually it’s going to cause you to rot away and die.

It was a miserable thing to have. And so nobody in their right mind is going to go near somebody who’s suffering from leprosy. And I’m sure nobody had touched this man in years.

That’s not good for us. I joke that I was practicing social distancing years before everybody else because I’m not a toucher, all right? I had to get okay with people hugging me in ministry because people like to do that.

Some of you hug me and you’re thinking, oh, no, no, it’s fine. I’ve become okay with it, but I didn’t start out that way. We’re good now, okay?

But I’m not by nature a toucher. But still, there’s something therapeutic every once in a while, even for those of us who are not naturally inclined in that direction, there’s something therapeutic about a hug or a pat on the back or a handshake or some contact with another person to let you know that they care about you. And he had not experienced that for quite some time.

And you notice here, Jesus doesn’t heal him first and then touch him. It says here in verse 41 that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. And then he has the conversation about healing him.

Jesus was so moved with compassion for this man. Jesus cared about this man’s needs and his condition so much that he was willing to do what nobody else would do. He touched this man.

He touched the leper while he was still unclean. And I’d submit to you, that’s when we need the touch from Jesus the most, is while we’re still unclean. And then Jesus said, I am willing.

Because the man had come to him and said, I know that you’re able. If you are willing for this to happen, I know that you’re able. So Jesus reaches out and touches him and said, I am willing.

Now, I missed this for years because I think it’s this story. If not, there’s another similar story about a leper where Jesus says in the King James, I will be thou clean. I will be thou I remember as a young child that was very confusing to me what exactly is he saying here I like the way the new King James expresses it you get the full sense of what he’s saying I am willing now in English there’s no real difference between those two tenses we use them interchangeably I will this is maybe a little more formal it’s not necessarily the way we talk today but it means the same thing I will this or I am willing they mean the same thing.

But I am willing helps us to understand just exactly what he’s saying. I am willing. I do will for this to happen.

This is my will for you. And then he tells him, be cleansed. He just tells him to be clean.

He’s commanding, Jesus is commanding him to do something that’s impossible for him. Right? I looked at you and said, I’m sorry you have a headache, be better.

Right? If I don’t have the ability to do something about it, that actually just comes across as kind of mean, but not with Jesus because he had the power to command it to happen. So he’s not just telling the man be clean.

He’s commanding it and so it happens here. He desired to cleanse the man from his leprosy. And he did this despite the fact that this man was so desperate that he had violated the law to come to Jesus.

If you look at verse 40 again, go back up there. It says, now a leper came to him imploring him, kneeling down to him. When you were a leper, you were supposed to announce yourself and you were supposed to keep your distance.

And it wasn’t six feet back. All right. You were supposed to keep your distance.

You were supposed to shout under the Old Testament law, unclean, unclean. You were supposed to wear certain clothes so that you could be identified even when you’re out of earshot. I don’t know if this is a biblical thing or a middle-aged thing, but some people even had to ring a bell.

I think that’s more of a middle-aged thing. But you were supposed to shout unclean and let people know and you’re supposed to keep your distance. He doesn’t do that.

He is so desperate. He actually violates God’s law written in the book of Leviticus. I believe it’s Leviticus 13 or Leviticus 14.

He violates God’s law in the way that he comes to Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t look at him and say, oh no, no, you broke the rules. Jesus cared about his need.

Jesus saw the heart of the man and he saw the need of the man who approached him. He saw his desperation. Now that didn’t make it okay that he broke God’s law, but for Jesus there was an even more pressing matter to deal with at the moment.

So he was moved by compassion for this leper and out of his compassion he didn’t just say, well I feel bad, I really do feel bad for you. He said, be clean. Now the reason that this man came to Jesus in the first place is important for us to understand too.

Because there were a few people recorded in Scripture who came to Jesus for something and didn’t get because their hearts weren’t right. They didn’t believe or they weren’t willing to be obedient. One of the things that sets this leper apart is that he had complete faith in Jesus’s ability to cleanse him.

There’s no doubt in his mind. If you read it, in verse 40, as I just talked about, he was violating the law. He was violating all these traditions on top of the he was doing something you would never do and get away with.

Like if the community could find a 10 foot pole to go after you with for doing this, they would. Right? Nobody’s going to stand for this.

Yet he was so desperate, he rushed up to Jesus like Jesus was his only hope. And then he says here at the end of verse 40, if you are willing, you can make me clean. There’s no second guessing.

There’s no questioning here. He doesn’t say if you’re willing for it to happen, I think you might have a pretty good shot at doing something about my leprosy here. No, he says, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

The only thing he questions here is whether or not it’s Jesus’s will. That’s the only thing he questions. That’s the only thing that he’s concerned with.

He was convinced that Jesus could do whatever Jesus set his mind to. And his hope here is just that Jesus is willing. but there’s no expression of doubt here anywhere about Jesus’s ability.

Folks, when we’re dealing with Jesus, there should be no question in our minds as to his ability. When we come and we ask him for something, it ought to be, I know you can do this if you’re willing. Pray that his will be done, but never doubt that he can do whatever he sets his mind to.

Whatever his will is, he can do it. And so this leper rightly recognized that Jesus was his only hope. That was the one thing this man had going for him was his faith in Jesus.

And it was that faith that drove him in desperation to come to Jesus. And he came to Jesus believing that he could do whatever he set his mind to, whatever he chose to. And so he comes to Jesus and he throws himself on his mercy.

And I suspect, too, that he had quite a bit of faith that Jesus would be willing as well. Even though he’s not as certain about it as Jesus’ ability, You’ve got to have, to come to Jesus that way, you’ve got to have some inclination that Jesus is good, that Jesus is kind, that Jesus is compassionate, that Jesus is the sort of man who would will to heal him, for him to go through this desperate act of approaching him in violation of the law. There are certain things you just don’t ask unless you’re pretty sure you’re going to get a yes, right?

Charla still laughs about the fact that when I proposed to her, I thought there was a chance she might say no. why were you so nervous about it because you just you’re never a hundred percent sure I mean I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t think there was a 90 chance you were going to say yes but I didn’t have any guarantee in writing so I was a little I thought maybe it was leaning that direction I had some faith in that direction but there was still a little bit of question and if you’re in suspense she did say yes all right so just don’t want to leave you hanging Don’t want to get emails later and say, how’d it turn out? She’s here. She’s here.

I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t thought there’s a pretty good chance she’s going to say yes, but there’s still, I’m not 100% sure. That’s kind of what I see here with him. He’s not 100% sure that Jesus is going to be willing, but he’s taking his chances because he knows what kind of person Jesus is.

No doubt as to his ability. And he’s willing to bet that Jesus might be willing to heal him because he’s heard of his compassion and his kindness and his willingness to heal others. And so he comes to Jesus like Jesus is his only hope.

And that’s the only way for us to come to Jesus. Don’t ever come to Jesus asking for salvation or anything else like he’s just one of your options. Like he’s the best offer in town, so you’re going to take his business to you.

You’re going to take your business to him, and if you don’t like it, you’ll try someplace else. We should approach Jesus as though He’s our only hope, because He is. And that’s because only Jesus can cleanse us from our guilt under the law.

Now, throughout Scripture, leprosy is presented as a picture of sin. Now, I want to be careful when I talk about things being pictures or symbols. That doesn’t mean they’re not real. I’ve talked to you about things in the Old Testament as being they were symbols of Jesus.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that they didn’t really happen. Some people will do that. They’ll say stories in the Bible, they’re allegories.

They’re not real. They’re just pictures that God used to illustrate a spiritual truth. No, two things can be true at the same time if they’re not mutually exclusive. It can be a real historical event and God can also use it to illustrate a spiritual truth.

Leprosy was a real disease that really afflicted people and had real issues associated with it. But God also used it as a representation of a spiritual truth about sin. You see, it’s a condition of impurity and separation.

When you had leprosy, you could not go worship in the temple. When you had leprosy, you didn’t have access to go to worship like everybody else. You were in that sense cut off from God and you were cut off from the people of God.

You were separated. And that’s what sin does to us as well. It makes us impure in the sight of God.

It’s the reason why we fall short of His standard of absolute holiness because we’ve got this sin in our hearts and in our lives, and it separates us from God. And on top of that, I mean, that’s horrific enough, but sin separates us from one another as well. I believe it was James said, why do you have wars and fighting among you?

It’s because of sin. It’s a reason we get sideways with each other, because we’re sinners. That’s why marriage is so tough at times.

That’s why family life is so tough at times, because you’re taking sinners and putting them in close proximity to each other and saying, you’re stuck together, we’re going to grate on each other at times. That’s why church life can be difficult at times too, because we’re sinners. Sin, like leprosy, makes us impure and it separates.

And it’s a condition that was cursed under the law, just like sin. Just like there are all these consequences under the law for sin, there are all these consequences under the law for contracting leprosy. As a matter of fact, in the minds of many in the Old Testament, many of the Israelites, the two were equated.

And it was one of those situations where if you contracted leprosy, the thought was immediately, well, what did you do wrong? And so these two were linked in the people’s minds. And leprosy was also a condition where the law addressed how to declare somebody clean from it once they were clean, but it didn’t really address how to make them clean.

You see, there are all these rules in Leviticus for how if somebody has leprosy, here’s how you diagnose it, here’s how you set them apart, here’s what you do. And when they think they’re cured of it, then they go to the priest, you go through these rituals, you do these washings and bathings, and you do all these things. And then the priest, once it’s clear they no longer have the leprosy, then the priest can say they’re clean again, they can rejoin the community.

But to my memory, the law doesn’t have a prescription in it for how you get rid of the leprosy to begin with. It says once it’s gone, here’s how you make the proclamation that he’s clean. It doesn’t say how to clean it up.

And sin is the same way. Sin is the same way. The law tells us where the line is between sin and holiness.

It tells us how to tell the two apart and how to tell which side of that line we’re on. But the law doesn’t tell us how to get from one side to the other. The Ten Commandments are not a formula for how we get from one side to the other.

The Old Testament law is not a formula for how we get clean, either from leprosy or from sin. That’s why Galatians talks about the law condemning us and being a schoolmaster that pointed us to Christ. The law is that sign saying you must be this holy to enter in. Whether we’re talking about heaven, whether we’re talking about a relationship with the Father of the law says, you must be this holy, and it’s way up here where we can’t get in.

And it helps us realize, it helps us diagnose the condition within us that is sin. But the law is not the remedy for how we get rid of that sin once it’s there. As I said this morning, we do not get extra credit.

We cannot stand before a holy God and have Him say, how do you answer for all these things you’ve done in violation of my law? How do you answer for all of these sins, all these times that your heart has been in rebellion against me? How do you answer for all of those?

We don’t get to look at all the other stuff we’ve done that’s good and say, I’ve done all these things. And the example I always give you, because it’s my favorite, is if I stand before a judge, told you this this morning, if I stand before a judge convicted of murder, and we’re going into sentencing, and he says, you’ve killed this man, what do you have to say for yourself? I don’t get to say, look at all these other people over here I haven’t killed.

You don’t get extra credit for that. That’s not how this works. And so when I come to God, if I violated his law in any place, I don’t get to say, look at all the others that are intact, because they don’t change the fact that this is still broken over here.

My father-in-law told the story talking about God’s law. Let’s take the Ten Commandments, for example, we like to think of it as 10 individual plates. Say a nice piece of china in one of your cabinets.

10 individual plates. And we might have a problem with three or four of them. Well, then we come to God and say, look at these six or seven over here that are unbroken and pristine.

That’s not the way it works. God’s law is one big plate. The New Testament tells us if we violated the law in one area, we’ve broken the whole thing.

So just like leprosy, the answer to our cleansing from sin is not found in the law. The law diagnoses, but it does not cleanse. Only Jesus can cleanse us from our guilt under the law.

Just like his leprosy condemned him under the law, our sin condemns us under the law, and only Jesus can cleanse us from either one. And if we want to be cleansed tonight, if you want to be cleansed, you must trust Jesus. If you’ve never trusted him before, that’s the answer.

Whether you’re here in person, whether you’re watching online, That is the answer. The good things, the religious rituals, the law can’t make you right with God. If you want to be cleansed, you must trust Jesus.

And if you’ve never done that, it’s as simple as recognizing that you’ve sinned against Him, that you’ve violated His law, and that you’ve been separated from Him because of that. And that only because Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and shed His blood and died to pay for your sins and then rose again to prove it, can our sins ever be forgiven? Can our spiritual leprosy ever be cleansed only because of what He did?

So we have to come to Him like He’s our only hope. Tonight, if you need to trust Him for the first time, you can do that. Simply talk to the Lord, acknowledge what you’ve done wrong that He knows you’ve already done, but trust Christ as your Savior and ask for the forgiveness that God offers because of it.

Now to a Sunday night crowd, I understand that most of you, if not all of you, have probably done that. But this is an important reminder to us as well. Because if we’re not reminded from time to time that our cleansing and our righteousness lie in Christ rather than the law, we tend to get a little puffed up and self-righteous, don’t we?

We start to get a few years removed from that old person we were, and we start to convince ourselves, well, I’ve always been this good of a person. And if we’re not careful, that comes off in the way we deal with others. We can end up looking down on them.

We can end up getting self-righteous. We can end up dealing with God in a self-righteous way. coming to Him like we have something to boast about.

When in reality, I know it’s not fun to think about, in reality, we’re spiritual lepers. If we are cleansed, it’s because we came to Jesus and threw ourselves on His mercy like He was our only hope. And as unpleasant as that is to admit, it’s also freeing to realize what He’s done for us that we couldn’t do for ourselves.

It’s liberating to realize when I stand before God and explain why I should be among His people. Just like the lepers in ancient Israel coming back in among God’s people. Why should I be in this fellowship with God?

We don’t have to stand there with our old filth to offer and hope that it’s enough. We get to stand before God with the cleansing that Jesus has offered.