And please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Leviticus for our Old Testament reading. The New Testament reading and the text for the sermon this morning comes from Luke 5, where we see Jesus cleanse a leper. And so from Leviticus chapter 14, we’re going to read the Old Testament mosaic slash Levitical guidance that scripture contained for God’s people of old for the cleansing of lepers, the procedures, the processes by which someone could be declared clean if they had had leprosy, but then had been healed. Leviticus chapter 14, and we’ll read verses one through 20. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, this shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall look.
Then, if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live, clean birds, and cedarwood, and scarlet yarn, and hyssop. And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water. He shall take the live bird with the cedar wood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease.
Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go into the open field. And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. And after that, he may come into the camp, but live outside his tent seven days. And on the seventh day, he shall shave off all his hair from his head, his beard, and his eyebrows, and he shall shave off all his hair, and then he shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and he shall be clean. And on the eighth day, he shall take two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish, and a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, and one log of oil.
And the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who is to be cleansed and these things before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it for a guilt offering, along with the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. And he shall kill the lamb in the place where they kill the sin offering and the burnt offering, in the place of the sanctuary. For the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest. It is most holy.
The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. Then the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand, and dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and sprinkle some of the oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. And some of the oil that remains in his hand, the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt offering. And the rest of the oil that is in the priest’s hand, he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed.
Then the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. The priest shall offer the sin offering to make atonement for him who is to be cleansed from his uncleanness. And afterwards, he shall kill the burnt offering, And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean.”
Quite an elaborate process of cleansing of a leper. But not so in the case of the Lord Jesus. So please turn with me to the gospel according to Luke chapter 5. where our reading, appropriately, is quite a bit shorter, and the process for the actual cleansing of the leper is far more simple. Luke 5, verses 12 through 16. While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.
And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately, the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing as Moses commanded for proof to them. But now even more, the report about him went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s ask Him once more to bless it to us now. Heavenly Father, this is Your holy word. As we approach it together, we pray that You’ll work powerfully through it in each of us. We pray that Christ would be glorified, and we pray these things in His name. Amen.
Some years ago, a friend of ours posted a video on YouTube, fairly short video, but it made a powerful point. These friends of ours, at the time, were living in the Dakotas. And it was the dead of winter. It was absolutely frigid outside. And the video showed my friend.
He had taken a saucepan, rather large cook pot, I guess, saucepan of some kind. And he boiled some water. And then he took this boiling water and went to the door of his house, stepped out onto the porch, and hurled the water up into the air. And this boiling water, before it even reached the ground, had frozen.
You could hear it falling like ice particles on the ground in this video. So if you think about it, boiling water, if you were to touch boiling water, it would burn you. It’d cause blistering on your skin if you were to touch that water. That’s how hot the water is. It’s so hot that it’s on the verge of being converted into steam. Some of it, even as it boiled, was doing that very thing. And yet this water is the hottest water can actually become and still be water. He threw out into this cold, and it froze before it hit the ground. Such is the power of the holiness of Jesus.
For any one of us, for any ordinary human being, to come into physical contact with a leper would make them unclean. They’d become ceremonially defiled. Also, depending on the variety of leprosy it was, they may have run the risk of contracting it themselves. If you touch a leper, you’d become unclean, but not Jesus.
Not Jesus. The power of the leprosy, the power of uncleanness of that disease was like that boiling water that my friend threw up in the air, but the power of Jesus the power of his holiness, the power of his purity, and the very power of life within him was like that cold, cold Dakota winter. It took boiling water and froze it instantly. This man was healed instantly by Jesus.
And the passage teaches us that Christ’s power over the most dreaded diseases illustrates the power of his gospel to cleanse the vilest of sinners. Christ’s power over the most dreaded diseases illustrates the power of his gospel to cleanse the vilest of sinners. Just two points in this morning’s sermon.
The first is the leper demonstrates deep humility and strong faith. The leper demonstrates deep humility and strong faith. The second point is going to be Christ Jesus demonstrates gracious compassion and infinite power. So first of all, this leper. Remember, Jesus, if we just glance back at chapter four, verse 44, last verse of chapter 4.
He was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. He was going from town to town. He said, that’s why I came. He wanted to get out and preach in as many towns and villages and cities that he could. And so on the Sabbath day he would appear in their synagogues and he would teach. And then he would teach in their streets, and teach on the plains, and teach on the mountains throughout the rest of the week. That’s what Jesus was doing.
And we’re told in today’s text that while he was in one of their cities there came a man full of leprosy. That’s how he’s introduced to us, full of leprosy. Some of our English versions translate that covered. His whole body was just enveloped in this horrible disease. And when it says he was full of leprosy, we take that to mean that this condition, this disease, was at a very advanced stage. He had not newly contracted it. It wasn’t just getting started. It had taken its course. just enveloped the man in the sores that were typical of leprosy. But what exactly is leprosy? What was it? What precisely did this man have? What was his condition?
Well, our English Bibles, including our ESV, have footnotes, usually, in the New Testament, particularly when the word leprosy appears. And it will usually say something like, this is a term for a variety of skin diseases. And that can encompass a whole range of comparatively benign things to an increasing scale of more life-threatening things. And so the term used in our Greek New Testament for leprosy could include things like eczema or psoriasis. And It’s surprising how many commentators go out of their way to argue that what this man had probably wasn’t what is now known as Hansen’s disease or that wasting kind of leprosy that we know of that degenerates nerve endings and causes extremities to auto-amputate and that kind of thing. And I’m not sure why.
I bring to you the words of Leon Morris, as he commented and wrote on this passage. Speaking of leprosy, he said, in its worst form, it was a very dreadful disease. It was both disfiguring and fatal. So for many, if they contracted leprosy, it was a death sentence, a long, slow death by this disease. typical eloquence and powerful words of J.C. Ryle. Again, speaking of leprosy, he wrote, of all the ills which can afflict the body of man, leprosy appears to be the most severe. It affects every part of the Constitution at once. It brings sores and decay upon the skin, corruption into the blood, and rottenness into the bones. It is a living death, which no medicine can check or stay.
And again, the text tells us that this man’s case was extensive. And that word that’s used there to say that he was full of leprosy can be used to describe the ripening of fruit. And so if you can imagine a ripe piece of fruit where the whole fruit is ready to be eaten, that’s a nice picture. But in a negative, in a horrible way, this man’s body was ripe with leprosy. It was everywhere.
And this sorely afflicted man, according to our text this morning, saw Jesus, no doubt from a distance, some distance probably. He saw Jesus. He fell down, and he begged. He begged. That word means he was asking in an urgent way. And to give you a kind of a taste for the earnestness the urgency with which he was praying.
This is the same word that Luke uses in chapter nine to describe the pleas and the prayer of a man who is crying out to Jesus on behalf of his afflicted son. So if you can think of the heart of a father whose son is suffering and how he would cry out to the Lord for aid, for help, for healing, it’s that kind of earnestness. In fact, Luke uses the same word also when the demons are being cast out by Jesus and they beg Jesus not to torment them. That’s the word that’s being used here. That’s the intensity and the urgency with which the man is crying out and begging to Jesus. One other use of the word, particularly in Luke, that I want to present to you, and I want to make a point of application for it. This word that means he begged. or that teaches that he asked with as much urgency as he possibly could ask.
It’s also the word that both Matthew and Luke use when they recount Jesus’ admonition to you and me to pray to the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into the harvest. He wasn’t just saying, I’ll pray to the Lord to do this. He’s saying, beg the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest. It gives us a sense of how fervently we ought to be praying for our sister churches that don’t have ministers, how fervently we should be praying that God would raise up missionaries to go to the field.
But as I said, this leper demonstrates deep humility and strong faith. And here’s where we see his deep humility. how he addresses Jesus. He says, Lord, if you will, if you will. Again, that’s how our ESV puts it. What he’s saying is if you are willing.
The leper understood that it was entirely Jesus prerogative to help or not. If you are willing, he says. despite his desperate condition, despite how tragic this disease was and what ravages it was doing to his body, and despite the fact that he knew and fully persuaded that Jesus could heal him, still he acknowledges Christ’s complete autonomy over the situation. It’s entirely Christ’s prerogative.
If you will, he doesn’t make demands. He doesn’t even try to build an argument. Look at me, look at how pitiable my situation is. He just says, if you will, he simply begs. So that’s where we see his deep humility. But we hand in hand with that deep humility, we also see this strong faith, you can make me clean. I know you can do it. I’m fully persuaded that you have the power.
You’re able, despite his otherwise hopeless condition, his humanly hopeless condition, and despite the fact that the disease had progressed so far. People in that day dreaded leprosy the same way modern people dread cancer diagnosis. You know, we get cancer diagnoses in various stages. There’s stage 1 cancer, right, where the tumors are comparatively small and they haven’t spread from the original tissue where the cancer appeared. And then you’ve got stage 2, stage 3. Once you get to stage 4, the cancer has metastasized, it’s spread throughout a person’s body, throughout the lymph nodes and so on. This man’s leprosy was stage 4 leprosy, but he still believed Jesus could make him clean. How does that compare with our faith when our situation becomes bleak? Because this man’s condition was bleak.
Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord both as to his power, power to heal, power to cleanse, power to save. And he’s Lord. as to his sovereignty in the exercise of that power. And this leper understood those things. He demonstrates deep humility and strong faith. But then, secondly, Christ demonstrates gracious compassion and infinite power. The first thing Luke tells us that Jesus did in response to this man is that he touched him. That should give us goosebumps. Ceremonially, that would have made any ordinary person unclean.
You touch a leper, that means you can’t even go into the synagogue. You certainly can’t go to the temple. You would have to be isolated for a period of time until you can be ceremonially cleansed because you touched a leper. And as to pathology, there’s, of course, the threat of the transmission of the disease. If you came into contact with them, well, what if you get leprosy from them? So you’ve got the ceremonial aspect, but you’ve also got the health aspect.
And neither of those concerns deterred Jesus one bit. He reached out. He touched the man. Now, aside from the fact that he healed him, consider Consider the emotional impact. Consider the relational impact that being touched by Jesus would have had on this poor man.
He had had no human touch for the duration of his sickness. And if it was as advanced as the text suggests to us, he had probably been bearing with this leprosy for many, many months or even years. Who knows how long he’d been afflicted by it. And for that time, no one could touch him. He hadn’t felt the warmth of human touch ever since his first diagnosis. No embrace, no hug, not even a pat on the back, not even the opportunity to hold the hand of a loved one, or the warm handshake of a friend. Matthew and Mark record this same incident. In Mark’s gospel, it appears in chapter one, and Mark gives a little snippet that Luke doesn’t share with us. As he introduces Jesus reaching out, touching the man, it says Jesus was moved with pity, moved with compassion. He stretched out his hand and touched him. Christ’s compassion is first expressed in touching the man.
Now, Jesus didn’t have to do that, did he? Many of Jesus’ healing miracles, he performed many cures without touching the person being healed. In fact, he even healed people that he never laid eyes on. Think about the centurion that came pleading on behalf of his servant. Jesus said the word, never laid eyes on the person, but healed him. We have numerous examples of Jesus performing cures without touching the person that was being healed.
So touching this leper was deliberate. It was a deliberate and dramatic statement that Jesus was making by touching this man. And so he touched him, and Jesus answers the man’s humble but urgent plea. The man had said, if you’re willing, and Jesus said, I am willing. Lord, if you will. Jesus replies, I will. It’s my good pleasure to do this. Jesus was saying to him, you have a deadly disease, but I have the very power of life. And so Jesus acts according to the man’s faith. The man says, you can make me clean. Jesus says, be clean. He just gives the order. By sovereign command, he healed the disease. Immediately, scripture says, immediately the leprosy left him.
Now, many of you, maybe all of you, at some point or another, have been cured of some disease. Maybe you had an infection, and you took a course of antibiotics, five-day, 10-day course. You take your antibiotics. And even before the course is over, you start to feel better. The symptoms begin to subside. But it takes time, doesn’t it?
Or whether someone suffering from cancer undergoes chemotherapy. And things like that, even the best of modern medicine usually involves a slow and gradual recovery. from whatever our affliction might be, but Christ has the power, even over an advanced case of a dreaded disease, to heal instantly. It shows his infinite power. Well, when we come to verse 14, we see an instruction that he gives to the leper that sometimes puzzles us, perhaps.
He says, don’t tell anyone. He charged him not to tell anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest. Humanly speaking, Jesus sought to manage his publicity. And so when he says to the man, don’t tell anyone, again, we get something from Mark’s account that we don’t see in Luke because Mark tells us that he sternly charged him.
And that word can mean, it can have to do with, it could even suggest a scolding. So there’s this fervor with which Jesus says, don’t tell anyone. Just go to the priest. Present the offering as prescribed by Moses. And we’ve talked about this. We’ve even talked about this recently at a fellowship meal.
Why is it, on many occasions, did Jesus tell people, don’t tell anybody who I am, or don’t tell what I just did? Why does he try to minimize the publicity there? Well, part of it has to do with what has been called the messianic secret. Again, as to his human nature. and his earthly ministry as the God-man among us, Jesus was seeking to manage false expectations about the Christ. So when people came to realize and even confessed him as the Christ, he would say, don’t tell anyone. Not yet. It’s not time. People won’t understand. So there’s that aspect of it.
But also, remember, Jesus had an agenda, and it was to travel around in the towns, to visit all the villages and towns and cities of Galilee, and to preach the gospel to them. But again, as Mark tells us, after he healed this leper, and the leper, instead of keeping it a secret, went and blabbed to everybody, then Mark says, Jesus could no longer openly enter a town. but was out in the desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter.” Notice too in verse 14, after he says, don’t tell anyone, he says, go show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing as Moses commanded for a proof to them. We just heard it not long ago from the book of Leviticus.
That’s what the man was being instructed to do. So even though he’d been completely healed, made clean immediately and fully, Jesus was saying, respect the commandments of Moses, go do what he told you to do. So Jesus respected and observed the ceremonial law. He had to, because he had to be the perfect man. And he encouraged others to do the same.
He followed the Levitical instructions of the ceremonial law. commanded the man, reminded him to make the prescribed offering for his cleansing. And even though the days of all those rites and ceremonies and sacrifices and offerings and all the things associated with the Levitical priesthood and the law of Moses. In that ceremonial law, they were soon to come to an end because the day Christ rose from the grave, they were all abrogated. They were all fulfilled and made irrelevant, but not yet.
And you know how sometimes towards the end of the school year, kids get a little bit excited and they want to get loosey-goosey and don’t want to obey the rules so much because, hey, school’s almost out. Jesus isn’t like that with the law of Moses. He knows that he’s coming to fulfill every line of it, and it will become obsolete. It will be abrogated. But until that time, he shows tremendous respect for the institutions of the Mosaic law. It was under the law of Moses that only the priest could officially readmit a person to society.
And that’s what Jesus was instructing the man to do. At the end of our text, not necessarily closely related to the main body of the narrative, but we see a word about the piety of Jesus and his practice of prayer. Look with me at that last verse once more, verse 16. But he, Jesus, would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
This was an ongoing thing. He continually and routinely did this. Christ was a busy man, just like many of you are busy men and women. But despite his busyness, he found time to be alone with the Father. And that provides a point of application for us, too, because in doing that, he was setting an example for us.
And when I talk to people and they say, I’m just having a hard time finding time to pray, my response is always, you won’t find time to pray. You have to make the time. You have to set it aside. And since Jesus did, so ought we to make sure we’re spending dedicated time alone with our Heavenly Father. David Brown said, prayer is the secret both of strength and of sweetness in the servants and followers of Christ.
Well, this event that we’ve been looking at is recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each of them in their gospels recorded this occasion. And they make other general references to Jesus healing lepers. And Jesus even gave power to his disciples when he sent them out. He gave them power over diseases, including leprosy. He gave them power to do what he had done for this man.
And if you’ve read the Gospels more than a few times, you know that there aren’t very many specific diseases mentioned by name in the Gospels. It deals just generally with sicknesses and diseases. But one of those diseases that is mentioned specifically by name is leprosy. And that’s partially because leprosy, in a way, is in a class by itself among diseases. There’s no other disease quite like it, kind of what Ryle was alluding to. Its nature and its effects make it especially fit to represent mankind’s natural pollution by sin. Again, quoting Ryle, he said, what are we all but lepers spiritually in the sight of God?
Sin is the deadly sickness by which we are all affected. It has eaten into our constitution. It has infected all our faculties, heart, conscience, mind, and will. All are diseased by sin, just like that man’s body was by his leprosy. Like leprosy, sin is loathsome. It’s a detestable thing. It’s filthy. It’s repulsive in the sight of God, as well as in the sight of anyone who really understands its true nature. Like leprosy, sin spreads. The sinful condition is not a static one. Sin progresses. Sin advances. Sin ripens. Sin deadens the conscience so that wickedness is ever increasing.
And like leprosy, sin is incurable, humanly speaking. No sinner is able to make himself clean. And unlike leprosy, Sinners do not naturally want to be clean. Lepers hate their leprosy and they want to be cured, but in the case of sin, it’s far worse than leprosy. Sinners love their sin. They have no desire to forsake it.
But if the Holy Spirit enlightens the mind of a sinner, If the Holy Spirit gives a person a sight and sense of their real condition, then that person sees sin the way the leper sees his leprosy. Then he cries out for mercy. And the account of this leper teaches us, here’s the takeaway. The account of this leper teaches us that there is no sin so foul or horrible that it cannot be forgiven if only the sinner has faith in Christ and calls upon him. No one is too dirty. No one is too filthy to come to Jesus and receive forgiveness. No one. Those whom others shun, Christ receives. Those who are unclean and full of shame, Christ embraces.
Because he has power to make clean. Thanks be to God, let’s pray. Oh Lord, thank you for this display of Christ’s power. Thank you for the mercy he showed to this man. And to so many others. Let us learn from this passage. that Christ has power to cleanse us from all of our sins. Nothing can do it except the blood of Jesus. We praise you that His blood is sufficient for all of our sins. May we trust in Him. We pray in His name. Amen.