Why The Incarnation Matters - [Luke 5:12-16]

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Well, there are two ways to approach Christmas. There's the secular way, and there's the sacred way.
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Here's an illustration of the secular way, and then we'll look at an illustration of the sacred way or holy way.
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This was in the Episcopal News, Diocese of Los Angeles, written by Reverend Benison, who's a rector of St.
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Mark's Church in Upland, California. Quote, there are few causes to which
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I'm more passionately committed than that of Santa Claus. Santa Claus deserves not just any place in the church, but the highest place of honor.
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I'm just reading this, by the way. Where he should be enthroned as the long -bearded ancient of days, the divine and holy one whom we call
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God. Santa Claus is God the Son. You better watch out. You better not cry.
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You better not pout. I'm telling you why. Santa Claus's coming to town simply refers to the Son of God slipping into the secrets of the hearts as easily as he slips down the chimney.
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Santa Claus is God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, in whose hand is a pack bursting at its seams with the gifts of his creation.
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Santa Claus is God the Holy Spirit, who comes with a sound of gentle laughter, with a shape like a bowl full of jelly, to sow in the night the seeds of good humor.
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So there he is, God the Son, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit. I've seen him in the toy store. I've seen him in his car on the freeway.
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And when I saw him with his crazy beard and his baggy red suit, I saw more than the seasonal merchant of cheap plastic toys.
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I saw no less than the triune God. Now, that would be the secular way.
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And you should just see your faces. If you want more of this blasphemy, I'm sure you could see it in the
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Shack movie. But that's another sermon. This is Christmas morning. Now, here's a secular, no, a sacred way to look at Christmas and to think about the birth of Christ rightly.
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Martyn Lloyd -Jones said, look at the matter this way. Here you are and I, miserable worms in this world, miserable worms with our arrogance and our pride and our appalling ignorance.
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We deserve nothing but to be blotted off the face of the earth. But what has happened is before the foundation of the world that this blessed
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God, three blessed persons considered us, considered our condition, considered what would happen to us.
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And the consequence was that these three persons, God, whom man has never seen, stooped to consider us and planned a way whereby we might be forgiven and redeemed.
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The son said, I will leave this glory for a while. I will dwell in the womb of a woman.
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I will be born as a babe. I will become a pauper. I will suffer insult in the world.
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I will even allow them to nail me to a cross and spit in my face. He volunteered,
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Lloyd -Jones says, to do all that for us. And at this very moment, this blessed second person in the
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Trinity is seated at the right hand of God to represent you and me. Jesus came down to earth and did all that and rose again and ascended to heaven.
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And it was all planned before the world began for you and for me.
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Isn't that a better way to think about Christmas? So here's what we're going to do this morning. We're gonna look at a biblical view, a reminder of why the incarnation is so important.
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And before we get into our passage this morning, which is Luke chapter five, I'd like you to turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12 as we set the scene so we get to Luke properly.
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This is gonna be kind of a different approach for Christmas. And we could have just carried on in Hebrews chapter two because the incarnation is talked about there at the end of the chapter, as you know.
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But I'd like to go to first Matthew 12, and then we'll go to Luke five as we consider the incarnation and why it's important and why it is relevant, why it's anything less than boring or old hat or secular.
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We'll look at Matthew 12 first and then Luke chapter five.
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Now, before we read the passage, I want you to think for a minute about God. Does He have a body?
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And how that relates to the incarnation? Wasn't that long ago I stood in the
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Sistine Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel is designed in such a way that it makes you look at the floor.
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Just everything makes you look straight down to the ground. Well, no, that's not true, is it? Everything in the
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Sistine Chapel is designed so that you'll look up, and when you look up, you'll see paintings by a particular person.
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Who is that person? Michelangelo. And the fresco that catches everyone's eye is a painting by Michelangelo called
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The Creation of Adam. Who's been in the Sistine Chapel to see that? Okay, when was that pilgrimage?
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It's about 1500, and Michelangelo paints this, and it's called The Creation of Adam, and it's when
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God breathes life into Adam, and you see the long finger of God, this father -looking, this ancient -looking, this old -looking man, ancient -looking man.
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But does the father have a body? I look at that painting, and I think to myself, God depicted as an elderly, white -bearded man in some swirling cloak, and He's creating
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Adam with this touch. How can that be? If God has no body, what's going on here?
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Can God touch people? Is God compassionate? Can He heal? Even yesterday when we were at the rest home, we had a great time, by the way.
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It was so wonderful to see some of those grandmas and grandpas, and with our little children running around dressed up like cows and all kinds of other things, and reenacting the manger scene.
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It was great. You know, the most precious times when I could see the ladies in the wheelchair, and they would be doing this to those little kids.
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What were they wanting? Just come over here and touch me. I mean, the power of a hug or a touch.
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I sat in the front row listening to a young preacher, but a pretty good preacher, and I just put my arm around this grandma next to me.
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Just the appropriate nature of touch. And you can just think about embracing. And I remember one story where a man decided he'd just go get his hair cut once a week just because he'd like to have somebody just touch him.
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The power of touch. So my question is this. If God has no body, God is a spirit, and a spirit has no flesh and bones, how can
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God touch anyone? What kind of real compassion can be shown? So let's first look at Matthew 12, and then
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Luke 5, and we'll answer those very questions. That's what I'm after today. Matthew 12, 15, it says, "'Jesus, aware of this, he's the
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Lord of the Sabbath. "'He's healed a man with a withered hand, "'and now he withdraws.' "'And many followed him,'
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Matthew 12, 15, "'and he healed them all, "'and ordered them not to make him known. "'This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet
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Isaiah.'" Specifically, Isaiah, if you look at your liner notes,
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Isaiah 42, one through four. This is a long quotation from scripture in this gospel.
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And you can just imagine what kind of Messiah did the people want back in those days. They wanted a revolutionary
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Messiah. They wanted a Messiah to overthrow the political structure. They wanted a victorious
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Messiah. They wanted a Messiah to get on a white Roman horse, as it were, and destroy the invaders and the
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Romans. And we want political correct overthrow. But this particular
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Messiah, the one that Isaiah 42 speaks of, the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, we would know. Gentle, meek, helping the poor and the needy.
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So Isaiah speaks of this great Messiah. And we see in Matthew 12, verse 18, "'Behold, my servant, whom
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I have chosen.'" I love the way Matthew does it. Take a look at this, behold.
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Well, isn't this amazing? The person to whom the spotlight goes is the father talking of the son.
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The father says, I choose for myself this particular son. He's the one, my chosen one. I particularly have him ready for a special task.
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My beloved son, do you notice the verse in verse 18 goes on to say, in whom my soul is well -pleased.
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Deep -seated love, my beloved one, my close one, and I love this son. I'm well -pleased with this son.
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He's talking about how great the love is between the father and the son, and how intense it is, and how dramatic it is.
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I'm well -pleased in choosing him for the work of redemption. Just for a second, think, is
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God the father pleased with the blood of bulls and goats, and does that ever take away sin? The text goes on, verse 18,
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I will put my spirit upon him. You can almost think there, right, of the baptism where the
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Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. We're not talking about some kind of social justice.
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We're talking about the justice of God, and how you can be made right in God's eyes, considered right and just in God's eyes.
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Matthew 12, 19 says, he will not quarrel. By the way, this is, and this is not a joke, although it'll sound like a joke.
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People want political rulers back in those days, and what do political rulers do? They quarrel, they argue, they brawl, they wrangle, they hassle.
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He will what? He will not quarrel. His mode of operation is completely different.
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Pharisees might have quarreled, he doesn't. He doesn't cry out. His approach is opposite.
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It's humble, it's meek. He's not fomenting violence and overthrow and revolution and take things by force.
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This is all to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 42. Nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
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Now, we come to this passage in verse 20. A battered reed he will not break off, and a smoldering wick he will not put out.
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What were reeds used for? We might understand this smoldering wick, but what about the reed?
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The reeds were used for flutes. It's a musical instrument, and you had to get it just right. If it was bent, no good.
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Battered, throw it out. You can just imagine a shepherd walking by and he gets a reed and he puts the right holes in it, he gets it all correct, and he can just use it as a great little instrument.
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But at best, it's fragile. At best, when it's perfect, it still is, it's just weak.
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And here's the imagery. We are weak. We are fragile.
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We are helpless. And of course, God could just take us as broken vessels and just say, you're not good for anything.
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I discard you. I throw you away. Why do you even keep it? But what does the text say?
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He won't break off. And similarly, in verse 20, a smoldering wick he will not put out.
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Can you imagine you have a little lamp, a little olive oil, and you've got some flaxseed wick in there, all the oil's gone, and you just got a wick.
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It just keeps smoking. It doesn't give you light. It just keeps smoking. There's that little cherry on top. It just keeps smoking and smoking and smoking.
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And so what do you do with that? What is it good for? How does it help you? No, it's just better if you just lick your fingers and just extinguish it.
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I mean, they're cheap. Flax is cheap. Throw it away. It's no big deal. Just replace it. I mean, why even bother?
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It's not even worth me bothering to go over and go, to put it out. So do you get the picture here?
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What's going on? Isaiah said the Messiah is going to come. And you might expect political overthrow, military upheaval.
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But he's going to come along where people would just as soon discard others. And he'll say, do you know what?
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I'm not like the Pharisees. I'm not pushing around people with all these rules. People that are broken, burnt to a crisp.
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Those that others would just toss out. No good for anything. Can you imagine if you go to some political leader and say, listen,
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I'd like to help your campaign. I have nothing to offer you. I'm actually going to be dead weight for you.
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Oh, come on. Why don't I make you secretary of state? No, these people that no one could want, no one could use, no one could benefit from, the
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Messiah has tender compassion toward. The lowliest of the low. And then the text says in verse 20, until he leads justice to victory.
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He operates with tender concern. He gives strength to people. He seeks out tax collectors and sinners and poor people.
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You know what? Jesus is almost like taking care of sheep who don't have a what?
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Shepherd. That's the idea. That's the very idea. And in his name, not just Israel, but the
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Gentiles will hope it's the world's savior. So now I'd like you to turn to Luke chapter five with that as a setup, why the
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Messiah would come, what the prophecy was for the Messiah to come as he was stooping low to be affiliated with those who are needy and sinful and broken.
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Now we have Jesus coming to meet a leper. Now I was talking a little bit about the power of touch at the rest home.
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I want you to know that we kind of in our Western culture, I don't really think we understand the power of touch very much.
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I love the study back in the 60s by Sidney Girard and he watched friends sit at a cafeteria together and they would have a conversation and he watched them for the same amount of time, different people across the world talking and did they touch each other in a friendly way?
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When he studied people who lived in England, two friends at a cafe talking, they touched each other zero times.
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The United States, once in a while with kind of a burst of enthusiasm, people touched one another friends two times.
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France, when friends get together, they touched each other 110 times in the same hour and for my
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Puerto Rican friends that are here today, those friends touched each other 180 times and our
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Puerto Rican friends here today said, should have been 360. You would like to have an
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NICU baby, a NICU baby or a preterm baby do better, what do you do? You touch them, you hold them.
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You'd like to have children in the orphanage sleep better at night. The power of touch everywhere you go, caretakers know that.
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Even Michelangelo said, to touch can be to give life. That's right. Back in the old days, they would teach waitresses and waiters, if you want a higher tip, just touch the person on the shoulder, they'll give you more of a tip.
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One journal called Emotion studied an NBA team and it said teams that touch each other, I assume high fives, fist bumps, those kinds of things, win more basketball games.
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It's amazing. The French psychologist said that when teachers pat students in a friendly way, those students talked in class three times more often.
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Now, if you'd like to be technical about touch, here's what the internet says. Touch is actually not a single sense, but several.
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There are separate nerves in the skin to register heat, cold, pressure, pain and touch. These thousands of nerves are distributed unevenly over the body so that some areas are more responsive to cold, others to pain and others to heat or pressure.
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Each of these nerves has a different structure at the receiving end. A touch nerve has an elongated bulb -shaped end, a nerve responsive to cold, a squat bulb.
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The nerve that registers warmth has what looks like a twisted thread. The nerve for deep pressure has an egg -shaped end.
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Pain receptors have no protective sheath. I mean, isn't this devotional? Aren't you feeling it? I mean,
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I just want to think, oh, touch described scientifically. But what you're going to see here in Luke 5, you don't need a scientific explanation to think that is the tender
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Messiah who loves sinners. Luke 5, the power of touch.
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Verse 12, while he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.
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Interesting that the physician Luke says that. He would know. And when he saw
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Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
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Now, if you go back in Luke a little bit, there's an ongoing description of the healing of Jesus.
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In chapter 4, verse 31, he heals a man with an unclean demon.
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In chapter 4, verse 36, he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's house. Now Simon's mother -in -law was ill with a high fever and they appealed to him on her behalf and he stood over her, rebuked the fever and it left her.
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And immediately she rose and began to serve them. Chapter 4, verse 40.
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Now, when the sun was setting, all those who had sick, they were sick with various diseases were brought to him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.
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And now this leper needs to be healed by Jesus. And Mark says that he was beseeching
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Jesus, asking him. I mean, the healing power of Jesus is news that spread through every nook and through every cranny.
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This leper has heard about the healing power of Jesus and abandoning all social regulations, he just barges right up, runs right up, falls down.
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Instead of keeping his distance, he just ignores all that. And when you think of leprosy, by the way, the
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Greek word for leprosy, it's the root that just means scaly.
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When I think of a cheap fish, it's just got all these scales on it, scaly.
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And we don't know exactly what kind of disease it was back in those days because it's morphed into all kinds of things. Maybe people call it
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Hansen's disease, but it was incurable. It was awful, could not be cured.
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Even today, it can't be cured. Some kind of scaly skin disease.
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The problem is, first you'd have some numbness in your fingers and your toes. Then it would start to hurt.
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Then your fingers and your toes and your skin would start discoloring, having weird colors on it.
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Then pretty soon there'd be ulcers, sores, oozing, pus. And then it started going to the face and the eyes and the ears.
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And then it would cause your skin to kind of bunch up. And when it bunched up, you'd almost look like a lion.
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Problem is, it did things on the inside of your body as well. And although no eyebrows makes you look funny, no eyelashes make you look funny, what was the worst thing was the odor.
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If you were by a person who had leprosy, you could smell them. But for me personally, what would probably be the worst, it also affects your tongue and your voice box and the way you talk.
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And so now you can't really talk very well. You're hoarse, you're gasping. It's a raspy kind of talk.
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So you've got oozing, ulcerations. You really suffer. And you'll suffer intensely for about nine years.
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Parts of your body start falling off because you can't feel them anymore. You'll one day be in a coma and then you'll die.
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20 years, people say you die by inches. The reason why
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I say that is you'll just lose one digit, then the next, then the next. So it's awful. Remember Paul Brand, that physician here in our last century, when he would care for leprous patients, he would always put a cat in the room.
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I'm not gonna make any comments about cats. Here I like cats, fondly like cats. Why? Because rats would run into the room or scurry into the room and eat off the digits of the person.
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And since they have no nerve endings, they don't know that the rat is eating them alive. So the cat will take care of the rat.
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So from the inside, bones and everything else, you're just... Well, the way I would describe it is when
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Miriam got leprosy in Numbers 12, listen, it says, Oh, do not let her be like one dead whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out from his mother's womb.
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No wonder it's a painless hell, they would say. It's your flesh is half eaten away.
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So you're hurting anyway. And now society, both socially and religiously, says you stay at arm's length, you stay away.
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I mean, we don't want to get it. Just for a second, remember when AIDS came out and you're like,
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Okay, can I be in a room with someone? Can I shake their hands? Can they be on the same basketball team? You just stay away. When my father got cancer 30 years ago, it was like his friends can't even come over.
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They didn't know what to say. I don't know if back in those days they thought they could get it or what. How much more here? No wonder
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Leviticus 13, it says, As for the leper who has infection, his clothes shall be torn and the hair of his head shall be uncovered.
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You want to spot him a mile off, by the way. And he shall cover his mustache and cry with a raspy voice, of course, because he can't really talk unclean, unclean.
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He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. He's cut off from the priest's office, cut off from God's house.
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Luke 5, what's it say? And when he saw Jesus, out goes all the stigma, out goes all the social issues, out goes all the ostracization.
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He sees Jesus. He falls on his face. Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Mark again says he's beseeching him.
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He's on his knees. And by the way, just picture it for a second. I don't think this guy stealthily snuck up.
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It was just like he just was bold. The faith of this leper. This guy can heal. I'll go find him.
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And I'd like to know if the waves of people began to part right about now. If I was standing by the leper,
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I'd want to get out, run. You treat lepers like they're dead, because they are.
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They're the walking dead. Now just think of what he's saying.
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Think how he said it with this kind of, as one man said, with a piteous cry, falling down before Jesus.
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If you can, if you will, what does the text say? Now, growing up, of course, you probably still do this, and I can even hear it in my own voice.
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If someone says, could I please use the restroom? Well, you can. But the real question is what?
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If you're a teacher and you hear that response, question, may I? You can, but may you?
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Now think similarly here. Can Jesus heal? And the word there is talking about his power.
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Can Jesus heal? But it's like he's saying, I know you can, but will you? May you?
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May you? I know you're powerful, and I know you're sovereign, and if you're powerful and sovereign, you can if you want to.
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Would you please do that? Do you want to? That's the idea. Here, Luke the doctor is just painting this picture.
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This guy with gurgling, awful smelling breath, awful smelling person.
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I know you can heal me if you want to. You don't have to. It's not that you ought to.
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It's not that you're required to, but I'm just beseeching you. I'm appealing to you. You've been compassionate to other people before.
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Would you please be compassionate to me? Full of leprosy,
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Luke says. What's that basically mean? He's got leprosy from one hand to the next, from the head of his, from the crown of his head to the bottom of his feet.
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Will you, God? I know you could. I know you can.
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Side note, doesn't this sound exactly opposite of these shenanigans that you hear from fake teachers on television?
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Naming it and what? Claiming it? Now, let's see.
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When was the last leper ever healed in the history of the world? How many lepers have ever been healed?
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I think you've got to go back 100 years, 200 years. How many hundreds of years do you have to go back?
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A thousand to 1 ,500 years when there was a man healed of leprosy and his name was what? He wasn't even a
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Jew. Naaman was healed. Now, remember, here comes
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Jesus. He's a suffering servant. He's sent by God. What kind of credentials must he have to be the
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Messiah? Heal lepers, Matthew 11 says. Who heals lepers? If you're willing, you can make me clean.
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I know you can do it, but I'm just begging you, please. Matthew 8, the leper said to Jesus, Lord, I know you're the sovereign
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Lord. If I don't get help, I'm going to die. Unclean, unclean.
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Now, just think for a second about God has no body or God has the incarnate body.
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Does it make a difference? Would it make a difference to you? Verse 13, and Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.
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I will be clean. Now, the great part about the other gospel,
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Mark, describing this account, it says Jesus was moved with compassion. He was moved with compassion.
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When was the last time that guy had ever been touched by anyone? No handshakes, no hugs, no embraces.
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Certainly no one would want to touch him or even be near him. The word he heard always was unclean, unclean, unclean.
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Commentator McLaren said, it was the complete clearing away of the last film of The Cloud of Doubt as to the will of Jesus.
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Jesus touching him answered the if by something that spoke louder than any word. Lord, if you will, is it really the will of God that I be healed?
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And the Lord Jesus put out his hand and touched him. No rabbi would have dared to touch him, but he put out his hand and touched him.
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And then he spoke the thrilling words, I will be clean. That word in Mark where he says he has compassion, it's from the inside.
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It's from his bowels, from his guts, from his emotions, deep seated.
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And here you think, okay, does God have emotions? Does God have any passion? Does God have compassion?
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Well, here the incarnate Jesus should answer all those questions. Every time you see the word that Mark uses for compassion, outside of Luke with the good
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Samaritans, compassion for the wounded man, it always refers to the compassion of God. And seeing the multitudes, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.
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Here we have the incarnate God touching the leper. He could have just said, you're healed, right?
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He said to Simon's mother -in -law, you're healed. He didn't have to touch. He doesn't need to touch anyone. His word, the word of God alone can heal.
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Why did he do that? Why didn't he just say, you're healed? Why didn't he touch? Well, you can imagine because Isaiah 42 said, this is the kind of Messiah that you can expect, not the military battler, but the one who takes a reed that's broken and says, no, no,
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I care for you. I love you. Jesus isn't going to be defiled by this touch because he's holy, holy, holy.
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How can leprosy pollute him? How can anything pollute him? This kind of language of the compassion of God makes us drive to Exodus 34.
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The Lord passed by in front of Moses and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness.
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How about Psalm 116? Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is compassionate.
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How about James chapter 5? You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the
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Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. Hebert said divine holiness is not defiled by touching human uncleanness, but rather imparts cleansing.
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It's the opposite. Jesus isn't going to be defiled. He's going to clean. I am be willing, be cleansed.
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Verse 13, what happened? The compassionate touch of the almighty God, the
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Messiah, the suffering servant, and immediately the leprosy left him.
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He touches the untouchable. He cures the incurable. Okay, now let's just think.
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Okay, no more ulcers, no more gurgling, no more odor, no more scrunched lion face.
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You probably couldn't even recognize the guy. I mean, what a far cry from these people who say,
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Jesus is going to heal you, heal your bad back or give you like a gold crown or your leg's too short and it heals your other leg and all these phony baloney miracles.
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Jesus heals the leper. Try that on for size the next time someone says,
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I can heal people. Okay, heal a leper and we'll see how you do. There was a rabbinic saying, it said this, that healing of a leper was just as impossible as raising someone from the dead.
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The supernatural Jesus, the eternal God Jesus, the compassion. I'm not going to take a read.
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It's broken and discarded. I'm not going to take a smoking flax wick and just snuff it out.
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No, I will stoop low. I will bend low and save those kind of people and he'll save instantaneously.
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He'll save completely. He'll save organically. He'll save congenitally. He'll save leprosy.
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And it says in Luke 7, when Jesus healed someone from the dead and raised that little girl from the dead, it says in Luke 7, 13, when the
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Lord saw her, he felt compassion for her and said to her, do not weep.
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This is the mother of the son. And he came up and touched the coffin and the bears came to a halt and he said, young man,
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I say to you, arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him back to his mother and fear gripped them all and they began glorifying
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God saying, a great prophet has risen among us and God has visited his people.
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What kind of God? The triune God who not is only, who isn't just holy but compassionate.
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The Messiah is here. Verse 14, and he charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest.
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Of course, Jesus is fulfilling all the laws there. Make sure they okay it like it was prescribed. Make an offering for your cleansing as Moses commanded, as a proof for them.
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I love the story where the Leviticus account tells you what to do if there's a leper that gets healed.
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S. Lewis Johnson tells a story that basically when this man comes back to the leaders in Israel, the religious leaders, they don't remember what to do because they've never had to do it in their life.
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It's like this old kind of, you know, computer programming language, COBOL or FORTRAN or something. We don't use that anymore.
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We've never had to use this leper healing thing. So we're going to have to look that up. We know it's somewhere in the Bible. We don't know where.
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Go show yourself to a priest. Offer the gift that Moses commanded as a proof for them. Watch them scurry and find the manual.
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Matthew 11. Now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said, are you the one who's in to come or should we look for another?
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And Jesus answered them, go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk and the lepers are cleansed.
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The deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.
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Now, just think for a second what it meant to that leper to be healed in every way, shape or form by Jesus, the
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God. And the time we have left, which isn't a whole lot of time. Think about for a second without the incarnation, where would you be?
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Where would I be without the incarnation? And is there an illustration that we can have?
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Is there kind of a tie -in between physical leprosy and its effects and spiritual leprosy that is sin?
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He heals the physical leper. What about the spiritual leper? Did you know that in the
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Middle Ages, if you got leprosy, they brought you to the Roman Catholic Church, the priest read the burial service over you because you're already dead, basically.
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Doesn't leprosy affect everything in the person, inside, outside? And hasn't sin, the leprous effect of sin, affected us?
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So why do we need the Lord Jesus? Well, the answer then should be obvious. We don't just have a disease of the skin, a sin disease of the skin, a sin disease of the nerves.
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We are affected. That's why, friends, theologians call such permeation of sin total depravity.
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We're not as bad as we could be, but I'm totally depraved as an unbelieving sinner. My mind, my will, my emotions, my conscience, as leprosy has completely affected and infected a person, sin has affected and infected us.
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So we need one to come, the eternal son of God who has no sin. That's why
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Galatians 4 says he's born of a woman born under law, but he perfectly obeys the law, keeps the law, and then he dies on the cross for people who are lawbreakers.
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I mean, if our righteousness is as filthy rags, what must our unrighteousness be?
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You ask a leper, go ahead and cleanse yourself. Physician, cleanse yourself. A leper can't cleanse himself or herself.
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Doesn't that kind of give you a good illustration, a good analogy of the spiritual sin, leprous sin?
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We can't save ourselves. God, we need to be rescued. We need to be saved.
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We need someone to come rescue us. Luke was telling me yesterday that a lady he was talking to afterwards at the rest home, you know, what you do is you preach the message or you hear the message preached and then you say to some of these dear folks, you know, did you agree with the message?
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And so this particular person, if I remember the story right, Luke told me that, you know, he began to talk about Jesus and then began to talk about sin and then this lady said, well, sin doesn't exist.
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I've had people in my home before saying, you know, my children don't sin. They're not sinners.
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I mean, there's just something in me kind of, I know it's schadenfreude and all that, but it's like, you know, just you wait. I want to be there that day.
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If we weren't in need of a rescue, Jesus just could have kind of, I don't know, had a big megaphone from heaven.
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Way to go. Keep going. Atta boy. You guys are all doing great. You ladies are just doing wonderfully well.
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But since we fell in Adam and we're sinful, we need to be rescued because we're enslaved. We can't do anything. We need help.
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We need someone from the outside to cleanse us just like Jesus had to cleanse the leper. He has to cleanse us because Romans 5 says, while we were yet helpless, can you imagine?
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We're helpless. We can't do anything about it. We're at God's mercy. Christ died for the ungodly. I mean, it's like this, isn't it?
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I mean, it's just such an easy analogy. Unbelievers, and when we were unbelievers, and if you're an unbeliever today, you'd like to be forgiven and cleansed and have the hope of eternal life and glorify
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God by honoring the son, Jesus. Lord, I know you can save sinners. Will you?
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Will you please save me? I know you can. You don't have to. There's no obligation. One will heartily die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die.
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But God, he continually demonstrates, he makes it conspicuous over and over and over his own love toward us, us reeds, smoking wicks, and that while we were yet sinners,
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Christ died for us. One writer said, there is a sense in which leprosy is the archetypal fruit of the original fall of humanity.
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It leaves its victims in a most pitiable state, ostracized, helpless, hopeless, despairing.
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The curse leper like fallen humanity has no options until he encounters the messianic king who will make all things new.
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Jesus reached out to the leper. God and Jesus has reached out to all victims of sin.
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Jesus is the remedy for our defilement. The only hope we had to be spared of our contamination is the incarnation of Jesus who had never sinned.
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And I don't know if you know this, you can study on your own, we need to close, but Leviticus 14 talks about the blood sacrifice that is needed to confirm the leper being cleansed.
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And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from leprosy seven times and shall pronounce him clean. And you know, the cure for spiritual leprosy still requires a blood sacrifice.
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Not sprinkled upon us, but the text of 1 Peter is the precious blood of the
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Lord Jesus Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot who was ordained before the foundation of the world.
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I love Revelation 1 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead, the prince of the kings of the earth, to him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.
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How can God touch without a body? How can God obey the law without a body? How can
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God die on the cross for sinners without a body? How can God be raised from the dead without a body?
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If you can or if you will, I think there's a song that summarizes everything like this.
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He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean.
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His blood availed for me. Let's pray. Thank you,
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Father, for this truth in the scripture that Jesus Christ loves the downtrodden.
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He's not just compassionate on those who are physically sick, but spiritually as well. And Father, I'm thankful that although you didn't have to save anyone, it was like the angels who fell, they weren't offered any rescue plan.
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You weren't going to have your son take on angel nature and die for them. You had no obligation.
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But you were obliged to save us because of the promise between you and the
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Son and the Spirit to rescue us. You were obliged because God is love. And the
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Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father and Spirit. And there's so much love in the
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Trinity that it just, as it were, spills out and over and onto us. I'm thankful for that.
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Because of the incarnation, Jesus touched sinners and had compassion on them and served them and saved them.
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And Father, we celebrate that today. We celebrate the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray for the Christians here that you would encourage them that you're a
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God, as Moses found out, full of compassion. And if those dear folks at the rest home needed a hug and an embrace, certainly we need your love as well.
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And for those that are here today who might not be Christians, I pray that the cry of their heart would be, Lord, I know you have the power to save, but will you?
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And I'm very thankful that those that come to the Lord, He will in no wise cast out. In Jesus' name we pray.