Cleansed from the Leprosy of Sin

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. In the name of Jesus, Amen. So the last time we worked our way through this particular miracle,

I made a big to -do, if you go back into the archives on the Kungsvinger website, I made a big to -do about the fact that Jesus was really in no -man's land.

He was neither in Galilee nor in Samaria. He was riding the no -man's land between the two.

And that kind of helps us understand a few things, and the reason being that we have to kind of focus it this way is because I've heard far too many awful sermons on this text.

And by awful, I mean just wretched, wretched awful sermons. It usually goes something like this.

Well, take a look. There, Jesus is commending the one guy who had enough clarity of mind to give thanks to him.

So what you really need to do, what you really need to do is go back and do an inventory of all the blessings that God has given you and ask yourself this question, have you thanked

Jesus for all that he's given you? That's not the point of this text. In fact, that confuses law and gospel, and that's really not what's going on here.

And so as we work our way back through our gospel text, let's keep that in mind and work this out as we do this.

Now, a little bit of a note, and that is is that over and again as we see Jesus operating in his earthly ministry prior to his death and his resurrection, that Jesus has compassion on those whom the law, not people, whom the law has pushed out, whom the law has declared to be unclean.

And you'll notice a strange thing that always happens with Jesus, and that is is that unlike us, like for instance, if we were clean and we were to come in contact with something or someone who was unclean, according to the

Mosaic Covenant, we would become unclean, but not so with Jesus. With Jesus, when

Jesus touches somebody who is unclean, he does not become unclean, he makes them clean.

And it's just a fascinating thing. And over and again, you can see that Jesus is seeking out those who are suffering, not those who have been, shall we say, marginalized because of the particular prejudices of the ancient world, but we're talking about people who have been put out of the worship community by none other than the

Word of God itself. And so consider then the fate, the life of somebody who has leprosy, and that is that the law says that if you have a leprous skin outbreak, you are required to go and present yourself to a priest.

A priest would be a Levite, and the Levite, with the unenviable task, is to examine the skin rash or outbreak and determine what type of outbreak it is.

And if he follows the Torah perfectly and rightly, then what will end up happening is that somebody with leprosy will be declared to be unclean by the priest who is in an office established by God.

And by the way, this is what the law does to all of us. The law declares each and every one of us unclean.

So think of leprosy today, if you would, as a type and shadow of the sin disease that we all have.

And so then these ten men, with one exceptional point I point out here, these ten men have been declared unclean by priests.

They have been pushed out not only out of the worship community of Israel, they've been pushed out of their towns.

They are not permitted to come in contact with people who are clean, they are not permitted to live within the walls of their town.

And this is the formation then of what historically we recognize to be leper colonies.

Having been pushed out, the only people that unclean people can hang out with are unclean people.

And then the Mosaic Covenant requires these men to keep their distance from people who are clean, and when they see somebody coming down the road who is clean and is clearly going about their business, traveling or whatever, the

Mosaic Covenant requires them to cover their mouth, you know, think of like one of those surgical masks, cover their mouth and shout out, unclean, unclean, unclean, and that's the signal to them to keep their distance.

And this is a horrible, miserable existence. And keep this in mind, you know, that each and every one of us are tempted when we are suffering to ask this question, what have

I done that God is punishing me? Why am I being made to suffer this way?

Oh Lord, have mercy on me. And mercy means that the way you demonstrate your mercy towards me is to remove whatever it is that I'm suffering from.

And we'll recognize then that in so many ways, the sicknesses that we experience physically, you know, these are nothing but symptoms of the sin that runs through each and every one of our bodies.

And think of sin like a leprosy then. It's different than our bodies, but it has corrupted us through and through.

It's corrupted our minds, our bodies, and our souls. And there are times in our life when sin is just, you know, is really on the rage, and it's symptomatic, and as a result of it we find ourselves just under its oppressiveness in a way that is just not good.

And so recognize that, you know, that's kind of what's going on in here. And so as Jesus entered the village, he was met by ten lepers, and these ten lepers did their duty.

They stood at the distance, but rather than shouting out unclean, unclean, they hear, Jesus of Nazareth is coming to our town.

And so these fellows have kept their proper distance, and rather than crying out unclean, they pray.

It is a out loud, shouted prayer, and we know the words of this prayer.

Jesus, Master or Lord, have mercy on us.

Oh, what a great prayer that is. It is a great prayer. In fact, that's what we prayed today in the

Kyrie, you know. Lord have mercy. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy on us.

Now note here, this stands in direct contradistinction to so much of what is called prayer in today's churches.

You'll note that these fellows didn't say, hey Jesus, check this out, we've been practicing our decreeing and declaring, and so now that you're here we want to impress you by saying, we decree and declare that our leprosy is going to leave us.

They didn't do anything of the sort, and you'll note that they don't have faith in their faith, which is a silly thing to do by the way, you know, because faith is like eyesight.

It always has something that it looks at. They have faith in Jesus. They have trust in him.

They believe that he can, and if he wills, if he wills, have mercy on them and relieve them of their suffering.

And so it says that when Jesus saw them, now notice he doesn't close the gap here, he doesn't go and touch them all and give him a handshake or anything like that.

He said to them, you go and you show yourselves to the priest. Now a little bit of a note. All Mosaic Covenant Jews, if they had a leprous disease, are required by the

Torah to do this. It is absolutely mandatory that they do this.

So, you know, Jesus is telling them to do exactly what the Old Testament scriptures prescribe should somebody be healed of a leprous disease.

And so I always find it fascinating that the nine get a bad rap, you know, because people that sit there and go, why didn't they come back and give thanks to Jesus?

They went to the priest in the temple to do that, because if you pay attention to what they would have been required to do, there are sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving and sin offerings, and ultimately the return to their families, the verdict from the priest coming to them that they are clean.

And see, the Jews are required to do this, because you got to remember, all of these nine lepers that didn't come back, they are still

Old Testament Jews. The New Covenant hasn't been established yet. And so Jesus says to them, you go and you show yourselves to the priest, and you'll note the text says that as they went, they were cleansed.

We don't know too much about the details, we could only imagine the joy, the excitement.

I don't know if they had high -fives back in the day, you know, did you back in the first century, yeah, way to go, yeah, we're healed, and all this kind of stuff.

We don't know that, but we do know that they're more than likely, these fellows would have stopped and just been so amazed and thankful and joyful at the fact that they had been, and listen to the word, cleansed.

Cleansed. You see, leprosy is not just something you're healed of, it's something you're cleansed from, just like sin is not something that you just merely receive a healing from, you have to be cleansed from your sins.

You think of what Ananias said to Paul when he went to go visit him on Straight Street, yeah, rise, what are you waiting for, rise, wash away your sins, call on his names, so there's a sense then in which we recognize that being forgiven is a cleansing.

But now we've got a problem, okay, so nine of these fellows are Jews, one of them happens to be a

Samaritan, all right, now he's got a problem, and the problem is this, he's not gonna be permitted in the temple, there's no way he's gonna be permitted in the temple, there are particular courtyards and gates and things set up in the temple, and somebody who is a

Samaritan half -breed heretic is not going to be welcomed into the temple, so now what does he do?

It's like, Jesus told me to go and present myself to the priest, the other nine, they're obeying

Jesus perfectly. In fact, I always like to point out, if on the day of judgment, you know, somebody were to point their, you know, their fingers and say, hey, those are the nine guys that forgot to give thanks to Jesus, Jesus would speak up and say, they did exactly what

I told them to do, do not judge them and slander them, right, so we don't want to slander these fellows, but this

Samaritan, he can't go to the temple, what's he gonna do? Now, I do remember in the book of Hebrews, it talks about Jesus in these terms, that Jesus is our great high priest, not in the order of Aaron and Levi, but in the order of Melchizedek, hmm, so this fellow has no one else to go to, and he couldn't even begin to explain to you how

Jesus is his high priest, but he decides that he's gonna head back, so he went and turned back, praising

God with a loud voice, and then he gets to do something that I'm really looking forward to being able to do myself.

He fell on his face at Jesus' feet. This is the ultimate humble worship that you can possibly imagine.

Here, this half -breed, heretic Samaritan, leper who's been unclean for who knows how long, he now falls at Jesus' feet, and he is giving him thanks.

He is praising and worshiping Christ, which tells us something, and that is, it tells us that not only did

Jesus cleanse his leprosy, but like Naaman the leper from the time of Elisha the prophet, he also gave him saving faith, and you can see now that that saving faith, which was given to him as a gift, cannot help but praise

Christ. The nine are gonna go and praise the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem, and they have the freedom to do that.

The Samaritan has no freedom to do that, so he's stuck, so he goes and he praises the only one he knows to praise in the moment, and that's

Christ, and so Jesus here makes a little bit of a big to -do about it, because you'll note that in Jesus' ministry, the

Samaritans who had been pushed out by the law, rightfully so, are now being called to repentance and faith along with the

Jews, along with them, and that Jesus here is not in the business of making belief in him some kind of an exclusive club that only is applicable to particular people who are genetically related purely to Abraham.

No. Instead, he's making it very clear that in his kingdom, all nations, all peoples, and all sinners, all the unclean he will make clean.

He will forgive and he will pardon and he will give faith to them, and the reason he's able to do this is because of what

Paul says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5. Remember that for our sake, God made

Jesus to be sin. It's not merely that he took our sins upon himself, but the text says

God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin. So Christ then on the cross not only bore each and every one of our individual sins,

God made him to be sin. He became the unclean leper. He became the unclean sinner.

All the sins of humanity were placed on him. Your sins, my sins, the sins of Adolf Hitler, of Joseph Stalin, of Pol Pot, and Epstein, and just name all the most vile people you can think of.

They were all placed on Christ and God made Christ drink to the dregs the full wrath of God so that we could be saved and so that we would no longer be sin, instead so that we might become ourselves the righteousness of God.

You see in our baptisms we were united with Christ in his death and resurrections. Our sins were washed away because of what he has done for us on Calvary.

And so Jesus now asks this kind of scandalous question. We're not ten cleansed?

And you can almost see the kind of tongue -in -cheek way in which he's asking the question because he knows full well these guys, the other nine are obeying him and they have no choice.

They're bound by the Mosaic Covenant to do exactly what Jesus sent them to do. And he says, was no one found to return to give praise except for this foreigner?

Can you imagine a foreigner giving praise to God? And that's kind of the point.

So Jesus then comforts him with these final words, rise and go your way.

And here's how the Greek reads, your faith has saved you. That's what the text says.

I always like to point out that that sozo is so much more than a physical healing.

Yes, he was physically cleansed, but this fellow we can see now that he was given the gift of faith by Christ and that Jesus was the very object and hope of his faith and that he then, praising

Christ, shows that he has true faith. And Jesus commends him and comforts him and says to the

Samaritan of all things, your faith has saved you. And you'll note then that this is where you got to pay attention to how faith works.

You can literally substitute the word faith with the word Jesus. Whatever the object of your faith is, you can substitute that word there.

If you have faith in Trump and your Trump has saved you, you can say that, say it like that.

But that's kind of a silly thing, you know. But I don't want to steer into politics, but listen to what we can say here.

Rise and go your way, your Jesus has saved you. Indeed, as Jesus did.

And so these words comfort us then. And so note this, brothers and sisters, today you confessed your sins.

Today you heard the words of the absolution. Today you are hearing the comforting words of the gospel that even your leprous sin, which has made you unclean and cast you out of the presence of God and brought on you rightly

God's judgment and the suffering that you're going through. Fear not, for you are washed, you are forgiven, and your

Jesus has saved you and made you well. So take comfort in that, little ones, because Christ for us right now has given us faith, and when he returns, like this leper, he will restore our bodies and make them new, and we will be clean forevermore in a world without end, in a face -to -face relationship with Jesus in his kingdom, where we, like this

Samaritan, will have then the freedom to fall at Jesus's feet and worship and give him thanks for his having mercy upon us.

In the name of Jesus, Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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