to bring God's word to you today.
A special welcome if you're new or visiting with us.
We're glad that you're here.
And we're glad that you're here
not because we're trying to fill seats,
but because we're following Jesus together as one community.
And as we follow Jesus together,
we become convinced that there's no one so good
that they don't need God's grace
and no one so bad that they can't have it.
So that's why we come back week after week
to hear what God has to say to us in his word,
because we believe that God has something to say
to everyone.
He has something to say to those
who've been Christians their whole lives.
He has something to say to those who have been Christians
only for a short amount of time.
And he has something to say to those
who would not consider themselves Christians,
who have doubts or questions or objections to Christianity.
So that's why we open up God's word.
We do it every Sunday.
We're continuing this morning our series
in the Gospel of Mark.
You'll remember that the Gospel of Mark
tells the story of Jesus in his life and his death
and his resurrection.
And we're asking two questions as we go along together.
We're asking the question of who is Jesus
and the question of how do we respond to him?
Who is Jesus and how do we respond to him?
Those are the very questions
the Gospel of Mark itself asks us.
So we're not doing anything that's foreign to the book,
except this morning I'm gonna reverse those questions.
So we're gonna ask first, how do we respond to Jesus?
And second, who is he?
I invite you to turn with me.
We're in Mark chapter one.
We're nearing the end of chapter one.
We're in the very last section, verses 40 through 45.
And as we come to this passage,
there's sort of a challenge here.
One of my challenges as a preacher
and one of your challenges as a reader
is what do we do with all these miracle stories
in the Gospels?
Why do we have so many of them?
Why do we need all of them?
Couldn't Mark?
Mark certainly could have told us fewer or more miracles
or less or more miracles, right?
And didn't we just see a miracle?
We just saw Simon's mother-in-law
being almost raised from the dead.
She had a fever, right?
In Mark chapter one, verses 29 through 31.
So my thought this morning
is that I'll just recycle that sermon.
I'm just gonna tell you all the same points
from Mark chapter one, verses 29 through 31.
You know, Jesus is king.
He's restoring the world.
He's bringing the future into the present.
And then, you know,
we've already learned everything we need to know, right?
It's just repeating the same thing over and over.
Of course, I joke.
Why does Mark do that to us?
What is it that we have to gain
from so many different miracle stories
coming to us over and over?
By the way, this is not the last one.
It's with that question that we're gonna read now.
And so I invite you to turn in your Bible
or in your worship guide or on your phone with me,
Mark chapter one, starting at verse 40.
And as we turn, remember that this is God's word.
God tells us that his word is more precious than gold,
even the finest gold.
And it's sweeter than honey,
even honey that comes straight from the honeycomb.
And so that's why we read now, starting at verse 40.
And a leper came to him, imploring him
and kneeling said to him,
if you will, you can make me clean.
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand
and touched him and said to him,
I will be clean.
And immediately the leprosy left him
and he was made clean.
And Jesus sternly charged him
and sent him away at once and said to him,
see that you say nothing to anyone,
but go show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded
for a proof to them.
But he went out and began to talk freely about it
and to spread the news
so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town
but was out in desolate places
and people were coming to him from every quarter.
I invite you to pray with me
as we come to this portion of God's word.
Our father in heaven,
and we thank you again for your word
that you give us in it everything we need,
that you don't give us too many miracle stories
and you don't give us too few,
but you give us everything that we need
to know you, to grow in you,
to love you and to serve you.
We ask that you would do that this morning,
that you would show us our need
to be touched by you, to be made clean,
and you'd show us how you meet us
at that point of need.
And we thank you that we can come to you freely
and ask these things
because we ask them in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Okay, I asked you all kind of a sassy question,
which is why I can't just preach the same sermon
I preached a few weeks ago in Jesus Healing
because we have another healing right in front of us.
And thankfully, Mark doesn't leave us to wonder.
He answers that question right away.
Very first noun that we have in verse 14,
very first noun of this story clues us in.
We are dealing with a leper and a leper came to him.
Now, this is a concept we are not as familiar with
in the modern day,
but as we saw in our Old Testament reading this morning,
this was a really big deal.
If you're a leper, you are someone who's outcast.
You're someone who's in desperate need.
You are practically exiled from the community.
Remember, I told you to focus on verses 44 and 45.
In that Leviticus 13 reading,
we saw that someone would live outside of the community.
They'd have to declare to everyone how unclean they were.
And so it was considered by many people
that leprosy was actually a fate worse than death.
It would be better to die
than to have to live cut off from everyone,
to live looking disfigured and deformed in this way.
A leper, scholars tell us,
can encompass a wide variety of skin diseases.
What we do know is it would make you look terrible.
You would be compared at times to looking like a corpse.
These people would be especially white and pale.
And so it can be,
you can imagine, right, how terrible that is.
Of course, people even today spend all sorts of money
caring for their skin
and this desire to look healthy and young and beautiful.
The person with leprosy
has given up on that a long time ago, right?
There is no hope for them to escape this fate.
On top of that,
scholars tell us it was considered contagious.
So if you were a leper,
not only did you look terrible,
but no one would want to have anything to do with you.
There's a reason you're told
to live outside of the community.
You're cut off from friendships and relationships.
Of course, you all can think just how crazy
maybe you began to feel during COVID,
quarantined for a few days
or isolated for a few weeks.
Imagine being cut off from people
for the rest of your life.
That's the fate that is facing this person.
And to add insult to injury,
to make it even more of a hopeless situation,
this was considered something that was incurable.
And so this was in many ways
the worst of the worst place to be in the ancient world.
You were someone who was cast out from society.
Now this is hard for us as modern people
to wrap our heads around.
If you all were here a few weeks ago,
you remember Jason Tippett,
a pastor in Buena Vista, Colorado,
came and preached.
Jason says he thinks that the best way
for us to understand leprosy today,
the closest analogy would be that of a sex offender.
Those are our modern day lepers.
They're people who are separated out from society, right?
They have to keep their distance from other people.
Everywhere they go,
they often have to declare their status.
Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
What I am saying is that's our idea in society
of understanding what it is like
to carry this type of shame,
this type of permanent being cut off from a community,
this sort of isolation.
And so Mark here is drawing us into the story
from the very beginning.
There's an acceleration,
an intensification of what's going on here.
This is not a garden variety healing.
This is not a garden variety exorcism.
This is different in kind
from Simon's mother-in-law being cured of her fever.
This is an entirely different situation.
This is someone with an extremely high level
of hopelessness and despair,
an incredibly low quality of life.
And so we can understand why this man does what he does.
Remember, I've told you before,
when we read the gospels,
we are looking to characters as models.
This man models for us how it is
that we are meant to respond to Jesus.
Verse 40, we see how desperate he is.
He comes to Jesus.
Jesus isn't seeking him out.
Of course, he comes knowing people aren't going
to want to see him or be around him.
Not only does he come,
he's imploring Jesus and kneeling before him.
In other words, this man is so desperate,
he doesn't care what people think of him.
He doesn't care how they look at him.
He is going to do anything
to have a chance at Jesus and his healing.
He is that desperate.
He has given up long ago on looking good,
feeling good, pretending to have everything together.
Everyone knows that his life is a mess.
He knows it as well.
So he models for us something simple.
How do we respond to Jesus?
We respond to Jesus by coming to him.
We come to him with our need.
Remember last week we talked about prayer.
This is the appropriate posture for prayer.
People who are desperate,
who know that they have no other hope.
You remember the illustration from last week
about Tim and Kathy Keller who prayed
because they realized otherwise they would not make it.
This man runs to Jesus because he knows
otherwise he is not going to make it.
This man knows his need.
It's that desperate need that drives him to Jesus.
He is no longer able to entertain the idea
of maybe trying to be self-sufficient enough
that he doesn't need to admit anything to anyone.
Remember leprosy was something that was incurable.
He could not escape from it.
And so the point is this.
Yes, Jesus takes the initiative, right?
Yes, Jesus seeks us out.
If he didn't, he wouldn't be there
ministering in and near Capernaum.
Yes, Jesus is the one who initiates his grace towards us.
And those who truly know how desperate and needy they are
run to Jesus.
They come to Jesus.
They are seeking him out and imploring him.
Remember what we talked about in Mark chapter one,
verses one through eight,
when we began the very beginning of this gospel.
Need is the price of admission.
Jesus comes, he's told us,
Mark chapter two, verse 17,
those who are well have no need of a physician,
but those who are sick.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
How do we respond to Jesus?
We run to him with our need.
Brothers and sisters, do you know how needy you are?
Do you know how needy you are?
Leprosy is meant to be a picture for us
of what our spiritual condition is.
It's obvious for this man, right?
Not always as obvious for us.
It's easier for us to hide how dark our hearts are,
than it is for this man to hide his leprosy.
And yet he is a picture for us of what is true for all of us.
We are in our sin, the walking dead.
When and to the extent that we know that we will be like him,
we will run after Jesus.
We will come to him.
We will be the ones imploring him and kneeling to him,
saying, if you will, you can make it clean.
Sometimes when I pray at the beginning of a sermon
or I pray our prayer of invocation,
I'll say something like this,
that God would make Jesus more beautiful to us.
Do you want Jesus to look more beautiful to you?
Do you wonder from time to time maybe why Jesus
is not as beautiful to you as you think
you would like him to be or he should be?
One of the great spiritual secrets is this.
The more we understand our need,
the more beautiful Jesus will be to us.
The way that Jesus grows beautiful to us
is that we grow in understanding and knowing
how terrible our position is,
how much we need him,
the fact that we have no hope outside of him and his mercy.
That is how Jesus becomes beautiful to us.
Brothers and sisters,
I promise you that this leper saw Jesus
as incredibly beautiful.
Even though in his appearance, Isaiah tells us,
there's nothing that would draw us to Jesus.
He didn't look beautiful in his face
or his body or his figure.
And yet his beauty came in his ability
to meet this man's need.
Jesus is beautiful to the needy.
Jesus is beautiful to those who know
that they cannot save themselves.
Jesus is beautiful to those who know they are lepers.
Jesus is beautiful to those who are willing to acknowledge
they can't save themselves.
believing we can save ourselves is as silly
as a leper believing he can make himself clean.
How do we respond to Jesus?
We come to him, we run to him with our need.
We know how desperate and how needy we are.
I've told you all before,
one of my passions as your pastor
is not just that I would tell you things from the Bible
and you would learn things about the Bible,
but you would actually learn how to read the Bible.
One of the things that we see in the Gospel of Mark
is we have these sets of characters
that serve as models for us.
The disciples are mostly a negative model for us.
In fact, one of my seminary professors put it this way,
the disciples only get one thing right.
The only thing the disciples get right
is that they keep following Jesus.
Now, that's a pretty big important thing to get right, right?
They make it because of that.
They make it because they keep following Jesus.
We have this other set of characters,
this group of people who are in desperate need of Jesus healing.
They, in a sense, understand things spiritually
that the disciples do not.
While the disciples are confused,
they're obsessed with power and position and honor,
these people know that all they need is to be healed.
They have given up a long time ago
on being important or significant or wealthy or powerful.
They just want to be clean.
They just want to be healthy again.
And so they're their model for us,
that we would be not like the disciples stumbling along,
being rebuked by Jesus for having little faith,
but we instead would be like this leper,
people who know how much we need Jesus and his grace,
and we come to him asking for it
because we have no other hope.
People always want to know why they suffer in this life.
Why is this the brokenness that you have?
Why is this the thing in your life that doesn't work?
They often come to pastors and they ask them,
why?
Why is this happening?
Why is this the thing that's going on in my life?
Why is this the thing that's broken?
Guys, I don't know.
I don't know why God has chosen your particular suffering for you.
I can't answer that question for you.
I don't know why God has allowed certain things into your life.
God has not revealed that to me.
I don't expect him to reveal that to me.
Often all we can do, often all I can do is sit with you and be with you
and remind you of God's faithfulness over time.
God can use your suffering to draw you closer to him.
God can use your suffering to show you your need.
God can use your suffering to grow you spiritually.
I don't know why he allows the things that he allows to happen.
I do know he uses it for good.
I do know one of the ways he uses it for good,
that we would be like this man,
that we can come with our need,
imploring him and kneeling before him.
Now when I say that,
when I say that God uses suffering,
uses it in our lives,
often people mishear that.
What I'm not saying,
I'm not saying that suffering is okay.
I'm not saying it's a great thing that this man had leprosy.
I'm not saying that we dismiss it.
I'm not saying that we don't cry and lament and grieve.
Forbidding those things is called stoicism.
It's not called Christianity.
It's the opposite of what the Bible actually shows us.
Sometimes people will say things like,
well, God's sovereign.
And that's true, right?
People will use that though as a throwaway line.
What they really mean is,
I would like to avoid facing real pain and doubt.
And so I'm just gonna shove this in the corner.
That's not what God's sovereignty is for, right?
It's a lot more comfortable to be numb sometimes.
And then we wonder why we're not growing spiritually, right?
Well, if you're numb,
if you just say God's sovereign,
and you shove things in the corner,
you're not gonna come to him with your need.
Of course you're not growing spiritually.
Of course he's not becoming more beautiful to you.
It's a lot easier, right?
It's a lot easier to avoid the risk of coming to God
with our hurts and needs.
It's a lot safer.
It's more comfortable to shut down our hearts
because then we don't have to risk being disappointed again.
It's a lot easier just to ignore and avoid God.
And yet Psalm 13, right?
The whole Bible shows us a different model.
In Psalm 13, the psalmist is crying out,
asking God how long he's gonna forget him.
It's at the end of the psalm that he confesses God's sovereignty.
It's after he's lamented.
It's as he's grieving that he confesses that God's the one who's in control.
I mean, imagine for a second that this leper is sitting in his leper colony
and he's just reading, you know, theology books.
Someone at the church just dumped a box of books by his tent
and drove away so they wouldn't have to be infected.
So he's reading, you know, some heavy theology
and he gets to the section on God's sovereign.
He says, oh, I'm a leper, but God's sovereign.
Okay, I don't have to worry about this anymore.
I'm just gonna stay here.
No, he sees, he knows God's sovereignty.
That's why he runs to God.
That's why he comes and he has this confidence.
Verse 40, if you will, you can, right?
If you will, you can.
He knows how powerful God is.
He knows God's sovereignty.
That's why he comes to him.
That's what drives him to God.
That's what gives him this confidence,
this willingness to look like an idiot in front of everyone else
because he knows that it's worth it.
Brothers and sisters, God's sovereignty is meant to drive us
to ask him for things.
God's sovereignty is meant to drive us.
It's what gives us enough confidence to finally make it safe,
to lay our hearts and our needs out before him.
That is what gives us the power and the platform.
That is the only thing that makes it safe.
That's how we're able to do what we talked about last week,
to come before God in prayer.
Are you ready to come and ask God for healing?
Some of you have quietly resigned to the status quo
because it's much safer
and it's much easier than trusting and crying out.
You don't have to risk being disappointed.
You don't have to risk being embarrassed.
What if I pray about this and things don't turn out well?
What if I share my need with someone and it gets messy?
You don't have to risk admitting
what's actually going on in your lives.
It's risky.
It's risky to tell God what we need and ask him to intervene.
It's risky to be lepers out in the open.
It's risky to come into the town where God is.
I knew a young woman a long time ago in a different life
and she was desperate to be married.
She told me she didn't pray about it for a long time
because she was afraid of what would happen
if God didn't answer.
It's risky.
It's risky to tell God what we want and need
and ask him to intervene.
It's risky to admit that things in your marriage are not okay.
I might feel like admitting that you're a leper.
It's risky to finally begin to talk about
your heartbreak from your divorce.
Seems scary, right?
It's risky to ask the question
of why your friendships only last a year or two
and why you always self-sabotage.
It's risky to ask the question
of why you're always the one
who ends your dating relationships.
It's risky
to finally admit
that things are more important to you than people.
It's risky to admit
that everything you do
has an angle to it.
It's risky to admit
that you're in over your ears
in credit card debt
and your purchases never accomplished
what you hoped they would.
That's the other thing
this leper shows us.
There's a sense in which
sins that
people can see,
struggles that people can see,
there's a grace to it.
There's a grace
to things being
visible, right?
If you're rich,
if you're healthy,
things look good on the inside,
it's easy to hide.
It's easy to believe
you're powerful.
There's a reason
Jesus tells us
in Mark chapter 10,
it's easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God.
Long time ago,
summer of 2009,
I was on this mission trip
to Ireland
and one of the things
they had us do
was door-to-door evangelism.
Whatever you think about that,
just put it aside for a minute,
okay?
Go with me.
We experienced
and it was already known
that rich neighborhoods
are not very interested.
They're more likely
to close the door on you,
and they're more likely
not to answer.
Poor neighborhoods
are much more interested.
They're much more likely
to open the door.
They're much more likely
to talk to you.
Why?
They're not under the illusion
that they're powerful.
They're not under the illusion
that they have the world
figured out
and they can fix it.
They know their need.
They know the situation
that they're in.
So there's a grace.
There's a grace that comes
and your problems
are something everyone can see.
There's a grace for this leper.
He can't hide the fact
that he has leprosy.
There's things
that are easy to hide
and things that are difficult
to hide.
You could have $200,000
in credit card debt.
I would have no idea, right?
No one knows
that that's your struggle.
If you struggle
with your weight,
yeah, people might know that, right?
Is one better than the other?
Not necessarily.
One worse than the other?
I don't know.
It's easy
when our struggles
can be hidden
to avoid Jesus.
The leper knows
something different.
And that's what helps
the leper
just want to be healed.
That's what helps him
know his need.
That's what helps him
avoid the trap
of the disciples
who want power
and significance
and fame.
And so how do we
respond to Jesus?
We come to him
with our need.
We come to him
with our need
no matter how risky it is
and how threatening it is.
We come to him
with our need
because we have
no other hope
outside of God's mercy.
And we come to him
with our need
because of who
Jesus is.
Remember,
we have two questions.
How do we respond to Jesus?
Who is he?
We have a wonderful picture,
a beautiful picture
of what Jesus is
here in this passage.
It's short and it's simple.
Jesus touches
the untouchable.
Remember,
I told you
it was thought
that leprosy
was contagious.
What does Jesus do
in verse 41?
moved with pity.
He stretched out his hand
and touched him.
Jesus heals
different people
in different ways
throughout the Gospels.
That's part of the reason
we have different miracles.
He heals them
in different ways
depending on the situation.
Here,
he touches
someone who's not
supposed to be touched.
Jesus isn't afraid
of the fact
that this man
is unclean.
He's not
intimidated
or overwhelmed
or ashamed of him.
He's not embarrassed
by his need.
Jesus doesn't feel
awkward
about the fact
that this man
is standing before him.
Jesus doesn't feel
awkward about you
and your need.
Jesus isn't embarrassed
by you.
There's nothing
here
that's so gross
and repulsive
that Jesus won't touch it.
Jesus touches
this man
who has this gross
and disfiguring
skin disease.
Remember we read
in Leviticus 13
about the little boils
and the liquid
coming out.
This is gross.
Jesus touches
this man.
Jesus is willing
to do that.
And so we see here
just in a simple form
the message
of the Gospel.
We're not all
physical lepers
but we are
as one person
has put it
all spiritual lepers.
We are all
the walking dead.
we all have
no hope
outside of Jesus
and his touch.
And
we all have
the opportunity
the invitation
to come
like this man
before Jesus
verse 40
to come to him
to implore him
and to kneel to him
to say
if you will
you can make me clean.
Of course we can have
more confidence
in this man
because we know
this story.
we don't need
to say
if you will.
We know
that Jesus
offers it.
He offers it
for everyone
who comes to him
in repentance
and faith.
Jesus is the one
who touches
the untouchable.
There is nothing
so gross
and repulsive
that Jesus
won't touch it.
There's nothing
so far gone
he's not powerful
enough
to heal it.
And
we have to know
our need.
We have to admit
our need.
In another gospel
in the gospel
of Luke
we're told
a story
about two people.
One person
who knows
his need
and one who doesn't.
Jesus tells
the parable
of the Pharisee
and the tax collector.
They both
go to pray
in the temple.
Jesus tells it
to those
who trusted
in themselves
that they were
righteous
and treated
others with contempt.
The Pharisee
stands by himself
and he prays
like this
God I thank you
that I am not
like other men
extortioners
unjust adulterers
or even
like this
tax collector.
I fast
twice a week.
I give tithes
of all that I get.
Tax collector
responds differently.
He stands
far off.
He doesn't lift
his eyes up
to heaven
but he beats
his breast
saying God
be merciful
to me
a sinner.
He knows
he's a leper.
And Jesus
says this
I tell you
this man
went down
to his house
justified
rather than
the other
for everyone
who exalts
himself
will be humbled
but the one
who humbles
himself
will be exalted.
Brothers and sisters
do you know
your need?
Jesus has come
to touch it
he has come
to heal it.
We just have
to admit it
and say
God be merciful
to me
a sinner.
Let's pray.
Our Father
in heaven
we praise
you
and thank
you
for
your grace
that there
is
nothing
so gross
that you
won't touch
it
and that you
come to us
the untouchable
and you
touch us.
We ask
that you
would remind
us of that
this morning
that you
would drive
that grace
deep into
our hearts
that we
would know
it and
believe it
more and
more that
we would
have greater
confidence
and faith
in you
that we
would have
the courage
to admit
our need
and the joy
that comes
from seeing
you meet it.
We ask
these things
in the name
of Jesus
who comes
to us
no matter
how bad
things are
and offers
and is able
to heal us.
We ask
these things
in his name.
Amen.