2/16/20 Mark 1:40-45 “Do You Have Leprosy?”

10 Feb 2/16/20 Mark 1:40-45 “Do You Have Leprosy?”

2/16/20      Mark 1:40-45        “Do You Have Leprosy?”

As we look at this today’s Scripture, I don’t think that we can help but feel good about the man healed.  This was a terrible and incurable disease.  Unfortunately, some of us may feel that these kinds of things only happen in the Bible so they have little relevance today.  I don’t think that is quite right.  I have read many, many accounts of people being healed from some disease where there is no hope of a healing.  There is a magazine called Guideposts that has all kinds of these stories.  The magazine Angels will also carry many good stories on healing.  And I also think that there are many of us listening today who have had a healing, a physical or spiritual healing.  I know that Jesus sure did a work in me and I get the feeling that He has done this to some of you also.  Today we are going to take a look at Jesus healing a man and what this can mean to us.

Several years ago, Sharon, Monique, Brandy and I attended an Anne Graham Lotz crusade in Fargo.  To make a long story short, part way into the program I developed severe abdominal pains to the point where I passed out.  They had to take me out in a wheel chair.  It slowly went away and so I didn’t think anything of it except that I always had this little pain near my stomach.  It wasn’t too long after this that I started to lose my appetite, started losing weight and had a terrible taste in my mouth.  Finally in June, 2 months after the initial attack, I went to the doctor.  I had lost 15 lbs. and I didn’t feel well most of the time.  The doctor told me on a Monday that he was 99% sure that I had gall bladder problems.  I either had gall stones or it was faulty.  So he set up an appointment for Thursday for a test to see which problem it was and to schedule a surgery.

So I went back to work and doing what I would always do.  Wednesday morning when I got up, I knew that whatever was wrong was now ok.  Everything was back to normal.  I went and had the tests done on Thursday and everything read normal.  The doctor couldn’t figure out what had happened.  God had touched me and healed me and I have never had a problem with it since.  It also happened to me with my heart attack.  God still does healings today just like Jesus did in today’s reading.  And like the man in the story, I went and told lots of people about this.  Jesus touched me and I loved it.

As we begin today, we have a man with leprosy.  According to what I have read, leprosy could have been a number of skin diseases.  Any of them would be called leprosy.  And if it was actually leprosy, then it was a terrible disease and there was no cure.  It would begin with a white spot on the hand or somewhere and then it would spread.  When it was noticed, the person was supposed to go to the priest and report it.  Then I believe that they kept a watch on the person for 14 days.  If the spot went away, then the person could be declared clean.  But if it didn’t, then the person would be declared unclean.

If you were unclean with leprosy, then you would be banished to a leper colony or some sort of isolated area.  You could not have contact with anyone.  You could not touch your wife or husband again and you could not touch your children.  If you came near someone who was clean, then you would have to shout out, “Unclean!  Unclean!”  Often times, people would throw stones at you and call you all kinds of names to try to get rid of you.  You became a very lonely person.  The church was the center a Jews life and lepers could have nothing to do with the church.  And these were the things that would be happening in a Jewish community where they might have been treated a little better than in a pagan community.

But that wasn’t all.  Leprosy was a terrible disease.  It would eat away at the nerve endings of people.  They couldn’t feel there extremities.  They would lose fingers and toes because they couldn’t feel them.  Often times, the leper became blind because they couldn’t feel to blink their eyes.  Animals would bite them and they couldn’t feel it.  So they not only couldn’t feel physical things, they also couldn’t feel the comfort of someone giving them a hug.  Their faces would become scarred and disfigured as the disease progressed.  They truly became an ugly sight.  Leprosy was truly an ugly disease.  From the time that they first contacted the disease, they would only live about 9 more years.

You may be wondering as to why am I spending so much time describing this horrendous disease.  The reason is that we have a disease like leprosy in our midst today.  It is not AIDS.  It is not cancer.  It is not heart disease although these are big problems.  Our leper like disease is one called sin.  As a matter of fact, sin is basically what this passage is all about.

We have spent a lot of time in the last 2 years talking about different kinds of sin that we commit.  There is probably no one here who hasn’t told a white lie now and then.  I am sure that there may be one of two listening today who have taken the Lord’s name in vain.  And we have all probably looked at what our neighbors have and wished that we had the same thing or better.  These things are wrong and they are sinful.

Now what about some of the sins that are harder to notice?  How about the sin of not paying taxes?  Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.  We have even had a Secretary of Treasury who doesn’t pay his taxes.  This person is in the public eye for all of us to see.  His message to everyone by not paying taxes is that we shouldn’t have to pay taxes either.  This goes back to the sin of lying.  I am sure that you can look to many Democrats and Republicans and find the same thing.  We even have it happening here in North Dakota.

And what about the sins we have committed to allow our government to tell us we can only say the word God or Jesus in certain places?  What do you think is the message that we are sending to our young people when we allow these kinds of things to happen?  It seems to me that we have put our government in a position to be a god for us.  And we are not to put any other gods before our God and Jesus Christ.  We are to be shouting out the Good News of Jesus Christ everywhere, not just where we are told that we can.

And the same thing is true of our schools.  We need Jesus Christ in our schools.  We need Jesus Christ in our government.  We need Jesus Christ everywhere.  We have racial hate.  We have religious hate.  We have sexual preference hate.  We are not to be hating anyone, at any time.  We are to love our neighbors as ourselves and this includes all people in all places.  We have been absolutely run over and beaten down by sin to the point that we just accept it or we will accept the lesser of two evils.  This may be news to some, but the lesser of two evils is still evil.  We have a great country in which we live and we have overcome many things.  Instead of thinking of something as being the lesser of two evils, let’s come up with some totally new ideas.  We don’t have to follow everyone else.  And we can do it by eliminating sin in our lives as we try to eliminate sin in our society.

God looks at all of these things like we are people with leprosy.  We are disfigured, misshapen and disgusting in the eyes of God just like the lepers were to the people around them in our passage.  God hates sin, period.  It doesn’t matter how big or little we think our sin is, God hates it.

Then this leper in our reading asks Jesus if He was willing to make him clean.  He doesn’t ask for Jesus to heal him.  He wants to be clean.  He wants to be able to worship with all of his friends.  He wants to be able to join his family where he can receive love again and maybe a hug once in a while.

And Jesus was filled with compassion.  His heart was touched because this man had come to him and asked to be made whole once again.  He believed in Jesus.  He didn’t think that he was worth being made whole again as he says ‘if you are willing.’  But he asked anyway.  You will never know unless you ask.

Then we have Jesus reaching out and touching the untouchable.  He is saying, “I am God.  I don’t have to follow your human laws.”  He reached out and touched this man and the leprosy left immediately.  Jesus makes this man clean and tells him to go to the Temple and show himself to the priests.  Jesus does this because this was the process that one would go through in order to be declared clean by the Jews.  It would be only after this was done that he could rejoin society.  And Jesus only wants what is the very best for this man and that would be for him to rejoin society.

And the other thing that Jesus tells him to do is not to tell anyone.  We have already seen what was happening when people find out that Jesus was in the vicinity.  Crowds come to Him to be healed.  But this wasn’t why He came to be among us.  He came to preach the glory of God.  But he will not leave people in need if they come to Him.  He stops and heals as many as he can until night fall.  Then he moves on to the next town.  So he doesn’t want the man to say anything because so many would come to Him for the wrong reasons and this was exactly what happened.

The man did exactly what Jesus didn’t want him to do.  He was so excited that he went and told everyone he saw.  He had been a leper.  He had been despised.  He had been kicked out of his life.  And now he was back.  He could go and see his wife.  He could hug his children.  He could rejoin the community at church.  He was alive again and he was excited.  He told everyone just like I like to tell people my gall bladder story and my heart story.  We never do find out if this man completed what Jesus told him to do or not.  We only know that it caused Jesus all kinds of problems.  Remember this the next time you decide not to do what God tells you.  You may think that you are doing the right thing but you may make all kinds of problems for God.

But of course the good news here is that Jesus will still love you.  He loves you and He always will.  I have already discussed what we must look like in the eyes of Jesus.  It isn’t a pretty picture.  This man with leprosy was not a pretty picture.  But He loves us in spite of our leprosy, in spite of our sin.

Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with everyone.  If you have never done this then confess your sins to Jesus, repent and ask Him to live in your heart as your Lord and Savior.  Today I would like you to think of someone in the community who just might feel like they are not worthy of the love of Jesus.  After you think of someone, try to think of a way to reach out to them with the gentle hand of Jesus.  Because Jesus isn’t just for you people listening today.  He isn’t just for church goers and the religious people.  He isn’t just for the rich.  Jesus Christ is for everyone and we are living proof of this.

William Mouser tells the story of when he was an undergraduate.  He volunteered to be one of a group of guinea pigs for a study at the medical school.  Most of the students in the study were Christians and knew one another.  I like the way he describes the ones who were not Christians.  He said, “There were a few pagans in the study and some of them pretty debauched pagans at that.”  This is something I would never say about other people even though I was probably one myself.  Anyway, the two groups pretty much stayed out of each other’s way for the two day study.

One young man was the exception and he would talk with the Christian group and ask a lot of questions.  He was very interested in the ministry of Christ but was always reluctant.  Finally, towards the end of the study, William asks the young man why he didn’t repent of his sins and ask Christ to be in his life.  He was rather astonished by the answer.  The man replied, “I can’t do that.  I’m not like you guys.  I’m really dirty.”  This poor young man didn’t realize that it is the dirty people who need Jesus the most.  Jesus didn’t come to heal the people who are already well and clean.  He came to heal the sick.  He came to heal the sinners.

Today we have tried to make a comparison of leprosy to our sin.  I think that just about any time you read about leprosy in the Bible, you can also read about sin.  But we are not to be fooled by Satan into thinking that we are not good enough for Jesus.  There is no such thing.  Jesus loves you so much that when you come to Him, He will wipe away all of the dirt you have accumulated.  He will wipe it away like a mother cleaning a child.  Let yourself go and come to the arms of Jesus for a big hug, a really big hug.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.