Made Clean

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,

Mark 10 · chapter mention

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

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.