"Jesus On Display" - Mark 1:29-45

All right let me see it got a bible work continue in mark chapter one,

the title of the series that you see every week is who is the son of god and

that's really the question that mark's trying to answer just as a quick reminder

of where we've been mark introduces,

the gospel this is the shortest gospel certainly the quickest gospel we see

the word immediately over 40 times.

Mark's trying to give mainly a Roman audience a picture of who Jesus Christ is.

Again, this is not a context like we're used to where everyone kind of knows

who Jesus is and they kind of have an idea of what he's like.

Mark is introducing people to who Jesus really is, who the Son of God really is.

And we've to this point seen Jesus attested to by John the Baptist.

John the Bass has been put into prison.

Jesus has taken his place as basically the main preacher in Capernaum.

He's going around. Last week, he was in a synagogue. There was a demon-possessed man.

We said that'd be one heck of a service to be in, right?

If you've got this guy speaking with authority like you've never heard someone

talk, and then a demon-opressed guy comes in, and man, what a Sunday.

And so this week, we're going to cover quite a bit of ground.

We're going to be from verse 29 to the end of chapter 1. and we're going to

see a couple of things that Jesus does, a couple aspects of his ministry.

I think most importantly, what we're going to see is what was most important to Jesus.

When you think when Jesus comes to earth, what's the most important thing for him to do?

I think we would have one answer. I think Jesus would have another.

And I think the people in Jesus' life, even the people that knew him well,

the people that were closest to him,

had a picture of Jesus that was wrong in the sense that what they thought was

the most important thing he could do was the thing that he seemed least concerned

about even though he had the ability to do it.

It's funny when you go to church things, I call them church things,

because if you live only in the secular world and you say VBS,

someone's like, why are you saying letters?

To us, that's a normal thing. We say things and people are like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what that is. And you go other places,

you're like, yeah, we're at a VBS.

They're like, is that a weird VA hospital? I don't know.

Speak to me like I'm a human.

But it's always funny when you get around churches and church cultures and the

way that they talk about Jesus, the way they think about Jesus.

Again, my earliest memories of Jesus were on a flannel graph.

If you were godly, your flannel graph was what color?

Light blue, specifically light blue. Okay.

That was the color. I kid you not. I remember going to my grandma's church one

time, they had a green flannel graph. And I was like, what is this trash?

I can't even pay attention to the lesson. Why would we ever have a green one?

Literally, it was the topic of conversation at lunch. It's like,

grandma, conversation. Okay. Can y'all not afford the blue? But what's going on?

But it's funny when you, again, have conversations about that.

And even more so, living in East Texas, if you just start asking people like,

hey, what do you think about Jesus?

40 words or less. Give me your summary.

It's interesting at times to hear people's summation of what Jesus is.

Their idea, their thought of what Jesus is. That would challenge you even of

yourself. Think about what do you think of when you think of Jesus.

Because what Mark is trying to do here is he is trying to, again,

paint a picture for the people that would read this of who is Jesus, who is the Son of God.

He's trying to give them this snapshot into the life of this person that will

be read for 2,000 plus years.

So I think maybe the best way to do this, let's just walk through this.

We're going to start in verse 29. We'll read it. We'll talk about it as we go.

Says and immediately there's that favorite word and immediately he left the

synagogue right remember he'd been teaching at the synagogue that's what he's

doing as a traveling rabbi he's teaching at the synagogue and entered the house

of simon and andrew with james and john,

now simon that's peter now simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever and immediately

they told him about her quick total side note peter is obviously married here

and if you have roman Catholic friends, they would tell you that popes can't be married.

The first pope seems to be married. So it's just something to earmark for yourself.

Go ahead and you can do some research on that.

Obviously, a good Roman Catholic has an answer for that, but it is something to note.

So Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever. Also, the fever,

we don't think of that as much, right?

When my kids get a fever, honestly, if it ain't 101, it's like, you're fine.

I don't want you around other kids, but you're going to be okay.

You know, take a salt tablet, you know, you're all right.

But a fever at this point in time in human history was a massive thing.

People died from these kinds of things.

We forget how many lives aspirin has saved, right? And so she lays ill with

a fever, and they don't know how this is going to end.

When you get a fever like that, they have no idea how this is going to turn out.

It says, and immediately, there's that word again, immediately they told him

about her. They told Jesus about Peter's mother-in-law.

And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and fever left her,

and she began to serve them.

So first things first, Jesus' healing. We're going to see some more healing

in these passages, but first thing I want you to notice is Jesus' healing ministry

is not accompanied by anything.

And what I mean by that is oftentimes when you watch it on TV or you hear stories

about healing, there's always some big grandiose moment, right?

They've been playing worship music for three hours and they've had people come

down front and they've had the spirit fall 19 times.

And somehow, some way they've worked in an offering or two or six.

And there's these moments that are set up for healing services to take place, right?

But that's not what Jesus is doing because Jesus doesn't need a moment.

He doesn't need a special circumstance.

Jesus heals, like we said last week, from his own substance, from an in himself.

There's nothing he's gathering around him. He doesn't go get medicine. He doesn't go get help.

He doesn't go and pick this woman up and take her to the synagogue or say,

hey, we've got to get her to the temple.

We've got to get her to some faith healer's house. He doesn't run beads over

her head or even dump oil on her.

He says, listen, he took her by the hand and lifted her up.

To the point that, you know, there was someone in the room that was like,

I knew she was faking it. I knew she was faking it. Like, that's kind of how this reads.

You know, like she was trying to get out of doing the dishes and she was faking

it. I knew what she was doing.

But that's how this reads is it's so, it's so natural for Jesus to be a healer,

to fix the brokenness of the creation that he created.

That it's just, hey, let me take her by the hand, lift her up.

And what's her response? She begins to serve.

She begins to serve. So Jesus' healing is immediate, it's unaccompanied, and it's complete.

If you've had a fever, like an actual fever for multiple days,

you know that even the day that you wake up that the fever is gone,

you don't feel like serving.

Your body's been through the ringer, you're tired, you probably haven't eaten, you haven't slept.

You need a day of recovery at least. Not so here.

Jesus doesn't just heal in the sense that Hey, I'm going to give you something

to make you feel better as time goes on He heals immediately,

And she, her response is To get up and begin to serve I think there's a beautiful

picture of the gospel right there What do you do when God heals you?

What do you do when God redeems you? What do you do when God reaches out his

hand to you And redeems your life And pulls you out of death and destruction,

sin and hell What do you do?

Well, your response is I got to serve this guy any way, shape or form.

I need to serve this person.

Now, of course, you'll get the story later of Mary and Martha and slow down, enjoy Jesus.

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't enjoy Jesus. What I am saying is that is her response.

Verse 32, he says, that evening at sundown, they brought him.

So his disciples, it looks like you're kind of bringing him place to place.

All who were sick or were oppressed by demons and the whole city was gathered

together at the door and he healed many who were sick with various diseases

and cast out many demons and he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.

This is incredible, right? So obviously word starts getting around.

Again, it would be like if we heard that down in troop there was this guy that's

healing all the diseases Okay, we would go troop.

I don't know maybe I don't think he was for troop in here. Are they i'm always

hesitant to give a hometown like I did the second I picked some random one.

I kid you not. I was doing a d9 one time and I thought I picked the most random Like west texas town.

This kid was like that's where we're from and I was like Sorry,

dude, your town's bad now in this story.

It's bad But there's a guy in troop and you hear about him healing everyone's

diseases. He's casting out demons.

He's doing all this incredible thing. So naturally, what happened?

Well, it says that evening at sundown. Why is that important?

Well, it's important because that would be the end of the Jewish Sabbath.

It's the end of the Jewish Sabbath. So it's sundown the day before or sundown

to sundown, sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

So the second the Sabbath is over, right, because they can't go.

They can't pick anything up. They can't work on the Sabbath.

They can't do anything. So, you know, they're all sitting on pins and needles.

They're saying, man, the second the sun gets below those clouds, we are gone.

And sure enough, everyone seems to have the same idea. Then they show up to where Jesus is.

And it says, he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons.

Also note here, the way this is worded, that evening at sundown,

they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.

He healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons.

The Bible connects spiritual things and physical things in the ways that we tend not to.

I've often heard people say, like, well, I'm going to church to get my soul taken care of.

And then I'm going to go here to get my physical life taken care of.

I'm going to go here to get my finances taken care of.

I'm going to go here to, and we kind of compartmentalize all these things in our life.

I'm not necessarily saying that all of that is false. Certainly,

you need to go to the doctor.

You need to go to the gym. You need to go to those places where you can help yourself physically.

But the way the Bible talks about

spiritual things is way more intertwined than we care to think about.

Way more intertwined than we care to think about.

The reason I say that is you need to know about yourself that you are a spiritual

being with a physical body, not a physical body that's been given a spirit.

And that order matters.

Your spirit, your soul, what's inside of you matters far more than what's outside of you.

And the way the Bible says these things, it's not to say that every single physical

ailment that you have is caused by a demon.

We've all met that person, right? Maybe you are that person and I'm not hating on you, okay?

Because you may be right more than not. But we've all met the person that every

time something happens to them, right?

They're on the way to work, they get a flat tire, they're like,

the demons are out to get me. And you're like, it was a nail.

It was a nail. Like not everything is a demon. Not everything is like some part

of what's wrong is you live in a fallen world.

And the fallen things happen to you.

But the Bible doesn't also say that everything is just part of living in the

fallen world. There are things that happen to you.

There are physical things that happen to you that are intimately tied to the

spiritualness of your life.

I often tell people to read Job, not to try and figure out when it was written

or try and decipher every code or talk about his friends,

but read Job 1 and 2 and read the longest conversation we have between God and

Satan, what they talk about,

and realize that all of Job's misfortune happens because of a conversation that

happens between God and Satan, and Job is not privy to that conversation.

He has no idea that's what happens to him, losing his kids, losing his servants,

losing his household, losing his wealth, his wife telling him to curse himself and die.

Job doesn't know that this is all happening in my physical life because of the

conversation that happens spiritually.

But we have the ability, we have the honor and the blessing of knowing that

those two things are intertwined.

The reason I say that is you don't want to fall into the ditch of making every

single thing a spiritual battle.

Some things just take time and some things take wisdom, and some things take hard work.

You're not failing English if you're a student in here because of a demon.

You're failing English because you don't study.

Can you hear my mom talking? She's like, Mom, I just need you to pray for me.

She's like, I need you to do homework. That's what I need you to do.

Yeah, don't try that. That's not how this works, right? Some of the things that

happen in our life are our own fault, our own sinful fault.

But at the same time, there are things that happen to us in our life that are

spiritual realities that are happening to us.

So Jesus heals and he heals physical ailments. He heals spiritual ailments like casting out demons.

Why does he do that? Acts 2.22 tells us, Peter speaking at Pentecost says,

Men of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders

and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourself know.

The healing that Jesus was doing, both spiritual and physical, was not an end to itself.

Jesus didn't come to heal diseases That wasn't his purpose We're going to see

what his purpose is in just a minute But that wasn't his purpose.

In Acts, Peter's going to say, Jesus was a man attested to the Jewish people, to you by God. Why?

How? With mighty works and wonders and signs, with healings.

And with these walking on water and raising dead men and dead women.

He's doing these things. Why? Because he's being attested to by God that this

is my son. No one else can do this.

Listen to this person. Listen to this Jesus of Nazareth. Listen to him because

he is the one who I've set aside to be the savior of the world.

He is the one that I sent to sacrifice himself for the sins of his people.

And so he is being attested to, as you may know what I'm saying,

he's being attested to, he's being proven to be that guy by these miracles that he's doing.

And in some ways he's giving them a picture of, he's giving us a picture of

what life will be like in eternity with him forever.

Revelation 21, 4, a verse you've probably heard before. He will wipe away every

tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

And so Jesus comes into a world where the former things have not passed away.

We live in a world where the former things have not passed away.

And you deal with the sinfulness of the world that you inhabit every single

day. You deal with sickness and death and depression and loneliness and sins

done in you and sins you do to other people and sins done to you.

You deal with all of those things. And Jesus comes at this moment in time and

living around him and being around him and watching him kill people and bring

righteousness and justice to the world is a picture.

It's a small picture of what life with him for eternity will be like.

Because these things talked about in Revelation do not exist because of heaven.

Heaven's not a special place in and of itself,

What's special about heaven, what's special about the new kingdom is not that it's a new place.

It's not that there's streets of gold or pearly gates or even mansions built for us.

What's special about this place is that Christ rules and reigns there.

He doesn't just come into that place like he does the world. He rules that place.

It's a place made by him for his people, for them to live with him forever.

That's what Jesus is doing when he heals. Let's keep going. Verse 35.

And rising very early in the morning while it was still dark,

he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, And they found him and

said, everyone is looking for you.

So what does Jesus do? Well, he prays. He gets up early in the morning before

anybody else while it's still dark.

He goes out to a desolate place and he prays.

It's a good question here, but does Jesus need to pray?

Good answer, right?

Jesus doesn't pray just to show us that praying is good. But Jesus praying is

evidence that we need to pray. Right.

Charles Spurgeon says this, not to pray because you do not feel fit to pray

is like saying I will not take the medicine because I am too sick.

Right. Not to pray because you do not feel fit to pray is like saying I will

not take the medicine because I am too sick.

You could say this way, too. I will not take the medicine because I'm just too busy.

I've just got too much going on. If I take the time out of my day,

if I take the time out of my day to go pray, To read the word to be with the lord.

I'm not going to have time to do what I need to do I'm, not going to get breakfast done in time.

I'm not going to have these moments I'm, not going to be able to accomplish

what I want to accomplish at work I'm,

not going to be able to get my show in at night I'm, not going to be able to

have the leisure time I want if I do that If I make that time if I carve it

out for myself I won't be able to take the medicine because i've just got too much going on.

Jesus here is this picture of, hey, if you don't have time, you make time. You make time for this.

I've said often that praying to me is one of the hardest spiritual disciplines because it's hard.

It's a hard thing to do. When your life is busy, when things get going and you

feel like your proper response is, I got to get to work.

I got things to do. If I wake up in the morning, what I need to do is work.

If I happen to be able to steal an extra hour of time out of my day I need to

use that hour to get something done Yet Jesus here gives us the picture of,

Everything you do is pointless If you do not find time to converse with the

Father For Him to converse with you For Him to give you direction For Him to

remind you of what you've been called to Of who you are.

Colossians 4.12 I think gives us a great picture of what prayer can be He says,

this is Paul writing to the church in Colossae. He says, Epaphras, who is one of you?

In other words, he's come from the church of Colossae. He's probably delivered

this letter, right? He's with Paul now.

He said, a servant of Christ Jesus greets you, always struggling on your behalf

in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

I love that phrase, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers.

I love that verse because for someone like me that it's hard to pray sometimes

It's like yeah, it's that way for a lot of people And you got to struggle you have to want it.

It's like any other discipline in your life. You have to say no I'm going to

pray I'm going to find time today to pray.

I'm going to make this happen because I need to do it I need to make this happen.

There's other things in my day that feel really important But I don't need to

do them. I need to do this Thank you.

So Jesus goes out to pray. And what do his disciples do? Well,

his disciples do what any of us would have done, right?

They've hitched themselves to this rabbi.

These guys have left their family businesses. They've left their homes.

They've left everything about their lives. And now they're attached to this guy.

He's the one that they're going, we're going to follow you. We're going to listen

to you. And they think, man, we have hit the jackpot.

This guy is healing people. He's speaking with authority.

Everybody's coming to see this guy. Man, we have hit the lotto here.

We're about to be on a skyrocketed, man, I picked the right pastor here.

His church is about to explode.

Everyone loves this guy. You know that they're looking at other guys at this

point who have other rabbis.

They're like, oh, your rabbi spoke to a couple of people.

Mine healed people yesterday. He cast out demons all day.

It's like what you always do when you meet up with other pastors or church people.

Inevitably it turns into, you know, like what y'all guys, you baptized four, five, five. Yeah. Yeah.

Did we really baptized five? It doesn't matter. That's what I'm going to tell you. Right.

It's just human nature to think that. And they're looking at Jesus and they're

going, man, we, we, we have got the right guy.

He actually chose us. We didn't even choose him. And now he's chosen us.

It must be because we're really important. And he knew that we were the guys for the job.

What do they say? They found him and said to Jesus, everyone is looking for you.

Again, they're even chastising him like, bro, what are you out here for?

There is people that need healing. There is people that need demons cast out.

You can't just leave and go pray.

It's a weird thing to say to the Lord Jesus Christ, but they are saying it. Who do you think you are?

Need you, right? We're expecting, and they would be expecting for Jesus to go

back into town, set up a big tent, and just a line of people through the door,

healing all day long, healing all day long.

He's going to the children's hospital. He's healing all the kids.

He's going to all of the wards in every hospital, every infectious disease,

everything that's wrong, cancer patients, and he's just healing people up and right.

Because to us and to them, in many ways, you're thinking, what could you do

that's more important than that?

What could you ever do that's more important than that. And granted,

to any of us in here that have any family members who are sick or any of them

that have passed away that were sick for a long time,

you know that you would do anything to remove that from that person that you

love. And so I don't think they're wrong.

I think they're wrong in the sense that they're missing the point,

but I don't begrudge the disciples for feeling this way at all.

Well, listen to Jesus' response. And he said to them, let us go onto the next towns.

And you know, again, they're sitting there going, what do you mean the next towns?

Why? That I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.

And he went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out

demons. Again, this doesn't make any sense at the time.

Everywhere Jesus went, people completely misunderstood his mission and what

the Messiah was sent to do.

They were waiting for the champion who would deliver them from sickness,

who would deliver them from death, who would deliver them from Rome,

not for the suffering servant of God who would deliver them from their sins.

I said earlier that the most important thing you need to know about yourself

is you are a spiritual being first and a physical being second.

That's the most important thing you can know about yourself. Why?

Because if you know that about yourself, you'll tend to yourself rightly.

You'll tend to yourself. You'll care for yourself rightly.

You'll care for others rightly. You'll care for your kids rightly.

You'll care for your friends rightly.

And Jesus comes and he's doing all of these casting out demons and healing people.

And again, his disciples, I think justifiably so are going, man, we need to set up a tent.

We're going to let all the surrounding towns know that you'll be here from 8

a.m. to 8 p.m. every single day and you'll heal everything that's wrong with them.

Jesus meets them with, hey, listen, I've just prayed. I've been praying all morning.

And I want you to know that we're about to go from town to town,

not so that I can heal everyone in those towns, but so that I can preach there also.

For that is why I came out.

Again, earlier in Mark, what does it say that Jesus is doing?

What does it say that John is doing?

Verse 14, now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee,

proclaiming the gospel of God.

Remember, this isn't a gospel about God. This is the gospel from God.

God in the flesh, speaking the good news, saying the time is fulfilled and the

kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

Casting out demons, healing people, the miracles, walking on water, feeding the 5,000.

All of that was a servant to the message that Christ preached.

We have a hard time with that because we think, what could be better than not

being able to walk and then being able to walk?

Think about your own life. What are the things in your own life?

We're all guilty of this that we think, if that was different, my life would be better.

Everything would be right. If I could get rid of that habit,

if that person would stop treating me that way, if the physical ailment in my

life that I have that I can't get rid of, if I could get rid of that,

everything would change.

We all think that way. If I could have a little more money, if I could have

a little more time, if I could find someone to help me out, if these people

would stop mistreating me, how about your past?

If that wouldn't have happened to me, if that wouldn't have taken place,

or if I wouldn't have made that mistake, my life would be completed.

If Jesus could come and fix those things for me, everything would get better.

And yet Jesus is here telling you and his disciples, listen,

that's not the point. That's not the point.

Jesus is healing these people, what you'll see, and we're definitely about to

see it here with this leper, the healings are not in and of themselves salvific.

Not every person that Jesus heals is saved.

And here bears the question for us and for them, do you tend to yourself spiritually

or do you tend to yourself physically?

And a good way to answer that question is if you, if you could save the person

in your life that you most want to save with whatever sickness they have.

If you could save yourself, if you could fix your problems, if Jesus would say,

hey, I will come to your life and I'll fix all of the things that can fix you

or I'll preach the gospel to you and I'll save you and I'll redeem you.

But you're going to suffer.

But you will suffer in this life. It will be hard. Which one are you choosing?

Again, it's easy to sit here and say, we would all choose salvation. That's easy to say.

But look at your life. Examine your life. Is that how you live? Is that how you think?

Is that how things go for you? Do you think about life that way?

That's what Jesus is challenging his disciples with.

I've come to preach the gospel, guys. I've come to tell people about the good

news that Christ, that I've come to save my people, that God has sent me to

save my people from their sins.

And it's a weird thing to be able to heal every disease and cast out every demon

and say You know, that's secondary,

That's secondary That's why jesus says things that don't make sense like hey

guys He's talking to his disciples and they're talking about the poor and he

says hey, listen The poor will always be with you,

That's a weird thing for jesus to say Because most of what I hear about jesus

is if jesus had his way there nobody would ever be poor It's like man.

He says they're always going to be here.

Says things like, hey, if you're not willing to leave your father and mother,

if you're not willing to look to me and value me more than your family and more

than your job and more than your life, if you're not willing to do that,

then you're not willing to be my disciple.

Because what Jesus is saying is you're revealing that you care more about your

physical self, the physical world

around you, than you do your spiritual self, and you don't get it yet.

You don't get it yet. He does the same thing with a rich young ruler.

Rich young ruler comes in, how do I be saved? And what does Jesus do?

You know the law, and he gives them all the physical things.

Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do this. And what does the rich younger

than the other say? I've done all those things.

I've done every physical thing that you think. And so what does Jesus hit him with? Okay.

Sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And the rich younger than

walks away sad. Why? Because he doesn't see it.

He thinks, how can I do that? For you and me, what that means is simple things like obedience.

What is something that you're not being obedient in because it's going to cost you something.

It's going to cost you your pride. It's going to cost you some time.

It's going to cost you some money. It's going to cost you some social clout.

Cost you something physical to prioritize something spiritual.

So Jesus wants them to know, hey, listen, here's the point. All right, let's close here.

Verse 40. We've seen Jesus as a healer.

We've seen Jesus prioritize prayer. We've seen him prioritize preaching.

I want to wrap this by looking at his character.

He says in verse 40, and a leper came to him and imploring him and kneeling,

said to him, if you will, you can make me clean.

So we don't have time to go into every Old Testament look at what leprosy is,

but I would encourage you to go read Leviticus, go look it up.

There's a whole section on leprosy. Essentially, if somebody woke up with a

spot on their body, fear would immediately rush over them because they're thinking,

if this is what it could be, my whole life is over.

They would go to the priest and the priest, there was rituals about them.

Hey, you got to distance yourself for seven days and then you're going to come

back and we're going to look at it again.

And you got to watch yourself and shave. There's a whole section on how they're

supposed to handle that.

And if it ended up being leprosy, that it was so serious that they would have

to stand out in desolate places.

And then if they saw somebody walking towards them, they would have to yell

out to them, unclean, unclean.

They would have to self-identify themselves as social outcasts.

They would leave their families. They would not be able to touch their kids.

They would be banned from the synagogue. They would be banned from every social

place. They would not have jobs.

They would be homeless. They lived in communities because who else can you be

around if you have leprosy other than people that have leprosy?

And what is your life essentially made up of? Well, it's you sitting around

with other people that have leprosy talking about how long you think you're

going to live until this disease takes your life.

That's what leprosy was in the ancient world.

Leper comes to Jesus. And I don't think the text is really giving us here a movement of faith.

I think what it's giving here from this leper is a movement of desperation,

that he hears about this name, who is healing every disease,

casting out all these demons.

And listen to this, verse 41, moved with pity.

He stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him, I will be clean.

Two things real quick, we'll close.

Number one, this is the right question for us to ask. If you will, you can make me clean.

The leper doesn't question what God can do. He questions what God will do.

He rightly understands that Jesus can do whatever he wants to do with him.

Now, does he understand everything Jesus is? Of course not. But he understands

Jesus enough to know, hey, you can heal everybody, obviously.

You got to think that there's leper upon leper. They're watching from afar all

these things that are happening in the city, all these people who have diseases

and demons being healed and demons being cast out.

And they're thinking, if we could just get in there, but we can't.

If they're downwind, literally, if they're downwind, they've got to be 100 feet away.

They're not allowed to be anywhere near anybody else that doesn't have leprosy.

And so they're stuck watching, thinking, man, maybe that guy can do it.

Maybe he can save me. And so this leper desperately comes to Jesus.

He asked the right question, but I want to see more importantly,

verse 41 says, moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand.

A translation, which I think may be an NASB, an NIV of this move to pity phrase is moved to compassion.

Moved to compassion. The Greek word literally translated in other places is

to have the bowels yearn.

It's really what I said. What was the word you said this morning that we don't use?

Exhort. Word of the week, exhort and bowels.

But move to compassion. In Once again, we have this language of Jesus within

himself, from within himself, his innermost being yearns to do what?

It yearns to do what? It yearns to reach out.

He has compassion from the innermost being of who he is and he reaches out.

Again, there's nothing in this story as much as people want to bring it out

and say, well, he had to have faith to come to Jesus.

And this is Jesus responding to his faith. No, it's not.

This is a desperate man in need of healing. And he's finally,

there's no telling how many years this guy's had his disease.

He goes, man, if I have any chance of this guy healing me, I'm taking it.

Well, I don't care who he is. I don't care where he's from. This is just my only option.

It's like when you hear people get sick and they go to third world countries

because they hear of some miracle drug that might fix them. And you go,

how could you ever do that?

And it's like, you've never been that sick. You don't know what that's like.

You'll do anything. That's what this man's doing.

And so this isn't a faith healing. This isn't Jesus saying, your faith has made

you well as he went other places. This is Jesus saying, this is my creation.

This is my creation that I created.

Not only is it my creation, this is the very good of my creation.

This is the pinnacle of my creation and sin and death has taken its toll on it.

And Jesus doesn't reach out just in compassion. He reaches out in a sense of

anger of what this has done to his creation.

Language when he raises Lazarus from the dead. And as he approaches Lazarus's tomb,

you have the same language of his bowels being turned within him as if to say,

I am so righteously angry at what sin has done to my good creation, and I will fix it.

I will fix it. And so he reaches out and he saves this man.

And for the first time since this man has been diagnosed with this disease,

since he woke up with a spot in his body, someone touches him.

Someone preaches out to him.

Someone does something that no one else will do. Everyone else's bowels,

when they see this guy yearn in sickness, how gross, how terrible it is.

Maybe if they have compassion, it's distant compassion.

It's, man, that's terrible and I feel bad for him, but I got my life to live.

That's too bad for those people, man. They're going to die one day,

but what can I do about it? I got to move on.

And they're right to think that way. They can't heal anybody.

So Jesus is moved to compassion. And listen, we need to have that picture of

Jesus in our hearts, that he moves towards the ugliness of your life.

He is not looking at your life and picking it apart and going,

you know, if you would get rid of that, I'd reach out.

If you would get rid of that, I would deal with you. If you could fix those

areas of your life, I would move in compassion towards you.

No, Jesus is moved to compassion in his innermost being to what?

To sinners, to people who are inflicted with sin.

Whether that is a disease because of sin or it's spiritual death because of

the sin in their life, Jesus is moved towards those people.

And he moves towards me and you for the same reason.

Really important for you to know. Because if you don't think that way,

what you will end up doing is thinking that your performance has something to

do with the way that God loves you. And one of two things will happen.

You'll be a mopey, depressed, sad Christian, which shouldn't exist.

Or honestly worse, you'll be a prideful, arrogant jerk of a Christian.

Those are the two options if you think it depends on you. You will stay depressed

because you can't figure it out, or you'll think that you figured it out and

think you're better than everybody else.

Neither of those things are good options.

But if you look at Jesus and go, he reached out to me, he came to me,

right? He lowered himself.

He took on the form of a servant. He walked this earth.

He was tempted the way I was tempted. He was tried the way I was tried. He was beaten, bruised.

He was hung on a cross, he rose again, he's resurrected, and he reaches down

to me to say, I am willing.

I have pity on you. I have compassion on you. I will reach out.

If that's how you think about Jesus, that's a good place to be.

Because you'll always recognize your need for him, and you'll always know that

he'll meet your need every time.

There's people in churches everywhere this morning, maybe even in this room

that think you're doing something this morning so that God will be happy with you.

I just want to say as lovingly as I can, that is the most demonic thing that

you could think about coming to church, that God's going to be happier with

you because you did something.

The only reason God will look down on your life and ever smile is if you place

your life in the hands of Christ Jesus.

He will look at you the way he looks at his perfect son.

You will be Saved by works but they will not Be your own You will be saved by

the life And death of Jesus Christ.

I don't want to miss any verses here. Verse 42, Immediately the leprosy left

him again. Jesus' healing is immediate. He was made clean.

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 your cleansing that Moses commanded for proof to them.

One words, a couple things. Jesus doesn't negate the law. He wants this man to follow the law.

Leviticus, it tells you exactly what to do when you think you're cleansed of leprosy.

Go to the priest, have them examine you And to shave your hair and your eyebrows

So they can make sure there weren't any hidden spots somewhere Jesus wants them

to do that But he also tells them, don't tell anybody Why would Jesus not want

people to know that he can heal leprosy?

Verse 45 tells us The leper, he went out and he began to talk freely about it

And spread the news So that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town

But was out in a desolate place and people were coming to him from every quarter.

Jesus wants to go from town to town and preach the gospel.

And he strictly, again, that's a very powerful word.

So this isn't Jesus saying like, hey man, I'd really appreciate it if.

This is Jesus looking this man in the face saying, you do not say anything to

anybody. And what does this man do? He disobeys.

Now, again, we can give him a break and say, hey, if I had leprosy and I got

healed, I'd probably do the same thing. That doesn't mean you weren't sinning.

The first thing this guy does when he is healed is he sins. He disobeys.

Again, I get why he did it, but he still did it.

And what does this cause? What causes exactly what Jesus was trying to keep

from happening to happen.

I want you to see lastly what happened with this leper is that he was the one

that lived in a desolate place.

He was the one that was the outcast. He was the one that had no way of getting

into the city that had no way of going to the synagogue No way of getting to

where god was and he trades places With christ.

What does christ do? He reaches out to him and what happens now christ is in

the desolate place Away from the city Away from where he wants to be There's

no better picture of the gospel than that You were the one in a desolate place.

I was the one in desolate place We were dead in our sins and trespasses and

jesus reaches down to us We don't reach up to him.

He reaches down to us, saves us and trades places and says, I'll go to the desolate place for you.

I will go to death. I will go to where you were. I will bring you back to life. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for our time together.

Thank you that you are a healer. God, most importantly, as you tell us through

your son that you are a preacher.

God you had one son And you made him a preacher of the gospel,

We thank you for that Thank you that each and every person in this room That

has a relationship with you Is the beneficiary of that God that if you would

have left us alone We were no better than the leper.

Outside of your city Outside of your walls Destined to live a life In the wilderness

The spiritual wilderness And destined to die a spiritual death And be outside

of your house forever but you and your great love and mercy have reached out.

You able to save us? Not only were you capable of cleansing us and raising us

from the dead, but God, amazingly, you were willing.

We thank you for that this morning. I pray that as we move into a time of fellowship

that you're with us, God, that it's a time that we can enjoy each other's company.

And as we said this morning, like Hebrews 10, 26 reminds us that it would be even a time of,

Encouraging one another all the more as we see the day approaching God to encourage

each other to say listen he is not Upset he's not mad he moves towards sinners,

He is angry at sin if you stay in your sins He will be angry with you forever

because of the sin that is in your life He is willing and able to cleanse you

of all unrighteousness We thank you for that in our prayer amen.