Luke The Orderly Account of Truth - The Faithful Healer - Luke 5:12-16

We are continuing our series going through the Gospel of Luke called Luke The Orderly

Account of Truth, where we are going through Luke's careful examination and investigation of

the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Last week we started in chapter five, and

we're picking up there in verse twelve. We're gonna read through verse sixteen.

If you don't have a bible, we have some on the black table there

right behind Gabe. Hi, Gabe, glad to see you too. If

you don't have a bible, it's yours. Take it, read it,

keep it, love it. So turn with me to chapter five, verse

twelve. We're gonna read through today's text. Then we'll pray and get into

it. While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along

who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell wait yep.

He fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord,

if you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his

hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said, be clean,

and immediately the leprosy left him. Then Jesus ordered him, don't tell

anyone, but go show yourself to the priests and offer the sacrifices that Moses

commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them. Yet the news about him

spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and to

be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

And that's what we're gonna do. Now. You don't have to withdraw

out to a lonely place. But we're gonna pray. Now, Lord Jesus,

as we read your word, as we read Luke's gospel account of your

life and death, I pray that you would humble our hearts to be changed

to the truth of your gospel. Help us to grow as obedience, joyful,

thankful children for your glory. Amen. So my sermon today is titled

the Faithful Healer. The Faithful Healer. Let's jump back into verse twelve.

We're gonna read through the verse, the first half of it, and we're

gonna break down what happens. While Jesus was in one of the towns,

a man came along who was covered in leprosy. Now leprosy in the New

and Old Testaments, there's a picture for picture for Gabe, Here're welcome,

Gabe. Leprosy in the New and Old Testament was not as specifically defined as

it is now in modern day leprosy or Hanson's disease. There were a multitude

of serious afflictions summed up under the general category of leprosy. So we don't

know the exact type that this man was afflicted with, but we do know

he was covered with it. In Leviticus we find extensive instructions that are given

to the people Israel for diagnosing those skin afflictions. The purpose was to find

out if the rash or scab or lesion, it's gonna get a lot grosser.

So warning to now if any of those things on the person's skin was

a harmless problem or one that was deemed to be leprosy, and it was

the priest's task in Israel to make the definitive diagnosis. So some of those

examples are found in chapter thirteen. Yeah you, the Lord said to Moses

and Aaron, when anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot

on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they must be brought

to Erin and the priest or to one of his sons, who is a

priest. The priest is to examine the sore on the skin, and if

the hair and the sword. Yeah, if the hair and the sowre has

turned white, and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it

is a defiling skin disease. When the priest examines that person, he shall

pronounce them ceremonially, ceremonially unclean. And after several, as needed, seven

day periods, the priest would check the skin of the afflicted person again,

as we find when we skip ahead to verse eight in chapter thirteen of Leviticus.

So, yeah, the priest is to examine that person, and if

the rash has spread in the skin, he shall pronounce them unclean. It

is a defiling skin disease. And there's more verse nine. When anyone has

a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to the priest. The priest

is to examine them, and if there is a white swelling in the skin

that has turned the hair white, and if there is raw flesh in the

swelling, it is a chronic skin disease, and the priest shall pronounce them

unclean. He is not to isolate them because they are already unclean. Yes

there's more Verse eighteen, Yes, super duper you. When someone has a

boil on their skin and it heals, and in the place where the boil

was a white swelling or reddish white or reddish white spot appears, they must

present themselves to the priest. The priest is to examine it, and if

it appears to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has turned

white, the priest shall pronounce that person unclean. Obviously, it is a

defiling skin disease that has broken out where the boil was. But if when

the priest examines it, there is no white hair in it, and it

is not more than skin deep and has faded, then the priest is to

isolate them for seven days. If it is spreading in the skin, the

priest shall pronounce them unclean. It is a defiling skin disease. I'm sorry

if I had to read it, you do too. And it just goes

on and on throughout the rest of this chapter with more examples of just super

gross sounding skin diseases. Feel free to read them all for yourself if you

can stomach it. But I think that's all we can handle for now.

So these kinds of texts seem really foreign to us, right, and we

often lose interest or in this case, our lunch when we read the detailed

matters that are involved. But if a Jew in that day woke up with

a symptom like one of these and he didn't know what it was, he

knew from these instructions that his life may be at stake. And also want

to draw attention to a repeated word and theme we saw in those verses unclean

for Israel, God's wholy chosen people. When they have these skin afflictions and

the condition was deemed to be stable, they were considered clean. After a

time, If their affliction was deemed to be deteriorating and was not going to

get better, those conditions and people were considered unclean, which may be asking,

well, yeah, obviously, but why unclean? What does it really

mean? They're pronounced unclean because God is holy, and God dwelt the very

presence of God dwelt within the camp of Israel as they traveled. They're pronounced

unclean because God is holy. In Numbers, chapter five, verse one,

the Lord said to Moses, command the Israelites to send away from the camp.

Anyone who has a defiling, skin disease or a discharge of any kind,

or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. We won't get

into that, but basically, people who touch dead bodies had to go through

their own process of cleansing themselves to come back into the camp. Send away,

male and female alike. Send them outside the camp, so they will

not defile their camp where I dwell among them. Them outside the camp,

so they will not defile their camp where I dwell among them, where I

dwell among them. Nearly one hundred percent of the Book of Leviticus is an

instruction manual for God's people, the Israelites, his chosen people, to be

set apart, clean and holy, just as He is holy, because to

be in His presence, the one, true, Holy and eternal God,

requires one to be clean. If you're not clean, you cannot be in

His presence. For a Jew to be cast out of the camp wasn't only

shameful and terribly sad. I mean, they're being separated from the rest of

their people, from their families after all. But it was terribly sad and

shameful because they were being separated from God's very presence. Imagine being a Jew

during that time and being declared unclean and having to stay outside of the camp

where you're God, an eternal father dwelt. I can't imagine it now.

You may be thinking, as I was, Thank God I wasn't born an

Israelite and then caught leprosy. I know I certainly did when I was preparing

the sermon. But to that thought, I'll share what I had to tell

myself. Check yourself, you whitewashed tomb. Check yourself, sinner. I

may be clean on the outside, but on the inside, forget about it.

Before Jesus saved me, I was a walking corpse. I was dead

in my sin. Without Jesus paying the penalty for our own sin, we'd

be in the exact same position as an Israelite with leprosy, separated from God's

presence and unable to stand before Him as clean, holy, blameless right his

children. Thank you Jesus. Continuing on the last half of verse twelve,

when he saw Jesus as the man of leprosy, he fell with his face

to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you

can make me clean now, because of what we went through in Leviticus,

we have a better understanding of what this man was dealing with, having not

only a life sentence of a miserable illness, but a living death. He

was unclean and separated, which is why he comes before Jesus and doesn't ask

to be healed. He asks to be made clean because he needs to be

clean to be joined back in again with his people with God. Jesus was

this man's last hope to cleanse him of his condition of a walking death.

Bless you, the man says, Lord, if you are willing, you

can make me clean. If you are willing, the man rightly places his

faith in Jesus, in God, the only one that can heal him,

the only one that can cleanse him. And look what Jesus does in verse

thirteen. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing.

He said, be clean, and immediately the leprosy left him. It

happened immediately, and it happened completely. When Jesus spoke, when he willed

it, he was clean. He was cleansed and healed. Now, sadly,

there are a number of so called healing ministries throughout Christianity, which introduces

a false and dangerous concept called faith healing. The danger with this practice is

that it infers that in order to be healed, the necessary condition is for

us to have the necessary faith to be healed, and if you don't have

that faith, then the lack of that faith works against you in being healed.

Does that make sense. Basically, what they teach is that if God

didn't heal you, it's because your faith wasn't strong enough. That somehow,

because of our weak faith, God just couldn't quite do the thing. It's

as if for God to act or to heal us rests on the weak faith

of his broken, sinful children, and that's just not the case. In

two Timothy two thirteen, Paul writes, if we are faithless, he remains

faithful. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. Praise God. Look

again at what the man said to Jesus. Lord, if you are willing,

you can make me clean. If you are willing, not, Lord,

if my faith is strong enough, you can clean me. Lord.

If you are willing, you can make me clean. Now, I'm not

saying that we should not ask to be healed, or that we should not

ask for what we need what I'm saying is when we pray, when we

speak to God the way this poor man did that, we follow his example.

We say, Lord, if you are willing, if you are willing,

And sometimes the answer is no. But if the answer comes from the

Lord God, omnipotent, the Lord God all powerful, who is more compassionate

than any of us, who is more wise than any of us, then

no is a good answer, because he is saying, that's not my will

right now for you, or that's not my will period. In the meantime,

we're going to experience great pain. We may experience great pain, suffering,

affliction. In fact, we're promised it. We're going to go through

those hardships. But his promise of the glory that awaits us in heaven remains.

Like we read in Romans, I consider that our present sufferings are not

worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. We don't always

know what his plan is, especially when we are in the lowest of valleys,

but we do know that his plan, that his will is what's best

for his children and what's best for his kingdom. It's all for him and

his glory. After all, what we do in the meantime is thank God

for his mercy, and we trust in his faithfulness. So when we when

we pray those prayers, when we pray as the leopard did, Lord,

if you're willing, regardless of the answer that we get, this is what

we do. We put our faith in the one that is faithful, no

matter what the answer is. We put our faith in the one that is

faithful, not in ourselves. We put our faith in the faithful God,

the faithful healer, because God is good even when he does not answer our

prayers in the way we would like. In verse fourteen, then Jesus ordered

him pay attention to this ordered him, Okay, don't tell anyone, but

go show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your

cleansing as a testimony to them. The leper had been made clean by Jesus,

and Jesus instructs him to immediately follow levitical instruction, to follow the law

and to go to the priest because they needed to certify that he was clean.

It was necessary so the man could be welcomed back into the fellowship of

his people in the synagogue and in the temple. Don't forget to do the

thing your alarmed just warned you to do. Before those things could happen,

before he could be welcomed back in, before the leper's exile from his family

and community could be lifted, He had to follow the prescriptions of the law

that God gave through Moses in Leviticus, and only the priests could verify that

he had been cleansed and was legally permitted to rejoin the community. He had

to go through all the ritual that's involved, including the offering of the sacrifice,

which can be found in Leviticus chapter fourteen. I encourage you to read

that Jesus instructs the man to relay what he had experienced to a priest,

as opposed to the public, which up until now they had been crowding around

him, trying to get trying to be healed, trying to hear what he

was going to say. They were overwhelming him. In Luke fifteen, yet

the news about him spread all the more so that crowds of people came to

hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. Now the gospel Luke doesn't

say, well, the man ignored Jesus commands and went out and told everyone.

But anyway, it just sounds like, oh, yeah, the people

heard about it. But if we go to the Gospel of Mark, you

find that it's he disobeyed and told everyone what had happened. He didn't go

to the priests as Jesus commanded. This is in chapter one of Mark,

verse forty three through forty five. Jesus sent him away at once with a

strong warning, see that you don't tell this to anyone, but go show

yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing as

a testimony to them. Instead, he went out and began to talk freely,

spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a

town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came

to him from everywhere. So Jesus was being straight up bombarded with people looking

to be healed by him. We have to remember that while Jesus was truly

God, he is also truly man. He still got tired, he still

got worn out, and look what he does in verse sixteen. But Jesus

often withdrew to lonely places and prayed, he withdrew to lonely praises places and

prayed Gonta get the band to come up. Every time Jesus healed somebody,

it drained him. On some occasions we read explicitly that the power went out

of him. The more the people came and the more they demanded from him,

the more important it became for him to withdraw, to get alone with

the Father, to get recharged. In a sense. I point this out

because well, I think Luke points this out because if it was necessary for

Jesus to find that strengthening and intimate power from being alone with the Father,

how much more important do you think it is for us to go before the

Father gaining strength from his spirit and untold, untold love of importance for us

to do it and in clothing. I want us to consider this and remember

it when we leave today and throughout the week. Just think about it all

the time. God is the healer, and he is good. God is

the healer, and he is good. If he heals us here on earth,

it is by his will, according to his plan, through his power.

And if we aren't healed here, we are promised to be made whole,

to be made new to be made clean, so that we can stand

in his presence by the death and resurrection of his son. I'll consider again

Romans eight eighteen. I'm just gonna turn to it here, unless Amanda is

faster than I am, which you probably are. Yep, maybe I will

Wood. Hey, yeah, you are faster. Day it Okay, thank

you, Amanda. I consider that our presence sufferings are not worth comparing with

the glory that will be revealed in us. Amen. So pray pray for

healing. Pray for physical healing, Pray for emotional healing, pray for relational

healing, and rejoice that our prayers are not answered based on the power of

our faith, but by the power and the will of the faithful healer.

Amen. Wow, that was fast. Okay, hey, Shade. All

right, We're gonna move into a time of response, a time of further

worship. Some of the ways we worship is by giving. If you came

prepared to give today, prepared because we shouldn't give under conviction, were to

be joyful considerate givers. The envelope, put it in the envelope, Put

it in the white box up by the doors. We have our connect card.

If you need prayer for anything or a question, mark it on the

back. We would love to pray for you or connect with you to answer

your questions. I would much prefer to pray for you face to face,

though, So if you want to receive prayer today for healing today, oh,

we pray for We pray to a God who heals. We pray to

a God who renews us, who cleanses us, and we pray to a

God who is faithful. Myself and other elders who are available will be on

the side of the end to pray with you, and we would love to

do that with you. And the last way we respond and worship is singing

praise. So we're gonna sing another song if you would stand, I'm gonna

pray and then we'll sing. Lord Jesus, I thank you that, as

we saw in the example of the Left for that approach to you in Luke's

Gospel, that you are the faithful healer, That when we are faithless,

you are faithful. That when we struggle with doubt, you never waver.

Lord, help us to trust in your will and in your plan in everything.

Remind us in our busy lives to refocus and to set time aside to

go to secluded places to pray, as Jesus did, help us to lean

on your power, on your understanding. We love you. Thank you for

your word today. Amen.