Sermon: A Touch of Grace

This morning I'm gonna look at Mark chapter one, just verses 40 through 45 here in Mark chapter one,

mark chapter one, verses 40 through 45.

Let me pray for us before we open and here God's word.

Father, we are thankful that you shine a light in the darkness of this world. We pray that we would know the light when we see it today, that we would know truth when we hear it today.

May your voice not to fall on deaf air ears today. Help us to be true hearers of your word and we pray this in the strong name of Christ. Amen. Mark chapter one, verses 40 through 45. This is the holy and err sufficient word of God 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 the spread the news so

that Jesus could no longer openly enter town, but was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter, the grass withers and the flower fades. The word of God is forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Well, this morning what I want to do is look at this little beautiful count here in Mark chapter one, just these five verses, and I want to do so under four points this morning. First the lepers plight. Second the lepers profession, third Christ's pity. And then finally Christ's plight. So the lepers plight, the lepers profession Christ's pity. And finally, Christ's plight. First the lepers plight Mark, as he often does in his gospel, he gives us a very succinct

and simple, simple statement of affairs and that he does so at the very beginning here in verse 40 he says, and a leper came to him That is a leper came to Jesus. Now this man's name is not given. His circumstances are not explained. He, he's just simply labeled that there is this one thing that is so all consuming about his life that that's all that he refers to him as. He's a leper, a leper came to him. That's the entire descriptor of his person.

Now, simple as that statement is it is to be equally shocking. You and I are to be shocked by that opening statement and to understand that, let's look at the lepers plight. Of course, a leper is someone that has leprosy, leprosy a disease. What? What is leprosy? Well in the Bible can refer to a range of skin diseases that were transmutable and that would be passed on from person to person. Uh, turn with me if you would.

The beginning of your Bible is to Leviticus, so Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, once you turn open to uh, Leviticus chapter 13,

and there we have in the law laws about leprosy. And so here in chapter 13, it's a whole chapter on it. Then chapter 14 will be a whole chapter on cleansing from that leprosy. But here I just wanna read these first three verses. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, when a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot and it turns into a case of lepers disease on the skin of the body, then he shall be brought to Aaron

and the priest or to one of his sons. The priest and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body and if the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of lepers disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.

Unclean, leprosy, though it was a catchall term for various skin diseases in the Bible is surely included and the main one that it was referring to is, is what you and I would refer to as Hansen's disease in our day and age. That name wasn't given until 1873, but it is a disease that has a long history. In fact, it was a a contagion in the ancient world that wrecked much havoc in the ancient world. We have evidence of it going all the way back to 600

BC in places as disparate as China and Egypt and India and it's a horrible disease, disease that ravaged the ancient world. It it's therefore referred to over 60 times in our Bibles because it was so prevalent. It's a bacterial disease that attacks a person's nervous system and it causes tumors to grow. Most often, those tumors grow on the person's hands and on the person's feet and on the person's face and on their ears

and bones would be attacked and bones would begin to retract,

sometimes completely disappear. And so people's fingers and people's toes and people's noses would retract into their bodies or just fall off.

Dr. Paul brand, modern day physician who became a world recognized authority on leprosy, he said that the man with the withered hand in the gospels in Matthew 12 and Mark III and Luke six was almost surely a man of leprosy. His bones just retracted leprosy, disfigures in cruel and horrific ways, but it also the person, it wasn't just their physical appearance, it also emanated a smell and does today because their flesh is kind of rotting,

but it isn't just sight or smell, it also destroys the nerves and it causes people to lose any sense of pain. We often see pain as a curse, but not being able to experience pain in a world that causes pain is even more of a curse.

How well people with leprosy will often injure themselves because there's no pain warnings. And so you have all kinds of stories of people with leprosy that will pick up a boiling hot cup of water and be burning their hands to third degree burns and not even realize it, that they will step off a curb and break, break their ankle and keep going because they have no clue they've broken their ankle. Paul Bran tells a story about a young boy that came

and turned a key in front of him and a doorknob and the key was stuck in the, the child just kept turning it and cut his hand all the way to the bone and didn't even realize it.

A person with leprosy often they no longer have the sensation that they need to flit their eyes and so they never do so and they don't re moisturize their eyes and most people with leprosy because of that they go blind. Their eyes dry out all because their nerves, as Dr. Paul Bran said, have fallen silent. However, leprosy does not just cause a person's body to fall apart, but their entire social world would fall apart.

In Leviticus 13, that chapter we just looked like at in verse 45, the lepers person has given instructions after they have been deemed unclean by a priest and the instructions are this, the lepers person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose and he shall cover his upper lip and he shall cry out Unclean. Unclean shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone.

His dwelling shall be outside the camp. That's what the law says. It was so contagious and transmitted from person to person by simple touch that a person with leprosy was cast outside of their family, outside of society, outside of worship at the temple.

They lived as the law commanded outside the camp and that meant their life was one of solitude. It's one of being alone.

It was so disastrous that there are various times in the scripture where it's actually the very curse of God upon people that are committing willful sin. So you remember gai, that servant of the prophet Elijah is an example. He will cheat name in the Syrian and so God will curse gai with leprosy or you remember Merriam, the sister of Moses, that she will be envious of Moses's position and she will begin to complain against him.

And so God strikes her lepers

whether it was a curse as a result of personal sin or it was simply the effects of sin and this world that someone had leprosy. It was a disease that affected the individual in every way personally in health, socially with others religiously with not being able to go to the temple. It was also true mentally and emotionally when even the individual dared to walk among others, they had to scream out unclean, unclean, not only reminding everybody else get away from me,

but reminding themselves, I'm unclean. I'm unclean. Just a continual reminder.

Josephus, the first century Jewish historian said it well, he said a life of leprosy was no different than being a corpse and that is why it is so shocking that Mark just simply says, and a leper came to him.

A leper shouldn't come to him to be shocked.

That's the lepers plight. I wanna look at verse 40 at the lepers profession.

Mark tells us that he came to him quote, imploring him and kneeling he, he comes by posture making a profession about Jesus. This leper, out of all of those around Jesus seems to know who Jesus is or at least he knows what Jesus can do because it's not just his posture before Jesus. It's also his words before Jesus that profess that he knows what Jesus is able to do. He implores him. Mark says in verse 40, if you will,

you can make me clean. He doesn't doubt Jesus' ability. He has confidence that if Jesus chooses to make him clean, he is able to make him clean. That's quite a profession.

The word for able there is the Greek word dai, which is a form of the Greek word DMAs, which means power. We get the word dynamite from that word. Jesus has the power to do this. You, you have the ability if you're willing. Jesus is quite a profession. It's actually a wonderful model for prayer. I think this lepers man, what he gives to us here, you come to Jesus, we go to the one who has all authority, the one who has all power.

And so it's right to cry out, to implore, to plead with him for his will because we know his ability. Lord, I know you are able, would you be willing to do this? Lord, I know you can if you choose to do so, would you hear my cry and will to do so? Look, it's a good faith filled prayer. What a profession. It's interesting that the leopard does not implore Jesus heal me. That's what I think I would be prone to do. I think that's what most of us would be prone to do.

That's not his cry. His cry is cleanse me. He doesn't simply want his physical body back. He wants to be restored spiritually. He wants to be cleansed. Cleanse me, not just give me a momentary healing, but that lasting healing.

It's interesting that as we read in Leviticus, the law could only point out what was wrong with the man affected by the disease. But the law though, it pointed it out and it confirmed it. It could never fix the man. It couldn't restore the man. There was no ability of the law to do this. And so the man does the only thing he knows what he must do. He goes to Christ. He knows that Christ alone has the power to cleanse.

If we would be clean, we must go to him. What a profession.

Third, I want you to see Christ's pity. Verse 41, Christ's pity, mark tells us that Christ was quote moved with pity. Now it's helpful to know that in some of the New Testament manuscripts of Mark one, that a different word is there. So some of your translations may have that different word and that word is that Jesus was angry, he was moved with anger. My guess is is that is probably the right term here, that that Jesus was angry.

I don't think our ESV is wrong in putting pity. Most of you're reading the ESV. I don't think that's wrong, but let me explain to you why I think the word there is actually anger. It's because when there is a more difficult reading in the early manuscripts, that's probably the most likely reading because you would've scribes that would copy these manuscripts, copy this manuscript of this manuscript. And what they would do is ah, if this is more difficult

and it's a little harder to understand, they might substitute an easier word to understand and it's easier to understand that Jesus has pity than that he is angry. And the other synoptic gospels, when they pick up this account, Matthew and Luke, and I'm convinced that Mark was written first and Matthew and Luke are using Mark as source material. When they tell this account they don't include Jesus's emotion there. Now it had said in the original that he was moved with pity.

It would make sense that they would do so. But you say he's angry. That causes questions. So it makes sense that they would not do that when they are reporting the event and their gospels. But I want you to understand his anger. It's not wrong that the ESV says that is pity that he's moved with we. We could call it a kind of pity infused anger because you read that Jesus has moved with anger and you think it must be because the leper came to him.

No leper is to approach anybody. He he's angry with the leper

and that would be a misinterpretation and I think the problem was seen at there. No, he is not angry with the leper. We know that because of the immediate response of Jesus and yet Jesus is angry.

What is he angry at? He's angry at sin and he's moved with true sorrow pity for the way sin is racking this man who was created in his image.

It's very similar to John 11 when Jesus is at the tomb of Lazarus, we're told there that he was quote deeply moved in the spirit. Deep within Jesus was deeply moved and the word used both in the New Testament outside of it conveys the idea of of inwardly sign of of groaning and outside the New Testament, we find it in examples of horses and their snorting that that inward angst that they're having as they snort

conveys the inward feeling of outrage of indignation. Jesus is deeply moved. He is greatly troubled. He is angry. He's angry about sin and sins effects in his world and he hates it.

Savior is not cold

and he's not indifferent to the pains of his people.

It angers him

his move with pity, stirred anger and that's confirmed by his action. Or tell us in verse 41, he stretched out his hands and touched him and said to him, I will be clean.

Don't you stop for a moment and just imagine, don't you imagine being that leper children? I want you to imagine being that leper, this figured in every way.

Maybe your fingers have fallen off, your toes have fallen off, maybe your nose has fallen off.

You're wrapped in all kinds of bandages.

You're not able to walk around the market, you're not able to sit at the family dinner table. You're not able to go and worship God among God's people

and no one, no one has touched you for years now, even for you non huggers in the room,

be painful not to be touched for years.

And yet that was the lepers alienation. Even a priest was not allowed to touch a leper. And yet in that moment, Jesus stretches out his arms and he extends his hand and he touches him. Now, surely Jesus could have just spoken the words,

he cast out demons that way. Just speaking a word.

What he does is he meets that leper where he's at. He reaches out and he touches him.

Fascinatingly, in that moment, Jesus's touch should have made him unclean. Yet what it did is it made the leper clean.

I will, that's his disposition. I will. And his word is power. He says, be clean.

And Mark says, and immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean what he wills accomplished. Not halfway, not partially, not potentially. It's done.

Did the man have blindness? He now saw, did he have a withered hand? It regrew. Did he lack a nose? All of a sudden it was prominent on his face again.

All the sores gone, all the ulcers dried up immediately.

Imagine all his nerve injuries were firing for the first time in years, the moment Jesus Ima touched him,

his first sensation

can imagine yourself as that leper, but you aren't simply to imagine what it was like to be the leper in the text.

Mark wants you and I to see ourselves as the leper in the text.

Jesus was in effect giving expression of the gospel itself to that man and to all of us. The leper was unclean. He was under the judgment of the law. He was an outcast from God's people and an outcast from God. He had a kind of living death. Paul says in Ephesians, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Each of us is born into this world dead. We are spiritual lepers and the the sin contagion has spread to every part

of our being. We are dead men and dead women walking and we are literally falling apart of kind of living death. But God, but God in Jesus as in this account, he identifies with the unclean by becoming flesh, reaching out his hands and thereby the unclean is made clean. It's a drama of the gospel itself. Just in miniature form.

You meant to see yourself there.

There's a reason that Mark puts it. At the very beginning of his gospel,

we saw the lepers plight, the lepers profession, Christ's pity. And now finally I want us to see Christ's plight, Christ's plight, that healing touch of Christ, it costs him. Verse 43, you see what Christ charges the man he charges him quote sternly. This is again a very strong word. This is not a slight ask from Christ, but a firm authoritative command. He, he doesn't want the man to tell anyone what he has done for him besides the priests.

Go tell the priests but nobody else. Why? Well, I think it's twofold. We will see over and over throughout the gospels in the early part of the gospel is that Jesus will warn those that he is healed. He tells them not to tell anybody. And the reason he doesn't want them to tell everybody is that he doesn't want to be treated as a circus act. He doesn't want people lining the streets just looking for the local miracle healer.

That's not why he has come. Peter will say it this way when he's preaching there at Pentecost. He will say, 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. All of those miracles, all those signs, they were just God's attestation. That what Jesus said was true. That who he said he was was true.

Remember on that mount of transfiguration, when the father will throne from the heavens above and he will say in a very loud voice, he will say, this is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him to listen.

He was the messiah, the promised Messiah to come. You're to listen to him. Look to him.

It's not just a mere miracle worker, a kind of local here healer.

The other reason he wants the man to tell no one is found in the second half of his stern charge. Go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. He wants the man going to the priest so that they are forced to acknowledge that Jesus himself is indeed the Christ that these religious leaders can't deny it. Here is a man that was a leper. They can't heal him. All they can do is pronounce that he is a leper.

And this man is now healed to test that Jesus is the Christ.

Remember when John the Baptist will send disciples to ask Jesus, are you the one that we're meant to expect? Are you the messiah to come? Remember, Jesus sends the disciples back to John the Baptist, quoting from Isaiah where he says, go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind received their sight, the lame walk. Lepers are cleanse.

The lepers are cleanse,

but it's now cleanse, leper he. He does not listen to the stern charge of Jesus.

He goes about flapping his gums and wants to tell everybody maybe can't fault him.

But in our zeal, when we think we are wiser than God, we are on bad ground. And it costs Jesus.

It costs him greatly. Verse 45, he began to talk freely about it and to spread the news and Mark tells us, quote, Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was out in desolate places. He he was now forced out. It costs Jesus.

And what Mark wants you to see is the rule reversal. It's changed. The leper is now part of society and he is alive in the town, but it costs Jesus. He's now forced into desolate places outside the town. That's why Mark puts it at the beginning of the gospel. He's given a foreshadowing of what is to come. That is when our savior acts in compassion and he identifies with us to heal our infirmities. By his touch of grace, he takes our place.

He's driven outside the camp. He's treated as a leper. One from whom Isaiah says, men hide their faces. Who the writer of Hebrews writes in chapter 13. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.

Christ identifies with us.

He takes on our shame.

He takes on our uncles, truly touch us, bearing the condemnation of the law for us, separated from all men and all society becoming a curse for us, driven outside the camp

outside the city walls

so that we might be brought into the walls of that eternal city, which is to come.

In essence, Christ became a leper for us.

He wills it. He wills to make us clean

you but need to come to him like the leper. That's it. That and implore him and kneel before him. That's it. He wills it.

I want you to recognize that there are none that are too far gone for Christ's healing touch. You don't get more bottom of the rung in that society than a leper.

There are two great heirs I think you and I commit. One is that we hear this account and we think, Hmm, that sounds like a little bit of fanciful preacher. I'm no leper.

If you knew what was inside me, you knew how unclean I am.

Say you're walking about, you should be proclaiming unclean. Unclean. And if you know yourself, you know that to be true. Chief among sinners said the Apostle Paul.

When you begin to see the depth of your sin, how incredibly unclean you are, that in a really very real sense, no one is safe around you 'cause of your corruption. A dead man walking

apart from Christ. 'cause that's the other second grave air that I think we make. We think, ah, I am too unclean.

No one is too unclean for the touch of Christ.

No one, I don't care what you've done, what you have fought, what you have desired.

No one is too unclean for the touch of Christ. None.

He wills it. You but need to go to him,

call out to him, bow before him, receive the touch of his grace. That's it. And you will walk into the heavens here in clean. Clean.

Lemme offer one more application for you. I'm not sure why this is the case. No, I am sure why it's the case, it's 'cause of sin. But often when we are most destitute and we are at our lowest and we feel like all of the world is upon our shoulders or we have committed some heinous sin or we are just feel like we are in a cloud of darkness and it is trial after trial after trial, it is often in those moments that you and I, instead of running to Christ, we run away from Christ

as the chief of FIEs and we seek to find an answer anywhere else we can in the world.

When he's able, he has all power

and he's willing, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy late. Why is it that we stop reading our Bibles and our prayers become cold and we go through the motions in worship and we try and run out of here instead of fellowshipping with the saints? Why is it that we run from him in those moments

when he has it all? The Christian life is one of continually coming to Jesus and continually receiving his touch of grace over and over and over and over again.

He's able and he's willing keep running to him. Would you? You pray for us.

Our Father, we are so thankful for so great a savior.

Forgive us. Forgive us that we can so easily sing. Nothing in my hands. I bring simply to thy cross I clinging naked. Come to thee. Forres,

easy to sing and yet slow. We are to do it. May we know your son, our savior, be a savior of angry, driven pity.

And may we receive his touch of grace, even this morning, some for the first time, some yet again. And we pray all of this in the strong name of Christ. Amen.