author: Ryan Hayden Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 5 this morning. Luke 5.

I had planned to preach a much larger passage this morning and cover through verse 25, but as I was studying this I go to involved in this first little story that we are going to focus on just that. So let's read verses 12-16:

[!bible] Luke 5:12-16 - KJV 12. And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 13. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. 14. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. 15. But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. 16. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.

The first time I think I ever thought about leprosy was when I was in probably 9th grade. My literature class was reading the book "Ben Hur" and our teacher, bless her, wheeled in the heavy Behemoth of a TV and an old VCR and let us watch all of Ben Hur in class. I think it took a week.

I love that movie. (The Charlton Heston version - the 2016 version is pornographic trash.). If you've never watched it, you should. It's probably one of the greatest movies ever made and I'm not sure that that teacher's decision to have us watch that movie wasn't responsible for my lifelong interest in the world of the New Testament.

Anyways, in the movie, one of the central storylines is that Ben Hur's mother and sister get leprosy. They are given it on purpose. They are actually jailed in a cell where a leper had lived and they become lepers.

And as lepers, they are released from jail, but their life goes from bad to worse. They are completely ostracized from society. Their nose and ears and fingers start falling off. They go about on the outskirts of society, dressed in filthy rags, completely cut off from everyone except other lepers.

That is, until they meet Jesus, and Jesus completely heals and restores them.

That's what we see in our text today, Jesus completely healing and restoring a leper. This story is also found in Matthew and Mark. It's an important part of the life of Jesus.

What I want to do this morning is to show you that leprosy is a vivid picture of sin in the Bible and how this miracle of Jesus is a picture of what Jesus does for all of us.

There are four parts to that:

• The leprosy
• The coming
• The healing
• The aftermath

So, that will be the shape of the message this morning. Let's pray and we'll get into it.

author: Ryan Hayden

The first thing I want to talk about today is...

1. The leprosy

Our text tells us that a man full of leprosy came to Jesus.

Leprosy is something we don't talk about often today, because in our modern western world, it has just about disappeared. We understand the disease better now and no how to both cure it and prevent its spread. In the 80s there were still over 5 million lepers in the world. Today, there are less than 200,000.

But throughout the ancient world, leprosy was a real problem. It was such a big deal that the book of Leviticus devotes several chapters to how to deal with lepers and there are several stories involving leprosy in the Old Testament.

• Miriam, Moses sister was struck with leprosy
• Namaan the Syrian came to Elisha to be healed of leprosy.
• King Uzziah, the judean king, was struck with leprosy.

Leprosy is an interesting disease. It manifests itself first in a rash that goes across the body - which the Old Testament describes in detail. But as it progresses, famously, people start losing parts of their body: their fingers, their nose, their ears. It's a horrifying and disfiguring disease.

Actually, the way it works is it kills the nerve endings. So lepers do not feel pain. There is nothing about leprosy itself that causes your fingers and nose to fall off. But without the ability to feel, the lepers end up harming themselves and disfiguring themselves.

In the Bible, once you were diagnosed with leprosy, you were cast out of society. You had to live outside of the camp, away from people. You had to let your hair hang out and wear rags and cover your face. You had to shout "unclean, unclean" whenever you came near people.

Of course, the legalistic pharisees took the commands of the Bible and (as they did) made them much worse. By the time of Jesus there were specific rules added that stated:

• If a leper so much as stuck his head in a house, the house became unclean.
• It was illegal to even greet a leper.
• Lepers had to remain 100 cubits away if they were upwind and 4 cubits if they were downwind.

So if you were a leper in Bible times, you lived in poverty, cut off from everyone you loved, begging for your existence, a living symbol of sin. It was a hopeless, dead existence. They were literally the living dead and they were treated like that.

They were utterly and completely cut off from the Tabernacle and the Temple. So lepers had no access to God. They could not bring offerings. They could not worship with their people.

Now, leprosy is a picture of our sin. Just like this man's leprosy, sin infects us. It infects us from the sole of our foot to the top of our head.

Just like this man's leprosy, sin causes us to stop feeling and to hurt ourselves and others. It is the nature of sin that it scalds our conscience. That we have to do more and more to feel pleasure.

Like a drug addict who has to take more and more drugs to achieve the same high - sin as it progresses in our lives - takes us further and further, causing us to do things we would not do normally.

Just like leprosy, sin destroys our relationships. Its so sad that in the Bible, as soon as sin entered into the world, there was marital trouble. Sin entered into the world, and in the very first generation, you had fratricide, brother's killing brothers.

All of us know people whose sin has destroyed their natural relationships, killing what is good and wholesome in their life. Driving children away from parents. Driving brothers away from brothers. Driving spouses apart.

Just like leprosy, sin causes us to go about as the walking dead, covered in filthy rags.

The Bible says:

[!bible] Ephesians 2:1 - KJV

1. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Like the leper, the sinner who has not been made alive by Christ is the living dead. They are spiritual zombies.

And like the leper, they do the best they can to cover their sin with filthy rags.

[!bible] Isaiah 64:6 - KJV 6. But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

But probably the most serious thing that sin does is that just like leprosy, sin cuts us off from fellowship with God.

In Genesis, sin caused man to go from fellowship with God in the garden to hiding from God in the bushes. Sin puts us at "enmity with God" -

[!bible] Romans 8:7 - KJV 7. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

it makes us hostile to God and God hostile to us.

Just as the leper couldn't approach the tabernacle and have fellowship with God, the sinner is kept out of fellowship with God.

So I see in this leper a picture of us in our natural state of sin.

Let's look at the next part of this story. We've talked about the leprosy, let's talk about...

2. The coming

Look at verse 12 again:

[!bible] Luke 5:12 - KJV 12. And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

I like the way the book of Mark tells this:

[!bible] Mark 1:40 - KJV 40. And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

So Jesus is going about, and this leper came to Jesus.

That by itself would have been scandalous. Remember, the lepers stayed away from people. They stayed outside the camp. They called "unclean, unclean."

The rabbis of the day had no compassion on the lepers. They believed they had done some evil thing and deserved what they got.

So for this man to come to Jesus was an incredibly bold act. I imagine as he came to Christ, the crowd moved away in disgust and horror. Maybe they were sneering at him in disgust as they stepped backward, giving him a wide birth.

But this man came to Jesus, fell at Jesus' feet and started worshipping him. (The book of Matthew tells us that.) He said, over and over again "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."

Notice the details of how this man came to Christ:

Notice that he came with an awareness of his sin. He didn't say "If thou will, thou can make me healed or thou can make me whole." He said "thou can make me clean."

He was acknowledging his sinfulness. His dirtiness in the eyes of God.

He didn't come to Jesus as a made up leper, disguised as a healthy man. He didn't come to Jesus saying "my leprosy isn't that bad - why are you making such a big deal about it."

He came as a leper acknowledging his sin.

And when we come to Christ, we must come to Him as poor in Spirit. We must come to Him as sinners.

The biggest thing that keeps most people from coming to Christ is either:

1. They don't believe they are sinners in need of salvation.
2. They believe they are sinners that are so far gone that they cannot be saved.

But this man, this leper, acknowledged his sin and had faith in Christ's ability to save him.

So the second thing to notice about this man is his faith. This whole thing was an act of faith. He said "if thou wilt, thou can make me clean." This man never doubted Jesus' ability to heal him, he only doubted Jesus' willingness.

Listen, when we come to Jesus acknowledging our sin and we come to Jesus in faith believing that He can heal us - He will save us.

Jesus said in John 6:37

[!bible] John 6:37 - KJV 37. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

I want to tell you today, that no matter how bad your leprosy is, no matter how bad your sin is, if you come to Jesus acknowledging your sin, if you come to Jesus in faith - He will not cast you out. He will heal you.

And that brings me to the third part of this little story. We've talked about the leprosy, we've talked about the coming.

Let's look at...

3. The healing

Look at verse 13 again:

[!bible] Luke 5:13 - KJV 13. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.

Remember, you did not touch lepers. If a leper even stuck his head in your house - you were considered unclean and had to go through ritual cleansing. Touching them was a big, big no no.

But Jesus reached out willingly and touched this man. And the word for "touched" there is interesting. It is not an incidental touch. It is a word that means "to fasten one's self to, to adhere, to cling."

!CleanShot 2024-10-27 at 08.12.54.png

I think Jesus grabbed this man. Jesus hugged this man. This man who had probably not felt a human touch in years. This man who had been cut off from his family and all that he loved. This man felt the touch of Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and had compassion. (Mark tells us Jesus was "moved with compassion.") When the world had only disgust. Jesus had compassion on him.

And listen to the words of Jesus "I will: be thou clean." And immediately the man was healed.

I imagine in an instant the man's fingers grew back, his face which had been misshapen was whole again.

Jesus healed him and healed him completely.

What a beautiful picture of what Jesus does for us. When we come to Jesus acknowledging our sin, when we come to Jesus in faith - He heals us. He heals us of our spiritual leprosy.

Sinner, maybe you think you are too far gone - can I tell you Jesus will look at you with compassion and He will heal you of the horrible disease that is inflicting you. He will touch you. He will love you.

Look, there is a beautiful picture of what Christ did for us here:

Do you know, that by touching this man. Jesus became ceremonially unclean. By touching this man, Jesus took this man's uncleanness on Him.

And by touching this man, Jesus passed His cleanness onto him. It was an exchange of sorts.

When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, He became sin for us.

[!bible] 1 Peter 2:24 - KJV 24. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Jesus exchanged His righteousness for our sins. He bore our sins on Him when He went to Calvary and He gave us His righteousness.

Like this leper, we are now clean. Like this leper, we can now have fellowship with God because we have been given the cleanness of Christ.

We are no longer the living dead - we are quickened - we are given the life of Christ. He took our disease and gave us His life.

We are no longer robed in the filthy rags of sin, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Glory to God. That's enough to make a presbyterian run laps.

Have you been healed of your spiritual leprosy?

So we've talked about the leprosy, the coming, the healing. Let's wrap this up by talking about...

4. The aftermath

Look again at verses 14-15 and in our text:

[!bible] Luke 5:14-15 - KJV 14. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. 15. But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities.

Jesus told this man not to tell anyone. There was this elaborate cleansing ritual that took about a week that is laid out in Leviticus 14. Jesus said "go and do that."

It would have involved him shaving himself, offering two birds, being reunited with his family for a week and then shaving again and finally offering in the Temple - something he had not been able to do for years because of His leprosy. This ritual signified a restored relationship with society and a restored relationship and fellowship with God.

You know, Leviticus lays out these instructions for priests on how to handle people who had been healed of their leprosy. But do you know what? I doubt they got to do it often. I bet they almost never did it. Because people weren't healed of this disease.

But this man was - and Jesus wanted that to be a testimony to show these priests that the Messiah had come.

Of course, the man couldn't keep it to himself. Mark tells us "he began to publish it much" (Mark 1:45) so that Jesus became even more popular.

Now, there is an irony here:

Jesus told this man NOT to tell people what He had done for him - and yet this man became an enthusiastic witness for Christ.

Jesus has told us TO tell people what He has done for us. He has commanded us to. And yet, we are silent about it.

Like the leper we were in sin, covered in filthy rags, going about like the living dead, cut off from God. Like the leper we have been healed, Christ took our uncleanness and gave us His righteousness. Let's faithfully witness for Him.

author: Ryan Hayden

Have you trusted Christ? Have you come to Him like this leper did?

I want to encourage you to come to Him today.

Some of the very last words in the last chapter of the Bible tell us what God wants.

[!bible] Revelation 22:17 - KJV 17. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Have you come to Christ? Why not come today? Come and be healed. Come and be cleansed.

Let's stand for prayer.