It is perhaps one of my favorite lines from a hymn: "He comes to make His blessing known, far as the curse is found." It's almost like the writer had in mind this account that we're going to look at this evening. You see Jesus on the fringe of Galilean culture, facing one example of the horrible effects of the fallen world on a human being. Sociologists say that a culture is defined by what's at the center and defined by what's at the fringe. Galilean culture was defined by what is at the center; at the center was the synagogue, and you see in Mark 1, Jesus in the synagogue.
Authority and Power in Galilee
And He's there declaring His authority by His preaching and declaring His power as He casts out that unclean spirit. And at the end of Mark 1, you see Jesus on the fringe of Galilean culture now encountering the leper there. And those two brackets really do picture for us the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. By His grace, He will transform the sinner; by His grace, He will transform the fringe; that is His mercy; that is His power. Let me read again for you from Mark 1, beginning with verse 40: And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, He stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, "I will; be clean." And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them." But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.
(ESV) It's hard for us, in the wonder of modern medical technology, to grasp the life of a leper. This was a horrible disease that had no known cure, that would leave a person physically disfigured. Perhaps the most horrible aspect of leprosy is one of the first things leprosy did was it would shut down the pain mechanism of a body; that warning system that would tell you that something was wrong. And so the body would eat away and skin would fall off; limbs would fall off without a warning of pain; what a horrible thing.
And lepers were not just suffering that physical condition; they were societal and social outcasts. If you read Leviticus 13 and 14, there are very strict regulations about the way a leper should be responded to. They lived outside of the city; and when they were in the city, they were told to constantly say, "Unclean, unclean, unclean!" These were the ultimate rejects, not only suffering terrible physical things, but utter outcasts from human culture. We don't know much about this leper, this particular man; we don't know much about him autobiographically or biographically because the focus of this passage is really on the Lord Jesus.
But we know something from the passage; you notice he comes to Christ; he kneels before Him, and he says, "If you will, you can make me clean." Interesting words. Clearly this leper had heard of the power of this Healer. He had heard of the miracles that He had done, and so he didn't come to Christ questioning Christ's power; he came wondering of His willingness; and he said, "If you're willing, you have the power to make me clean." It's an amazing moment. Here is the Creator, the One who made this world perfect, now looking with His eyes at the utter disaster and horror that sin has brought into the world.
What a remarkable moment as the Messiah faces this disfigured hopeless man. What a picture that is for us of His grace. Notice what it says next in the passage; it says that Jesus was moved with pity. I don't actually like the translation here that's in this passage; pity is probably not a very good translation. This word is greater than compassion; it's actually connected to words for anger; probably the best way to say what Jesus was experiencing, at this moment, as He looked at this leper, was 'angry sympathy.' This is Jesus looking at this man; and in a righteous way, He's infuriated at what the fall has done.
The Anger That Moves Christ
He's infuriated at what sin has done to His creation, and that is evidence of that in front of this horrible hopeless broken man with this terminal disease. And it is that anger of Christ that moves Him to respond. Let me just say something about that. We should not be embarrassed that the Bible presents God as being angry. We should not consider His anger as sort of, if I could say it this way, the embarrassing uncle of His characteristics that we sort of want to hide. You would not want to live in a world that was ruled by somebody who was incapable of anger.
Because if God was incapable of anger, there would be no justice; there would be no mercy. Anger, with what has happened to the world, drives Christ to respond. You could argue it's the anger of God and the grace of God that lead Jesus to the cross; and on the cross, on the shoulders of Christ, God's anger and God's grace kiss. There's a way in which all of Scripture is an anger story as God, in righteous holy anger, will not allow sin to triumph, but will move through Christ to make all things new.
Such is God's anger. In that way, His anger is the hope of the universe. And so Christ is experiencing that righteous indignation; it's the anger of compassion; it's the anger of sympathy that moves Him to respond to this. Listen to this: your Lord cares about all of the effects of the fall. He's unable, in His holiness, to be passive. He's unable to be neutral. He's unable to sit by and let sin prosper and let sin triumph. He's a rescuer. He's a restorer. He's a Savior. Praise Him! And you see that pictured by Christ as He faces this physical picture of the horror of what sin has done.
What Christ does next is almost, again, impossible to picture for us. He doesn't just speak to this man and speak to him in a way that cleanses him; we know that Christ has the power to cleanse just by a word. No, Jesus does what is shocking; He reaches out, something that no Galilean person would ever think of doing, and literally touches this leprous man. And in a shocking demonstration of His power, Christ isn't made unclean by touching the leper; the leper is made clean by Christ's touch. Now you can't look at this account without seeing a gorgeous picture of God's saving work in Christ.
We are spiritual lepers. The disease of sin disfigures us all; it disfigures our hearts, and our thoughts, and our desires. It distorts our actions. It disfigures our words. It leaves us lame and broken. And there is no cure for the disease of sin that we can find in and of ourselves. It leads to damnation and death; and but for the cleansing blood of Christ, there is no hope for us. But for the touch of His hand of grace, there is no cleansing for us. There is nothing I can do to clean myself up.
I cast myself on His mercy. I cast myself on His power. I cast myself on His grace. I rest in His cleansing blood. There is the Gospel; there is our hope. What a radical picture of the intervention of grace--Your Redeemer will not stand from a distance. He literally, by His grace, touches the dark disease of sin; and by His grace, He makes what is broken and diseased clean and new again. Praise Him! Jesus then gives this man two commands; look there at Christ's words in verse 44, "See that you say nothing to anyone," is the first command.
Show Yourself to the Priest
The second, "...go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them." Now, the first command we've already seen Christ make, this the first time He's made it to someone whom He's healed in this way. He says, "Don't tell anyone." Christ is not so much trying to keep His power a secret; what He's trying to do is stay true to His mission. The centrality of His mission, the thing that He came for is to preach the Gospel of the Good News of the Kingdom, that message 'repent and believe.' And He does not want that message to be interrupted.
He will not just be the healer; He will not function as peoples' shaman because what He understands is that His mission is salvation. And so He enjoins this man, "Don't tell anyone." Already, Christ has been, if you would, harangued by the crowds, and He doesn't want this mission of the Gospel to be interrupted. And then He says to the man, "I want you to obey Levitical law, and I want you to go and show yourself to the priest. I want you to make the offering that Moses required." And there Christ is submitting to those laws, demonstrating He didn't come to destroy the Law, but He Himself to fulfill it.
And then He says something interesting, not just that, but do this for a proof to them. Jesus is confronting the priests with His power. He wants them to see this man who's been cleansed; this is Christ confronting the religious rulers of His day with His power and His authority. What happens next is difficult to understand. After this man has been so mercifully cleansed by Christ, what does he do? He's immediately disobedient to Christ's call. It's a shocking moment of unthankfulness, selfishness, and disobedience.
It's hard to take in; that immediately upon the command of this One who has given life back to you, that you would go out and do exactly the thing that He asked you not to do. He immediately goes out; he begins to spread the news. What a picture of our selfish, disobedient, and rebellious hearts. You would need little more than this account to argue for the powerful need that every one of us has for a Savior. You are not always excited about the call of Christ. You do not always find joy in doing His will.
You don't always care about His glory. There are moments when you do wrong and you know it's wrong; the Bible calls that transgression, where you willingly step over God's boundaries. Maybe you're a husband and you know that you are to nourish and cherish your wife, but you would rather, at this moment, argue her into a corner and win an argument; you would rather be nasty to her than to do what God has called. Maybe you're a parent, and you know that you've been put in this unique position where you're God's representative in the life of this child.
And you know that there's something going on down the hallway that God calls you to, but you would rather rest; you would rather read your book; you would rather watch that program on television. Maybe you're alone on your computer, and you're on the Internet looking for something, and you begin to go places that you know you shouldn't go; you know it's wrong. You're not doing that because you're ignorant; you're willingly stepping over God's boundaries. Maybe it's a word of gossip, and you know what you're doing, and you know you're sharing something with someone that you should not share, and you know you're getting that titillating joy out of that.
The Rebel Nature in All of Us
You see, this moment in this man pictures all of our hearts; and as long as sin still lives in us, there's that rebel nature in all of us. And in the recognition of that, we recognize again there is no hope for us but the mercy and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you run to that mercy? Do you recognize your need of that mercy? Do you celebrate that mercy? Well, sin has consequences. And the consequences of this man's disobedience were severe. Look what it says at the end of verse 45, that because this man had disobeyed Christ and had spoken widely and freely about what had happened to him, Jesus was not able to enter the town and do what He was there to do, to preach the Gospel.
Jesus was driven into a desolate place, and people were coming from every corner to Him. The Gospel agenda, the Gospel message is interrupted because of this man's disobedience. Know this: in every moment of your life, you are either part of what God is doing, or you're in the way of it. This week, in the place where God has put you, were you part of what God is doing, part of His work in that place where you are, with those people that you were around, or were you in the way of it? This man is smack dab in the way.
He would rather tell the story than to honor the call of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in honoring the call of the Lord Jesus Christ, promote the work of the Kingdom of Christ. It is true that this little account is a picture of us all. We're disfigured by sin, unable to heal ourselves, finding our only hope in the mercy of Jesus. We're rebels who would rather have our own way who find greater joy in our little kingdom purposes than we do in the grand moves of the Kingdom of God, and that our hope is His cleansing blood.
I want to read this passage again that I began the service with. It's a hymn of celebration that's there in Revelation 5: Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. (ESV) There will be a day when people from the center and people from the fringe who have been redeemed and cleansed by the blood of Christ will together celebrate for eternity that grace.
The powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the weak, the accepted and the despised, names that are known and names that are unknown, all together singing one hymn: "You are worthy for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God." Together they will recognize the one hope that has opened the door to eternity - the cleansing blood of the Lamb of God, and we together will sing that hymn forever. Let's Pray: Lord, thank you for the beautiful picture this historical count is of the redemptive love of the Lord Jesus Christ; Christ who invades the darkest locations of a fallen world; Christ who was willing to touch what we would not want to touch; Christ who, in holy indignation, will not rest until sin is forever defeated.
Thank you for Your presence, and Your grace, and Your power, and Your blood. You, and You alone, are our hope! In Jesus's name, Amen.
