The Contagious Holiness of Christ: An Analysis of ‘How Can I Be Clean?’

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:00] Psalm 124, verse 8, our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
[00:00:09] This is an unusual time here in the southeast in Charlotte with this winter storm barreling on upon us, so we are recording this on Saturday afternoon and are praying for the Lord's safety and warmth and provision and protection for millions of people in the path of this storm.
[00:00:33] So, welcome to those here who are live and the many more who will likely be watching this on Sunday. Our text for this morning, afternoon, whenever you may be watching, sermon, is Mark.
[00:00:49] So, you have a Bible. Would you turn to Mark chapter 1? I just started a series on Romans, and I didn't want to go to the next Romans chapter, so we'll be a little bit off on the
[00:01:03] schedule. But I thought, what to preach on? Well, I just did Mark 1, 35 through 39 a few weeks ago as a beginning of the year reminder about prayer and the importance of the Word of God in prayer.
[00:01:19] So without knowing what to pick from the entire Bible, I thought, well, let's just go to the next paragraph, which is a wonderful paragraph and also one of my favorites. I think if people kept track over the years how many times I say this is one of my favorites, it'd be a long list,
[00:01:34] but this really is a great, great text. Follow along as I read from Mark chapter 1, beginning at verse 40. And a leper came to him, that is Jesus, imploring him and kneeling said to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand
[00:02:01] 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,
[00:02:18] 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
[00:02:30] about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out and desolate places when people were coming to him from every quarter. Let's pray. Father in
[00:02:46] heaven, we ask for your help now, not only in coming to the hearing and the preaching of your word, but we do pray for our community here in Matthews, the Charlotte area, and the millions
[00:02:59] of people here in the southeast and up the east coast facing this winter storm. We pray for your protection. We can often take for granted how relatively easy our lives are most of the time,
[00:03:14] how smoothly things go, getting where we want, what we need, and relative comfort.
[00:03:20] We pray that you would provide for us, especially those who may be older or ill or in difficult circumstances. We pray that you would spread your wings and you would give us all that we stand in
[00:03:35] need of. And help us now that we may, in whatever situation we find ourselves, we may now attend to the hearing of Your Word, that You would have just what we need to hear by Your Spirit. In Jesus' name,
[00:03:49] amen. I'm sure that many of you have read Shakespeare's Macbeth. Maybe not of your own choosing, but at some point in high school, you had to read Macbeth. Education is often wasted on the young and you go back and then you think, wow, that was, oh, there's a reason that they made
[00:04:09] us read that. That is really, really good. To remind you of the story, the play starts out at a battle where King Duncan of Scotland hears that his generals have defeated two different invading armies and one of those generals is Macbeth. And on his way home from the battle, Macbeth meets
[00:04:30] some witches, who tell him that he will be made a thane, a thane is a rank of Scottish nobility, and that one day he will be the king of Scotland. Macbeth isn't sure he believes the prophecy,
[00:04:45] not even sure if he wants it to come true, until some of the king's men come and they meet him on the road after this prophecy from the witches, and they do make him a thane. They make him part
[00:04:58] of the Scottish nobility. And when this happens, Macbeth starts to wonder about the other half of the prophecy. Will he really become king? King Duncan visits Macbeth at his castle, and while the king is there, Lady Macbeth convinces her husband, now is the time to become
[00:05:18] king. And even though Macbeth has reservations, his wife persuades him to kill the king in his sleep. He murders the king, and Macbeth, as you remember the story, this is really the famous moral heartbeat of the story, immediately feels profound guilt. He asks, will all great Neptune's
[00:05:42] ocean clean from my hand? But his wife reassures him, quote, a little water clears us of this deed.
[00:05:52] how easy it is then. But of course, if you remember the story, it is not at all easy to be cleansed from this guilt. Macbeth is plagued by guilt and he becomes a violent, wicked king
[00:06:08] because of this guilt, while Lady Macbeth slowly descends into madness. It is a story about guilt and what guilt not dealt with does to the human soul. She starts sleepwalking through the castle being haunted by the dead king. She imagines constantly she has blood on her hands, which
[00:06:29] figuratively, of course, she does. And in one of the most famous parts in the play, Lady Macbeth says to herself, as she tries and tries in vain to scrub away her guilt, she says, out, damned spot. Now, parentheses, it's not a swear word right there because it really
[00:06:50] means what she says. This accursed, damnable, hellish spot. I say, one, two, why then tis time to do it? Hell is murky. Fee, my Lord, fee, a soldier and a feared. What need we fear? Who
[00:07:06] knows it is when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him. She cannot get out the spot on her hands. Macbeth is a story
[00:07:22] about guilt and remorse. It's part of what makes Shakespeare worth reading 500 years later is he hits at human nature. It's a story about two people who get stained with the guilt of sin and they don't know how to get clean. This passage in Mark is also a story about getting
[00:07:48] clean. We see from this interaction with Jesus three things. First, you need to know that you are not clean. Two, you need to believe you can be clean. And three, you need to come to the one
[00:08:05] who can make you clean. So, those are the three points. How can you be clean?
[00:08:10] If anyone has ever felt that Lady Macbeth sort of moment, you can't get the spot of sin off your hands. You can't get the sense of remorse out of your heart. You feel dirty. Maybe something
[00:08:28] long ago in your past that you've never really dealt with. Maybe something that's very weak.
[00:08:33] How do you get clean? This text tells us. Number one, you need to know you are not clean.
[00:08:41] So here, look at this story with Jesus and the leper. The first word that should jump out at us is there in verse 40, and a leper. Now, you can see the footnote there in the ESV,
[00:08:54] leprosy was a term for several skin diseases, references to Leviticus. The Greek translation, The word here is lepra, and so it's translated as leprosy, but almost everyone agrees now this is not the disease, strictly speaking, Hansen's disease, but could be any number of skin
[00:09:15] ailments. But it was a problem, and it was a big problem. Everyone knew you had leprosy.
[00:09:23] Leviticus 13 gives the instructions, the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes, let the hair of his head hang loose, he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean,
[00:09:42] he shall live alone, his dwelling shall be outside the camp. So, everyone knew you had leprosy.
[00:09:48] Now, lest we think that the Old Testament is just cruel and unusual punishment, to think of another famous story from literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, that this is just a big A around your chest. This was not about public ridicule and shame, though it likely
[00:10:03] felt like that, but this was about health and safety, especially in the ancient world. What do you do with diseases you don't understand? You quarantine, and you live outside the camp. You let everyone know as you come up to them that they should keep their distance. We have something
[00:10:20] similar today. People all the time, especially in the winter, you maybe go to shake their hands.
[00:10:25] I better not shake your hand, I'm getting over something, and they'll do a fist bump or they'll do an elbow or something. We have the same sort of precautions. Everyone knew if you had leprosy.
[00:10:40] And even if the intention of the Old Testament was not to give a stigma, certainly there was a stigma attached to it. Leprosy, in whatever form it took, whatever kind of exact skin disease this was,
[00:10:52] was something despised, something feared. I was trying to think maybe the closest analogy, if you were alive in the 1980s into the early 1990s, sort of how AIDS loomed large in the public imagination. People, you know, at first, you know, there were different theories about
[00:11:11] all the ways it might be transmitted. You get it from a drinking fountain. Maybe you can't even come into contact with people. There was certainly a stigma attached. It wasn't just an illness. It was a death sentence. So maybe something similar with leprosy. Like you would have heard in the
[00:11:30] late 80s, someone has AIDS. So he knows he is unclean. There's no way he cannot know that he's unclean. Now we need to say something about sin and uncleanness because when we come to the New Testament, these categories overlap, but they're not identical. Not everyone who had
[00:11:53] an uncleanness in the Old Testament was sinful. You were ritually unclean for all sorts of things, normal sorts of bodily emissions or after having childbirth. These things were not sins. They were not moral failures. So, there's a category of ritual or moral impurity and then a category of
[00:12:16] sin. So, this man isn't necessarily knowing his own sinful heart. But when we come to the New Testament, we see that these categories, they merge together, or at least the imagery of being clean is transmuted over to a moral category. Ritual purity with Jesus is going to fall by
[00:12:40] the wayside in the category of cleanness becomes a metaphor for spiritual purity. So, later in the New Testament, Hebrews 10, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
[00:12:56] So there, the Old Testament imagery of purity and cleanliness is now explained with a moral valence. So even though, to be clear, this leprosy is not sinful per se, we are right in understanding this to be a story about this whole business of how you get clean. And for this man, it was leprosy,
[00:13:20] and for the human condition, it's even worse than that. It's sin. It's the spiritual uncleanness, which brings us back to the point. You and I will never get clean if we don't admit that we
[00:13:37] are unclean. And we have developed lots of ways of hiding this. Pastors know, parishioners know, men, women. It is no respecter of race or ethnicity or age.
[00:13:53] We know how to find ways to make ourselves feel less unclean.
[00:13:59] Comparison, that's a really good way. Sure, I do some bad things.
[00:14:03] I'm not perfect, but have you seen them?
[00:14:05] There are always worse people.
[00:14:08] No, we don't usually think, well, there are always better people too.
[00:14:12] There are certain husbands I know who do all the grocery shopping and all the cooking.
[00:14:18] That's sort of a mythical category, but there are a few of those out there, and that's just a rule in our household.
[00:14:23] There's no comparison to those husbands when we talk about it.
[00:14:27] So we don't usually think about those who might do something better.
[00:14:30] We find those who are worse, and then we don't have to feel so bad.
[00:14:34] We're all versed in positive self-talk.
[00:14:38] I'm beautiful, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I'm a good person.
[00:14:43] Or we trust in the opinion that others have of us, especially our friends, people who are culturally conditioned to tell us how great we are.
[00:14:52] Or we find ways to excuse our sin.
[00:14:54] It's just part of my history or it's part of my biology.
[00:14:58] And if that doesn't work, we can always blame others.
[00:15:00] It's the fault of my parents or my upbringing or my church or my wife or my husband or my kids.
[00:15:08] We find ways to try to hide the fact that we are unclean. This man, the first step, the thing that he knows, even though he doesn't quite know exactly who Jesus is, he knows that he's not clean he can see his skin you know how you're if you're eating french fries
[00:15:35] and you have ketchup and you get some ketchup there on your chin and the person you're eating with has that uncomfortable how long do I let that ketchup just stay there what do I do do I
[00:15:48] because your friend is talking to you cannot see it just going on and on you can't hear anything he or she is saying. All you think is you have so much ketchup on your face. It was just like
[00:16:02] you ate ketchup. That's all, and it gets bigger and bigger, and all you can see, you can see it, your friend can't see it. Well, that's us. That's the human condition with sin, a big spot of
[00:16:16] ketchup. Other people see. You ask people around you, are you a sinner? You probably don't want to ask them, but they know. They know you're a sinner. My family knows I'm a sinner. Are you
[00:16:27] willing to admit that you're not clean? If you take a look, that's why the Word of God is called a mirror. Hold up to see, what do I really look like? Now, as you get older, I'm middle-aged now,
[00:16:44] my wife and I will sometimes, now my wife is very, very cute, of course, but we'll sometimes go by the mirror because you don't usually see yourself. Then you stop and you say, is that what I look
[00:16:54] like? Or you see a picture and you're going through the pictures and you always say, well, I got to find a good picture. And then somebody has to tell you, but all those other pictures,
[00:17:07] that's what you look like. You don't sometimes know what your life is really like. Can you admit that you're unclean. That's the first step to getting clean. Here's the second. You need to know not only that you are unclean, but that you can be clean. This leper demonstrates a remarkable
[00:17:32] faith. This is why I said I love this passage. Isn't this one of the great lines in the Bible?
[00:17:41] in verse 40, he kneels, implores him, and kneeling. This man is in a state of desperation.
[00:17:50] He doesn't saunter up. He doesn't have a sense of pride. He comes with abject humility, desperation, on his knees, begging Jesus. And you see what he says, if you will, you can make me clean. It's the willing part he's unsure of.
[00:18:17] Sometimes we think God is willing, but we're not sure that He's able. Here, this man knows that Jesus is able. Maybe he was in the crowd this previous day when Jesus was healing in Capernaum, and people were bringing the sick and the demon possessed, and he saw with his own
[00:18:34] eyes, or maybe the word had gotten to him, whatever. He demonstrates remarkable faith.
[00:18:39] He has no doubt. He's on his knees knowing, Jesus, you can cure me of this. I don't know if you will, but I know you can. It's the fight of faith to believe what the Bible says about God, about
[00:18:57] Jesus, about the Spirit, about His promise. Sometimes it's a fight of faith to believe you can be forgiven, to believe that your life is not reduced to simply being a recovering alcoholic, an ex-adulterer, a former whatever, as if that's going to be your identity for your
[00:19:18] whole life. Just a, maybe you can make some, but you're just a former whatever who messed things up. As if this man, maybe I can get, but I'm going to be just an ex-leper. That's all I am.
[00:19:33] You can be a new creation in Christ, but you must believe that Jesus is able.
[00:19:41] Healing leprosy was a big deal.
[00:19:45] This is not like when you see so-called faith healers on TV.
[00:19:49] You notice that they're not doing leprosy.
[00:19:50] They're not doing things that you can see and just gone.
[00:19:55] It's backaches, sort of hard to gauge with, it's invisible maladies.
[00:20:01] No, this is the big stuff.
[00:20:03] It's not joint pains. It's the worst sort of disease you could have in the ancient world.
[00:20:10] Second Kings 5, the king of Israel is supposed to heal Naaman. He reads the letter and he tears his clothes and he says, am I God to kill and to make alive that this man sends word to me to cure
[00:20:22] a man of his leprosy? That's how they thought of it in the ancient world. No, nobody cures leprosy. Later rabbis claimed that healing leprosy was as hard as raising the dead.
[00:20:33] Only two instances of lepers being healed in the Old Testament, Miriam, Moses' sister, and then Naaman, the Syrian general. And there's only two instances in the New Testament, this one and then the healing of the ten lepers. So, this is not an everyday occurrence. This is not a
[00:20:53] headache and take some ibuprofen. This is leprosy, and yet he has faith enough to say to Jesus, you can do this thing. This is not hard for you. We don't know what he understood about Jesus'
[00:21:08] messianic identity. Likely he didn't have a well-developed faith, but he believed in Jesus' power. And underneath it, he may have had a faith in Jesus' purity. Not only his power, but his request of Jesus may be a tacit acknowledgement that Jesus not only has
[00:21:32] power, but he has a unique purity. Here's what I mean. Some commentators will make a really big deal, and it's just a big problem for the exegetes, that Jesus touched this man. Because people say, now wait a minute, the Old Testament says that leprosy is unclean. So, did Jesus
[00:21:55] disobey the Torah? He didn't keep the law because he touched a man with leprosy. The leprosy left him after he touched him in verse 41. Did Jesus break the law? But think carefully. The law
[00:22:13] merely stated that contact with a leper would make you unclean. This was not a thou shalt not Ten Commandments, and Jesus broke it. The law said, if you touch a leper, you will become unclean. But what if it doesn't work that way with Jesus? See, the other miracle going on here,
[00:22:40] besides the obvious miracle of the leprosy disappearing, is the identification of this miracle worker who is more than just a miracle worker. When Jesus touched the leper, here's the point, Jesus was not in danger of becoming ritually unclean like this man. The leprosy
[00:23:08] was in danger of being swallowed up in Jesus. Or here's how we can put it in one pregnant sentence.
[00:23:17] we find in this text, Jesus' holiness was more contagious than this man's uncleanness.
[00:23:27] Jesus touched him, and his holiness was now that purity was upon the leper, whereas Jesus was not made unclean by this man's uncleanness. Now, we'll see something in just a moment, the effect that it has on Jesus, because there is a kind of trading places. But what I want you to
[00:23:51] see, that Jesus not only has a unique power, He has a unique purity. And it takes faith to believe that God has more forgiveness to give you than you even have sins to get rid of. Do you believe
[00:24:10] that. God has more forgiveness to give you, to offer, than you have sins that need to be forgiven.
[00:24:18] You never come to God in the name of Jesus for sins to be forgiven. And he says, if you only would have come yesterday. There's no winter storm that can get rid of the forgiveness that Jesus
[00:24:29] has. Sorry, we're out of milk, out of eggs, out of water. He always has more forgiveness to offer than you have sins to be forgiven. Or to put it like this, we are not stains on the character of
[00:24:44] God. He, rather, is the whiteout for all the mistakes in our lives. Jesus does not receive the man's leprosy. The leper receives Jesus' purity. Here's the third point. So, if you're going to be clean. You need to know you're not clean. You need to believe you can be clean and
[00:25:09] you need to come to the one who can make you clean. This is where the world gets tripped up because the world might say in some sense, yeah, you need to admit your mistakes and that's one of
[00:25:21] the 12 steps. You need to admit it, good, own up to it, maybe even acknowledge that there's some kind of higher power or acknowledge that there's a way and you can put your past behind us. There's
[00:25:31] all sorts of books in the self-help section about that. But here's what we see in the gospel.
[00:25:38] You need to come to the one, to the only one who can make you clean. This man was not supposed to come to Jesus. Lepers weren't supposed to come to anyone. They were unclean. They were to keep away.
[00:25:52] But this man comes, gets on his knees. He begs. He implores him. He may be ashamed as a leper, but he has no shame in pleading for his life. It's a lesson there, too. Some of us may want
[00:26:06] help. We may want forgiveness. We may want victory over our sin, but we want it on our terms. We don't want to lose control. We want to keep our decorum. We want to say, God, I want your help. We want to
[00:26:20] come and still be self-respecting, not groveling sort of sinners. But there's no way around it.
[00:26:30] You can't get help from Jesus, the help you really need, and still save face.
[00:26:37] This man, you can't come with all the dignity of your titles and your position and your wealth and your status. You have to come to Jesus without any pretense. This man was not too proud to beg. What can this man do for me? That's a good question. Wasn't that an old
[00:27:00] tagline for, was it UPS? What can Brown do for you? What can Jesus do for you? Sometimes people, they want a little Jesus. They just don't want too much. They don't want to be one of the weird
[00:27:13] religious people always talking about their relationship with Jesus. Many people in many parts of this country, a little bit of Jesus, a little Christianity, a little religion is a good thing, but just don't be crazy about it. Just enough to sort of have some social lubricant
[00:27:28] in relationships, maybe keep your kids in line, a little more discipline. You're happy for second chances. But that's not this man. He comes to Jesus, falls on his face. Have you ever done that?
[00:27:43] Have you ever, maybe in the front of others, but certainly in the privacy of your own closet, said, oh, Jesus, you can make me clean and I need all the cleanness you can give. Are you willing?
[00:27:59] to lose face? Are you willing for that kind of humility? I mentioned there's only, there's two lepers in the Old Testament who are healed, Miriam, and then the more famous story, you may remember, is Naaman, the Syrian general. And do you remember, he wants to get healed of this
[00:28:15] leprosy. And he hears from a servant girl that there's a wonder-working man in Israel.
[00:28:23] So, he goes and he meets Elisha, and Elisha tells him, go wash in the Jordan River seven times and you'll be clean.
[00:28:36] Now, you might think that he's living with this terrible disease.
[00:28:40] Just go in the river seven times and you'll be clean.
[00:28:44] Simple as that, except Naaman thinks, well, that's a dumb idea.
[00:28:50] You know, he thinks, well, you know, you wave your hand or you call on the name of your God or something, but this Jordan business, this Jordan River business, this is ridiculous.
[00:28:59] And he says, we have far mightier rivers than this. It's like you live on the banks of the Mississippi, and then someone says, you see here the Sugar Creek Greenway? No offense, Charlotte, but that, you know, that little drainage ditch, and you're the, you know, the president from some
[00:29:17] other country, and you come and they take you there and thinking, this? So, this is a river trick. I have real rivers. This is a stream. This is a puddle that takes rainwater. Jordan River in
[00:29:37] many parts at many times of the year was not impressive at all. He said, I didn't come down all the way here for this. And so he marches off in a big huff. And his servant urges him
[00:29:49] to just try it. And famously, he does. And it says, his flesh was restored like a little child and he was clean. And you ever think there that line, like a little child? I think that's
[00:30:03] intentional because he needed to have faith like a little child. If he wanted to have skin like a little child, if he wanted to have a conscience like a little child, you have to have the kind
[00:30:12] of reckless abandon that children sometimes have. Go in that river. Woo, a river. You need to have that kind of faith. Tell me to do it. I'll do it. But he had to set aside the pride, the pretension,
[00:30:30] the awareness that he carried with himself that he was a big deal. And we need to set that aside too. Will you come to Jesus? Really come to Jesus. Some of us are too proud. We think I need a little
[00:30:43] Jesus, but I don't need to do this meager Jordan River thing. I don't need to get on my knees and implore him. This is beneath me. We'd like to come to God. Sure, we want to be healed. Who doesn't
[00:30:56] want healing? But we want to come like Naaman did. Naaman came with his horses, his chariots. We want to come with our pride and our honor. And God always says the same thing when we try to come
[00:31:09] like that. Are you willing to come to me on my terms? And that means forget the horses, forget the chariots, forget your titles. I want you to dip yourself in this muddy little Jordan River seven times. Are you really sick enough to finally be healed? Do you see your
[00:31:30] leprosy clear enough to finally be cleansed? Jesus is able. Here's the second part of the good news. He's also willing. Don't you love how verse 40 to 41 works? The man is on his knees.
[00:31:49] If you will, you can just hear the plaintive cry. You can see it in his eyes. I don't know if you will. You're busy and you never met me. I may be too far, but you can do it. And then Jesus
[00:32:11] Jesus moved with pity, stretched out his hand, touched him. You notice the very first thing he says, I will. He says, if you will, Jesus says, I will. And that's what Jesus always says to every
[00:32:32] sinner looking for forgiveness. Now, this is not a passage that promises us that every one of us gets a prayer answered and all of our earthly illnesses disappear. We know that's not the record of the Bible. That's not the record of life. This is about the spiritual uncleanness.
[00:32:53] There is a way to get the spot out. After Macbeth kills the king, he's filled with remorse and he desperately wants to undo what he just did. But Macbeth didn't know how to get clean. He had
[00:33:11] regret, but not repentance. Remorse, but not truly before God to receive the absolution he needed.
[00:33:22] One scholar, Shakespeare scholar, put it like this, despite his profound remorse, Macbeth does nothing to right the wrong. He becomes a worse and worse person. That happens.
[00:33:33] We see that all the time. People regret the things that they've done, but they don't turn their life around. They don't get real forgiveness. They don't get real healing.
[00:33:42] They become a worse version of themselves. By the end of the play, the scholar says Macbeth is a bloody tyrant, disappointed in all aspects of his life, his reign, his marriage, a family for a potential dynasty, and damned for eternity in his death because he didn't know how to get
[00:34:01] the spot out. You know how to get clean. This text tells us you will never get clean unless you know you're not clean. You believe you can be clean, and then you run to the only one who can
[00:34:17] make you clean. And how does that work? How does Jesus make us clean from our sin, from our guilt, and from our shame? How does that work? He takes it upon Himself. Now, I've already said
[00:34:34] in a manner, he doesn't become unclean. He doesn't become a sinner by our sins. But notice, Jesus is treated very carefully. He doesn't become unclean. He hasn't broken a law, but he now is treated as one who is unclean. Just like Jesus in taking our sins upon himself,
[00:35:00] he does not become a sinner, but he is counted as one. He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, 2 Corinthians 5.21. That's the doctrine
[00:35:12] of imputation, a reckoning, a counting. Well, that's what this text is about. Have you ever noticed before, Jesus and the leper trade places? Look at what transpires after the man is cleansed.
[00:35:31] Verse 43, Jesus sternly charged him, sent him away at once.
[00:35:35] See that you say nothing to anyone.
[00:35:38] Now, why?
[00:35:39] This is famous in Mark's gospel, in particular, this messianic secret, because it's not his time.
[00:35:43] Jesus doesn't want his friends misunderstanding.
[00:35:45] He doesn't want his enemies to kill him before it's time.
[00:35:48] So he says, don't tell anybody about this.
[00:35:51] Show yourself to the priest, because that's part of the law.
[00:35:53] Jesus is for keeping the law.
[00:35:56] Offer for your cleansing when Moses commanded.
[00:36:00] That's what he's supposed to do.
[00:36:01] But notice what he does instead. He went out and he began to talk freely, freely about it, spread the news. So he doesn't keep quiet. The man goes and he tells everybody about it.
[00:36:23] Look at that word freely. What is the man? This man who up to this point in his life, as long as he's had leprosy. He can't do much of anything freely. He has to live by himself.
[00:36:36] When he encounters people, he has to tell them, unclean, unclean. He is a bondage in servitude to his uncleanness, and now he goes freely. If he's telling everybody about this, it means he's able to have human interaction. He's able to have communication. So, this man has a freedom that he's
[00:36:58] not experienced before. And look what happens to Jesus. So that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places. Same word. Earlier in chapter 1, of his own accord, he wants to go out into the wilderness to pray, desolate places. Now he's forced into desolate
[00:37:19] places because people were coming to him from every corner. The leper and Jesus have traded places. The leper has a freedom he's not enjoyed before. Jesus has lost a freedom up to this moment that was his so that the leper is now in society where now Jesus has to live his life
[00:37:46] as something of an outcast. It's very deliberate. He goes about freely. Jesus no longer is free to go about and openly enter a town.
[00:37:59] And from this point, he will be, in the arc of the gospel story, increasingly rejected, despised, hated.
[00:38:07] He will be a kind of spiritual leper, and Jesus will march all the way to the cross.
[00:38:15] So even here, in this moment of miraculous triumph, he is taking one more step down the path to be stricken, smitten, and afflicted. And what did he do? It's more than just a wonderful story
[00:38:32] of a miracle. It's more than just a story of, look how caring Jesus was. Now, it is that. It's about his compassion. It's about his power. But it's about something more. It's about Jesus in
[00:38:44] this one episode at the beginning of his ministry gave up his life for the sake of a man who was wretched, pitiable, and poor. Come ye sinners, poor and wretched, weak and wounded, sick and sore.
[00:39:04] Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. Come ye thirsty, come and welcome.
[00:39:12] God's free bounty glorify. True belief and true repentance, every grace that brings you nigh.
[00:39:18] Come ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms,
[00:39:34] in the arms of my dear Savior. Oh, there are 10,000 charms. And the leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling, and said to Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean. And if you come
[00:39:55] to Jesus with that same prayer, with that same abject humility and awareness of your spiritual poverty, then this will be the same response from Jesus to you. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I will be clean. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you
[00:40:23] for your word. Would you do a mighty work by your spirit to bring cleansing to all who are stained by sin. Give us an honest assessment of our hearts and lead us to the only one who can give us true
[00:40:39] forgiveness, lasting peace, eternal joy, and never-ending cleanness. We pray in his name, Jesus. Amen.