Luke's Gospel

So Luke chapter 5, and we're gonna be starting from verse 12, and it's on page 1032. So from verse 12. While Jesus was in 1 of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy, When he saw Jesus, 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 priest 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 illnesses.

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. 1 day, Jesus was preaching and pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of galilee and from judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the lord was with Jesus to heal those who ill. Some men carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles in the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven. The pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins, but god alone? Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk?

But I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralyzed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home. Immediately, he stood up in front of them, took what he'd been lying on and went home praising god. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to god. They were filled with awe and said, we have seen remarkable things today.

Well, good evening. My name's Pete Woodock. I'm the pastor of the church, and we've been going through this, Fantastic. I think we've been really loving this this gospel of Luke, and it's just been really exciting. And, the scene I just want us to look at today is, just that first part of the reading, which is from verses 12 to 16, and it's the healing of this this man with with leprosy.

And, it's a little scene. But I actually think that it's got everything you need to know in this. It's it's almost got everything you need to know about god and Jesus and ourselves and life and almost the universe just in these these little verses. It's it's it's so rich and so immense. It's 5 short verses in this scene.

And, I think if you were there when this happened, it would be 1 of the most memorable days of your life and would change you. Think it would change your life. And this is the amazing thing that we're seeing about Jesus. Jesus changes lives, and here he does it very dramatically and very wonderfully. Now I know that many people don't want their lives changed.

They're very happy doing what they're what they're doing and they're as long as they're in control, they're they're pretty happy about it and that's 1 of the reasons why people don't wanna come anywhere near Jesus. But tonight, I just want you to step into this scene This these 5 verses, and I want you to step into this scene. We've already seen that this is a historical scene. Luke is writing history. He's done his investigations to to make sure that these stories aren't just made up.

So tonight, we're just gonna step in and see this remarkable scene and I wanna say it it gets a bit scary when we start to think what's going on. Leprosy, this man with leprosy, is a terrible, terrible diseases. Still in the world today, and it's still a terrible disease. And it made this man an outcast and an untouchable But what a difference a day makes when Jesus comes into a day in the life of this man? Let me read it again.

While Jesus was in 1 of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged. Lord, If you're willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I'm willing, he said.

Be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. First thing I want you to see is this this leper, this this man. He's an untouchable While Jesus was in 1 of the towns, it says in verse 12, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. Leprosy is a very, very horrible disease.

And, it starts in a very deceptive way. Most people that start with leprosy, obviously don't know that they've got it. There's a slow process. It begins to work through the body. The first thing you'll notice is the odd spot.

And then a sort of discolored patch on your skin and then the skin begins to thicken a little bit, and then nodules form particularly on the cheeks and up the nose and around the nose and on the forehead. And then in time, these nodules ulcerate and become pussy and foul and revolting. Eyebrows fall out. If you see anyone with their eyebrows falling out, you know, they might well have leprosy. Where's where's Chris Branchhaw these days?

Because he seems to have no eyebrows at the moment. But eyebrows fall out. Voices become hoarse and breathing becomes very wheezy, like you've got a very bad cold, hands, become sort of bleeding stumps and feets become but it starts off slowly and ends up like this. Because it's a slow progressive thing, it's been called the remorseless nibbling of an unhurried death. That's an awful description.

So leprosy is slow. It's dis it's deceptive, but then it becomes in the it's more advanced stage, this numbing effect. So advanced leprosy, it means that actually attacks the nerve centers. So you begin not to feel. You lose the sensation of pain.

And that becomes a major problem because you don't realize that your hand is being burned on the on in the fire or on the stove or people have had their fingers nod off at night when they've been asleep by rats and not known it because they can't feel anything. Luke, who wrote this book is a physician. He is a doctor, and he says this man, did you notice he's covered with leprosy? The word that we translate covered there means full complete. He's completely full of leprosy.

In other words, he's at the advanced stages of this horrific disease. So this is the clinical medical diagnosis from a physician. So his face would have been affected, his arms, his hands, his legs, his feet, massive ulcers, and sores from the crown of his head to the to the soles of his feet. He he would have looked repulsive. He would have smelled repulsive.

This is an awful picture of what this disease can do. A man came into town covered with leprous and he's someone who's definitely an untouchable. You don't wanna go near a bloke like this. So le lepers lived in isolation as they still do. Those have it.

They're abandoned, they're feared by people, they're outcasts. When people saw this man. He would know that people were were sort of moving away from him in horror. Children would cry out in fear, perhaps his own children would cry when they saw daddy. It was it's a horrible thing you He couldn't come to a building like this.

He couldn't sit in the warm and drink a cup of tea with us and share fellowship together. In fact, If he saw anybody, he was supposed to shout out so the law said in those days, unclean, unclean, so that people would know that he's an clean leper and would have to get away from him. Josephus, a first century historian writes about how lepus were were treated in the first century, and he says they were treated like dead men. Sometimes people would have a funeral for the man even though he wasn't hadn't actually died, but he's treated like a dead man. He's like a dead man walking.

He's like 1 of those zombies in the Walking Dead TV series. You know, you don't wanna see them. You don't want them in the building. You're gonna have to destroy them and get rid of them. So here is is a is a really sick man separated from anything humanely good, anything good.

And the worst fact is that no 1 could do anything about it. Not not not even him. No 1 could help him. The Bible, the law of Moses couldn't help him. All that could do, was to tell him that he got leprosy or to tell him that he didn't.

Or to tell him where he could go and where he couldn't go and what he's excluded from and what he had to shout when he came any near anywhere near people. So there really wasn't any hope. The only the only slight hope that any leper had was that it might burn itself in some way. And then if it did, he would have to present himself, to the priest to make sure that the saws had gone, and it had dried up in some way. And even then, though, if he got rid of the leprosy by burning itself out and he was declared clean still, the marks and the scars and the lack of fingers that the leprosy had had caused would still, you know, not be there and be there, you know, the skars would be there and the fingers wouldn't.

So this is a really dreadful thing. So all he could do every day was just to examine himself to see he has to look and look at his dying body just see whether it burnt itself out, but that was very unlikely. So he's an outcast. He's an untouchable. Do you get the picture?

Get the picture of this man? The second thing I want you to see then is his desperate plea. Because of what he is, he's desperate Look at verse 12. While Jesus was in 1 of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy, When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. Now notice Jesus is in town, but this leper shouldn't have been there.

He's well out of place here. And you can imagine the town screaming. Get out. What are you doing here? You're not welcome here.

You're not meant to be here. Get out of town. Now, this therefore cannot be a chance encounter. It wasn't that Jesus was walking through the town, and the leper happened to be walking the other way. The lepers come for a reason to see Jesus.

He's a desperate seeker and he's putting himself in more danger because the town could kick his head in, stone him to death. He could leave the town worse off than when he started. He doesn't know what's gonna happen. Remember, he could have more limbs smashed to pieces. So he's he's a desperate man, and it says, when he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him.

Now I've absolutely no doubt that there's humility here. I've no doubt that the man is really humbled before the lord Jesus Christ, and he falls in reverence to who Jesus is. I've no doubt that that's being said here, but I think Luke wants to see see something more here. This event with the leper follows the last story, the last event that we were looking at last week, where Peter, 1 of the disciples of Jesus, experienced something with Jesus he hadn't experienced before. He'd seen the miracle of the fish, If you remember that story, doesn't matter if you don't, but he'd seen what Jesus could do.

He understood perhaps for the first time very clearly who Jesus really is. And when he understood who Jesus was, and he looked at himself He says in verse 8, it says in verse 8, when Simon Peter saw this, that's the miracle, he fell at Jesus knees and said, go away from me. I'm a sinful man. He fell at Jesus' knees and said, go away from me. I'm a sinful man.

Now it seems that Luke is carrying on. He's put these stories together. He's making a point and it seems that when this leprous man sees Jesus, he does the same thing. He topples over. He falls over perhaps without the fingers and the arms and the hands and the subtlety that even Peter had, a plant his face in the ground.

When Peter understood who Jesus was, Peter saw himself as a sinful man and fell at his knees, but this man knows who he is, a leper, and he goes down further than the knees. He goes down further than Peter. He plants his face in the ground. And he begs him. This is a desperate man.

A desperate man. He knew that Jesus had the power to make him clean, but was he willing? And so he asked he begs. He pleads. He doesn't presume.

He doesn't presume on mercy. He doesn't think it's his right. Lord, if you were willing, you can make me clean. Is it some sort of religious creed that he sort of trundled out? This is this is this is a leper.

This is a a man desperate. This is a man out of his comfort zone who hasn't who comfort is in town that could get more beaten up, pleading, not knowing what is gonna happen, but knowing that Jesus has power and he plants his face in the ground. He's a leper. He's an outcast. He's an untouchable And he's in the presence of 1 that Peter who was a disciple and not a leper still said, go away from me.

I'm a sinful man, but he has no option. Make me clean. Please make me clean. See how wretched I am. Look at my leprosy.

I'm full of it. There's no hope for me. Moses can't help me. Religion can't help me. I can't help me.

I can't change my I'm gonna die if you don't save me. A desperate man, potentially in more danger, vulnerable, facing the ground, unable to get up quickly before lack of limbs and fingers and full of sores and brokenness Literally, the a mob could have kicked his head in. He's broken. He's desperate. And there's only 1 hope, and it's worth the vulnerability, and it's worth the danger.

Please heal me. A desperate plea. But third thing I want you to see is the touch, look at verse 13, Jesus reached out his hand and don't read too quickly. Jesus reached out his hand and and what. I think I've told you this before.

This is 1 of my favorite scenes. 1 of my favorite scenes in the entire bible. I love this scene. If I was a filmmaker, I would make this. I would make this.

Because I think it's just extraordinary. I would slow it down. I'd make it black and white. I'd make it grainy. I'd have 1 of those handheld cameras where you're seeing the crowd in you're looking around, and here's this man in a place that he shouldn't be.

Here's an unclean, unclean man. For snarling faces. The crowds moving back in revulsion. You'd slow it down the fingers and the hands coming out and pointing and gesturing. Get out of town.

Get out of town. Some hands, you would follow down to the soil where they would pick up some kind of rock or something to lob at him. Which was only open up another wound that he may not feel and then would fester even more. You see all this? And slow it down, take your time to see this event, and then you look at Jesus and then you see his hand and it comes out and it reaches out.

Is it gonna point? Is it gonna gesture get out of town? Is it gonna say get out of this place? I am a holy rabbi. I am a religious man.

Who do you think you are? We cannot come near you. We are unclean if we touch you. And you focus in on the hand, and it moves towards him and touches him. His face is in the ground.

It touches him. Jesus touches him. Didn't push him away. Didn't strike him, but the soft, supple, healthy hand that he hadn't felt perhaps for years, touched him. Now the word translated here tuck is so much bigger than touch.

I have no idea why the why the translators don't put the word in. It's embrace. It's to hold fast. See, touch could be just be a sort of arms length and a a sort of touch like this. Is that real flesh?

But this is not a touch. This is an embrace. This is Jesus down on his knees. Remember his man's got his face planted in the ground? This is Jesus coming.

This is Jesus, perhaps even receiving some of the stones and the snarls that are going on. This is Jesus now getting right down in the dirt with his arm around the man holding him fast. The greatest fear that others had was that he he would touch that they would touch this man or be touched by him, but Jesus embraces him. Jesus could have said, and I guess this is what the leper was thinking. Jesus could have said, We know he could have because he did it in other times.

He could have just said, be clean. What's he have to touch him for? But he touches him. He embraces him. He holds him fast.

He stops teaching or whatever he was doing. He stops answering the religious man's questions. He devotes all his tension to this foul, stinking, unclean, desperate man. Jesus touches him. Now This is what I'm saying.

When you see that scene, don't you love Jesus? This this is why we love him. Those of us are Christians. It's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, You can't just dismiss him, can you?

Jesus touches those who are unclean. That's this is amazing, isn't it? Anyone that says I'm not interested in Jesus, I don't know what they're talking about. They need to see the scene. This is so amazing.

It's a very beautiful scene. He blesses this man. He encourages this man. He publicly dignifies this man. That's an amazing.

It's it's a man. I mean, I guess time stood still. That's why I would like to make a film of it. It's beautiful. Jesus, look at verse 30, reached out his hand and touched the man.

Don't just read over this. I am willing. He said, be clean and immediately the leprosy left the moment. What a day? His feet, his toes, his ulcerated stubs suddenly made whole.

The lumps on his hands grew into fingers. He suddenly got his eyebrows back. You know, back came his hair, his eyelashes, his skin becomes supple and soft. And then once he's shown himself to the to the priest. He would be a touchable person.

He would not be an outcast any longer. He's welcomed back from the dead. He'd be welcomed back into society. He's a dead man resurrected. He's back.

So when we read this scene, my goodness, it's wonderful. Let me read it again. While Jesus was in 1 of the towns, a man came along, who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him lord if you were willing. You can make me clean.

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I'm willing. He said, be clean and immediately. The leprosy left him. This leads me to my fourth point.

Does this scene not change you? Doesn't it change you? As I say, we've seen that Luke is a is a a thorough historian. We know this this actually happened. This is a real historical event.

So we can guarantee it happened. Does this that does this scene change how you see Jesus? Aren't you inspired by him? You're not inspired by this Jesus? Yes.

1 person is. Seeing this encounter has got to do something to you, just being in the crowd and and looking on. And perhaps if you were in the crowd, you would have been a changed person because if you were in the crowd and you saw you saw this man in town, perhaps you were thinking, flipping it. I wanna get away from him. My goodness.

What the heck is he doing here? And pulling the children back and you're about to jeer and shout at him and say get out of town and then you see Jesus touch him and you see this man and then you think you wanna instead of jeering at the man to go away, you wanna cheer Jesus. So, you know, if you're in the crowd looking, it's gotta have that sort of an effect on you, hasn't it? But this scene isn't here for us to be in the crowd looking on at the compassion and the power of Jesus. Luke, the writer is aiming at something bigger for us.

I think Luke is aiming for a bigger change in you than you standing back and admiring Jesus and loving what he did to the leper. Let me ask this question. If the man who was covered with leprosy wasn't covered with leprosy, Would he have still come to Jesus that day? Would he have bowed down with his face to the ground and beg for mercy? Would he have done that?

Now, he might have come He might have heard that Jesus was in town. He may well have come and been in the crowd. He might have come to see Jesus helping other people and healing other people and looking on in the crowd, and he might have been very affected by Jesus compassion. But would he have planted his face in the ground and begged for mercy if he didn't think he was covered in leprosy? He might have come to argue with Jesus, like the religious people or he might have come to hear a good theological argument that they were gonna have.

And listen to the 2 and then throwing. He might have come to see and be in inspired by Jesus loving the outcasts. What an inspirational person he really is. He might have done that. Perhaps he might have come to Jesus to get a little bit of help in his life.

We all need a bit of help. Jesus is obviously a wise rabbi. Maybe he'd come for that. Now, If any of those cases, if the man who had leprosy didn't have leprosy and came, like I've just said, then his encounter with Jesus would be exactly the same as our encounter, which is standing in the crowd or reading this event and standing back and admiring Jesus and what he does for other people. But that isn't why Luke wrote this, I don't think.

The point I'm trying to make is this, When the man sees how desperate he is covered in neprosy, and sees Jesus beautiful and glorious that he is. He's on his face humbly begging to be clean. When he knows what he's really like, His encounter with Jesus is not just in the crowd looking on and admiring. His encounter is real life changing encounter, and that is what Luke wants us to see, I think. When Peter saw who Jesus was, he saw who he was, go away from me, I'm a sinful man.

When the leper realized what he is, he's covered with leprosy, The only thing he could do is to be more vulnerable than he was and to throw himself on the ground and beg for mercy. So how does this scene change you? Of course, it changes you to admire him. That's pretty obvious. You'd be mad not to.

A weirdo, a rather hard person. But let me make a statement about you. I don't know whether you're up to this statement, but let me make a statement about you. How you react to this statement will find you out. Are you ready?

You may wanna go. This is my fifth point. When here's the statement, When the are you ready? You won't be laughing. When the all seeing, all knowing, all wise, holy, beautiful, majestic, gorgeous in truth, pure, righteous, creator god of the universe, and therefore creator of you, when that god sees you.

He sees you as repulsive You could not be more repulsive. You are covered in leprosy. You stink. You are foul. You are a disgrace He created you not to be like that, but you are like that.

So here's my fifth point. You are the leper. Luke wants us to see that you're not an onlooker to this event. You're not in the crowd. You're center stage.

You're the leper. The only question is, will you admit it and will you beg for mercy? For the only 1 that can change you and heal you. Just go down. We'll be looking at this in more detail next week, but go down in chapter 5.

And you'll see at the end of this little section of chapter 5 after he's, dealt with all kinds of different people, including the leper, He says this, Jesus answered them. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repent. I've not come to call the righteous, I've come to call sinners to repent. You cannot be called by Jesus.

You cannot be a follower of Jesus. Unless you are an unrighteous sinner. If you're not an unrighteous sinner, and you don't see yourself as an unrighteous sinner, all you can do is stand in the crowd and admire what he does to people with the with leprosy. You'll only be an onlooker. You'll only be an interested admirer.

You'll only be someone who says I I quite love Jesus what he does for people. If you think you're healthy, you won't call the doctor who is Jesus. You'll just admire the doctor that comes in an ambulance and helps people that really need it, but you'll have no experience of Jesus other than some kind of religion or standing on the outside and gazing looking in at what he does. You've never experienced his healing. You can't unless you're an unrighteous loathsome leper.

When you're in that situation, you'll know the touch of Jesus If you don't know the touch of Jesus, it's because you don't think you're a leper and you haven't planted your face in the ground. It's just an onlooker You're just looking at Jesus and applauding him. But if you wanna be called, you gotta be an unrighteous sinner. If you wanna be touched, you gotta be a leper. So I'm asking you, examine yourself and see that you're a leper and run to Jesus.

Just have a look closely. Have a look. Because I'm calling you a repulsive leper. You know? You can say that tomorrow, can't you?

What do you do yesterday? Well, I went to a place where a bloke called me a repulsive foul stinking leper. Look closely in the mirror of god's word. Can't you see some sores and spots? Don't the sores and spots show the outward symptoms of some deadly disease called sin in your life.

See sin is like leprosy, and the Bible treats it like that. It uses leprosy as an illustration of sin. It's deceptive and slow at first first, you don't think you're very ill, although you're actually it's all over your body, and you just look for the sore spots. Look for them. It begins small.

It begins to spread. It twists our intellect. It perverts our emotions. It hardens our consciences. It enslaves our will since starts small with little things.

I love this little phrase that shows you how thoughts grow. It's a it's a wonderful little thing. So a thought, reaper word. That's what happens, isn't it? You sow a thought, reaper word So a word, reaper deed.

If you start saying stuff, you start doing stuff. So a deed reaper habit When you've done something, it's so much easier to keep on doing it, so a habit re reaper character, so a character reaper destiny. A tiny seed, the tiny spot reveals something underneath, and it grows. So a thought, reaper words, so a word, reaper deeds, so a deed, reaper habit, so a habit reaper character, so a character reaper destiny, sin then paralyzes and removes all sensitivity And you suddenly are doing things that you never thought you would do. It becomes so much easier for sinners to lie and to cheat and to be immoral.

Just turn to 1 passage. I mean, this was the job. I didn't know where to go, but I I'm just gonna turn you to this. Proverbs in the old testament part of the Bible. Proverbs 6, 16 to 19.

It's just a few proverbs. They're pithy sayings. But I wanna show you how god looks at us. He's repulsed Proverbs chapter 6 and verses 16 to 19, is proverbs, and the way they speak is to sort of build up the argument. So in verse 16, there are 6 thing the lord hates There are 6 things.

So we can see if we look at these 6 things, if we've got any of them, it says the lord, that's the god of the world, hates them, then it says that 7 that are detestable to him. So if you've got any of the 7, They're detestable. You are like a leper. You are a foul, polluted person. And then he says them, here's the 7 things.

6 things god hates, 7 things that are utterly detestable to him. Haughty eyes, A lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deceives wicked devices, wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who stirs up conflict in the community. God detests them. If you have any of these, and you may say, well, I have only 1 or 2. I haven't got all 7, but doesn't matter.

If you got these are the things that god detests When he looks at these things, he sees a leprous person covered in leprousy. So I'm not gonna go through them all. It would take us too long, but haughty eyes, what are haughty eyes, proud eyes, arrogant eyes, haughty eyes. Insanely thinking that you're independent and autonomous. You walk into the day as if you don't need god and you don't need help because you can cope.

Proud. Proud is is a highway to hell. It's a refusal to to admit that you need a savior, humility, humble, falling on your face is a hallmark of salvation. Proud. I can do it.

I can do it on my own. I don't need god. I don't need god in my life, or I only need god a little bit. I don't need god to be god. I'm god, and I might need some of his help.

Haughty, lying tongue. You ever lied? Someone is there anyone here that's never lied? Stand up. Come on.

You can start your career right now, actually. Have you have you never lied? We've all lied. So How many lies do you need to do to be a liar? How many murders do you need to do to be a murderer?

You've lied. Oh, hold it. You've lied. You are detestable. You are detestable.

You are repulsive. The god of the universe looks at you. And you see 1 spot, 1 lie, 1 saw. It means that there's a leprosy underneath. You're riddled with it.

He's you're detestable. Have you ever given false witness? Have you ever passed on a bit of gossip that you didn't know whether it was true or not? Have you ever said something about people? Have you ever not said something in order that that person would have false witness against them.

That's detestable. Have you ever caused conflict? I mean, you've only gotta come here tomorrow. And these tiny little darlings that we think are lovely gorgeous little babies. They're horrors.

They're hitlers. They're foul. That's my toy. No, it isn't. It's the church.

It's just shut up. He touched me. He hit me. They're stomping around like little nazis and starlings. We should come in and give them little mustaches because all dictators seem to have stupid mustaches.

And she would say now which 1 do you want to be Hitler or Stalin today? My lovely. We're gonna put starling on you because you've murdered nearly everyone in this room. Stomping around causing problems. Think of what we do willfully.

Think of our pleasure and our enjoyment in re I was just listing. I don't even know what has happened this week. But I I had the radio on as I was coming in and and people are going on about What's her name? Meghan, can't think what her name is. Meghan Windsor or whatever name is.

Oh, it's Markle. That's it. Yeah. Well, what is she now though? She's like Windsor, isn't she?

Tastes. Yeah. So people have been going on about they don't like her or something like this and you and there's all a gossip about her and people are passing on and saying, well, we don't know. What the heck is going on? It's just nasty and vicious and cruel.

And the racism and the the the things that are said and the the arrogance and the haughtiness and the pride and the class issues that go on. We think we're better and we could go through all of these. These things are just the outward sores, the spots sin is like a leprosy. And you might see 1 or 2 spots, and it says that you've got the symptoms. But if you start examining yourself a little bit more, you'll see that every organ is covered in leprosy.

You're you're dying. Every cell is dying. Your eyes They're blinded to the glory of god. They're not thankful for what given as god has given to us. Our ears don't hear the wonders of god, our mouths are full of cursing and swearing and lies, and our minds are perverted, and our imaginations are twisted as we dream of ungodly things and, our affections are perverted, and our bodies are in the end all decaying.

And 1 day, they'll be dead. You're a leper. Okay? However, offensive that might be, As god says in Isaiah chapter 1, your whole head is injured. Your whole heart is afflicted.

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness, only wounds and welts and open sores. Not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. You're an open sword to god. And if you say hold it, I don't like being called ungodly. Well, if you're not ungodly, are you godly?

Do you listen to him and follow him and love him and obey his commands? And if you say, no, that means you're ungodly. 1 of the best illustrations, I've read for someone finding out just what they're like was from the life of Malcolm Mugridge. Malcolm Mugridge lived in the last century. He was a very interesting, bloke who became a Christian later on in his life, and, he was, journalist.

And, he wrote about a scene in his autobiography when he lived in India. He was married to his wife Kitty, but he went down to the river, a large river in India. And he saw a woman over the other side of the bank, quite a big river. She was on the other side of the bank, and he saw that she had come down to wash and bathe and so he thought he'd watch. And at first in his mind, he was saying, Hey, but I'm married.

I'm married, but then he it's the temptation just took him over. And she she she he he saw that she took taken her clothes off. And he started to go in the river to get a nearer look and and the more in the river and the nearer look that he saw this this this gorgeous girl who's taken her clothes off and he fantasized over and started to swim nearer and nearer to her until he finally got to her, and he says this. She was an old and hit she was old and hideous. From from afar, she looked like a beautiful girl, but near she was old and hideous, and her skin was wrinkled and worse she was a leper.

This creature grinned at me, showing me a toothless mask It left me trembling, what a dirty, lecherous woman, but the rude shock of it dawned on me. It was not the woman that was dirty and lecherous. It was me in my heart. Have you not seen yourself like that? Have you never gone down that route?

Have you never swum across the river? You see other people as dirty, but in your own heart, you are filthy, you are foul. You are foul. And so you need a savior. You need to come to Jesus.

You need to make yourself even more vulnerable. You need to come to the god that sees you as foul and fall down on your face and ask for mercy. Mercy, beg. Because if you don't, You're only on looking Jesus. If you don't come to the doctor, you'll never feel his healing hand.

If you don't plant your face on the ground and know that you're the leper, you'll never come to him. Not really. It'll all be just religion. It'll all be pretense. It'll all be unreal.

You need to see what you are before god and as he sees you. And then the touch. And when the touch happens, everything changes, When the touch happens, all your leprosy, your sin is forgiven. And before god, you're his child. You're the cleansed 1.

He loves you. On nothing to say. For Jesus to touch the leper meant that he became unclean. For him to cleanse that man meant that he became uncle. And that is exactly what happens on the cross.

This is god so loving the leper. That he died on the cross to take the sin of the world and become full of leprosy, full of sin, to take the wrath to take the disease so that we'd be cleansed. It's an amazing story, isn't it? Don't you think? So where are you in it?

Are you just there applauding? Where are you with Christ? Lovely isn't it? Gosh. He's wonderful.

You know, it's worth me going to church if and every now and then and singing about it because it's just amazing. That wonderful. I love being in the crowd. We'll come out of the crowd. Plant your face in the soil and beg him.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever done that? If you haven't, why not? Cause you are leprous, If you have, praise god, isn't it wonderful? How much he loves you even though you're repulsive.

It's just amazing, and how he makes you a child, a repulsive 1, a child. Isn't that wonderful? Praise him. Tell it out. Gosh, it's amazing.

Isn't it? Your life's been changed? Wouldn't you want to say to other lepers, oy? You filthy foul leper. Come to Jesus for goodness sake.

This is amazing. I did. Fow like to the fountain fly says 1 of our songs. Wash me, savior, or I die. If you're not a Christian, have you ever done that?

And if you've not done that, do it now. Come on. Be vulnerable. Scary ain't it? Come out.

Own up to your sin. Allow God to show you that you're even more foul than you thought you were. Those few spots, no, you're covered in it. From head to foot. Come out.

Ask him now. Ask him. Be my savior. Cleans me, wash me, make me whole, make me someone who knows the love of god and in the family of the father. Do that now?

How'd you do that? You ask him? Bow your head and you ask him. Be my savior. Cleanse me from my sin.

Would you do that? Ben will show us what this wonderful table means. This might be the first time you've done you've done this table. You've taken the bread and the wine as a yes. He's my substance, he's my cleanser.

He died for me. Let's pray. Ask him now to be your savior. Fol the god, would you hear our prayer and our praise? Pother, if there's someone here that needs to come out of the crowd and fall down on their face would you give them the ability to do that?

Make them vulnerable so that they would feel your touch and your forgiveness. Those of us that have done this help us never to forget your love. In Jesus' name.