September 4th, 2022 | Cleansed - Brett Meador

hey good morning nathan creek would you guys all stand with us it's great to see you great to be here with you sunday morning beautiful day we get to worship the lord in spirit and in truth we get to get in the word a little bit we'd love to teach you guys a new song this morning in john chapter 6 [Music] jesus is getting the ministry going miracles are happening he claims to be the son of god and at that point a lot of people they hit the ejection button they're out they start walking away but jesus in john chapter 6 verse 66 says from that time many of his disciples they went back and they walked with him no more but then jesus turned to the 12 his 12 disciples and said will you also go away then simon peter answered and said lord where will we go thou hast the words of eternal life and we believe and are sure that thou art the christ the son of the living god peter knew he knew that he needed jesus he knew that jesus was the way the truth and the life even in that early part of the gospel john chapter 6 and if you've been in the world if you've if you've seen the darkness you know how much you need jesus how much you need the light it is a thing like that old hymn every hour i need thee that's how this song is kind of rooted in that idea that we need the lord and we can trust in him amen man let's sing a song again [Music] [Music] lord you know me and you always [Music] you surround me [Music] oh [Music] [Music] though that will never you're my fortress [Music] my grace [Music] is [Music] [Music] that's who yeah are [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] oh i need you lord that will never change in every moment every way oh i need you lord that will never change no that will never change [Music] though that will never change [Music] winterize come that i can't understand [Music] my god is good oh my god is good your love [Applause] held me through the storm my god is good [Music] oh my god [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] my god is [Music] [Music] i will fix my eyes [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] forever [Music] [Music] [Music] i will fix my eyes upon your way forever [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] i want to see [Music] [Music] to see [Music] foreign [Applause] me [Music] [Music] [Music] i want to see i want to see oh [Music] oh [Music] i want to see [Music] holy [Music] oh [Music] i hear the same you see [Music] indeed [Music] paid it off [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] jesus made it on [Music] oh is is is jesus paid at all [Music] [Music] it was lord what a glorious thing to be able to sing um that truth is so profound lord that we were sinners messed up doomed the lord for destruction and yet what an amazing truth that we sing about that you loved us so much that you dealt with our sin dying on the cross shedding your your own blood living among us dying raising up from the grave and then washing us clean lord i know that for many of us that maybe have been saved for a long time we almost lose the gravity of that information we sing the songs uh we go to church but i pray lord that we we just be re-sensitized today to the glorious truth of what you've done for us that lord you'd restore unto us the joy of our salvation lord for those who have yet to be saved maybe have not been forgiven of their sins still walking in sin lord i pray that today they'd hear this good news and really want that for themselves lord you invite us to be saved and you tell us the way to be saved and i pray that that would be clear today and that people would be drawn to you lord um this church our pastors me all of us we we lord want to decrease so that you might increase we want to be like john the baptist who pointed to you so help us with that lord may you be honored may you be glorified in this place we pray in jesus name amen there once was a man who lived just outside of a small town in galilee called capernaum it was a town that was thriving successful it was actually a town where they engineered and made sort of a bunch of millstones that's what they did there is raised or you know made hundreds and hundreds of millstones every week and then would ship them throughout the land of the bible but this man didn't work in the millstone factory he actually owned some acreage and he was a farmer who was tending the you know the field and he owned a couple small fields and he was a young man he was a young family man he had a wife and a small child three-year-old daughter that he loved dearly everything in his life was pretty normal people respected him the community knew him it was all good until that one afternoon he was out working in the field and he sort of uncharacteristically felt a little fatigued some of his joints were hurting he didn't think much of it because he was that kind of guy that just kind of worked through those kinds of things you just keep working and you'll feel better and he just kept doing that the next day he woke up and felt even more aches and pains but he just kept at it and a few days after that he realized something kind of weird was happening with his hand he felt his hand growing numb and it was weird he'd find himself doing his work and then he'd shake his hand going what's going on with my hand it was weird but that stuck with him for several days and eventually he saw something even more troubling was he saw that there was a raised area on his skin on his arm it was white kind of some of you know how this feels when you see something the older you get you start thinking oh melanoma you know you see dots and things in your skin the older you get like oh no cancer and you kind of have that sinking feeling could i have melanoma well that's how this guy felt he said i don't know there's something here and it's kind of a way raised white area but he thought oh whatever i'm sure it's nothing a few days later that same area got a little whiter and a little puffier but also shockingly and this was sort of the thing that turned a corner in his thinking when he saw that several of the hairs on his arm around that area turned bright white and you see that was a telltale sign of something really bad that was happening he suspected because of those symptoms that horribly loathsome disease of bible times called leprosy but not really willing to just give it to someone and say yeah i've got leprosy he he actually even hid it from his wife for several days he'd wear long sleeves at home he didn't want her to see the he thought i'm sure it's nothing and he just kind of dismissed it as many of us do but it only got worse he could no longer hide it when one day he was out working and he was actually sharpening his sickle because he was getting ready to harvest and he had done this a million times it was almost muscle memory for him but with his hand numb without feeling he became sort of clumsy and he he sort of fumbled around with his sharpening influence and ended up slipping and and slicing his hand wide open and he waited for the excruciating pain only to feel nothing and blood was gushing and his hand was cut open but he didn't feel a thing and he couldn't hide this from his wife he bandaged up his bleeding hand and held it close and walked home really kind of fearful and his wife looked at the what happened and explained and then she pulled his sleeve up and saw the white patch with a white hair and she thought honey oh no and right then and there she burst into tears knowing what he had to do because the jewish law it was not just the law it was the law of moses the law of the leper from the book of leviticus said that once you saw something like that you had to go and show yourself to the priest and he would inspect because it was a highly contagious disease leprosy was and so they knew what they had to do and he got his things together and he made the journey to the priest where he showed his arm to the priest and you know the priest looked at it and had to kind of look at the rules and what what it looked like because the law of the leper was found in what our day of bible leviticus chapter 13 the law of the leper told the priest what to look for and sure enough the evidence was there so the next step according to the levitical law was you'd put that person in a isolation in quarantine for seven days and the priest would make him stay there in sort of a cell of the synagogue or of the temple they'd just kind of stay there isolated and then after seven days the priest would look again if he saw that the patch had gotten less and he seemed to be improving well that wouldn't be leprosy because leprosy doesn't get better but if it was still there or even worse then that man would be declared a leper and in bible times once a leper always a leper you were doomed it was a death sentence so our friend from galilee from capernaum went into that isolation and those seven days seemed like seven years to him would he be able to see his precious daughter again would he be able to hug his wife would he be able to go back into his fields and work or was he doomed and his heart would just throb with pain and ache as he thought of what was happening to him he couldn't believe it was happening to him but finally the seven days rolled around the priest looked at his arm into his horror the priest said unclean you are a leper well the law was very clear what was supposed to happen in fact if you read leviticus 13 right there in verses 45 through 46 it tells the priest what to do the leper and whom the plague is his clothes shall be rent his head bare he shall put a covering upon his upper lip and shall cry unclean unclean all the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled he is unclean he shall dwell alone without the camp or outside the city shall his habitation be the person that was diagnosed by the priests as having leprosy would be doomed to no longer live among civilization but you have to go and live in total isolation either by himself or in what you and i know as they were leper colonies there in capernaum just shortly outside the city maybe two miles where a series of caves it was kind of a hole in the ground with these caves and that's where the lepers lived and so the priest told him you can go home one more time and get your things that you can carry and report to the leper colony and so our friend sadly with tears flowing makes his way home can't really hug his daughter can't really hug his wife because of his contagious condition but with tears he says his final goodbye and goes and lives in the caves of the lepers horrible horrible situation you know the leprosy comes on fairly slowly but it gets worse and worse in fact william barclay wrote about what a leper looks like in bible times and this is what he said the whole appearance of the face is changed till the man loses his human appearance and looks like the ancient said a lion or a satter the nodules grow larger and larger they ulcerate from them comes a foul discharge the eyebrows fall out the eyes become staring the voice becomes hoarse and the victim wheezes because the ulceration of the vocal cords the hands and feet always ulcerate slowly the sufferer becomes a mass of ulcerated growths the average course of the disease is nine years and it ends in mental decay coma and ultimately death the sufferer becomes utterly repulsive both to himself and to others horrible horrible disease the leper would then wrap themselves up in rags you'd see it in the movies maybe you've seen old movies where they showed lepers and they were wrapped in rags why would they do that two reasons the stench of their wounds and the pus they'd cover it up with rags but also you always hear people joke around about leprosy how they you know pieces of their body falling off hands and feet falling out it's not really what happens honestly what happens is because they lose the feeling in their hands and feet ears and nose and stuff like that what happens is is they hurt themselves stub their toe and they don't feel it they have no feeling of wounds so they end up accidentally wounding themselves not even knowing and then they those wounds get infected and things start happening and even more and you might say but this is great well this is the point of the bible of leprosy it was a grotesque horrible thing so bad was that the stench would draw the rats and at night time when the leper was asleep the rats would come and nibble and they wouldn't feel a thing that's how they lost their extremities horrible horrible loathsome disease once a year the family members of the lepers were allowed to come closer to the leper colony they would still keep a hundred yards away but they would walk up and they would look and the lepers would look from behind the rocks of the caves and they would look and see their families from about a hundred yards away and the families would lay down clothes and some supplies and try to try to give them stuff that would hopefully ease their suffering a little but he would see his daughter year after year and his wife come and five years into it his daughter there now eight years old and then 10 years old year after year it seemed to him like time was standing still and he was only waiting to die but one day in the leper colony there became a buzz and there was a hoarse whispering of lepers talking of something that they'd all heard rumor of the rumor somehow got to the lepers that there was a guy who was going around first there was this guy kind of a wild man they knew his name was john the baptist and he was talking about a guy that was coming well that guy came and and his name they called him jesus some people called his name emmanuel which means god with us but what got the leper's attention is he was spoken of being one as as that had healing abilities he was able to heal people that were diseased and even maybe raise the dead and some of these lepers thought oh if he would only come here the reason they thought that technically a leper according to the law couldn't leave the leper calling in fact if you left the leper colony and you went out in that region uh walking around as a leper people had legal right to start picking up rocks and stone you to death on the spot you were not supposed to leave and you would put your great yourself at great risk great peril if you left the leper colony but this man thought to himself what do i have to lose i'd rather die by rocks than this horribly loathsome disease i'd rather risk all and try to find this one who could perhaps heal me he he's one who could do it and so with a a tiny glimmer of hope in his heart he thought i'm gonna i'm gonna risk all and he bolted as as much as he could with his condition after seven eight years of leprosy he was close to death but he made his way back into capernaum where he lived because he heard that this one jesus was locally there somewhere around capernaum and so he makes his way down the hills of of by the sea of galilee that was on the shore of the sore side of of capernaum when he saw a multitude of people walking they were coming down the hills outside of capernaum big multitude and they all looked very interested in this one guy and he thought he thought to himself surely this is the one they're talking about but he knew he had to be quick because people would freak out once they saw him once they smelled him but he thought this is my only hope and so he made his way as quickly as he could to the one that everybody was drawn to everyone was talking with and he he rushed his way in and sure enough somebody said leper and people started freaking out some people even started reaching down to pick up rocks and they were going to throw him at him because that's what you do when you see a leper but this leper went right through the crowd and went stood right in front of the man they called jesus that story that i just told is what i would call historical fiction but i tell it for a reason um the story we're about to read here in matthew chapter eight is that of the cleansed leper and we read stories like oh yeah some guy had leveraged he died he almost died but he uh got healed the end that's the way we view some of these bible stories but you have to remember this was a real person who had real suffering and that was a very similar story to countless others through the ages who had to deal with this horrible disease of leprosy but here this guy he finds jesus and that's where we pick up our story in matthew chapter 8 verse 1. let's read matthew chapter 8 verse 1. and when jesus when he was come down from the mountain great multitudes followed him and behold there came a leper and worshiped him saying lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean and jesus put forth his hand and touched him saying i will be thou clean and immediately his leprosy was cleansed and jesus said unto him see thou tell no man but go thy way show thyself to the priest and offer the gift that moses commanded for a testimony unto them see how short and sweet this little story is but this was a huge event because the last time a leper was cleansed in the bible or in the judaism of that time was hundreds of years earlier from second kings a story in second kings some guy got healed but it hadn't been for several hundred years and suddenly there's this guy who comes and can just touch someone you're not supposed to touch a leper but jesus touches him and says be thou clean and bing his skin is restored he's got the skin of a baby's bottom he's he's clean and he's he's no longer leprous and and then jesus says go and show yourself to the priest and bring the gift that moses says for a testimony now all this to say you say okay brett this is quite a story but there's so much here that we can miss first of all what mountain was jesus coming down from well this is where we left off on wednesday night it was the mount of beatitudes this this happened right after jesus gave the sermon we've been studying for the last month and a half the sermon all the red letters in chapter five six and seven of your bible that sermon just finished and then on wednesday night you and i we saw the way the crowd responded it was remember it was a heavy sermon if you've been with us you know sermon on the mount is really heavy but the people went away thinking this we know what they were thinking matthew chapter 7 verse 28 let's back up what we ended on wednesday night it says it came to pass when jesus ended these sayings the sermon on the mount that the people were astonished at this doctrine the word doctrine just means teaching so they're shocked astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority not as the scribes the scribes were the teachers of the day the scribes the pharisees the sadducees they all went around teaching but interestingly enough they noticed something was different about jesus you know he had the heft to him the words that he said weren't empty you know some people like to wax eloquent and say stupid stuff and sound intelligent and and man that happens even today it's kind of interesting but but jesus when he spoke the people acknowledged man he's not like all those other guys when he speaks he speaks as one having authority you say well that's great yeah but when you hear the sermon on the mount that should be kind of scary because remember jesus said stuff with authority like unless your righteousness exceeds that of the pharisees you will no wise enter the kingdom of heaven saying that with authority would give you a little pit in your stomach because you would know as a jew in those days your righteousness is nowhere near what a pharisee's righteousness seemed to be and he even upped the stakes with stuff like if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you're guilty of adultery jesus said on the sermon on the man if you're angry towards your brother you're guilty of murder jesus said like jesus just upped the game so much that you might walk away saying he said that with authority but that's horrifying because who then can be saved who can go to heaven i wonder if some of those people had sort of a joy because they heard truth from jesus but also a little bit of a hurt and a fear because man i'm not that person i'm not saved and maybe you think i'm doomed as you're walking down the amount of beatitudes having heard the sermon you'd be going oh man is there any hope for me and then suddenly this leper shows up and you're kind of freaked out oh there's somebody who's doomed i may be doomed but that guy's really doomed he's totally doomed you see jesus didn't give the answers on the sermon on the mount he just preached to the doom of humanity why didn't he teach the answer the answer to the question there is jesus is the answer jesus is the answer to the sermon on the mount you and i can't be as good as the sermon on the mount requires none of us are able to do that that's why we need jesus and then jesus demonstrates the answer to the sermon on the mount when he heals the leper how does he do that what do you mean brett well did you know that there was actually a truth and a false the truth was the bible treats leprosy throughout old testament anew as a picture of sin leprosy is a type or a picture of sin now the sadducees and the pharisees and the scribes took it too far when they said well if you have leprosy you're a sinner and that's why you have leprosy they would preach that so if you saw a leper you say well he must have done something really bad because look at him he's a leper now that was a wrong conclusion leprosy is however a picture of sin and all have sinned all have fallen short of the glory of god the bible sort of handles it like you and i we're the lepers in the story we're plagued with the disease that stinks that is sin so notice that jesus sees this guy who's a leper and all of them would have been saying sinner and throw a rock at him um but jesus doesn't do that he doesn't turn his ass what are you doing here sinner your stinky leper jesus doesn't do that that's what everybody else would have done but jesus in this account in fact i love it this story is not only in matthew's account but marks as well when you read the gospel mark in fact we learned something in mark chapter 1 verse 41 it says this in addition to what we learned in matthew 8 it says in mark 1 and jesus moved with compassion put forth his hand and touched him and said unto him i will be thou clean the part we learn in mark is that he was moved with compassion so one of the things you'll always see jesus our savior do is move in his heart with compassion toward the doomed sinner so there's the people coming down the sermon on the mount going oh man we're doomed because unless your righteousness succeeds out of the pharisees we're doomed and then they see the doomed leper and jesus says i'm having compassion on you be thou clean and he does the unthinkable he does what many would say is the impossible they hadn't seen a leper cleanse only legends talk about second kings when the leper was cleansed jesus doesn't condemn him he's got compassion on him and so this leper shockingly has enough faith did you notice he's got a faith like you and i have he says i know that you can cleanse me but will you that's often what we we know god is able to do whatever we just sometimes doubt whether or not he's going to do it for us you get a sense of this leper kind of thinking that way i know you can heal me he says but will you and jesus said i will and by the way this raises an interesting question does jesus heal the believer the christian every time well the answer on that is yes but there's a lot of confusion on this one there's cults out there that say you don't need to go to doctors or hospitals because you just have to have faith and if you have enough faith then jesus would heal you so you're a sinner if you're not healed it's your fault and that's just the wrong teaching remember paul the apostle had an infirmity of the flesh he called it the thorn in his flesh but he prayed three times the lord said okay paul stop praying i'm not going to heal that one that's paul the apostle that's the one who had his sweat bands laying around and people would touch him and they'd be healed like the bible's clear paul healed a lot of people but he himself sat in his whatever it was some infirmity of the flesh the bible calls it so sometimes the lord doesn't heal right away is paul healed today well let me tell you there's three layers of healing that i want to express and the first way jesus heals just quickly is number one immediately that's what we're seeing here in matthew chapter eight versus one through four here's this leper who's all and diseased with leprosy and guess what bing instant healing i love this one this is a fun one to be a part of it's fun to see that and you know some of you have seen an instantaneous healing from the lord and that happens from time to time it's not the major part of the time in my experience once in a while here at the creek we've seen prayer for things that doctors gave stage four cancer and doomed and we've seen the church come around and pray and we've seen healing and it's glorious we like that one well if that doesn't happen then you're not healed well not exactly because let me tell you about the second type of healing that often is more common there's progressive healing that's over time oh brett you're just calling healing that what your body naturally does your body is able to not no it's supernaturally natural isn't it a miracle that god made your body where it heals itself that's a miracle of god right there and i'm going to call that progressive healing and you know what is included in that doctors medicine treatment care those are all things that god uses sometimes and i'm going to call that progressive healing um when did jesus sign his name to doctors in medicine i'll tell you interesting little story remember when jesus went to the blind man and he took and made spit and mud and put the mud in his eyes i remember as a kid i was always hung up ew that's gross but in bible times they thought of spit and mud as medicinal and so jesus was in a sense signing his name to medicine even though he could have just thought the thought be healed and his eyes would have been restored but he didn't do that he used a process and through a time and and remember the blind man that saw but he only saw kind of men walking around like trees i only see a little bit the lord says okay let's do this again and he does it again was jesus not on his game that day what was jesus doing there i think he was showing sometimes sometimes it's a process and it's a progressive healing the lord uses that and does that by the way the second king's healing of the leper remember that guy had to go and dip in the the river seven times it was a process of just being obedient seven times and something that he'd thought was stupid but he ended up doing it at the coercion of some of the people around him and he did it and through that progressive time doing the right thing he was healed so sometimes the lord heals immediately sometimes progressively and then the third and final one is ultimate healing when is the lord ultimately well if you're a believer if you're a person of christian faith believing in jesus guess what when you die that's the ultimate healing and that's why i can say when a believer is sick or diseased or hurting every single time they're going to be healed the question is when will it be immediate will it be progressive or will it be the ultimate when you go to heaven and you get a whole new body i'm looking forward to that man exchange the ab for some abs it'll be great new body looking forward to that it's gonna be wonderful but until then you know the the leprosy hadn't been healed for hundreds of years by the way the history of leprosy is interesting dr um i'm our hanson of norway was the first doctor to see the leprosy germ under a microscope this was in 1873. and leprosy was a horrible horrible plague through the time of christ all the way till the time of the 1800s but um in the in the 1900s they came up with some medicine practices that were sort of a little bit uh not working very well but they started trying to treat leprosy with a certain nut that they extracted the oil from the nut and they would inject it and there were some short-term benefits but the long-term benefits seemed uh questionable but it was after 1941 they came up with the medicine called pro-min which was uh you know the u.s public health service came up with this treatment and again it was working somewhat but it was extremely painful and required far too many injections into the poor victim but our dr r.g cochran was a pioneer in the use of dapsone for leprosy there were pills um but the leprosy germ learned sort of to be resistant to that and so it wasn't completely successful until in the 1970s fairly recent success at last on the island of malta in the 1970s there was a combination of drugs that were discovered by doctors and by 1981 the world health organization it used to be a trustworthy organization came up with multi-drug therapy three drugs taken in combination and this treatment takes six months to a year to actually be effective but in treating people with leprosy throughout the world they've rubbed out leprosy this biblical form of leprosy is no more on the planet thank the lord for that this is where the lord uses medicine and i think that's all part of god doing that progressive kind of healing but in our story here i love how this man was healed instantaneous that's that's where we i think we call that more of a miracle it's all a miracle if you ask me but one thing that we need to observe and there's many things here but notice the word when a leper is what we would call healed the bible doesn't use the word healing except for one remote little story all the other times talking of the leper being healed is they use the word cleansed why it's because in the bible leprosy is used to picture sin like you and i need to be cleansed from our dirty sins leprosy is a picture of that throughout the bible the bible shows that leprosy is sin how is leprosy like sin well let me let me give you a few ways it's an amazing analogy really leprosy is like sin and number one it starts small but it ends big uh it starts as just a little spot on your skin like no big deal whatever but it's deadly starts small but ends big in the laws of the leper in leviticus 13 it says the priest shall see him and behold if the rising in his skin is the idea be white in the skin and it have turned the hair white and there'd be a quick raw flesh in the rising the implication that that man should be diagnosed as a leper starts just small your sins started small you know nobody ever started out saying today i'm going to be a raging alcoholic and they took a little shot glass that's not how it happens it always starts small innocent seemingly no big deal but sin if you're not careful start small but it gets big real fast number two sin like the disease of leprosy spreads quickly not just on your own body but around you with the people around you there's something that's infectious in a bad way about our sin that we drag other people in fact oftentimes our sin we drag our loved ones the ones we love the most they end up being diseased with our leprosy especially those of you that are parents or those of you of influence have people under your care or leadership man when you sin when we sin it's like a contagion that spreads horribly um we got to watch out for the spread of our sin but number three like leprosy it brings out isolation isolation the leper is told you've got to go live in a cave how does sin bring about isolation let me tell you as a pastor i've seen this so many times it's really tragic what happens is a couple levels of this first of all if you're a sinner and you just keep living in sin but you claim to be a christian you're living in no man's land and you become kind of isolated in fact usually the person that knows better and doesn't really shouldn't be sinning but they're just choosing to do it jesus calls them out says men love the darkness because their deeds are evil so when we start doing sinful stuff we go into hiding no longer you don't want to hang out with family as much as you once did no longer you want to be with your friends and hang out and have good fellowship no longer do you want to be a part of a church and you start making up stupid excuses i don't like organized religion and i don't like christians and the church is full of hypocrites that's usually a sign that you're just a big honking leper you're a sinner and you don't like being around people who are trying to at least be close to the lord you can find yourself isolated you know what's even worse no longer do you feel comfortable around god's people so you go back to your old party friends at the bar or wherever at the strip club and there you are and they're like dude aren't you supposed to be one of those christians what are you doing here so you're in no man's land you're neither here nor there and you're sort of riding this goofy fence and you find yourself totally isolated you don't relate to the church you don't write the right to the friends of the strip club but there you are in isolation it's kind of a sad thing i've seen this far too many times and it's all of your own doing that's what happens when we sin it brings about isolation we can go on in other ways our sin isolates us but that's what happens but number four and not only that it leaves everything contaminated when a leper was diagnosed there in the law of the leper in leviticus 13 this is what it says he shall therefore burn the garment whether a warp or roof which is a kind of clothing in woolen or in linen or any thing of skin wherein the plague is for it is a fretting leprosy it shall be burnt in the fire in other words that's the king jimmy way of saying man uh you got to burn your clothes because they're diseased and the problem is is because it spreads you might be saying brett it's just my sin it's not hurting anybody else i can do whatever i want oh that's what so many people have said only to find out that their sin is the one that has hurt everybody around them consider judges chapter seven aiken the one who took the accursed thing the clothes this the bar of gold the silver and hid it under his tent and he thought he pulled it off but if you remember the story it ended up costing him his life and his whole family how i've seen this so tragically how families are torn apart and wounded and hurt because of one man's sin the people he loves and cares about the most often are victims of his own contagious sin so it leaves everything around it contaminated that's why the bible employs leprosy as a picture a type of sin number five it deadens the senses as i mentioned earlier the most dangerous part of leprosy is that you lose feeling and sensitivity when you and i sin we lose sensitivity toward that which is right and wrong our conscience becomes calloused or even seared how is it that people and parents can do such things you know like have you seen all the news lately the big trend right now and i don't get it i don't understand how can parents think it's cool to bring their five-year-old children to a drag queen strip show and have their kids on the laps of the drag queens and uh with them on the stripper pole how how is it a person gets that way i'll tell you a seared conscience somewhere along the way their own worldview and sinful attitude made them start to lose sensitivity in their conscience the conscience there's old sermons from generations past one preacher said the conscience is the nerve ending of the soul but paul and i man i've been harping on this verse a lot lately because it's what's going on in our culture i mentioned it last week first timothy excuse me verses 1 and 2. it says now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits doctrines of devils speaking lies in hypocrisy having their conscience seared with a hot iron these are the days we're living so it's no wonder people are calling good things evil and calling evil things good our conscience has been seared and that's because we've been plagued with the sin with the leprosy of sin and that's why the sinner the way of the sinner well like proverbs 13 15 says but the way of the transgressor is hard and numbers 32 23 talks about how this i'll be sure of this your sin will find you out in other words your sin is going to catch up to you and it's going to make your life hard and i would even add for most miserable and that's why leprosy is compared in the sense that it deadens the senses finally number six the reason sin and leprosy are similar is number six it is in fact a sentence of death a sentence of death and this is where romans chapter six tells us paul told us this clearly the wages of sin is death when you and i sin man the repercussion of sin is death and you say well everybody dies no this is what we call eternal death and hell the bible talks about this but good news this is where we start to bridge the gap the wages of sin is death but the gift of god is eternal life through jesus christ our lord you see people coming down the mountain from the sermon on the mount were in in sort of a typological way they were coming down the mountain with a similar problem as the leper the leper was doomed so were the sinners who heard the sermon on the mount but i wonder if those people when they saw jesus touch the leper and say be clean and he got healed i wonder if suddenly there was a little hope for the hearers of the sermon on the mount because even as he was doomed with leprosy they were doomed with their sin but if jesus can cleanse the leper immediately then why couldn't he cleanse them of their sins you see notice it says here in our in this romans 6 23 the wage of sin is death but the gift of god is eternal life this reminds me of something jesus told the leper after jesus taught heal the leper do you see what happened it says in verse 4 check it out again jesus said to him see thou tell no man but go thy way show thyself to the priest and offer the gift that moses commanded for a testimony unto them what is this about well i bet you the religious leaders are like what is he talking about you see by the way for those of you know your bible there's some interesting stuff going on remember the scribes pharisees they wanted to accuse jesus of breaking the law jesus never broke the law jesus was a perfect keeper of law he didn't come to destroy the law but to what fulfill it and so jesus cleanses this leper they're all going what's going on and then he says go do what moses in the law told you to do and bring your gift what gift i'm sure that the pharisees had to brush off they hadn't seen a leper cleanse for hundreds of years they're probably like oh what was the thing they're supposed oh yeah somewhere in lebanon oh yeah what are these in fact why don't you grab your bible turn to leviticus chapter 14. flip over there keep your finger in matthew 8 and go to leviticus 14. i told you leviticus 13 was the law's concerning leper and it is that is identifying and diagnosing leprosy but shockingly chapter 14 of leviticus is what do you do if a leper's cleansed and there was a very clear and distinct process the leper that would be cleansed which would happen so rarely i'm sure they they had to kind of research this and go what was that thing about a leper if he got cleansed because they hadn't seen that for 100 years they had to go back and brush off leviticus 14. and there is the process and i think this is where some of you read your bibles at night you're going to bed you're reading devotionally you read leviticus 14 like whatever what is this birds and boards and hyssop and what's this all about it's kind of a creepy story about one bird that get killed the other one gets sopped up in its blood what in the world and you just kind of go whatever the old testament oh but you miss you miss the most beautiful this is one of those lo i come in the volume of the book it is written of me that is jesus jesus is the word and when you read these old testament stories everything points to jesus and it makes the old testament come alive let me show you how that works here in leviticus 14 verse 1 it says on the lord spake to moses saying this shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing he shall be brought unto the priest question who is our high priest in the new testament jesus and what are they supposed to do bring the leper to the priest that's something you and i are supposed to do by the way just heads up so they bring the leper to the priest and then verse 3 the priest shall go forth out of the camp so the priest actually goes out of his normal dwelling place and comes and meets the leper halfway interesting outside of the camp now why do they do that technique is a leper's filthy and unclean and could disease people so they don't want him walking around town so they go and meet him out outside of the camp and the priest shall look and behold if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper then the priest will command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean now you say brad what's a clean bird like did you shampoo up the parrot or whatever before the no um in the jewish law there was clean birds and dirty birds and you're not supposed to use a dirty bird what's a dirty bird um it's it's a sandwich at the dave's hot chicken um yeah no that's that's good too but no in the in the in the old testament the dirty bird was like a vulture or birds that were declared by god as unclean you can't use a vulture they would traditionally use a dove or even a something as simple as a little um you know starling or a little sparrow stuff like that just little clean birds but um but they had two birds it says take the two birds alive and clean and cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop and the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in earthen vessel over running water weird as for the living bird he shall take it and the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop and shall dip them all of those things in the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water and verse 7 he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed the leper from the leprosy seven times seven times you sprinkle the blood and the water from the bird from the vessel and you sprinkle it seven times on the guy that has leprosy and it says um and you shall pronounce him clean i love that pronounce him you are now clean and shall let the living bird loose into an open field what a weird process um have you ever thought i mean i know i'm weird but have you ever thought what goes into the poor bird brain you know he's sitting there and he's him and his buddy are taken by these guys like what's going on and then you see your buddy killed in an earthen vessel and his blood sprinkled you're like that's gross and then you they take you and rub you in his blood and then kind of ring you out and the blood is dripping on this guy that's all or at least he was and then also they take you out you're all bloody and wet and kind of freaked out and then they let you go in a field and you fly away like what was that all about um i know i'm weird but i do think about these things some of you are like yeah brett what is that all about well as it turns out everything in the bible points to jesus i think you should know that let me just do a really quick rundown on what we actually are seeing here because you remember um the old testament is a picture book illustrating new testament truth the greatest truth is jesus and this is a beautiful picture of what happened bird number one the one that was killed in the earth and vessel let's talk about that for a second jesus who left if you would his nest in heaven and came down and and what did he do he became a man what is an earthen vessel a picture of in the bible anybody you bible students hello [Music] right somebody said it your body uh you can jot this down in your notes second corinthians 4 7 where it says we have this treasure in our earthen vessels um you and i were made of clay the bible says and the bible compares your body to this earthen vessel and so what happens jesus comes from heaven and is put in an earthen vessel and then what happens um he's hung on a cross which what is this cedar board all about whenever you talk about the wood in the bible wood points us to the cross and some places it's kind of a dual thing of of humanity and the cross which there's reasons they co-mingle together but this so you got this bird with some cedar wood which speaks of the cross and water is being poured not just standing water but living water that is running water over the bird that's been bleeding in the earth and vessel the water living water in the bible you bible students what's that the type of yes the holy spirit so you got these amazing elements what about the hyssop was hyssop part of the cross oh in so many ways remember the picture of the cross in the passover of exodus 12. remember how they killed a lamb and took the blood and with hyssop they wiped the blood on the doorpost and then when the spirit of death came over instead of that firstborn dying the spirit of death passed over the house because of the blood that was on the door by the hyssop meanwhile when jesus was hanging on the cross they reached up to him with hyssop if you recall it's an interesting thing that hyssop is an element of the cross and so you got all these elements you got the earthen vessel jesus who was in a human vessel made himself a no reputation took him on itself a formula servant and was obedient to the death of the cross that's what philippians 2 says and the blood was spilled water was poured out and cedarwood the cross hyssop and and then you say okay so that's the first bird that died of the blood but what happened to bird number two well this is where it gets a little confusing but stick with me for a second bird number two is also jesus how's that so jesus is dead but what happened after jesus died on the cross then what he rose from the dead and ever lives to make intercession for you and me jesus christ in his resurrection is bird number two but bird number two also represents you and me how so brad i'm confused how can um you know you kill two birds with one stone here well actually it's what the bible teaches us we get to go free because jesus had victory over death jesus rose from the grave out of the earthen vessel out of the grave jesus rose from the grave and went free back into heaven if you would and ascended you and i because he did that we get to go free too that's the point um second corinthians you can read the whole chapter but it's all about that but second corinthians 4 corinthians 15 of knowing that he which raised up the lord jesus shall raise up us also by jesus and shall present us with you it's one of the promises of god's word what an amazing picture of what actually is happening so the leper who's a type of sin gets the blood sprinkled on him from the bird that died in a human vessel earth and vessel and with the board and the hyssop and all that stuff that points to the cross and suddenly the leper is now declared clean so now is he done well not exactly if you keep reading chapter 14 there's a couple more things they have to do just to fill you in quickly the leper would then go and shave his whole body every hair off of his body was to be shaved off um mr clean and then they would go to back to the priest and the priest would kill a lamb on the altar in the temple and then with that blood that was shed from the lamb they would mix it with oil oil is also a type of what anybody holy spirit somebody said it over here so the holy spirit the oil and the blood would be mixed now there was a an anointing ritual that was about to happen but normally this anointing ritual that i'm going to describe was reserved for three main people very elite bunches of people there were there was this process of taking the oil and the blood and the priest would dip his fingers in the blood and he would anoint the right earlobe the right thumb and the right big toe of the person why would they do that well there were three main people prophets would be anointed this way like samuel and the prophets isaiah and the prophets they all got this kind of special elite anointing why the earlobe why the thumb why their answer that which he hears that which he does that place where he goes was all to be anointed and set aside for the lord and his purpose it was a symbolic anointing for the prophet but also for the priest and also for the king in the bible you read about this thumb ear toe anointing that happened to the elite prophets priests and kings but there's one other person in the bible that gets this very elite kind of amazing anointing and it's right after that in in leviticus chapter 14 the leper after the bird ceremony with the cedar and all that pointing of the cross and jesus suddenly he joins this elite group that gets a special anointing after the lamb was slain and the oil was given the lamb being slain speaks of salvation the oil speaks to the holy spirit coming upon you or in you when you got saved and now you're ready to roll it's at that point the leper could go and he's good he's he's declared free and he can go back to his house and hug his wife and love on his child and be back in business we are the leper in the story we're the ones deserving of death but jesus came down from heaven god with us died on the cross shed his own blood and when we apply that blood to our own life we are declared clean now you are clean jesus said by the word that i've spoken unto you jesus declares us clean from our sin now um all that to say um it's interesting what did this guy do uh you know after jesus told him okay now go and show yourself the priest um mark's gospel tells us something that's kind of funny because jesus what did he tell him don't tell anybody now why did jesus do this i think this is important for some of you that went to those churches where they had the healing services and they marched the poor victims across the stage and they were throwing wheelchairs and saying be hailed tonight and doing all that kind of weird stuff is that jesus like no jesus heals a leopard and says don't tell anybody now why did he do this i think two reasons humility he wasn't looking to be exalted as the crazy amazing healer not not yet but as it turns out he also knew that once the word got out people would be coming from all over and he wouldn't even be able to go into town well that's what actually happens it's mark chapter 1 verse 45 the same guy our friend the leper he went out and began to publish it much and blaze abroad the matter and so much that jesus could no more openly enter into the city but was without into desert places and they came from to him from every quarter jesus was never into the hype of healing like benny hinn and others but he was into just low profiling isn't it funny jesus told him go and tell no one and he wouldn't told everybody after jesus rose from the grave and ascended in heaven he told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel and we tell nobody what happened there you and i have the job to go and publish that we were once lepers in our sin and our pus and our stink and god saved us and cleansed us and washed us man i love that now i told you earlier that the bible uses the term when the leper is healed as we would call it the bible always calls it cleansed which is a beautiful thing because it's a picture of sin being cleansed of the sinner who was the guy that got the one-time calling of his leprosy being healed well there's a little story there that i don't want to leave undone on this topic of leprosy in the bible in fact would you flip over to one more passage we're almost done luke chapter 17. why don't you flip over there and in luke chapter 17 we uh see now that word has gotten out that jesus cleanses the leper can you imagine leper colonies must have come and tried to find him well this this is what happens here in luke 17. whole leper colony shows up it says here in luke 17 verse 11. it says in luke 17 11 it came to pass as jesus went to jerusalem that he passed through the midst of samaria and galilee which is always amazing when you hear this the jews hated samaria and they hated the samaritan samaritans they talked about racism racism was rampant during the time of jesus and it wasn't black versus white it was samaritans versus jews they both hated each other which was shocking because jesus said we need to go through samaria and then i was like we got to go where and he said we're going through samaritan samaria what areas some area yeah some area and jesus did that this was a shock meanwhile as he's going through samaria it says in verse 12 as he entered into a certain village there met him ten men that were lepers which stood afar off of course they were trying to obey the laws of samaria to not be close to heal the normal people so they lifted up their voice verse 13 and said jesus master have mercy on us and when he saw them he said to them go and show yourselves to the priest what's missing from this picture jesus didn't say be healed he didn't say that like he did in matthew chapter 8 guy he said i will heal you be thou cleansed he said that and the guy instantly was cleansed these guys didn't get that um jesus said go and show yourself to the priest so these guys had a little different role to play jesus heals people differently some of you get the instant healing some of you have to do what these guys do because they're told to go and show the priest yeah but can you first heal us then we'll go show ourselves to the priest nope go show yourself the priest so they had to turn and start walking toward the priest and then check it out it's great it says that go show yourselves the priests and it came to pass as they went they were cleansed it's like every step they took the white pus and the redness and the the the big you know leprous ugliness just started going away as they went can you imagine that sometimes the lord requires you to take some steps of faith before you actually get to see the results remember the ark of the covenant being brought into the jordan river the priests had to go into their ankles into their knees and they just kept going deeper and deeper and then the river opened up and they were able to walk through it's kind of a whole another story of taking steps of faith that's what these guys had to do well then it says in verse 15 of luke 17 it says and one of them one of the ten when he saw that he was healed that's the first time in the bible we see the word healed in context of leprosy when he saw that he was healed turned back with a loud voice and glorified god and fell down on his face at his feet giving him thanks and he was a samaritan um we don't know that all the ten lepers were samaritans but this guy was a samaritan and jesus is going to acknowledge that in a second in fact it says in verse 17 then jesus answering said were there not ten cleansed word cleanse there but where are the nine there are not found that returned to give glory to god save or accept this stranger jesus is making note that the samaritan guy a stranger he's the guy that came back and gave glory to god so what's the difference well look what jesus says and here's where we wrap it up in verse 19. and he said unto him arise go thy way thy faith has made thee whole new word so we've got cleansed we've got healed and now we've got the word whole is it possible to be cleansed but not whole i think that's the point here this guy got something else from jesus when he came to worship and glorify god for his healing for his cleansing and now jesus said you get to go away now whole there is a difference some of you are saved and cleansed from your sin praise the lord you're going to go to heaven by the grace of god and some of you man when you get to heaven you're like i smell smoke you're like everybody's like sorry your coattails are on fire but welcome to heaven you made it glad you made it phew that was a close one and that's great salvation is the key but did you know that as a former leper you also can be made whole this isn't the only story like this remember the woman with the issue of blood 12 years of blood and she touches jesus's garment and jesus you know you could have just left it there she touches the garments she's healed so the end of the story right jesus stops everybody goes wait a minute somebody touched me and i was like oh brother jesus you're in a multitude there's lots of people they're all touching you come on and jesus said nope virtue is gone for me and he and why is he doing this to call this woman out and make her embarrassed no he's not done with her she was healed from her issue of blood but jesus turns and and he starts interacting with her and by the end he says now you are whole there's a difference between somebody's forgiven and going to heaven but the person who's also made whole the lord wants that of us who is the leper that was made whole when he came back with thanksgiving and gave glory to god and realized what a wretched situation he was in and how glorious it is and the other lepers didn't even come back to thank the lord they just kind of took it and ran there's something about the person the christian the believer that is worshipful and remembering the the catastrophe that they were saved from are you a crusty christian i worry about crusty christians and i'm one of them i've been saved for 51 years and you know i talk about being forgiven of my sins and and so do you and and many of us have been talking about for so long yeah we got our sins forgiven we're going to heaven it's great god's grace and mercy yeah amazing results that sounds like like we we've been around we've been around the church for a long time but we start to get kind of calloused toward the glorious thing that actually happened to us 50 years ago and i hope that as a crusty christian you don't let that start to mess you up as far as just being sort of unthankful ungrateful and you can find yourself singing the songs in church going yeah i'm saying this song 100 times but oh yeah sometimes you've got to go back and remember your sinful leprous self that was headed for hell and eternal death and destruction and you got to kind of peel back those sensitivities and realize oh lord thank you for saving me the first thing i would say as we close is man if you're a christian remember what the lord has done for you go back time and time again like this tenth leper go back and say to jesus glorious work that you have done glory is your name holy and righteous and true like worship jesus for what he's done for you don't forget to do that remember you were a leper and the second person i would end with today is if you're still in your leprosy are you still walking around a leper you're the person who's not yet been cleaned jesus has to look to you and say be thou clean how do you get to that you've got to be like the leper of our story and go go to jesus and say can i be clean ask and you shall receive seek and you shall find knock and the door will be open like jesus is just so giving the only time you see god in a hurry in all the scripture is when he's hurry to forgive a sinner that's the only time god's picture in a hurry the prodigal son the father who's the picture of god this prodigal son you and me the sinner and the prodigal comes moseying back to the father's house and the father is watching from afar and when he sees his son the father runs to the person who's coming his son who's the leper sinner pig slop wacko the father runs to him and hugs him and kills him that's what god wants to do for you he will be in a hurry to forgive you and cleanse you from your leprosy you don't need to die in your sin and pus and death and end up in hell you can just accept the cleansing that jesus has to offer all have sinned we all fall short but good news the gift of god is eternal life through jesus christ the blood that was shed that is applied to the leper in the old testament story is the story that can happen to you you know the only difference between you if you're not a christian here and the rest of us is we're all sinners we're all lepers the question is have you been cleansed you don't deserve it you didn't earn it neither did we but you can have it for free because god made the way the truth the life jesus would you bow your heads as we close this service and i would just ask for christians would you be in prayer right now and and i wonder i just can't resist to invite anyone who wants that from the lord and if you would please if you could remain seated i know it's tempting to bolt um and get out early but this is kind of heaven and hell stuff that we're talking about here and if you're one who's like like i need to be cleansed i know i'm a sinner the bible says that you need to repent of your sins acknowledge you're a leper acknowledge you're a sinner and then say lord i need you to clean me and then the bible tells us how to do it romans 10 verse 9 and 10 says that if you confess with your mouth believe in your heart the lord jesus christ the god raised him up from the dead it says you will be saved it's nothing you did it's what he did he's the bird if you would the shed is blood he's the lamb that shed his blood john the baptist said behold the lamb of god which takes away the sin of the world that's jesus so by you going to jesus and saying would you wash me and cleanse me from my sins he will do it so it says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave it says you will be saved also known as cleansed forgiven washed declared clean by jesus that's all that matters that's the biggest thing that'll ever happen in your life so why would you wait why would you hold back i'd like to invite you to do that i'm not going to embarrass anybody or make you get up in front of anybody but right where you sit if that's you and you'd like to confess that in faith and be washed today the lord would do that this would be a glorious day for you to do that um if that's you would you just go ahead and acknowledge that between you me and the lord right now if you would just look up at me right now and give me a quick wave and i'm going to look around for a minute or two and just just i want to just acknowledge some of you guys awesome back there cool i see you guys you good don't let me miss you awesome you guys right here and here good anybody else let me let me just kind of scan for a little while way in the back i see you that's great in you good and you awesome over here awesome good way in the back i see you good if you're watching online and you're kind of wondering about yourself you can pray this prayer too right now and we're just going to pray this prayer i'm going to ask the whole church we love praying this confession of faith because it's the prayer that we believe and we read from the scriptures this is what is required of you to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart so we're going to pray this all together out loud but those of you that have raised your hand the lord sees your heart and he'll hear you as you confess this all you got to do is ask and he'll he'll do it so let's pray let's pray this together your father in heaven i believe in your son jesus i believe that he died on the cross for my sins and that he rose up from the grave and then i'm forgiven help me to walk with you thank you for saving me in the name of jesus amen lord would you just wrap your loving arms around these people who've just confessed their faith may they sense the burden of their sins lifted off their shoulder lord because you forgive them and lord your word tells us that your your thoughts toward us are precious thoughts and not of evil to give us a future and a hope and may they just sense that hope that they have now of being saved and the joy of what you've done lord i pray your blessing on your church may we remember the glorious salvation never become so accustomed to it that we lose the joy restore unto us the joy of our salvation lord we pray and this we ask in jesus name amen

Channel: Athey Creek

Views: 13,536

Keywords: Brett Meador, Bible, Church, Teaching, Study, Christian, Jesus, Through the Bible, Athey Creek, Athey Creek Church, Athey Creek Christian Fellowship, Bible Prophecy, Prophecy, Bible Study, Worship, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel, Prayer, Leprosy, Sin, Cleanse, Cleansing, Healing

Id: BM_4_3jtIZA

Length: 83min 34sec (5014 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022