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Introduction:
To me,
one of the most shocking occurrences in Mark is how silent Jesus
wanted folks to be. In Mark
1:44, Jesus told the cleansed leper to tell no one. In Mark
5:43, Jesus told Jairus to say nothing about his
resurrected daughter. In Mark
7:36, Jesus told the deaf man to say nothing. However,
people didn’t listen. In Mark
1:45, the cleansed leper talked freely. According to Matthew
9:26, the report about Jairus’ daughter went out all
over the district. Mark
7:36 says the more Jesus charged people not to say
anything, the more they talked. Perhaps more than anything else in
our New Testament reading plan this year, these occurrences have
impacted me. I would like to share with you what I have gotten out
of these stories. Discussion: I.
Jesus wants to cleanse people. A.
The story of the leper in Mark
1:40-45 most catches my attention. Leviticus
13 deals with the Old Covenant laws on leprosy. According
to Leviticus
13:3, lepers were officially pronounced unclean. According
to Leviticus
13:45-46, the leper had to live alone outside the camp.
Wherever lepers went they had to broadcast their uncleanness. They
had to wear torn clothes, let their hair hang loose, cover their
upper lip and shout, “Unclean, unclean.” How do you think that
made the lepers feel? B.
How do you think that made other people feel? Do you think
lepers were accepted with open arms? Did people want to bring
lepers into their homes, embrace them with hugs or touch them? Did
people even want them around? Of course not. When Mark
1:40 says the leper came kneeling and imploring, I’m not
sure we can imagine the desperate begging taking place. What did
this man expect from Jesus? Would Jesus do anything for him? Or
would Jesus, like all others, turn him away as the unclean person
he was? C.
Jesus not only pronounced Him clean, the text says Jesus touched him (Mark
1:41). Think of how shocking this is in the context of
1500 years of shunning lepers. Jesus did not cleanse this man
grudgingly or for show. The man had said “If you are
willing…”; Jesus was willing. Jesus wants to cleanse people. II.
Jesus wants to cleanse people of sin. A.
I believe every account of healing is an illustration of
what Jesus does for His children and their sins, especially the
account of cleansing the uncleanness of leprosy. B.
Christ’s law has not proscribed that I tear my clothes,
let my hair hang loose, cover my lips and shout, “Unclean,
unclean,” when I sinned. But, to be honest, I have felt like I
was carrying a neon sign that said, “Look at me, I’m a
sinner.” I have feared talking to people because they might know
my sin. Or maybe something will accidentally slip to declare how
unclean I am. How will they react when they find out? Will they
turn on me? Will they abandon me? Will they proclaim me unworthy?
Will they be like the older brother in the story of the prodigal
in Luke
15? I have felt like that leper. Have you? C.
There is no telling how people will react. But I do know
how Jesus will react. People may shun. People may look down.
People may ridicule, malign and slander. Jesus, however, when I go
to Him and say, “If you will, you can make me clean,” will
reach out and touch me, embracing me and say, “I will; be
clean.” Praise God, brethren, Jesus wants to cleanse us from our
sins. III.
Jesus wants us to tell everyone. A.
None of the healed obeyed Jesus when He told them to say
nothing. They couldn’t, they were overjoyed. They couldn’t
keep quiet. Could you? If you had been cleansed of leprosy, could
you hush it up? If your daughter or neighbor had been raised from
the dead, could you put a lid on it? If you had been mute, blind
or deaf and could now speak, see and hear, could you hide it from
people? I don’t think any of us could; we might try, but it
would bubble out. B.
Here is what has impacted me personally. Jesus told these
people to say nothing to anyone and for joy they said something to
everyone. Jesus has told me to say something to everyone and for
fear, apathy, procrastination, distraction or whatever reason, I
don’t say much to anyone. Jesus told His disciples to go into
the whole world and preach the gospel (Mark
16:15). In Acts
8:4, the scattered disciples went everywhere preaching the
word. Yet, I often neglect that charge. I have to remember Jesus
wants me to tell people what He has done for me. IV.
If we can mourn our sins and have joy over our cleansing,
telling others will come naturally. A.
What these stories have most convinced me of is that I
don’t need another class on evangelism. I don’t need another
sermon to make me feel guilty. I don’t need another tool to make
it easier. I don’t need opportunities dropped in my lap. I need
to be like these people cleansed by Jesus. B.
I need to mourn my uncleanness. I need to recognize how bad
I am compared to Jesus. I am a rotten awful sinner (Romans
3:23). This is part of the poverty of spirit Jesus taught
in Matthew
5:3. When I can recognize that, I won’t compare myself
to others because in God’s eyes, I am in the same boat as
everyone. I am an unclean leper, who ought to be shunned and put
outside the camp. I need to mourn that. C.
I also need to feel the joy of cleansing. Why do you think
the leper told everyone? Because of joy. His cup overflowed and he
shared it with everyone. If I mourn my sins, then I can feel the
joy and I won’t be able to contain the lid on it and I will talk
to people. The fact is, I know that I am not really motivated by
the sterile approach of thinking I’m right on things and others
are wrong. But if I can see my cleansing through the true gospel,
then I will want to share that true gospel with everyone so they
can be cleansed like me. Let me ask you this, when that leper
started talking to people about what had happened to him, who do
you think he talked to first? I am betting it was the people he
knew, the only people who had been close to him before—the
lepers outside the camp. He couldn’t help himself. These people
had to know there was someone who could cleanse them. D.
However, I know there is something that keeps me from
wanting to go down this path. If I am going to share the joy of
being cleansed with others, I will have to admit of what I was
cleansed. And I don’t really want anyone to know. But that is
something I must overcome. Therefore, I want to share with you the
leprosy of which I have been cleansed. I want to share with you
the sins for which I have been forgiven. I hope this is beneficial
to you, but to be honest, I’m sharing because of what I hope
this will do for me. As I share this, I want you to know that I am
a growing Christian. Like Paul, in Philippians
3:12-13, I am not perfect. As Peter taught in II
Peter 1:5-8, I am growing in knowledge, virtue and
self-control, which means I still have some ignorance, some
non-virtue and some lack of self-control. I still struggle with
some of the sins on this list. I am not perfect, but I am
forgiven. Jesus has not only forgiven me, but He is also setting
me free from my body of death. Sometimes it is slow and painful,
like today. But He is doing it. What that means is I was forgiven
of some of these sins when I came into Christ and for some of them
as I confessed to God after becoming a Christian. Secondly, I want
you to know that I do not share any of these sins with you out of
a sense of joy over my sins themselves. I have nights without
sleep because of my sins. I have joy that I am forgiven, but
absolute sadness that I needed forgiveness. Third, my biggest fear
in sharing in this context is for the young who are making their
first choices about sin who may see this as permission to dabble
in sin and repent later, trying to have, as it were, the “best
of both worlds.” To you who are young, let me say that while my
sins provided moments of pleasure, they have provided years of
anguish, guilt and shame. While they provided instances of fun,
they have taken me further than I ever thought I would go, taking
control of my mind, my life, my relationships and causing me more
problems than I ever imagined. With those caveats in mind, I want
to share with you why I am overjoyed to be a child of God and a
disciple of Christ. I have written these without thought to order,
but simply in a chain of thought session trying to remember sins
I’ve committed and therefore why I have needed forgiveness and
why I ought to be overjoyed. E.
Jesus has forgiven me and cleansed me from the spiritual
leprosy of lying, disobedience to my parents, rebellion against my
parents, striking my father, unkindness to my brothers, arrogance,
pride, covetousness, breaking and entering, drinking alcohol,
stealing, lust, use of pornography, sexual immorality, hatred,
slander, gossip, gluttony, materialism, greed, lack of discipline
and self-control, cussing, telling dirty jokes, listening to dirty
jokes, laughing at dirty jokes, not standing up for the gospel
truth, selfishness, self-centeredness, outbursts of anger,
verbally mistreating my wife and children, not seeking my wife’s
needs and desires, holding grudges, bitterness, resentment,
strife, dissension, divisiveness among brethren, malice,
boastfulness, self-indulgence, providing for the lusts of the
flesh, jealousy, envy, impurity, sensuality, gambling, being
quarrelsome, being a lover of self, being a lover of money, being
a lover of pleasure, despising authority, being willful,
stubbornness, blasphemy, forsaking the assembling of ourselves
together, being entangled again in the world after having come to
the knowledge of Jesus Christ, trampling under foot the Son of God
and profaning the blood of His covenant. F.
I am certain, if I were able to remember every day of my
life clearly, I could double this list. As Paul said in Ephesians
2:1-3, I was dead in trespasses and sins, I had become by
nature a child of wrath. But as Paul wrote to the Corinthians in I
Corinthians 6:11, “I have been washed, I have been
sanctified and I have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Praise the Lord. How can I not share that with people? Conclusion: To be honest, this sermon has been all about me. If it has been about you as well, I hope it was helpful. I hope we can increase one another’s joy and help one another bring others into the fold. As the song says, “Redeemed how I love to proclaim it.” When I mourn for my sins and rejoice over my redemption, I will love to proclaim it. I hope we all will proclaim it.
Glory
to God in the church by Christ Jesus
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