Most of us in the room are old enough to remember 9/11/2001; September 11 of 2001. And if those of us who are in the room that are old enough to remember that day, I think I'm probably right in saying that at least two things resonated among all of us who were watching the events unfold on that day. All of us who remember that day--there was a lot of things going on; there was so, much confusion and so, many emotions, but I think two things in particular really hit home for all of us. One was just a great deal of confusion and anxiety and trepidation over what we were seeing unfold on the TV screens. But I think another emotion that was really prevalent among all of us who are watching the events of that day, was just this sense--I don't even know what a name to put to it--but this the sense that what we were watching on the TV was going to change our life forever. We didn't know how we didn't understand this. We didn't know who was doing this. We didn't know what this meant for the immediate future. But I think all of us had a sense that what we were seeing was something that was going to change all of our lives forever. We didn't know to what extent, we didn't know how, but we just knew that we were watching the end of one life and the beginning of another. I think that's something that is unique in modern American history. Perhaps we could compare it to maybe the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bombing of Pearl Harbor certainly equaled the events of September 11, in the sense of the impact that it made, the deaths on that day, and the change in the trajectory of the nation. That certainly was equal in that way. But what was different about Pearl Harbor Day was the fact that we weren't watching that on TV. I wasn't here to watch anything on TV, but those who were alive, weren't watching it unfold. They heard about it on the radio, the next day, they read it in the newspapers, but they weren't watching it unfold like we were on September 11. We were watching before our eyes, things that we did not understand, but yet we knew they were going to change us. In that sense, we are like the people in Mark's gospel. Because in Mark's gospel, there are all these crowds, and spectators, and disciples, and all of them are watching these things happen. And they don't understand all these things that are happening, but I think that there is this strong sense that what they're seeing is going to change life for them forever. They don't know how, they don't understand the scope of what they're seeing, they don't understand the meaning of everything that they're seeing, but they know that what they're seeing is going to change things for them. And the story before us this morning is a story in which that is true to a great degree--that what they saw, what they witnessed in our story is something that will change their life. But I think they had little understanding as to how that would change their lives. So, this story they we're turned to--just five verses here beginning from verse 40. Let's begin by reading from verse 39, through the end of the chapter. And as we read this, we will try this morning to place ourselves, as much as we can, into the context, into the understanding, into the crowd that was watching this, even the leper himself, in order to understand to a greater degree what God has for us this morning. So, the events that we just read are events that are familiar to us--this interaction with this leper, the cleansing of the leper, but in order to begin unpacking the story, and really getting a firm grasp on what God has for us in the story, we need to understand something about leprosy. So, let's read from verse 39. And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. And a leper came to Him imploring Him, and kneeling, said to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will; be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him; See that you say nothing to anyone but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so, that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. Now, I understand probably everybody here within the hearing of my voice this morning, we've all come in contact with the teachings of leprosy in the Scripture. I mean, leprosy is so, prevalent in the scriptures. You can hardly read your Old Testament without coming across leprosy somewhere in the pages of the Old Testament. You can hardly read the gospels without coming across Jesus encountering a leper. And so, we are accustomed to hearing of this phenomenon called leprosy. And we know that this leprosy, that's spoken of in the scriptures, is something that covers a vast array of skin diseases. Some scholars believe as many as 70 different skin diseases were covered under this term leprosy, and some of them were very mild in the sense of maybe just some eczema. Others were very serious. And the most serious of all was what we know of today is Hansen's disease. And I'm sure all of us have heard something said from the pulpit about Hansen's disease, and what Hansen's Disease is and what it does to the person, the sufferer of Hansen's disease. And so, we won't take a great deal of time to go back through that. But just to kind of just hit the high points--if we can call them high points--of what Hansen's Disease is. As we'll see in our text a little bit later, we know that this leper was not one who had a mild form of leprosy. We know that he was one who had the most severe form. And we also know it was a form of leprosy, a case of leprosy that was much advanced. We'll see that in the text just a little bit later. But before we go there, let's just understand a little bit about what this was about this Hansen's Disease. This disease of leprosy was a horrible, in fact, it's still a horrible disease. There was no cure for it. And still today, there is no cure for this disease. There are medical treatments that can greatly remediate the symptoms of the disease, yet there still is no cure for this disease even today. So, in Jesus's day, in the Old Testament days, this disease, when it struck, was a hideous sort-of thing. It was a disease that attacked the nervous system, it was passed by contact between people. And when it infected the nervous system, it manifested itself in the skin. It would manifest itself in bulbous sort-of growths on the skin. In fact, the word leper, or leprosy from the Greek is from lepros, which is which means scale. And so, you can kind of get an idea, there that the word itself is trying to describe what the disease looks like--this scaly sort-of bulbous growth. We've all sort-of googled, I'm sure you can go--don't do right now--but you can google leprosy. And you can see all kinds of pictures of people infected with such a disease as this, and it's a hideous looking thing. So, as it attacks the body, the nervous system, and manifests itself in the skin, it causes the skin to grow in abnormal ways, to begin to lose sensation, to be painful, but then eventually to lose the sensation to such a degree that we're told that most of the injuries, most of the damage from leprosy occurs from the victim having no longer any feeling in that limb, or that appendage, to such a point that they damage their hands or their feet or, or whatnot, because they don't feel any pain. And there's many stories, there's many verified accounts of lepers who would do great damage to their hand, because they used a hoe all day that had a nail sticking out of the handle, they didn't know it. Or accounts of lepers that will reach into a fire to grab a potato that they dropped into the fire. And so, much of the damage comes because there's no longer any pain receptors. But the damage is not limited to that. These growths will just continue, and and eventually the skin will begin to decay. And it will emit a--what I'm told--is a strong odor. Lepers, I'm told, have a very foul smell to them. And in addition to that, as the disease progresses, the appendages eventually begin to fall off. And so, if you do that Google thing, and you look at those pictures, you'll see many pictures of victims of leprosy that will have no longer any fingers, maybe just a stub for a hand, no longer any toes, maybe not any feet, the nose, the ears, all those things will eventually fall off. It's a hideous disease. And so, we know something about what it looks like, we've all heard this talked about before from the pulpit. But as we begin the story this morning, where we need to begin is to really understand what leprosy is, and why leprosy is such a big deal in the scriptures. Because if we don't understand this--it's not like we can't understand what God's saying to us in the passage at all--but unless we understand leprosy, we won't fully grasp what the passage is about this morning. Leprosy is not like anything else in all the scriptures. Leprosy is in a category all its own. So, we know that all diseases, and all maladies, and all deformities of the body, we know that the Scriptures teach us that all those things are the result, the eventual result, of the fall, of the sinfulness that's present in the world. And so, every illness, every cancer, every heart disease, all of that we can trace back to the fall. If there were not sin, there would be no disease and sickness. Now, sometimes those sicknesses and those illnesses in the Scriptures can be directly attributed to the sinfulness of the victim. But there's this ambiguity. There's always this ambiguity in the scriptures, except for those instances in which we're told specifically, but there's this ambiguity in the scriptures in which there'll be a sick person, or lame person, or a blind person, and we're not sure whether that was a direct result of sin in their life, or whether it was just the result of living in a fallen world. Think about the story of Job. As Job is suffering all these losses, and the boils, and everything all over his skin, his friends come and they say, Job, this has got to be because you have sinned hideously. And Job says, No, it's not, I've not sinned. Or think about the blind man, the man born blind in John chapter nine, in which the disciples say to Jesus, Jesus was, Is this man blind because of his sin? Or is it a more indirect result of his parents’ sin? And Jesus says--neither. So, there's this ambiguity when we come, when we come across malformations, or deformations, or missing appendages, or blindness, or deafness, or sickness. We're just not quite sure all the time whether that's a direct result of sin, or whether it's not. Paul himself even says to the Corinthians, some of you are sick and have died because of your sin. He didn't say all of them have. So, we know that to be the fact with sicknesses and illnesses and diseases. However, leprosy is different. With leprosy, there is no ambiguity with leprosy. The Scriptures tell us it is always the result of the person's sin. Whether or not that sin is known or unknown. In the scriptures, in the Old Testament, we are led to believe, we are taught that the manifestation of leprosy is always the result--the direct result--of sin, that leprosy in the scriptures is given to us as the manifestation of God's judgment upon the sin, whether that sin be a known sin or an unknown sin. Look with me in Numbers, chapter 12, and your handout Numbers chapter 12, verses nine through 12. This is the instance of leprosy that struck Miriam, the sister of Moses, remember when Miriam and Aaron, they rebelled, revolted against Moses, and they said; Who is this, Moses? He's not the only one that can speak for God, we can also. So, they revolted against Moses. And so, as a judgment against that, God struck Miriam with leprosy. And just take a look at the account. In verse nine, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against them (meaning Aaron and Miriam), and he departed. And when the cloud removed over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead whose flesh is half eaten away. So, here is Miriam struck with leprosy that's a clear result of her immediate sin just prior to that. We think of the instance of Uzza, who's (I'm sorry), Uzziah in Second Chronicles, Chapter 26, verses 19 and 21. Then Uzziah was angry, (he was angry at the priests. Why? Because he wanted to be a priest himself, he wanted to be be king and priest). So, he had taken the censor in his hand, (which is what the priests do), and he wanted to burn incense. And when he became angry with the priest, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priest, in the house of the Lord, and King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death. And being a leper, he lived in a separate house, and it was excluded from the house of the Lord. So, here's what we see in the pages of the Old Testament, is leprosy is always a direct result of the sin of the individual. And so, this leprosy is given to us in the scriptures as something that's a manifestation of God's judgment upon sin. One of the things that shows us what's important to God is oftentimes how much space God devotes to it in His Word. And so, if something's important to God, we can expect that it will receive lots of treatment in God's Word. And so, do you know that God's treatment of leprosy in the Old Testament, God's directions to the priests on how to recognize leprosy, and how to proclaim it, how to declare it and then what to do about it, do you know that that equals his treatment of the Day of Atonement? The rituals surrounding leprosy equal in space, the amount of space, given to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most important day of the year. And so, the most important day of the year, all the rituals surrounding that day equal the amount of space given to leprosy. Chapter 13 and chapter 14 of Leviticus are devoted entirely to leprosy. And neither one of those are short chapters; chapter 13 is 59 verses, chapter 14 is 57 verses. So, some 116 verses are given to us for the recognition, the declaration of leprosy, and then the recognition if someone has been cleansed of leprosy, and then the sacrifices, and the rituals that involve that. So, some of the places that come to us, for example, in Leviticus chapter 13, verses 45 and 46. So, we just talked about how much space is given to this, but just here's just a tiny little snippet of how God instructs his people to deal with leprosy once it's manifested among them. Verse 46, the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes, and let the hair of his head hang loose, let it the hair of his head, hang loose. Do you know that leprosy is the only thing in Scripture in which the victim is told to make himself look worse? There's nothing else in Scripture like it, in which those suffer from the disease is told to purposely, intentionally make yourself look even worse than you do. He shall let the hair of his head hang loose, shall cover his upper lip, and he shall cry out, Unclean, unclean wherever he goes. So, he must cry out wherever he goes, Unclean! To let everyone know that here approaches this unclean person. And so, we're told that the amount of ostracizing that took place was extreme. And all this was from the direction of God; God directed his people to ostracize the leper. And so, we're told that whenever a leper, they had to live away from people. Luke chapter 17, we're told that the lepers stood 50 paces away from Jesus. And so, they had to live outside. And not only could they not come into the assembly of God's people, so, once the priests, once the priest stood up and declared that this was leprosy, unless you were cleansed, that meant that that day was the last time you would ever be among God's people, unless you were cleansed. And then not only that, but you had to live outside the town you had to live away from others. We're probably familiar in the New Testament, with Gehanna, which was sort-of like that ancient trash dump. That's where the lepers lived. And so, you were immediately displaced from your home, you immediately had to go live away from your home, the lepers house, after he was declared to be a leper, his house was torn down and burned. So, not only was he now destitute, unable to provide for himself in any way, his family, though they couldn't see him anymore, were now homeless. And so, they had to live away from others, he shall remain unclean, as long as he has the disease, he is unclean, he shall live alone, His dwelling place shall be outside the camp. Not only could he not live with his family, he couldn't even live in town. And we're told that even, if a leper, of course, entered a house, the house would be unclean, but we're also told that if a leper stood under the shade of a tree, the shade of the tree was unclean. And you, yourself, would be made unclean by standing under the shade of the same tree that a leper had stood. And that's the seriousness. That's the radical nature of God's direction to ostracize the leper from among them, to drive the leper out from among them. And God's people took it seriously. It's well known that when a leper would come around, that people would throw rocks at them, and throw sticks at them. Kids were trained, they were taught, to throw rocks at the lepers, to drive them away, to grab sticks, and yell at them, Get away!, like some sort-of dog, some sort-of mongrel dog that was coming around looking for scraps. They were told to drive them away from them. So, you're starting to kind of get a picture of what this was like, not only the disease itself, but God's requirements for his people to deal with the one who had such a disease as this. To be cast off from God's people all together, to be cut off from God's people. Leprosy is the only thing in which they were told that the disease became the person's identity. You remember, in the pages of the New Testament, the fellow named Simon the leper, who was even called Simon the leper, after Jesus cleansed him? That's the only thing in which the disease becomes the identity of the person. That's how ingrained it was. And so, no other thing in the pages of Scripture is parallel to this. The only thing in the pages of Scripture that really kind of comes close to this, in terms of ritual defilement, would be the touching of a corpse. In Scripture, we know that, in the pages of the Old Testament, the Jewish people would become unclean if they touched a corpse. And so, the ritual regulations revolving, or revolving around touching a corpse would be similar, in some way, to coming close to a leper. But what's interesting is that the disease leprosy itself, was somehow akin to being dead in itself. Take a look once again in Numbers chapter 12, and verse 12. This is again describing Miriam who was struck with leprosy due to her sin. Read verse 12 with me here: Let her (Miriam), let her not be as one dead. This is Aaron crying out to Moses, let her not be as one dead. The leprous person was like the Old Testament version of the Living Dead. The one who's dead, but still alive. That's what they were. They were dead, but still breathing. They were dead, but still moving and eating. Their life, in a sense, was over. They were just chased away from people with rocks and sticks. And children would taunt them, and berate them. They were like the dead who had not yet died. That's the curse that was placed upon them. No other condition in all the pages of Scripture is such a manifestation of God's judgment upon sin. So, this is what we are looking at when we look at the leper. And this is what we must grasp as we...when Jesus will cleanse the leper, Jesus is not healing him. In fact, nowhere in the New Testament, will you ever--you can go home and check your concordance--nowhere in the New Testament are we ever told that Jesus ever healed a leper--he cleansed them. And that's the only thing he cleansed. He didn't cleanse the blind. He didn't cleanse the demon possessed people. He didn't cleanse Peter's mother Law with a fever. He healed them. But He cleansed the leper. Because leprosy was not so, much a disease, as it was a sentence from God. Leprosy in the scriptures, is a manifestation, it's an illustration of our sinful condition of the consequences of our sinful condition, and the status of being separated from God. That's what leprosy is in the pages of the scriptures. So, if we think of pages of scriptures, like, for example, Ephesians chapter two, verses one, two, and three--this vivid description, this is back on page one of your handout, this vivid description of the heart that is separated from God; You were dead in your trespasses and sins. You see the connection? They were the dead, who are not yet dead. In the same way, that you are dead in your trespasses and sins, you are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that's now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. And were by nature children of wrath. If you could take leprosy, and transform it over into the spiritual realm, that would be Ephesians, 2:1, 2, and 3. If you could see the spiritual equivalent of leprosy, it would be Romans, chapter three, verses 10 through 12; None is righteous, not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. That's the spiritual equivalent of the leper. Now, we're told very plainly in both of those passages, that that's the condition of all of us apart from the regenerating work of Christ. So, a very troubling question probably enters our mind at this point. And the troubling question is this. Why would God strike some people with such a hideous condition, when we just read that all of us are like that? Why would God choose some people to be the ones that are struck with such an awful affliction, when we're plainly told that, apart from the regenerating work of Christ, that's all of us? And if that troubling question enters your mind, you must fight that question with the more correct question, with a more proper question. Instead of asking; Why would God afflict some with such a hideous disease? The right question to ask is; How can God be so, merciful, so, as not to afflict all of us with what we really are? Because all of us are spiritual lepers apart from the regenerating work of Christ. So, the real question is; How can God be so, abundantly merciful to most? Because what we see in this leper as we begin to look at the story, just a few moments what we're going to see in this leper, you should transmit that over into the spiritual dimension. And you should see yourself, apart from Christ, as this leper kneeling before Christ.