The Touch of the Savior

Introduction

Last week we finished by looking at Jesus going out into all of the region of Galilee preaching and performing miracles. The next section that we are going to look at takes place while he is out doing these things. Tonight we are going to see a leper cleansed. This disease of leprosy was a brutal one that attacked the entire body including your blood and your bones. This is not to mention all of the social regulations around it that we will get to later. Through this story we will once again see the heart of the savior but we will also see his touch and what it means to be clean. Lets start out by reading the passage. Mark 1.40-45

Mark 1:40–45 ESV

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.

carrying through Mark we continue to see a few themes continue to come up. The first I want to call your attention to is the theme of the wilderness or desolate place. We see the book of Mark begin in this place and we see it continually go back to this place. The wilderness is a place of spiritual growth and refinement and Jesus constantly returns there, sometimes alone sometimes with others. The second thing is his heart. Through Mark we see that Jesus has a heart for the lost and hurting. He wants to help them and that is seen again here in the end of chapter one. The final theme that is the theme of the Bible but is highly evident here in Mark is the need for salvation. The need for our salvation is the greatest need that we have and this is the greatest desire of Jesus. We see this need illustrated here in the story tonight through a real life scenario in the life of Jesus.

Through tonight's lesson I want to call your attention to what is clean and what is unclean and what the real point of it all actually is.

Pray

Unclean

Mark 1:40 ESV

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

Leprosy was a disease that would slowly destroy the body, it would cause sores and could even lead to the loss of things like your ears and your nose. In Luke’s telling of this same story he says that the man is full of Leprosy. This guy has it rough. That is not even to mention the social issues associated with the disease. People with the disease were not permitted to do most things and they could not get within what by our standards would be 50 ft of any person that does not have the disease. If you had the disease and someone was approaching you you were supposed to holler unclean. You lived your life as a beggar except you couldn’t get close enough to anyone to even beg. It was an awful demoralizing life, you were always lonely and looked down upon. You were unclean.

The interesting thing about this is that we are not to different than this man in the story. He is ceremonially unclean but we are spiritually unclean. The main difference is that when you are unclean with leprosy it is obvious to you and to everyone around you that you are unclean. Often times when we are unclean spiritually we work to not see it and others don’t often mention it unless they themselves are clean.

Our sin makes us unclean, it is a stain upon our souls. Sin is anything that you think, say, do, or don’t do that goes against God. It say in Romans 3.23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”. We are all sinners in desperate need of a savior. The sad thing is that what happens most of the time is instead of running to the savior like this man did, running to the only one that can help you, we just ignore the problem. What we need to do is to realize how serious our sin truly is and see how badly we need a savior. Just like with this man there is nothing we can do to make ourselves clean, it is only what the savior, Jesus Christ, can do for us. We need to not ignore the problem but to see the problem and also seek the solution. Tonight I tell you that the solution to your problem is found in Jesus, he can make you clean.

Clean

Mark 1:41–42 ESV

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.

Jesus was moved deeply by this man and does the unthinkable, he touches him. According to the law if you touched someone with leprosy you became unclean, but here the exact opposite happened, the man became clean. Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish it and he is Lord over it. When he comes he shows us how broken we really are. A lot of the laws that they had at this time regarding leprosy were not even from God but were ones that they made up later, if you are interested in what the laws were considering leprosy you can find them in Leviticus 13-14. Jesus had compassion on this man, he saw his pain.

Just like before this relates to our own lives, we are unclean but Jesus can make us clean. Jesus has compassion on us to as sinners and is waiting for you to come to him to be healed, to be saved. All he ask is that you repent and believe in the gospel. This it the way to salvation, this is the way to be made clean from our spiritual uncleaness. This is the message that Jesus began preaching just a short time ago and this is the message that he continued to preach through his entire ministry and this is the message that I am preaching to you today. We are all unclean sinners until we have been made clean and forgiven by Jesus. It is my desire that each and every one of you would come to the realization of the seriousness of your sin and your need for forgiveness.

Jesus Christ never asks anyone to define his position or to understand a creed, but “Who am I to you?” Jesus Christ makes the whole of human destiny depend on a man’s relationship to himself.

Oswald Chambers

Everything hinges on one thing, our relationship to Jesus. Do you have a relationship with Jesus? are you clean?

The Point

As I hope you are beginning to see now the point of all that Jesus is doing is not to bring physical healing but spiritual healing, he uses physical healing as he seeks to bring the spiritual healing. The point of all of this is that there is a way to salvation and it is Jesus.

These people did not understand the true purpose of Jesus’s ministry. Their focus was not in the message but rather on what they could get. They let these great miracles cloud their vision and they missed the most important part. It says in Matthew 7.13-14 ““Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Many people do not find the way to heaven because it is not the nice easy way. Many of you here tonight are on the wide road leading to destruction because you have never come to the realization of how fallen and broken you truly are. If tonight you are starting to see the seriousness of your sin, your uncleaness, then you need to repent and believe in the gospel. The gospel that says you are a sinner but Jesus came to make a way for you to be forgiven and your relationship with God restored. Faith and repentance is the way to salvation, will you take the narrow path?

for those of you that have put your faith in Jesus and are saved, realize the point tonight for you is to recall what happened in your salvation, you were once just like this leper, unclean, but Jesus made you clean. Realize the significance of your salvation and let that empower you to serve Jesus with your whole heart. A few weeks age Rod did a devotion at our men’s breakfast about serving with your whole heart and passages like this should motivate us to do that because they give us an image of what we used to be like and what we are now. You were unclean but Jesus made you clean.

These people did not get the point of Jesus’s ministry, they were blind to it. So much so that Jesus had to quit going into towns and started teaching in the wilderness because there were so many that came out just to see a miracle. What they never realized though is that the true miracle is the saving power of Jesus Christ, the power to not only save from physical issues but the even more important power to save the soul.

I plead with you here tonight, don’t miss the point as so many have.

Conclusion

All of us start out unclean. Some find a way to be clean through Jesus but more find the way to destruction. In your life which path do you truly think you are on? Be honest with yourself, you don’t want to be lying to yourself about where you will spend eternity. Putting your faith in Jesus is the only way to go to heaven, has there ever been a moment in your life where you have done this?

Just like the man in the story without Christ we are unclean but our stain comes from sin. Sin is anything that we do or don’t do that goes against God. We are all sinners in desperate need of a savior. Sin entered the world through Adam back in Genesis and is still the problem that we face today. Jesus came and lived a perfect life, literally perfect, and was killed on the cross and while on that cross he bore our sins and made a way to be forgiven for all of our sins. Three days later he rose from the dead and we are told that all we need for salvation is to turn from our sin and put our faith in Jesus as the only way for salvation.

Our whole world is fallen and sinful but, the majority miss the point of it all and keep going down the wide path to destruction. Don’t miss the point and just look for a miracle, the real miracle is that Jesus would look at any of and after we ask to be clean he say “I will”. Will you come to him and ask to be clean? Will you come to him to be saved? Will you come to him to be forgiven? will you embark down the narrow bath that leads to life?