The Worst Best Kept Secret

Children’s Message

1 Thessalonians 5:11 (ESV)

11Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

*Chair illustration*

Prayers for Students and Teachers

Adults Message

Today I want to talk about the thought of “The Worst Best Kept Secret”. I remember times growing up when my family would try to surprise me with a birthday party. It never worked because either my parents would give too many hints about it or one of my brothers would spill the beans about it.

We might think of someone who gains a generous inheritance from a deceased loved one. Every one comes out of the woodwork then.

You find out that you have second and third cousins who you never met before and who live somewhere you never been before.

God mentions something about the worst best kept secret in the story of Jesus healing a Leper from Mark 1:40-45.

This is a healing story with passion in it. It is not just any healing story.

Jesus is frustrated and upset when he heals the man; and in the process of healing him, Jesus breaks down walls that have been carefully built and preserved by well-meaning religious types, when he touches the leper.

He dares to do the unconventional, in fact, the unlawful, so that he may accomplish the unlikely

Let’s go a head and read it now.

Mark 1:40–45 (ESV)

40And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

41Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”

42And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

43And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once,

44and 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.”

45But 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.

WE SEE THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST V40-41A

40And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

41Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him

First of all, we see the compassion of Christ here.

What Lepersy is

William Barclay described what a leper looks like:“The whole appearance of the face is changed, till the man loses his human appearance

They grow several ulcers

From them there comes a foul discharge.

The eyebrows fall out, the eyes become staring.

The voice becomes hoarse

and the victim wheezes because of the ulceration of the vocal chords.

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

Tradition says that this leper was traveling with others and eating with them at an inn and that’s how he got the disease.

Notice what the Leper did.

Came to him

implored him

kneeled to him

acknowledged that Christ could make him clean

Notice how Jesus responded

Jesus was moved with pity and compassion

Jesus reached out and touched him

WE SEE THE CLEANSING OF CHRIST V41B-42

and said to him, “I will; be clean.”42And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

Next we see the Cleansing of Christ. Jesus immediately cleanses the Leper. In order to fully grasp this concept we need to look at what the Old Testament says about another leper.

Leprosy is like sin in many ways. There are some good reasons why many ancient rabbis considered a leper as someone already dead.

Leprosy is like sin in that:

It begins as nothing.

It is painless in its first stages.

It grows slowly.

To fully understand this comparison of being a leper and sin we have to study about it in the Old Testament.

In 2 Kings 5 it mentions THE HEALING OF NAAMAN who is a leper

I. The good Life.

Naaman had almost all that a man of the world could wish in the way of honour, fame, and success, but there was a sore in his life that all the praise and wealth of the world could not heal—“he was a leper”

Like the rich young ruler, there were many things which he did not lack, but he did lack “one thing”—purity.

He was unclean. Wherever sin has dominion, it casts its shadow over the whole character.

II. Merciful Message. “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, … and thou shalt be clean” (vv. 8–10).

Nothing but trouble and disappointment could come by going to the king instead of the prophet.

The means was within easy reach. “Wash in Jordan.” The promise was sure. “You will be clean.” The prophet kept himself out of sight that Naaman’s faith might be in God and not in man.

III. Rebellious Spirit. “Naaman went away in a rage” (vv. 11, 12).

Why did this God-sent message of salvation from the lips of the prophet come to his heart like a spear thrust instead of a healing source? Because of his pride and false notions of the God of salvation. He said, “I thought he will surely come out to ME,”

Note, that proud “I” and that leprous “me” must be broken down before God’s saving power can be enjoyed. The simple message of the Gospel of Christ cuts at the roots of all preconceived opinions and self-efforts of men.

Naaman, or any other man, may wash as often as he likes in the “rivers of Damascus,” but there is no regenerating power in them, because there God has not put his promise. All our own works are godless, therefore utterly powerless to save us.

IIII. Changed Man. “His flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (v. 14).

He became a new creature through the obedience of faith (Matt. 18:3). His faith was also evidenced by a cleansed life.

“The flesh of a little child” signifies not only perfect cleansing from his foul disease, but the renewing of his youth. What a perfect illustration this is of the wonder-working power of the Gospel of Christ!

“If any man be in Christ he is a new creation: old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

We not only see the compassion and the cleansing of Christ but we also see the command of Christ.

WE SEE THE COMMAND OF CHRIST V43-44

43And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once,

44and 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.”

Told to be silent, the newly healed man cannot comply. Jesus, now himself ritually unclean, has sent the cleansed leper “back” to the priests not as any nice, obedient Jewish boy would do, but as a sign of holy defiance.

He sends the healed man back to demonstrate that cleanliness now happens not by any codes or laws, but by being in touch with Jesus, who is now ritually unclean but who has authority to make even a leper clean. The game is on!

Upon healing the leper, Mark describes Jesus not as jumping for joy at the leper’s new situation, sends the man back to the priests.

In Binding the Strong Man, Jesus’ instructions that the leper go back to the priests and undergo ritual cleansing] only make sense if the man had already been to the priests, who for some reason had rejected his petition.

Deciding to make an issue out of it, Jesus sternly gives the leper these orders:See that you say nothing to anyone! Rather, go back and show yourself to the priest and make the offering prescribed by Moses for your cleansing as a witness against them.

This passage presents to us a paradigm of purity.

Mark has taken us from the religious space of the synagogue, to the private space of the home of Peter’s Mother in law, and now we find him taking us to the desolate and open spaces.

The compassion of Jesus is no sentimental pity for this poor man. His compassion compels Jesus to reach across the boundary of disease to touch an untouchable, violating Jewish law, and in the process to make himself an untouchable, ritually unclean.

WE SEE THE CONTAGIOUS CHRIST V45

Why would Jesus risk his own health and ensure that he would become ritually unclean by touching this leper? Mark precedes his touch by telling the reader something essential about Jesus.

That brings me to my final point. That we see the contagious Christ. It wasn’t disease or sickness that he spread. It was the hope, compassion and mercy of God!

Jesus essentially traded places with the Leper. After Jesus healed him and the leper didn’t follow the command of Christ to not tell anyone the news of Jesus spread everywhere.

It’s like what Paul Said....

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV)

It was us who deserved the punishment and wrath of God for Sin. It’s us who should of been on that cross but God in his mercy sent his son to take our place because of the love he has for us.

APPLICATION

the cleansing of the leper shows us the compassion of Jesus Christ. That we too may reach out to him for healing.

We may not be suffering from leporsy but we face a greater problem. The problem of sin.

Jesus can cleanse us too just as he did the leper. We can pray like David and say “Create in me a clean heart o’ God and renew a right spirit with me. God is willing but are we?