He is Willing

Text:

Luke 5:12–14 NIV

12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” 13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

What is sin?

In Presbyterian circles, we learned in our catechism - “sin is want of conformity to the divine law.”

And yes, That is true. If you revile, steal, lie, cheat - those are sins.

But sin is deeper than that.

Recently, a famous pastor tweeted that the essence of humanity is sin.

Well, I know what he is getting at. We are all conceived and born in sin…but it wasn’t how we were created, and it won’t be how we end up.

Sin is something that has twisted and corrupted everything that made us good in the beginning.

Think of it this way

Darkness is when there is no light.

Cold is when there is no heat.

Sickness is when there is no health.

Sin is when there is no righteousness.

Evil is the absence of good.

And since we are alienated from God, all of those good things that we were created with became dark, sick, cold, exiled - and lead to death

Our affections - we love the things that we should hate. We hate the things that we should love.

Our will - we do the things we shouldn’t, and don’t do the things we should

Our minds - we think dark thoughts, and there is no wisdom in us.

This is not the ESSENCE of who we are. Who we are is image-bearers of God.

We were created to think, to feel, to do, to smell, to hear, to love, to taste, to breathe.

But sin is like a cancer that twists us into ourselves and we don’t even know it.

One of the big problems with sin is that it deceives. It convinces us that it isn’t a big deal. We aren’t really dying from it. We are at bottom pretty good. We have the strength to fix this if we just try harder.

But it isn’t true. It actually is a lot like leprosy.

Leprosy in the bible could be any number of skin diseases. Cancer, what we call leprosy today or what have you.

It was a disease that spread, that deformed the person, made him ugly and unclean and eventually led to death. It was catching. It destroyed. It made you ugly. It was the absence of cleanness and health.

A very good example of what sin does to us.

What sin does to the soul, leprosy did to the body.

So God uses it as an example to teach us the ugliness of sin.

It drives you away from fellowship and love. In fact, if anyone touched a leper, they also became unclean.

It drives you from worship - how can you enter the tabernacle when you are unclean? And how can you worship when you are far from God, a sinner without hope.

It makes you unclean and ugly.

It makes you alone and cast out...

And…there is no cure.

This is each of us before Jesus.

But it shows how desperately we need a savior.

Hopelessness

Leprosy will kill you. You can’t cure it.

You can’t decide, “You know what. Today I’m not going to be a leper.”

You can’t cover it up. You can’t just pretend it isn’t there.”

It is so, so hopeless.

Sometimes we lose sight of true hopelessness, and we don’t see the parallel with sin.

Some with chronic illness understand. “This can’t be cured”

But the rest of the world:

Did you try apple cider vinegar? Did you try essential oils? My doctor is the best. He’ll fix you right up.

Leprosy isn’t like that. And neither is sin.

In fact, there was a word for a sickness that was hopeless and would lead to death without fail. Anush. without cure, leading to death.

This is what we can’t fathom.

We know the effects of sin.

We do things that we are all ashamed of. But we aren’t sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

From our deceitful hearts flow all manner of lies, adulteries, lusts, anger, wrath, malice - and so on.

We hide, we fight, we are alienated because we are lepers.

And we think that if we simply try harder, we will somehow make ourselves better.

But ultimately, we sin because we love to. We choose to sin because we want to. And we won’t admit it to ourselves, because we are fallen

Isaiah 1:6 NIV

6 From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness— only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil.

Jeremiah 17:9 NIV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

That is the hopelessness of the sickness that will kill us.

Alienation from God, and we can’t fix it.

We cannot be good without being in fellowship with God, and we can’t be in fellowship with God unless we are good.

But here is the good news.

There are two things that this leper knew.

He knew he had leprosy and could do nothing about it.

He knew that Jesus could heal him if Jesus wanted to.

And he was about to learn something else.

No one that ever asked Jesus to be cured was ever turned away.

Ever.

But what about where it says, “He couldn’t do any miracles there because of the lack of faith.”

If you have no faith, you won’t ask, will you?

How can you call on the name of the Lord if you haven’t believed in him? And how can you believe in him if you haven’t heard of him? And how can you hear of him unless someone tells you?

And you with lightening minds just realized that I paraphrased Romans 10.

Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

EVERYONE.

Gatekeepers

And more often than not, the church has become the gatekeepers with the lists of rules.

The catholic church of the middle ages - penance, indulgences, sacraments, priests, popes -

And today - you have to be a certain kind of person before you can come to Jesus.

And the gatekeepers don’t come, because they are too busy comparing themselves to everyone around them.

I thank God that I am not like other men.

Jesus said this:

The New King James Version Chapter 23

13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

We look into the kingdom and see sinners - real sinners. People like tax collectors, people like Naaman, people like Abel, others

And we say, Nope. This is why the fearful won’t enter the kingdom of heaven. We are afraid of the others, we are afraid of what will happen if we preach the gospel.

We are afraid that people will get away with all kinds of stuff if we tell them that God loves them and invites them to himself.

And one thing that Luther saw was this - whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

“Lord, if you are willing, YOU can make me clean...”

And this is the gospel in a nutshell.

“I am willing. Be clean”

There was only one condition - that there are no conditions. All you do is ask, like a beggar searching for bread.

Like a leper without anything.

The picture

That is the picture. The man was cleaned immediately.

And of course, we know that we are still sinners. We know that we are still in these cursed bodies.

The leper eventually got old or sick and died.

Because this miracle pointed to a far, far deadlier and greater disease that could only be cured by the death, resurrection, and spirit of the son of God.

That lifegiving spirit poured out on Pentecost!

Because God doesn’t want robots. He didn’t create us to be blocks of stone, or donkeys that have to be led around with bits and bridles.

His desire is that we love him with all our hearts…and that we think his thoughts after him, and follow his heart, and love what he loves and hate what he hates.

And so our sanctification is not just Jesus waving a want.

It is through the trials of life, the fellowship of the saints, the word and sacraments.

And all of it - if it is functioning properly, only has one message- we cry out daily to the Great Physician, and he heals us little by little.

And the day will come when we will stand before him clean, whole, without sin, without death, without illness, without leprosy - pure and whole.

And we know that he is able - for he is almighty God

And we know that he is willing, because he said so.

“I am willing. Be clean.”

But the only way to hear those words is to finally understand the hopelessness of the situation.

We have become experts in pointing at everyone else who is a sinner, and it doesn’t even occur to us that our sin is deadly, incurable, and only Jesus can heal us.

We think we will bring our riches, our goodness, our beauty, our sacrificial giving - and we forget something...

The only thing that we bring is our leprosy. You can cleanse me.

I am willing. Be clean.