Left the house and went off to a
solitary place where he prayed. Simon and
his companions went to look for him, and
when they found him, they exclaimed,
Everyone is looking for you.
I just replied, let us go somewhere else,
to the nearby villages, so I can preach
there also. That is why I have come.
So he traveled throughout Galilee,
preaching in their synagogues and driving
out demons. A man
with leprosy came to him and begged him
on his knees. If you are willing, you can
make me clean. Filled with compassion,
Jesus reached out his hand and touched
the man. I am willing, he said. Be
clean. Immediately the leprosy left him,
and he was cured.
Jesus sent him away at once with a strong
warning. See that you don't tell this to
anyone, but go show yourself to the
priest and offer the sacrifices that
Moses commanded for your cleansing as a
testimony to them. Instead, he went
out and began to talk freely, spreading
the news. As a result, Jesus could no
longer enter a town openly, but stayed
outside in lonely places. Yet the people
still came to him from everywhere. The
word of the Lord.
There are two kinds of people in the
world.
There's one kind of person.
Who comes to a job and.
These kind of folks, they know just
what to do. They organize, they
strategize, they solve the problem, they
stick to the long term goals.
They know how to get the job done.
These people are wonderful to have
around. You really want these people on
your team. We describe them with words
like efficient and reliable, and you want
them around because they get things done.
Great people, wonderful people.
But. With
these kinds of people, there's almost
always a besetting fault that comes
along. They get the job
done, but sometimes at the expense of the
needs of the people around them.
They tend to lose sight of the point of
the plan that they're achieving. OK,
their living room is so clean that you
are afraid to sit down in it.
Their schedule is so full of things to do
for you that you you can't talk to them,
OK? Or maybe they get annoyed with you
for interrupting them while they're doing
things for you to carry out the plan.
Their sin is the tendency to put.
The plan above the people.
But there's the other kind of person
These people never seem to mind when you
interrupt them. They're eminently
interruptible. You get a
sense that you're important when you're
around them. And there's such, there's
such wonderful people to have around, you
know, we describe them with words like
available and warm, you know, and you
really want these people on your team
because they remind you of the reasons
for doing what you're doing. OK.
But.
These folks have a hard time often
getting things done. They seem unable to
stick to a longer term goals. They
often apply for extensions. They lose the
keys. Their living room
doesn't get clean, or if it
does, only frantically.
That their sin is a tendency to put
people above the plan.
Now of course I'm simplifying the world
here, but you know, I'm describing it.
Maybe you're a long a spectrum, but I'm
describing the poles here for a reason.
You take my wife and me.
By the way, my wife sends her love to you
and my whole family does actually.
They're very anxious to be coming up
here. And when we get an apartment,
they're going to be joining us and
they're just, they're geared up for it.
They're they want to come and be with
you. No one said to
my 5 year old daughter recently after the
weather changed down there recently.
Someone said to her are you cold? She
said no I'm a New Yorker.
I guess there's various ways to interpret
that. I'm not
just cold. I'm, you know. Um,
but they're really, they're really
psyched to come. And but my
wife and I, our marriage has really been
a 12 year study. And what happens when
you take two of these people on opposite
poles that I just described and put them
together to work together to be to be
married to each other?
Now I'm going to leave it to you to guess
which one of us is which.
We've changed each other a great deal. I
mean, that happens in marriage. We
have changed each other a great deal, but
still we're we're still on these poles.
Supposing, though, that you
met one person.
Who had the strengths of both?
And the weaknesses of neither.
What would he look like?
As we light our first Advent candle here
and we're approaching the season of the
incarnation, I want to begin to look at
Jesus. But today I'm not. We're not going
to talk about a Christmas story. We're
going to look at Jesus in a beginning
moment in his ministry that you just
heard read. Remember, we're going to do
an exegesis of this passage. I'm going to
start in the middle. OK, I'm the
preacher. I'm allowed to do that. I'm
going to start with verses 404142. OK,
we're going to start in the middle. We're
going to look at the beginning, Then
we'll look at the end, because the middle
tells us what the real deal is. The
middle is the middle. It's the crux and
the. Is about leprosy OK?
Verse 40 We don't really know. We're not
entirely sure what leprosy was back then,
but we know that it did make you
untouchable. As as bad as the disease
was, what was worse is that you lost
your friends. It
made you the discarded of the society.
And nobody wanted you anymore. Nobody
wanted to be near you. And nobody
certainly would touch you. You lost human
contact. Nobody would touch you. I talk
with an acquaintance of mine, Doctor
Frank Young, who is the former head of
the FDA and very interesting because one
time he said to me that he thought
that. AIDS was the modern equivalent of
leprosy, and that's significant coming
from him because the AIDS really became
an issue during his administration.
And you think about it, there's a
lot to recommend that you This was
a disease that was seemingly incurable.
It had a stigma attached to it,
and it ended up.
You know, that was the end of human
contact in a lot of cases for you.
OK, so there's a lot to to that
parallel. That's why we we are so blessed
and so support the Isaiah 58 ministry in
this church because it's really doing
what Jesus was doing right here was
touching folks that have a stigma being
untouchable. And verse
41 tells us that Jesus was moved
with compassion love this words flag
means omise blog mesalamine because it's
one of the few places in the
gospel where the gospel writer describes
Jesus's motivation behind his action
right we get a lot of things
where. Gospel is telling us what Jesus
did. Very few places where they go behind
and say This is why he did what he
did. But here's the plan. Here's the
place where they do. He's moved with
compassion. And So what Mark is doing,
you see, is he's inviting us into the
realm of Jesus psychology in a way.
And it's also one of these places where
we get a clue of out how different
Jesus is from me.
Because I know in my heart that when
I see somebody greatly suffering or with
a big problem, my inclination is to run
the other way. You know, I tend to
recoil from great suffering. And I
learned this about myself by riding the
New York City subway, because, you know,
those who ride the subway. Know that
around any corner you may be faced
with some of the city's great suffering.
There's serious suffering going on in
this city and it might be around
any corner in the subway. And my
inclination when I come, come to face
face to face with with a person.
Like that is to I. I'm not towards
them. I want to recoil it. God is
not like that.
God is not like that. See, the
chorus of the Old Testament is that
the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow
to anger, and abounding in loving
kindness or steadfast love. And it's
always been interesting to me that you
can find that whole expression there in
all parts of the Old Testament. This
is a chorus that spans. You know, 2000
years of sacred writing and in all the
different literary genres of the Old
Testament, it's in the law, it's in early
narrative, it's in the late narrative,
it's in the writings, in one of the
Psalms you can find. Why
does it keep cropping up?
Well, it's because it's so true.
God is merciful. He
is motivated by mercy. He
is kind, that's why.
So when you see verse 41, the
and the way it's written, it's very
deliberate. Jesus reached out to his
gospel writer and he touched him.
It's very deliberately written. Because
that was just not something that you did.
You did not touch a leper. And motivated
by his compassion, Jesus reached out and
he touched him. It was an astonishing
thing to do. So you see the gospel
writers surprise at this.
Now this is something I'm, I'm bringing
this out because it's something that you
need to know. When you're in
need, if you're in need this morning,
especially in great need, God's heart is
towards you. OK, Yahweh is near to the
broken hearted. He saves the crushed in
spirit. What Jesus is showing us here is
the very heart of God toward great need.
Now if we move to verse 43,
verse 44, what we see is an
amazing change here.
It's it's the way it's was translated.
And I guess with NIV this morning, you
know that he gave him a strict charge
that that is actually with a strong
warning. It isn't a prepositional phrase
in the Greek. It's a verb. It's a very
strong words. Embry Mall MI is the verb.
And it's a word expressing great
intensity. It's not much used
in the New Testament, not much used
outside of the New Testament. So it's a
word the gospel writer deliberately chose
here. Expresses great emotion and
intensity. That's what it's reserved for,
and I wanted to go into the meaning of
this word a little bit for a little while
here. It's just to bring this out because
it's key. After Jesus's motivated by
compassion, he turns around and he he
does what this word is. What is this
word? Well, Mark uses it once more at the
end of the Gospel. He uses it. For
this intense yelling at a woman
that people did when she came
in and anointed Jesus head with
expensive oil and they were indignant
and they they Embrey Malmi her
OK, they yelled at intensely at
her. The Gospel writer John uses
it. He uses it when Jesus comes to the
tomb of the friend that just died. His
friend, a close friend of his died. He
came to the tomb and I think it might
be translated there. He was grieved in
spirit or something, but it's the same
word. It's ember Mama. It's.
Some intense, intense expression of
emotion there. At
the tomb. Go back into
the Septuagint, which is the Greek
translation of the Old Testament. We find
this word used in Lamentations, which is
which is the story of about.
You know Israel at its low point after
God sends Israel into exile. And I would
like to read to you how this word is
used. Lamentations 26. It's talking about
God, what God did to Israel. God has
broken down his booth like that of a
garden laid in ruins, the place of his
appointed feast. The Lord has brought it
to an end. And Zion appointed feast and
Sabbath. And in his here uses a noun.
In his fierce indignation he has spurned
king and priest. OK,
very intense word in fact, and always
negative you notice?Now it's
used one place we can find outside of
these scriptures in Greek literature, and
I thought it would be fun to bring this
in, actually read you a passage where it
appears. In
the Greek, it's used by the Greek poet
Escalus. You might remember as one of
those Greek poets. Ohh Greek playwrights,
one of the first to write a play
with more than just one character in the
chorus. He wrote about, he
wrote a number of plays and this is from
his play 7 Against Thieves. What I'm
going to do is I'm going to read the
passage and want you to try to figure out
once you try to guess where Ember Modem
is being used. OK, this is about this
battle against thieves and the and the
and the horses and the and the army.
Chomping at the bit, they're ready to go.
To attack, They're ready to go. This is
the passage. See where it's used. OK.
Soldier now for the next to
draw the gate. He should attack
the third lot. Leaping from the
upturned bronze helmet, sent a tea
Cletius to hurl his troops against
the Nystatin gate, his restless mares
eager to charge the entrance toss.
Their frontlets as he turns them now
this way, now that, their muzzle pipes
filled with the proud beasts breath and
snorting sound out a savage music on
his shield as a device. No humble
1A man in armor climbing up by
a ladder to the enemy's wall to
sack their town. And this man too
shouts. His words are written there.
Aries himself shall not repulse me from
their walls. It's a beautiful
passage. Where do you think that that
verb was used?
Well, I won't ask you to raise your
hands, but I'll tell you. See if you were
right, it was. It was for the horses.
When they snorted, it was the snorting of
the horses. That's the same word being
used there. OK,
I don't mean to say that Jesus snorted at
this man, but I wanted to give you a
sense of the semantic range of this word
to show you that it was intense what he
did. Now you might be able to soften it a
little and say, well, you know, yelled
strong warning. You might be able to
soften it somewhat, but you can't soften
it that much. You certainly can't soften
what he does next, which is he throws the
guy out. Actually cast them out.
Ebalo actually. Same word used when Jesus
casts out a demon and he throws him
out of the place.
So what?What is Jesus
doing?And his charge, you
know, it was very emphatic. Say nothing
to nobody. Literally in the Greek double
negative, nothing. Don't say nothing to
nobody. Is is
Jesus just capricious?How could
he be so compassionate and then so
vehement?
You know, if I were a disciple, I think
that there would be many moments like
this where I'd be looking. Kind
of back and forth. Completely
befuddled. And then maybe
a long time later, maybe maybe years
later, suddenly realizing, wow, so that's
what was going on.
I I never realized someone could be that
good.
Truly, God is love. I think that would be
many moments for me like that as a
disciple.
Because I'm going to say to you the
reason that he yelled at the leper and
cast them out through a mountain that
till recently, Lepper. Was to prevent the
crowds. See, let's go back to verse 36
through 39. Sets it up for us, OK sets up
the reasons the disciples are looking for
Jesus high and low and they're really
looking for and the verb tells us that,
you know, they were worried. They weren't
just out for a jaunt in the morning. They
were they were searching for him high and
low, trying to find him in verse 37. And
they find him, you know, they don't say,
you know, how are you? We missed you.
What's up? You know, it's it's what's on
their mind is everybody's looking for
you. You know the you know
the iron is hot, Jesus, because of what
you did, you know everybody's seeking
you. You could tell they're
being crowd driven. These disciples,
they're being people driven. You know,
the audience is growing. The iron is hot.
Jesus, let's keep striking. Let's do it
right. And Jesus answer is very odd
in verse 38 and I loved how Ty read
it. They're very matter of fact. You
know, they're saying everybody's looking
for you. Jesus says well let's go
somewhere else. You see that?
Let's go somewhere else. Let's go into
these other towns. But it's
because of his ministry plan which he
tells them that's why he wants to do
this. And he lays out the plan for this
reason. I came out, you know, do you want
to know what Jesus long term project is?
Here it is. He wants to
get into as many population centers of
this region of Galilee as possible to
preach. That's his plan to get
into the towns. OK. And verse 39 tells us
that he was doing that. He was following
that plan and actually doing it. That was
his plan. Get into as many population
centers as he could so people could hear
him preach. Now,
people. Jesus knew. Jesus
knew something about people.
He knew that people are desperate.
He knew that humanity is full of needs
that were sold under sin. Sickness racks
our bodies. You know, many people. Many,
many people are just desperate for hope.
Jesus knew that. I mean that much we
can identify with. That hasn't changed
much through time just because now we
have vacuum cleaners.
And he certainly wanted to minister to
those needs, yes. But he wanted
his message to reach even the people who
were not desperate. Ohh. The desperate
would come for sure. But what about the
others? What about the people who needed
his gospel just as much? Who still needed
forgiveness and needed to be shown that
they needed forgiveness?Who was
just as bad off as the leper but not so
aware of it. Well, where were
they?In the towns.
And Jesus knew that if he got if word got
out that he healed a leper. You
know, not just cast out a demon, not just
healed other diseases, but healed a
leper. He'd be swamped.
And if that happened, he couldn't take
his preaching into those population
centers anymore, into the business lives
of the people. While they were doing
their work, you know you couldn't go and
preach in the marketplaces and a certain
type of people would never hear his
preaching again in person.
So out of his love for the non desperate,
he wanted that ministry to go on as long
as possible. I mean, just imagine
supposing that, you know, 6:00 news
tonight, you sit down and it's announced
that there's an instant cure for AIDS.
Cure not just three drugs that put
it off, but cure OK instant. Or
maybe cancer too. Cancer and or aids?
Cancer and aids. Put
together. All right, comes across on the
6:00 news tonight. And, you
know, cancer and AIDS, that implies
probably any other disease, right? You
know?Or maybe.
It's also the newscaster tells you it's
completely free. No medical insurance
needed. All you had to do was show
up apparently. It's
available in one man. Only
in one place. Perhaps only one
day. Supposing that comes across
on the news, you know, what do you think
the traffic pattern would be like Monday
morning?Along West Side Drive.
What do you think it would be like in the
Holland Tunnel?What would it be like
at La Guardia?
Folks, there were about 1 or 2 million
people in Palestine at that time.
And if you wonder what would happen, this
news gets out, well, you don't really
have to wonder if you have your Bibles,
you can turn right back to verse 28 and
see what happened after Jesus just did
one exorcism. What happened? Gospel
writer saying, ohh, these people coming
from all over that region of Galilee.
Or you could look forward, as we're going
to do now, to what actually did happen.
And verse 45. See, the
guy goes out. And
you could see Mark's point here.
He's making clear the lepers, until
recently, lepers disobedience. He says
he talked freely, spread the news
directly, disobeys Jesus's word directly.
OK. And you know, this is another proof
that the Gospels are true. They're not
just made-up stories. It's the kind of
good thing to question that you might
bring up at a Q&A like we do
here after the service. But it
shows us here just the way this is
written. It's one of the reasons you can
you can believe that it's true because
this is just what would happen in real
life if a miracle happened to ordinary
folk like you and me. OK, We have this
idea sometimes that these people involved
in these miracles were walking around
their feet, 3 feet. Off the ground now
that suddenly, you know, something good
happens and they stop sinning, they stop
doing anything wrong. Not so. They remain
sinners just as we do, and God does
great things for us, right, do we not?
Do we get suddenly holier and better
behaved when God does something great for
us?Often
not. Often not.
Often it's not. Often it's the opposite.
So before you look down at the leper
in your heart, ask yourself how you would
have done. Have you ever even
tried? Have you ever even tried to not
talk about something life changing that
you were excited about for the sake of
another? You ever even tried that?
You know, he walked down the street and
that's somebody said, somebody say, say,
didn't you used to be a leper?
To. Yes,
I used to be a leopard. No would come
near me. Nobody would touch me. My life
was in shambles and Jesus touched me.
And then a little off he went, all over
Galilee. And the result
is. And it's telling
that Mark ends this passage, ends the
pericope with this word and a great
ponto, then he actually ends the whole
passage with this word.
People are coming to him from all
quarters, literally in every direction.
Jesus looked N people were coming. He
looked S people are coming east, West,
coming for every direction. He couldn't
budge. And
you know, going on in Chapter 2 when he
finally gets to Capernaum, you know,
people find out he's at Peters house,
there's so many crowds that people are
just cutting through the roof to try to
get to him.
So, in other words, by the end
of the passage, people, because of the
healed leper, Jesus's time of preaching
in the towns was over, at least
in that region of Galilee.
And the rest of this half of the book
pictures him as managing his ministry
around the crowds. It's crowd management
from this point on.
Now listen folks, when he met the leper,
he knew that he knew that possibility was
was right there in front of him.
He knew it when the man fell to his knees
in front of him.
And what's perhaps the most amazing thing
about this?Passage. Is that
Jesus knowing the risk?
Knowing the whole plan that he had.
Healed him anyway.
He killed him anyway.
Note two things. First, God's
heart is being shown here.
In spite of our misuse of His gifts, in
spite of our disobedience, God wishes to
do us good anyway, even if He knows it's
going to happen. And that's what
we see in Jesus. This is what
God is like. That's what he's like.
He will heal you and help you, knowing
that you may disobey Him.
He won't die for you on a cross.
Even while you're hating him.
And secondly.
I want you to see that it's
because of his love for all types
of people that Jesus, following his
compassionate healing so harshly, treated
this man in a deliberate, wet way
to impress upon him as strongly as
he could to keep quiet.
See, the compassion and the vehemence
shows us God's perfect character. You
know those two types of people in the
world with their accompanying strengths
and weaknesses. You have people whose
lives are in control tend to put the plan
above the people. You have people who are
tender tend to put the people above the
plan. Jesus held them pull together
perfectly. And then, after he did
what he could, he entrusted himself to
the Father. See, Jesus is not a
control freak. He does not withhold the
healing because this guy has the
potential to mess up his crucial ministry
plan. He stopped short
of letting his concern about being
thronged too early prevent someone in
need from receiving his help.
He allows his compassion to make the
decision to give this guy health. He
didn't have to. He risked it.
Knowing that it was the better path to
take. And then Jesus did all that he
could to prevent the news from spreading,
and then he entrusted the outcome to His
Father. Do you see
this beauty in Jesus?
This, this is the one that you're dealing
with in your life right now.
Why the struggle?Why
are you fighting him?Why? What is there
to fight here? Why all this struggling to
look for loopholes out of Christianity or
out of his will for you that you know?
I mean, isn't this the kind of person you
always wanted to know? Somebody who can
get things done, but who is sensitive to
the people he's with?Well, here
he is. Here he is
desirous of being your closest friend.
Isn't this the kind of person you always
wanted to work for? You know, a boss who
wasn't a control freak?Well listen
here is 1 you can serve. Who you
can really believe in as your Lord.
Isn't this the kind of person you've
always wanted to elect? A kinder, gentler
ruler, yet with a backbone for the long
term plan?For the
long term goal, well, because he is
king already. Even without your vote.
But you can elect him so in your heart.
Why do you fight him?
Imagine the leper and how Jesus looked at
him, wanting to heal him in spite of his
faults. That's how he looks at you. It's
how he looks at me.
Turned to him now, as we pray.