I'm going to ask your attention tonight to
a few verses in the eighth chapter of
Matthew's Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter eight,
and the first four verses.
Our gracious Father and our God, now is
the open time book.
We lift our hearts again to you, and
we pray to you that thou wilt do
for us what our blessed Lord did for
those disciples on the resurrection evening, when he
opened to them the scriptures, and opened their
understanding, and opened their hearts, and opened their
eyes, and opened their ears.
Willst thou do all this for us, and
give us to receive thy truth in good
and honest times, as the very word of
the living God undertakes for us, as we
seek to minister independent from thyself, and in
the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Matthew eight, verses one to four.
And when he was come down from the
mountain, a great multitude followed him, and they
came a leper unto him, and worshipped him,
saying, Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make
me free.
And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched
him, saying, I will, be thou free.
And immediately his leprosy immediately was cleared.
And Jesus said unto him, Be thou tell
no man, but go thy way unto the
priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded
for a testimony to them.
Those of you who are familiar with your
Bibles, and I hope you all are, will
remember that in the book of Leviticus, which
was the priest's guidebook under the old dispensation,
there are two chapters devoted to the detection
of, and the detection and cure, cleansing of
leprosy.
Chapters thirteen and fourteen.
You'll remember that in chapter thirteen we are
told how leprosy was to be detected.
If a man or a woman had in
the skin of their legs a rising or
a bright spot that was giving them some
trouble, they were to be brought unto the
priest, and the priest was to examine them
carefully.
And if he discerned certain symptoms as indicated
in that chapter, then he was pronounced this
person or persons to be leprous.
And we read the man in whom the
leprosy is, his head shall be bare, his
clothes shall be red, he shall have a
covering on his upper lip, and he shall
cry, unclean, unclean, and without the cap shall
his habitation be.
It was a terrible affliction.
Leprosy, you see, is the awful picture of
sin.
Leprosy was the most filthy, the most horrible
disease that was known in ancient times, and
sin, though we so often treat it lightly,
is the filthiest, the vilest thing that has
ever intruded into God's universe.
We're told that fools make a mock at
sin.
So, whenever you find anybody who speaks scornfully
of what God's word has to say regarding
sin, you know exactly what he is.
God says he's a fool.
Now, we're not authorized to call people fools
ourselves, but when God calls a man a
fool, then we need not hesitate to apply
that epithet to him.
I remember once some years ago, a group
of us were going night after night from
Oakland to San Francisco on the ferry boat,
the whole meetings over in San Francisco, and
we had with us a delightful Irish brother
who played a concert leader and was a
very good tenor singer, and as we went
back and forth in the ferry boat, we'd
get off to one corner on the deck,
and this good brother would lead us in
the singing of thoughtful hymns.
And I remember one night as we were
singing, a man who was reading a newspaper
near us dropped off with great indignation, and
just as we finished, he said, who are
you people anyway?
A pack of fools intruding the religion of
a pope who have no interest in it?
My Irish friend said, yes, you know, sir,
we are fools for Christ's sake.
Whose fool are you?
And the man turned and fled.
He was away down at the other end
of the boat in a minute or two.
Well, you know, it's a terrible thing to
be one of the devil's fools.
Fools make a mock at sin.
Sin is a fearful affliction.
One might as well make a mock at
a terrible disease like leprosy.
You see, leprosy, like sin, was a constitutional
disease.
A man wasn't a leper because he happened
to have an incurable sore here upon his
hand or his arm or some other part
of his body, or it might be on
his head, for we read that if a
man had a rising or a bright spot
on his forehead or on his bald head,
this becoming way of wearing the hair was
common in Israel thousands of years ago.
And if a man had a sore, one
of these horrible sores in his head, well,
it was leprosy there.
On the body it was called leprosy of
the flesh, and you see it just indicates
the two different kinds of sin.
We read of the lusts of the flesh
and the lusts of the mind.
The lusts of the flesh, of course, include
all kinds of fleshly appetites, breaking over from
God's host's objection to God's holy law, drunkenness,
and lasciviousness, and licentiousness, and other terrible sins.
And a great many people, respectable people, look
with utter disgust on folks who are given
to these sins, but they forget that leprosy
of the head was just as terrible as
leprosy of the flesh, and that the lusts
of the mind are just as wicked in
God's sight as the lusts of the flesh.
Pride, and arrogance, and conceit, and unbelief, these
things are just as hateful to God as
drunkenness, and adultery, and the gluttony, and other
vile sins.
They all tell the story that the one
guilty of them is a sinner.
But I started to say a man was
not a leper because he happened to have
some of these thorns here or there upon
the body or the head.
They were there because he was a leper.
The leprosy wrought from within out.
It was a constitutional disease, and a man
might be a leper for some time, and
quite unconscious of it until at last these
outward evidences appeared.
And so a man is not a sinner
because he gets drunk, or because he tells
lies, or because he's guilty of some vile
form of immorality, or because he's proud, and
haughty, and vain, and conceited.
He's not a sinner because of these things,
but he is guilty of these things because
he's a sinner.
Because out of the heart the Lord Jesus
tells us to receive evil thoughts, fornication, and
adultery, and all these other unholy things that
make manifest the fact that one is a
sinner.
And, you know, leprosy was an absolutely incurable
disease.
In our day physicians have discovered a remedy
that seems, at least in some instances, to
bring about a cure if used in time.
But, in Bible times there was no known
cure for leprosy.
The man who became a leper was accounted
a curse of God, and there was absolutely
no help for it.
You'll remember it was said that King Uzziah,
that because of his pride in attempting to
assert the priesthood, had entered the holy place
in the temple with a censer in his
hand.
When the high priest sought to hold him
back, that suddenly the leprosy came out on
his forehead.
You see, that was leprosy of the head,
indicating the pride that dominated him, and we're
told he dwelt in a several houses a
day of his share.
What, mixed with leprosy, there was no cure.
Dear friends, there's absolutely no cure for sin
so far as man is concerned.
No man can by any means redeem his
brother, nor give to God a ransom for
him, nor can any man deliver him from
himself from the power of sin.
Sin, so far as man is concerned, is
an incurable disease.
But, thank God there is a cure.
I'll never forget reading long years ago, when
they were holding the first World's Fair in
Chicago, that they put on what they called
there a Parliament of Religion, and they invited
the representatives of all the great religious systems
of the world to come together to explain
their beliefs, to make clear to the people
what their creeds were, and so on, and
give folk an opportunity to choose between them
if they wished.
Well, they came from all over the world.
There were Hindus, Swamis in their yellow robes.
There were the Chinese followers of Lao Tzu
in their priestly garb.
There were the representatives of the Persian apartheid,
who held the Zend-e-Vestas, their sacred
scriptures.
There were Mohammedan Mullahs in their robes, representatives
of all the religions under heaven, and there
were representatives of the various branches of the
Catholic Church Greek Catholics, and Greek Orthodox, and
Roman Catholics, and Jacobite Catholics, and Monoposite Catholics,
and Coptic Catholics.
You know, some people imagine the Catholics are
all one.
It's only us.
We poor Protestants are divided up, but blessed
is the dozens of fifteen different Catholic churches
are all claiming to come right down from
Christ and the Apostles, and they were all
there.
And here and there could be seen among
the multitude representatives of Protestant Christianity, and among
these was Joseph Cook, the celebrated congregational preacher
and lecturer of Boston, Massachusetts.
When it came his turn to speak, oh,
what a message he gave.
This was before that great audience of thousands
of people, and he said to them, my
friends, I come to you today taking my
text from Shakespeare's Macbeth.
I draw your attention to the scene where
Lady Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan, is
trying to wash the blood of the murdered
king from her hands, and Shakespeare says, see
how she washes that hand.
That was the red, that red right hand.
It was the multitude even as he's incarnate,
making the green one red.
And her husband Macbeth stands by and cries
out, oh, damn, ah, will that hand ne
'er be clean.
All the perfumes of Arabia could not weaken
that little hand.
Dr. Cook said, I've listened to the representatives
of all the religious systems who are gathered
here from the East and the West and
the North and the South, and I come
to you today and I place Lady Macbeth
on my right arm, and her husband on
my left, and I walk down the aisle
of this grand congress of religions, and I've
only one question to put to the representatives
of every system here, and my question is
this, who will cleanse our red right hand?
Who will wash away the guilt of our
sins?
He said, I listen to all the different
representatives here, and I find different ones telling
us how we ought to live in the
future, and how we should reform our lives
and teach to behave better, but I've yet
to hear one who can tell us how
the sin of our lives is to be
cleansed.
Who will cleanse our red right hand?
Ah, he said, at last I turned back
to the one of whom I learned that
my mother is mean, and I look up
into his face and say, who can cleanse
our red right hand?
And the answer comes back, the blood of
Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all
sin.
That's the only cure.
That's the only way that guilty sinners can
be cleansed and made fit for heaven.
Well, the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus, I repeat,
tells us how to diagnose cases of leprosy,
and because the priest has a responsibility of
doing this very thing, I'm certain that every
priest in Israel who officiated at the temple
must have read that chapter over and over
and over so as to get all the
details of it clearly in his mind.
But the fourteenth chapter told the priest what
he was to do when a man was
cleansed from the leprosy.
You know, I've often wondered whether any priest
in Israel ever took the trouble to read
that chapter through twice.
Undoubtedly, at least at once.
But I fancy he'll be ready to say
to himself, well, I don't know why this
is in my Bible.
Why, it says here that when a man
has been cleansed from his leprosy, then the
priest is to do certain things for him.
And I've never heard of a man who's
cleansed from his leprosy.
Lepers are never cleansed.
You know that you can go through your
Bible from the chapter that tells us of
the healing of Miriam in the wilderness to
where this passage is not yet coming to
you, right on down to the very beginning
of the New Testament.
And you never read of a leper being
cleansed in Israel.
Not once.
The Lord Jesus said many lepers were in
Israel in the days of the life of
the prophet, but to none of them was
the life the same but to Nahum and
Nathanael.
And he was a saint, and this chapter
wouldn't apply to him.
But we never have any record of any
leper ever being cleansed in fifteen hundred long
years.
Why on earth did God put that chapter
in the Bible?
A chapter that manifestly nobody could ever act
on, so far as people could see.
A chapter that nobody, that gave instruction which
no priest could ever carry out as far
as anyone did, and yet there it was
in the book.
A dead letter, they might say, but it
was part of God's work.
And you know, one day a priest was
officiating I fancy at the temple.
I have to draw a little bit of
my imagination here, but I'm sure I'm not
going outside of Scripture record.
A priest was officiating at the temple, and
a man came to him and said, look,
could you come outside?
There's a man out here who says he's
been cleansed from his leperism, and he's come
to offer the sacrifices of Moses the man.
And I fancy that priest would say whatever
he thought he might.
Why, I've been a priest here for years.
I never heard of a man being cleansed
from leperism.
My father was a priest before me, and
he never knew of a man being cleansed
from leperism.
As far as we can go back into
the record, no one has ever heard of
a man in Israel being cleansed from leperism.
And you need to tell me that there's
a leper who has been healed outside the
gates of the temple.
Yes, he's there, and he wants you to
come and look at him.
And I fancy, you know, almost unwillingly, that
priest would go up.
Where is this man who says he was
cleansed from leprosy?
You're the man, so let's have a look
at him.
And he would examine, according to the 13th
chapter of Leviticus, which tells us he knew
well.
And we have to say, well, I don't
see any evidence of leprosy here.
But are you sure?
Yes, there were lepers.
Well, if I wasn't, somebody made a terrible
mistake, and I've suffered awfully from it through
the years.
I came to this very temple years ago,
and I was carefully examined by the priest
who pronounced me to be a leper.
And because of that, I've had to dwell
in the wilderness apart from my family all
these years.
I haven't been permitted to visit my loved
ones.
I haven't been able to come close enough
to my wife or my children even to
touch their hands.
If they brought their food to me, they
placed it on a rock, and then they
threw them far off as I came over
and picked it up in order to feed
upon it.
And if anybody drew near, I had to
cry out, on tree!
On tree!
And oh, how I've suffered in my form.
Quite seen as though my very fingers and
toes and my feet and my hands were
just literally rotting away, and my face has
been amassed of horrid flames and sores.
My whole body has been reaping with this
filthy disease.
Well, I don't understand it.
There's no evidence of it now.
How was it cured?
What doctor did you find?
What medicine did you take?
You ought to make it known to everybody.
If you found a cure for leprosy, everyone
ought to know it.
The Jerusalem Medical Association ought to have all
the details so that they can publish it
abroad and give everybody the opportunity of getting
the remedy.
How were you cured?
And I think the man would reply, well,
I was up there in Galilee, and I
was out for the wayside in the wilderness,
and I saw crowds coming down the highway
just the other day, and I wondered what
was all about, and I shut as near
as I felt I dared, and I shouted
out, what's this excitement?
What's going on?
Somebody answered back, Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth
is coming this way.
And I said, Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth?
Oh, I've heard strange things about him.
He's the one I'm told who makes the
tongue of the dumb to sing.
He's the one who opens the ears of
the deaf.
He's the one who opens the eyes of
the blind.
He's the one who makes the lame man
into the heart.
He's the man who they tell me heals
all manner of diseases.
Surely he could do something for me.
Surely my case is not too bad for
him.
And I would say, Jesus, sir, I forgot
all the prohibitions, you know, and I ran,
and I saw in the midst of a
crowd, and I fell down at his feet,
and I said, Lord, if thou wilt, thou
canst make me clean.
And he put forth his hand and touched
me.
Touched you?
Well, then he became untreated.
Any man who touches a leper is untreated.
I bet it didn't work that way.
He touched me and said, I will be
thou clean.
And in a moment, I felt in my
body that I was healed of that awful
plague.
And the next instant, I looked at my
own hand.
I could hardly believe it.
Why, there was just a disease of mouths,
not a sign of disease upon them.
And I knew that I was no longer
a leper.
And he said to me, now, don't go
treasured abroad, but go to the temple, show
yourself to the priest, and offer the sacrifices
that Moses commanded.
So, here I am, and I want you
to offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded.
And I think I, that priest, that is
impudent.
He knew what am I to do.
Hey, go and get me my Bible, will
you?
I don't know what to do for this
man.
And away they go, and get him the
book of Leviticus.
And for the first time, he'd read that
14th chapter with real interest.
Now, he had found the case where he
was to carry out what was written in
it.
And you know, from that time on, for
three and a half wonderful years, there was
perhaps gently a week that went by that
somebody didn't come to the temple on the
same evening.
Someone calling for the priest to examine him,
because he'd been claimed to be leprous.
And one time there were nine of them
came at one time, all together, nine of
them.
And I can't use the priest's name for
some of that.
And he said, you need to tell me
that you were all lepers.
Yes, you were all lepers.
And in fact, there were ten of us.
But the other one, well, he was a
Samaritan.
And he wasn't interested in our temple.
He was far more interested in the man
that healed him.
We were all together, and we came to
Jesus.
And we asked him to heal us.
And he said, go show yourself to the
priest.
And as we went, we were healed.
There's power in his words to heal and
save.
And the priest would have to again carry
out all that was written in the Fourteenth
and Leviticus.
Are you surprised that when you turn over
to the book of Acts and read of
what happened a few years later, after the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we're told, and
a great company of the priests were obedient
to the faith.
Why, you see, they'd had so many wonderful
testimonies to the power of Jesus.
Well, what were they to do?
Well, you have to turn back to that
passage in Leviticus.
I'd like to read it to you, but
my eyes are so thin, I'd only hold
things up a bit trying to follow it,
so I have to depend on memory.
But you know, we're told that when a
man was cleansed, and the leper seemed to
behold the priest, and the priest was to
come forth and look upon him, and to
be proud that he was actually cleansed, then
it says, the priest shall take two birds,
alive and clean, and cedarwood and scarlet wool
and the hyssop, and he shall kill the
living bird in an earthen vessel over living
water.
Then he shall take the other bird, and
he shall dip it in the blood of
the dead bird, and let them shall sprinkle
the blood of the dead bird upon the
leper, and let the living bird loose into
the open field, and the leper shall be
counted as clean.
That was his judicial cleansing, to fit him
to come back again among the people of
God, to go back to his home and
dwell with his family too.
And what does it speak of?
Oh, it seems to me it's God's beautiful
picture of the death and resurrection of his
beloved son.
Two birds, one of them that had to
die, the other soared up and up into
the air bearing upon it, through me, the
blood of the bird that died.
You see, they were identified as it were,
one with the other.
It took two birds to illustrate Christ in
death and Christ in resurrection.
He was delivered for our offenses, he was
raised again for our justification.
The priest took that little bird, and you
know the bird of the heavens just keeps
the Christ, the heavenly one, coming down into
this world to cleanse poor sinners.
He says he came not to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance, and the priest
put that bird in an earthen vessel, and
you know what the earthen vessels speak of.
The apostle Paul, when he's talking of believers
as carrying the gospel to a lost world,
says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels
that the excellency of the power may be
of God and not of us.
The earthen vessel, you see, refers to our
poor, frail humanity, and so the little bird
in the earthen vessel spoke of the heavenly
one, the blessed eternal son of God, taking
our humanity apart from its care, if the
human with his being, in other words, becoming
a man.
What for?
Oh, the bird was put into the earthen
vessel to die, and the Lord Jesus became
a man to die.
To die for you, dear us, says what?
For you, that you might not perish, that
you might be saved eternally, and have you
ever thanked him for doing so?
He came from heaven's highest glory down to
Calvary's depths of woe to save your guilty
soul.
The little bird in the earthen vessel, the
Christ of God in a human body, in
order to die.
You remember the apostle Peter uses that figure
when he's speaking of the proper relation of
Christian husbands and wives.
He says to the husband, giving honor unto
the wife, who is the weaker one.
I remember some years ago we were at
the Bible conference of the Quebec, and there
was one brother there who was, oh, he,
I suppose he was a Christian.
I hope he's not too bad in our,
our, our, but he was one of these
hard types of men.
He was so hard in his family, and
so stern with his wife and his children,
but he was very prominent in speaking of
the nature.
And so we were on that passage, and
he looked up and he said, Brother, what
do you understand about that?
Giving honor to the wife is on the
weaker bed.
But I said, Brother, I think it means
this, that you should be very considerate of
your wife.
And when you come home and find she's
got a bad headache, you get in and
do the dishes for her, and clean things
up for her.
Well, he said, you think that's what it
means?
I said, exactly what it means.
Well, he said, I never thought it was
anything like that in the Bible.
I thought it was trying to find an
answer.
I said, you see, the body of the
wife is spoken of as the weaker bed.
And so the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus,
came down from heaven, and he took the
earthen vessel of our humanity in order that
he might die.
And see how exact Scripture is.
The priest was to kill the little bird
in the earthen vessel over living water.
And living water is God's lovely picture of
the life-giving Holy Spirit.
And it was in the power of the
eternal Spirit that the Lord Jesus offered himself
without thought or control for our salvation.
He said, the Son of Man is come
not to be ministered unto but to minister,
and to give his life for ransom for
man.
Well, there's good, there's gladness, yes.
And he saw the little bird put to
death, and he saw the priest carrying out
his trust, and then he saw the priest
take the living word, and he did to
prove it to the living word in the
blood of the bird that died.
Then he left the earthen vessel, and away
he went, up and up until he proved
it with holy sight, and it was God's
picture of his own blessing Christ.
What did you think tonight?
Up from the grave he arose with a
mighty triumph for his foe.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lay forever in his place.
That bird fluttered flying away with the blood
of the dead word upon his throat, and
spoke of the Christ of God ascending to
heaven with the mark of death upon his
resurrection body.
But do you know this?
Of all those who will be in heaven
for eternity, the Lord Jesus is the only
one whose body will bear a scorn for
an evidence of suffering.
Every other one will be freed completely from
every evidence of suffering or pain, but he'll
bear for all eternity the mark of his
hand.
You know, it says when he appeared on
earth in resurrection, and Thomas was so unbelieving,
the Lord Jesus said to him, Thomas, receive
it as I have, thrust it into my
thigh.
Receive your fingers and put them in the
wounds in my hand.
The wounds were there, even though he was
in his resurrection body.
And long years after John, looking up into
heaven, said, I saw in the midst of
the crow, and in the midst of the
living one, and in the midst of the
elders, a lamb as it had been slain.
Wayward and gracious, I saw a lamb that
looked as though it had once been offered
in sacrifice.
By and by, when he returns again, take
a look upon him whom they fear.
And when he appears to Israel, they'll behold
his fiercest hand, and they'll say, Lord, what
are those wounds in my hand?
And he'll answer, those with which I was
wounded in the house of my friend.
Yes, he'll care them forever.
Thy wounds, thy wounds, Lord Jesus, those deep,
dark wounds, they tell the sacrifice that frees
us from sin and death and hell.
These binds me once forever to all who
own thy grace.
No power these bonds shall sever.
No time these tarnishes.
Oh, as in life, as with song, I
shall know him.
I shall know him as redeemed by his
child.
I shall stand.
I shall know him by the prints and
the names in his hands.
Well, what is it that he claims to
ever have to do himself in order to
be pronounced free?
So far as his judicial claims he was
concerned, he had nothing to do.
He took to a chair and looked on.
He saw what the priest was doing.
He saw the bird killed.
He saw the living bird nestled, and he
realized that in some way it was all
meant to be peace for him, but he
had nothing to do himself.
But just look on.
Have you ever stood for the cross of
Jesus and looked on in faith?
And have you seen him there suffering, bleeding,
dying from grief?
And then did you look again and see
that that cross is empty now?
There's no one hanging there now.
But did you look yonder to the throne
of God?
There's a one who once hung the cross.
It is strong as a nail, a bridge
to heaven.
And God has declared that all who receive
his righteous are cleansed from every sin.
To him give all the prophecy of faith,
that through his name, whosoever believeth in him
shall receive remission of sin.
Dear friends, and I hope you realize that
you're a poor lost child.
I beseech you, just give up trying to
make yourself any better.
Just acknowledge that you're hopelessly lost unless God
can do something for you.
And then do believe the gospel message.
God has done everything that needs to be
done.
He's given his son to die for you,
and now if you'll just put your trust
in him, you will be saved, believer.
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart
that God has raised him from the dead,
thou shalt be saved.
For with the heart man believeth on the
righteousness, and with the mouth confesseth he shall
be saved.
Just look at that.
You can take it all on the fingers
of one hand.
It begins with in, and that's on purpose.
It ends with say, and that's blessed And
then there are three shalts in between.
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth that
Jesus is Lord, and shalt believe in thy
heart that God has raised him from the
dead, thou shalt be saved.
That's all there is to it.
You say, but don't I have to pray
until I feel that God has accepted me?
Dear friend, it's a question of feeling.
Do you know how often the word feeling
is found in a new fashion?
You know, just twice.
And in neither case is it anything to
do with our salvation.
In the one place, it speaks of our
having a great high priest who can be
touched with the feeling of our infirmity.
In the other place, it speaks of a
healer who has been so far that her
path changes.
And you know how often the word feel
occurs in a new fashion?
Just once.
And that's in the seventeenth chapter of the
book of Acts, where Paul is talking again
of a healer, and he says, God is
not far from any one of us, if
happily we might feel after him.
Men who don't have a father, who don't
know anything about the gospel, but might groan
after God, weep after God, like an infant
crying in the night, an infant crying for
the light, and with no language but a
cry.
But when it comes to poor sinners, anxious
to be saved, God has nothing to say
about feeling, but he's a lot to say
about believing.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved.