Services | If Jesus Is Willing

Bulletin

Hymn # 475 “Victory in Jesus”

SCRIPTURE READING – 1 Corinthians 15:55 - 58
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – “Let It Begin”

Praise and Worship
“In the House”
“This Is Amazing Grace”
“Your Promises”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“If Jesus Is Willing?”

PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection

“Let It Begin”

Sermon Notes
Mark 1:40 A leper falling on his knees asking to be made clean if Jesus is willing
Mark 1:41 Jesus being moved with compassion touches and cleanses him
Mark 1:42 The leper is immediately cleansed
Mark 1: 43 & 44 Jesus sternly tells him not to tell anyone but do what the law commanded after a leper is cleansed
Mark 1:45 The man does not listen and tells his news and as a result Jesus had to stay in unpopulated areas

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

A lot of misunderstanding about faith.

I find one of the best ways to really understand something or to learn about something is to illustrate it with a story, usually hopefully a true story that illustrates the point that you might totally understand what we're talking about. Fortunately, Mark and his gospel does that for us.

And so if you have your Bibles and you should, turn to Mark Chapter 1, start with verse 40.

I find this to be an excellent,

true story that illustrates faith.

And it's something that while it's a very short incident in the life and ministry of Jesus, it speaks so much.

And so it says this, "And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching him and falling on his knees before him, and saying, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." So I want you to see something that this story tells us that is kind of also reflected in the scriptures.

We see this leper who basically boldly comes to Jesus, because a leper is supposed to yell out ahead of time, "Unclean, unclean," so that people can avoid him.

But instead of yelling out, "Unclean, unclean," he comes to Jesus boldly.

Well, we are told in Hebrews that we are to go to the throne room of heaven,

the Holy of Holies, and find grace and help in time of need. That we are to go confidently and boldly. But we say, "But I'm unclean." Yes, I'm a sinner. But because of the blood of Christ, I am now holy, I am now righteous, and I now belong there. The high priest could only go into the shadow of that place once a year.

We can go frequently, daily, hourly to that Holy of Holies, and we do so confidently. So this leper comes to Jesus boldly, if you will, but he also comes to him humbly, falling on his knees.

So he is beseeching, he is begging Jesus to do something, but he does so from a humble position.

How many times in people's prayer life, it's almost as if they demand something from God. If God doesn't give me this, then there is no God. Or if God doesn't do that, I won't serve him. And we almost demand things from God. We don't do so humbly, and one of the great sins that we can commit is pride.

As it says, pride goes before the fall. And so even though this leper comes to Jesus boldly, he comes humbly.

And that's how we should make our request known to God, not one of demanding it, but one of humble, urgent request.

And it says this, "If you are willing, you can make peace."

He didn't say, "Can you?"

The notice of faith is that I'm not certain whether you have the power to do this. It's, "If you are willing to do this, you can."

So often people will kind of, in our prayer life, it's kind of, "Well, I'm not too sure God can do this. I'm not too sure he notices it, or I'm not too sure." It's, "Can God do something?" And the matter is, it's not if God can, for nothing is impossible for God.

Is he willing?

So I will confess something to you. A lot of times because as a pastor, people think, "Well, I have a special insight for God." And so they want me to pray.

And it's one thing to say, "Okay, I'll pray for you, but I'm not your president." It's another thing to be praying for somebody, especially if they're in the hospital and you're praying for somebody to be healed or whatever. And I'm always hesitant because I don't want it to affect their faith in the sense of, "Well, if the pastor asks and it doesn't happen, then maybe God doesn't care or God doesn't." And I don't want it to weaken their faith.

But the question isn't whether God can. Is he willing? Does God have another plan for me? Does God want me to go through this difficulty?

He's willing. I mean, he can, but does he want that for my life?

This person obviously in faith knows that Jesus, if he's willing, can make him. And notice what he's requesting.

He doesn't ask for the cessation of the leprosy. He doesn't say, "Stop the leprosy," or does he say, "Heal me from the leprosy." He wants the whole package. He wants not only be healed from leprosy, but he wants to be clean.

Because what is it that the leper would call out? He wouldn't call out, "I'm a leper, I'm a leper." Unclean, unclean. And people avoided you if you were a leper. One because you were unclean and they didn't want to become ceremonially unclean, but they didn't want to take a chance of you giving them leprosy.

Notice you were an outcast.

Even if you could go to places, you had to have a screen in between you so that that would happen, so that they could have no possibility of being contaminated by you.

I also want you to notice again how great this person's faith is.

Because in all of biblical recordings, there was only two people who were healed, made clean from leprosy.

The first one was Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Miriam and Aaron, who was also brothers and sisters, and Aaron, the brother of Moses.

Moses had married a Kushite woman, which the land of Kush was basically a little south of Egypt, and where we would consider south of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. So she was probably very dark, complected, or black.

And they weren't too thrilled with Moses having married this woman. And they were talking them between themselves that, "Why is it Moses is the only one who could speak for God?

They also speak for God.

God hears it." And they're in the tent of the meeting, the three of them, and God comes down and says,

"Outside."

And they go outside and he goes, "I may speak to prophets in visions and dreams, but I speak face to face with Moses.

In essence, you ain't know Moses."

And he withdraws, and when he withdraws, Miriam is full of leprosy.

And they panic.

And they cry out and say, "Moses, pray for us." Which I always, again, find interesting. That people always want somebody, when you mess up with somebody, they want you to pray for them rather than say, "Maybe you ought to ask God himself." But they say, "Moses, pray for us that God will take this away." And Moses prays for Miriam. And God says, "If she had spit in her father's face, there would be consequences.

Therefore she's going to have leprosy for seven days. She's going to have to go outside the camp and be there for a week.

Because there are consequences for thinking you're all that."

And then after seven days, she was healed.

The second healing of a leper came from a mean commanding officer who was a valiant warrior.

And this army had actually been besieging and fighting Israel.

And this commander had taken a prisoner, an Israeli girl, and she says, "If I mastered you of Elisha, he could heal her."

So he gets permission from his king to go and ask the king of Israel an audience with Elisha. And the king of Israel goes, "Wait a minute. This is a trap because there's no healing of leprosy. You're just going to have a reason to fight us all the more." But he grants the permission.

And before he ever even gets inside, Elisha goes, "Go to the River Jordan and dunk yourself seven times and you'll be healed."

And then he gets really upset.

And he goes, "How dare he ask me to do that?" And one of them servants goes, "You know, if he'd asked you to do something great, you'd have done it.

Why don't you do what he asked you to do?"

He goes and he dunks himself seven times into the River Jordan. He comes off the seven-time heal.

Those are the only two situations.

And yet this leper thinks that Jesus and knows that Jesus, if willing, can heal him. The funny thing about the story, if you look two more chapters, when their means are in the besieging the city and they're at the point of cannibalism, there's four lepers who are outside the gate because they're not allowed to go in the city. They go, "You know, guys, we go in the city, we're going to die because everybody's eating everybody. We stay out here, we're going to die.

Why don't we go to their camp?"

And basically the worst that could happen is we're going to die.

But maybe something good will happen. And when they show up, the garment is gone and there's all kinds of food and booty and spoil and they go, "Hey, we can't keep it to ourselves." And so they let the city know.

The man who is a commander of this type of army was healed of leprosy while God's people, the four lepers weren't healed, but let the city know God had provided the leave.

So let's see what Jesus does.

Verse 41, "Moved with compassion."

Moved with compassion.

Jesus isn't the Son of God who just doesn't care.

He is moved with compassion. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.

Now, the act of Jesus potentially touching him would render Jesus unclean, but for the fact that Jesus is God and heals him immediately. So both he and this man are clean.

But can you imagine this man, it doesn't tell us how long he was a leper, but at certain stages your skin starts to fall off.

It's a debilitating, terrible disease and nobody wants anything to do with you. You can't be around anybody. And so I don't know how long, but it has been some period of time that no one has even touched this man or fear of the consequences it might bring upon them.

And Jesus moved with compassion, touches. Just as Jesus with compassion touches us.

And said to him, "I am willing."

He didn't say, "I am willing" and touched the man. He touched the man and said, "I am willing."

I'm pretty sure as soon as he touched the man, it was obvious that the man was healed so he wouldn't have to say anything, but he wanted to communicate.

"I am willing be cleansed."

Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. He wasn't just healed, he was cleansed. Now I told you that only two people in biblical history were ever healed from leprosy.

One as a result of Moses and the second as a result of Elisha.

Pretty important prophets of God.

So the fact that Jesus healed him from leprosy would be a sign that somebody at least as important as Moses and Elisha are here.

And so that is why what he will say to them is, "And he sternly warned him and immediately sent him away.

And he said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priests and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them." Now I want you to notice what Jesus says is, "I want you to stay silent. I want you to go to the Levitical priests because Moses has a commandment how you are to be clean."

Now as I just said, only two people in biblical history were ever cleansed. One before the law of the cleansing, one afterwards, and that second one was a Gentile.

So I'm pretty sure Jesus sends this man for two reasons. One, because the laws required of him, he was supposed to present himself for an inspection for the Levitical priests to determine he is back free from leprosy. And then he was to offer an offering according to the law.

But I think what Jesus is doing is I want you to go to the religious establishment to let them know something, someone at least as important as Moses and Elisha are here.

And I'm pretty sure when if these priests, when he comes would go, "Have you ever done this before?" "No." "Have you ever done this before?" "No."

"I'm not even sure how we do it. So let's get the pitot, this un-scrolled and find out what the law is so that we can do it." Which tells the religious leaders, "Jesus is here."

And I'm sure they had to look in the scrolls because as an example, many years ago my son is very good at Excel and he prepared these spreadsheets for me that did auto sums so that you don't have to add up the columns it does. And so I had to do a similar thing in a different way for an accounting and an estate. So I go, "Well, if I add all the figures up and do all the stuff, it would probably take me as long or longer if I figured out the formula." So I kept trying to figure out the formula and whatever.

And what seemed to be the obvious formula was the formula because it wasn't working. So I did, I became a little younger and go, "Ah, I know what I'll do. I'll check Google or YouTube and let them tell me how to do it and it showed me how to do it and it worked."

If I needed to do that again because it was a couple of years ago, I don't remember how to do it. I would have to either cheat from that other thing or go to YouTube or Google again and figure it out. That's kind of, I think these priests are going, "We don't do this every day."

So what's the law? But again, I think the impact is not only is he following the law of Moses, but he's also telling the religious establishment, "Son of God's here.

Maybe you ought to check them out."

But this leper being unlike you and me says this, "But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and spread the news around to such an extent that Jesus was no longer able to publicly enter a city.

He told this guy, "Shut up, go to the priest."

This guy instead of shutting up goes everywhere and I'm assuming while he's going to the priest proclaiming that Jesus healed me, that he made me cleanse.

What has Jesus told us to do? To be his witnesses.

And we wonder if it's an appropriate time or place to tell people.

This guy was told by Jesus to shut up. We're told by Jesus to speak publicly. We're a little more silent. He goes, "You know what?

I had leprosy.

I couldn't be anywhere.

No one cared about me. No one touched me because I was unclean and he made me clean."

Praise be to God that what he did.

So he spread it as far as wide as he could. And I'm sure when, I was like, "Have you ever recalled somebody being healed of leopard?" No, I don't recall it. And all of a sudden it's the news spreads and spreads and spreads to such an extent that Jesus is so famous. He can't even go to the towns and cities.

But stayed out in the unpopulated areas and they were coming to him from everywhere.

One guy sent to the priests tells so many people that it's not like Jesus can't go to the next town. Jesus can't go anywhere.

And the news is so spread that it says, "Every," people are coming from him from everywhere.

Galilee, Judah, Jerusalem, River Jordan, all these places, people were coming because something significant had happened.

Because a man who was unclean only came in humility to Jesus in faith.

If you are willing, you can make me clean.

And unfortunately, while our skin doesn't fall off at this particular moment, those of us who are sinners, we are more than unclean.

We're unrighteous, we are unworthy.

And yet because of who Jesus is and because his compassion and because of the love of the Father, he came to us to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This man sometime in the future of this point will die.

His flesh will fail.

Yet he's proclaiming everywhere what Jesus is.

Jesus in healing our sinful nature and making us free from sin and no longer slaves, as we read, will give us victory over even death.

And that this new life that he will give us, we will be no longer subject to pain and death and disease and sickness because of what he has done to cleanse us.

Not because we do something difficult, but to simply say, if you are willing.

But pastor, you don't know how bad I have been. You don't understand what's a sinner and how many times I have thought to try to do the right thing and I do the wrong thing. You just don't understand how bad and wicked and evil I am.

Nothing is impossible with God. He has compassion and he will reach out and touch you. How is it I know? Because he reached out and touched me.

Grace is unmerited favor. No one who has ever received grace ever deserved it.

So what has left for us to do?

Come to him humbly and ask for cleansing.

And then unlike this one who was told to shut up, we are told to proclaim it.

That's how much our God loves us. That he doesn't want his salvation limited to you or me.

He offers it freely to those who will come.

In boldness and in humility.

All God's People Said.