"IN CLEANSING THE LEPER, JESUS DEMONSTRATED THAT HE FREES FROM THE EFFECTS OF SIN."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 100:1,2
Psalm 97:6
Psalm 103:1,2
Hymn 21:1,3
Hymn 60:1,4,5

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

In the course of our lives, we all, sooner or later, become sick. We’re laid up with an illness relatively minor –a cold or the flu- or possibly with something quite major – be it cancer or a heart condition. Whatever illness we have, we all know that sickness is not particularly enjoyable. It’s uncomfortable, and possibly painful.

Where, my brothers and sisters, does sickness come from? We know from Holy Scripture that sickness has its roots in the fall into sin. God had said to Adam and Eve that if they would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. Sickness, to greater or lesser extent, precedes and foreshadows death.

So it is that sickness reminds us of our sinfulness. Being ill is not just a nauseating and tired feeling that sends you to bed. Rather, through illness the Lord confronts us time and again with the fact that we have fallen into sin and therefore are subject to death.

But if illness is rooted ultimately in the fall into sin in Paradise, there must be gospel in the Bible also about sickness. And indeed, beloved, Scripture tells us that the Christ did not come into the world only to forgive sins as such; He came also to free from the consequences of sin, including death and therefore also sickness. This gospel is driven home for us in the account of the cleansing of the leper. With Good Friday around the corner, this is the gospel that I want to draw out with you this morning.

I summarise the sermon with this theme:

1. What the Lord cleansed.
2. How the Lord cleansed.
3. Why the Lord cleansed.

What the Lord cleansed

Jesus, our text tells us, stretched out His hand, touched him, and through His word of power, cleansed him. Who was it that Jesus touched? What did He clean? Matthew leaves no doubt; the man Jesus touched and cleansed was a leper.

Why a leper? Would it have made any difference if the man mentioned in our text had been, say, a cripple? Or an obvious cancer patient?

As it turns out, beloved, it does make a big difference that the man of our text was a leper. In fact, it is because the man was ill with that specific illness known as leprosy that there is gospel in the actions of Jesus recorded in our text. So we need to know what leprosy was all about.

Leprosy. The term brings to mind those pictures that we’ve all seen at one time or another of persons suffering from sores all over their body; fingers and toes have fallen off, the face is disfigured as the disease eats away at the flesh. That’s leprosy, officially called "Hansen’s disease".

But that is not the disease referred to in our text. In the Bible, a leper was anyone who had a skin disease of some sort. Hansen’s disease, where the nerves die so that you can’t feel when you hurt yourself, is fatal; I’m told there is no known cure. The skin disease referred to as leprosy in the Bible, on the other hand, was curable. That’s obvious from the provision in the law that the cured leper had to show himself to the priest. In fact, as far as one’s actual health was concerned, a person who suffered from what the Bible calls ‘leprosy’ could live a very normal life, earn one’s own living.

But if leprosy was only a skin condition that did not make life itself impossible or even difficult, if leprosy was not a chronic illness, what was so terrible about leprosy? Why would this leper approach Jesus to ask for cleansing? Why, for that matter, does he ask for cleansing instead of healing?

To understand what leprosy is all about, congregation, we need to go back to God’s revelation in Lev 13 and 14. Those are the chapters in which God gave Israel particular instructions about leprosy.

What God said? God told Israel that if anyone had a swelling or an eruption or a spot on his skin, he had to go to the priest and show the spot to that priest. The priest in turn had to examine the spot and determine whether the hair in the spot had turned white and the spot was deeper than the skin itself. If the hair had turned white and the spot was deeper than the skin itself, then the priest had to diagnose the man as having ‘leprosy’ and as such pronounce him unclean.

Why was such a person unclean? The reason is not because this skin disease was somehow contagious. Note that it is the priest who has to declare the person unclean, not a doctor. That implies that the pronouncement of uncleanness had a religious significance, not a medical one.

Why was such a person religiously unclean? We are to recall that the laws recorded in Leviticus were given to Israel while that people was camped at the foot of Mt Sinai. God had made His covenant with this people, claimed them to be His. Now it was God’s holy wish to live among the people He redeemed. So God instructed Israel to build for Him a tabernacle. At the end of the book of Exodus we are told that the Lord moved into the tabernacle Israel built for Him; God dwelt with His people.

But who was this God? He was a God Most holy, a God so holy that He could tolerate no sin in His presence. And what was Israel? Israel was sinful, Israel was one-and-all sin. As such, holy God and sinful Israel could not live together. Something had to come between God and Israel that would make living together possible. That was why God, right after He moved into the tabernacle, gave to Israel the instructions mentioned in the book of Leviticus; that book is to be read in the context of holy God and sinful Israel living together. In that book, God taught Israel what it meant to be sinful, what it means to have a holy God. That’s why that book begins with instructions about the various sacrifices. God could live with Israel and Israel could live in God’s presence only on the condition that there be forgiveness for Israel’s sins.

It is in that light that we have to see God’s instruction in Leviticus about leprosy. These chapters about skin diseases are not concerned first of all with Israel’s hygiene; those chapters rather reveal something more about how a God of holiness and a people of sinfulness can live together. What, then, is the specific message in these chapters about leprosy; what do these chapters tell us about God and Israel living together?

What God taught Israel in these chapters about leprosy is this: Israel, because it is sinful, is by nature dead. For death is the wages of sin. And the dead cannot be in God’s holy presence. That’s God’s instruction in Lev 13 & 14.

I have to work that out. On the skin of an Israelite there might appear a swelling or an eruption or a spot. The priest had to examine whether the spot was white and deeper than the surface of the skin. White: in skin that’s the colour of death. Granted, the person concerned was still alive, even quite healthy, but the point is that death had begun to enter the body. And where does death come from? Said God in Paradise: if you eat of the forbidden tree, you shall surely die. Death is the consequence of sin. Well, here is an Israelite with death on his body. In other words, he is touched by the consequences of sin. But if he is touched by the consequences of sin, then it follows that that person is himself very much a sinner, he is sinful. Here, then, was divine instruction for Israel in the doctrine of total depravity, the doctrine of sin.

The details of Lev 13 & 14 point up this conclusion. According to the vss 45 and 46, this Israelite with the skin sickness was to wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose. Why the torn clothes and the unkempt hair? Because torn clothes and unkempt hair were signs of mourning, grieving. The leper had to grieve because there was death in his body; though still alive he was on his way to the grave. So he had to sing his own funeral dirge and so make clear by his appearance to one and all that the wages of sin is death. The appearance of the leper was public testimony that all were by nature spiritually dead; indeed, already there was in human bodies the beginnings of being physically dead.

Note also that the leper was instructed to "dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp" (vs 46). Why the isolation? I mention two reasons. In the first place, God had decreed that uncleanness was contagious; whoever touched an unclean person or thing was in turn also unclean. Hence uncleanness had to be removed from the people. There’s a second reason, more important still. The leper was sent out of the camp, out of the presence of God. That meant that he was in effect cut off from the communion of the saints and excommunicated from the privilege of sacrificing in the tabernacle. He was excommunicated, not because he hardened himself in some specific sin; rather, he was cut off by God from His people and His tabernacle because God –He’s holy!- wished to impress upon Israel just how totally sinful they were and how terrible were the results of sinfulness. They were sinful, totally depraved, and that meant not just that they could not comfortably live in God’s presence; that deadness in sin rather implied rejection by God, hell. The presence of leprosy taught that the sinner was hopelessly lost in sin and misery.

In the course of time there were many lepers in Israel. Each leper served as graphic instruction for the rest of God’s covenant people, instruction that all were sinful, were dead in sin, were worthy of eternal death. Through the generations the Lord God used lepers to spell out for Israel the doctrine of human depravity.

Now comes Jesus to God’s sinful people. He preached the gospel. As a result of His preaching, an excommunicated leper, one of those outcasts who carried in his body the evidence of sinfulness and the consequence of sin, came to faith. Although the law commanded him to cry out that he was unclean and to stay away from other people, to stay away specifically from the dwelling of God –after all, God was holy and he was sinful- yet this leper approaches Jesus. Pleading with the Saviour, he asked not for healthy skin but for cleansing. Cleansing he wanted, because this excommunicated Israelite understood why he was excommunicated, understood that all men, himself included, were sinful and therefore doomed to "the most severe, that is, ...everlasting punishment of body and soul" (LD 4.11). He understood his sin and misery, and hence he cried out to Jesus of Nazareth for deliverance, deliverance from the consequences of sin, consequences so vividly illustrated by the sickness in his skin.

How the Lord cleansed

In response to the plea of the leper, Jesus cleansed him. That’s what Matthew may report: "immediately his leprosy was cleansed." So, Jesus delivered this leper from the excommunication that belonged to being a leper; this man was no longer to be considered to be among the dead, but could instead rejoin the world of the living.

Yet Matthew tells us that Jesus did more than simply speak a word and so make the leper clean. Jesus "put out His hand and touched him," Matthew notes. The fact that Jesus stretched out His hand indicates that Jesus’ physical contact with the leper was not accidental; no, Jesus consciously made an effort to reach out and touch this man.

This, beloved, is most striking, and significant. The leper was unclean, unclean because he had death on his person. Jesus touched him, and that’s to say that He touched the unclean, touched the dead! Now, we are to know that the law of God had stipulated that whoever touched "the dead body of any person shall be unclean 7 days" (Num 19:11). Indeed, "every one that is unclean through contact with the dead" had to be "put out of the camp" (Num 5:2f). For God did not wish to see the camp defiled; after all, He was holy and lived in the midst of the camp.

Jesus made a point of touching the leper. That means in turn that Jesus made a point of Himself becoming unclean.

He touched the leper. Then Jesus said: "Be cleansed." This order of doing things, brothers and sisters, is important. In fact, it is so that this leper could be cleansed because Jesus touched him. The leper became clean –and so could return to the communion of saints and to the temple of God- because Jesus became unclean. By touching him, Jesus took on Himself the uncleanness that burdened the leper. This uncleanness was transferred from the sinful leper to the sinless Jesus. And that’s why Jesus could pronounce the leper clean: Jesus took the sinfulness illustrated by that leprosy upon Himself. More: the leper was unclean because that consequence of sin, death, was in his body. The leper became clean because Jesus took death, that bitter fruit of sin, upon Himself. Here is illustrated the doctrine of imputation; Christ takes the curse of the sinner upon Himself and fills that sinner with His righteousness. The cured leper could now go to the temple, could return again to the courts of God. And Jesus… - that brings us to our last point.

Why the Lord cleansed

For notice: there is something here that is different than what is stipulated in the Old Testament. To touch an unclean person or object meant –according to Old Testament law- that you became unclean yourself. But your becoming unclean through touching a leper did not mean that the leper now became clean. No, according to Old Testament law, the only way in which an unclean person could become clean was through washings. Cleanness could not be transferred from one person to another (cf Haggai 2:10ff).

But in Mt 8 Jesus touched the unclean leper, and lo, that leper was cleansed. Why the difference? That, beloved, is because of what Jesus was going to do.

All those washings in the Old Testament, including those that a leper had to go through in order to be cleansed, all pointed forward to the sacrifice Christ would make on Calvary. The washings with water and the sprinklings with blood were a picture of the washing away of sins through Christ’s blood. And that blood alone can make one clean. It was because these washings pointed forward to Christ’s coming sacrifice that Jesus could instruct the cleansed leper to "offer the gift that Moses commanded" (vs 4).

Christ was going to go to the cross. Though He was Himself sinless, all the sins of God’s people would be transferred from them onto Him. The sinless would be made sinful, would be made one-and-all sin. Now already, by touching that leper and cleansing him, Jesus was busy taking the sins of His people upon Himself, making Himself unclean before holy God.

So the day had to come when there could be no room for Him any more among the people of God; the day had to come when He had to be cast out of the camp, out of the city, doomed to an uninhabited place; such was the law. And so it happened. He was made all sin, and therefore dragged to an uninhabited place, to Golgotha – the "place of the skull". He was sent outside the camp because God did not wish to see this bundle of sin in His presence any more. Indeed, God put Him in extreme isolation, in a world of absolute loneliness; on the cross God placed Him in total darkness and so excommunicated Him, rejected Him, left Him alone with the demons and devils, those companions of sin and sinners. Three hours long He struggled in His infinite loneliness, in His absolute seclusion, and then finally pressed out of His lips that cry of anguish voiced by the lepers over the centuries: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" You see, beloved: on the cross, Jesus became THE leper!

But He, unlike the lepers of Israel before Him, could do something about the sinfulness piled onto Him. Sovereign God He was, even as He hung on the cross, and therefore He could pay for sin. And that’s what He did; He satisfied the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. Those for whom Christ died no longer have sins recorded against them; their sins are forgiven so that God declares them righteous. But the work of Christ obtained more than forgiveness and righteousness; because of Christ’s work God’s people are also renewed, made new creatures. The heart of sin is taken out and replaced with a heart that desires to do the will of God, sanctified. That means that we have both forgiveness of sins and deliverance from the consequences of sin. Christ died –He took on Himself the results of sin- that we might live.

Jesus Christ touched the leper, cleansed him, became sin Himself and so had to go to the cross. In so doing, Jesus fulfilled Lev 13 & 14. That is why someone with a skin disease today does not have to show himself to the consistory for a judgment on whether he is clean or unclean. Before God every believer –sick or healthy, handicapped or not- is clean, because all have been cleansed through the blood and Spirit of Christ. No longer does God use the presence of lepers in our community to instruct us about our sinfulness and His holiness. Christ has been rejected, Christ has died, and so is the cause of our misery taken away; sin is forgiven.

Then it’s true: we still meet with sickness and death. And as in the Old Testament, so today: sickness and death continue to remind us of our fall into sin, continue to remind us how much we need Jesus Christ. But because Christ took on Himself the sinfulness of the leper and so cleansed him, because Christ went to the cross and there atoned for sin, is the bitterness, the edge, the curse out of every disease. I may be ill, but even in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; my Father in Jesus Christ will never forsake me. Indeed, the sting is out of death, for even death does not separate us from God; death is now the door to full life with God. And surely, beloved, if dying is gain, if death is no longer an enemy, if dying for the Christian is no longer the wages of sin, then surely illness too is no longer something terrible, something negative, a curse. The sting is out of this consequence of sin; now even illnesses –including skin diseases- work for good for those who love God (cf Rom 8:28). Why it’s so? Matthew summed it up so neatly by quoting the prophet Isaiah: "He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses" (vs 17).

Now it’s only a matter of time before sickness will be gone. Soon there comes the New Jerusalem, when holy God will dwell with man and men with God. No consequence of the fall into sin shall be there; indeed, "death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away" (Rev 21).

Or, as another Scripture says it: "no inhabitant will say, ‘I am sick;’ the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity" (Is 33:24).Amen.