Unclean!

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We've all heard the saying that "one picture is worth 1000 words". And, sometimes, that is entirely true. Although God has chosen to communicate Himself through words, often those words are, in fact, pictures - word pictures. Even in the Old Testament, God commanded the prophets to act out their message. In a very real sense, then, when you come to the life of Christ, we can say that the entire life of Jesus Christ was an extended, visual parable. He taught, not only by what He said, but by what He did.

And that is especially true in Mark's gospel. Mark is a gospel of action - acting urgently, acting decisively. Mark is not about Jesus' sermons, but about His miracles and His actions. Not one of Jesus' major discourses is recorded in Mark's gospel. Mark is more concerned about what Jesus did. That doesn't mean, however, that Mark doesn't intend to teach through his gospel or to allow Jesus to teach through his gospel. The truth is, it's full of teaching about Christ and by Christ. Every one of Jesus' miracles provides incredible, spiritual insight. Jesus' miracles are, in fact, visual parables. They are visible, outward pictures of deep, spiritual realities. Perhaps none, more so, than the account we come to tonight in our study of Mark's gospel.

Mark 1, the account begins in verse 40. Mark writes, "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.' Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I am willing; be cleansed.' Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. 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 priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.' But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere."

Even in the 21st century, this story has great attraction and magnetism. But in the ancient world, this story would have grabbed the readers, perhaps in a way that no others had the power to do, because leprosy was in that day the same kind of scourge that AIDS would be in ours. And this is Jesus' first recorded encounter with this horrible disease. And it's only one of two specific accounts of the healing of leprosy in the entire New Testament.

This story is a fascinating one and it begins with a leper's request. Verse 40 says: "And a leper came to Jesus..." We don't know exactly when this happened, but apparently it occurred during the preaching tour of Galilee, that we studied last week. In fact, Luke records that it happened in one of the cities, meaning the cities of Galilee.

Now, we are first introduced to this whole idea of leprosy in the Old Testament law in Leviticus 13 and 14. The Hebrew word for leprosy, used in those chapters, is a general word. It was even used to describe, by the way, mold and mildew. But it was especially used to describe a number of skin diseases including running sores, itches and rashes, boils, inflamed rashes, and leprosy - the disease we know as leprosy. The scribes listed as many as 72 different skin diseases that were called by this general Hebrew word. So, the label "leprosy" then, in the Old Testament, included everything and, particularly in Leviticus 13 and 14, everything from simple rashes to what we think of today when we hear the word leprosy.

In the New Testament, it appears to be primarily the disease of leprosy, or it is as it has been more commonly come to be called, Hansen's disease. It was named Hansen's disease after a Norwegian doctor who discovered in the 19, excuse me, the 1870s what caused it. And this disease of leprosy was widespread in the ancient world. Leprosy has terrified humanity since the beginning of time. We have recorded accounts as early as 600 BC in India, and China, and Egypt. And it's still a major health problem even today in parts of Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. But for many centuries, it was a rampaging disease.

Many have thought that leprosy was a disease of the skin. It's really better classified, however, as a disease of the nervous system, because the leprosy bacterium attacks the nerves. And it is caused by a rod-shaped bacterium related to the tuberculosis bacterium. It's spread by multiple skin contacts, as well as by droplets from the upper respiratory system, such as the nasal secretions that are transmitted in the air from person to person.

Its symptoms start in the skin and the peripheral nervous system, and then spread to other parts - the hands, the face, the feet, the earlobes. They experience disfigurement of the skin and bones, a twisting of the limbs, and curling of the fingers to form the characteristic claw hand of leprosy. Facial changes occur - the thickening of the outer ear and the collapsing of the nose. Tumor-like growths form on the skin and inside - inside the respiratory tract. The optic nerve degenerates. And there are a large number of deformities that occur with this disease that come from the loss of pain sensation. As the nerves are damaged, they lose all sense of pain sensation. And so, much of the damage that lepers do to their bodies, is because they have no sense of pain. Paul Brandt wrote a book called, The Gift of Pain, as he dealt with the lepers, because what happens is they will often, without even thinking, reach over and pick up something that's boiling hot and, literally, fry their hand. But they have no sense that they're doing damage to themselves. All kinds of things like that where you and I accidentally touch something and immediately our nerves tell us there's danger and we pull back, so that there's only a slight damage to our bodies. But in the case of leprosy, the nerve endings die. There's no sensation of pain and they proceed and destroy their bodies in the process.

It was the work of Dr. Paul Brandt, the late world-renowned orthopedic surgeon in leprosy physician, who began to realize that this was the biggest problem, really, with leprosy, because the nerve endings that carry pain signals were destroyed, there was a total loss of physical pain. When these people cannot sense touch or pain, they tend to injure themselves because they're unaware of the injury caused by the outside agent. Some leprosy patients have had their fingers eaten by rats in their sleep, because they were totally unaware that it was happening. Paul Brandt, in the early days of his surgery on leprosy, after doing surgery to correct some of the problems with lepers' limbs, would send a cat home with them in rural and poor areas for that very reason - to protect them from that reality.

A milder form the disease would never cover the body and would heal itself, within one to three years. But the more virulent kind covered the whole body and lasted for 10 to 20 years, eventually proving fatal. I'm not going to leave this up very long, but I want you to get an idea of what this man looked like. Here are just a few pictures of what leprosy does to the human body.

In terms of the requirements for treating and the attitude toward lepers, those are addressed very clearly in the Old Testament. Turn back to Leviticus 13 in that section on leprosy. A person who was diagnosed with the true Hansen's disease or form of leprosy, was given very specific instructions as to what he was to do. Leviticus 13:45: "As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered [or, literally, disheveled], and he shall cover his mustache [in other words, he'll cover half of his face, the part where he would breathe out, because that's how the disease was spread] and cry, 'Unclean! Unclean!' He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp."

Leprosy was not only a disease; leprosy was a sentence. This person, who woke up one morning after enjoying a nice celebration with his family, perhaps the nights before, many years ago now before this encounter with Jesus, would have looked down at his hand and seen a slight discoloration, the beginning of a sore. And not many days would pass until it would begin to spread. And those around him would begin to realize that something was desperately wrong. He would have gone to the local priest, which was required by Old Testament law, to be diagnosed. And if the priest in fact identified him as having leprosy, his whole life changed. He had to leave his family, leave his town, leave his relatives. And he had to dishevel his hair. He had to wear torn clothes so that he was quickly and easily recognizable as having leprosy. Whenever he came near anyone, he had to cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!" And this would be true his entire life, for the next 10 to 20 years, as this disease unfolded in all it's terrible tragedy.

That was what a leper expected in New Testament times, and more, because the rabbis, in the Mishnah (the interpretive commentary on the Old Testament), had added a number of other requirements. They had said it's okay for lepers to live wherever they choose to live, except in walled cities and especially they can't be within Jerusalem. They can attend synagogue services, if a screen was set up to isolate them from the rest of the congregation. The rabbis taught that if a leper so much as stuck his head inside of a dwelling, inside of a house, it was unclean. And there were so many things that had to be done to make it clean again. It was forbidden to even greet a leper. The Mishnah required lepers to stay at least 50 paces away from other people. And there're differing statements in different places. Some said the distance was greater if the leper was upwind. Josephus writes that lepers were considered "as if they were in effect dead men, no different than a corpse." It was considered the worst of diseases. The rabbis said that it was as difficult to heal a leper as to raise the dead. In fact, only twice in the Old Testament, were people cured from leprosy and that was Miriam in Numbers 12, Moses' sister, and Naaman in 2 Kings 5, the foreign general. Only twice.

God used leprosy on several occasions in the Old Testament as a judgment on sin. You remember Miriam, and Uzziah who tried to take over the king, who tried to take over the priest's role? So, it came to be thought of as a type of sin and it had a stigma beyond other diseases. Even in the New Testament, when they speak of other diseases, they needed to be healed. But when they speak of leprosy, it needed to be cleansed. That's the state in which this man finds himself.

Luke tells us that he was full of leprosy. That means he had an advanced case. This man was completely disfigured, had probably had the disease for between 10 and 20 years. It was a full-blown case, covering his entire body. His limbs would have been gnarled, his hands curled into claw-like form, his body covered with oozing sores, his clothes ripped as he was required, the bottom half of his face covered. This is where this man was.

And he's so desperate and, at the same time, so hopeful based on what he's heard about Christ, that he breaks all of the social customs, all of the rabbis' laws, and he comes running up to Jesus. Running to Jesus. Compare that to Luke 17 - the ten leprous men who stood at a distance, understanding what they were required to do. This man is desperate.

Verse 40 says, "And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him..." According to both Matthew and Luke, he begins by saying, "Lord". This is probably more than the typical "Sir". After all, remember he's falling down before Jesus and has concluded that Jesus is able to heal the disease for which there is no cure. And he says to Him, "If You are willing, You can make me clean." Here is the beginning of faith. Notice this man has no doubt about Jesus' power to heal him. What he doesn't know, is if Jesus is willing to heal him. This is a statement of his faith and confidence in Jesus Christ. "If you are willing" - even acknowledging that may not be the Lord's desire. "If you [desire to] are willing, You can make me clean."

That brings us to our Lord's compassion. Verse 41: "Moved with compassion..." The Greek word is an ugly sounding word, but one that has a beautiful meaning. In its noun form, it actually means the entrails or bowels, the heart, the liver, the lungs, so forth. It's used that way in Acts 1 where Judas goes out and hangs himself and you remember the sordid end of that story. So, it literally says Jesus' bowels were affected. This whole incident affected Him in His bowels.

But understand this word is used figuratively. We still do this, don't we? We talk about being upset in the stomach. We picture intense negative emotion as, "It hit me in the gut!" There's this sense of impact, of emotional impact, in this expression. In the first century, this word was even used to describe a mother's love for her child, because the emphasis was on the depth and force of the feeling. You have to understand this. Jesus wasn't just slightly affected by this; He was struck in His stomach by this man's desperate situation.

It's interesting that this word is often used to describe the attitude of affection God has toward men. You see Jesus in Mark 6 saying, "...[when] He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion [same word] for them because they were like a sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things." Here in Mark 1 it's used the same way. When Jesus saw this maimed, diseased man dressed in his tattered clothes, eaten up with a disease, soon to die, Jesus was struck in His bowels. He was hit as if He had been hit with something, with intense concern for this man.

But it wasn't just emotion; it was combined with action. Verse 41 says, "...Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him..." Now, folks, this is a very important point in the story. I say that because all three synoptic gospels include this very point and stress it. To us that doesn't seem like much because you've read the story before. You're familiar with the gospels. Leprosy is not such a big deal in our day, in our lives, here in 21st century Dallas. You have no idea how shocking that would have been in the first century. All the people standing there, who saw this unfold, who heard the story later, had spent their entire lives trying to avoid these people. And on those few occasions when they had accidentally come into close contact with a leper, they would have backed away in horror, gone home and bathed and re-bathed, and prayed that God would show mercy and that they wouldn't get it.

There were two problems. One of them was ceremonial defilement - to touch someone who had one of these skin diseases was to render yourself ceremonially unclean, unable to worship God in the temple, unable to express your worship to God. But the larger concern, for most in the New Testament with leprosy, would have been the contagion - the fear of actually contracting the disease and how it would wreck your life. Jesus is unconcerned about either. I love the quote by James Edwards in his commentary. He says, "The outstretched arm of Jesus is a long reach for his day, for any day." Jesus, unmoved with concern, reaches out, stretches out His hand, and touches this man. And it's not the idea, by the way - this Greek word is not the idea of He sort of extended a finger, and quickly touched him and withdrew it. The idea is He put a firm hand on it, perhaps even put His arm around this man.

Verse 41: "... [Jesus] said to him, 'I am willing; be cleansed.'" This was a shocking thing because all the priests could do was declare a person to be clean or unclean based on what they found. Jesus doesn't just state that he's clean; He makes him clean.

And that comes to a dramatic healing. We've seen the leper's request, we've seen the result of that and now, a dramatic healing. Notice verse 42: "Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed." Suddenly and completely - Mark loves this word "immediately". His leprosy, in a moment, is gone and it's gone completely. He was completely leprosy-free. What does that mean? It means that, at the touch and command of Jesus Christ, this dreaded disease that had ravaged his body for more than 10 years, had just gone away. And every trace of it had disappeared. The extremities, that had been damaged and worn away, became new. The disfiguring growths were gone, and all of his physical features returned to the way they had been before the disease. All the function returned to his nerves. His skin, instead of that terrible, terrible shape, becomes soft and supple. And every single bacterium is gone. Not one trace of the disease remains! Instead of yelling, "Unclean! Unclean!", he's yelling, "I'm clean! I'm clean!"

On the heels of that dramatic healing, our Lord gives a clear directive in verse 43 and 44. Notice what He says: "And He sternly warned him and immediately sent him away..." It's a surprising statement. The Greek word for "sternly warn", as you can see there, literally means to snort in anger. Jesus says this in a sort of angry tone. Most commentators agree that's because Jesus, allowed by the Spirit, exercises His omniscience, His all-knowing. He knows what this man is going to do, and so, He sternly warns him not to do it.

Verse 44: "and He said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone...'" Jesus, in the Greek text, uses a double negative, which is just as unusual in some ways as it is in English. It's proper grammar in Greek but it is forceful. It's a way of saying something extremely strongly. He says, "Say nothing to no one!" And Luke adds, "And [Jesus] He ordered him to tell no one, 'But [instead, verse 44 says] go show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing, just as Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.'" Jesus was ordering this man to follow the requirements of the Mosaic law.

Just as a footnote, in the weeks to come, we're going to see Jesus at odds with the religious leaders of Israel. And their complaint against Him is that He does not obey, does not respect the Mosaic law. And this account, even before that happens shows that, in fact, He does.

Why does Jesus send him to do this? Well, understand, that under Mosaic law, only a priest could declare you to be unclean with leprosy, and only a priest could declare you to be clean. Leviticus 13 makes that very clear, as well as Leviticus 14, in the references I've listed there. And Mosaic law also laid out the process in Leviticus 14 - exactly what this man was supposed to do. The Old Testament law required that if you were a leper, and you believed you no longer had leprosy, you were to go to the priest in your own hometown and show yourself. The purpose of this was for the priest to verify and to certify, in writing (he would actually have given you a written document), testifying that you were no longer unclean, that you no longer had leprosy, and you had been confirmed as clean. This was medical and hygienic. It was, as we like to say, "a clean bill of health". But it was something that he would have needed, after all those years of leprosy, to move in and around town, to have the ability to transact business, to live in his community again.

And then, after this interaction with the priest, he was to go to Jerusalem and to offer a set of prescribed sacrifices. Here's how it worked. Once he got to Jerusalem, he would present two birds at the temple - two birds. One would be killed, and then the live bird would be dipped into the blood of the one that had been slain and released. Some of the blood of the dead bird would then be sprinkled on the former leper. And then there would be a waiting period of eight days. Eight days later, the healed man was to return to the temple and was to bring three lambs: one for a sin offering, one for a guilt offering, and one for a burnt offering (according to Leviticus 14).

Now, there were several reasons, as you see here, for these sacrifices. One was certainly to acknowledge his sin. While sin may not have been the cause of his leprosy, certainly he was a sinner and needed to confess that. So, to confess his sin and seek forgiveness. To cleanse him ceremonially so that he could worship again with God's people. To serve as an acknowledgment that God is the one who had healed him. By offering this sacrifice, he wasn't taking any credit. He wasn't giving any credit to doctors, or eastern medicine, or whatever it is he might have tried. But he was giving the credit to God, and it was to express his gratitude. Once all of this was done, then the man could be reinstated to society, to his community, to his town, and to his family. Jesus told him to go do just this.

Why? Well, Jesus told him to do it as a testimony to them. This was to be proof of something. It was to be proof of the reality of this man's healing to the people of his town. It was to prove that he was in fact now well. But it was also a testimony to the priests of Israel that Jesus had the power to heal a leper, something that was tantamount to raising the dead. William Lane in his commentary writes, "If the priests established that healing has taken place, and accept the sacrifice for cleansing, but fail to recognize the person in power through whom healing has come, they will stand condemned by the very evidence which they themselves had supplied."

That brings us to a tragic disobedience. Verse 45 says, "But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around..." We don't know for sure if he went to the priest in his hometown, and then went down to Jerusalem and offered the sacrifices that were required. We don't know that for sure. He probably did, however, because in that first century culture, without the pre-certification, he would not have been able to return to normal life. But he clearly disobeyed what Christ had commanded him about keeping it quiet, about telling nothing to no one. We don't know if he disobeyed immediately and left this encounter, and before he went to the priest or before he went to Jerusalem began to spread it around town, or if he went down to Jerusalem for those eight days and came back and began to spread it. We can't be sure. We can certainly understand, by the way - to some extent, we can understand what this man did. If you had had that terrible disease, you would want to share it. There was some, I'm sure, excitement. There was even gratitude for what had been done. But on the other hand, it was a tremendous act of disobedience.

Jesus wasn't asking this man to keep it quiet forever. Once the local priest knew, word would get out. But Jesus was trying to avoid a situation where His teaching wouldn't be heard because of the fascination with His miracles. What Jesus had tried to prevent is exactly what happened, thanks to this man's disobedience.

By the way, the words, as I say here, the words "proclaim" and "spread" around are words that are used to describe what believers in the first century often did about Christ. So, it may very well be that this man genuinely came to faith in Christ and he's spreading it around.

But he disobeyed and there are repercussions of that disobedience. Verse 45 says that "[he] spread the news [word] around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in the unpopulated areas..." You know when I read that and was studying it this week, I just noticed there was a great irony in that statement. When this story began, Jesus was in the cities and this leper was forced to stay outside. But now, because of his disobedience, Jesus is forced to stay away from the cities and the man, who was healed, is received again to the city and to his family. As a result of this man's disobedience, Jesus could no longer continue His ministry in the synagogues of Galilee.

But it didn't stop Jesus' ministry. Notice the rest of verse 45: "...and they were coming to Jesus from everywhere." Luke puts it like this in his gospel account: "But the news about Him [Jesus] was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray." What a powerful story!

But the lessons for us are every bit as powerful as well. I want you to think about this with me for a moment. There are some really profound lessons that affect our lives. The first is a lesson about Jesus' compassion for those who are hurting. Jesus was moved with compassion, based solely on the physical suffering of this man, at least, as far as the text tells us. William Hendrickson, the great commentator, says, "The healing ministry of Christ should be an encouragement to all those persons and organizations that are genuinely involved in providing help and care for those in need." I thought of that this week. We have a number of people in our church who are involved in caring for people, and their physical needs, and human suffering. Jesus was moved with compassion on such people. And we should be as well.

There's a lesson about Jesus' power to heal the body. As we saw several weeks ago, whenever healing occurs, it is Christ who does it. And if He chooses today, as then, there is no disease beyond His power. Jesus Christ can say the word and, if it is His will and His sovereign plan, cancer will be done, or whatever the scourge of our day may be. When the body does heal, whether from its little problems or its great ones, behind it is the same power that healed this leper.

Number 3, and this is really the heart of the story, I think. It is a lesson about Jesus' power to heal the soul. Remember how we began tonight? Jesus' miracles were like parables. They were visual, spiritual lessons. No first century disease better illustrated man's spiritual condition than leprosy. R.C. Trench was a famous Greek scholar and the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. He wrote of leprosy that although the leper was not necessarily any great a sinner than others, he was a profound picture of sin. Listen to Trench: "Leprosy was an outward, visible sign of the innermost spiritual corruption." Those terrible pictures that we saw of the human body infected by leprosy is a vile picture of how sin has infected our souls. And if we could see with the eyes of God, we would see our souls every bit as distorted and diseased.

Leprosy was like a picture of human sin. That's because of the nature of leprosy. It began small, almost imperceptibly. A few tiny bacteria entered the skin through a cut or through the nose or mouth, through the tiny droplets breathed out into the air by someone nearby. So, it started very small. And it grew slowly. It didn't go from something small and tiny one day, to the full-blown disease the next. It grew slowly. It destroyed the ability to sense things in the physical world, because it took away the eyes. It took away the senses. It rendered a person ceremonially unclean before God. It alienated the person from other people. It eventually proved fatal. And it was completely incurable. In all these ways, leprosy was like the sin that infects our souls. It begins small, almost imperceptibly. Just a little sin. Nothing too significant. It passes almost without our notice. And then as life goes by, it grows slowly into a monster that controls and dominates our lives, destroying everything around us, disrupting relationships, alienating us from others and, most of all, alienating us from God. And it is completely incurable. There is nothing we can do.

There's one more way that sin is like leprosy. The more advanced the disease, the less you feel any pain. I was struck by the story I read this week. Arnold Dallimore, in his two- volume biography of George Whitfield, describes how the Duchess of Buckingham responded to one of her friends, who had invited her to go with her to one of Whitfield's services, and to hear one of his messages. Here was a lady of refinement, a lady of nobility. And she heard Whitfield preach about sin and this is what she said to her friend: "It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder how you, Ladyship, should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding." You know what that tells you about that lady? The disease was far-advanced because, like with leprosy, the more advanced sin is in the soul, the less awareness there is of it.

Leprosy is such a powerful picture of human depravity. We are all by nature spiritual lepers. But here's the good news. Your soul may be just as eaten up with sin as this man's body was with leprosy. But if you will do what this man did, if you will recognize your desperate condition, if you will recognize that Jesus Christ is the only one that can help you, and if you will run to Him and fall on your knees before Him and ask Him to make you new, He can do it! Don't believe the lies. Ken Hughes is right - "Sin tells us two opposite lies. At first it tells us that we are not sinners. But then there comes a point, when we get over that lie, and we begin to understand and see just how terrible sinners we are. And then sin tells us another lie. It tells us, once we come to see our sin, that we are so bad, we are beyond all hope." Although this leper didn't know if Jesus would heal his body or not, "If You are willing, You can make me clean." You and I don't have to wonder about whether He will heal our souls because He's made it clear He will. Listen to Jesus. Matthew 11:28: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." John 6:37: "...the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out [turn away]."

But the greatest lesson in the story isn't about what Jesus can do for us. The greatest lesson in the story is a lesson about Jesus and His character. Did you see it? You see, in the Old Testament, everything and everyone who came in contact with what was unclean, became defiled - polluted. And throughout the Scripture, interacting with the morally unclean produces, what? Uncleanness in you. But Jesus, here, touches one who is unclean, and He remains undefiled and uncontaminated. And even more than that, not only does the uncleanness have no effect upon Him, but the touch that should have made Jesus unclean, made the leper clean. What does that tell us about Jesus? I can't put it any more profoundly than James Edward does. He says, "Unlike an ordinary rabbi, Jesus is not polluted by the leper's disease. Rather, the leper is cleansed and healed [listen to this] by Jesus' contagious holiness." I love that! Jesus wasn't tainted by this man's sin and leprosy. Just as He was intended as he walked through the world but, instead, where Jesus went and those He touched were affected by His contagious holiness. What a lesson about our Lord. If you can only get to Him, you can be healed of the plague of sin, the disease that has tormented your soul. And you will be affected. He will not be affected by your sin. He will not be affected by the taint that you bring. Instead, you will catch His contagious holiness. And you'll become like Him in your moral character. What a lesson in the leper!

Let's pray together.

Father, help us to read these accounts with a sanctified imagination. Help us to transport ourselves back in time, put ourselves in the places of these people, and enter into the stories that You intend us to see the character of Christ in. Father, we thank You for this account. We thank You for this maimed, diseased man who saw in Jesus the answer to every need. Father, thank You that for many of us here tonight, You have brought us to see the terrible nature of our souls, the ravaged, diseased nature of each of our souls. And You have brought us, like this leper, running to Jesus, falling down at His feet, and saying, "If You were willing, You can make me clean." And, Father, thank You that by grace, through the work of the cross, You have made us clean. Help us to celebrate our Lord and His contagious holiness, His power to heal the body, and His power to heal the soul. Father, I pray as well for the person here tonight, who even as they sit here, realize the terribly diseased nature of their souls. Father, I pray that You would work in those hearts that, even as we were reminded this morning, You would be in this story taught, in the Word taught, calling effectively those people to Yourself, that they would run to Jesus in repentance and faith, even tonight before they lay their heads on their pillows. And may they find what this man found. May they wake up tomorrow with the realization that the disease of a lifetime has been cured and that they're clean. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen!