And chapter number 13 of Leviticus there that we just read deals with the plague of leprosy.
Most of the chapter is talking about leprosy in a human being and in this passage we find
a great example of what the Bible says in the New Testament that all scripture is given
by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect thoroughly furnished
unto all good works.
And so even when we run across a chapter like this that might strike some people as antiquated
or outdated or we don't really need this, that was for them back then, that was something
that they dealt with thousands of years ago, we need to understand that there's also a
spiritual application to these things that are found in the Bible.
So I want to preach tonight on the subject of leprosy and leprosy is something that comes
up throughout the Bible.
There are numerous stories in the Bible about people who had leprosy.
There are whole chapters, Leviticus 13 and 14 for example devoted to the subject of leprosy.
Now first of all let me just read for you the encyclopedia about leprosy today.
The encyclopedia says that leprosy is also known as Hansen's disease and the reason that
it's known as Hansen's disease is that in the 1800s there was a doctor named Hansen
who figured out what it was that caused leprosy.
It's actually a bacteria that they named Mycobacterium leprae and it's a bacterial
infection that takes over.
The encyclopedia goes on to say that initially infections are without symptoms and typically
remain this way from five to as long as 20 years.
Symptoms that develop include granulomas of the nerves, respiratory tract, skin and eyes.
This may result in a lack of ability to feel pain and thus loss of parts of the extremities
due to repeated injuries or infection due to unnoticed wounds.
Weakness and poor eyesight may also be present.
Leprosy is spread between people.
It is believed to occur through a cough or contact with fluid from the nose of an infected
person.
Leprosy occurs more commonly among those living in poverty and it is believed to be transmitted
by respiratory droplets.
Now it's actually not as contagious as people think but it is yet contagious through coughing,
you know, through getting those respiratory particles on someone.
That's how they contract leprosy.
Now look if you would at verse 44 of chapter 13 there.
The Bible says, he is a leprous man.
He is unclean.
The priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean.
His plague is in his head and the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent
and his head bare and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip and shall cry, unclean,
unclean.
All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled.
He is unclean.
He shall dwell alone.
Without the camp shall his habitation be.
Now one thing that really cracked me up though as I was researching the subject of leprosy
is what the Jews teach about this in their Talmud.
Now we know of course that the so-called Jews and their false religion of Judaism which
is not Old Testament Bible believing religion.
It's actually the wicked religion of the Pharisees where Jesus was constantly rebuking them for
making God's word void through their traditions, things that were handed down to them by the
rabbis who were actually ungodly, wicked, whited sepulchers, etc. as Christ called them.
That is the religion of Judaism today and it's amazing to me that they say that the
leprosy of Leviticus 13 and 14 is not what we know as leprosy.
They say, oh, that's a bad translation.
The New Testament got that wrong and, you know, English Bibles get that wrong and it's
not really leprosy, it's something else.
And here's why they say that, because in their book, the Talmud, which is not the Bible,
it's their traditions of the Christ rejecting rabbis from after the time of Christ, in their
book, the Talmud, they say that leprosy is a non-contagious disease, the biblical leprosy
of Leviticus 13 and 14, that it's not contagious.
So they say, well, we know that leprosy is contagious and since the biblical disease
is not contagious, it can't be leprosy.
Now let me ask you something.
Does it look to you, just, you're a smart person here tonight, right?
You're looking down at Leviticus 13.
Does it look to you like the Bible teaches this is a not contagious disease?
But yet the foolishness of the Talmud, Rabbi Shimon HaKflem or whatever, he said that the
biblical disease is not contagious.
So here's what they do.
They use this circular reasoning of saying, well, we know that this can't be leprosy because
the Talmud says leprosy, you know, of the Bible is non-contagious, so it must be a different
disease.
Well, how do you know?
Oh, because the Talmud said.
Except that the Talmud has zero authority and it's written by fools who rejected Christ.
You say, well, how dare you call them fools?
What did Jesus call them?
He said, you fools and blind.
That's what he said to the Pharisees.
You'd have to be blind to read the Bible and walk away saying it's not contagious.
What they teach in the Talmud is that a better translation than unclean here would be ritually
impure.
Okay.
So, according to them, and I brought along a little illustration, this is basically like
a surgical mask, you know, that you'd put on to stop you from spreading germs, right?
Well, if you read the Bible here in Leviticus 13, it says that the leper in whom the plague
is, his clothes shall be rent.
He's supposed to tear his clothing, which was a sign of mourning.
It's a sign that something's wrong.
So just visually, if you saw this guy, his clothes are torn.
That's the first thing you'd see.
And then it also says that his head shall be bare and he shall put a covering upon his
upper lip and shall cry unclean, unclean.
Now the purpose of this is to warn everybody that he's coming so that he doesn't get too
close.
You don't want to just be walking along and all of a sudden this guy with leprosy is right
there.
You know, you're like, whoa, man.
And it's interesting that it says that he shall put a covering upon his upper lip.
Okay.
Why?
Because the way that this is spread is through coughing, is what the encyclopedia even said
about leprosy.
So he puts this on and now when he coughs, it's not going anywhere.
That's the purpose.
So according to these Christ-rejecting Jews of the Talmud, he's supposed to put this on
and walk around saying, unclean, unclean, but it's not contagious.
And actually a better translation is he's supposed to walk around saying, ritually impure,
ritually impure.
But this is the nonsense of religion that denies Christ.
You know, and the Bible says that even today in the reading of the Old Testament, that
veil, they don't wear it like this.
They wear it like this when they read the Bible.
Oh, well let me tell you what Rabbi Shimon Ha-ha-ha said, you know.
They don't even know.
But what's funny though is that today Christians will go to the Jews to interpret the Bible.
They don't have the Holy Spirit.
The Bible says that the Word of God is spiritually discerned and that it's the Holy Spirit that
guides us into all truth.
So if you read the Bible without the Holy Spirit, you get goofy ideas.
And these are supposed to be really intelligent people, but yet they can read this passage
and walk away saying it's not contagious because our rabbi said so, even though the Bible said
it is contagious.
And it is clearly the same disease as what we know today as leprosy because the thing
that came up over and over again in Leviticus 13 was about the whiteness of the area or
the lack of pigmentation.
And it talked about a hair growing up in the area and that even that hair would be white
or pale or yellow in color.
And the reason for that is because one of the symptoms of leprosy is that it will create
what they call hypo-pigmentation in those areas.
The pigment is gone which causes it to appear white or pale in that area.
It's clearly the same disease that we see in Leviticus 13.
It's spread through coughing.
That's why they covered their upper lip and so forth.
But when you read this encyclopedia definition, flip over if you would to Ephesians 4.
This is the scripture that kind of popped into my mind when I read that encyclopedia
description of Hansen's disease or leprosy.
Because in the Bible, leprosy pictures sin.
And some of the similarities with sin that we see here is that this is something that
destroys you slowly over time.
And that's what sin will do in our lives.
When we have sin in our lives, it slowly destroys us over time.
We might be able to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season as the Bible says and get
by with sinning and even enjoy it and even thrive as we say.
But over time, it's very destructive to us.
And when you read up on leprosy, it says that initially infections are without symptoms.
So at first, there's no symptom.
They don't even realize that they even have a problem when they're infected with leprosy.
And it typically remains that way for from 5 to as long as 20 years.
So you get leprosy, you're infected, but no symptoms for as long as 5 to 20 years.
And then when you read about the symptoms, obviously you have the skin disorder.
That's the main thing that you see.
But also, they can result in the lack of ability to feel pain and thus loss of parts of extremities
due to repeated injuries or infection due to unnoticed wounds.
So we think of pain as being a bad thing, but actually pain is good.
God gave us pain for a reason because it tells us that something's wrong.
It tells us that there's a problem.
That's why when you experience pain, you shouldn't just always just take a painkiller and fix
that, and then just go on about your life.
You should figure out what's causing the pain, figure out what's behind it.
Usually when people have a headache, and obviously the exception proves the rule, don't get mad
at me if you have a different style of headache than what I'm talking about.
But usually when people say, oh, I have a headache, it can be cured by doing three things.
This is what I've noticed in my life, eating, drinking, and going to sleep.
If I eat, drink, and go to sleep, I wake up, the headache is gone, usually, unless there's
some other problem like a toothache or a neck ache that's causing it.
A lot of headaches are due to just dehydration or just not eating enough or just not getting
enough salt and getting hyponatremia and things like that.
So we shouldn't always just want to just dull the pain because pain is there for a reason
to tell us something's wrong.
So these people who get leprosy, though, they start losing sensation of pain in their extremities
like in their fingers and toes.
Then what happens is they keep injuring themselves because they don't feel that they're doing
something wrong.
They keep slamming their toes into things, slamming their fingers, and they don't even
realize that there's a problem there.
And then they also get wounds that they don't notice, and then they get infected but they
can't feel the fact that they stepped on something sharp or whatever.
So that's described here.
Think about that in a spiritual context now with Ephesians chapter 4.
And by the way, one more thing, in the encyclopedia it also said that poor eyesight can also be
one of the symptoms.
People will even sometimes go blind from leprosy.
So look if you went to Ephesians 4.17 with that in mind.
It says, "'This I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as
other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being
alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness
of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness
to work all uncleanness and greediness.'"
So in this description of people who are very sinful people, notice some key words that
pop up, uncleanness, blindness, and being past feeling.
More like leprosy where you lose feeling.
You don't feel the pain anymore when you're harming yourself or doing damage to your body.
Blindness and also just the uncleanness that sin represents.
So basically leprosy is a picture of sin in the Bible.
Now let me say this.
Just because a person has leprosy, it doesn't mean that they're a sinful person.
We don't want to go down that road where we look at people who have sicknesses or handicaps
and we say, oh, that's a punishment from God.
That's a false doctrine.
Because if you remember, this was the mistake that Jesus' disciples made when they came
to him and they said of a man who was born blind, they said, well, who sinned?
Did this man sin or did his parents sin for him to be born blind?
And Jesus said, well, neither did this man sin, neither did his parents sin.
He was actually blind for the glory of God.
He was blind so that God's glory could be manifest because Jesus had a plan where he's
going to heal this man and all kinds of great teaching would go forth and it would be a
great miracle and it would actually fill up a great section of the book of John there
because of the fact that he was born blind.
And he didn't realize that.
He probably didn't like being born blind.
His parents probably didn't like the fact that he was born blind but yet God used it
for his glory.
We don't want to be like Job's friends where we look at Job and Job had a skin disorder,
didn't he?
He had boils and all kinds of scabs and so forth.
And we don't want to be like them where we tell Job, hey, you must be living in sin.
No, actually sickness can happen for all manner of reasons.
It can just happen just for physical reasons.
It could also happen in God's plan that someone could become sick for his glory or it could
be a chastening from the Lord and it's never us to judge.
Yes, God did strike people with leprosy in the Bible as a punishment.
He also struck people with blindness as a punishment.
But yet there were many people who were blind that it was not a punishment.
It was just for whatever other reason.
So we don't want to make that mistake but yet leprosy does picture sin.
Not saying that the person is necessarily a wicked person but that's what it pictures
in our life.
Why?
Because sin slowly destroys us over time.
It slowly eats away at us and the longer we have it, we start losing feeling.
You know, it used to be when we would do wrong, we would be pricked at our heart.
Our conscience would bother us.
But the deeper we go into sin, the less our conscience bothers us.
You know, the first time you commit a sin, your conscience is bothering you.
The Holy Spirit is really convicting you but then as you go deeper into sin, you become
numb to it.
You get desensitized to sin.
Even as you harm yourself, even as you're wounded, even as you're infected, you don't
even realize it.
Also just as with leprosy, you might even go five, twenty years without even seeing
the consequences of it but it's there and it's slowly killing you and slowly destroying
you.
It also creates blindness where when people are in sin, they become blind to the consequences
of what they're doing and the foolishness of their actions.
So there are a lot of similarities between leprosy and sin.
And also, of course, the Bible says sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
And of course leprosy was a death sentence.
I mean, eventually it's going to kill you.
Now let's look at a few other scriptures on leprosy.
Go to Numbers chapter two, book of Numbers chapter number two, I'm sorry, Numbers chapter
five verse two, Numbers five verse two.
And the Bible reads in Numbers chapter five verse two, command the children of Israel
that they put out of the camp every leper and every one that hath an issue and whosoever
is defiled by the dead, both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye
put them, that they defile not their camps in the midst whereof I dwell.
So here we see the fact that they need to be separated from the assembly.
They need to dwell outside of the camp of the children of Israel because of the contagious
nature of leprosy.
So they were supposed to dwell alone outside the camp.
Look at Deuteronomy chapter number twenty-four, just a few pages to the right in your Bible,
Deuteronomy chapter number twenty-four.
And the Bible says in verse eight, take heed in the plague of leprosy that thou observe
diligently and do according to all that the priests, the Levites, shall teach you.
As I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do.
Remember what the Lord thy God did unto Miriam, by the way, after that ye were come forth
out of Egypt.
So let's look at that story.
Go to Numbers chapter twelve.
This is one of the famous stories of leprosy in the Bible where Moses' sister Miriam was
actually struck by God with leprosy.
Now thank God he was merciful to her and after seven days she was healed.
But for seven days she was plagued with leprosy.
The Bible says in verse number one, and Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the
Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
And they said, hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?
Hath he not spoken also by us?
And the Lord heard it.
Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.
And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses and unto Aaron and unto Miriam.
Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation.
And they three came out and the Lord came down in a pillar of a cloud and stood in the
door of the tabernacle and called Aaron and Miriam.
And they both came forth and he said, Hear now my words.
If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision
and will speak unto him in a dream.
My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches.
And the similitude of the Lord shall he behold.
Wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and he departed.
And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle and behold, Miriam became leprous, white
as snow.
And Aaron looked upon Miriam and behold, she was leprous.
And Aaron said unto Moses, Alas, my Lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein
we have done foolishly and wherein we have sinned.
Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed, when he cometh out of his
mother's womb.
And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.
And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be
ashamed seven days?
Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.
And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days, and the people journeyed not till Miriam
was brought in again.
And afterward the people were removed from Hazaroth and pitched in the wilderness of
Paran."
So notice what Aaron says when Aaron sees the terrible condition that his sister Miriam
is in, and Moses is also distraught about it.
But notice what he says in verse 12, Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half
consumed, when he cometh out of his mother's womb.
So Aaron basically describes the leprous person as being like somebody who's dead, in the
sense that, you know, it's like a death sentence.
It's just a matter of when.
You can just look at them and see that death is consuming their body.
I mean, she's leprous from head to toe.
I mean, her skin is destroyed.
It's just outwardly apparent that she's going to die of this terrible disease.
Now when a person's not saved, the Bible actually describes them as dead.
Go to Ephesians chapter 2, if you would, in the New Testament.
Even though they're walking around, even though they're talking and doing things, they are
described spiritually as being dead, sort of like the leprous person is like a dead
man walking.
Look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, and you have the quickened.
Quickened means brought to life.
Quick means alive.
You have the quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in time past you walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation
in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of
the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.
By grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus.
Then in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift
of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
So here he says, you were dead in trespasses and sins, and Jesus Christ quickened you or
brought you to life or gave you life.
The Bible says throughout Psalm 119, thy word has quickened me.
The entrance of God's word gives life and light to all where it enters.
Now here's the thing, there's a false doctrine out there known as Calvinism that teaches
that you don't make any kind of a decision to be saved, but that rather it's all foreordained
in the sense that God decided who's going to go to heaven and who's going to go to hell,
and there's nothing that we can do about it, and we have no free will to make that decision
on our own.
Now this is a ridiculous doctrine, it flies in the face of the teaching of Scripture,
and clear Scripture refutes this doctrine, and a big part of this Calvinist philosophy
is that Jesus Christ did not die for everyone, is what they teach.
Well the Bible's real clear that he by the grace of God did taste death for every man.
The Bible says he's the savior of all men, especially of those that believe.
The Bible says he's the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world.
And there are many Scriptures that talk about the fact that Jesus Christ died for us all.
But they say no, he only died for certain people, you have to be one of the chosen,
and it has nothing to do with anything that you say or do, it's all foreordained of God.
Now they don't have clear Scripture on this, if you go to the Scriptures that they'll point
you to, and you actually read them in context, the doctrine falls apart.
But they use a lot of man's philosophy and logic to refute just the clear surface teaching
of the Bible where it just says, whosoever will, let him come.
What does whosoever will mean?
Whosoever wants to.
The spirit and the bride say come, and let him that heareth say come, and let him that
is the thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Just kidding, it's just certain people that I picked.
It's stupid, it's a lie, it's a fraud.
But unsaved people come up with weird doctrine like this, because again, you know, just like
the Jews, they're doing this when they read the Bible, because they're not saved, you
know, they're blinded.
And so they come up with weird doctrine.
That's why we should never listen to Bible teaching from people who aren't saved.
You know, before you listen to Bible teaching, figure out if these people even believe the
Gospel or not.
Figure out whether they're even saved.
That shouldn't be an afterthought.
You know, whether they're saved or not.
Well, he's right on everything except the Gospel.
He's right on nothing.
I mean, if you don't have the Gospel, you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't have
the truth.
You don't have the spirit of truth.
You have a spirit of error, the Bible says.
And so they'll use logic, and here's the logic that they'll use.
And I've heard this a million times.
They'll say this.
Well, what can a dead man do?
Hmm?
I mean, the Bible says that before we were saved, we were dead.
Dead in trespasses.
What can a dead man do?
Nothing.
God does it all.
You know, God just comes and saves who he wants to save.
And what can a dead man do?
Nothing.
But see, here's the thing.
That's human logic and human reasoning.
That's not biblical.
Because the Bible describes all kinds of people as being dead.
For example, the most famous story of the prodigal son.
And when the prodigal son goes out and lives a life of sin, and then he realizes, wow,
I had it a lot better off in my parents' house.
I'm going to go home to my parents and eat crow.
When he's in the pig pen and desiring to be fed with the husks which the swine did eat,
he has a change of heart.
He comes home to the father and says, I've sinned against heaven, against thee, and I'm
no longer worthy to be called thy son.
You know, make me as one of the hired servants.
And what does the father say about him?
Hey, we ought to rejoice.
Because he was dead and now he's alive.
He was blind and now he can see.
He was lost and now he's found.
So here's the thing.
What can a dead man do?
Well, a dead man can realize that he's wrong and come home.
Oh, but sorry to confuse you with what the Bible actually teaches.
What else can dead men do?
Well, according to this, dead men can fulfill a lot of lust of the flesh and go out and
live a sinful life.
So they're taking this parable a little too far of what can a dead man do?
Like just nothing.
We're all just.
But see, the Bible says that the legs of the lame are not equal and so is a parable in
the mouth of fools.
So they take this parable of the fact that people who aren't saved are dead and they
take it like so literal.
A dead man can't even believe in Jesus because he can't do anything.
But hold on.
The Bible says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe
in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
And let me tell you something tonight.
That's up to you whether you do that or not.
And if you're here tonight and you're not saved, it's up to you to decide to be saved.
You can take the water of life freely tonight if you want to.
Jesus said you will not come to me that you might have life.
It's offered freely to all and it's whosoever will may come.
And if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and if you believe in your heart that
God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
And it's up to you.
And when we go out soul-willing, we can take the horse to the water, but we can't make
him drink.
We preach the Gospel and you know what?
At that point, it's up to that person whether they're going to accept or reject that free
gift of salvation.
But this just what can a dead man do argument that says that a dead man can't even believe
in Jesus.
You know, that's right.
Now, if somebody says, well, a dead man can't do any works that would please God, okay,
I agree with that.
What can a dead man do to please God?
Nothing.
Because they that are in the flesh cannot please God, the Bible says.
But can a dead man call upon the name of the Lord and be saved?
Absolutely.
Can a dead man believe in Jesus?
Sure he can.
And you say, well, but, you know, God's got to draw him.
Yeah, but Jesus said if I be lifted up from the earth, I'll draw all men unto me.
Well, but he's got to have faith and the faith comes from God.
Yeah, but the Bible says faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
So you know how he's going to get the faith?
When he hears the Word of God preached from some faithful soul winner.
That's how it's going to happen.
So leprosy in the Bible here, you know, is described by Aaron as, wow, you're as one
dead.
You know, when you have that bad of leprosy, you're as one dead.
And again, that's a picture of what sin does in our lives.
Even though we're maybe walking around and functioning, if we're not saved, right, if
a person's not saved, obviously we're saved here tonight, 90 some percent, God willing.
But you know, people that aren't saved though, they are dead in trespasses and sins, spiritually
speaking.
Now let's go to another scripture, Leviticus chapter 14.
We looked at Leviticus 13, which is the passage that has to do with diagnosing leprosy.
And it spends most of the chapter about the skin disease, the fatal condition that we
know today as leprosy and we also know it as Hansen's disease.
Then it spends the latter part of the chapter referring to what the Bible calls a leprosy
in a house or a leprosy in clothing.
And what that's referring to is probably using that word because it's like leprosy in the
way that it spreads and so forth, and the color element.
Probably referring to like a mold or a mildew, you know, where people get black mold in their
house and sometimes they have to tear out whole walls out of their house and everything.
To get rid of that mold.
That's probably what that word is being used to describe.
But in Leviticus chapter 14, he talks about the cleansing of the leper after he's been
healed when he's recovered from leprosy in order to declare him clean.
Now what's the purpose of declaring him clean?
Well, one of the main purposes is that so he no longer has to walk around wearing this
thing and yelling unclean and dwelling outside the camp, you know, so he can actually live
in the city and so forth.
Now let me say this, the Bible doesn't have a leper colony.
It doesn't say, hey, put all the lepers together in a leper colony.
You know, that's just going to make it worse.
And then people who don't even have it, but if people have a skin issue where they think,
then they're going to get it, you know, if they all are living together and so forth.
The Bible says that they would dwell alone without the camp.
And again, it's not super duper contagious to where you just have to stay super far from
these people.
But, you know, you just don't want them coughing right on you and you don't want to get too
close to them, obviously.
But it's interesting that Jesus actually, in that famous story where his feet are anointed
and so forth before his death on the cross, where the woman comes and she's weeping and
she gets out the expensive ointment and so forth.
It's funny how the Bible just throws these things out there.
It just says that when that happened, he was in the house of Simon the leper.
That's all it tells us.
He just happened to be at a guy's house who was a leper.
So you wonder, did he heal the guy, you know, is he still a leper, is he still called that
even after Jesus healed him, or was he not healed, you know, what was the situation with
that?
It's funny how the Bible just kind of tells us that, but it doesn't really give us any
more information on that.
Where did I return?
Chapter 14.
So this is where they get cleansed of the leprosy and they actually go to offer a sacrifice
unto the Lord as part of the cleansing ritual.
So it says in verse 2, this shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing.
He shall be brought unto the priest and the priest shall go forth out of the camp and
the priest shall look and behold if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper, then shall
the priest command and take for him that it be cleansed two birds alive and clean and
cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop and the priest shall command that one of the birds
be killed in an earthen vessel over running water.
As for the living bird, he shall take it and the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop
and shall dip them in the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the
running water.
And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times and
shall pronounce him clean and shall set the living bird loose into the open field.
So this is a really interesting picture here.
When they bring the offering for the cleansing, they take two birds and they kill the one
bird and then the blood of that bird is put in this basin, this earthen vessel, and it
says that they dip the living bird in the blood that was killed over the running water.
Isn't that interesting?
So they take these two birds, they kill the one, and then they take the blood from the
one that's killed and they dip the living bird in the blood of the other bird and then
they release the bird that's been dipped in blood and let it fly off and be free and do
whatever.
So this pictures salvation in the sense that Jesus Christ is our sacrifice that died for
us and the Bible says that he has washed us from our sins in his own blood.
So Jesus has washed us from our sins in his own blood and the Bible says if the son shall
make you free, then you shall be free indeed.
So that's the picture of salvation here where we are washed in the blood and then basically
given total freedom at Christ's expense.
His sacrifice paid for that with his blood.
Now go to the New Testament if you would.
Go to Mark chapter 1.
Let's look at some scriptures in the New Testament on leprosy.
Mark chapter number 1 and again leprosy is picturing sin in our lives because of the
fact that the blood is shed there as part of the cleansing from sin and of course the
Bible says in 1 John that the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sin.
We're cleansed from sin by the blood.
But look at Mark chapter 1 verse 40.
The Bible says there came a leper to him, to Jesus, beseeching him and kneeling down
to him and saying unto him, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched him and saith unto him,
I will be thou clean.
And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed.
This is a great story about a man who comes to Jesus with the faith saying, you know what,
if you want to, you could heal me of this leprosy.
And he's healed.
And of course we know that, you know, Jesus is always going to be willing.
He said, him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
There's no one who would come to Jesus in faith and call upon the name of the Lord by
faith and believe in their heart that God had raised them from the dead where he would
turn them away.
Never.
He'll never, the Bible said that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have
eternal life.
There's no one that would ever be turned away if they came to Jesus Christ by faith.
Now there are some people who've been hardened and they will never come to Christ by faith.
There are others who just resist that and just choose not to come to Christ but Christ
is always willing to heal those who will come to him by faith spiritually speaking.
Now this is a beautiful story but it's destroyed in the new international version, the NIV.
You know, thank God for the King James Bible that we have an English Bible that faithfully
gives us the original meaning from the original Hebrew and the original Greek.
We have a faithful, reliable translation into English.
I believe that the King James Bible is the word of God without error.
It's been tried, it's been tested, it's been the standard for 400 years.
It always cracks me up when they come out with some new Bible version and they call
it the New American Standard and the English Standard Version, the ESV and those versions
will never be the standard.
This book is always the standard by which every other version is compared and people
say, well why do you make that your standard?
I didn't make it the standard, it is the standard.
Anyone with a brain knows that this is the standard.
I mean this is the standard version for the last 400 years.
You say, well no, I think the NIV is the standard.
Okay then why did it just change in 2011?
Why did it change in 1984?
Why did it change in 2011?
Why will it change again?
Well what about the New American Standard Version?
Yeah, nobody's even buying it anymore because the people who used to buy the New American
Standard, they've moved on to the ESV now, the English Standard Version.
And you're seeing the NASB fade away.
Why?
Because it never was the standard.
This is the standard.
And all these other versions basically collapse when they're compared to that standard.
They can't measure up.
They've all sinned and come short of this standard right here.
But anyway, you know, this is the standard.
And this beautiful story in our King James Bible about this man coming to Jesus, and
you can just feel the poignancy in this story.
You know, you feel the emotion of him coming, kneeling before him saying, Lord if thou wilt
thou canst make me clean.
And then you see Jesus moved with compassion.
I love when you read about Jesus being moved with compassion.
You know, he really loves us.
He loves us, and he not only just loves us in a kind of mental type of a sense or a type
of intellectual sense, but he also has compassion on us, you know, which means that he empathizes
with us.
He feels what we feel.
He was at all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
meaning that when we feel pain, he feels it too.
When we're sad, he grieves with us.
And of course the famous verse, Jesus wept, is a great passage on that.
But over and over again, I love the scriptures where it talks about Jesus being moved with
compassion, putting forth his hand and touching this unclean man and saying, be thou clean.
It's a beautiful story, isn't it?
When you read it in the NIV, it's changed to where it says, you're not even going to
believe this, in Mark 1.41 in the NIV, it says Jesus was filled with indignation, meaning
that he's upset, angry, mad.
I'm not sure if it's that way in the old NIV or not.
I know that in the 2011, I'm going to have to pull out the old handy dandy NIV here.
I wonder if the New American Standard also perverts this scripture.
But I know the NIV changes it and again, you'd have to be, I think the thing that keeps coming
up over and over again in this sermon is that you have to be blind to believe in this stuff.
How blind do you have to be to read Leviticus 13 and say it's not contagious?
How blind do you have to be to read this and say, oh yeah, that makes more sense.
Yeah, let's change that in the new version.
It makes way more sense that Jesus got angry and healed the guy.
What kind of a nonsense Bible are these people reading?
Look, the guy comes to him and he's kneeling.
His skin is just destroyed on his flesh.
He's in a wretched, miserable condition and he gets on his knees before Jesus and says,
Lord, if you will, Lord, if you want to, Lord, you can make me clean.
And Jesus, move with compassion, reaches out and touches him and says, I will.
Be thou clean.
And in the NIV, he's filled with indignation and he's just like, be clean.
I will, be clean.
It doesn't make sense, it's ridiculous.
But oh, you that are King James only are just not intellectual.
You're just not smart enough to realize, you know, the intellectual dishonesty of the King
James only position.
But it's funny that these same people in the same breath will tell you, oh, we're so much
smarter because we use these new versions and then they'll tell you, well, the King
James is hard to understand.
Well, wouldn't that make us smarter then since we understand it?
Wouldn't that make them dumb since they're reading the one that's on a third grade reading
level or whatever?
You know, I mean, come on.
So thank God the Bible wasn't written by a third grader.
You know?
Whoa, it's a third grade reading level, great.
Yeah, wonderful.
I really want to read that for the rest of my life.
Sounds like a real intriguing book.
Go to Luke chapter 17, Luke chapter 17.
I mean I guess all these theologians and scholars, they go to the library, they just head straight
for the juvenile section and that's the only place they ever go because everything else
is too hard to understand.
But learn Greek though.
This is too hard to understand so learn Greek, right, according to these people.
Look at Luke 17, this is another great story about leprosy.
We can't turn to all the stories for the sake of time because there's a great story about
Naaman that's a whole sermon in and of itself.
I've done a sermon on it actually in the past, a whole sermon about Naaman and Gehazi.
It's a beautiful story in 2 Kings chapter 5 about leprosy.
But I'm just going to do this last story here in Luke 17 verse 11.
It says, And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst
of Samaria and Galilee.
And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers which
stood afar off.
And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priest.
And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed.
This shows Jesus' healing power.
He didn't even have to touch these people.
I mean, they're standing far off and they're just yelling to him, Jesus, Master, have mercy
on us.
And he just says, Go show yourself to the priest.
That's all he said.
They go away to obey.
You know, they basically have the faith.
So they go to the priest.
Now why is he saying that to them?
Because remember, when you're healed of leprosy, what do you do?
You show yourself to the priest.
And in fact, in that story we looked at in Mark 1, if you get the parallel passage from
Matthew, Jesus tells that guy, Go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses
commanded for a testimony unto them.
So he goes through the process of Leviticus 14.
But here, these guys are on their way to go see the priest and on the way to the priest,
they all get healed.
I mean, just imagine, these 10 guys, they're walking to the priest and they're saying,
Well, I don't know, you think it's going to work?
I mean, he didn't even touch us or we didn't even touch the hem of his garment or anything.
And they're walking and all of a sudden they just start looking, whoa, they're healed.
They were just amazed by that.
And obviously they're rejoicing, they're super excited to be healed.
So let's pick up the story here.
It says at the end of verse 14, It came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed.
And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice glorified
God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks, and he was a Samaritan.
And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed?
But where are the nine?
There are not found that return to give glory to God, save this stranger?
And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.
So this is a great story because it shows that Jesus healed all 10 of them.
Now he didn't punish the other nine for not coming back and saying thank you, did he?
It didn't say, and then they all got their leprosy back.
You guys forgot to say thanks.
No they're all healed.
He said, look, were not ten cleansed?
One of them returned to be thankful.
One of them returned to give God the glory.
All ten of them were cleansed.
And you know what?
Frankly, they all ten had the faith.
They all had the faith to come to Jesus in the first place.
They all had the faith to call upon the name of the Lord in the first place.
They all had the faith to follow his directive to go show themselves to the priest.
They all had faith.
They all were physically saved, but it's a picture of being spiritually saved from our
sins, from leprosy in a spiritual sense.
But notice only one of them came back to give the glory to God.
And he was actually the least prestigious of the ten.
He was the guy that was the most looked down upon by society because he was a Samaritan.
And Samaritans were not as respected in Judea as the Jews were.
The Jews looked down on them because they weren't the chosen people.
And so they looked down upon the Samaritans as being a mixed people of various nationalities
that had come in and mixed.
And so this guy is the one who gives God the glory.
This is a great illustration of the fact that not everybody who gets saved is going to come
and thank us and glorify God and come to church.
And what's amazing to me is when people will attack and criticize soul winning because
they'll say basically, well where are all these people?
You know, that you won unto the Lord.
I mean, you said you had ten lepers cleansed.
Jesus, I only see one.
So where are the other nine?
That would call Jesus a liar in the sense that there's only one there to say thank you.
But this is human nature on display.
I mean, think about what Joseph did for the guy where he interprets the dream and the
guy ends up being set free.
And he tells them, you know, remember me, you know, to the chief butler.
Remember me.
Get me out of prison.
Say something to the Pharaoh and get me out of here.
And what's the guy do?
He totally forgets Joseph.
As soon as he's healed, as soon as he's out of prison, totally, and then years later,
he's like, oh yeah, I do remember my faults this day.
My buddy's been in jail for the last two years.
I was supposed to help him out.
But this is human nature.
We're often ungrateful and unthankful.
So when we go out and preach the gospel, people are being healed spiritually.
People are being saved.
You say, well how do you know that?
Well because they're calling upon the name of the Lord by faith.
Now obviously there are some people out there that are just going to go through the motions
and pretend to be saved and pretend to believe and pretend to call upon the name of the Lord.
And obviously only God knows the heart.
So yeah, there are going to be people out there that we think get saved that really
didn't.
But then there are other people where we go out and we think they didn't get saved and
they really did.
Because we'll give them the gospel and they won't get it right then and there, but then
often they'll get it thereafter.
Once that seed has been watered and they will eventually get saved.
I know this, that when I go out soul winning and knock doors, when I pray with someone
and lead them in a prayer to accept Christ as their savior, then if I have any doubt
about the person, if I feel like I'm not sure if this person really got it, you know how
it is.
Because you do a really thorough job and you go through all the points and you verify that
they understand it and that they believe it and you pray with them.
But sometimes you walk away saying, you know, I'm not really sure if that person got it.
You know, they were a little shaky on it or whatever and I never count those people.
You know, I only count the ones that I'm confident about where I feel like it's real clear that
they understood what was being preached and that they made that decision to believe on
Christ and I prayed with them and it was just very clear.
You know, when in doubt, I don't count the numbers.
There have been times though where I did not count someone and then I'll be soul winning
again in the same area a week later and I'll walk up to that person and start asking them
questions and talking to them and it's crystal clear that that person did get it because
a week later they've got it.
And then I'll go back and retroactively say, oh, I am going to count that person.
They really did get it.
So all that to say this, some of the people that we count could be pulling the wool over
our eyes and some of the people that we don't count, you know, really got saved.
So the way I see it, it pretty much balances out.
But here's what I say to all the critics of soul winning that want to know where the nine
lepers are.
Here's what I want to say to them.
Well, you know what?
Let's say 10% of the people that we claim that we won to Christ actually got saved and
let's say 90% of them were a fraud.
That still is way more than you're doing for the Lord, period.
Sick of these do nothing losers and that's what they are, they're losers.
Hey, if we're soul winners, what does that make them?
A loser.
I'm talking about zeros today.
I'm talking about do nothings.
I'm talking about the people who Jesus describes as a wicked and slothful servant doing nothing
for the Lord.
And then they want to criticize people who are trying to do it.
I mean, oh, God forbid that we would go out and knock doors and open our Bibles and try
to tell people how to be saved and do the best we can through the power of the Holy
Spirit to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Are we perfect?
No.
But you know what?
God uses imperfect man and God uses us, the earthen vessels that we are, to carry out
his will and to preach the word.
He's committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation.
And if we see our calling brethren, it's not many that are talented, it's not many that
are wise, or it's not many that are great looking or eloquent speakers, no.
God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and he uses us.
He uses humble, just imperfect, sinful, failed, flawed human beings like us and we go out
and we win people to Christ and it's real.
But then the do-nothings want to say, well, you know, how can you claim that that many
people got saved?
You know, you only have 200 people in your church but you claim that, you know, 2,000
people got saved.
Well, hello, that's the nine who didn't come back.
And by the way, the other thing about that that's so ridiculous is that just for a fundamental
Baptist church to grow from zero to 200 in 10 years is a great growth anyway.
And by the way, this church has a revolving door.
Do you notice we have visitors every single week?
We really have visitors every service, virtually Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday
night.
And it's like a revolving door of people.
Why?
Because our church is so different than the culture in America that people can't handle
it because they're so messed up with the American culture of 2016 that this preaching seems
radical to them.
So they go down to the warm and fuzzy church down the street that kind of tells them what
they want to hear and there are a whole multitude of reasons why everybody that we win to Christ
doesn't come.
In fact, I put together a whole list of reasons, you know, why people who get saved don't necessarily
come to church.
I'll just quickly blow through some with you.
First of all, a lot of the people who win to the Lord are teenagers.
A huge percentage of people that win to the Lord are teenagers.
Why?
Because children and teenagers are really receptive to the Gospel.
So you know, you say, oh, oh, you won a teenager to the Lord 30 minutes away in Glendale or
30 minutes away in Levine or wherever and they didn't come to church?
Well, they must have not gotten saved.
It's like, what?
Expect a 12-year-old to get here from 45 minutes away?
Yeah, we go soul winning like 30 minutes from here frequently.
Think about the Gilbert soul winning team.
You know, oh, they didn't drive the 30 minutes.
But first of all, half the people that I personally win to the Lord is in Spanish.
So guess why they don't come?
Because we don't have a Spanish service.
So that kind of explains that.
And then here's where a lot of the people that we win to Christ also, they already go
to another church.
But they're just not saved.
And you know, you'd think that they would realize, whoa, my church didn't get me saved.
Time to switch churches.
But guess what?
A lot of times they just continue to go to that non-denom church or that Baptist church
or whatever church they were going to even though they never got saved.
They keep going.
Another phenomenon is that sometimes you'll win somebody to the Lord and then their relatives
and friends who are Christian will hear, oh, wow, you got saved?
Well, you're coming to my church.
So they'll get saved and then they'll get absorbed.
I know I've had that many times with friends and co-workers where I'd get them saved, get
them coming to my church a couple of times and then basically they'd get taken away to
some liberal church by aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, brothers, sisters, whoever that hears
that they got saved.
You know, a lot of people, by the way, just don't come to church because they're shy and
embarrassed because it's kind of scary to walk into a new church for the first time.
Some people are just, now that might seem silly to you if you're a very outgoing person,
but for the average person it takes a lot of guts to show up for church.
And I've talked to many people who said, oh, I came to church and I got to the parking
lot and I turned around and drove away because I just got so nervous I couldn't walk in.
Now, who can kind of relate to feeling nervous walking into a new church for the first time?
Put up your hands.
Oh, look around the building.
Oh, that's nobody, right?
It's the whole building.
It makes you nervous.
And look, I'm a very outgoing person and I can tell you right now, when I walk into a
new church, I don't get nervous.
But I'll tell you this though, when I was a teenager and even as a young adult, when
I would walk into a new church for the first time, I would get nervous.
And I'm not a super shy person.
That's natural, that's normal.
And I grew up in church.
From the time I was born I was in church.
What about a person who's not used to going to church, doesn't know what church is like,
can you see how they might be a little apprehensive, they do receive Christ as Savior, they do
believe the Gospel and then someone puts this in their head and says, okay, you know, here's
the church, here's the time, here's the location, we'd love for you to come.
They might look at that and say like, oh, I don't know if I'm ready for that.
I don't know.
I'm nervous.
But you want to tell me that those people all didn't get saved.
No, it doesn't say come to church and thou shalt be saved.
It doesn't say get baptized and thou shalt be saved.
It says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
And you know what, just here's the proof.
In Jesus' ministry, he had multitudes and multitudes saved.
The Bible talks about thousands and thousands and thousands of people being saved through
the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus.
How many people were in the early church in Acts chapter 1?
120.
So four years of ministry, six months of John the Baptist, three and a half years of Jesus
and his 12 disciples that were full time, okay?
So we have 13 full time preachers.
And by the way, these guys weren't just average preachers, were they?
Jesus!
Peter!
James!
John!
These are the 12 disciples.
These guys are like we've forsaken all and followed you night and day.
We're going soul winning.
We're preaching the gospel.
We're going to every town and village.
We're preaching to the point where Jesus worked so hard in those three and a half years they
said he's crazy.
He's beside himself.
They're trying to grab Jesus and say you need to eat something.
You need to rest.
You need to take it easy.
And in four years how many members showed up on Wednesday night as it were?
120.
The core of the church was 120 people in Acts chapter 1.
So you know, excuse me if I think it's pretty reasonable after 10 years of soul winning,
I'm not Jesus.
I'm not Peter.
I'm not John.
I don't think you're James.
I don't see Andrew here.
But yet to have a few hundred people as the core of the church 10 years later, well that's
because we're not as cool as Jesus and the 12 disciples.
And we don't have 13 full time guys doing it.
Hello.
But you see how people have such a weird unreasonable expectation that oh every person you get.
So I guess what they would say then is that Jesus and John the Baptist only had 120 people
saved.
Because that's the only people who were actually in the church.
And that's what I've heard these fools say.
I've heard independent fundamental Baptists say well if they had this many people saved
but this many came and got baptized and joined the church and continued in the church, that's
how many people they actually got saved.
Well then you're saying that John the Baptist baptized thousands of unsaved people.
Jesus baptized thousands of unsaved people.
Basically the whole ministry was a joke then.
What kind of nonsense is that?
So we need to understand the fact that 9 out of 10 people that you talk to aren't even
going to say thank you.
They're not even going to walk up to you and say thanks, let alone join a church.
Let alone serve God for the rest of their lives.
You see there are many people today who believe on Jesus Christ and they want that free gift,
right?
But they don't want to do the work.
Well they're still saved because thank God his grace is sufficient and if they believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ they shall be saved.
But the Bible teaches that there will be many people who are saved where all their works
are burned and they don't get any rewards.
You know those who are faithful are going to be rewarded greatly and we're going to
rule and reign with Christ but those who get saved, even if they don't get any rewards,
you know I'd rather be the bottom rung in heaven than to be the top dog in hell.
Think about that.
And so leprosy tonight, it pictures sin and thank God the deliverance from sin, the salvation
from sin comes through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father we thank you so much Lord for these lessons about leprosy in the Bible.
First of all we learned about the contagious nature of it.
We learned about the fact that it slowly will eat away at us, destroy us, it'll make us
desensitized and we won't even realize how harmful it is until it's too late.
It's a death sentence and the wages of sin is death and sin when it's finished bringing
forth death.
But Lord thank you so much for salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ and thank you for
the fact that we have the cleansing and healing, not just the physical cleansing because our
body is going to pass away anyway, but rather a spiritual cleansing Lord from our sins.
And God thank you for the fact that one day those who are ill with this disease, there
are some people today who have leprosy and also just any other physical diseases or ailments
of the body, thank you so much Lord that one day they will receive a glorified body if
they believed on you, you will not only have healed the soul but eventually you will heal
the body Lord and that basically in the resurrection they will have a fresh clean body Lord for
all eternity.
And thank you for all these things, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.