Let's pray. Father, thank you so much. Thank you for your love. God, it really is amazing how much you love us. It's overwhelming. And this morning, we're just here to meet with you. We're just here to be in your presence and worship you. And we're here to hear from you. So, Holy Spirit, we just invite you into this place. We know you're already here, and we just we're here in your presence. We want to hear from what you have for us. And so I just pray, Lord, that you would literally translate everything that comes out of my mouth to whatever, whatever it is that we all need to walk out of this room this morning closer to you than when we came, and we just ask all of this in your name. Amen. Well, last week Steve started a series on the 23rd Psalm about how Jesus really is our shepherd. It's probably one of the most, if not the most, quoted chapter in the Bible. The Lord is my shepherd. It's how it starts. And Steve's doing a whole series on how Jesus really is our shepherd and what that means for us. With Steve being sick this morning, we're going to take a break from that, but he'll be back next week picking up where he left off. So you definitely want to be here. This morning, we're going to take a look at a really interesting, impactful, and honestly just moving encounter that Jesus had with someone really early in Jesus' three-year ministry, really early in the three years where Jesus was traveling around teaching people about who he was, who God really was. I know personally, a lot of my favorite passages from the Bible are these interactions that we have recorded between Jesus and just real, everyday people. And Jesus was, he was walking around, going and teaching in different places, and he encountered a lot of people, and these are real people. They have issues. Several of them, I mean, you can think of the woman at the well, Zacchaeus, the tax collector, you can go on and on. They have major issues in life that they're working on. Behaviors in life that aren't healthy that they need help with. Several of the people who come to Jesus, they are in a life crisis, an intense one. And they need help. And they are coming to Jesus desperate for help. And all of us can relate to those kinds of situations. And so we get to see these interactions that Jesus has with people just like us. And what's so cool about that is that the Bible tells us that Jesus is the exact representation of God. It says that in Hebrews. He is the exact representation of God, which just means that if we want to know what God is like, we just look at Jesus. That is as close of a picture as we could ever get to who God really is. And so when we see Jesus interact with all these people, we see how God feels about people. We see how God feels about us. The way that Jesus talks to people, the way that he helps people, the things he cares about, those apply to all of us. That is exactly how he would interact with you and me if we walked up to him with a problem. So it gives us this really cool and really powerful picture into how God feels about you and me. This morning, specifically, we're going to look at an interaction that Jesus had with a man in Mark chapter 1. And it's one that had a lot of significance for Jesus and this man as well. For Jesus, it was it was kind of a risk that he was interacting with this man, but it shows us something about him that really is amazing. It's in Mark chapter 1, verses 40 through 45. It says, A leper came to him, begging on his knees. If you want to, you can cleanse me. Deeply moved, Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, I want to be clean. Then and there the leprosy was gone, his skin smooth and healthy. Jesus dismissed him with strict orders. Say nothing to anyone. Take the offering for cleansing that Moses prescribed, and present yourself to the priest. This will validate your healing to the people. But as soon as the man was out of earshot, he told everyone he met what had happened, spreading the news all over town. So Jesus kept to the out-of-way places, no longer able to move freely in and out of the city, but people found him and came from all over. We see a lot of desperate people come to Jesus. But I'm not sure if there's anyone that comes to Jesus more desperate than this man. Because he has leprosy. And in Jesus' day, there was no disease that was as feared as leprosy. For very good reason. It is a terrible disease. And in Jesus' day, it was an epidemic. Basically, it's a skin disease that aggressively attacks the nerves. And it attacks the nerves in some key places around the eyes and the lower part of the face, the hands, the feet. The eyes get attacked so that your eye loses its ability to blink and self-clean, and so they dry out and it causes blindness. The muscles around the mouth and the nose become extremely deformed, almost to the point where a person with a severe case becomes unrecognizable. And all feeling is lost in the hands and the feet and in the extremities. And so those parts of the body become paralyzed, become crippled. Oftentimes, infections happen that causes those limbs to be lost. And ultimately, leprosy led to death. It was a fatal disease. So much so that in the Middle Ages, when there was a rise of leprosy in Europe, priests would read burial rites over people when they were diagnosed with leprosy right away. They were literally considered as good as dead. That's how serious of a condition this was. And in Jesus' day, it was an epidemic. But not only did lepers have to deal with the physical stuff and just the reality of certain death and everything that would come from that, they had to deal with total social exclusion. Because it was an epidemic, people were terrified of the disease spreading, and so lepers were kept away from others. And in Jesus' time in the Jewish community, that level of social exclusion was extreme. The key word that anyone would have used to describe a leper, and that a leper would be forced to use to describe himself or herself would be the word unclean. They were considered unclean. And there had been some regulations back in the book of Leviticus that had talked about how to deal with leprosy. And at that time, when Leviticus was written, the Jewish people were nomads and they lived traveling around, they lived in camps in the desert, and it was literally millions of people living in extremely close proximity. We're talking millions of people living in tents, one after another. So they had to be extremely cautious with any disease because it could spread so quickly. And so if someone was diagnosed with leprosy, according to Leviticus, they had to leave the camp, they had to stay outside the camp. And if they were around other people, they had to shout unclean, unclean, as a way to warn people, I have a disease and I don't want it to spread. And that alone would be incredibly difficult to deal with, to have that constant reminder of this condition. But by the time Jesus is here, the social exclusion for lepers has taken on a whole other level. See, then in the centuries before Jesus came, there was this movement of laws that were created that weren't from God, they were man-made laws, but it was a movement of laws that were called scribal laws. And basically the deal was these people called scribes that kind of came into power in the centuries leading up to Jesus' arrival, decided that there were too many things in God's word that were up to interpretation. There were too many gray areas, too many things that people had the ability to decide on one way or another. They wanted everything to be defined, and so they came up with law after law after law to try to define every aspect of life to make sure that people could not offend God. And this was religion at its absolute core. Man-made rules that were treated as if they were from God. And in Jesus' time, they didn't distinguish between a scribal law, a man-made law that had come about, versus something that God actually said. To them, it was one and the same. They were equal. These were what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 15, 9 when he was talking about the Pharisees and said, their worship is a farce. For they teach man-made ideas as commands from God. And just like religious rules today, because we still have religious rules in our world, they were, for the most part, unnecessary and they were often oppressive. But because the Pharisees and the religious leaders in power, because they were so passionate about these and believed so strongly that these were just as important as anything God had said, they enforced them. And so the person who didn't wash their hands the right way before they ate was just as much of a sinner as the person who lied, cheated, and stole. No difference. And there were a ton of scribal laws about leprosy. A ton. And they were extreme. And basically, the result of those laws, those man-made laws, treated as if they were from God, was that lepers were cut off from any form of human contact you can imagine. See, in their world, to be unclean, that wasn't just to be disease. To be unclean meant that you were detestable. You were detestable in the eyes of society, you were detestable in the eyes of God. They believed that. They believed that if someone had leprosy, this was God punishing them. They weren't compassionate toward them. And they very much believed it was very superstitious that a person could just transfer their uncleanness to someone else. If you touch someone who's unclean, you were unclean. And not just physical, spiritual. And so the laws were so extreme that if a leper even put their head through the doorway of your household, your whole household could be considered unclean. Your whole household could be considered unclean. No one approached lepers. If they were walking down the street, people walked to the other side. And they spent their entire lives not only dealing with the severity of this disease, but also withgoing years with no touch. No hug, no holding. You can imagine how devastating it would have been. You wake up one morning, you have a sore on your skin, and you're thinking, God, please let this not be leprosy. Anything but leprosy. And it progresses, you're diagnosed with leprosy, and immediately you leave your home, you leave your family, you leave your friends, you leave your career, and you're totally isolated. You're cut off from everything, and the people you love the most, they are not even allowed to touch you. And in that day and age, the Jewish people, religious laws to them were just as important as laws from a government. They followed this. This was the way of life, and so that is what life was like as a leper. That is what this man who comes to Jesus has lived through. That is what his life is like. He's crippled, he's deformed, and he hasn't been loved in who knows how long. That's who comes to Jesus. And the way that Jesus responds to him is really incredible. Looking back at what it said, a leper came to him begging on his knees. If you want to, you can cleanse me. Deeply moved, Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, I want to. Be clean. Then and there the leprosy was gone, his skin smooth and healthy. You can you can almost feel the desperation in this man. He's begging Jesus to help him. For starters, he's taking a big risk just by walking up to Jesus. He's not supposed to do that. He's supposed to say unclean, unclean, and avoid any contact with people. That is the religious rule. But he doesn't. Instead of saying unclean, unclean and avoiding him, he sees Jesus and he says, Clean me, clean me, please, cleanse me. He sees his opportunity. And it says, Jesus is deeply moved. He's filled with compassion. And just like we said a few moments ago, this man would not have been used to compassion. The popular opinion would have totally been that God was angry with him, that this is what God wanted. But Jesus is God. And so he debunks that idea very quickly. And he shows this man that God is not angry with him. God does love him, and God wants to help. This isn't God's judgment. This is an incredibly unfortunate circumstance in this man's life, and Jesus wants to help. And what happens next is really amazing. It's amazing that Jesus heals him. Yes, that is amazing. Jesus healed a disease that there was no cure for. And that's incredible. That can't be overstated. But Jesus healed people all the time. It was a daily thing for him. He healed every disease and sickness you could think of. The Bible teaches us that that's why people follow Jesus wherever he went. He could do things no one else could do. But the most significant thing that happens here is how Jesus heals him. He touches him. He reaches out his hand and he touches him. And for this man, we can only imagine what that alone must have felt like. He hadn't been touched in years. Perhaps decades. Who knows how long? People could live up to 20, 25 years with leprosy. It's no telling how long he had gone without human contact. And Jesus touches him. Even if he hadn't healed him of leprosy, if Jesus would have just put his hand on him or hugged him and said, I'm so sorry for what's going on in your life. That man would have walked away totally changed because of that alone. Even if he hadn't been healed, but Jesus touches him. And what's really, really amazing is that Jesus didn't have to touch him to heal him. Jesus wasn't touching him as a necessity to perform a healing. Jesus healed people constantly, and he healed a lot of people without touching them at all. He would just speak words. There's a story of a man that was paralyzed, and Jesus says, get up and walk. And the man stands up and he walks. There's a man that came to Jesus that had a servant who was incredibly sick, and Jesus says, Okay, I'll heal him. Let's go to where he is. And the man says to Jesus, No, Jesus, you are so powerful, you don't even have to be in his presence. Just say the words and it's done. And Jesus did that. He healed the man from a long distance. He just said it and it was done. Jesus' friend Lazarus, Lazarus, he was dead. He was dead and buried in a tomb and outside of the tomb. Jesus shouted, Lazarus, stand up, Lazarus, stand up. Can't say that. And he stood up. Just by speaking it. Jesus could have just looked at this leper and said, Your faith has healed you and be on your way, and it would have been done. He didn't have to touch him to heal him at all. But he did. And he wasn't touching him to heal him, he was touching him to love him. To make him feel loved. This man had felt untouchable, unlovable, unclean. And Jesus touches him. Jesus shows him love. And that shows so many things to us about God and how he loves us. It shows us that not only does God care about our circumstances, but he cares about us. He didn't just care about this man's problem. He cared about that. He cared enough to fix it. But he cared about this man. He cared about his heart, his emotions, the fact that he had spent years without feeling love. Jesus cared about that. He was just as concerned with that as he was his condition. And that's how God is with us too. He doesn't just care about our circumstances. He cares about, he cares about you, who you are, how you feel. It's important to him. When we're down, when we're upset, when we're when we're in a bad place, when we're depressed, whatever it is, he cares about that. He cares about how we feel. It's that personal. This interaction that Jesus has with him, it doesn't just show us how compassionate, how loving God is, how much he cares about us as people. It also shows us something else that's really interesting. It shows us how far God is willing to go for us. This leper definitely took a risk by breaking a religious law to just approach Jesus in the first place, but he had nothing to lose. He had leprosy. He had nothing to lose. Why not? Why not break this religious law? Why not? Jesus, on the other hand, he had a lot to lose. See, this was very early in Jesus' ministry. It was early in the time he was traveling around teaching to people. He'd already done some miracles. He already had huge crowds of people following him. But this is early. He hasn't walked on water. He hasn't fed 5,000 people with a few pieces of bread and fish. He hasn't done those things yet. And he's done enough at this point to attract not just large crowds, but also the attention of the Pharisees and the religious leaders, these people that hold all these religious laws, these scribal laws that weren't from God, but they acted like they were. He's attracted their attention and they don't like Jesus very much. He's done a few things that have rubbed them the wrong way, ruffled their feathers a little bit. He's chosen some disciples that weren't viewed as good people, you know, fishermen, tax collector. These weren't the types of people the Pharisees would have associated with. They didn't like that about Jesus. He had been associating with people that they avoided. They already had something against Jesus, but they didn't have any dirt on him. They didn't have anything that they could use against him to discredit him, to push him out. But they were constantly looking for something. Anything they could use to get in Jesus' way, to keep him out. And so when Jesus touches a leper, he's taking a huge risk. Because this was more than just an obvious violation of a religious law, this would have been a slap in the face to a religious law. If a leper could stick his head in or her head in your home and your whole household was unclean, if you touched a leper. And that was serious. And if the Pharisees find out about this, there's no doubt that they will use it against Jesus. That is why Jesus tells this man, do not tell anyone. Don't tell anyone what's happened. Keep this between you and me. It wasn't because he didn't want huge crowds of people showing up after they heard what he had done. Jesus already had the crowds. Huge crowds were already showing up. And he wasn't afraid of the Pharisees. He didn't fear the Pharisees at all. But the simple truth is, they had the ability to make his life more difficult. They were in authority. And they already didn't like him very much. And this incident, if they found out that he broke this religious rule, this man-made rule that they viewed as God's rule, if they found out about that, they could declare Jesus unclean. And now Jesus has the stigma and the taboo and everything that comes with that word unclean. Jesus has to carry that. They could use that to keep him out of the synagogues. He wouldn't be able to freely go into a church and teach. They could keep him out of cities that they had a large amount of influence in. There's no really end to what they could have done, how they could have gotten in his way if they would have known what Jesus has done. Jesus didn't fear them, but he didn't want to give them exactly what they wanted. And this would have been a softball. No offense to our softball team at all. But that's just a figure of speech. This would have been a no-brainer. It would have been gold to them. It's a huge risk that Jesus is taking. And it's a risk that actually did have negative consequences for Jesus. The Pharisees did find out about this. The man couldn't keep, he couldn't keep the secret. And who can blame him, honestly? Who can blame him? His whole life was changed. Who could blame him for not telling people what Jesus had done? But because he tells people what Jesus has done, it says that, well, we'll just look at it. It said, as soon as the man was out of earshot, he told everyone he met what had happened, spreading the news all over town. So Jesus kept to the out-of-the-way places, no longer able to move freely in and out of the city. But people found him and came from all over. There's no doubt that the Pharisees found out about this. And they used it against him. They declared him unclean. And it's interesting because before this, most of the time when Jesus teaches, he's going to synagogues. He's going to their churches and he's teaching in the churches. The Pharisees didn't like it very much, but they didn't really have any way that they could keep him out. After this, there's only a few times through the rest of the next two and a half years of his life that he's recorded teaching in a synagogue. And when he does, when he does show up in one, only a handful of times, they're pretty upset that he's there in the first place. From this point on, Jesus primarily teaches outside the cities. In the wilderness. He can't freely go in and out anymore. He can't walk into a synagogue. They wouldn't let him. Jesus took this risk. And it was a calculated risk. And I'm guessing he knew that the man would talk. Not just because he's God, but because of common sense. I mean, who could keep a secret for that long? But he took the risk anyway. To Jesus, healing this man, it wasn't just healing the man, because he could have healed him without touching him. And there would have been no risk in that. It would have been all reward, no risk, if Jesus just would have said, You're healed. But when he decided to touch the man, he took that risk. He knew exactly what could happen, and he did it anyway. Because to him, loving us, showing us compassion is worth any risk imaginable. And it's just, it's interesting as a side note because this is such a perfect example of who Jesus is compared with what people thought God was like. We have a new banner on our building, and you may have seen it, or maybe you drive up so often you don't even notice. But it says Jesus, not religion. And you know, these scribal laws, they were the embodiment of religion, man-made rules that are taught as if they're from God. That's what religion is. And it's interesting because religion would have kept Jesus and this man apart. If they had both observed the religious laws, this man wouldn't have even approached Jesus in the first place. He would have moved to the other side of the street, or Jesus would have done that. Jesus definitely would not have interacted with him. He definitely would not have touched him. Religion would have kept them apart. This never would have happened. But Jesus doesn't care about religion. He cares about people. He cares about love. That's who he is. That's who God is. That's what that means. That's what Jesus, not religion, is all about. And this is a perfect illustration of that. Most of us, probably all of us, can relate to the leper. We've probably all felt a little unclean at times. We probably have things in our lives that we we feel like God is upset about, is unhappy about. That's normal. Some of us may have even been branded unclean at some point in our lives by someone. Who knows? But Jesus showed us how God really feels about us. We are not unattractive to God. We are not unclean. We are not unapproachable. He loves us. He has compassion for us. And it's interesting because Jesus didn't just heal this man's uncleanness. He took it upon himself. After this interaction, this man is clean. He's healed. He's free. Now Jesus, because he touched him, Jesus is unclean. Now Jesus has to carry the burden of that. And so this is actually a really early picture of exactly what Jesus has done for all of us. In 1 Peter 2.24, it says he used his servant body to carry our sins to the cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. In 2 Corinthians 5.21, God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong so we could be put right with God. Jesus, he's taken all of our uncleanness on himself. And he dealt with it. It's dealt with. And in God's eyes, our uncleanness, our sin, it stayed buried in that tomb. And Jesus took it all on himself. He did exactly for us what he did for this leper. And now, because of that, we are clean in God's eyes. We're not perfect, but we are clean. If the worship team will come back up, all of us this morning, all of us have a God that loves us, that's compassionate, that cares about us, just like this man was cared for by Jesus. All of us have a God that no matter what, no matter, no matter how unclean we might feel, no matter what, God doesn't only want to help us with our problems, he wants to literally reach out his hand, touch our hearts, and have us know that we are deeply loved by him. And so this morning we can we can all be like that leper. We can all just go to Jesus, tell him what we need. That leper just said, Jesus, cleanse me, cleanse me. We can all just say, Jesus, I want to be clean. Jesus, I want my marriage to be healed. Jesus, I want this addiction to go away. Jesus, I want my relationship with you to be restored. We can all just go to Jesus and say that, and he will respond the same way he did to this man. He will just reach out his hand, love us, and help us through it. He took all of our uncleanness on himself. He carried that burden and it's dealt with. And now we're free. We're free to worship him, we're free to live life knowing that we are loved by God and we are cleansed by God. And that is awesome. So if you'll stand with me, let's pray. And just worship Jesus for what he's done. Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you that you treat every single one of us the same way that you treated this leper. Not one of us can ever do anything that makes us unattractive to you, unapproachable to you, unclean in your eyes. We are all your kids. You love every single one of us. And all you want to do is reach your hands out, grab hold of us, and love us and help us. You're amazing. We love you. And we thank you and ask all this in your name. Amen.