Sermon Transcript

So right now, guys, we’re in the middle of a sermon series called “Who is Jesus and What Does He Want?” The DNA of our church is that we are making disciples. In fact, our church has been making disciples since 1789. And we belong to a Savior who’s been making disciples for over 2,000 years.

In the call for us to make disciples, we get that from the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20, which we’re learning on Wednesday nights. And He calls us to make disciples by first baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the second step is that we teach them to obey everything that Christ has commanded us.

So the effort in this sermon series is that we would take the commands of Jesus, whether they’re implicit or explicit, and study them so that we cannot just do them, but that we can also teach them as we make efforts to disciple our children, our grandchildren, and even ourselves.

With that being said, there are two types of commands in the New Testament. You’ve got commands that are action, but this week we’re going to focus on the other type. And that type of command is the command of belief. Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” But what we believe is quite a lot to think about. We’re called to believe in Jesus, but exactly how or what type of person Jesus is, we need to know.

We could say that we believe in Jesus, but do we understand what it means that Jesus is the Son of David? Do we understand what it means that Jesus is Yahweh? Do we understand what it means that He has authority over all of creation, diseases, and death, and that He has the ability to raise us from the dead? These are commands of belief.

Today, we’re going to look at one of those commands of belief. And this time, it is implicit. In other words, He doesn’t come out and say, “Believe this.” But from the story in Luke 5, we are going to see that it is implied. But it is a command that we must embrace.

Okay. So rise with me if you will while we read Luke 5:12–14. This is the word of the Lord:

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” (ESV)

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Heavenly Father, I come to You in the name of Jesus. And Father, I pray that You would help me to give them the message I am 100% certain You want them to have. To walk out of these doors knowing and believing that You love them and that You embrace them as they are to make them new. I pray, Father, that You would penetrate our hearts, and Holy Spirit, I pray that You would wash over me right now and take captive my brain cells and my tongue and that You would give my weak body the energy and the vigor that is needed to proclaim awesome and mighty truths that transcend our existence and the reality of our world. I pray that You would be with our people and help them to receive this. Protect them from the enemy as we speak today. We love You, Lord Jesus, and we embrace that You love us. In Your name we pray. Amen.

You are not going to hear me say this often from the pulpit at all, but the Lord has literally told me this week what He wanted me to say to you. And I am quite excited to say this and give you the evidence for how I know that to be true.

Earlier this week or last week or the week before, I had a meeting with a brother, and this brother says, “Josh, I can’t quite remember whether you’ve ever told us in these words: ‘God loves you.’” And I’m thinking to myself, “No, that sounds foolish. I’m pretty sure I told you guys God loves you.” So, I go home, but I did promise I’m going to sit on this, right? I’m going to sit on this.

And I went home and went to sleep, woke up the next day. It’s operation desk day. I am going to clear the clutter on my desk. So, in the meantime, I decide I’m going to put on a YouTube video to listen to in the background. So, I’m going through all the junk on my desk, and I’m going through the papers. And in this YouTube video, it’s an interview between two Christians. And this really popular author, about 10 years ago, he’s explaining why he stepped down from leading this megachurch in California.

He had stepped down from leading this megachurch because he said, “If you were to ask him, ‘Does my mother love me?’ 100% it’s coming out of my mouth without a second to think. Yes, she loves me. I’m 100% sure my mother loves me. But if you were to ask me, ‘Does the Heavenly Father love you?’ I would say I’m 90% sure.” And it struck him, “Why am I so confident that my mother loves me? A sinner who has made countless mistakes, and yet my perfect Heavenly Father, I doubt that He loves me?”

And I was like, “Oh, wow. Maybe my brother’s on to something that I just didn’t realize. Maybe there are a lot of people that struggle with this.” So anyway, I finished the desk. That was a miracle. And then I’m leaving, and it’s lunchtime, and I decided I’m going to call up a friend, a friend of the church, and ask her, “How are you? How have you been?” And she gave me the lowdown. She’s doing good.

And I said, “And how’s your child? You know, the one we’re trying to pray for to come to the Lord?” And she tells me they’re good. We’re praying for her. And she said she was able to do a devotional with her. And I said, “Oh, well, what was the devotional about?” And she says, “I’m reading this devotional out of a book, and the devotional says, ‘God the Father loves you.’” And she told me, “Josh, I grew up not hearing that very often, that God the Father loves me. Jesus, I heard a lot, but God the Father, that He loves me.” I’m getting goosebumps just telling the story.

So, within two days, three people have come to me, and they have all expressed the same thing: God’s people need to hear that God loves you. And it gets even better. So, we are going through a sermon series, “Who is Jesus and What Does He Want?” I already had this passage picked out. And this passage is all about a man who recognizes that Jesus is Lord of the universe because he says, “I know you can make me clean.” He also recognizes that He’s worthy of worship, and he falls to his knees.

Many of us are like this man. But the one thing that this man lacked was knowing whether Jesus wanted to do it. He says, “If You will it, if You desire it, You can.” This man is not sure if God loves him. He recognizes Him as Lord. He recognizes that He’s powerful and able, but he just doesn’t know, “Does He love me enough to do it?” And I’m here to tell you because God wants me to: God loves you tremendously.

And I want every single one of you to hear this passage today. And I want you to not be embarrassed to feel like you identify with this leper. Are you ready? Alright. So, here we are. If you are with us for the first time this week, we like to follow a fancy little system we call sermon notes. You’re going to find that in your bulletin. Please take those out and follow along with the sermon so you can fill in these blanks as we go through it.

For our dear loved disciples at home, if you are not here with us, we love you. You can also grab these sermon notes directly from the website. At the homepage, you’ll see a bar at the top, and it says, “Grab this week’s bulletin and sermon notes, and you can follow along.”

Apart from Jesus, we are without God and his community.

The first point of today’s sermon is: Apart from Jesus, we are all without God and His community. Okay. So, where do we get this idea from? You see in Luke 5:12–14, we see a man who is a leper. What does it mean to have leprosy? How did it affect this man? These are the kinds of questions we need to ask.

Well, you see, leprosy in the Bible is not exactly the same thing as what we might call leprosy in the modern medical system. It’s a very specific type of disease for modern doctors. But the actual biblical definition of leprosy, how the biblical authors would have regarded it, well, that’s found in Leviticus 13. He’s going to lay out, I believe, six different types of skin diseases. It could have been something as simple as psoriasis. It could have been something as simple as a scab. And he mentions white hairs growing out of them. So, it gets kind of weird, but it gets pretty detailed. And Leviticus 13 is where you’re going to find those.

Now, with that being said, we have to understand what are the implications for a person who contracts leprosy. It’s really sad. It’s one of the saddest things that could possibly happen to a person. In Leviticus 13:45–46, Moses writes, “The person who has a case of serious skin disease is to have his clothes torn and his hair hanging loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and he will remain unclean as long as he has the disease, and he must live in a place outside of the camp alone.”

In fact, this prognosis that is given to people with leprosy was regarded as so terrible to endure that the authors of ancient Jewish literature like the Talmud and the Mishna said if anyone ever gets the diagnosis of leprosy, they are as good as dead because nothing will kill you faster than a broken heart, isolation, and not just isolation from other people. But this also meant that you couldn’t participate in the temple or tabernacle. That meant you were also undergoing isolation from God.

Can you imagine contracting a disease where you were no longer allowed to come here on Sunday morning? Now, some people want the excuse to not come here on Sunday morning, might welcome it, but I’m telling you, this is one of the worst things that you could possibly go through. A person with leprosy is without his people, God’s people, and God Himself.

And guess what? It’s not the skin disease that’s problematic. It’s the label that comes with the skin disease, and that is “unclean.” To be unclean meant that you were something that repels the presence of God. In fact, in the book of Luke, you’re going to see in Luke 8:26–39, there’s a demon-possessed man, and it says that the spirit that possesses him is called an unclean spirit. Demons and uncleanliness go hand in hand. The enemy of God and uncleanliness go hand in hand.

And when you contract leprosy, you become marked with the enemy’s territory. You can no longer draw near to God. And God will no longer draw near to you. And God’s people will shun you and turn their back on you, and you will die in isolation.

But folks, what I want you to understand is that it is the same way with us. Without Christ, we are all dead in our sin. And like the leper, we also are isolated from God in His community. So what happens to this leper and his heart to be made clean is really a heart that is crying out to God: “God, make me so that I can belong to You and to Your people, but do it only if You really want me.” And what is Jesus’s response? “Oh, I want you.”

Ephesians 2:1 says, “You were dead in your trespasses and your sins.” And so, we acknowledge that this man, he sees Jesus as doing things well. Right? He says that Jesus is King, and this is good.

We must acknowledge Jesus is king, but also that he longs for you to belong (vv. 12-13)

So point two in your bulletin: We must acknowledge that Jesus is King. But, guys, we also must believe that He longs for us to belong. And that’s the title of today’s sermon. The Lord desires us. We must believe that He longs for us to belong to Him and His community. And that’s exactly what the leper is asking for. He recognizes Jesus is God. And this is what we commend him for.

And this is what I want to hang on to for a few seconds with the way this leper looks at Jesus is how Peter did as well. And we got this two weeks ago when Peter saw Jesus. At first, he just saw a teacher, right? He’s standing on the shore. He comes in. He’s super tired. He didn’t catch anything all night long. And now he’s just bug tired. But he sees Jesus. Nothing happens.

Then all of a sudden, Jesus says, “Hey, Peter, let down your nets. Throw it out.” He catches so many fish, they have to call in a second boat. The boats start drowning. And Peter, instead of seeing the fish and thinking, “We’re rich,” he sees Jesus for real. He falls to his knees and he says, “Depart from me. I’m a sinful man.”

The leper is doing the same thing. He sees Jesus for who He is. He recognizes that He’s God and Lord. Some of us only see Jesus as the statue or a picture on the wall. Maybe the picture that you got on your bookmark. But do you see Jesus? Not everybody can see Jesus the way Peter and the leper can.

Many times Jesus says, “This is for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.” If Jesus does not penetrate your heart and cause your knees to buckle and weep joyfully because you recognize who He is and what He is offering you, then I beg you to pray and ask the Lord to penetrate your heart in a way He has not yet or a way you’ve not submitted to. Reach out to the Lord and beg Him. You want to see the Lord the way this leper does.

Now, that’s what the leper does well. But where he falls short is he doubts whether Jesus desires him. And some of us are like this leper. We know that Jesus is real. We know He’s powerful. But do you believe that He loves you? Believe it, folks.

Now, how do I know that He loves you? One, He died on the cross for you. I have never witnessed a man do what Jesus did on the cross. He did not just die for you. He experienced separation from the Heavenly Father. He experienced an eternity’s worth of damnation for an incredible number we shall find out of people who sinned against Him.

We are supposed to undergo an eternity’s worth of punishment. And Jesus took that eternity’s worth of punishment not just for one, not just five, but millions of people. This is incredible. Not just that, He underwent the cat of nine tails. His flesh at His rib cage was torn. He died of asphyxiation. He endured incredible hardship for you. And when He was doing it, He had you on His mind. That is love.

But maybe your struggle with love isn’t that He loves you to the point where He suffered for you. Maybe you had a hard father figure that just never let you sit on his lap and put his arm around you. You know, that tender fatherly kind of love. Maybe you struggle with that.

If that’s the case, let me show you who Jesus is. The world was supposed to not touch lepers, go near lepers, and they haven’t been hugged. This guy probably hasn’t been hugged or touched in decades. And I mean, even if it’s not decades, a year would be awful. And this man is lonely.

And the God of the universe, He doesn’t heal him first and then touch. Jesus touches him in the pit of all of his unholy, unclean state as a wicked and awful sinner. Jesus reaches out and touches him and then He makes him clean. That’s how I know Jesus loves you. Because He does not wait for you to get clean. He doesn’t wait for you to stop sinning. He doesn’t wait for you to quit alcohol, quit drugs, quit porn, quit gambling, quit cheating on your wife, quit being a bad father or a selfish mother. He doesn’t wait for that.

He is reaching out today. He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” If you let Him in, He will come in and dine with you. He loves you. He loves you. Let Him be the loving father figure that you may have never got to know. And if you did have a loving father and he’s not around anymore, you’ve got one that surpasses that one. He loves you.

How Jesus makes sure that you belong to Himself

Now, how do we know that Jesus, what is Jesus doing to make sure that we actually belong to Him? He does two things. He heals the vertical relationship. That’s the next point on your bulletin. He heals your vertical relationship. By this, I mean your relationship from you on earth straight up to heaven, your relationship with God.

He heals your vertical relationship (v. 13)

This is the first step in making us belong to God and His family. Remember, lepers are not allowed to participate in the temple. But in verse 13, like we already looked at, we see that Jesus reaches down and touches the leper first. This is God of the universe reaching down to touch. This is God. When God touches you, a sinner, He is healing the relationship that you have with Him.

And just like the leper, you are called to love Him because He first loved you. God initiates this love. This is seen in John 1. Jesus entered the darkness because He’s the light, and the darkness rejects the light. We rejected Jesus when He came, but He entered our world to restore our relationship with Him. Why? John 3:16. Because He loves the world.

Now Jesus reaches out to us first in all of our filth, and He will make you a new person. You know, I know some of you struggle with this. You know how I know? Because I hear some people say, “I can’t come to church. I don’t have anything to wear.” And you know what I think that’s saying? I think they’re saying, I know there’s some cultural things, right, that you may have grew up with the tradition of looking your best on Sunday and being ready for a ballroom dance. I don’t know. But I think we also approach our relationship with God as well. You’re too afraid to come to God with stained clothes, holes in your socks. But you see, this is what I want you to be embracing. I want you to recognize what we read this morning in Isaiah 62. In Isaiah 62:5, the Lord says that He is taking you, currently the adulterous wife, right?—through false worship, we cheat on Him—He is taking us into the fold. And it says that He is making us into the wife that He is going to brag about. What God is making us into, new creatures to the point where He can look at all those around and say, “This is my wife.” See this? That is you. So though you might not think that you are anything worth writing home about now, just know the Lord is making you into a new creature, and He is going to rejoice over you when you stand before Him, and He will say, “This is mine. Look at how beautiful she looks.”

Church, this is the idea with Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new person.” So come to the Lord. I don’t care what kind of spiritual holes you got in your clothes. He doesn’t care. I don’t care what kind of bad things you’ve done in the past. He doesn’t care if you’ve screwed up as a husband. He’s willing to look past that and make you a new person. Doesn’t turn you into a great husband. It does not matter what you think was holding you back is actually nothing to God. He is able to wash over it and make you entirely new.

I also want to press upon the church, now you see, Jesus touches a leper. This is a vile, smelly, gross-looking individual. He probably can’t shower because he doesn’t have access to communal baths. And the Lord of heaven and earth who made everything touched him. I have to ask you, could you touch someone like that? Someone who smells, covered in blisters? Would you sit down and eat with a person like that? Would you take them to dinner and just hear their story? Can you do that, or does it gross you out?

Does the love of God truly penetrate you? Do you believe that you were like this leper spiritually, and Jesus touched you? Because if He did, you do believe that, and it does penetrate your heart, then you will see homeless people in a different light. Yes, everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has consequences for those mistakes. But so did you. And Jesus stopped those consequences.

I want you to seriously consider this. There was a homeless guy outside of my work when I was working at Best Buy in Houston. And you know, I’m used to panhandlers all the time, but this guy wasn’t panhandling. This guy had his head in the trash can, and he’s just looking for food, and he’s all jumpy. I come out of work, and I said, “Hey, what are you doing, man?” And he freaked out at first because I’m talking to him. People don’t talk to him, and there’s a guy who is now talking to him. And he’s like, “Uh,” and he couldn’t piece a sentence together. I said, “Are you hungry?” “Yeah.” “You need food. Is that what you’re looking for?” He goes, “Yeah, it’s been a while.” I’m like, “Man, let me give you some money.” You know, normally I’d like to take them to go eat, but I couldn’t. And so I was like, “I’ll give you some money.” (What he does with the money is between him and God, in my opinion, right? It’s not my job to play judge.) So I said, “Okay, let me give you some money, but first, can I ask you a question?”—“This guy wants to have a conversation with me?”—“What happened? How did you get here?”

And he started sharing his story. And yes, it did come with drug addiction. Yes, it did come with drug abuse. And I said, “Man, I am so sorry. I struggled with that, too. I know what that’s like. That’s awful. Do you know about Jesus?” And he goes, “Yeah, people used to talk to me about Jesus all the time.” “Well, what about now? Can I pray with you? Put a hand on you so I can pray for you?”

And he said, “Please don’t touch me. I have sores all over my body, and when someone touches me, it just hurts so bad.” And I was like, “Can I just get like this?” [Pastor shows how he places his hand near him without touching him.] “Can I just pray over you?” And he says, “Please.” So I prayed over him. He lifted his eyes when we were done praying. And you know what he said? He said, “You talking with me and praying with me is worth far more than this $20 bill because people don’t talk to me.” People don’t show him love. He is like the leper.

I just read a stat this week. Do you know that churches are… Do you know the most likely person to stay in church and not leave the church? Do you know it’s actually a person that has a college education and a full-time job? We used to think it was the opposite. That if you went to college, they’re going to talk you out of your faith. But now the statistics are actually flipping. It’s showing that poor people are not coming to church.

And I can’t help but wonder, is it because the church is no longer targeting poor people? You see, churches have a prerogative to get donations, to keep the lights on, to pay their pastor, pay their staff. I get that. But please tell me, church, that we’re not neglecting to reach the poor. Because that’s exactly who Jesus came to save, right? The smelly ones, the ones with sores that nobody talks to, the person that you and I are not unlike at all on a spiritual level.

So I want to say that, church, will you please soften your heart towards the impoverished? Do you know what the impoverished really need? I mean, look, it’s going to be hard. I got a cop right here that’ll tell you loving the poor is not easy, right? Because oftentimes these people are stuck in a mindset. They grew up at home without a father. They don’t know how to respect. They don’t know how to respect other people’s goods. They don’t know how to love. They don’t know how to receive love. Right? It’s difficult. Does that mean we don’t do it? No, it doesn’t. Because we are called to be the light of the world and love like Jesus. Because that’s what He did for you.

He heals your horizontal relationships (v. 14)

Alright. So the next is: He heals your horizontal relationship. This is the second part of how we know that Jesus loves us and He’s bringing us into His family. How do we know that? It is because Jesus looks at him in verse 14 and He tells him to now “go”. He says, “Don’t tell anybody what I just did for you.” Don’t tell them because Jesus isn’t about getting the glory and the praise at this point. He’s just… He literally just tells him, “I want you to go show them that you’re healed, but do it in the way that they expect you to fulfill the law of Moses that Moses commanded.”

You see, in Leviticus 14, when somebody has leprosy and they’re healed of it, they had to go to the priest, and they had to show the priest that they were healed. And if the priest agrees, “Yes, it does look like you were no longer considered unclean,” now they have to purge you of your sins. And so they have to go and buy like three lambs, two males, one female. They have to bring hyssop, and they have to bring all these other things to the priests, and the priest calls for it, and then they slaughter. It’s a whole ceremony. Leviticus 14. Thank you, Jesus, we do not live under the law.

Now they have to go through the ceremony to sprinkle this guy clean, and then they have to wait seven days, and then they have to do another ceremony, and it’s a long, drawn-out process. But the hope is, by the end of it, it says that they are now allowed to enter back into society. So when Jesus says, “Go to the priests, show them you’re clean, and fulfill the sacrifice that Moses commanded,” He is saying, “I want you to show them that you can live with them again.”

Jesus wants us to live in community. He wants us to. You see, it was never meant for us to be alone. In Genesis 2:18, it says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Folks, this was before the fall. Before the fall, we were not meant to be alone. We were meant to live in community. Belonging to community is a part of our design.

But it’s not just any community because a large reason why people are leaving the church is that when surveyed, they said, “I found another community through work or the gym, the hunting club, tennis club, golf club, Kiwanis club, etc.” But that’s not what God designed for you. If you want to experience the true blissful love of God, you belong to His community. And that’s what He wants for you.

Who is Jesus’s community? Jesus says in Luke 8:19–21, His mother and His brothers are coming to Him, and they’re telling Jesus, “Jesus, Your mother and Your brothers, they’re trying to talk to You.” And He says, “Who are My mother and brothers?” And He starts pointing around the crowd, and He says, “He who hears the word of God and does it, that’s My family.”

How many moms would be upset if you heard your child say that, right? But the Lord of heaven and earth, who is without sin, takes it that seriously. I want you guys to take a hard look at all those around you. I’m serious. Look at each other. This is your family. We are your family. We are the family of God because He designed it that way.

When He cleansed us of our leprosy, because He loves us deeply and greatly, He not just cleansed our relationship with Him, He made it so that we could relate with one another. And folks, we’re going to commit a ton of mistakes. But we love each other because Christ first loved us (1 John 4:19). We can do this kind of love because this love is always there. And as long as we’re focusing on our relationship with the Lord, we can love whatever stanky church members we got. Right? Just remember that for the business meeting. I love you guys.

So my question for some of you is, are you trying to enjoy Jesus without His community? Like I said earlier, some of you like the… I mean, there are some that like the online services to the point where they choose not to be here because they would rather sit at home, stay in PJs. Look, I know some people have… I’m not saying everybody. I’m talking about the people who are able to be here, fully capable and gifted and employed by God to be here, but they would rather sit at home and say, “Well, I’m worshiping God at home.”

This isn’t just a problem. I’m not saying this is a problem here. This is an American church problem. A leading statistic for why people are leaving the church, according to the book The Great Dechurching, is because after COVID, so many churches have set up online portals for worship that they say, “I’ll just do church at home.”

I want you to be aware that if you are choosing to isolate yourself, thinking that you’re getting the experience that Jesus intended for you, you are not. God encouraged us to be in community with each other. In fact, His bride is the community. The word “church” literally means the gathering. You cannot claim to be the church without the gathering.

Alright? So praise the Lord that you were cleansed of your spiritual leprosy and live with the community. Be with each other.

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Jesus, we thank You tremendously that You have saved us from our wretched selves. That You love us deeply. That You have called us out of darkness. Father, we proclaim God loves us. He touched us in all of our sin and darkness and shame and stank with all of our terrible stuff, and You embraced us first and then declared us clean.

Help us to love others in the same way. Help us to embrace the poor, the broken, the addicted. Help us to be a loving person to someone who has not been loved in a long time. Jesus, please. I pray, Lord, that You would continue to strengthen all of our members, including those who are stuck at home, and help them to feel Your peace and presence.

We love You, Jesus, and we thank You. In Your name we pray. Amen.