0:0 - All right, let's pray before we dig into God's word.
0:6 - Lord God, thank you for your word.
0:8 - Thank you for the mystery that is your word.
0:10 - Thank you for the clarity that you provide for us inside of that mystery.
0:16 - That little bit of light that mists the fog, the little bit of clarity on a map amongst a difficult and long journey.
0:26 - God, be with us this morning as we're all on that journey together, collectively, but also individually.
0:32 - And Lord God, minister to us through your word.
0:35 - Speak to us through your word.
0:38 - Give us eyes to see and ears to hear what it is that you would have for your people to discern and to step into.
0:46 - In your name, amen.
0:50 - All right, so we're going back to Luke.
0:56 - We're going to be in Luke 5 this morning.
0:58 - Let me get you there for a second.
1:1 - Because we've been kind of working through it, but it's been a while.
1:4 - We started way back in Advent.
1:8 - Our Advent series for four weeks was studying the four different sections of Luke chapter one.
1:14 - And we kind of worked through it and looked at how Luke chapter one is kind of like these Old Testament prophecies, but they're for Jesus who's about to show up right now.
1:22 - So it's like the Old Testament in the New Testament.
1:25 - And we experienced that as that developed.
1:28 - And then we turned the page into Luke chapter two and we spent Christmas focusing on the story of Jesus' birth.
1:36 - And then the new year came and we thought, well, why not stay in Luke?
1:41 - And so we did and we worked through Luke chapter three.
1:45 - And in Luke chapter three, right, we fast forward 30 years in Luke chapter three.
1:51 - And all of a sudden, we find John the Baptist, who we heard about already, he's grown up, and he's still doing the prophecy thing.
2:0 - He baptizes Jesus and then Jesus is kind of starting to take on his ministry.
2:7 - And we also get the genealogy of Jesus, where the story of who he is is anchored inside the Old Testament.
2:16 - It anchors him as potentially the Messiah and potentially and definitely part of the Jewish people.
2:25 - And then in chapter four, he goes into the wilderness, and he goes through that experience being tempted, and he kind of overcomes, and then he comes back, and he begins his official ministry.
2:35 - And so we find ourselves in Luke chapter five, and Jesus is starting to do all the things that we know Jesus for, for the teachings and the healings and the tension with the status quo, and some of the struggles that come along with all of that.
2:53 - And so our text this morning is only a few short verses, but it tells a very popular story, and so we'll read that now.
3:1 - Luke chapter five, verses 12 to 16.
3:7 - While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.
3:15 - When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
3:26 - Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.
3:31 - I am willing, he said.
3:33 - Be clean, and immediately the leprosy left him.
3:39 - Then Jesus ordered him, don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them.
3:53 - Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.
4:2 - But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
4:10 - I'm gonna just find it here so I can refer to it.
4:14 - Matthew, Mark, Luke, it's the third one.
4:20 - Luke chapter 5.
4:26 - All right.
4:28 - Okay, so Jesus is in one of the towns.
4:32 - He's traveling now, he's ministering to the people, and along comes a man with leprosy.
4:40 - Now, leprosy was a term that was used to cover a whole bunch of different, basically, skin ailments.
4:49 - It's a blanket term.
4:50 - It doesn't just refer to what we know today as leprosy.
4:53 - It could be all sorts of stuff, psoriasis, ringworm even.
4:56 - There's a whole bunch of things that fall within the bracket of this.
4:59 - But the point is, those original audience, the ones reading this text, would know that this is the kind of illness that is likely contagious, and there is books and books, well chapters and chapters found in the Old Testament law in Leviticus that kind of lay out what this means if someone has leprosy.
5:27 - And what it means to have leprosy is that that person who has this skin condition is separated from society.
5:40 - They weren't able to spend time with their families.
5:43 - In fact, they had to live outside the city walls, outside the city gates with all of the others who were sick.
5:51 - They weren't able to go to the temple.
5:54 - They weren't able to do much of anything in community anymore.
6:0 - They were cast out and they were separated.
6:4 - Now often when we read this in Leviticus, we see this as some kind of punishment for a skin condition, but that wasn't the original intention actually.
6:13 - This was, it wasn't punishment, it was actually protection, if that makes any sense.
6:19 - Before you have modern medicine that can cure these ailments, the way to protect everybody from getting sick is to isolate them, to set them off to the side, to separate them, so that others don't get sick.
6:34 - And that is the purpose of this, sometimes we see strict or oppressive Levitical law, it was to protect everyone else.
6:44 - But we know that of course this comes with devastating consequences.
6:51 - We might know this even more well now than we did five years ago, given the pandemic that we went through.
6:57 - And before there was ways of helping, the solutions that were given to us was separation, it was isolation, it was to keep us away from each other.
7:9 - And since then, we've had some pretty heated debates about what was worse.
7:16 - Is COVID worse or is it the isolation and separation?
7:20 - And I think for different people, you can give different answers on that.
7:23 - But the reality is that the consequences of being separated from your society, whether it's meant as a mode of protection or not, is devastating.
7:35 - It's devastating.
7:36 - Someone who was given leprosy is immediately separated from their family.
7:40 - They can't go to their kids' birthday parties.
7:44 - It had massive, massive implications for them.
7:48 - And so this is all known to the audience as they read these few words.
7:51 - A man with leprosy arrives.
7:55 - Now, he shows up, he sees Jesus, and he drops to his knees.
8:1 - He's immediately submissive.
8:3 - He's immediately humble.
8:6 - And we see in the words that he says, that he is trusting.
8:13 - Okay, so the words that he says to Jesus are these.
8:17 - Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
8:23 - Notice those words.
8:25 - If you are willing, you can make me clean.
8:30 - There is a profession in there that God can heal.
8:36 - There is no doubt about the fact that God restores, God rescues, that Jesus has the ability to do these things.
8:49 - The area of nuance and question and wonder comes into whether or not Jesus is willing to do it, which is a very appropriate, very healthy, very humble, very trusting posture to hold.
9:8 - I wonder how it would change our prayers today if we prayed in that way, if we modeled our own prayers to God after the prayer of this man with leprosy.
9:24 - God, I'm experiencing overwhelming economic crisis.
9:29 - I can't pay my bills.
9:32 - I know you can fix that.
9:36 - I know it's nothing for you to fix that.
9:39 - It's easy.
9:41 - You created everything.
9:44 - If you are willing, it will happen.
9:51 - That's our first big takeaway from the text this morning.
9:55 - This posture of humility and submission and trust is something that we can learn from.
10:2 - A way that we can grow in the way, in the ways that we pray.
10:8 - All right, so that's just the first verse.
10:11 - That's just verse 12 that we've been unpacking there.
10:14 - Let's kind of move on to verse 13.
10:19 - In verse 13, I just got too many papers up here.
10:23 - All right, in verse 13, the focus shifts from the leprous man to Jesus.
10:35 - And Jesus responds.
10:37 - And he responds with word and deed.
10:42 - With word and deed.
10:45 - And he starts with an action.
10:49 - Jesus reaches out his hand towards this man, which has profound implications.
10:58 - I'd like you to think about that for a minute.
11:1 - This man who is unclean, ritually and ceremonially and also physically unclean, someone who is unsafe, someone who is at risk of infecting the community, is standing before Jesus, and Jesus does the one thing that puts him in a very vulnerable position because he's reaching out to touch this man.
11:30 - There's a second vulnerability that comes with this action.
11:34 - That's the first vulnerability.
11:35 - Now, you might wonder, is Jesus actually vulnerable in this, right?
11:41 - He's reaching out to touch, well, he's Jesus, right?
11:45 - I don't know, I imagine, I know Jesus was perfect, but I imagine he still got sick.
11:50 - I don't know, we could probably debate that.
11:53 - But the second vulnerability that Jesus opens himself up to is the vulnerability of other people's perceptions, which is a real vulnerability that I know we all have encountered and experienced.
12:5 - Think about that.
12:7 - This person is unclean.
12:9 - Anyone who comes into contact with this man becomes instantly unclean.
12:16 - They now belong with this person.
12:20 - They are now also cast out and separated.
12:24 - But whether Jesus is actually vulnerable or not, he appears to have no fear about any of that.
12:30 - I imagine he would have thought about it.
12:33 - But he reaches out his hand and he touches the man.
12:39 - And he adds words to his deed.
12:42 - He says, I am willing.
12:47 - I am willing be clean.
12:50 - And then the miracle happens.
12:52 - The text tells us that immediately the man is healed.
12:56 - Immediately the man is healed.
12:59 - And this is what he was looking for.
13:0 - This is what he was hoping for, was this miracle.
13:5 - I'd like for us to see this miracle that we experience in our text, something from so long ago, is something that we experience here this morning.
13:15 - Something that happens in and through baptism.
13:20 - God stretches out his hand towards Anders and says, I am willing, be clean, be healed.
13:35 - We are witnessing and experiencing the same miracle that was encountered so long ago.
13:43 - And it's an absolute blessing.
13:49 - So Jesus heals and he sends the man off to the priest, which is neat because he's not overturning any of this Old Testament law.
13:57 - Sometimes we see Jesus as totally against the Old Testament, but he's not.
14:1 - He says, go to the priest.
14:3 - He says, don't go and tell everyone, just go to the priest and go through the rituals and process to be made clean again, which is the way he will be restored back to his community.
14:15 - So we have a physical cleaning, but then there's also this relational, emotional cleaning, cleansing, healing that is happening as well.
14:27 - And through this, Jesus' popularity increases.
14:35 - Text tells us that people start showing up, and they're showing up for the miracles that this man experienced.
14:44 - They're coming in droves because they have realized that, wow, prayers get answered, and the kind of thing that I need, this man can provide.
14:54 - And so people show up.
14:57 - The interesting thing is these crowds show up, and Jesus isn't there.
15:4 - Jesus is nowhere to be seen.
15:8 - They show up with their issues, their struggles, their barriers, their physical ailments, and they can't find Jesus.
15:23 - This part is easy to skip over, right?
15:25 - We saw the miracle.
15:26 - It's easy to just kind of glaze through these verses.
15:29 - But this is real.
15:33 - Because I think we experience and encounter the same thing at times.
15:39 - There are times in our lives where we pray for deliverance from the enemies, the burdens, the issues that we are encountering.
15:50 - We say, Lord God, rescue me from this.
15:55 - I have a broken relationship with someone and I don't know how to fix it.
16:0 - I feel completely powerless.
16:2 - Help me, please.
16:6 - And in this, we might feel we can resonate with the crowd who shows up.
16:11 - And where did Jesus go?
16:15 - This is a reality.
16:17 - It's not right to dismiss it.
16:20 - It's not right to focus on the first half of this text where miracle is experienced and encountered and not wrestle with the second half of this text, which is crowds waiting to see Jesus who doesn't show up.
16:38 - But the text does tell us where Jesus is.
16:43 - He's off praying.
16:45 - The same hand that he used to reach out to a leprous man, he is now turning towards his father in heaven in prayer.
16:58 - Now we don't know exactly what Jesus would have been praying about or what he would have been saying in that moment.
17:5 - The story doesn't tell us.
17:6 - It's just that he often withdrew and he prayed.
17:8 - But we do have other stories where we know of times where Jesus withdrew and prayed.
17:17 - And most famously, we find a detailed prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night that he was betrayed, just before he went to the cross.
17:31 - Jesus also pulled away and he prayed.
17:34 - And John chapter 17 is a precious text really, giving us the words of Jesus, an intimate conversation between Jesus and his father.
17:49 - I'd like to read it for you, John chapter 17.
17:53 - And I want you to think about this in relation to your own experiences, the things that you're bringing before God and you're wondering where he is, the struggles that you have and you're wondering why you're not receiving the answer that you hoped you received or that you wanted to receive.
18:10 - Now, the chapter's kind of long and it's got three parts.
18:13 - Jesus prays to God and then he prays for his disciples and then he prays for all believers.
18:18 - So what I did is I spent some time kind of parsing that chapter in my own words to kind of get the main point of what is said.
18:28 - All right, so, and I wanna pray this.
18:31 - I'm gonna pray this.
18:33 - It's me reciting in my own words the words of Jesus to the Father, okay?
18:38 - And I just want you to just hear these in light of your own circumstances.
18:45 - Father, the time has come.
18:50 - Father, make your majestic presence known in me so that I can make you known.
19:0 - Father, you have given me authority, authority to give everlasting life to those that you have given to me.
19:10 - Eternal life is this, that they know you, the one true God.
19:18 - And that they know me, Jesus Christ, who is sent by you.
19:23 - Father, I pray for those who believe in me.
19:27 - I pray that they might be one, just as you are in me and I am in you.
19:34 - Father, I have given them my majestic presence, as you gave it to me, you, Father, in me and me and them for the purpose of complete unity.
19:47 - Father, I know you, and they know me.
19:51 - And because of that, through me, they can know you.
19:56 - They can know that you love me and love them, and I, myself, will be with them, amen.
20:8 - I want you to realize that in the seasons of life that you go through, when you're facing difficulty challenges and hard times, and when you look to God with a very specific request, and you're not feeling him nearby, or you're not seeing him stand directly in front of you, or you're not experiencing the direct answer that you're looking for to prayer, wrestle with these words of Jesus, because he is advocating to the Father on your behalf, and he's doing it for the greatest miracle, which is restored relationship between God and his creation, where you have the opportunity to sit on the lap of your Father in heaven and just experience his goodness and his presence.
21:2 - Because the miracle that's offered to this man in the text, the ultimate miracle, the ultimate goal of that miracle was restored relationship.
21:14 - The miracle, the healing of the leprosy was simply a window of hope.
21:19 - It was a method of pointing towards something that's even greater, which is God restoring all creation.
21:26 - And that is the greatest miracle and the greatest purpose.
21:31 - Let's pray together.
21:38 - Lord God, you offer us so much more than we think we need.
21:47 - We come to you with requests that are very important to us and near and dear to our heart, and you care about those things.
22:2 - You care about them so much.
22:5 - But what you care about most is our heart and our soul.
22:12 - You care about us being in right relationship with you, walking with you someday in a new garden, a new city, where we will realize just how great you are and how good it is to live in walk and in step with you.
22:32 - So, God, I ask that we, your church, are able to grow in awareness of that each and every day.
22:40 - Bring us closer and closer and deeper and deeper into an understanding of who you really are.
22:48 - Help us to offer our prayers as a profession of faith and to ask if you are willing and to be open to what you are leading us to.
22:59 - God, be with your church as we discern what you have for us and how this looks in our day-to-day lives.
23:6 - In your name.
23:7 - Amen.