How do you Respond to the Compassion of Jesus?

Jesus is able to cleanse people inwardly and outwardly because he has compassion on them and loves them. This is his highest priority and comes through the preaching of his gospel. We should respond in service to Jesus and obedience to his word.

Intro

I love air fryers. I think they’re great. You can cook so many different things with them, they’re very versatile, they don’t take up much room, they are often healthier than other cooking methods, and they cost much less to use than ovens.

My love for air fryers is so great that I tell people to get them all the time. I’ve given spare ones I’ve had away to friends, I’ve bought them as wedding presents, and convinced other people to buy them.

I didn’t always use to be an air fryer evangelist. It was only when I started living in my Grandad’s house which had an air fryer, that I started using it and was changed by it. And because I then realised how great it was and useful it had been for me, the natural response was then for me to serve the air-fryer cause and tell others about it.

If I were to have used an air fryer and not told anyone about it, it would serve to show that I don’t really think it’s that good, as it isn’t worth telling others about and wouldn’t change their cooking habits. Our response to Jesus serves to show whether we have his priorities or not. Whether we’ve seen his compassion on us and been healed by him. If we have been cleansed by him, we should respond to him in service and obedience.

When you read a passage like our passage we have this morning I wonder how you usually approach it? Is it something like:

“Okay hmm, so Jesus cares about his disciple’s family, and now he’s healing lots of people, yeah I read about that a lot in the gospels. Oh here’s something about prayer, okay… I’d better get up early tomorrow morning and pray and definitely keep it up for more than a day or two. Ehh what else? Oh, some more healing. Hmm, wonder why he tells the leper not to tell anyone about him, have I heard why before? Oh well, and then… oh that’s it.”

Sometimes when we read the gospels we can be tempted to gloss over things because we’ve heard them so many times before, or they don’t seem as important to our lives here and now, or we pick out something Jesus does and think ah, the application is for me to do what Jesus did. And in this case we think, well, I’m not going to cast out demons or heal sicknesses, so I guess I’ll do the prayer one until I give up. Oftentimes we need to slow down, and take the time to understand what God wants to teach us about himself from his word.

When we read the gospels we need to remember that their purpose isn’t for us to think in different situations in our life What Would Jesus Do. Rather the gospels are first and foremost stories about Jesus, and they should point us to him and what he has done first.

As we study our passage for this morning we’re going to examine it from the perspectives of three characters as we seek to see how we should respond to the gospel of Jesus. First we’ll consider the response of Peter’s mother-in-law to the works of Jesus, as well as secondarily the responses of the disciples and the people of Capernaum. Next we’ll see the disciples’ and the people of Capernaum’s responses in some more detail as they seek out Jesus. And finally we’ll examine the leper’s response to Jesus and how this compares to our other characters. In each case we’ll see how Jesus acts, and how the other characters respond to his actions.

1 - Peter’s Mother in Law

We arrive at our first point this morning mid-action, as we consider Jesus and Simon’s, who is more commonly called Peter’s, mother-in-law. Our passage opens in verse 29 with another And immediately, as Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue where they were in the morning, and where we were last week, and head over to Peter and Andrew’s house.

And the disciples, after having seen Jesus cast out the demon in the synagogue, teaching, calling, and commanding with power and authority, immediately tell Jesus about Peter’s mother-in-law.

It’s likely that she is the matriarch of this fisherman’s house where the brothers are living, with Peter’s wife, and possibly some other family too. And we would expect under normal circumstances that this woman would begin to serve Jesus, this guest in their home, as soon as he entered. She might wash an honoured guest like Jesus’ feet, or be preparing or serving a meal for him.

And yet what we see in this story is the opposite. Because we’re told in verse 30 that Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever. She is so sick that she is bedridden, at the very least unable to entertain and serve any guests, but likely even worse than that, as Luke’s account of this story details it a high or a great fever.

And rather than Peter’s mother-in-law serving Jesus, what we see instead is Jesus serving Peter’s mother-in-law. Verse 31: And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her. What a reversal of what should be happening in this situation.

Imagine — Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, the creator God of the whole universe, who sustains everything by the power of his word and upholds the world with his mighty right hand. This very God become man, standing in your house, beside your bed and you lying there asleep instead of worshipping and serving him. It’s absurd when we think about it.

And yet this is the reality for all who don’t recognise Jesus as Lord. This was us before Jesus took our hands and raised us up, even as he will raise us up on the last day when he returns again in his glory to judge the living and the dead.

We did not even reach out our hand to Jesus, but like with Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus came, and he took her and he took us by the hand. We could not reach out our hands because dead men can’t reach for anything. We were dead, but have been lifted up to new life, with our sin taken away from us as far as the east is from the west.

And Jesus’ serving only continues. Look with me from verse 32:

Mark 1:32–34 · ESV

³²That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.³³ And the whole city was gathered together at the door. ³⁴And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

We’re still on the same Sabbath day that began with Jesus in the synagogue. The Sabbath lasted from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, and so we see that the people of Capernaum have waited until the Sabbath was over to come to Jesus to bring their friends and family to be healed as the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, considered healing on the Sabbath to be breaking of the law.

Compare this to the urgency of Peter and Andrew. Immediately after they left the synagogue they go to their house with Jesus, and when they’re there, they immediately tell Jesus about Peter’s mother-in-law, whom Jesus promptly heals. They understood Jesus’ power to heal, had faith that he could, and knew that urgency was required and so rather than waiting told Jesus immediately.

If we are followers of Jesus. If we have friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who are spiritually dead. If we know this to be the case, that the most important thing they need is to be raised from spiritual death to life. If we know that this is urgent, that their lives may be demanded from them at any moment, or that the Lord may return at any hour like a thief in the night, do we share the urgency of the disciples? Do we bring the remedy of the proclamation of the gospel to those for whom that is their only hope with this urgency?

Or are we like the people of Capernaum, who wait til evening at sundown to bring others to this Jesus? The truth is we are often more the latter than the former. And yet as we see here, Jesus doesn’t rebuke those who he heals for being healed later in the day, for keeping him up all night instead of allowing him to get some rest. Nor does he even rebuke those who lovingly bring the sick and oppressed to him.

Jesus is happy to heal on the Sabbath. He will later in this gospel say to the Pharisees on a Sabbath Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? He would have happily healed those whom he healed earlier in the same day, but he would rather they came to him for healing late than not at all. A man who is healed of his sickness, or rid of the demon who is possessing him may have preferred and been better off to be healed earlier, but all of them would say that they would rather be healed later than never.

We should have a right urgency when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, but we should not let ourselves despair in how we have failed in this until now. Rather we should press on with the knowledge that while Jesus tarries, and people still live, his offer of forgiveness and life still remains. Praise God that he has forgiven us though we were slow to come to him and came with but a poor and incomplete understanding of what he had done for us.

We see three responses to Jesus and his healings in this section.

First, we see the response of Peter’s mother-in-law. We see in verse 31 that the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

The right response to being healed by Jesus, to being raised up to life by him, is to respond in service to the one who has done this.

Hear these words from John Calvin on Jesus’ act of healing here:

Observe, How complete the cure was; when the fever left her, it did not, as usual, leave her weak, but the same hand that healed her, strengthened her, so that she was able to minister to them; the cure is in order to that — to fit for action, that we may minister to Christ, and to those that are his for his sake.

When Jesus heals us, saves us from the powers of sin and death, he does not leave us frail and tired and unable to then live and serve him and his people. No, his healing is so complete that it strengthens us to be able to serve him, and he sends his Holy Spirit to dwell in us to enable us to do so. We’ll consider this more later.

Secondly, we see the response of the people of Capernaum. Jesus wasn’t the first of his type to go around Palestine in the first century, amassing a following and teaching — although certainly none to the scale Jesus would reach. But there were none like him. There were none with miracles and healings to back up his preaching.

I wonder how many people in Capernaum heard that a preacher from Nazareth was teaching in the synagogue and didn’t think much of it. Then word started to spread through the city of Jesus casting out a demon in the synagogue and some started to get interested. Then maybe some others were walking past Peter and Andrew’s house and saw Peter’s mother-in-law hurrying about serving and wondered how this could be when they knew she was deathly ill.

And as the rumours and news spread across the city and as people came and were healed and more demons were cast out what was their reaction to his new teaching with authority?

For some there was probably no change. Jesus’ teaching wasn’t important to them. To them his message wasn’t what was making their sick friends well, his healings were. For others perhaps the healings served their purpose, which was the same then as it is now. To drive those who see them to consider Jesus’ teaching all the more. Jesus’ healings shouldn’t distract us from his message or character but should serve to heighten them for us. They should explain them all the more and cause us to wonder at the one who is teaching and healing.

And this leads us to thirdly, our response to Jesus and his healing in this section.

We need to recognise that we are those who were sick and dead like Peter’s mother-in-law. We were unable to get up on our own. The sick need a doctor, and Jesus came to us. More than likely for most of us we have had family, friends, or church leaders who prayed for us, brought us before God in prayer and petition for salvation, just as those in Capernaum brought others to Jesus who were sick or oppressed. We need to be persistent in doing this for others as others have done for us. We need to be reminded that prayer is powerful, and is a secondary cause that God can and does use to heal people and bring them into his family.

We should also remember when we read sections like this in the gospels we shouldn’t just gloss over these healings because we’ve heard them, or others like them, many times before. Rather, we should pause and really take time to imagine being healed by a word, or with a touch, immediately and completely.

All these healings echo and point forward to Jesus’ power over death. Not only does sickness often lead to death, especially 2000 years ago, but as we have already seen, when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law he raises her up. He casts out unclean demons from people and allows humans to live as themselves again. The curing of leprosy is seen in the Old Testament as having the same power as that over life and death.

This passage shows us how the Kingdom of God is at hand. That which Jesus has come to proclaim, the Gospel of God. The unclean are being made clean, the sick are being healed, evil is being cast out. The Kingdom of God, the good news of the gospel is that God is making everything right again. He is fixing that which is broken and renewing all things.

Last week we saw that Jesus was teaching with authority. Jesus’ actions are connected to his teaching. Jesus’ healings in this passage are connected to his proclamation of the gospel, of the kingdom of God at hand, of his authority over all things, sickness, evil, life and death, and of the need to repent and believe.

2 - The Disciples/People of Capernaum

Which brings us to our second point as we consider Jesus’ actions in the next section in our passage this morning, and the responses of the disciples and the people of Capernaum to them again.

Jesus’ long day in Capernaum is finally over. From teaching in the synagogue, to casting out a demon there, to going to Peter and Andrew’s house and healing Peter’s mother-in-law and then staying up to heal the whole city only starting from the evening at sundown. Jesus has been flat out and you’d forgive him for having a lie in the next morning.

But, as always, Jesus continues to do the opposite of what we would expect, and verse 35 rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

When we arrive at verses like this, our temptation can be to say to ourselves, great! Here’s some easy application, I’ll do this and get up early and pray, and not actually engage in what the passage and context as a whole is teaching us. The gospels are first and foremost stories which should draw our eyes towards Jesus in faith, repentance, and worship of the God who became man for us.

It is only then, once we’ve understood the purpose of a verse or a story and why the gospel writers have placed it where they have, that we should respond to the claims and truths presented to us in faith, repentance, and worship.

When we see Jesus praying early in the morning our first thought shouldn’t be “I need to pray early in the morning” or “I’m such a useless Christian because I don’t pray early in the morning.” Rather, we should ask ourselves why was Jesus praying early in the morning? What is the significance of this in the context of this passage, and what does this teach me about Jesus and his message of the coming Kingdom of God.

What we should see as we look at this passage, is that Jesus’ preaching ministry is interwoven with his healing ministry, which is interwoven with his prayer ministry. Look with me at our passage. From verse 29 immediately he left the synagogue where he had been teaching and healing and went to Peter and Andrew’s house, where he immediately heals Peter’s mother-in-law, before following on with the rest of the city through the night.

Then with little sleep he’s up the next morning praying until the disciples find him. And what does he say to them when they find him? Verse 38 and he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”

Healing, prayer, and teaching all wrapped up together.

We’re not told explicitly what Jesus is praying for here, but I think from the context that we’ve seen in the passage and the fact that when later on the disciples, having seen Jesus go out to pray, ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, we can make a good assumption.

Jesus teaches the disciples what we call the Lord’s Prayer. And while Jesus would not have to pray for his sins to be forgiven, I think based on what we’ve seen he certainly would have been praying for the Kingdom of his Father to come on earth as it is in heaven. I think he would have been praying for provision for the coming day, for strength from the Holy Spirit to aid in his work of healing and teaching, and for forgiveness for those whom he had healed and taught, and whom he would heal and teach. Interceding for them before his Father.

Our primary take away here should be to praise God for his son Jesus. To thank him for healing us, for preaching his gospel to us, and for continuing to pray for us as our Great High Priest, interceding for us at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

And having rightly fixed our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, we should then respond as those who have been healed like Peter’s mother-in-law. Responding to Jesus’ serving of us, with our service to him.

And what type of service is appropriate for a servant? Well it is to do his master’s will. We see the will of Jesus here is to go out and preach the gospel. The gospel concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And to be equipped to carry out our master’s will we should learn from and follow the example of our Lord Jesus.

See the difference? Rather than, an attitude of “Oh, to be a good Christian I guess I should pray like Jesus does here,” our attitude should be “Praise God that Jesus is like this. I love him so much that I want to serve him more and better. I’m going to learn from him and his example so I can do that to please him.”

One attitude leads to defeat and depression, the other to joyful service.

A few of us who were away at a training weekend yesterday for an upcoming youth camp heard this phrase a few times in the context of serving.

We want to have to rather than we have to want to.

We want to have to rather than we have to want to.

If we are to preach the gospel, we need to realise that we cannot do so without prayer. If Jesus himself prayed when he was on earth how arrogant would we be if we thought we could get by without prayer.

Preaching is not just what happens on a Sunday morning, but is what happens whenever the gospel of God is proclaimed and the work of Jesus made plain to others.

And so what do we learn from Jesus’ example in this passage when it comes to prayer?

First, we should value the act of private, secret prayer alone with God. While not diminishing the importance of corporate prayer, what we see in this passage is the importance of time in a desolate place, free from distractions of people, of phones, of the internet, of children, of food, of work or school, or of anything which could draw our attention away from our much needed time with God.

Second, and for anyone here who does this, I’m sure you can vouch for its benefits, the practice of prayer in the morning as we start our day. I know for me, whenever I begin my day with a prolonged time in prayer, not just a quick one or two sentences, but truly spending significant time with God, that I have a much more joyful day. We find when we do so that often on a day which would ordinarily have run us down, or irritated us, or distracted us, we find ourselves able to respond to challenges with patience, kindness, and love.

We need to learn to discipline ourselves in this practice, building good habits so that when we have busy days and late nights and are tempted not to, we can instead model Jesus and continue our habit of prayer. As it is especially on those tough, long days that we need prayer the most, to ensure our next days will not be marked by weariness, but by doing good.

As Martin Luther once said:

“I have so much to do today that I must spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Husbands, if you want to love your wife and help her to enjoy these benefits, then take actions which can help cultivate an environment where this is possible. Do some chores in the evening, after sundown, that she might ordinarily do in the morning, to free up her time to spend meaningful time in prayer as she begins her day — free from distractions.

Wives — do likewise for husbands. Help each other to grow in maturity and love for God in practical ways.

Finally, we should model Jesus, in that when the Sabbath is over, we do not ignore worship and fellowship with God until the next week. Just as Jesus spent time in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and then came again in prayer the next day, Christians should not only worship and pray on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, but should continually express our reliance on God by returning to him each day for our daily bread, feasting on the grace that he offers to us freely whenever we come to him.

And so what are the responses of the disciples, and the people of Capernaum, to Jesus now.

Look with me from verse 36: And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.”

The people of Capernaum were not done with Jesus yet. Despite his healing of many the previous night it seems like they want even more again today. They seem to have faith of some sort, they trust that Jesus can heal, but is that as far as it goes?

Based on Jesus’ reaction that he wants to go elsewhere to preach, it seems so. Jesus tells Peter that what is more important than staying in Capernaum, capitalising on his fame, and healing more people, is to spread the gospel elsewhere. Merely physically healing people isn’t Jesus’ purpose or why he was sent out by the Father in the power of the Spirit. Rather, he came out to preach the gospel.

Remember Jesus’ healing ministry is mixed in with his preaching ministry, serving to show his power and authority. The gospel message being proclaimed for the spiritual healing of many is ultimately why Jesus has come.

And as we’ve already considered, the right response to Jesus’ healing of us is to serve him, and so we should therefore obey him and his command concerning the spreading of the gospel to Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Our priorities should be Jesus’ priorities.

It’s interesting that after having seen Jesus heal many in the city of Capernaum, and then tell Peter that the reason he was sent by God was to preach, that we only get one short summarising verse, verse 39 explaining that he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons, before Mark drops us immediately with another story about Jesus’ healing.

3 - The Leper

Which brings us to our final point, as we consider Jesus, the leper’s response to Jesus, and the consequences of his response. It’s natural that we should have another healing story here, as Jesus’ gospel, his message about the Kingdom of God, is a message about the beginning of the consummation of God’s kingdom here on earth, where he is making all things right as they should be. He is healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, righting the wrongs.

Look with me from verse 40:

Mark 1:40–45 · ESV

⁴⁰And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” ⁴¹Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” ⁴²And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, ⁴⁴and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” ⁴⁵But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

To be a leper in this time in Israel was to be an outcast. Unable to be part of society, unable to participate in the life of the community, unable to live with your family, unable to enter the temple for worship.

We read in Leviticus that The leprous person… shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

And as a result people were extremely afraid of being anywhere near lepers, for fear that they would contract whatever disease they had.

Many people have an idea of God that is like this. A god who is afraid of sin. Or a god who is so pure that he can’t possibly be near sin or sinners, because he doesn’t want to be defiled by their sin. And so he shies away and hides himself from sin.

But in reality, the opposite is true for the God of the bible. It’s true that sin and God cannot be in the same place. Sin, evil, cannot be in God’s presence. God’s holiness and perfection is so great that sin cannot be near him.

But rather than God being defiled by sin, rather sin is burned away and destroyed. We see this clearly in our passage. For an Israelite to touch a leper would be to become unclean, and would require purification. But here we see Jesus stretch out his hand and touch the leper. And what happens isn’t that Jesus becomes unclean, but that the leper becomes clean, as immediately the leprosy leaves him.

And we can be so tempted to have this, what is really a low view of God. When we think that God can’t handle sin, or that he’ll be offended or disgusted by sin, or that it’ll cause him to turn away from us — we’re revealing that we don’t truly understand God’s holiness. When we think God doesn’t want our sin we won’t bring our sins to him. We won’t confess our sins and repent of our sins.

But when we know that he is a God who is so much greater and more powerful than sin, when we know that when we bring our sin to him he heals and cleanses us, removes our sin and oppression and guilt, then we will be quick to confess our sin, quick to bring our sins to him, and quick to trust that he will cleanse us from our sin.

All mankind is like this leper. Cut off from God, cut off from his presence, from his people — not because of any outward sickness or uncleanness, but because of our sin. Our sin keeps us from God and relationship with him which is what we were made for. We can’t be in his holy presence with our sin or we will be destroyed with it. Our estate is one of sin from birth.

But praise be that Jesus has cleansed us from all sin by his blood! He has had compassion on us, he was willing to clean us, to purify us — that we could be reconciled to God, able to enter his presence and have relationship with him and his people again. Praise be that Jesus doesn’t tell people like us or like this leper to clean ourselves up and then come to him, but that he is the one who cleans, he is the one who reaches out to us.

We don’t know how long this man has been a leper, how long it has been since anyone has touched him at all. Can you imagine having no physical contact with anyone for a year. For two years. For ten, or twenty years or more? Like covid restrictions but orders of magnitude worse.

I’ve been made fun of in our community group for wanting to reclaim greeting one another with a holy kiss, but could you imagine no handshake or hug when you come into a room, no hand holding, no pat on the back, no intimacy of any kind.

And then you somehow hear the news of a man who could give you that back. Who is able to heal any ailment, who could bring you back into community, into your family. This is the reality that is before the leper. This would be the consequence of faith in Jesus for him.

Look at his faith as he comes to Jesus. Verse 40 he came to him, imploring him, and kneeling. See what he says: you can make me clean. He knows Jesus can heal him, he just doesn’t quite know if he wants to. Jesus, moved with pity verse 41 stretches out his hand and says to him “I will; be clean.”

For those here this morning who have not come to Jesus and asked him to make you clean, Jesus is ready to reach out his hand. He is willing. He can make you clean, he is mighty to save. You can approach Jesus knowing not just that he is good or powerful, but that he is willing and compassionate, and that he wants to heal you and cleanse you from all your sin, that you would have reconciliation with him.

And this is true for all of us who follow Christ too. We must continue to approach Jesus for healing in repentance. We must remember that he can make us clean, and that he is willing.

But what is the leper’s response to being healed by Jesus?

We see Jesus’ power at work immediately again, as the leprosy leaves him and he is made clean. But what happens next?

Well Jesus explains what should happen, verse 43: And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and he said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

You see it was not enough for a leper to decide that he was clean from his disease whenever he wanted, the priest needed to be involved to verify the claims, to make atonement for him, and to ensure that all the correct procedures and sacrifices were followed to welcome him back into the community.

Jesus has cleansed the leper, but the law still needed to be followed to perform all the rituals for the leper to rejoin his family and community. So Jesus sends him to go to the priest to do so. You can read about the laws for this in Leviticus chapter 14. The laws provide the means for recognising that the disease is gone, and for restoring the leper to his regular status in the community, but the law itself could not heal him. Only Jesus could do that.

Does the leper then follow what Jesus asks him to do in response to his healing? Does he follow God’s word in obedience? Well, no.

Verse 45: But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

The leper’s response to Jesus’ healing is not to listen to what Jesus has said. Rather than following the commands of the law, that Jesus restipulates for him, and keeping quiet about Jesus as Jesus asked him, he decides that he knows better and goes out telling everyone what Jesus has done.

Now it seems clear to me that the leper has good intentions. He seems overjoyed by his being healed. He seems to love Jesus, and seems to want other people to know what Jesus has done for him. His faith in Jesus seems very genuine.

And yet when it comes to responding to Jesus, good intentions are not enough. The leper isn’t disobedient to Jesus’ commands because he is actively wanting to do evil or harm to Jesus, and yet his actions are still sinful as he is disobeying Jesus’ commands, the very words of God.

And we see in this passage that his disobedience has consequences for the preaching of the gospel as Jesus becomes unable to enter towns openly which was his desire.

A father may tell his daughter: “don’t draw on the walls.” Now the daughter may have a genuine desire to do something nice for her father. She may have good intentions to make him a beautiful piece of art. And when she draws on the walls it may even be genuinely good and beautiful art, with a heartfelt meaning behind it. And others may see her art and see her love for her father in it. But it is still disobedient because of the father’s command not to draw on the walls.

All of us here, myself definitely included, can do things with good intentions, even as we are in fact disobedient. We can be pragmatic in how we live as followers of Jesus, rather than convictional and following God’s word. We can say we’re doing this or that for the purpose of spreading the gospel, without stopping to think whether this or that are actually good, actually means commanded or approved of by God.

How many times have you heard someone say “If just one person is reached or saved it will have been worth it”, or “Oh that thing can’t be bad or sinful because it really helped me.”

God is bigger than our disobedience. Just because God turns our bad choices and uses them for good does not make our decisions good. We see it in this passage. Even though the disobedience of the leper looks like it will hinder the spread of the gospel rather than help, God still ensures that his plans are enacted, and people come out to Jesus in the wilderness from every direction.

Ultimately our good intentions aren’t what is important if they lead to sinning. Think of the different Christian denominations and their differences in doctrine and practice. While some distinctives may be down to culture or preferences, many are differences in theology and understanding of God’s word. And while many of these are drawn from good intentions to be faithful to God’s word, ultimately some people have right interpretations of his word and others don’t.

When we study God’s word and then go out to practice what we believe this should drive us to be diligent and discerning, seeking to truly understand and live out the commands of God’s word rather than our own ideas or thoughts. While God’s word tells us that man’s heart is deceitful above all things, it also tells us that the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

Chapter 22, paragraph 1 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession details this in what is commonly called the regulative principle of worship by theologians. It says this:

The acceptable way of worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.

1689 London Baptist Confession · 22.1

As Christians the way we worship God, the way we serve God, should be by following his Word in scripture, not by our own good intentions or imaginations.

This is also why in this church we believe in expository preaching, preaching sequentially through books of the bible, so that we preach the whole council of God, preaching whatever we see from his word in front of us each week, not whatever we’d like to hear, or what comes from our own minds.

And lest you think that the answer to this is to swing the other way completely and do things that are outwardly good and right and obedient, but inwardly you don’t want to do them, or you’re doing them out of bad or sinful or selfish intentions, remember that God looks at the heart. We need to learn true obedience in our service of him.

One way we can do this, and avoid the failures of the leper, is to be the type of Christians who in our desire to serve Christ be those who avoid the mentality of the ends justify the means. The leper in our story undoubtedly thought that he was doing good. He was telling others the good news about Jesus so that they would come to him. How could that be wrong? He had faith in Jesus that he could heal him, and his spreading of this gospel shows that he wants others to know how great Jesus was.

But his ends of wanting others to know Jesus did not justify his means of disobeying Jesus’ commands. Those means were contrary to the word of God.

We can be the same. We can tell white lies to advance the gospel. We can hide certain things we believe that would be offensive to others to get them to listen to or respect us so that they’ll come to know Jesus. We can think we can worship God according to what we think is right rather than what God has commanded us in scripture.

The point of this story isn’t to discourage us from proclaiming the gospel. Rather we’ve seen so far that the opposite is true. If we have been healed, cleansed, and saved by Jesus we should respond by serving him and doing his will, preaching this gospel to others.

But we should do so in a way that is obedient to the commands of God, not in the way we think is best. As the Orthodox Catechism says in Question 97:

Question: What do we do that is good? Answer: Only that which arises out of true faith, conforms to God’s law, and is done for his glory; and not that which is based on what we think is right or on established human tradition.

Orthodox Catechism · Q. 97

How often are we like the leper as we go about our lives as followers of Jesus? We have faith. We have been healed. We have heard Jesus’ stern warning in his word, and yet we still don’t listen. And we can be tempted to despair, and feel sorry for ourselves, and wonder why Jesus has saved us when we keep failing.

But Jesus knew what would happen when he healed the leper. And he knew that we would still fail and sin even after he healed us. But he cleansed us anyway. Even knowing what would happen, even knowing how we would live. Just as he healed this man knowing that it would mean that he could not openly enter nearby towns. Because he has compassion on us and loves us. And his plans are much greater than our sins and failures, and they will be brought to pass anyway. What man intends for evil, God purposes for good.

We see this reversal take place in our story. Where before the leper was unable to enter cities, and was forced to live out in the wilderness, because Jesus has cleansed him he is now able to again. But because of this, now the opposite has happened, as we’re told that it is Jesus that is now unable to enter into cities and must stay in the wilderness. Jesus takes the effects of the curse of sin upon himself, and substitutes himself in place of the leper, taking the consequences in his place, that he could be restored.

This is an image of the substitution that takes place on the cross where Jesus takes the ultimate consequence of our sin — death — upon himself and dies in our place. How could we respond to this Christ but in praise and thanks and love.

And so our love for God should spur us to serve God and serve others. As we look to Jesus, and rest in him and his finished work on the cross which is sufficient to take away all our sin, past, present, and future, we will want to do his will, and serve him in obedience. This isn’t legalism that if we serve Jesus enough we’ll earn our salvation or forgiveness. No, the only way we come to Jesus is like this leper, imploring him and kneeling before him, with faith that he can make us clean. It isn’t even legalism-lite where we think that Jesus will love us more if we do. But rather this is the proper response to being healed and cleansed by Jesus — just as Peter’s mother-in-law upon being raised up and healed by Jesus began to immediately serve him and his people.

We see in this passage that Jesus makes sacrifices for the sake of the gospel and his ministry. He rises early in the morning to pray so that he has time to travel and heal and preach, having spent the day before from sundown to late at night healing an entire city. He sacrifices being able to enter cities and being forced to stay in the wilderness because he is moved to pity to heal the leper.

Our primary takeaway from this should be to thank God for the sacrifices Jesus made for us. That he became human, taking on forever a human nature. That he humbled himself, taking the form of a servant and dying for us on a Roman Cross. He offered up his own life as a once-for-all sacrifice that we could be reconciled to God and be freed from the oppression of sin and death.

But while not the primary point of what’s going on here, if we’re followers of Christ then we should follow him. We should make sacrifices for the sake of the gospel. Jesus tells us to take up our crosses and follow him.

Maybe that’s sacrificing going out with friends on Saturday nights so that you can be well rested to hear God’s word to you on Sunday morning.

Maybe it’s sacrificing your precious holiday days to serve at a kids club or summer camp to evangelise to children.

Maybe it’s sacrificing your sleep to get up early and help serve in church on a Sunday morning, or to pray in the morning before the Sunday service. Do you believe that prayer is powerful and necessary for the Christian life? Jesus did.

So often I fear that we have fallen victim to Christianising our culture of individualism and libertarian thought. Thinking: “Well I don’t have to do that, so therefore I’m not going to.”

We abuse the freedom we have in Christ, for which we have been set free (we’ve read in this passage of Jesus freeing people from oppression), but we abuse the freedom we have to then not sacrifice, to not serve, to not go above and beyond, to not go outside our comfort zone, or what’s easy.

Would we give up our precious free time away from work or children to read a book to mature us as Christians so we can better teach and disciple others? Would we reach out to our brothers and sisters to spend time with each other one-on-one, praying for each other and encouraging each other, even when it’s awkward?

Would we go from immediately spending time with a friend, evangelising them, to immediately going to a gospel community group, to immediately preparing a meal for someone in need or in our church family, to immediately going to bed without doing the things we wanted to do that day, so that we can be well rested for another day of service, to then getting up early to pray for our friends and family and country, to then live out our lives as followers of Jesus in our workplaces, schools, colleges, families.

And if all that sounds daunting or impossible or challenging to you then good!

It should!

We should be striving for these things, but we should also remember that we’re not going to do this perfectly. We’re going to fail. And that’s okay. Because our hope is in the one who did not fail. Our trust is in his finished work.

And as we strive and we fail that failing should remind us to look back to Jesus once again, to look back to his life and death and resurrection and ascension back to heaven where he is continuing his work at the right hand of the Father.

He has made us clean. He has freed us from oppression.

Today is called Pentecost Sunday in the church calendar, when the day of Pentecost is remembered when the Holy Spirit comes down on the fully inaugurated Church of God, anointing each and every member to be able to carry out the work of the kingdom.

When Jesus was on the earth, when he healed and preached and cast out demons as we’ve read this morning, he did so in the power of the Holy Spirit whom we saw descend upon him in his baptism two weeks ago. This is the same Holy Spirit who is sent into each person who has been cleansed by the blood of Jesus and who enables us to sacrifice, to serve, to preach the gospel of God.

John Owen writes this in his book on the Holy Spirit:

“Our Duty is to attempt to obey God’s commands, and his work is to enable us to obey them. So those who sit back and do nothing — because they say they can do nothing until God works grace in them — show that they have no interest or concern for the things of God. Where a person does nothing, the Holy Spirit does nothing also.”

Owen continues:

“Although there is no grace in a believer except by the Holy Spirit, yet to grow in grace, to thrive in holiness and righteousness, depends on the believer using the grace he has received. We have been given arms and legs. If they are to grow strong and healthy, they must be used. Not to use them will be the most effective way of losing them. Therefore to be lazy and negligent in those things on which our spiritual growth depends, and which concern the eternal welfare of the soul, on the pretext that without the Spirit we can do nothing, is both unreasonable and stupid, as well as dangerous.”

Jesus is not a utilitarian. He doesn’t decide to not heal the leper so that he can go into the next city and do as he did in Capernaum, healing the whole city.

The one individual was important and precious to Jesus, even though unworthy of his compassion. How often do we think that we’re too small or insignificant for God? That he has much bigger things on his plate. Countries at war, nations to bring the gospel to, or even other individuals, but ones with really big problems or needs, not like our own.

Brothers and sisters, you are precious to Jesus. He loves you.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. He will leave the 99 to rescue the one. He cares for you deeply, even at great cost to himself.

Just as he took your sins upon him at Calvary and bore the wrath of God upon himself in your place — how much more will he care for the things going on in your life now. If he is powerful enough to defeat sin and death, to cast out demons, to heal those who are sick and clean those who are unclean — how much more can he deal with the trials and problems of your life.

The sin and failure of the leper wasn’t in his approaching of Jesus to cleanse him and make him whole, but was his response afterwards. Don’t conflate that response with not turning to Jesus now, whether that’s in faith and repentance for the first time, trusting him to make you clean, to carry your sin and shame, and to follow and serve him as his disciple —

Or for most of us to return to him with all our issues, all our struggles, and all our sin and shame. Turning to him in repentance for continued sins against him and trusting in him and his power and sovereignty over all the things in our lives, big and small.

Conclusion

We were like those who Jesus heals in this passage. We were sick. Even worse, we were completely dead. Like the leper cast out into the wilderness we couldn’t come to God or we would be burned up.

But Jesus has reached down to us.

He has raised us up like Peter’s mother-in-law to new life, he has taken our sin upon himself, substituting himself for us in his death on the cross and allowing us to be reconciled to God and come into his presence.

He has shown us the desire of his heart, to see the gospel proclaimed for the cleansing of many, and he has modelled for us how we should live as his servants.

Our day to day lives won’t necessarily look exactly like this day-and-a-bit in the life of Jesus every day, but they should follow similar rhythms as we seek to serve him in response to what he has done. We should have time with God’s people for teaching, we should spend time caring for family, we should be ministering to the community, we should spend time alone in prayer to God, and ultimately this should all drive us to preach the gospel, which is the desire of Jesus’ heart.

Let me finish with some words from a bit later in Mark’s gospel:

Mark 10:43–45 · ESV

⁴³But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.