In the sermon 'Jesus Touches the Untouchable' delivered by Peter Allison, the speaker explores the biblical story of Jesus healing a man with leprosy as recounted in Luke 5. The sermon draws a parallel between leprosy and sin, describing leprosy as a disfiguring and isolating disease that serves as a metaphor for the separation caused by sin. The speaker emphasizes Jesus' compassion, highlighting how He reached out and touched the leper, an act that would make others ceremonially unclean, yet Jesus remained pure and healed the man. The sermon discusses the role of faith, noting that the leper's belief in Jesus' power to heal was central to his cleansing. Additionally, the importance of prayer is underscored, as Jesus often withdrew to pray despite His busy ministry. The Old Testament rituals for cleansing leprosy are explained, pointing to their symbolic representation of Jesus’ redemptive work. Ultimately, the sermon calls believers to recognize their own sinfulness and respond with worship and gratitude for Jesus' willingness to cleanse and save.

Please turn in your scriptures to Luke chapter 5. I'd like to read beginning verse 12. And it happened when he was in a certain city that behold a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus and he fell on his face and implored him saying, Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean. Then he put out his hand and touched him, saying, I am willing to be cleansed. 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 a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded. However, the report went around concerning him all the more, and great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed by Him of their infirmities. So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. May His commandments ever be with us to make us wiser than our enemies. Almighty Heavenly Father, may you sanctify us this morning by your Word.

Your Word is truth. Your Word endures forever. We ask that you would grant to us to receive that word with meekness this morning. I ask that you would bring it to us in a vessel of clay that the glory may be yours this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

One of the more prominent memories about missionary visits was The pictures that they would bring from the other countries, often in Africa, but could be other places, with the leprosy that was rampant in some of these places. Horrible, horrible, a horrible disease. I don't know whether it's because we don't have as many missionaries going over there or whether there is less, whether the leprosy is less today than it was 40 years ago. But for whatever reason, I don't recall recently seeing the prevalence of these kinds of pictures. But leprosy is a horrible disease.

It's a bacterial disease that attacks the nervous system with devastating results. It produces a disfigurement of the skin and bones, a twisting of the limbs, a curling of the fingers. When somebody has had severe brain damage, the muscles are all balanced. There's a set of muscles that pull on every bone in each direction. That's how we can move it back and forth.

One set of muscles extends, another set contracts. And when there's severe damage to the nervous system, one of the things that can happen is one set of those muscles doesn't work. And so the other set then is contracting, and so it contorts the body, because everything is contorted in one direction or extended the other direction. And so this nervous, when it attacks the nervous system it can have these kinds of disfiguring effects. It's excruciating to simply look at a picture of somebody who is in that condition where the damage to the nervous system has resulted in failure of one set of muscles.

But it can result in many kinds of growths and lesions. But Probably the most significant effect of leprosy is because it damages the nervous system, it results in a loss of pain. You might think, oh, wouldn't that be nice to not have to feel any pain? Actually it's one of the worst horrors that you could inflict on anyone. Pain serves a very useful purpose when you touch a hot stove you know immediately And you immediately retract it.

You don't have to wait an instant, right? You know how fast that is and even as fast as that is you can still get a very good burn in that just that Momentary contact can result in very significant injury to your skin now Just imagine if you didn't have that feeling of pain and instead of retracting your hand immediately when you touch that hot stove or that hot pot, if you just let your hand there even for three seconds until you happen to look and say, oh, that's a hot pan. I better take my hand away. Just think how much more extensive the damage becomes when you don't have pain, when you don't have pain. You can't sense that you're doing something dangerous.

You can't sense that you're touching something that's sharp and is going to poke you. And so you keep pushing right into it. And so without pain, The body, our body just begins to get injured in countless ways. Because we can't feel the pain and stop. Pain is what, when you get sick you can have, things can have pain.

Pain is like the warning light, the engine warning light on your car. Pain tells you there's something wrong. Your body is having a problem with something. It's a signal, it's a messenger, a gracious messenger letting you know something's broken and letting you take action to fix it. Pain is a great motivator in that sense.

When we don't have any pain, we just keep doing whatever we're doing. When the body starts screaming in pain, then we tend to stop. We tend to do something to take the pain away. That's kind of why sometimes if you take something to take the fever away, or to take the pain away, you're kind of like just breaking the check engine light. If I knock that light out, then I don't have the problem.

But that doesn't solve the problem, it doesn't solve why the car is overheating or the check engine light has come on. Pain is the same way. It's a warning. It's a signal that there's something wrong. And it should tell us to look into what's wrong and find the cause of what's wrong So we can fix the root cause and not just take the symptom away.

And so leprosy then, people that have leprosy, they were, they would, can damage themselves. They lack the ability to stay away from dangerous, avoid dangerous situations. And so all these things tend to create wounds that don't heal and causes the flesh to fall away. And So people that have leprosy often are extremely disfigured because of the damage to the nervous system and the damage that you can do to your body when you don't have nerves to feel pain. And it was also a contagious disease.

It was contagious from contact, contagious from respiratory droplets, from breathing, from nasal discharge, things like that. So it is a very contagious disease. Very disfiguring and very contagious. In the Bible, the response to leprosy was to put someone outside of their culture, to quarantine them. They had to live outside the city.

They had to cover their lip. They had to cry out, unclean, unclean, if anyone came near them. So that people would know, don't come closer. There's a contagious, highly contagious disease. These leper colonies have existed until very recent times, places where people lived in quarantine and isolation.

So this is a disease that creates a cast of outcasts, a social outcast. Somebody who is Not welcome in our assembly, somebody who is not welcome in our communities. Not welcome just to live next door, not welcome just to go down to the grocery store and buy groceries. Not welcome to come where other people are gathered. We really don't have anything even remotely like this today.

Maybe AIDS Seemed like it was going to be like that in the early 80s. I remember when AIDS was brand-new acquired immune deficiency syndrome And it was killing people And it was contagious. It seemed it was spreading it was growing and nobody there was no cure for it and people were scared. There was a fear in the culture at that time. This age was going to just take over everything and be a plague.

We couldn't cure it, we couldn't heal it, we couldn't stop it. There was sort of a fear. But that quickly went away when the predictions of the increased infection rate didn't happen. It leveled out. It turned out to be something that was unique to a certain pattern of sin.

So for the most part, it was limited to people who practiced those sinful things. So it hasn't gone out and become the scourge and today you don't hear very much about it at all. We don't really have anything then like leprosy in the Bible. It was a repulsive disease. Just to look at somebody with leprosy was repulsive.

It was sort of thing that made you gag. That's how disfiguring and repulsive the disease physically was. Somebody that had leprosy, their flesh is rotting, flesh is not healing, disfigured body, growths, G-R-O-W-T-H, tumors. Disfigured body, growths, g-r-o-w-t-h, tumors, it can grow tumors or growths on the spine and the nervous system. Very very disfiguring.

System. Very, very disfiguring. And that's why leprosy in the Bible is a symbol for sin. Leprosy is disfiguring, it's revulsive, it cut off people from their culture. It cut off people from contact with all other people.

And there was no known cure for it. There were a couple times in the Old Testament where leprosy was used as a punishment for people's specific sin. But like Gehazi, remember he was greedy after Naaman's wealth that Naaman had offered to Elisha for healing him. And he wanted it. And God put Naaman's leprosy on him or Naomi, Miriam sorry.

Miriam, Moses' sister, spoke against Moses. She said, Who are you Moses? Why are you so unique that only God could speak through you? And she was struck with leprosy. Moses prayed for her and she was healed.

But leprosy in the Old Testament made someone unclean. You could have a cold, you could have a fever, you weren't unclean. But if you had leprosy, you were unclean. To be unclean meant you couldn't Take the Passover. You couldn't go into the temple.

You couldn't be with other people. To be unclean meant they had to live away from everybody else. Miriam, when she had leprosy, she was put outside the camp for the time of her leprosy. And so in a sense, in a real sense, leprosy was seen as a picture of our sinfulness. Our sin cuts us off from fellowship with God.

The result, the wages of sin is death. Death is not a part of it. Without sin there would be no death. The wages of sin is death. So leprosy, just like leprosy cut people off from contact with the culture, so our sin cuts us off with fellowship from God and by extension from one another.

And there's no cure for it. There is no, there's nothing that we can do to remove the guilt of our sin. It's fatal. It's fatal. So this is the person then who comes up to Jesus.

Somebody who is disfigured, who is marred, who is repulsive to the culture, somebody who Nobody else would even want to get anywhere near. Jesus has, according to Matthew, just come down from preaching the Sermon on the Mount. So there are crowds, thousands of people around him. Matthew 8 says, When he came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him, and a leper came and worshipped him. This leper came up to Jesus and worshiped him, Matthew says.

Matthew, the account is given in Matthew chapter 8. He beheld a leper, and behold the leper came and worshiped him, saying, Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean." This leper believed that in Jesus, he believed that Jesus could heal him of his leprosy. This was an incurable disease. When the king of Syria sent a letter to the king of Israel saying, I hear that you can cure my leprosy down there. Because you remember this servant girl in Naaman's house said, I know someone who can cure your leprosy and the king thought what and she told it to Naaman and of course the king thinks well if anybody can cure leprosy he must be in the palace of the king certainly that's where somebody with that kind of gift skill could be And so he wrote a letter to the king of Israel.

I remember the king of Israel tore his clothes saying, this guy's trying to pick a war with me. Who can cure leprosy? Leprosy is an incurable disease. And yet this leper had faith that Jesus, the Messiah, the God who created his body, the God who created everything around him, who knit his body together and made it whole, this one, he knew, could heal him. And so throwing aside all the requirements of that day, what was acceptable in that day for a leper, He ran up to Jesus and said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

And he was right. He worshipped him. Matthew says this leper ran up and worshipped him Before he did anything else he ran up and worshipped him He fell on his face He prostrated himself before the King of Kings. He humbled himself before the Lord. His first thought, you see, wasn't to himself and to be healing, but rather this desire to be healed flowed out of his worship of the Lord.

This was in a sense one way that he did worship the Lord. Worship is the chief purpose for our existence. It's why God created us, to worship him. To worship God is the act of magnifying Him. It's to express His beauty, His power, His glory.

It's to exalt Christ. Paul expressed a hope that whether he lived or died, that Christ would be exalted in his life. Whether he lived or died. Now how would Christ be exalted in his death? Well Christ was exalted, Paul would exalt Christ in his death because he recognized that in death he would have a deeper intimacy with Christ.

He would gain a closer, more perfect relationship with Jesus Christ. This leper exalted Christ in a very similar way because in his inner experience he knew that Christ could heal him. You see how he exalted Christ because he knew that Christ could heal him. You see how he exalted Christ because he knew that Christ could heal him. That was his experience.

Christ can heal me. Christ is powerful. Christ is the mighty God. Christ is the creator God. And he knew that.

And he expressed that in words as well. But what he said was simply the expression of what he already knew in his heart, what he was already experiencing. He was exalting Christ in his heart and he exalted Christ in his words. We do the same, or we can fail to do the same in our lives when we hope in his mercy. When we hope in God's mercy and in His power and in His goodness.

When something happens to us that's good, it's easy to hope in God's goodness and in His power and in His mercy. But when something happens that isn't as good, when we get delayed for an hour and a half in traffic, or we miss our flight, or other things happen, That's when we show in our heart whether we're worshipping Christ. We exalt, are we hoping in His goodness? Do we say the Lord has brought this to pass for His good purpose? He's brought it to pass because he's the one who sovereignly controls all things.

And he's brought this to pass for his own glory and for my own good. See, When we respond that way, we are hoping in God's goodness. We are expressing our certainty that what God has brought to pass, He has done for His glory. That what He's brought to pass, He's done for our good. Maybe we need to learn something.

Maybe He needs to show us something. Maybe He's preserving us from something. But how do we think about these things? These ordinary, everyday matters. How do we think about them?

Do we worship Christ in them? Do we exalt Him? Is our experience that of exalting Christ by resting in His providence, by hoping in His goodness, by knowing as this leper knew that God was good and that He is able and willing to teach us, to deliver us, to strengthen us, to heal us. This leper worshiped Christ. He exercised faith in Christ.

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. That's the statement of faith. That's the statement of faith. Of trusting in Christ. Christ was the object of his faith.

It wasn't his faith that saved him, but his faith was that channel through which he received and appropriated Christ's power. Jesus shows himself here to be the savior of lepers. He shows, he first of all has a compassion for this man, this repulsive man, repulsive looking man. Jesus reached out and touched him. He didn't stand back with his hands folded to himself and say be cleansed.

He reached out and touched this man with leprosy. That would have made a man, any other man who did that, unclean. That would have exposed him to whatever bacterial infection this man had in an even greater way than just being near him was. But Jesus has compassion on this person. There are parallel accounts of this in Matthew and in Mark.

I've referred to Matthew, but Mark says this, Then Jesus moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him. Just the very fact that he reached out his hand and touched him is an act of compassion, but Mark makes it explicit that Jesus was moved with compassion. He had a love for this man, this repulsive looking man. In his condition of leprosy, of eroding fingers, of disfigured face, Jesus had compassion on him. His heart went out to him.

He reached out and touched him and he said I am willing I Am willing to be cleansed Jesus has compassion on sinners who in God's sight are the same repulsive, loathsome creature that this leper was. Our sin pollutes us. Our sin corrupts us and makes us as repulsive to God as leprosy made this person repulsive to his culture. Repulsive to his culture. But Jesus has compassion on sinners.

Jesus died for sinners because he loved sinners. He died for sinners because he loved sinners. Jesus has compassion on us while we were yet in our sins. He died for us. He reaches out and touches us.

Jesus is willing to cleanse this leper. He says, I am willing. Jesus is willing to forgive Those who come in faith as this leopard did. Those who come hoping in God's goodness, knowing that he does forgive, knowing that he does heal. Jesus is willing.

Do we present Jesus as a willing Savior? Do we think of Jesus as a willing Savior? When we see these vile people mocking Christ, blaspheming him, people are beginning to look loathsome today. More and more, as they mark themselves, as they cut themselves, as they disfigure their bodies. They're starting to look more loathsome.

Do these loathsome looking people, Do we see Jesus as a Savior who is willing to heal them? If we don't, then we don't have the view of Jesus that this leper did. This leper did. Jesus came to heal the sick and the blind, not the righteous. Do we see ourselves like this leper?

Because that's how God sees us. That's His view of sin. It doesn't matter whether your whole body is full of leprosy like this man's was. It says he was full of leprosy. Full his body was apparently just covered with the marks of the sin.

Or whether there's just one little spot, one little spot of leprosy. It's the same. It's still a fatal disease. It didn't matter Whether the leprosy covered your whole body or one little spot in the Old Testament, you were unclean. And whether you had a whole body or one spot, you were put out to live with lepers, unclean, with a fatal condition.

Our sin, whether we've grown up in Christian homes and haven't known some of the fullness, or whether you grew up in an occult home and are familiar with every form of evil known to man. The wages of sin is death, all sin is death, And we, regardless of the extent, are in God's eyes, as this leper was. And are as guilty of death as any other sinner. Jesus touched the unclean man and cleansed him. He healed him of his leprosy and he cleansed him.

He washed him so that he was no longer an outcast. And it's interesting that, see, Jesus in touching this leper did not become unclean himself. Jesus touches the unclean but instead of becoming unclean himself, the man he touches becomes cleansed and healed. This is also a picture of Jesus taking the legal responsibility for our sin without becoming a sinner. Without becoming a sinner.

He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus is the Savior And He touches the unclean. He doesn't become unclean. He causes those He touches to be cleansed. Jesus takes our sin without becoming a sinner.

He died, He paid the penalty for our sin because He loved us, but He did not become a sinner in doing that because He's God. He's Jesus the Savior. But he sent this man to the priest. Go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing as a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded. Jesus upholds this Mosaic law.

He instructs this leper in what to do. It was a fairly lengthy and elaborate process that's described in the law. Its leprosy is discussed in Leviticus 13 and 14 quite extensively. In Leviticus 14 there is the ritual for healing for cleansing lepers. This is the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing.

This is what Jesus tells this leper to do. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp and examine him. And if the leprosy is healed in the leper, then the priest shall command to take for him as to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedarwood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. And as for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedarwood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and dip them in the living bird, in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water." There's a blood that's pointing to Christ, sacrifice.

And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from leprosy." That's the mode of baptism. Which remember, baptism is what signifies the application of Christ's work to us. "...and shall pronounce him clean, and shall Let the living bird loose in the open field, and he is to be cleansed, shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself with water that he might be clean. And that he shall, after that, he shall come into the camp and stay outside his tent seven days. But on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows all his hair.

He shall shave off, he shall wash his clothes, wash his body in water and he shall be clean. Every vestment, every remainder, reminder of his former sin, of his former clothes is removed. Even the hair, even his eyebrows, it's all removed and put away. This is what Christ does when he cleanses us from our sin. He removes the guilt of it.

He removes every vestige of the guilt of our sin away from us. And on the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, one new lamb of the first year without blemish, three tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and one log of oil. Then the priest who makes them clean shall present the man who is to be made clean, and these things before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. And the priest shall take one male lamb, and offer it as a trespass offering, and the log of oil, and wave them as an offering before the Lord. And he shall kill the lamb in the place where he kills the sin offering and the burnt offering in a holy place.

For as the sin offering is the priest, so is the trespass offering. It is most holy. The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, on the big toe of his right foot. And the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own hand. And The priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and sprinkle some of the oil with his finger seven times before the Jehovah.

And the rest of the oil the priest shall put on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, and the blood of the trespass offering, and the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand, he shall put on the head of him is to be cleansed, so the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord." There you see wrapped up in all of this ceremony is the sign pointing to the work of the Holy Spirit falling upon us. It's also the Holy Spirit, the oil that was put on this man's head. The water that was sprinkled on him, he was being baptized. Again pointing to the work of Christ. The oil pointing to the work to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that is put on this man's head.

The blood of the sacrifice is put on this body signifying that he's been cleansed by in this case the blood of the sacrificial animals but that was pointed to the blood of Christ that cleanses us from our sin. And the priest shall offer the sin offering and make atonement for him whose to be cleansed from his uncleanness. And afterward he shall kill the burnt offering. And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar, so the priest shall make atonement for him and he shall be clean." What Christ cleanses is clean. It's clean.

Paul could tell Some of the Corinthians, some of you were murderers, some of you were homosexuals, fornicators, some of you were adulterers and liars. But you've been washed. You're now cleansed. Those are former things. That is not how God looks upon us now.

Regardless of whatever your sins have been in the past, when Christ cleanses you, you are washed. The guilt is removed. We can stand before Jesus Christ in pure and white robes, without disfigurement, without scarring in bodies that are new, that are whole, that are healed. Jesus had him go to the priest and show himself and make an offering as a testimony to them. It's not exactly clear who the them is referring to, but I think it's referring to the priests.

He was to do this as a testimony to the priests Because they've probably forgotten that Jesus could heal lepers of their leprosy. Jesus sent a testimony to them, to these people who were trained in the law, who should have understood the significance of this ceremony that they were doing. Jesus sent it to them as a testimony that he, the Messiah, can cleanse the leper. Do we remember that as well? When we see all these people today, in all of their filthiness, in all of their repulsive rebellion, do we remember that Jesus is the Messiah who can cleanse even these?

Jesus, the Savior of lepers, has compassion on the leper, who cleanses the leper. This Savior even found time for secret prayer. And if Jesus, the Messiah, needed to pray, how much more do we? And he was busy. He was very busy.

The report went around concerning him all the more and great multitudes came together to heal, to hear and to be healed by him of their infirmities. So he often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. Jesus found time in the despite all the busyness. He found time because of the busyness to pray. I used to think we take a rest when the work is done, but I realized a year ago We have to rest because the work is never done.

We have to rest just because the work isn't done. We have to rest in Christ because He is the one who can do these things. Jesus, we need to pray because it's not in our power to do any of these things. And Jesus himself, as a person, as a human, needed to pray and he found time to do it because, because he was so busy. Takes away any excuse we have of being too busy to pray, being too busy to worship the Lord, being too busy to spend time in secret in communion with God.

The response of this leper is to show his love for Jesus. Jesus instructed him not to tell anyone about it, but to show as a thanksgiving offering, to give the sacrifice of praise. But Mark tells us that however he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter so Jesus could no longer openly enter the city but was outside in deserted places and they came to him from every direction. This leper had been cleansed and as Jesus pointed out to the disciples, Those who have been cleansed from much love much. Those who have little love little.

This man was cleansed from much. And he loved much. He went out and proclaimed it freely and to spread the matter of what God had done for him. Here is Jesus, the Messiah, he cleanses lepers. He cleanses ugly repulsive lepers.

He takes those who are outcasts from society and makes them accepted. Jesus is the one who takes us as an outcast, rejected, repulsive, and makes us accepted in the sight of the beloved. Is that something you love to talk about? Is that something you love to proclaim? Is it something you love to express?

As we know, as we begin to understand the depth of our sin, we begin more and more to understand the love of God who saves us. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are Jesus, the Savior of lepers. That you cleanse, That you remove the disfigurement and the defilement and the corruption of our sin. We thank you Lord for your love to us while we were yet in our sins.

We thank you for your mercy to us. We ask, Father, that we might have a love for you as this leper did. That we might desire to worship you as this leper did. To exalt your majesty and power and goodness. To know with certainty your willingness to heal.

To know with certainty your love. A love you have said you have for the world, that whoever believes in you should not perish but have everlasting life. Lord, we thank you for our salvation. And we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to you, which is but our reasonable duty. And we ask, Lord, for your Holy Spirit to anoint us, to fill us, to empower us, that all that we do might be done in you and by your power and not in our flesh.

In Jesus' name, Amen.