Jesus Heals Man With Leprosy | Week 14

As I was saying, the Bible can be utterly lifechanging. Sometimes you know how this is. Sometimes you read the Bible and it helps you grow or it gives you something that you’ve learned. But there’s other times that it can really be major turning point, something you see about yourself or something you see about God, and it can help you. This sermon series has been looking at Jesus himself, and that can be life changing, of course.

Now we believe that the entire Bible is inspired, that we can learn from the Old Testament, from the letters, the other parts of the Bible. But there’s something sweet and powerful about looking straight at the life of Jesus and what we can learn from him. Today we’re going to read a really powerful story. It’s the story of Jesus healing the man with leprosy. And I would like to dive in, and I will tell you that in preparing for this lesson and learning about leprosy itself, it has been disturbing. It’s been really sobering to see what people have gone through when they have something happen in their lives that they can’t fix, they can’t take back, and they can’t change. And it’s so wonderful to see Jesus come into the picture. Let’s dive in. Wow, sorry.

So I’d like us to dive in, and I want to ask you to open up your heart to learn from Jesus, but also to open up your heart to learn from the leper.

In Luke chapter 5:12-16, it says, “While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. 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. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing. He said, be clean.

And immediately the leprosy left him. 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. 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. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Let’s pray briefly about understanding this text.

Let’s pray together, Father. It’s so amazing to see what Jesus could accomplish in the life of this leper. I don’t even know what it looked like, Father, for this man’s leprosy to immediately disappear. But we know, Father, that you have that power in every one of our lives to change us, to heal us, to make us better. Help us, Father, to learn from this text, to learn not only from Jesus, but from the leper about coming to you for healing.

We love you, Father, and we pray in your son’s name. Amen. So what can we learn? So first, obviously, we can learn from Jesus. It says “While he was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. 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. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him.

This is one of the great passages in all the Bible about the compassion of Jesus. I made a little table here because you guys know I like charts and tables. So from Jesus, we see compassion. From Jesus, we see the value of physical touch. They reached out and touched a man who he wasn’t even supposed to touch.

Jesus was not a man just of good intentions, but he took action to heal a person. And what he did was countercultural. You did not come near a leper. You didn’t come near a leper. And you certainly at the risk of catching the leprosy, you certainly didn’t touch a leper.

And yet Jesus did that. But I really like something that Tony Fernandez has been doing with this sermon series on the Ministry of Jesus. And that is that he has been emphasizing, rather than putting yourself in the shoes of Jesus, what if you put yourself in the shoes of the people Jesus impacted? And when you do that, a whole treasury of new insights, new lessons, new opportunities for growth and change are opened up for us. And to be honest, it takes some humility.

Like it’s easy to picture yourself with Jesus because you’re making yourself the hero of the story. And so certainly it’s a biblical principle to look at Jesus and imitate Jesus. There’s nothing wrong, even in this sermon series, for us to look at Jesus, imitate Jesus, but to have this emphasis on the other person, the impacted person, it takes humility. And here’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to learn from the leper.

Let’s highlight what the leper did in this passage. We had a highlight of what Jesus did. What about the leper? “When Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along covered with leprosy. 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.”

So I would like to put forth this premise that to learn from the man with leprosy, let’s put ourselves in his position. For starters, what would it be like to have leprosy? I have found this is a really disturbing thing to study. It’s really a tragedy. Look at what Moses wrote. Here’s, the commands in the Bible for a man with leprosy. “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”

Now, the reason it says his dwelling will be outside the camp is Moses gave this command when the Israelites were traveling from Egypt to the promised land and they had a camp that they would break down every morning and travel, and at night they would set up the camp. So what this is saying, imagine yourself as a leper. What this is saying is you no longer care about fashion. This is saying you need to deliberately disfigure your clothing.

You no longer care about your hair. Your hair is supposed to be unkempt. And then it says he shall cover his upper lip. I don’t want you to miss the miracle here. There’s a miracle here.

And that is that 3200 years before we knew about germs, Joseph Lister, Dr. Samuel Wise, all those famous people who discovered and promoted the idea in the 1800s that a lot of our diseases came from germs. All of our diseases came from germs. People did not know this. And yet God is teaching quarantine.

And I think that’s a mask. Could that be a mask we’re looking? At it says cover his upper lip and cry out, Unclean. My wife is a physician, and we were talking about leprosy this week in preparation for my sermon. And we found out that leprosy is caused by bacteria. And the bacteria that causes leprosy is the same family of bacteria that causes tuberculosis, which, as many of you know, is primarily a lung disease.

Now, leprosy is not primarily a lung lung disease, but they think that people probably catch leprosy through the air that a leper breathes as well as touching him. And God 3200 years ago says the lepers got to cover his upper lip and then he’s got to stay separate from other people. Just thought I’d point out that’s a bona fide miracle. By the way, the Bible does not attempt to be a science book. The Bible is not attempting to be a science book.

It just gave us this for free in passing that you guys need quarantine to deal with this problem.

If you’re a leper and you’re married, you just lost your marriage. If you’re living at home in the idyllic situation, married with wonderful children, how often is it actually idyllic? But you know what I’m saying?

You lose that. You move out of your house, you say goodbye to your kids. You move out of the city. You’re not welcome in town. You’re not welcome in the store.

Are you going to keep your job? You’re not going to keep your job.

I just want to take this home a little bit. When you have leprosy, you have no freedom from the disease. Now, there are things that happen to you, to your body, and then they heal, and then there’s things that can happen to your body and they never heal. You know that diagnosis you don’t want? The diagnosis that means from this day forward, you have diabetes. From this day forward, you have rheumatoid arthritis. From this day forward, you fill in the blank. There are diagnosis that you get, and sometimes you can get a cure for them. But some of those, it becomes part of your body and it never leaves.

This is the worst of those. In a little bit, I’m going to show you some photos of leprosy and if you guys have any children, I’ll let you know. But you probably ought to distract them and cover their eyes. I even held back some of the most disturbing ones and did not include them in the lesson. But like we’ve already talked about, you’re separated from your loved ones.

You become ugly and disgusting to other people. Can you imagine a life where every person you meet, every stranger you meet, has a look of horror, a look of rejection and wants to move away from you? Oh, my gosh.

Thank you, Stephen. Clean up on aisle three, I guess.

Sorry about that.

Can you imagine abject poverty? Now, there were people who had leprosy in ancient times that did not move into abject poverty. We actually have recorded Kings, monarchs, high officials, army generals in the past that had to isolate themselves, but it did not end up in abject poverty. But basically, 99% of the people who got leprosy lost all their money and of course, social and community rejection and isolation. Can we identify with the leper?

In what ways do we desperately need Jesus? I actually think I got a map because I like maps. This is where leprosy occurs. Now, you’ll notice on the map that leprosy is a Southern hemisphere phenomenon for the most part.

You see in the United States and Canada, they do have cases of leprosy, but they’re so extremely rare. For example, my wife has been in practice as a family practice physician for 34 years, and she’s never seen diagnosed or treated a single case of leprosy. That’s just how rare it is in the United States. You and I usually never see leprosy in our lifetime. It’s a little bit hard to relate to a leper.

Now I’m going to show you some photos of leprosy to let you know a little bit more of what this man’s story was like. So once again, if you have kids, you might want to adjust for this. So this is a basic presentation of leprosy. They think leprosy is actually not a rash that comes upon you, but that it’s a rash that comes from inside of you as a bacteria. And it usually almost always spreads.

There’s different kinds of leprosy, but it usually spreads. So I know this photo might be hard to see, but that’s a man who’s getting leprosy on his face. Here’s a man who has leprosy on his ear. And you can see that leprosy begins to change the physical appearance and it begins to destroy the flesh. And leprosy is actually an infection of the nerves it’s not just a rash.

And so what it does is first it makes your nerves hypersensitive so that it’s really painful, painful. Even when you’re not touching things, it’s painful. And then the nerve dies. And when the nerve dies, then you can’t feel anything and you’re into actually a worse problem than if you had the pain, because then you don’t realize when you hurt yourself.

And so it does say in the book of Luke, Luke was a physician. As you guys might know, the book of Luke is the only of the three accounts that says the man was covered with leprosy. So I know this is a little shocking, but here’s a man who is covered apparently from head to toe with leprosy, and you may begin to notice that his fingers, some of his digits, his fingers are beginning to receive some damage. This is the last Photo I have for you. And here you have a person with leprosy who it looks like at least nine of the ten digits have been damaged so that they’re losing their fingers down to the knuckles or more.

Can we identify with the leper?

I don’t have leprosy. Do I still need Jesus?

So what I would like to propose is leprosy as a metaphor for the incurable, devastating disease of sin, because I don’t feel what the leper felt. I don’t feel the incredible, permanent tragedy of what it’s like to be a leper for my life to utterly change. You know, if you had a tragedy for a week, if you had a tragedy for a year, could you endure it? This is a tragedy that never goes away.

I can’t imagine. I tell you, I had times during the week when I was preparing this, I just started weeping because I was trying to put myself in the position of somebody like that. And I’m like, I can’t even imagine.

The interesting thing is we do have a disease like that. We often just are not as sensitive to it as a leper would be to their own leprosy. If you see your need for God in healing the problem of sin like the leper saw it, you would be a very rare individual. Most of us have a tremendously difficult time seeing our sinfulness and seeing a need to deal with it. Now I’m going to share with you a scripture that begins to help us unpack what sin does to us in a way that’s similar to what leprosy would do to somebody.

Gosh, you got any ideas?

Is it the way I turn? Okay. I’m good. All right.

Ephesians, chapter two, “As for you,” this is Paul talking to the congregation and Ephesus. So the you is plural. He means all y’all, as they say in the south, all y’all. As for all y’all, “you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.” So he’s saying you’re dead while you’re still alive.

That’s what he’s saying. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the Kingdom of the heir, the spirit who is now at work, and those who are disobedient.” So I know this is kind of a little bit of fancy religious talk. What Paul is saying is you were a dead man walking before you became a Christian because you were following the ways of the culture that are sinful, and you were actually following Satan even though you didn’t know it. So that’s what he’s teaching these people.

And let’s continue on. This passage has two slides. It says, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. He’s saying, this is a problem that everybody has done. So this is not those other people who are not churchgoers.

This is you and me. This is everybody. Everybody has been a dead man walking until they became a Christian and God began to deal with, solve and heal the problem of sin. This is all of our problems. Now, you may not feel this way, and that’s why we’re talking about the leper, because if we can identify with the leper and we can see our need, then we can approach Jesus like we need to approach Jesus.

Let’s finish this passage. It says, “like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” Now, this is really hard. When I first became a Christian, I was 18 years old. And I remember talking to the young adult men who were studying the Bible with me, the guys who were already Christians.

And I told him that I like to be philosophical. So I told him, I think basically man is inherently good and that we’ve just messed up a little bit, but we need to fix our own problems. And the guy studying with me, they said, actually, the Bible teaches a different viewpoint. It teaches that man is not 100% bad, but that he basically is more bad than he is good and that he cannot fix his own problems. And that’s why we need a savior.

And what this passage is saying is it takes it to an extreme. It says that me and you deserve the anger of God. We deserve the anger of God. Now, I don’t know if you realize this or not. This is a New Testament teaching.

God is angry right now. God is angry right now.

That doesn’t sound like God to me. Just ask yourself this question. Should God be angry about human trafficking? Should God be angry about child molestation? Should God be angry about the effects of alcoholism on a family?

Should God be angry about adultery? You see where I’m going with this? You think God is a loving God? He’s not angry. God is angry because he’s a loving God, because he cares about those people in human trafficking because he cares about the spouse who has had adultery committed on that person.

He cared because he loves when do you get mad at your parents? Why do you get mad at your kids? Because you love them and you don’t want them to hurt their own lives. You don’t want them to hurt other people. You don’t want to hurt their brother or sister.

I’ve already told you this. Some of you, I used to get so mad at my kids. The thing that made me most angry at my kids was sibling rivalry when they would hurt each other. And that’s how God is with us. We are deserving of the anger of God, and we need a savior.

We need a savior.

And verse four, here comes God the Savior. “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by Grace that you have been saved.” So as we’ve already talked about, sin brings a type of death even while you’re alive. Now, this is the list of things that are bad if you’re a leper. We already covered this. There’s no freedom from the disease. You’re separated from your loved ones. You’re ugly and disgusting. Are these the effects of sin?

Are these the effects of sin? Do you have freedom from the disease of sin? Did you know the Bible teaches that once you sin, you become a slave to sin? John 8:36 is one reference for that. It’s taught in many places in the Scriptures.

But when you become a sinner, all of us have been enslaved to sin. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is sensitivity training because you have been enslaved to sin. It took me a while to own up to it also. Are you separated from your loved ones? Well, maybe you don’t have to move out of your house.

What comes between you and your spouse? What comes between you and your kids? What comes between you and your roommates? You and your friends? It’s your sin or the sin of the other person hurting you.

And you might be able to go forward in your relationships. But the definition one way you can define sin is the actions or the attitudes are the words that damage relationships. That’s what sin is. It damages your relationship with God. It damages your relationship with others.

It even damages you yourself. That’s what sin does. Does sin make you ugly and disgusting to other people? Does being arrogant make you ugly? It doesn’t make you ugly physically.

But you know what I’m talking about. There’s people that because of their sin, you don’t even want to look at them. What about abject poverty? There’s a lot of rich people in this world who have not been freed by the Grace of God. But they’re poor on joy, they’re poor on peace.

They’re poor on finding a purpose that’s genuine and that works. They’re missing out on love.

These other things apply to us. But there’s another one that leprosy doesn’t affect. And one of the effects of sin that’s even worse than leprosy, is you lose a chance at eternal life. You see, the greatest problem physically we’re going to have in our lives is our own death. And God has actually solved the problem of our physical death.

We will physically die, but for the one saved by Grace, we have the hope of a resurrection and eternal life. Can we be like the leper? Listen to this. “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.”

Do you feel that way about your sin? I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way about my sin the way I should have. Even now, even after being a Christian for a long time, I still think I’m affected by the world that I don’t fully realize what a wonderful thing it is to be saved from sin, to be forgiven of sin, to be changed by the Grace of God. No one can be perfect. After you become a Christian, obviously, you’re going to continue to sin, but God can even change that.

So that thankfully, you sin less. And a lot of the habits that you have, you can break. And that’s a great promise from God. Do you see your need for Jesus? So what I’m hoping is that as we talk about the leper, we can grow in how valuable the healing of God is for the sin in our lives.

God can cure the power of sin and its shame, but not if we’re unaware of the problem or if we deny the problem. Look at the leper. Let’s learn from this guy. He saw his problem clearly. He felt his need fully, and he pursued Jesus urgently.

The reason we’re covering this today is I’m preaching to myself as well as to you. We need to have a greater appreciation for our need for God, our healing through Jesus Christ. Why don’t we see it? Well, first of all, why don’t we see our name for Jesus? Everyone around you seems oblivious.

You walk out in the front of your house, you’re watering your lawn. Your neighbor comes out and he says, don’t you feel your need for Jesus? That has never happened to me.

This is just not a common thing. This is not something people usually talk about at the workplace, in their study groups, at your school, if you’re going to school, if you look around and you go, you’re not learning your need for Jesus by peer pressure.

Others around us have a lifestyle of sin. So I went to the University of Florida. When I went there, Playboy magazine voted the University of Florida the number one party school in the nation. They’ve improved their reputation since then, but that was the reputation of the University of Florida when I went there. And what you expected to do as a freshman at the University of Florida is sin as much as you can.

That was the expectation. And how would you have fun? Well, you can play board games, but that was for kids. If you want to have fun like an adult, you go and sin. And that’s the expectation of society.

Right now, that’s the expectation. And so it affects us. Look, one of the problems with entertainment, that is faith based, like if you go see a faith based movie, or you listen to a faith based song, one of the problems is purity is not cool. And so faith based movies struggle with people wanting to see them because we’re constantly indoctrinated with the idea that sin is cool and righteousness is not cool.

And I feel sorry for the people who are trying to produce faith based entertainment because they’re fighting an uphill battle against the values of our culture. Another reason is you think you can cure yourself. I don’t need the help of Jesus.

If your parents let’s say you’re teaching your child to tie their shoes, right? So you get down on a knee and you bend over with your five year old and you’re tying their shoes for them. And as your helping hand reaches towards the shoe, there’s going to come a point in time when the five year old or the six year old is going to take your hand with their hand, they’re going to push your hand away and they’re going to say, no, Daddy, I got this. No, Daddy, I can do this. Now, if you’re a parent, you’re happy.

Thank goodness I don’t have to keep tying this kid’s shoes. Eventually, by the time they graduate from high school, they’re going to have to tie their own shoes. So if they get there at five years old, you’re like, thank goodness, right? They’re tying their own shoes. You don’t want to do that as an adult with God when God’s helping hand is reaching out.

How many times have I done this? God, I don’t need your help. I got this. No, we don’t. We need the help of God on this one.

Maybe you can tie your own shoes, but dealing with sin is a different matter. Another issue is blame shifting. I’m not going to unpack this, but we know what it means that it’s hard to see your sin if you blame it on your parents, blame it on your job place, blame it on your marriage, blame it on your DNA, blame it on whatever. And it’s good to say, all right, I’m going to own my wrongdoing. I’m going to face it and then realize my need for help with it.

Another thing is fear of change. And the last one, maybe the killer is stubborn, foolish, pride. You just don’t want to admit you need help. Even the question what does this question do for you? You need help.

Our first reaction is, no, I don’t. I don’t need help. I don’t need you telling me I need help. That’s our natural reaction, because we’re prideful people. How many people are prideful?

100% of people are prideful. Now what you hope and pray is if there’s a streak of humility inside you to kind of fend off some of that pride, because actually that streak of humility is necessary to be saved. What does the cure look like? I want to give you some hope here. I’m going to read you three passages in a row, back to back of what Jesus is offering.

“On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as scripture has said, Rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this, he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

One question that we often get as Christians is, do you take the Bible literally? Well, I take the parts of the Bible literally that are meant to be taken literally, but right here, Jesus is using a metaphor. You’re not supposed to take it literally. And what he says is, whoever is thirsty, he’s not talking about H 20, and he’s not talking about thirsting for actually drinking a bottle of water that I have to take good care of here. He’s talking about what you thirst for in your soul, the things that we already talked about peace, happiness inside, joy, purpose, those kinds of things.

He says, if you’re thirsty for that, I got it.

Look, this sounds prideful or even kind of uncomfortable. It sounds boastful to say this, but I feel the living water coming up inside of me, and it’s not a feeling. I know that sounds like I’m contradicting myself, but it’s not this tingling feeling. It’s not this whoosh feeling. I feel joy I can’t explain. I feel peace at times. I shouldn’t feel peace. I feel happiness when I’ve had times of suffering and difficulty. I feel comfort and grief that’s really hard to bear. And I believe that that’s the living water that’s promised to us, even though we’ve been damaged by sin. Here’s another great promise. And it continues on with this idea, that of the spirit being living water.

It says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love,” this is what we get “joy, peace forbearance, which means patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol. Against such things, there is no law.” And then there’s the last scripture I’m going to read is a famous promise in John 10:10. Jesus says, “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.”

So if you’re willing to see your need, I would like to give you some closing instructions on what to do about it. First of all, learn the gospel. So here’s what I mean. In Romans One, it says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel because the gospel is the power of God that brings Salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile.” If you want healing, you need the gospel.

And I’m going to give you a flyover of what the gospel is. The gospel is a message of Salvation, but it’s also a message of the Lordship of Jesus that you’re going to make him King. He’s going to bring you Salvation, and you’re going to live within his Kingdom, the Church. These are aspects of the gospel, primary aspects of the gospel. The second thing that I’m going to give you four pointers for what to do to receive healing that we need learn the gospel and then decide whether you want to make Jesus Lord of your life.

Should the decision to make Jesus your Lord be a sober, thoughtful, lifelong decision or a rushed, impulsive decision based on emotion? Maybe some of you never thought about this. I’m sorry. Should the decision to make Jesus your Lord be sober, thoughtful and lifelong are a rushed, impulsive decision? So if you’re visiting with us, you might be wondering, do you guys have an invitation song where I can come forward and become a Christian, or do like we bow our heads and if you want to be saved, you raise your hand.

So in the Broward Church, we do something different. We open up the Bible and sit down and talk with you. And so we don’t want quick, cheap, watered down conversions that might not be real.

Now, I’m not trying to be disrespectful of any religious traditions you come from, but I want to ask you this question. Should becoming a Christian be based on emotion? Should you do it at the drop of a hat without thinking about it? Or is it like the decision to get married should be, which is a sober decision to get married? It doesn’t always work that way either.

But look, in our congregation, this is a bit unusual in 21st century Christianity, but it’s not even remotely unusual in the Bible. In the Bible, people learn the gospel, they thought about the Lordship of Jesus, and they made a decision to become a Christian. Can you become a Christian in one day? Yes, you can become a Christian in one day. Most people don’t.

Most people got to think about it. As Christians, we don’t want to hold somebody back from becoming a Christian if they want to become a Christian. But my experience has been most people got to think about it, and we need to give them some room to think about it. But what we want to ask of you, if you want healing from Jesus for the problem of sin, what we want to ask of you is to be open to opening up a Bible and talking about your life with somebody who’s already a Christian, maybe one or two members of the congregation here.

If you came with somebody from the Church here, or if you meet somebody from the Church here, if they’re a mature Christian, they can sit down with you, share the gospel with you. We even have a study series, which is kind of one approach to organizing the gospel message. And so even for some of our young Christians who may not have a great grasp of the Bible, they can take that study series, talk it over with you, and the gospel message itself will lead you in the right direction. And so the next thing is to do this process of learning the gospel and deciding to make Jesus Lord do it within the Church community. Here’s what I mean.

Some people have the mistaken value that my Salvation is mandatory, but involvement in Church is optional. You see, the Bible paints a picture and assumes that the Christian is always in Church community. And so as you’re going through the process of becoming a Christian, you should be doing it within Church community, coming to Church, building friendships with Christians, getting to know what the Christian life looks like. And the last pointer I have for you is to believe, to repent and to be baptized. Now there’s a super simple, straightforward formula for having the leprosy of sin forgiven.

One of the most famous passages on this is Acts 2:38. It says repent. That means to change. One of the changes is to turn away from sin, turn away from sin, choose the Christian life. I’m turning away from the bad, turning towards the good, repent and be baptized.

The word baptized means in water. That’s literal, to be baptized in water, every one of you, in the name of Jesus. Here’s why for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive that living water, the Holy Spirit. Now you might be thinking, well, look, I’m visiting. I’m glad to be here.

I don’t need to become a Christian. I’m already a believer. I like to share some things with you that I hope will be helpful. I would encourage you to build friendships in our congregation over a Bible also. This is a great way to get to know people is to study the Bible together.

My favorite place is Starbucks. I have the hot chocolate made with soy. Go to Starbucks, open a Bible, go to your kitchen, open the Bible, and talk about the Bible. And here’s what you can talk about. Are you happy with your Christian walk?

I can’t tell you how many people have come to the Broward Church and realized their Christian life was watered down mediocre. They weren’t happy with it, and they decided that they were becoming members of the Broward Church to repent, to be wholehearted, to kind of look, none of us can be perfect, but you know what I mean. Get your act together and not be a hypocrite about your Christian life. Now what has happened a lot is people who are believers have found out that they weren’t actually yet a saved Christian.

Now if you’re a believer and you’re a saved Christian and you’re coming to our Church, we would like you to be a member of our Church. But for some of you, you may have faith, an intellectual belief in God, but you may not yet have a saving faith, which is a different topic for a different day. But you can open up a Bible and talk about it. I just want to show you this principle that it’s possible to be a believer but not yet to be saved. I bet you some of you didn’t know that.

It was a shock for me. I’m going to read you one passage of scripture on that. We’re almost wrapped up here. “Not everyone who says to me,” this is Jesus talking, “not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of heaven. Only the one who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day” that means the judgment day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name before many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.” It is possible to believe in Jesus, to go to a Church, to even do Jesus work, and to not be saved. There is such a thing as saving faith.

And like I said, that’s a conversation you ought to have over an open Bible where you can talk about your life. But I hope this is helpful. The closing scripture I have and then we’re going to share the Lord’s Supper together is a great scripture of healing and hope for the leprosy of sin.

I want you to think about this as we prepare for the Lord’s Supper. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I’m gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Let’s pray together. Holy father as we come around the table, figuratively speaking, to share the bride, the bread and the juice, father, we want to remember the incredible sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ. Not only did he heal the leper, but Lord, we know at the cross he healed the disease that afflicts all of us, Father. And we pray that he’s you would give us humility and insight, to be willing to turn to your Father, to be willing to come to you and receive the healing that we all need.

We love you and we pray in Jesus name Amen.