Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: Compassion/love says or does what is necessary and works out the consequences later.

Ha-Foke-Bah Hebrew

Ha-Foke-Bah Engliehs

We are in part 5 of our series through Leviticus.

I am tracking right along with this idea that “Even after the storm of (…..fill in the blank) God still wants to co-create the world with us because of His unrelenting love.

I want to emphasize this again.

God wants to co-create the world not because of our law-keeping but because of His unrelenting love.

Slide showing all the tragedy.

Listen, if God was doing all of this based on our law keeping this thing ends at the golden-calf, it definitely ends at the strange-fire and for sure it ends with not picking Aaron the one day gold calf maker the next day slayer of golden calf worshipers.

This is a system where God is prioritizing everything around his love not law keeping.

This is even more highlighted by the continual sacrifices coming into the tabernacle as both expressions of “I am sorry” to “I am so happy.”

These sacrifices were a witness to the priest about what God was doing outside of the Tabernacle outside of the soil-bound-tent where the One God dwelt on the mercy seat.

There is one kind of sacrifice that required the Priest to go outside the camp for the Metzora cleansed of leprosy (the leper Lev 13:45-46; Lev 14:2).

The priest were to inspect for “a healing” to have occurred in the metzora (Lev 14:3).

Yet, “To the rabbis the cure of a leper was as difficult as raising a person from the dead” (Marshall, 208, referring to Str-B IV.2.745–63).

As a result, Lepers were victims of far more than the disease itself.

The disease robbed them of health, name, occupation, family, fellowship, and a worshiping community.

Other illness had to be healed, this required healing and cleaning.

It was not just physical, it was deeply spiritual.

As time went on the commandments about isolating and staying far from a leper took precedence over compassion for lepers.

By Yeshua’s time, rabbinical teaching had made matters even worse.

If a leper even stuck his head inside a house, it was pronounced unclean.

It was illegal to even greet a leper.

Lepers had to remain at least 100 cubits away if they were upwind, and four cubits if downwind.

Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, summarized by saying that lepers were treated “as if they were, in effect, dead men.”

This was not just commandments over compassion.

This was social taboo over compassion.

This always involves re-naming and re-making a person to be “not you” or “not your group.”

You re-name the person from Larry to Leper, you re-make him from neighbor, friend, buddy, co-worker to unclean, hideous, outcast.

Have you ever seen a situation or been in a situation where religious commandments took precedents over compassion?

Where people were re-named and re-made.

Have you seen this?

Maybe, been the victim of it?

You know where sacred people with a sacred text use that sacred text to with-hold compassion.

Have you ever seen this?

Ever been on the receiving side of this?

Have you ever been guilty of doing that?

I can tell you that I have done this.

As a young seminarian-pharisee, at Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary I got so focused on the text that I lost site of who the text was for.

I lost site of the fact of the “why” it was written and forgot about the “who.”

Started looking at the speck in everyone else’s eye and did not see the oak tree in my own.

I realized reading the Gospels that Yeshua did not like people like me very much.

That kind of sucks when you realize Yeshua might not like you very much.

I found that easy legalism always involves prioritizing commandments over compassion and labels over love.

Re-naming and re-making people so they are excluded.

Yeshua always prioritizing compassion over commandments and love over labels, his mission was always to re-name and re-make.

People called her a “sinful woman” a “hooker” he re-named her Martha, disciple.

They re-made her unclean, unholy he remade her child of God, disciple of Yeshua.

Metzorah Slide

I want us to spend our time this morning looking at a story in the Gospels that I know will shed some light on our Torah portion.

It is a story that was so transformative and remarkable that it shows up in all three of the gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke.

It is the story of a Metzora, one struck with Leprosy.

Now, there is no doubt in mind that this story is 100% authentic because if you were at all trying to present Yeshua as a decent rabbi, law abiding Jew, then this story about the leper you are either changing completely or leaving out.

When you read this story you only have three options to choose from about Yeshua.

He is either a rebel, ignorant or the perfect embodiment of God’s love.

The story that I am talking about takes place early in Yeshua’s ministry career.

In Matthew’s gospel it is what happens just after the Sermon on the Mount.

Which makes the story so much more tantalizing because when Yeshua preached the Sermon on the Mount comes across as a supra-Torah observant Jew saying “your righteousness must be better than that Scribes and Pharisees” but what we are going to see from this story is that does not mean more rules, more contempt for people unlike you, different than you, outsiders, it actually means more compassion.

Mark 1:40 A man with tzara’at comes to Him,…begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”

First, this leper is a law-breaker.

Lepers were not supposed to approach anyone.

Not supposed to enter into cities.

He had an obligation to live away from people, to tear his clothes and say “unclean, unclean” as he came upon a person.

This leper is outside of the Law of God.

Mark 1:40 A man with tzara’at comes to Him,…begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”

Secondly, he knows the Law of God.

This is not a man ignorant of God’s law.

He says to Yeshua, ‘you can make me clean.”

If he were a Roman or a Greek or just ignorant of God’s Law he would have said, “if you are willing, you can heal me.”

He is not Roman, Greek or ignorant he knows that the Law of Moses has put him in a religious category that is next to impossible to escape.

Third, the laws branding has made him desperate.

He is begging and falling on his knees.

This is the greek word parakaleo, παρακαλέω, which according to BDAG means a strong form of begging like when the parents of a kidnapped child beg and plead for the child’s return.

The TLV does a horrible job translating the particle γονυπετῶν.

They having falling down on his knees but its not falling, this an act of intentional taking a knee in desperation, an act of showing someone that they are superior and you are inferior.

The action is repeated.

It’s not that he just says it once.

The way it read is that he kept on begging and kneeling and saying to him, “if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Last, this man thinks Yeshua can cleanse him not because of faith but because of what he has heard about him.

In the paragraphs preceding, Yeshua is presented as a very popular and charismatic healer.

People are coming from everywhere to be healed by him.

When you recognize who Yeshua is you will lose you fear of religion and religious people.

This leper knew he was out-of-bounds, knew the law was working against him, knew that rabbi’s would condemn him if not kill him, that socially people were frightened of him.

Despite the scarlet letter “L” branded on him, despite all the condemnation that must have been working against him, he had heard and maybe seen who Yeshua was and that he would loosen the shackles that religion and religious people had placed upon him.

Religious people will always leverage their:

Theological System

Personal Ideology

Politcal Agenda

Family Loyalty

to re-name and re-make people.

The goal is exclusion not compassion.

They use the commandments of God and whatever else they can find to maintain boundaries of exclusion.

When you start to hear about the kind of people Yeshua interacts with, eats with and heals you come to find out he does not operate based on

Theological System - Grace and Truth

Personal Ideology - Came to do my Father’s will.

Politcal Agenda -

Family Loyalty

He operates on a different motive all-together.

Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Yeshua stretched out His hand and touched him.

He said, “I am willing.