Marks of True and False Repentance

Mark  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  50:00
0 ratings
· 196 views
Files
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
View more →

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. It is a blessing and a privilege to have you with us this morning. It is also a privilege and a blessing to have any of you who may be joining with us online this morning. We wish you could be present with us but are also so thankful for this technological window that allows us to worship together even from different locations.
Please open your Bibles with me to Mark 1, Mark 1. We’re coming to the end of this first chapter of Mark in which he has introduced us to the purpose of his Gospel, that it was about Jesus Christ the Son of God. He has introduced us to the forerunner who would proclaim the coming day of the Lord in John the Baptist. Then Jesus arrives on the scene and are treated to a seat at His baptism and then to the report that temptations took place. After John is arrested, Jesus comes preaching with a seemingly simple message “Repent and believe the good news!” We get to see Him call His first disciples, have a fantastic day of ministry in Capernaum and then shockingly make the decision to leave a dynamic ministry environment to move on to the other towns in Galilee to continue His primary mission to preach the Gospel.
This morning we come to an interesting and enigmatic story - and it is a story that could really legitimately be preached many different ways. A question that we must deal with right at the beginning is why is this story here? Mark has just written in Mark 1:40 that Jesus has essentially been on a speaking tour through the region of Galilee and that He has been both preaching and casting out demons. The first century Jewish historian Josephus reports that there were more than 240 towns and villages in the region of Galilee. To put that in perspective, the state of Washington has about 281 towns and cities. But we’re going to find that by the end of this story, this incident, Jesus can’t enter into any of these towns. This is such an important event that it is recorded all of the synoptic Gospels - of Matthew, Mark and Luke. So let’s read the passage and then discover together what is so important about this story that all three of those men included it and God has brought it to our attention today.
We’ll be reading Mark 1:40-45.
Mark 1:40–45 CSB
Then a man with leprosy came to him and, on his knees, begged him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. “I am willing,” he told him. “Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. Then he sternly warned him and sent him away at once, telling him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news, with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly. But he was out in deserted places, and they came to him from everywhere.
So ays we come to the end of this chapter it seems that Mark is now posing the question of what reaction will his readers, and by extension those of us here today, have to Christ. He has presented Him as the Son of God and throughout this first chapter we have seen two reactions to Christ. The first is that of His disciples who, upon His command, drop their livelihoods to follow Him. The second is that of the crowd in Capernaum who only wanted from Jesus what He could give them as far as healings and miracles went but weren’t interested in the Gospel message that He preached and which was His primary focus. This morning we’re going to be given a view into a third person’s reaction to Christ and as we examine the story it should call us to question the way we have responded to Christ. It is fitting that we come to this passage on not only a family worship Sunday but also a day on which we will present ourselves before the Lord’s table and share in the Lord’s supper. But before we get to that let’s explore this passage together to understand the flow of the story and then to see how it impacts our lives. We’re going to examine this story in three movements - the leper’s plight, the Lord’s provision, and finally the story will end with the Lord’s plight. So if you’re a notetaker there is your outline, if you’re a Southern Baptist note taker there is your fully alliterated outline. The leper’s plight, the Lord’s provision and finally again the Lord’s plight.

The Leper’s Plight

As we have already looked at this morning Mark 1:40 tells us that Jesus has been on a preaching tour throughout the province of Galilee. During this time He has not only preached the Gospel but He has cast out demons and presumably there have been some healings along the way as well. As a result of this His popularity is on the rise and there are many who are taking notice of His ministry.
One of those, who Mark chooses to highlight here, is a particular man afflicted with leprosy. Now it is important to not necessarily apply our 21st century understanding of the disease of leprosy to this man. In the first century any sort of skin. The symptoms include lesions on the skin that turn the skin a lighter color - much like the descriptions of leprosy that are found in Leviticus 13 and 14. If a person was found to have a discoloration or a scaly patch on their skin they were required to be quarantined for seven days. If after that seven days was over and the priest examined the person and found that the lesion had not spread or has remained the same then he will be quarantined for another seven days. If after that the sore has remained the same or has faded then the priest can pronounce him clean. But if the sore has spread then the person is pronounced unclean and must live outside the camp, socially ostracized and cut off from both the religious life that was so important to the Jewish nation but also all of their family.
Today we know leprosy by the more medical term of Hansen’s Disease. We also know that it is curable by the prompt application of antibiotics to fight the bacteria that cause the disease. The symptoms of this disease if allowed to progress are awful. The end result is a loss of feeling as nerve damage results particularly in the extremities. Those who have been afflicted with this disease in places such as Africa and Asia have been known to reach into burning fires after a dropped potato without any thought because their nervous system is damaged to the point where they no longer feel pain. The result of this is often wounds such as burns or cuts will go untreated or result in mutilations of their body because they simply have no idea that they are being hurt.
The disease can also lead to blindness as the nerve damage affects the facial area of the person who has the disease.
This particular strain is most likely what this man would have been suffering with. You can almost sense the desperation in his voice as he falls at Jesus feet. He’s tried everything else. He’s been separated from his community - most likely for years. He’d had to endure living as a social outcast wearing tattered clothing, keeping his hair unkempt and crying out “unclean, unclean” anytime he might come into contact with others. The disease is now known to be transmitted via the air and so it is well understood why the rabbinical law required that lepers downwind of others keep a distance of 6 feet and when upwind they had to remain 150 feet away from others.
Just like fever leprosy was also viewed to be the physical judgement that was the result of some hidden sin. In Numbers 12 when Miriam and Aaron complain against Moses, God strikes Miriam with leprosy and she must remove herself from the camp for a time. After Naaman presents himself to Elishah to be healed in 2 Kings 5 and Elishah’s servant goes after Naaman to accept some of the payment that Elishah had refused, his servant Gehazi is stricken with the disease of leprosy that Naaman had been cured of. According to Josephus and rabbinical teaching of the day, lepers were viewed as walking corpses. Josephus writes in his Antiquities
The Works of Josephus: New Updated Edition Chapter 11: Of the Purifications

And for the lepers, he suffered them not to come into the city at all, nor to live with any others, as if they were in effect dead persons;

In the story of Naaman, before presenting himself to Elishah he presents himself to the king of Israel along with a letter from the king of Aram with these results
2 Kings 5:7 CSB
When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and asked, “Am I God, killing and giving life that this man expects me to cure a man of his skin disease? Recognize that he is only picking a fight with me.”
It is made clear to us from the Scriptures that no one was viewed to having been cured of leprosy but instead that they had been cleansed of the affliction. So this man risks everything to come to Christ - a very bold and impertinent gesture. He knew that by approaching Christ he would make Him ceremonially unclean. And yet he presents himself, prostrate and makes his statement that we see looking at verse 40 “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” On the surface this statement would present itself to us as a statement of great faith. And in one sense it is - this man is acknowledging Christ’s transcendent, supernatural power to heal those things which cannot be healed except by a move of God. But notice also this statement - “If you are willing”. This man recognizes without question that Christ has the power to heal him - what he questions is whether or not Christ will condescend to heal him. Almost as if he expects Christ to look at him and say “Well, fevers and demons are one thing. Even the lame and the blind are worthy - but you leper - no you are not worthy of healing. Get away and back to the hovel that you have been hiding in. Take your foul odor and ruined flesh and be gone.”
That may seem like an extremely harsh and difficult thing for us to contemplate and yet how often do we think the exact same thing. We have no problem acknowledging that Christ is powerful enough, is capable of forgiving our sins and yet one of the most common objections you will hear whether it is on the street, in the workplace or in your own heart is “of course Christ is capable of forgiving my sin - but He wont forgive my sin. It’s just too much. I’ve gone too far. It’s not that He is incapable but my sin is different and He could not possibly forgive me.”
Oh what an arrogant statement - probably the most arrogant statement that we could ever make. To think that somehow we could out sin God’s capacity for grace and forgiveness. To think that we could ever be beyond His sovereign reach if He so wills to heal and to forgive us. Charles Spurgeon once said it this way
If I saw you at the very gates of hell—so long as you had not actually crossed the threshold—if I saw you trembling there, and you said to me, “Can Jesus Christ save me now?” I would reply, “Yes, my brother, look unto him, and he will take you from the gates of hell to the gates of heaven in a single moment.
If you are here this morning and you have been thinking that. If you have been approaching God in just this manner - or maybe you are approaching Him that way this very minute - repent of that self-pitying arrogance and recognize that He is not only capable but willing to forgive you here and now. Oh that we would never doubt His willingness to either heal or to forgive us.
But we also must recognize this statement from another angle as well. Notice here the contrition of this man. He comes to Christ on his knees recognizing that this is really his last hope for cleansing and begs Him “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” How often do we come to Christ and, instead of showing this form of contrition, we say thank you Jesus I accept what You have done for me. We don’t even give a passing nod of affirmation to His willingness or His capability - we presume that what He has done on the cross requires our acceptance. We almost say “I am willing Jesus, You can now make me clean.” This is again another statement of arrogance on our part to assume that there is something valuable within us that would compel Christ to heal us or to make us clean through His forgiveness. Oh that we would never presume upon His willingness but instead present ourselves with a contrite heart that recognizes that only through Christ can we be made clean and that He has already demonstrated His willingness in the most clear demonstration ever by humiliating Himself and submitting to the Father’s will as He went to the cross.
It is in Christ’s response that we see both His provision for this simple leper and for us today.

The Lord’s Provision

First we need to address an instance of textual variance that some of you may see. If you’re reading from the New International Version your version may have a slightly different wording to this verse than the Christian Standard Bible that I read out of. The NIV reads this way
Mark 1:41 NIV
Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”
Where the NIV translates this as indignant, our CSB translates it as compassionate. Those two words seem to be at polar opposites of the spectrum of human emotion and so there may be some wondering which translation is correct. Most early manuscripts do have the word compassion there but there are a couple, a small handful that have the word indignant. The struggle is that the Greek word is the same - it is οργιζω - and every dictionary and lexicon I looked in says that this word means to be angry. It comes from the root word οργη which means an upsurging or anger. In fact of the 9 times this word is found in our New Testament this instance in Mark 1:41 is the only instance in which it is translated “compassion”.
So which is right - is there a mistake in the CSB manuscripts and should this cause us to question our translations? The short answer is an emphatic “No” - we shouldn’t question our translations because of a minor variance such as this. What most likely happened is some well meaning scribe along the way sought to soften the language just a bit so instead of indignant he wrote compassion. And really is it really all that difficult to imagine Christ being both indignant at the man’s plight and compassionate in His answer to him? Are we not indignant over the murder of thousands of babies every day through abortion but isn’t it our compassion for the sanctity of those babies lives that drives our indignation? So really either word fits well here and so there really isn’t a controversy. I wouldn’t even have addressed it except that I’m fairly confident that in a room this size there is at least one person using the NIV and I don’t want you, whoever you are, to wonder why there is a difference in translations and have cause to doubt.
Whether it is in indignation at the man’s condition or the resulting compassion that Christ always displays to those who are sick or heavy laden, Christ’s answer to this man is the model of pastoral concern that He had with all of those He came into contact with. Christ demonstrates His concern for the man with His words and most remarkably with His touch. In fact it is His touch that comes first and is the most shocking moment of the entire scene.
While it would have been shocking to the crowd surrounding Jesus at this moment that the leper would have the temerity to present himself before Jesus despite knowing the levitical prohibitions against this and risking making everyone there unclean. The rabbi’s had even taken this requirement to an extreme such that if a leper poked his head inside a building then everyone within that building would become ceremonially unclean just by virtue of that action. It was even illegal to greet a leper. The crowd surrounding Jesus would have been crawling all over themselves trying to get away from this man and yet Jesus does the unthinkable. He reaches out and touches the man.
The power of the human touch is amazing. It is the first sense we learn to convey our feelings with. You can see it in the way that a newborn baby soothes at the touch of a parent. I remember one particular man that I knew who definitely knew the power of touch - and it was always in a good way. During my teenage years I spent several years working at Salvation Army summer camps and there was one particular director, Captain Kenneth Maynor who always knew how to get what he wanted accomplished. He would come up beside you and place his hand on your shoulder and he would give it a squeeze as he gave you the directions that he wanted accomplished. And of course when that brief moment was over whatever direction he had just given you - well you were going to accomplish it.
Touch is a connection that we have lost in our modern world. More often than not people now recoil from touch rather than seeking it. One of our favorite parables also conveys that sentiment. The power of the good Samaritan was not solely in his willingness to help the man on the side of the road. He could have called 911 and then allowed the police to handle the situation and he still could notionally have been a good neighbor. It was in his willingness to transcend the personal boundaries despite the personal cost (and he, like Christ in this story would have been declared ceremonially unclean because he touched a bleeding man) to himself. And so in many cases we avoid human touch because of what it might cost us. But that would not have been the case with this leper, with Christ with respect to the leper nor should it be the case with us today.
Yet Christ reaches out and touches this man. There was no requirement for Him to touch him to heal him. Christ healed the centurion’s servant and the synagogue leader’s son without even being in the same zip code so there was no need for physical connection between Christ and the person He was healing. Yet here He touches this man and this should have resulted in Christ’s becoming ceremonially unclean. But the beauty exhibited in this event is that there is nothing that can make Christ ceremonially unclean - because nothing rubs off on Him. When He touches something there is no residual effect for Him the way there would be for us. If I touched a man who was leprous I would come away unclean or somehow affected by the disease. But not Christ - that is why He could touch this man and that is why He is the only One who can effectively touch and reach out to sinners and remain pure. We cannot - whenever we seek to help sinners with anything other than the power of Christ and His name and His proscribed way to salvation - we come away tainted and most times they walk away unchanged. We cannot substitute our own wisdom or pragmatics or well meaning methods to help them - the one and only answer for them is Christ. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Christ not only reaches out and touches the man but He tells him “I am willing, be made clean.” Never had six simple words sounded so sweetly in this man’s ears. “I am willing, be made clean.” You can have your life back. You can rejoin society. You were once an outcast but now, with these few words, you are no longer an outcast but are now a member of society again. And just as with Simon’s mother there was no need for a period of quarantine, there was no doubt - the healing was immediate and it was complete. The flesh that had been torn and rotted was new and clean. One of the worst things that can happen to lepers is that rodents will come and gnaw on their fingers and toes and so they may go to bed with 10 fingers and wake up with 9. If that had happened to this man all of a sudden he had a full complement of digits again. His atrophied muscles and dead nerves were regenerated - imagine feeling the breeze on new skin again after not being able to feel it for a long time. It would be like the Youtube videos of kid’s hearing sounds or their mother’s voice for the first time.
And to prove that he was completely restored it says that Christ gives him some simple commands - look at verse 44.
Mark 1:44 CSB
telling him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
Say nothing. Go show yourself to the priest and offer what Moses commanded. He commands him to obey what the Old Testament prescribes to demonstrate that he has been fully cleansed. Showing himself to the priests would accomplish two things - the first and most obvious is that it would allow him entrance back into Jewish community life. Leviticus 13 and 14 are clear in saying that only a priest could pronounce someone cleansed of leprosy and so this would have been a requirement for the validation of the cleansing. Not that presenting himself to the priest would make him clean - but it would provide the validation for the cleansing that had taken place.
Second, when he presented himself to the priest it would be a demonstration to that priest of the healing power of Christ - because he would know that there was no natural way that this man could have been cleansed and only by a supernatural demonstration of divine power could it have happened. It would have been one more evidential piece that should point the priests to the fact that Messiah had in fact come - but they missed it.
One reason is that the man never makes it - at least not in the scope of this pericope - to Jerusalem but instead his actions directly lead to our Lord’s plight.

The Lord’s Plight

Verse 45 says
Mark 1:45 CSB
Yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news, with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly. But he was out in deserted places, and they came to him from everywhere.
He went out and began to proclaim - to preach - what Christ had done for Him and as a result Jesus could no longer enter a town, any town, any one of the 240 towns of Galilee openly. The preaching tour of Jesus was over - supplanted by the “preaching” tour of this former leper. The former outcast had now become the included with the result that the formerly included - Jesus - was now the outcast. Even though their touch did not result in Jesus becoming truly unclean, their interaction nonetheless resulted in the effect of His becoming unclean as He was relegated to the deserted places the leper had formerly found himself in. All of this was because of the lepers message - that Jesus had healed him. His message was the same as the crowds desire in verse 37 when the disciples told Jesus that “everyone is seeking You.” They weren’t looking for salvation - they were looking for the benefits of Jesus without looking for Jesus Himself.
Jesus, knowing all of this, withdrew to the deserted places because He didn’t want the distractions to sidetrack the goal of His ministry - to preach the Gospel - and the ultimate end of His ministry - the cross. He knew their hearts. John 2:23-25 tells us this
John 2:23–25 CSB
While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. Jesus, however, would not entrust himself to them, since he knew them all and because he did not need anyone to testify about man; for he himself knew what was in man.
The word for believing in His name and entrusting Himself to them is the same - they believed in Jesus but He didn’t believe in them. And so He withdrew Himself from them.

WIIFM - What’s In It For Me?

Now what’s the point for us today? When I was teaching in the Navy every lesson had a WIIFM - a what’s in it for me. And this text provides much for us today. The first is that we have a picture here of repentance - the type of repentance that each of us should have. We should come and fall before Christ imploring Him to save us. Unlike this man though we should come recognizing both Christ’s willingness and capability to save. You see we have the whole story - we can see it all and we know that He humbled Himself to death on the cross so that we could be brought into a right relationship with the Father. Have you repented in just that manner today? Or have you refused to present yourself to Him because you think that you are too far beyond His willingness to heal, to forgive? Or maybe you’re at the other end of the spectrum and you have come to Him and said - thank you Jesus I gladly accept your forgiveness because of course you died to save me. And if that were the only lesson we draw from this text this morning - oh what a lesson that would be.
But there is more for us to see. What is is that you came to Christ for? It has been rightly said and supposed that the effects of leprosy on the outside of our bodies is a mirror image of the affects of sin on the inside of our hearts. And so what is it that we came to Christ for - and almost as important what is it that we proclaimed when we went away? You see this leper came to Christ and was healed but I would submit to you that he went away an unchanged man spiritually. Why do I say that? Look at what he did - he went away preaching the false gospel of his healing. Christ gave him simple commands - He has given us simple commands and yet how often do we, just as this leper did fail to follow them and instead go away from this place and proclaim our own message - even if it is close to the Gospel - instead of His?
Let me give you an example from my own life. This is something I’m not fond of but it’s relevant here and so I’ll use myself as an example. I got truly saved July 3, 2006. I met Bekah on July 4. If, as I tell my testimony, the main point is that I got saved and the very next day I met my wife - or if that’s what you hear then I am preaching a false Gospel. The main point is I got saved. There is no and. The main point is that Jesus condescended to save me, an awful wretch from a life that was destructive and hell-bound - there is no and after that. Anything that happened after that is a blessing but it is not the message. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said
Gems from Martyn Lloyd-Jones Gospel (Society, Unevangelised)

The primary business of the Christian gospel is not to give us blessings. Its primary function is to reconcile us to God.

This man walked away from Christ’s healing and proclaimed solely the message of the healing and it resulted in the degradation of Christ’s true ministry and His ability to get His Gospel out. How many of you have come to Christ and then walked away unchanged and proclaiming a false gospel? Maybe it’s a near gospel that you proclaim - it’s still not good enough.
Now I’m sure there are some who are saying “tone it down Chris, you’re being too harsh. This is too hard.” My dear friends I would rather you think me harsh this morning but truly examine your faith than one day you hear the far harsher phrase of “depart from Me for I never knew you.” What Gospel are you preaching? Christ said that if you love Me you will obey my commandments. Are we doing that? Are we obedient to Him and thus demonstrate our love for Him, or do we get up from our reading and prayer time or go out from this place having heard Christ preached and do our own thing and proclaim the message of what Christ can do without ever actually proclaiming Christ?
We’re about to come to this sacred table - it’s not sacred because of the bread or the juice. We know that these are only representations but they are representations of the body of Christ that was broken for us. The juice is a representation of the blood of Christ that was shed for us. This is a moment where we can remember the true Gospel - where we as believers can celebrate what He has accomplished for us. It is also a time of repentance. Maybe you have walked away from your moment with Christ and proclaimed a false gospel - this morning is your time to repent and to commit your life fully to Him. One way we can do that is we submit to Christ as Savior but not as Lord. This morning - before you come to this table - repent and receive Him as both. If you’re not a believer this morning we would ask that you not partake of these elements as they are for believers only. If you are a believer please take a moment to search your heart and make sure that when you come to this table that you come with a clean heart fully submitted to Christ and then come and partake of these elements using them as spectacles to look through and see the very body of Christ that was broken on the cross for you.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more