Luke 5:12-16 - "A Man Who Was Full of Leprosy Saw Jesus"

For several days now we've been looking at Luke chapter 5:1-11. In these verses Jesus preached to crowd, and they pressed upon him. He gets in the boat with Peter and preaches from the edge of the shore and then He launches out into the deep with Peter and they catch a bunch of fish. And then he commissions Peter, James, John, and I also believe Andrew, to become his disciples and they forsook all and followed him.   Today we want to begin looking at verses 12-16. I want to talk about this man that has leprosy. But first let's notice something. Jesus had just called his disciples to follow him and to become fishers of men. And then immediately they begin ministering “in a certain city” where they meet a man with leprosy.  Luke points out that it was in a “certain city”. The disciples and Jesus didn’t take off in five different directions doing their own thing. They went with Jesus to a certain city where “it happened”.   My friend there is no time for us to do our own thing wherever, whenever, or however.  In the harvest fields of the Lord Jesus Christ, people are perishing, and they need to be saved. And here “in a certain city” the very first person they are going to deal with is a leper. A leper is one who has a disease that is incurable. They tell us today, maybe even in our world today, there are 10 million people who have some form of leprosy. And even with all our medical advances the disease is still spreading. It's an incurable disease. One form of leprosy attacks the nerves so that the victim cannot feel pain. Infection easily sets in, and this leads to degeneration of the tissues. The limb becomes deformed and eventually falls off.   In the Old Testament leprosy was a picture or a type of sin. Like sin, leprosy is deeper than the skin (Lev. 13:3) and cannot be helped by mere "surface" measures (see Jer. 6:14). Like sin, leprosy spreads (Lev. 13:7-8); and as it spreads, it defiles (Lev. 13:44-45). Because of his defilement, a leprous person had to be isolated outside the camp (Lev. 13:46), and lost sinners one day will be isolated in hell. People with leprosy were looked on as "dead" (Num. 12:12), and garments infected with leprosy were fit only for the fire (Lev. 13:52). How important it is for lost sinners to trust Jesus Christ and get rid of their "leprosy"!   A man without Jesus Christ is under the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). Now this man was “full of leprosy”. He was at the end of the stages of the disease, and he had no hope for a tomorrow, no hope for the future. His only hope was a miracle that maybe only God could perform. But Jesus had been in this region and the fame of Him had gone out because of the people who had been healed. Luke simply says this sick man “saw Jesus”. By the grace of God this man is brought into contact with his only hope. He has his eyes opened and “he saw Jesus”.   My friend, that's our job. Not to go out and point people to us. But our job is to point sin sick sinners to Jesus, then duck out of the way. To preach the cross, and then hide behind it. We must make sure that people see and know who Jesus is. When this man saw Jesus “he fell on his face and implored him”. He humbled himself. We were under the law of sin and death. John 3:18-19 tells us: “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.   John 3:36 goes on to say: He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."  When we meet and see Jesus, the condemnation of the law, and the guilt of our sin causes us to fall on our face before Him! Then we cry out from the depths of our soul for Jesus to save us!   This is how a genuine salvation experience takes place! Will you trust Jesus to save you today?   God bless!