These were the months when Jesus was beginning His ministry. He had been going through the countryside performing the great miracles so that people might see Him for who he was and that they might glorify and fear the Lord.
He had gone through the land, healing. He had (1) cast out demons at Capernaum, (2) healed Peter's mother-in-law and a multitude of other folks, (3) healed a man full of Leprosy, and (4) amazed the people when He commanded a paralytic man to "Arise, and take up thy couch and go into thy house".
And then...as He was walking, He saw a Publican named Levi sitting at the seat of custom and He said unto him, "Follow Me", and Levi became a disciple.
"And Levi made Him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of Publicans and of others that sat down with them..." Matthew 5:22 But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against His disciples saying, "Why do ye eat and drink with Publicans and sinners?" and Jesus answering said unto them, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick."
Thus was Christ's answer for mingling with Publicans and sinners when the scribes and Pharisees murmured against Him. This answer triumphantly cleared Him by showing He was acting in complete accord with His character.
a. A physician should be found where the sick and the needy are.
b. He should be found where there is work to do
c. He should be found where healing is required.
According to their own testimony there was much to do among the Publicans and sinners, for they were very sick. Therefore, our Lord was in His proper place, rightly executing His job and office as He healed them and ministered to their needs
It is important that we leave here this morning aware and thankful of the fact that mercy graciously regards sin as a disease!
...but...
1. Sin is more than a disease: If it were only a disease, then men could be pitied for having contracted it. Justice would never call sin a disease. For it is more than sickness.
a. It is voluntarily entered into...
b. It has within it the perverse element of self-will
c. It contains the full rebellion of the man and could not be without that rebellion of man and could not exist without that rebellion.
Mercy leniently and graciously looks at sin and calls it a disease. Justice views sin, looks at sin and sees even the slightest sin as worse than the plagues, venoms and viruses that have ever effected mankind.
Mercy chooses to see sin so as to explain it, for almost everything that can be said of sin, can be said of disease.
Let's consider some of the particulars of sin.
2. Sin is hereditary.
a. We are born with a tendency toward it, no we are born in it. The taint is in our blood.
The bible says that we are "born in sin and shapen in iniquity".
Every man born into this world contains within him the seed of sin; The bias or bend of his mind...his inclination...everything about him is inclined to sin. It is indeed a plane and simple fact that any parent can vouch for, You have to teach children to do right and to turn away from wrong.
"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one!" How can he be clean that is born of woman?
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| Jesus healing at the pool of Bethesda |
a. A sick man cannot carry burdens, climb mountains, run races, walk with perseverance or leap with joy.
b. A sick man cannot do any of the things he was meant to do. He cannot live a fulfilled life.
c. And just like sickness keeps us from serving in life, so sin keeps us from being able to serve God.
We cannot pray...we cannot praise...in every duty we are weak and in every service, we are feeble. In the mind of God and in the mind of all who are holy, sin is seen as that which would strip all of our strength.
a. If you would run in the way God commands, sin would lame you.
b. If you would sing for Him or praise Him with your tongue, sin would make you dumb.
c. If you would grasp at the promises of God, sin would paralyze you.
Sin weakens man's nature for all that is good! That's why "all our righteousness is as filthy rags"!
4. Sin is loathsome:
a. Some diseases are so extremely disgusting that they literally bring chills to the people who deal with these diseases all the time. It is everything that is unlovely, disreputable, dishonest, impure and abominable..in a word...damnable!
5. Sin is polluting: In the Lord's day, it was required of a leper that he keep himself away from other people He was to cover himself from the sight of people and to warn them of his disease so that they could avoid him.
a. Even so, our sin separates us from God and from all that is holy. There can be none who are sinful in heaven. Sin shuts us out from the presence of a Holy God. We dare not enter into His majesty..we dare not attempt to enter into His holy presence, or the fire of His Holy anger would consume us as it did Nadab and Abihu.
b. We cannot stand at the altar of a Holy God to worship Him if there are leprous sin spots on us.
6. Sin is contagious: A sinner cannot be a sinner alone. "One sinner destroyeth much good." Eccl. 9:18b.
a. The seeds of sin are like thistle down...in the "winds of life". It cannot be contained. You can shut up a diseased person in a ward, but there is no such way to shut up a sinner. His family under his influence will imitate him. All those close to him will walk in his footsteps. Even his neighbors will fall under the mesmerizing effects. Sin is contagious and will spread like wildfire in a stubble field.
7. Sin, like leprosy is painful yet numbing. Most men are unconscious of the effect of the fall on their lives. They cannot realize the joys and fullness God has for them in a life apart from him. I don't miss owning a Rolls-Royce because I've never owned or could not own one, but if I die and find out I could have had one and just didn't...that would pain me.
a. Sin ultimately will bring visible pain to the life. Homes broken, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex or other addictions, misery, loneliness,...the things a Pastor deals with in his office or on the phone, late at night. Or the notifications he receives of the death of loved ones without mention of the sin that caused that death. These are the pains that follow the numbness "for a season" of sin.
8. Sin is deep-seated:
a. It has it's throne in the heart of man.
b. It does not lie in the hand or the foot which could be removed by cutting away. It is like cancer in the marrow. The scalpel of a surgeon can often cut away disease but no surgeon can operate and cut out the sickness of sin.
9. Sin is wholly incurable:
Listen to the Bible's indictment of sin...
a. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?"
b. "Can a bad fountain send forth sweet water, or can the thorn yield forth fruit?"
c. "Can fire lose it's consuming power? Can water turn and go upstream?"
d. "Shall the lion eat straw like the ox or the leopard bleat like a lamb?"
Such changes in nature can only be wrought by Divine power. The utmost of religiousness, the most devout prayer or the greatest amount of goodness cannot remove the taint of sin from the unrenewed heart. Sin is a mortal disease. James 1:13-15 "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."
Humbling as it is, yet it is a fact, we are all suffering under the disease of Sin.
It pleased Divine Mercy to give Christ the Character of a Physician!
10. Jesus didn't come to this world just to explain what sin is:
a. Moses had for his mission the explanation of sin.
b. Jesus had for His mission the eradication of sin. He did not come to apologize to God for our sin. It was not His mission to die on the cross so sin would be less sinful.
c. He didn't come to change the attitude of God toward sin to a less severe attitude. Now where do we see God's attitude more plainly and vividly displayed toward sin than on the cross, His holy wrath consuming His only begotten Son! Listen to how He put it in Lamentations 1:1 "Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me in the day of His fierce anger."
d. Christ didn't come flattering men's souls to prevent distress of their conscience, or to win them to tolerate Him. He did not say "Peace, peace when there is no peace."
e. Christ did not come to save you from Hell so that you might continue in sin and escape the penalty of it. Many people think that when salvation is preached it is merely salvation from Hell...it isn't. It is a great deal more than that. It is Salvation from Sin.
f. No person has a right to say, "I am saved!" while he continues in sin as before. How can you be saved from sin while you continue living in it?
1) A drowning man cannot say he is "saved from drowning" while he is still in the water.
2) A man can not be said to be rescued from a fire while still in the burning building.
No sir! Christ did not come to save you in your sin but from your sin! Christ Jesus came to heal us from the plague of sin, to touch us with His hand and say "I will, be thou clean!" Matthew 8:3
11. When a physician presents himself, one of the first inquiries is, "Does he have a right to practice...does he have a diploma on the wall? Very properly, the law requires that a Doctor prove himself before he is allowed to deal with our bodies. It has been very tartly said, "A Doctor is a man who pours drugs and medicine, of which he knows little, into a body of which he knows less."
Has Jesus a diploma? Have you ever read it? Would you like to? Luke 4:18,19 says:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
12. The next thing you want in a Physician is education:
a. You want to know that he is fully qualified. To be the Physician that takes away the sin of the world one must be perfect, without flaw. No man ever spoke as that man spoke. "It was never seen in all of Israel, the works that He did."
b. There is not a single sin that He has not dealt with. Not one that He does not know. There is no brokenness of heart that He has not felt, no grief of the soul He has not had a greater part in.
"He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin!" Hebrews 4:15
13. Finally, one likes a Physician who has had a wide practice. We don't like to trust a man who has the tools but who has never used them.
a. Jesus has the widest imaginable practice. For millennial's He has been healing the broken hearted and sin sick souls of the most impossible people. It will be the most amazing thing when we get to heaven and view the myriads whom He has been mighty to heal!
14. To sum up the virtues of the Great Physician:
a. His cures are speedy. There is life in the look of Him.
b. His cure is radical. He strikes at the very center of the disease...the heart.
c. He never fails... "My Lord is able."
d. The disease never returns. It is eradicated. His patients are not patched up for a season. They are healed for eternity. He makes a new man...gives him a new heart.
e. He is not a specialist: One who knows more and more about less and less until they know a whole lot about nothing. Whatever is oppressing you, He is able to help and heal.
f. His medicine is Himself: "By His stripes we are healed"! If there is pain, He bears it.
15. Finally, It is our need alone that moves Christ to us: His statement was, "I do not go to the whole because they do not need me."
a. A man who really sees himself as sick goes to a doctor. A man who is wounded and bleeding does not say, "Oh, maybe someday I shall go to the doctor." He finds a doctor if he has to crawl there for help.
b. If you are here this morning without Christ, there is none other reason for it but, you really don't think you are hurt or sick or in need of a Physician. And the Bible says that if this is your position, "...you are a liar and have made God a liar and the truth is not in you"! So if you are a lost person today, without Christ it is because, Jesus said, "I do not go to the whole because they have no need of me."...and they don't. He goes where the need is.
a. If you would run in the way God commands, sin would lame you.
b. If you would sing for Him or praise Him with your tongue, sin would make you dumb.
c. If you would grasp at the promises of God, sin would paralyze you.
Sin weakens man's nature for all that is good! That's why "all our righteousness is as filthy rags"!
4. Sin is loathsome:
a. Some diseases are so extremely disgusting that they literally bring chills to the people who deal with these diseases all the time. It is everything that is unlovely, disreputable, dishonest, impure and abominable..in a word...damnable!
5. Sin is polluting: In the Lord's day, it was required of a leper that he keep himself away from other people He was to cover himself from the sight of people and to warn them of his disease so that they could avoid him.
a. Even so, our sin separates us from God and from all that is holy. There can be none who are sinful in heaven. Sin shuts us out from the presence of a Holy God. We dare not enter into His majesty..we dare not attempt to enter into His holy presence, or the fire of His Holy anger would consume us as it did Nadab and Abihu.
b. We cannot stand at the altar of a Holy God to worship Him if there are leprous sin spots on us.
6. Sin is contagious: A sinner cannot be a sinner alone. "One sinner destroyeth much good." Eccl. 9:18b.
a. The seeds of sin are like thistle down...in the "winds of life". It cannot be contained. You can shut up a diseased person in a ward, but there is no such way to shut up a sinner. His family under his influence will imitate him. All those close to him will walk in his footsteps. Even his neighbors will fall under the mesmerizing effects. Sin is contagious and will spread like wildfire in a stubble field.
7. Sin, like leprosy is painful yet numbing. Most men are unconscious of the effect of the fall on their lives. They cannot realize the joys and fullness God has for them in a life apart from him. I don't miss owning a Rolls-Royce because I've never owned or could not own one, but if I die and find out I could have had one and just didn't...that would pain me.
a. Sin ultimately will bring visible pain to the life. Homes broken, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex or other addictions, misery, loneliness,...the things a Pastor deals with in his office or on the phone, late at night. Or the notifications he receives of the death of loved ones without mention of the sin that caused that death. These are the pains that follow the numbness "for a season" of sin.
8. Sin is deep-seated:
a. It has it's throne in the heart of man.
b. It does not lie in the hand or the foot which could be removed by cutting away. It is like cancer in the marrow. The scalpel of a surgeon can often cut away disease but no surgeon can operate and cut out the sickness of sin.
9. Sin is wholly incurable:
Listen to the Bible's indictment of sin...
a. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?"
b. "Can a bad fountain send forth sweet water, or can the thorn yield forth fruit?"
c. "Can fire lose it's consuming power? Can water turn and go upstream?"
d. "Shall the lion eat straw like the ox or the leopard bleat like a lamb?"
Such changes in nature can only be wrought by Divine power. The utmost of religiousness, the most devout prayer or the greatest amount of goodness cannot remove the taint of sin from the unrenewed heart. Sin is a mortal disease. James 1:13-15 "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."
Humbling as it is, yet it is a fact, we are all suffering under the disease of Sin.
It pleased Divine Mercy to give Christ the Character of a Physician!
10. Jesus didn't come to this world just to explain what sin is:
a. Moses had for his mission the explanation of sin.
b. Jesus had for His mission the eradication of sin. He did not come to apologize to God for our sin. It was not His mission to die on the cross so sin would be less sinful.
c. He didn't come to change the attitude of God toward sin to a less severe attitude. Now where do we see God's attitude more plainly and vividly displayed toward sin than on the cross, His holy wrath consuming His only begotten Son! Listen to how He put it in Lamentations 1:1 "Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me in the day of His fierce anger."
d. Christ didn't come flattering men's souls to prevent distress of their conscience, or to win them to tolerate Him. He did not say "Peace, peace when there is no peace."
e. Christ did not come to save you from Hell so that you might continue in sin and escape the penalty of it. Many people think that when salvation is preached it is merely salvation from Hell...it isn't. It is a great deal more than that. It is Salvation from Sin.
f. No person has a right to say, "I am saved!" while he continues in sin as before. How can you be saved from sin while you continue living in it?
1) A drowning man cannot say he is "saved from drowning" while he is still in the water.
2) A man can not be said to be rescued from a fire while still in the burning building.
No sir! Christ did not come to save you in your sin but from your sin! Christ Jesus came to heal us from the plague of sin, to touch us with His hand and say "I will, be thou clean!" Matthew 8:3
11. When a physician presents himself, one of the first inquiries is, "Does he have a right to practice...does he have a diploma on the wall? Very properly, the law requires that a Doctor prove himself before he is allowed to deal with our bodies. It has been very tartly said, "A Doctor is a man who pours drugs and medicine, of which he knows little, into a body of which he knows less."
Has Jesus a diploma? Have you ever read it? Would you like to? Luke 4:18,19 says:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
12. The next thing you want in a Physician is education:
a. You want to know that he is fully qualified. To be the Physician that takes away the sin of the world one must be perfect, without flaw. No man ever spoke as that man spoke. "It was never seen in all of Israel, the works that He did."
b. There is not a single sin that He has not dealt with. Not one that He does not know. There is no brokenness of heart that He has not felt, no grief of the soul He has not had a greater part in.
"He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin!" Hebrews 4:15
13. Finally, one likes a Physician who has had a wide practice. We don't like to trust a man who has the tools but who has never used them.
a. Jesus has the widest imaginable practice. For millennial's He has been healing the broken hearted and sin sick souls of the most impossible people. It will be the most amazing thing when we get to heaven and view the myriads whom He has been mighty to heal!
14. To sum up the virtues of the Great Physician:
a. His cures are speedy. There is life in the look of Him.
b. His cure is radical. He strikes at the very center of the disease...the heart.
c. He never fails... "My Lord is able."
d. The disease never returns. It is eradicated. His patients are not patched up for a season. They are healed for eternity. He makes a new man...gives him a new heart.
e. He is not a specialist: One who knows more and more about less and less until they know a whole lot about nothing. Whatever is oppressing you, He is able to help and heal.
f. His medicine is Himself: "By His stripes we are healed"! If there is pain, He bears it.
15. Finally, It is our need alone that moves Christ to us: His statement was, "I do not go to the whole because they do not need me."
a. A man who really sees himself as sick goes to a doctor. A man who is wounded and bleeding does not say, "Oh, maybe someday I shall go to the doctor." He finds a doctor if he has to crawl there for help.b. If you are here this morning without Christ, there is none other reason for it but, you really don't think you are hurt or sick or in need of a Physician. And the Bible says that if this is your position, "...you are a liar and have made God a liar and the truth is not in you"! So if you are a lost person today, without Christ it is because, Jesus said, "I do not go to the whole because they have no need of me."...and they don't. He goes where the need is.
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