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Christ's Temptation Proven By Stephen Bignall

Luke 5:12-13

told to us what the Son of God did and he particularly takes this aspect of the Savior,
the Savior sent by God. Now what strikes me as we just move away from this temptation in
the wilderness, have you considered how much more the Lord Jesus Christ faced in the wilderness than
Adam and Eve did in the garden? Adam and Eve were in a garden full of fragrant fruits.
Adam and Eve lacked nothing in bodily sustenance. The Son of God was in a desert.
The Son of God had not eaten for 40 days and Satan came to him with temptations
threefold, threefold, a singular temptation to the perfect couple,
threefold and powerful temptation to the perfect Son of God, the second Adam.
And having proceeded to be victorious over Lucifer and having for a season put him to flight,
the Son of God proceeds now to undertake his ministry. He's been baptised by John.
He has gone into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He's overcome in this first great
encounter in his earthly ministry and now he goes forth to preach the glad tidings and we pick this
up in verse 18 of chapter 4. He goes to the synagogue, stands up to read, handed the book
of Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the Gospel
to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of the Lord's mercy, the year of the Lord's grace.
Having declared to those present that the Scripture has been fulfilled in their ears,
which Isaiah prophesied, he says, the one who is going to do this, the one who is going to preach
the Gospel is here. The one who is going to heal the brokenhearted is among you. The one who is
going to preach deliverance to the captives has come. Recovery of sight to the blind will begin
now. The acceptable year of the Lord has been opened. Those who are oppressed are about to be
set at liberty. Now the Jews' response to this was to seek to take him up to the top of the hill and
cast him off. They wanted to throw him over a cliff because he pointed out to them as they
questioned in their hearts who it was that was speaking to them, as their unbelief laid hold of
them once more. He told them that those in the time of Elijah the prophet who were blessed were
not of the house of Israel, that there were many lepers at verse 27 in Israel in the time of Elijah
the prophet and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. And that angered them, those
exclusive religious people who felt that they alone had any right to God's mercies, who felt
that they alone had any aspect by which they could approach God and who despised the nations around
them as dogs and unworthy to be even considered by the Almighty. They took the Son of God. They
wanted to cast him off a cliff. He moves through the midst of them. And then we find him in the
city of Capernaum in Galilee in verse 31. This is by way of introduction. The first point here is
that when Jesus declares himself as the Messiah he immediately begins to demonstrate and to
undertake that ministry. This is the beginning of his public ministry now and it grows in intensity
and it grows in breadth and it grows in power and it grows in its opposition until the cross.
Now the immediacy of this prophecy's fulfilment is shown to us when the Lord comes on the Sabbath day
in verse 31 of chapter 4 into this synagogue at Capernaum and he begins to teach them.
You see he's come to preach the gospel to the poor, to the ones who haven't got these riches
that God is making known in the gospel. And while he's doing that in the synagogue with authority,
a man who has an unclean demon, a malignant spirit who has him in possession,
cries out with a loud voice and says, let us alone. What have we to do with you Jesus of Nazareth?
Do you come to destroy us? I know you. You are the Holy One of God. The immediacy of this releasing
of the captives is shown in that the Lord Jesus rebukes the demon. Come out of him. Be quiet.
And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and the marvel is it did not
hurt him. You see the man taken out, he's set free, no longer subject to the hurts that this
malignant creature, this spiritual entity subjected him to. And all these people, they were amazed
and they spoke among themselves saying, what a word is this? With authority and power,
he commands the unclean spirits and they come out. And there's an immediate response to Jesus's
ministry. The report about him went out into every place in the surrounding region. Now he
arose from the synagogue and he entered into Simon's house. And here we see Simon's mother,
very, very sick. And once again, the immediacy of Christ's response in fulfilling this prophecy.
She's got a high fever. They make requests of him concerning her. He stands over her.
He rebukes the fever and it leaves her. And immediately she rises up and serves him.
It's a wonderful picture, isn't it, of what happens when a soul is born again.
When a soul is cured of its disease and its death, rises up and serves the one who has healed it.
Now when the sun was setting, all those who had anyone sick with various diseases brought them
to him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And that's the comprehensive
nature of the Lord Jesus Christ ministry and the comprehensive nature of his inclinations
towards the lost and the oppressed and the sick and the troubled. Everyone that was brought to him,
he healed. He'd been ministering from dawn till dusk, but everyone who came to him
to receive that which they sought, even healing. And it was that when it was day, he departed
and he went into a deserted place and the crowd sought him and came to him and tried to keep him
from leaving. But he said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also,
because for this purpose I have been sent. You see the strength of his purpose and the breadth of
his purpose. I must preach in other cities also for this purpose I have been sent.
So I take and I'd hope that just by looking through these few verses between four and five,
that you see something of the immediacy by which the Lord Jesus Christ took up the ministry,
took up the joy that was set before him. Did you notice this morning when Don mentioned that,
about the joy that was set before the Lord Jesus? There's a twofold joy set before Christ
in his earthly ministry. One was that he delighted in his heavenly Father's will,
and you saw that in John Chapter 5. He did nothing of himself. He did all things that
his Father commanded him to do. And the second joy was in seeing the efficacy of his, if you like,
atonement being applied to men. He was looking, as those Jews and his disciples were at that time,
forward to the cross. But he was seeing the power of what he was about to purchase
changing the lives of men and women, and that gave him great joy,
and that gave him courage to continue towards that cross.
And now we want to come, Chapter 5 is really a large chapter, and though we want a sense
of progression, no one could go through it in a mere 40 minutes, and so I won't attempt to.
You'll remember there was a sermon, possibly if you were here six months ago, on the paralytic
man, lowered down through the roof in the morning, Christ the great physician. If you'd like an
exposition of that sermon, of that portion, well it's available from the Tate Library.
But what we want to do is have a look at this little incident in verses 12 and 13,
sort of sandwiched in between two accounts. And we'll just take these as our text.
And the second point that I want to make to you, the first was that,
soon as the Lord Jesus Christ declares himself, he begins to undertake his ministry in a very
public and powerful way, and the inclination of Christ is clearly shown to us in his encounter
with this leprous man. That is, his inclination towards sinners. This passage typifies to us
the attitude of the Son of God towards sinners, and it should furnish us with some
good and helpful embellishment to our view of the Saviour, one that is timely and needed in the
circles in which we move as a church, in the sort of confessional Christianity to which we hold.
So let's move on. I want you first to consider the wretchedness of the man's existence. Let's
read the verses together. And it happened when he was in a certain city that, behold,
a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus. He fell on his face and begged him, saying,
saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Then he put out his hand and touched him,
saying, I am willing. Be cleansed. And immediately, the leprosy left him.
Now, we are not in the habit of having people in the advanced stages of leprosy
move in our social circles or even within our cities.
And it might be hard for us to understand just what sort of plight this man was in.
Now, it's worthy of noting that as far as I'm aware, there still is no cure for leprosy.
It can be retarded in the early stages. It can be arrested. But there still is no cure for leprosy.
And there certainly wasn't a cure in the days of the New Testament.
This man was a social pariah. Not only was he forbidden by Levitical law from being in company
with other men, but the rabbinical laws that it added to the scriptures were so
draconian, so cruel, that a rabbi coming across a leper was quite often likely to pick up
stones and begin to pelt them at the leper to drive him or her away for fear of ceremonial
defilement. You see how far they'd gone? This is at the heart of the Pharisees' attitude.
You read about their attitude in John chapter 5. Their heartlessness, their so-called holiness,
was absolutely self-centered. They were fearful of being polluted by moving amongst their fellow
creatures or by being seen in any way to fall short of all the rules and the regulations
that they had carefully constructed upon the commandments of God. They constructed little
frameworks upon each of the Decalogue, their own little frameworks. And they had so leapt in
compassion, they had degenerated to such a point that seeing a man or a woman struck with leprosy,
their first inclination was to stoop down and to pick up stones and to pelt them to drive them
from their presence lest they be defiled. And that's recorded in the rabbinical literatures,
that man, Edisham, in the life of times of Jesus the Messiah gives accounts where the rabbis
actually wrote that this is what they would do. You were not allowed to approach within six feet
of a leper. You were forbidden to touch a leper lest you be defiled. A leper was required to dwell
outside the gate. A leper was required to tear his clothes as one in mourning for the dead.
A leper was required to wear sackcloth upon his head. A leper was required to veil his face down
to his upper lip. And he was required to cry out to anyone who approached him unclean, unclean,
that they might be warned and that they might steer clear of him. His only society was other
lepers. And if there were no lepers in the vicinity, then he dwelled alone. He was alone.
He had no comfort. Wherever he laid his head was defiled. Whatever he touched was defiled.
And this was the condition that he was required to dwell in until his leprosy was cured,
which was very rare, or until it generated him to the point that he died. And what a terrible
death to rot and rot and rot until your body cannot sustain life. And then to be buried away
from others, to be buried alone and to have no one minister to you in that dying, no one touch
you in that dying, just the dissolution, the gradual and painful dissolution in loneliness.
Now this is the condition that this man was in, the condition that he was in. Is it any wonder
that when he heard that the one who was going to release the captives had come, the one who was
going to heal the broken hearted had come, is it any wonder that he suddenly found before the Son
of God on his face, pleading with him, if you will, you can make me clean. The rabbis had no
answer. The rabbis did not know how to cure leprosy. The only answer they had was to take
the man away and be even more rigid than the Levitical law was, be even more, sorry, to be
cruel. Where the Levitical law was not cruel, it was designed for the safety of others. And there
were periodic examinations by the priest to see if the man was made whole, to see if the leprosy
had arrested in its course. But the situation had gotten so bad that this man had no prospect of
hope. And we must see that this leprosy is above all other diseases a type of our condition by
nature before God. It's not a pretty picture, it's not a wholesome picture, it's a disturbing picture.
But if we look and consider a few points about this disease and then we consider the spiritual
disease that's brought upon us by nature, it was hereditary to the third and the fourth generation
this disease could visit the offspring of those who had it. Now when we bring our little ones
into the world, it does not appear that they suffer from the sin that so obviously dwells in
our members. But it's the same with the child of the leper. I'm reading an account this afternoon
as I prepared hastily where for a while a little child born to a leper will appear as a normal child
and then gradually and terribly the disease will begin to manifest itself in the early life
until the terrible deformities are clearly evident and the child's mortality is
just so quickly comes to pass. We by nature and by generation are born in sin and the disease
manifests itself and gradually consumes the soul. This was a contagious disease. It was passed on
and transmitted easily. Psalm 1 talks about not standing in the way of sinners, not sitting in
the way of sinners, not sitting in the seat of the scornful. We so easily can egg one another on,
drive one another on, encourage one another and be drawn away into greater sin and greater
depth of sin. It's a contagious thing. It's a thing that is easily transmitted throughout human
society. The outworkings of sin can grow very quickly with a little encouragement.
We don't need to encourage our young children to sin. They so evidently do it not just by imitation
but by the origins of their own desires, welling up within them and manifesting them in the world.
But not only is it contagious, it has a tendency to increase. Leprosy doesn't stop. Leprosy
consumes and consumes. It begins on the surface of the skin, goes deeper into the muscles, deeper
into the tissues, into the very bones, into the organs and gradually lays hold in a more and more
virulent form upon the one that's suffering from it. And this is what happens with us
as we progress through our life without Christ, without redemption, without the cleansing that
he offers. More and more virulent, more and more obvious, gradually this sin that dwells in us,
this ungodliness, this darkness that's opposed to our Creator takes hold in a deeper and a deeper
and a deeper way. And by nature it's incurable. In the natural realm even now, as far as I'm aware,
and certainly for centuries, leprosy was incurable and we by nature cannot remedy
our sinful condition. I think it's in the book of Micah where it talks about what will I give
for my sin? Can I sacrifice my firstborn, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul?
Can I sacrifice my own life for the sins of my children? Can I sacrifice anything to redeem any
man from the effects of sin? No we can't. Our sacrifices are not acceptable. We can by no
means redeem ourselves, by no means redeem our brethren. It's an incurable thing. It's a source
of shame. Picture that man. Who knows how long he'd been in that condition. Certainly the man
at the pool of Bethesda had been 38 years in the condition that he was in. I'm 34.
My life seems to me to be both long and short. But if I thought that for 38 years I was going
to suffer from such a dreadful disease, my prospect would not be a very optimistic one.
The shame of this man's disease being forced day in, day out, to cry out to every stranger,
that he longed to approach, that he just desired to have some intercourse with some conversation,
unclean, unclean, to cover his head. What a shameful condition.
And the isolation. And aren't we isolated in our sin? Aliens and strangers from the
Commonwealth of God, strangers to our Creator, cut off from God, cut off from the only source
of help and comfort, the only source of light and truth, the only source of the power to save
the soul, by nature, strangers and enemies and rebels. He cannot bear to look upon sin.
He cannot bear to look upon sin. And gradually the deforming, resultant corruption
ends in dissolution. And what will our state be by nature, without Christ and without God in the
world? Dissolution, eternal dissolution, where the worm dies not, where the fire is not quenched,
where the knowledge of our sin and all its rottenness and all how it's so odious to God and
how it angers him, and how we've trodden underfoot the Son of God, and how we've despised those who
sought to instruct us, will just be there before us, ever testifying against us, if we have not
Christ, that we did not seek Him, Him alone, who could have cured us. The leper has a golden prospect.
The leper has light in the midst of darkness and hopelessness. And we, you, as sinners, I
have but one moment of light, one moment of opportunity, as this man did, when Jesus of
Nazareth is walking by, my children sing that song, when Jesus of Nazareth is walking by,
and this man approached Jesus of Nazareth in the right manner, with the right understanding,
he said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me claim.
Consider how correct that man was in his approach. Consider how appropriate the words were that he
used. So often the message that will go out from many pulpits is, if you are willing,
if you are willing, you can be saved, if you are willing. But that is not what this man knows.
He knows that if the Son of God is willing, He will be cleansed. And that is the difference
between the true Gospel and the Gospel that finds its strength and its power in the will of men
to persuade the Son of God to heal them. This man came in the knowledge that the only thing
that could lead to his salvation was Christ's will to save him. That was the only thing.
And what a great comfort that must have been to him, to know that this one alone,
if he so willed it, had the power to save him. Consider the nature of Christ's response.
Consider in Mark Chapter 1, which is the same incident, just have a look with me, this strange
and wonderful saying. I've just got to turn it up myself.
Chapter 1 and verse 40. Then a leper came to him imploring him,
kneeling down to him and saying to him, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
And here is the marvel of God with us. Here is the marvel of He who bore our infirmities.
Jesus moved with compassion. You see, this is why He's in all points, like as we, yet without sin.
Yet without sin, He is compassionate as a man. Compassion surged through His breast.
As the God-man with the power to heal, He looked and He loved and His inclinations were toward this
poor, wretched, helpless creature. That's the inclination of the Son of God towards sinners.
He says, I will. What music to that man's ears. I will be thou clean.
Until we see the desperateness of our condition, until we truly understand
whether our lives are long or whether they are short, whether they are full or whether they are
empty, until we know that our condition is so desperate, those words will fall on
passionless ears. Our affections won't be drawn out by those words at all.
When the Spirit of God reveals to us our true condition, when the testimony of the world
by its lostness drives us to repentance graciously by God's enabling, we see that we're born in sin,
that we're shapen in iniquity, that we have no hope. Then when Christ says, I will be thou clean,
what a hope will surge up within the breast, what a joy will be established within the heart,
what a voice will come out of the man in praise to God, in desire to make his master known.
This man was straightened and charged by the Lord to zip his lip and go and offer
the Levitical sacrifices for his cleansing. And he was disobedient. It welled up within him.
He was so, the Lord had saved him, had cleansed him. He is prospected in one moment gone from
being someone who was going to slowly die alone in abject misery and isolation, to being whole,
to being clean, to being undefiled. And he touched him. He touched him. As he was saying that,
he walked within the six feet. As he was saying that, there was a hand without a stone in it to
cast at him. There was a hand that was laid upon him. And he felt the touch of God, the touch of
a man, the touch of Christ. What a marvelous thing. What a tremendous thing to be touched.
Do you know that if any other man had touched that leper, by the law of God, he would have
been ceremonially defiled? But when the Son of God, who is purity and light, who is holiness
unapproachable, who is the power of God to salvation, touches the defiled, what happens?
It's cleansed. It's cleansed. This is the wonder of the Son of God. This is the inclination
of Christ towards sinners.
And if the inclination of Christ is so full towards sinners, and we find in the Gospels
again and again and again, men and women bringing children to him, bringing the infirm to him,
and his inclination is to heal them, is to forgive them, is to save them,
then we have a broader and a richer view of our sovereign and glorious Saviour.
I've been reading this book by Ian Murray. I commend it to you on Spurgeon and hyper-Calvinism.
There's such danger in Reformed circles of being so awed with the sovereignty and the holiness of
God to forget that the Lord firstly declares himself merciful when he reveals himself.
When he revealed himself to Moses, he said, the Lord, the Lord, merciful, the God of love,
the God who is love. Sometimes we struggle when we read sermons by men like Spurgeon who plead
with men. Listen to some of the things that Spurgeon says to men.
If any man thirst, let him come under me and drink.
Speaking of Christ, he says, he invites men to come. He pleads with them to come.
And when they will not come, he gently upbraids them with words such as these.
You will not come under me that you might have life.
All our Lord's sermon was so many loving calls to poor, aching hearts to come and find what
they need in him. Beloved, there is nothing that so delights Jesus Christ as to save sinners.
You misjudge him if you think he wants to be argued with and persuaded to have mercy.
He gives it as freely as the sun pours forth its light.
Paul had no stinted Saviour to present to a few.
No narrow-hearted Christ to be the head of a clique.
But he preached a great Saviour to great masses, a great Saviour to great sinners.
My Lord Jesus, by his death, has become immensely rich in pardoning grace,
so rich indeed that no guiltiness can possibly transcend the efficacy of his precious blood.
And he implored them to come to Christ. He implored them to come to Christ.
And that's because he saw not only the great and glorious attributes of God's sovereignty,
but his holiness, his justice, and was awed by them, as so many of us are.
But we stop there. We stop there.
His love, his love is the final jewel that makes the crown blaze.
His love sent his Son into this world. God sent his Son into this world to save the sinner,
to save what was lost, to redeem the souls of men.
That was the only reason that he sent his Son.
That was the highest reason for which he sent his Son.
It brought him glory. It brought him honour.
It made his name known. But it was to save because he loved.
Some of us have come from communions where that's taken a second place.
We were saved and in our infancy we rejoiced in the Son of God.
We rejoiced in the love of God.
But as our want often is, when truth comes to us, we distort it.
We have a tendency to take truth and to make an error.
And in some communions this has been forgotten.
And there's no fault Christ preached. And the precepts of God are preached.
And the electing love of God is preached. And the sovereign grace of God is preached.
But the love of Christ is the fabric that draws all those things together.
It's the lifeblood that pumps through that system.
The love and the grace of Christ.
And this is why we can have confidence in the Gospel that we preach.
And this is why we can plead with sinners.
And this is why the churches shouldn't just be polishing up their views of the decrees of God.
And whether they're a covenant in community and their confessional position, as so many are,
they need to be preaching the love of God.
They need to be preaching the love of God, the inclination of the Son of God, to save sinners.
Without the Son of God's inclination, without the Son of God's power, no one,
no one will be saved. No one can ever be saved.
But with that power, with that inclination, everyone who comes will be saved.
And they're the two tensions. And Spurgeon said,
Good friends don't need to be reconciled. The necessity of Christ for any to be saved,
the absolute certainty that whoever comes will be saved.
And this is demonstrated to us here with this leprous man.
Isn't that a marvellous thing? Isn't that a wonderful thing?
Isn't that a thing to joy over and to take home and to clutch close to our heart and to reconsider?
If it hadn't been for the willingness for you who are saved,
if it hadn't been for the willingness and the love of God,
you would be wretched and miserable, naked and blind still.
And the disease would be making its way into your flesh with ever increasing virulence.
Until the day for the final dissolution comes and the final shame,
the final eternity of misery and bitterness, of wailing, of gnashing of teeth,
of the fact that I forever will know that I trod the Son of God underfoot.
I forever will know that God disapproves of me, that the day of mercy is over,
that He is against me, that He is a King who is angry with me.
And nothing, nothing ever, ever, ever shall save me.
Nothing ever will redeem me. Nothing ever can relieve the torment.
Because, because I have sinned against my Creator.
What a wonderful deliverance there is in Christ.
What a wonderful Saviour we have. His inclinations are proven to us.
They're proven in His earthly ministry. They're proven in His incarnation of the world,
in His earthly ministry, in His crucifixion, in His glorious resurrection,
in His sending of the Holy Spirit, in His equipping of the Twelve,
in His sending them out into all the world, in the fact that as Paul Thompson pointed out to us,
the Gospel has made its way from Jerusalem to Newcastle in 20 centuries.
Love is proven and there are people from every tongue and tribe and nation,
a group of them anyway, gathered here tonight. We saw the ones born in different lands.
Are you saved? Do you know Christ? Do you join that?
Have you lost that love? Have you lost that love?
Have you forgotten the sweetness of His presence, just the tenderness of His touch,
just what it once was to be without hope and without Christ in the world and what it is now,
to have Him ever there, always there, guiding, upholding, forgiving again and again.
You know, Peter, when he had the Lord's Supper there, when he was in the upper room,
and he said, he said, Lord, you're washing my feet? And the Lord said, you've got to let me
do that because you've got no part in me if I don't do it. And he said, well, wash my head
and all of me. Peter had already been washed, you see. The Son of God had made him clean.
And what the Lord was doing was He was washing his feet. We walk through this world and this
world clings to our feet and our feet become rotten with the stench of this world. And the
Word of God, that's why He said that we should do it to one another, you see, wash one another's feet.
We should take the Word of God, we should take the Gospel of Christ like that living water that it is
and wash the defilement off the feet and pour the precious ointment on the feet, those feet that
are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, that Gospel that carries us into every
tribe and tongue and nation in the name of Christ. We wash one another's feet with the Word of God.
We're already clean through the Word which He has spoken to us. We can never be what we once were,
never, never. Those whom Christ has set free are free indeed. Those who are in His hand,
none can pluck them from it. But their feet are washed constantly, our feet cut and bleed
from the sharpness of the way. And so we're to wash one another's feet with the Word of God. And
that's what I've hoped to have done tonight to you who love Him, to you to whom He is precious
and to you who do not know Him. Consider Him, consider such a One who would touch the untouchable,
who would bridge the gap and have compassion on the most wretched of creatures.
Consider His willingness. You will not, you will not lament eternity because the Son of God willed
your destruction. You will lament eternity because you refused, you refused His gracious
overtures. Your sin, your sin is that which takes you to hell. The Son of God is the One
who transports us to heaven. May God bless you as you consider His Word. Amen.