From His Heart

Guest (Male): God is ready, willing, and able to meet your deepest need. Here's Pastor Jeff Schreve to show us how we can know that truth.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: A. W. Tozer said this, what we think of when we think about God is the most important thing about us. That is the most important thing about you. That's the most important thing about me. And I pray God that he would use this message today to help you see that the Lord Jesus Christ is good and he's ready, willing, and able to help you in your deepest need.

Guest (Male): A lowly, desperate leper reaped a blessing beyond measure from the Lord. And believe it or not, Jesus is ready, willing, and able to bless you too. In times of our deepest need, when we often feel lonely and forgotten, Jesus is ready to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we could ask or think. This is from his heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, where today you're in store for a comforting and empowering hope filled lesson about a leper who came to Jesus with complete faith and hope in the Savior's readiness, willingness, and ability to bless him. And he did.

Are you ready and willing to trust Jesus? He supplies the able. And we'll learn what that means in the message called ready, willing, and able from the series we're in now entitled encountering the real Jesus. If you can, open your Bible to the fifth chapter of the book of Luke as Pastor Jeff begins the lesson called ready, willing, and able. Years ago, I heard a story about a man. He was out in the country. This is long before the time of cell phones, and he's driving out in the country, and he gets a flat. And so he says, oh crud.

And so he pulls over this country road, pretty much a deserted country road, and he goes into his trunk to get out the spare tire. And when he does, he notices that he didn't have a jack. And so he said, man, what am I going to do? I need a jack. And way off in the distance, he sees a farmhouse. It wasn't anything around except this farmhouse. Way off in the distance, he saw a light. It was starting to get a little bit dark, and so he could see a light burning. He said, well, I don't have any choice but to walk to that farmhouse and see if they have a jack, that they would loan me a jack, that they would help me.

And so as he's walking along, he's thinking to himself, some negative thoughts start filling his mind. He's thinking, these people aren't going to want to see me. I mean, this is late, and they might scare them. And then he started thinking, well, you know, they might not even have a jack. Oh, I'm just wasting my time to walk over there. And then the thought dawned on him, what if they have a jack and they don't want to let me use it? Well, that's just terrible. And so he's thinking all these thoughts. He gets to their house.

He knocks on the front door, and the farmer answers the front door with a smile, and he says, hello, sir. What can I do for you? He said, let me tell you something you can do for me. You can take your jack and stick it in your ear. Negative thoughts produce negative images. And when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, many, many people have negative thoughts and negative images and a negative perception that is built on lies. Just as in that fictitious little story, that farmer was going to help him. That farmer was glad to see him, but he had built up lies in his mind.

And he perceived the farmer before he ever met him to be a man who didn't want to help, who had the means to help but refused to help. You know, a lot of us, we have this perception of the Lord because we look at our lives in a snapshot. We determine God based on the snapshot of our lives. And what do I mean by a snapshot? It's by how your life is going right now. You've heard me say before, we have so many of us a daisy theology where we say, well, he loves me, he loves me not.

He loves me, he loves me not. It's all based on snapshots. What's going on right now? And if it's going good, he loves me. If it's going bad, he must love me not. And we look at that period of time in our lives, and we say, man, that that's just such a tough period of time. And we develop this attitude toward God based on this little period of time rather than on the truth of God's word of who he really is. We're in a series called encountering the real Jesus. We don't want to encounter the make-believe Jesus.

We don't want to encounter the false Jesus. We want to encounter the real Jesus that is revealed in his word. Luke chapter five gives us such a wonderful picture of who Jesus really is as we see Jesus interacting with of all people a leper. This is an important story because it's covered in Matthew's Gospel and in Mark's Gospel and here in Luke chapter five. I 'll begin reading in verse 12. It says this, and it came about that while he was in one of the cities, one of the cities in Galilee, doesn't tell us which city, behold, there was a man full of leprosy.

And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and implored him, begged him saying, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, I am willing, be cleansed. And immediately the leprosy left him. And he ordered him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing just as Moses commanded for a testimony to them. But the news about him was spreading even farther, and great multitudes were gathering to hear him and to be healed of their sickness.

But he himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. A W. Tozer, the theologian from a few years ago, said this, a great statement. He said, what we think of when we think about God is the most important thing about us. What we think of when we think about God, what image that we have in our minds when we think about God, that is the most important thing about you. That's the most important thing about me. And I want God and pray God that he would use this story today and this message today to help you see that the Lord Jesus Christ is good and he's ready, willing, and able to help you in your deepest need.

I want you to notice with me three encouragements from this passage, three actions that the leper took that you and I can take even today that made a difference in his life that will make a difference in our life. These will encourage you just as they have have encouraged me. Encouragement number one, like the leper, you can come to Jesus. Like the leper, you can come to Jesus. Now Luke says that when the leper saw Jesus, he fell down before him and and begged him, entreated him, implored him when he saw him. But Matthew and Mark both add this little tidbit, and behold, a leper came to him.

It's not that just the leper saw him, the leper sought him. He came to him. Which was a big big deal because if you had leprosy, you didn't come to where the people were. You were unclean. You were separated from the people. You had to be because you had the disease, the dreaded, deadly disease called leprosy. Now we don't know much about leprosy in terms of the the way that they did. We we not we don't encounter most of us don't ever encounter anyone with leprosy, but they did. That was a a thing that they saw, a thing that they were familiar with, a thing that no doubt many of them feared.

I don't want to become a leper. I mean, leprosy has been around since ancient times. And leprosy represents a huge problem, a huge problem. If you had leprosy, you had a huge problem. Now in the law in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14, there is much time and space given to the issue of leprosy. And if you had uh uh some kind of a spot, the the the word in Greek for leprosy means scaly. If you had something on your hand or something on your face or some kind of weird looking rash, you'd have to go to the priest, and the priest would have to inspect it.

And if he inspected it and determined by the look of it that it was, as the scripture says, deeper than the skin, then he would say, you have leprosy and you are unclean, and you had to separate yourself from your family, from your friends, from society, and you'd have to live with other lepers because when you had leprosy, you were contagious. And you were uh going to experience the ravages of that bacterial disease. You know, leprosy, what it does is it is a skin disease that goes deeper than the skin. It affects your nervous system.

You can't feel anymore. It it affects your your tissue, and so that your skin starts to rot and things don't heal correctly. It affects your eyes. It affects your your larynx. And often times, if you hear someone who has leprosy, their throat is very scratchy and raspy because that disease has affected their vocal cords. It's a disfiguring disease. It's a horrible horrible disease. You would stink because your flesh is rotting. Often times, if you will uh look at do a Google search on images for leprosy, you'll see that people's uh their their fingers and their toes will begin to uh fall off and rot away, and their hands kind of turn into claws or clubs.

And And it's just awful. Josephus, the Jewish historian, said that those with leprosy were the walking dead. It was a terrible thing to have leprosy. This man seeks Jesus out. He comes to Jesus with his leprosy. He's got a huge problem. And see, leprosy is not only a huge problem, but leprosy represents our sin problem. Leprosy in the Bible, the external disease of leprosy represents the internal disease of sin that affects every single man, woman, boy or girl. You say, how is leprosy like sin? Because leprosy goes deeper than the skin, and sin goes deeper than the external.

Sin is in your heart. David said in Psalm 51, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. I was brought forth in Adam. And the scripture says in Adam all die, and all are sinners as we're brought forth as children of Adam. We're sinners by nature. We're sinners by birth. We're sinners by choice. We're sinners by practice. And all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death. And just as physical leprosy would deform spiritual uh leprosy, the disease of sin, it deforms us, and it makes us rotten in the sight of God.

It's a terrible horrible thing, and it isolates us. And the deeper we go into sin, the more we're isolated from other people and separated from God. And it's incurable. See, just as the people that had full of leprosy as this man, it was incurable. He didn't have just a uh uh little uh smidgen of leprosy. It was He was full of leprosy. I mean, just tumors all over and and rottenness all over. It was horrible. You and I, apart from Jesus Christ, are full of the spiritual leprosy. And it's incurable. There's nothing that you can do.

They asked Jesus one day uh when he said, indeed it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of God. And the disciples said, well then who can be saved? He said, with man it's impossible, but with God all things are possible. It's impossible for you to do anything, for me to do anything by which we can get rid of the disease, the leprosy of sin that's in your heart and my heart.

In Jeremiah chapter two verse 22, the Lord says this, although you wash yourself with lie and use much soap, the stain of your iniquity is before me, declares the Lord. Uh how how are you going to get rid of the stain of sin in your heart? What can you do? Can you go to church enough? No. Can you pray enough? No. Can you give enough? No. Can you sacrifice enough? No. Can you serve enough? No. Can you read the Bible enough? No. There's nothing that you can do. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

So like the leper, you can come to Jesus. And I like how it says behold in verse 12. Behold, there was a man full of leprosy who came to Jesus. The word behold is a word of surprise. It's a word of astonishment. It's it's a word that says, well, look here. Look here. This leper came to Jesus. This guy that was commanded in the law and the customs of the people, if you have leprosy, you stay away from people. You don't come near people. Why? Cuz you you're stink. You're the walking dead. You go over there with the other dead people.

And if anybody ever came close to you by accident, they had to cry out unclean, unclean, unclean. And the people would move away from them. But this guy, he broke all the barriers and all the uh social mores to come to Jesus because he was desperate. He had a huge problem, and he was desperate to bring that problem to the Lord. Hey, like the leper, you can come to Jesus with your problems. Second encouragement, like the leper, you can cry out to Jesus in your problems. It says that he came to him, and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face, and he implored him.

He begged him and said, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. He fell on his face. That that's the right place to be when you come to Jesus is on your face. As you cry out to him, on your face, get down low. See, this man, he humbled himself before the Lord. He calls him Lord, kurios, which means supreme authority. Lord, he gets on his face and says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. How do you get God, the Lord Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh, how do you get him to respond to you?

You come to him, you say, I don't care what other people think. I'm going to come to him. I don't care what my friends think. I don't care who might see me or laugh at me. I have a need, and I'm going to come before the Lord. And he didn't come It was just It wasn't just him and Jesus. There were other people around. And he broke through as people gave him that stink eye, you know, like you're not supposed to be here. They did the same thing in Luke chapter seven with the prostitute who came to Jesus as he was dining at Simon the Pharisee's house, gave her the stink eye like, get out of here.

You're not supposed to be here. Same thing with the leper. You're not supposed You're unclean, unclean. Get away from here. Get away from us. Definitely get away from Jesus. He is holy, and you're rotting flesh. But he came, and he immediately bowed down. He was humble. You want God to do in your life, you have to be humble before him. And the good news is all of us in this room, watching on television, listening on radio, we can all humble ourselves before the Lord. God says in his word over and over and over again, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Ecclesiastes, which is the the book where there's a search by King Solomon for satisfaction, and he tries all these things and comes up empty, says this at the end of the book. The conclusion when all has been heard is fear God and keep his commandments because this applies to every person. For the Lord will bring every act to judgment, everything that is hidden, whether it is good or evil. Fear God. To fear God means you understand and you give God his rightful place as God, and you take your rightful place as servant, as slave.

He fell down before him. He humbled himself before Jesus Christ, kurios, the supreme authority. I love what the scripture says in Isaiah 66 verse two, the Lord speaking, he says this, but to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite, lowly of spirit, and who trembles at my word. You want God to look at you, get down low. Get humble before the Lord. You remember when Moses met the Lord at the burning bush? He didn't know it was the Lord. He just saw this bush that was on fire that wasn't consumed, and he said, I must go and see this incredible sight, a bush that burns but is not consumed.

And when he came close to the burning bush, he heard the voice of God. And right off the bat, the Lord said to Moses, take your shoes off, Moses. Don't come near here, Moses. Take your shoes off cuz the place on which you're standing is holy ground. So why does God want me to take my shoes off? Because when you're in the presence of God, you get as low as you can, as fast as you can, and you're not even going to have an inch of shoe leather to raise you up before the Lord. No, you get low before the Lord.

You humble yourself before the Lord. If you want him to do in your life, he's opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And this man humbled himself. You can do the same thing. And this man believed that Jesus was able. See, he says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And within that request, within that cry, you have faith. Faith cuz he calls Jesus Lord, and faith because he says, Jesus, I know you're able to do this. He doesn't say, Lord, if you're able, you can make me clean. He says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

I know that you're able. And see, you and I, we can come before the Lord with our needs, and we can say, Lord, I believe the truth that you are able in this situation. No matter how big it is. And let's face it, gang, in your life, outside of salvation, which is the biggest greatest need for every single person. And if leprosy in this story represents the deeper problem of sin, that is the greatest problem that all of us have, and all of us need to come before the Lord before it's too late to receive cleansing by the blood of the Lamb.

But we would all have to agree that this man with leprosy, the disfiguring uh rotting disease that was going to take his life on a very slow basis. People with leprosy would live a long time, 10 years, 20 years maybe uh with this disease until it finally killed them. What a horrible way to die. His problem is bigger than your problem. I think most of us would agree. I don't care what your problem is. His problem greater than your problem. And he comes to Jesus. He humbles himself, and he says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

I believe you're able to do this. Well, he is able to do this for the leper and for you and me, no matter what our struggles are today. What a hope filled and guaranteed promise from God. You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. And today's lesson ready, willing, and able from the seven message series encountering the real Jesus. Did you know there are some things that God can't do? It's true. And one of them is he can't lie. He always fulfills his promises, and he promises to renew us as we surrender our lives even more fully to him.

Do you want God to do something fresh in your life as we follow him in obedience, the resulting joy will be greater than any passing pleasure this world could possibly offer? And we will be refreshed. This month, to help refresh your soul, Pastor Jeff is in his seven message series encountering the real Jesus. And you can get a copy of the series when you go to fromhishart.org, click the listen link. There too you can listen to any of the broadcasts that you may have missed and also get the series in the format of your choice from our resource center.

That's fromhishart.org. Well, while you're there, we would appreciate you asking God what he might have you do to give to support this outreach. In our 21st year of telling the world about God's truth, love, and hope we find in Christ, it's a blessing to know that you are with us all the way. Hey, this is a ministry that depends on your support. Pastor Jeff is simply our speaker and our full-time volunteer receiving no income from what you give to From His Heart. He supports his family by the salary he's given through his other full-time job as pastor of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas.

And when you give a gift this month to From His Heart, we'll say thanks by sending you the series that we aired earlier this month called Soldiers of the Cross and the companion booklet The Lord's Army. Call 866-40 Bible, 866-40 Bible. Or go online to fromhishart.org. And thank you so very very much for partnering with us to speak the truth and love to a lost and a hurting world. But we're going to pause right there in this lesson for today, but we'll be back tomorrow when Pastor Jeff continues looking into the Savior's readiness, willingness, and ability to bless this poor leper and bless you and me too.

Make sure you're with us then. Be with us on Friday for part two of ready, willing, and able right here on From His Heart. From His Heart is the listener supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth and love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more about that when you go to fromhishart.org.