Jesus’ mission is to cleanse people by taking the effects of sin

Imagine you came home one afternoon and discovered Jesus was sitting in your living room. Of course, being wise you’re skeptical that he’s the real Jesus, but he has intrigued you enough that instead of calling the police you watch him carefully. He knows that your money has been rather tight recently so he goes to the cabinet and finds whatever meager food he can scrounge up and somehow he turns that into a feast. During the meal, you start to experience those painful stomach cramps that have been bothering you in the past few months for unknown reasons. This time your pain is bad enough that you have to excuse yourself and lay on the couch, embarrassed at how poor you are at hosting. But Jesus gently comes over and places his hand on your shoulder. The pain leaves immediately and you feel healthier than ever. Now you’re certain, this is the real Jesus.

What do you ask him for next? When it suddenly dawns on you that this man has authority over all of creation and the power to do anything, what do you want to see him do?

The list of every need I could ever have would start running through my head immediately. I have many friends who are deeply sick who need healing. I have problems that need fixing. I could walk Jesus around town for days asking him to meet a never ending catalog of needs. But how long would it be, before you ever asked Jesus, “Why did you come here? You’re the Lord, what did you come here to do?”

In Mark this morning, we’re going to see that so many people know what they want from Jesus, but they are completely ignorant of what he came to accomplish and what his mission is.

Main Point – Jesus’ mission is to cleanse people by taking the effects of sin

Text – Mark 1:35-45, that’s page 786 in the pew Bibles

Prayer

So why does Jesus come to earth at all? What is he here for?

Point #1 – Jesus is on a mission (vs. 35-39)

Read vs. 35

It appears as if this is the very next day after last week’s sermon. Jesus was healing people after sundown and presumably late into the night, yet before the son rises he is awake and sets out to find a quiet place to pray. Clearly prayer is a priority to Jesus. He had every reason to sleep in like I assume the disciples are, but he recognizes prayer is essential.

I think this again reminds us of the image that Mark paints of what Jesus’ ministry would be like. At Jesus’ temptation Mark said he was in the wilderness, he was tempted by Satan, there was danger, and he was being ministered to by the angels. I’ve said this multiple times now, Jesus’ mission takes him out into a dangerous place to do battle with Satan. And for this to be a success he will need to be ministered to by the Lord. He will need the support from heaven. We’ve seen how he battles against Satan, but now we’re seeing how is ministered to by heaven. It is through prayer. Through his conscious dependence on the Father.

Read vs. 36-37

But then Jesus is interrupted. Simon and the others are looking for him, the word could be translated as hunted for him. And just like the parent of any young child knows, when you try to find quiet time to be with God, there’s probably someone looking for you who will interrupt that time. But the few disciples here I believe feel justified in interrupting him. After all, they say, “Everyone is looking for you.” Simon on behalf of the disciples says, “Jesus, there’s even more people who want to be healed. We were able to reach many people last night, but there’s more. You need to come back and finish healing people.”

Jesus’ response is pretty interesting here.

Read vs. 38-39

Jesus does not go heal the people from Capernaum that are looking for him. Do you see that? He says, “Let’s go to the next towns”. Is Jesus being heartless here? Doesn’t he recognize that there are people suffering with horrible illnesses and infirmities? There’s possibly someone out there who has had chronic pain for decades and finally had hope they could be healed, but Jesus says no. Why isn’t Jesus helping in a way that is clearly within his power.

He tells us. It’s because healing everyone is not his mission. He wants to go to the next towns. Why? So that he may preach, for that is why he came out. His message is simple. Repent and believe the gospel. And there are other places that have not yet been called to that repentance.

Because imagine how Jesus’ ministry would have looked differently if he had responded to Simon’s request. He would have walked back to where he was before. He would have started healing people. Maybe he’d stay there for several more days. But people would keep coming to him. Perhaps after most of his region was healed he’d go to another region and then what? He could move to the next place and heal them. He could travel all across the continent healing people everywhere, and by the time he’d finished he’d just have to go back to the beginning and start healing again because there would be new people. Yes, healing people’s sickness was part of Jesus’ mission, but it wasn’t the center of Jesus’ mission. His mission was to call people out of the kingdom of darkness, by calling them to repentance.

Well then why does he bother healing anybody at all? If that’s not his mission then he should just leave them in their sickness and tell them to repent. The reason Jesus does miracles at all is to prove to us his authority over sin, death, and Satan. He heals these people so that they will know that the one who can save them from sickness is the one who can save them from their greater problem, sin. Jesus is on a mission. And it’s greater than healing.

In our day, we tend to be like Simon here and confuse what Jesus’ mission actually is. If Jesus were here today, what would we be coming to him for? It’s actually a very easy question to answer. Just think about what you’re praying for.

“God, I’m sick. Heal me.” “God, someone I love is sick. Heal them.” “God, I don’t have enough money, I need some more.” “God, I need to get a job.” “God, give me a safe trip or I need a new home or a new car.”

Now these are all perfectly fine things to ask God for, but if it’s all we ask him for, it could be that we’re confused about his mission. Because, again, what happens if he answers every single one of those requests among our people. He heals all of our sicknesses and removes all of our maladies. They’ll just keep coming back. As long as there is sin in this world, these struggles will keep coming back.  Jesus’ mission isn’t simply to free us from the effects of sin, but to destroy the power of sin altogether.

How will this impact how you pray? How will this impact what you notice about the world around you? Perhaps, you think the world is a dark place because people are poor, because they have addictions. When you look at the world you see inequality, and you see hunger, and you see ignorance. Then the solution for all of this is for you to pray for healing. The problems in the world can be solved by money, more food, and education. But if Jesus’ mission is bigger than that, then you’ll look at the world differently. Each of us is damaged by sin. Those who don’t know Christ are enslaved in it. And it’s sin’s effects that continue to ravage the people in this world. Let’s pray for that to be defeated. Let’s pray for sin to no longer have a sway on our minds and the minds of those we care for. Let’s pray for the lost to come to Christ. Let’s also pray for people’s material needs, but just like Jesus healed to point others to his greater mission, let’s pray that people’s needs are met to point them to their greater need.

How does this impact the mission of our church? If Christ’s mission was to break into the kingdom of darkness and preach repentance to save souls from death then that should be our mission too. We can and should offer relief such as we have been through our brown sack ministry, through Operation Christmas Child. We should support the LRBA Pregnancy Center. And I’m so thankful that we do. But we can’t think that if we do these things we’re completing the entirety of Christ’s mission. There are lost people who need someone to preach the gospel to them. People in our state who don’t know Christ yet. There are people across the world who don’t know Christ yet. “Let us go on to the next towns that we may preach there also, for that is why we exist.”

But Jesus will still continue to heal people in various places and we’ll see here how it works towards his greater mission.

Point #2 – Jesus cleanses people (vs. 40-42)

Read Vs. 40.

In this next encounter we see a man with leprosy coming to Jesus asking to be cleansed. Today we have a little more narrow view of what leprosy is. We associate it with something called Hansen’s disease where someone loses feelings in their nerves and as a result they experience all kinds of injuries and infections on their skin. But the biblical term of leprosy was quite broad and covered a wide variety of skin diseases. But what’s most important about this man’s condition is not the disease itself or any symptoms or pain that came with it. What is most significant to this man is the fact that he is unclean. Did you notice what he asks Jesus for? He doesn’t say if you will, you can heal me or you can cure me. His focus is on the fact that as a result of condition, he’s unclean. What does that mean, he was unclean?

Listen to how the Old Testament law describes the consequences of someone having leprosy. It says in Leviticus 13:45-46.

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”

Do you hear that? Having leprosy had more than just physical implications for your health. It had social implications. Being unclean would become his identity. There are any number of sicknesses you can have that affect you, but having leprosy defines you. If anyone comes near he has to identify himself by loudly pronouncing what he is, “Unclean, unclean!” He was shunned from all human interaction and forced to live alone. There wasn’t a day that could go by without this man relating to the world through his uncleanness. This is why he doesn’t come up to Jesus and say, “Please heal me of my disease”. Rather he begs to be cured of his uncleanness. He wants to rejoin community. He wants to be able to hug someone. He wants to walk up and down the street with a new identity, no longer defined as an outcast, but as a member of society! Do you see how this is different from the woman who lay in bed with a fever?

Read Vs. 41-42.

If you’ve ever worn anything that is very white, you know what happens when something clean touches something unclean. When you’re wearing a white shirt, you’re careful to avoid sitting in the wrong place or letting the wrong little one come up and hug you. You’re careful about what you eat and drink or even whether you eat and drink at all. You know the whole time you have it on, if an unclean thing touches this clean thing, we will now have two unclean things. The unclean always wins.

And the Jewish law functioned the same way. When a person or an item that was ceremonially unclean touched someone or something that was clean, the clean thing has now also become unclean too. Cleanness never transfers. It’s always the other way around. And yet Jesus has the ability to reverse this. He reaches out and touches the unclean man, and the impossible happens. The clean transferred itself onto the unclean. Immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

Jesus hadn’t merely changed the condition of this man’s health. He had changed his status. He was clean. For the first time he could rejoin people in the town. He could live in freedom with others and not in isolation.

I don’t suspect anyone here has leprosy, but I’m confident there are many who feel unclean. You might not walk around shouting “unclean” when you’re around others, but that voice in your head is certainly shouting it to you whenever you get too close to people. I’ve heard enough people joke saying, “I can’t go into a church. I’d probably get struck by a lightning bolt”. Or maybe you’ve told yourself that you can’t be around Christians because you’ve done too much wrong. You’re covered in uncleanness from head to toe and it defines you. You can’t go through one day without considering how filthy you are.

Satan would have you stay as far away from Christ as possible. He’ll give you all sorts of reasons why you can’t approach him. But friend, he delights in cleansing. Regardless of how dirty you think you are, you cannot contaminate him. He always cleanses. Are you tired of your sin being your identity? Are you tired of your poor choices being what defines you? Then come to be cleansed. Kneel before the Lord and say, “If you will, you can make me clean.” And I guarantee he will.

Christian, if you have called on Christ to be cleansed but are still frustrated with the stains you still carry, take heart. Cleansing you is in fact part of his mission. Jesus doesn’t merely transfer you from Satan’s kingdom into his own and leave you as is. He purifies you entirely and perfectly. The day comes when you will be presented holy and blameless before him. Jesus came to justify you by clearing you of your guilt before God, but he also came to sanctify you by removing every stain of sin and to cleanse you.

This cleansing though comes at a cost.

Point #3 – Jesus takes the effects of sin (vs. 43-45)

I was careful in my wording for this point. I didn’t want to say that he simply removes the effects of sin, but rather that he takes the effects. This is because the effects of sin are going to be absorbed by Jesus and he will endure them. Let’s read our next two verses.

Read vs 43-44

Again the book of Leviticus has quite a few hoops to jump through for someone who believes they are cured of leprosy. They have to go to a priest and be ritual cleansed. They have to shave all their hair off and wait for seven days. Then after offering some sacrifices they are able to be declared clean again. Jesus tells him to abide by these rules. He wants him to follow all of the laws. “Go to the priest and do what Moses commanded”.

Interestingly, he tells him not to say anything to anyone. This is a pattern that we’ll see persist throughout the book of Mark. Jesus heals someone and then tells them to keep it quiet. We’ve already seen it happen a couple of times with the demons. They know who he is so he tells them to stay quiet. Later, his disciples will come to know who he is and he tells them the same thing, “Tell no one!” This pattern is known as the Messianic Secret. Jesus is the Messiah but he’s keeping it a secret.

Why does he do this? This will slowly get revealed as the book of Mark goes along but I’ll tell you ahead of time. Jesus refuses to allow people to know him as Messiah, as a Savior apart from his suffering and apart from the cross. Let me show you the outline of the book of Mark again that I showed you last week.

Jesus doesn’t want anyone to see him as an authority without also seeing him as the one who suffers. If you only get the first half of the book, you miss who Jesus is entirely. There are about a dozen instances of Jesus telling people to stay quiet and not reveal who he is in the book of Mark and all but perhaps one of them occurs in the first half of this book. Everyone who recognizes Jesus’ authority wants to go and declare it to others, but Jesus says, no because that’s not the full story! He is more than someone who heals and who casts out demons. He’s more than someone who can control the storms and multiply food. The most important part about Jesus’ ministry is his suffering and dying for those he came to save. And so Jesus declares that his authority must always be tethered to his death. That’s the Messiah he is.

Have you ever heard of Doom Town, Nevada? It was built in the 1950’s. It sprung up almost overnight. Somehow this town immediately contained grocery stores, banks, multiple churches, and gas stations. Cars lined the streets and it was filled with homes and happy families. But do you know why this mysterious town was built? It was built for nuclear testing. The government built this town for the sole purpose of dropping a bomb on it. It was destroyed even faster than it was built. Suddenly its name makes sense. If you thought it was a normal town you would be mistaken. It was made to be destroyed.

Jesus was a very specific kind of Savior. He was born to die. If you thought he was any other kind of Savior you would be sorely mistaken. Yes, he came to deliver people from the kingdom of darkness. Yes, he came to cleanse people and to purify them completely. But how would he do that? He would do that by taking the sin of all those he would save on himself and by taking all of the effects of that sin on himself and then dying with it, thereby defeating it.

And even in our passage we’re going to see that Jesus is beginning to collect the effects of sin by taking it off of someone else and placing it on himself.

Read vs 45

Jesus tells the man not to say anything, but then he does. As a result more and more people are coming to him. So many people in fact that, listen closely, “he could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places”. What was the great problem that the leper faced a moment ago? It wasn’t merely a sickness. It was that he was cast out away from the towns and could no longer be a part of them. Jesus has exchanged places with the leper. Jesus was in the town and the leper was out. But now as a result of Jesus’ cleansing, the leper is in the town and Jesus is out.

The presence of sin in the world affected the leper. It caused him to bear a disease. And that disease caused him to be cast out of society. But now Jesus frees the leper from that effect and bears it himself. Jesus is gathering sin’s effects as he heads to the cross. He will gather up misunderstandings. He’ll gather up hatred and betrayal. He gathers rejection and anger. He gathers up being outcast. And he takes these to the cross to die with them. Jesus as the Savior can only be understood in connection with his suffering and his death.

Jesus has all of the authority. He has demonstrated it. But you will never see him using it for his own benefit. He always uses it to serve others and he serves others sacrificially. He serves in a way that is painful for himself. He is our Lord, but unlike every god in every other religion in all of mankind, he suffers on our behalf. He suffers to save us. And this is the God we are called to follow.

Christian, are you imitating Jesus? Are you using all of the gifts, blessings, and benefits God has given you to serve others? Are you suffering so that others can be healed? Are you willing to be an outcast so that someone else can be accepted? Sometimes we think, I’ll give as much as I can without it having to affect me. If I was already planning on getting rid of those clothes then I guess I can donate them to the person who needs them. If I received some unexpected extra income, then I can send that to the missionaries. If my Saturday afternoon is already available then I suppose I can help visit the shut-ins.

Hear me when I say this, if anyone in this church is serving or giving in any way at all, thank you. If you are using your time, your talents, or your money to serve God by serving others, thank you. But with all that you’ve given away, have you given in a way that hurts you? Because this is the type of service that God wants. It’s not because he’s a sadistic God who wants to see you be in pain. It’s not because he’s a greedy God who needs more and more. He has plenty thank you. But what he wants from you ultimately is your heart. He wants to transform your heart and shape it to be like Jesus’ heart. And this is the core of who Christ is. He suffers so that others can be saved. He takes the effects of sin on himself, so that others can be free.

Jesus Christ is on a mission. It’s a mission not merely to heal, but to preach the gospel and save people from the kingdom of sin. His goal is to cleanse people from sin and its effects and to bring them to God. And the only way to accomplish this mission will be through his suffering by taking sin on himself.

Prayer