https://assets-cdn2.dropwave.io/086174f0-efbe-400f-a3e9-b91549a26ab7/media/Trinity 14 AD 2026.mp3

https://app.dropwave.io/show/our-savior-lynchburg/trinity-14-ad-2026

++ JESU JUVA ++

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

No matter what trouble you have in this life, Jesus Christ is your Helper. No sickness is so bad that He cannot heal it. No trouble is so great that He cannot change it. No misery is so great that He cannot turn it back.

Therefore, joyfully and cheerfully run to your Lord Jesus, seek His grace, and receive His abundant mercy. And when He has relieved your trouble — after you have obtained His help — see, also that you are indebted to Him. God has relieved you. So do not withhold thanksgiving, but give Him thanks with a loud voice.

You remain in need of mercy. Return to Him again and again, for His mercies are new, morning by morning. Great is His faithfulness. His mercy is not merely in taking away the trouble that brought you to Him. His mercy is in bringing you to Himself.

The standard. Being clean isn’t just a matter of feeling, although feeling clean is nice. I expect your neighbors appreciate it when you’ve had a shower recently. If you’re having surgery, being clean can be a matter of life and death.

God’s view of cleanliness is even higher than ours. God wants His people to be clean and pure as He is clean and pure. The unclean needs someone who can cleanse him. That’s why He’s so particular in the Old Testament about what kinds of food and behaviors were clean and which weren’t. He wanted His people to be pure before Him, and He instituted cleansing for when they became defiled.

In the Old Testament, there were lots of ways to become defiled or unclean. most involved touching something unclean: a dead body; certain bodily discharges; and unclean animals. Unclean persons couldn’t come into God’s presence at the Temple. If an unclean person touched you, his defilement would spread to you. According to the law God gave in Leviticus, most uncleanness was washed away with a bath and waiting until the new day began at evening. So the uncleanness and separation were temporary.

But leprosy was unique. It couldn’t be removed with a bath and waiting until the evening. So long as this disease persisted, their uncleanness remained. The Hebrew word for leprosy is related to the verb “to strike.” It means that God strikes you with leprosy, and only He can remove His hand and cleanse you. The priests still had a role. The priests could recognize that leprosy had been healed and restore the former leper to society, but only God could remove it. So that’s why, when Naaman is cleansed of his leprosy by washing in the Jordan River according to the Word of God, we know that this healing had to be from God.

Who can cleanse the unclean? The Law can declare what is clean and unclean. It cannot make a sinner clean. But Jesus does.

The disease. Ten men have leprosy. Skin infected. Slowly dying. Nerve damage. Loss of sensation. Secondary infections. Ears, nose, tongue — they’d all be disfigured. As if being disfigured wasn’t humiliating enough, they had to act unclean. Hair unkempt. Clothing torn. Lower face covered. Announcing their continual uncleanness to every passerby: “Unclean! Unclean!” But Jesus doesn’t wait for them to become clean before He comes near.

A few years ago, we had a taste of these practices. It wasn’t for ritual purity, but by the requirements of “public health.” “Mask up.” “Avoid unnecessary travel.” “Six feet apart.” “Quarantine.” “We’re all in this together.”

Maybe taking precautions kept someone from catching a certain disease. Maybe the leper being separated from his family protected them from his leprosy. But separation doesn’t heal. The leper still needs cleansing. The sinner still needs Jesus.

This division and separation from their family and community was only superficial. The lepers weren’t the only ones infected and dying. The rest of the people of Israel had an uncleanness that was slowly killing them, too. We have the same infection. So does everyone else around us. The whole world has the disease. It’s the disease and uncleanness of sin. We are impure and unclean before a thrice-holy God.

Staying away from other sinners doesn’t remove sin. You cannot quarantine yourself from your own heart. You need cleansing that can come only from outside of you — from Christ. He is the Holy One who comes among the unclean and sinful to cleanse them.

In the modern world, leprosy is mostly gone. But we’re still concerned with purity. Bottles of hand sanitizer. Obsession with bodily health. Keeping distant from anyone with a bodily ailment. Removing or even murdering those who have physical defects or pain — like babies in the womb, the aged, or the infirm. We seem to have an almost universal desire for cleanliness and bodily perfection.

Our nation is in the advanced stages of leprosy. We are sick and unclean and near death. We pour out the blood of the unborn. We mock His Word. We think that we live by our own reason and strength. Deformity and disease, death and despair — these all share a common root. The original sin you inherited from your father Adam is at work in you.

This evil nature you have from your conception provokes God’s wrath. Your works separate you from Him, too. You have this spiritual disease — even before you say or do anything sinful. Saint Paul warns us about the symptoms of this disease. These “works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21).