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Sacramento Central SDA Church

Chris Buttery

What Soap Can Never Clean

For millennia, people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds have found direction and encouragement in the inspired pages of the Bible.

In his day, Jesus directed listeners to search the prophecies of Scripture to find Him, the only way of salvation.

2, 000 years later, as we stand on the break of eternity, we no less need the purpose and hope God's Word provides.

Sacramento Central Church brings you Receiving the Word, timely Bible messages presented by pastors Chris Buttery and Mike Thompson.

Amazing Revelations await you in God's holy word, the Bible.

If you have your Bibles, and surely you do, please turn with me to Mark chapter 1, and we'll be looking at verses 40 to 45, and we read these words again.

And there came a leper to him, that is Jesus, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and said unto him, I will be thou clean.

And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed.

And he straightly charged him and forward sent him away and said unto him, see thou say nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priests, offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

But he went out and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city but was without in desert places and they came to him from every quarter.

Today's message, and it'll be relatively brief, is entitled, What Soap Can Never Clean?

A story encountered in some places claims that soap takes its name from a supposed Mount Sappho, where ancient Roman sacrificed animals, apparently rain would mix with the animal tallow, that's the fat of the animal, and wood ash would run down the side of the mountain into the clay soils of the banks of the Tiber river.

Eventually, women noticed that it was easy to clean their clothes with this substance.

Now, the location of Mount Sappho is unknown, as is the source of the ancient Roman legend to which this tale is typically credited.

We don't really know the origination of soap as we know it today.

The earliest known evidence of soap use comes from the Babylonian clay cylinders, dating from about 2800 BC, and they contained a soap-like substance.

The Ebers papyrus, found there in Egypt, dating back to 1550 BC, indicates that the ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance.

The word soap actually first appears in European language in Pliny the Elder's Historia Neutralis, which discusses the manufacture of soap from this tallow, this white solid animal fat with ashes, but only mentions for it as fragrance for hair.

And Pliny mentions rather disapprovingly that among the Gauls and the Germans, men were the likelier to use it than women.

Now in modern times, the use of soap has become universal in industrialized nations due to a better understanding of the role of hygiene.

Manufactured bath soaps first became available in the late 19th century in advertising campaigns in Europe and in the United States, helped to increase popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and hygiene and health.

By the 1950s, not too long ago, soap gained public acceptance as an instrument of personal hygiene.

So how effective or how is soap effective in cleaning?

Now whatever soap you choose to use, whether it be Dove or Irish Spring or Spider Lily natural triple milled soap or moisturizing soaps, herbal soaps, glycerin soaps or aromatic soaps, whatever soap you choose to use, when soap and water is applied to a soiled surface, the soapy water holds particles in suspension and then when it's rinsed off with water, all the dirt, the grime and the grit are washed down the drain.

Now being clean is important to you and me, amen?

We don't want to look dirty, we don't want to feel dirty, we don't want anyone to think that we are unclean people.

Soap cleans off the dirt, the grit, the grime, the germs, sometimes the paint, the markers, the crayons, the sauce, the stains, and the smells.

But there are some things that soap will never clean.

Now, initially, soap won't clean the grease from underneath your fingernails, and you've probably discovered and may have found this out when you were younger, but sometimes soap can clean the dirty mouth, but technically it doesn't clean the dirty mouth.

And as we read in this story, soap cannot clean a leper and soap cannot clean a sinner.

Look with me here again, we're in Mark chapter 1 and we're verse 40, the Bible says there came a leper to Jesus, there came a leper to Jesus.

Now today leprosy is known as Hansen's disease And it's basically a malady that affects, acts as an anesthetic, and it numbs the pain cells of feet and hands and ears and nose and eyes.

For thousands of years, people considered leprosy, or Hansen's disease today, they considered to be highly contagious.

Paul Brand's research, we now know that of all infectious diseases, Hansen is probably the least contagious, and that in 99% of the cases of Hansen's disease only numbs the extremities.

The destruction that follows, because typically destruction of the body is associated with leprosy, that destruction follows because the warning system of pain is gone.

So you can imagine when someone inflicted with Hansen's disease stands on a nail, maybe doesn't know it because their feet are numb, discover later on that the infection has set in and the damage is done to the flesh and to the surrounding area and that's 1 of the dangers of Hansen's disease of leprosy.

Back in the day of Jesus, of all the diseases, it was 1 of the most feared.

The thought of contracting this deadly disease filled the bravest person with fear.

Unfortunately, among the Jews in the time of Jesus, they considered it a judgment on account of sin.

And so it was known as the stroke or the finger of God.

Like someone already dead, that person was shut out from society and shut out from contact with anybody.

Whatever this person touched was considered unclean.

Even the air that he breathed was considered to be contaminated.

Anyone who was suspected of having this disease in the time of Jesus, needed to present himself or herself to the priests, who were to examine and to decide each particular case.

If pronounced a leper, that individual was isolated from family, was cut off from the congregation of Israel and was doomed to associate only with those who had the disease themselves.

Monarchs, if they were attacked by the disease, they would lay down their scepter and like anyone else they would flee society.

Away from friends, away from family, the leper needed to bear the curse of this particular malady alone.

He was obliged even, and if you could believe it, to publish his own fate.

He was to rend his garments and he was to sound the alarm whenever he came by anyone.

He was to cry out, unclean, unclean, referring to himself.

He was to signal that he was unclean and it was heard by people with fear and abhorrence.

Now in the region of Christ's ministry there were many who were afflicted by the disease of leprosy and you can understand that the work of Jesus in healing people from many different things reached these individuals and perhaps kindled in them a gleam of hope.

But since the days of Elisha the prophet, no 1 had been cleansed from leprosy And perhaps they didn't want to expect that Jesus would do it for them if he hadn't done it for anybody else.

There was 1 individual, however, and we read about him here in Mark chapter 1 in verse 40, whose heart hung on in faith.

Now, he probably wasn't sure how to reach Jesus.

Jesus traveled around quite a bit by foot.

And if he approached Jesus and found Jesus, the question is, would Jesus heal him?

Would Jesus accept him and heal him of this dreaded disease?

Would Jesus take time to notice this downcast of society, the 1 whom was suffering from the justice of God?

Would he not be told to run and pronounce his curses he had been told by the scribes and the Pharisees to do?

However, this man evidently was determined to find Jesus.

He was determined to find the Savior, to cross his path and in the hopes that he would be healed.

And so he traversed the towns and the villages looking for Jesus, and he happened upon Jesus, found Him there healing people of all manner of diseases down there.

He sees the lame and the blind, the paralytic, those dying from various diseases rise up in health.

What we do know is that He comes nearer to the crowd and these restrictions that have been laid upon Him, the safety of the people and the fear with which everyone regards Him, He doesn't matter, He thinks only of the hope of healing.

Now, he's not a pretty sight, very likely.

The disease has probably made some very terrible inroads into his body, into his skin.

And you can imagine people stepping back in fear, not wanting to be in his presence.

Perhaps some seek to prevent him from approaching Jesus, but for this man all of that is useless.

He doesn't see them, he doesn't hear them.

All he desires is to hear the voice of the 1 who can speak life to the dying.

And of all, all too often you see there are individuals, not back then, but today, who approach, are afraid to approach Jesus for fear of what someone will say to them.

They're afraid to ask mercy and ask for the forgiveness of Jesus because they're afraid of what others might think.

I don't want to be considered to be too weak in the eyes of my friends or my work colleagues.

What will those at my work, my family, my friends say if I come to Jesus and I choose to follow Him.

Too many, unfortunately, will never know what it is to like to love Jesus, to follow Jesus, to serve Jesus, and to know the height, the depth, the breadth of his goodness, because they were too concerned with what other people thought about them if they came to Jesus.

Now there's a little saying that I like a lot.

It says, people would worry less about what others think of them if they only realized how seldom they do.

Others tend to be put off from coming to Jesus and follow Him because of the apparent hypocrisy of His professed people.

They're mishandled, perhaps, maybe talked down to, made to feel unwelcome, and in response, they choose to come to Jesus another day or not at all reasoning that if they ever came to Jesus and they gave their life to him that they wouldn't want to become something like the people that have mishandled them and perhaps who can blame them if that was the case But we need to look at the leper here this morning.

He's going after what he needs so desperately.

He doesn't care about what others think or how he's being treated.

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What Soap Can Never Clean

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