How strange this law appears! Yet there was wisdom in it. When the disease broke out completely, it proved the body was fighting back—the constitution was sound.

This morning, let's see what this peculiar rule teaches us. We too are lepers. And the law of the leper applies directly to us.

When a man sees himself as altogether lost and ruined, covered all over with the defilement of sin, not one part free from pollution... when he disclaims all righteousness of his own and pleads guilty before the Lord... then is he clean through the blood of Jesus and the grace of God.

Hidden, unfelt, unconfessed iniquity is the true leprosy. But when sin is seen and felt? It has received its death blow. The Lord looks with eyes of mercy upon the soul afflicted with it.

Nothing is more deadly than self-righteousness. Nothing more hopeful than contrition.

We must confess that we are "nothing else but sin"—no confession short of this will be the whole truth. And if the Holy Spirit is at work in us, convincing us of sin, there will be no difficulty making such an acknowledgment. It will spring spontaneously from our lips!

What comfort this text brings to those under a deep sense of sin! Sin mourned and confessed, however black and foul, shall never shut a man out from the Lord Jesus. Whoever comes to him, he will in no wise cast out.

Though dishonest as the thief. Though unchaste as the woman who was a sinner. Though fierce as Saul of Tarsus. Though cruel as Manasseh. Though rebellious as the prodigal. The great heart of Love will look upon the man who feels himself to have no soundness in him, and will pronounce him clean when he trusts in Jesus crucified.

Come to him, then, poor heavy-laden sinner! Come needy, come guilty, come loathsome and bare. You can't come too filthy—come just as you are.