Do you know what it is like to be shunned by someone? To be outcast by a group of people? Well, whatever social exclusion you and I might have faced at some point is no comparison to what lepers in ancient times experienced.
Leprosy was widespread in the ancient Near East. We have record in the Scriptures of Jesus encountering several lepers, and the ancient Jewish writings contain many instructions relating to those with the disease. Leviticus 13-14 contain laws relating to leprosy, but the Hebrew word used there for leprosy included other skin disorders as well as what we know refer to technically as leprosy. The Jewish scribes counted 72 different afflictions under the heading of leprosy.[1] Luke, whom we recall was a physician by training, refers to this man in his account as being full of leprosy. The word leprosy comes from a Greek word lepein which means to scale or peel off. And this is how the disease affected the body. It might begin with discolored nodules on the skin which proceed to ulcerate with foul smelling discharge. Accompanying this would be a loss of sensation in the surrounding areas where the disease attacked the nervous system. The muscles would begin to atrophy. The eyebrows would fall out. Tendons would contract, leaving the fingers drawn like claws. The eyes begin to set in a blank stare. The vocal chords are affected causing the person to wheeze with every breath or spoken word. Eventually the decay might become so thorough that a hand or foot would drop off the body. It might go on like this for nine years or more, ending in mental decay, coma, and eventually death. Barclay referred to it as “a terrible progressive death in which a man dies by inches.”[2]
Added to all the physical affliction of leprosy was the social ostracism. In Leviticus 13:45-46, the Law stated, “As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” More than an illness, leprosy was a living death sentence. Josephus says that lepers were treated “as if they were, in effect, dead men.”[3] They were cut off from comforts of family, from the company of friends, and from the community of faith. They were required to always keep a distance of fifty paces from other people. In Luke 17, we read about a group of ten lepers who “stood at a distance” crying out to Jesus.
The leper Mark tells us about had reached a state of such desperation that he disregarded all social custom came directly into the presence of Jesus. And we are struck in the narrative by the Leper’s Request and the Lord’s Response.
I. The Leper’s Request (v40)
Notice in the first half of the verse,
A. The attitude of his request (v40a)
He came to Christ in desperation. He was beseeching Jesus, or as the NIV has begging. He realized that he had no other hope. If what he had heard about Jesus was true, then he knew Jesus could help him. If Jesus couldn’t help him, then no one could. So he came desperately begging. But he also came in an attitude of humble reverence. He was falling on his knees before Him. This is a posture of worship. In fact, Matthew uses a different word here, proskunein – a word that is never used in any other way except to describe worship.
Jews believed that leprosy was a judgment from God, and as such, they believed only God could cleanse it. So this man came to the One whom He believed was God and he approached Him as we all must – in an attitude of worship, of reverence, of desperate hope in Him alone. I wonder today, when you approach Jesus, what is your attitude? Perhaps we should all learn from this leper something about the attitude we should adopt as we come into His presence to make our requests known.
Then notice secondly …
B. The articulation of his request (v40b)
As we see the words that this leper used in making his plea to the Lord, we notice first, a recognition of divine sovereignty. He says, “If you are willing … .” The leper knows that there is no demanding our way with God. God is God – He doesn’t get His marching orders from us. We come to Him acknowledging that He is sovereign. That means that His will is absolute. He is not subject to the dictates of another.[4] There are many today who say that we have the authority to come into God’s presence and claim by faith that He WILL do whatever it is we ask of Him. A friend gave me a little pamphlet a few years back called How to Write Your Own Ticket With God.[5] The author claims that Jesus appeared to him in a vision saying, "If anybody, anywhere will follow these four steps they will receive anything they want from God." Listen, we don’t even want to write our own ticket with God. What do we know about what we need or what is best for us? We want to submit ourselves to the sovereign will of the infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful God, just as this leper did. There is nothing wrong with making a request. We are invited, even commanded, to do so. But we must do so with a recognition of divine sovereignty that says, “If you are willing.”
In addition to the recognition of divine sovereignty, the leper speaks with a declaration of great faith. He says, “You can make me clean.” There is no doubt in his mind that Jesus Christ is the answer to his pressing need. He understands that Christ stands before him as the omnipotent God of the universe, and there is no problem He cannot handle, no disease He cannot cure, no need He cannot meet. Sometimes we may pray reluctantly about a concern, hiding some measure of doubt in God’s ability to do anything about it. But the leper knows there is no limit to His ability, and he boldly declares his faith in the power of God to help him. The only question is whether or not it is God’s will.
So in the leper’s request, we can learn some important lessons about how we should come into God’s presence making our requests known to Him. We should come humbly, reverently, in desperate hope and faith in Him alone to meet our needs, and accepting His will as a gracious provision for our lives. Following the leper’s request, we find …
II. The Lord’s Response (vv41-45)
Anyone present would have recoiled at the sight of this leper, and the disciples probably wanted to scurry him away from the presence of Christ. But Jesus didn’t respond with rebuke or condemnation. Instead, He responded to the leper’s request with …
A. Powerful Compassion (vv41-42)
The text says that Jesus was moved with compassion. To have compassion with someone is to identify with their sufferings. The Greek word has at its root the inner organs of the body, and the idea is that Jesus was touched at the deepest core of emotion, and that compassion was demonstrated in His works and His words.
1. Compassionate Works
Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him. You don’t touch lepers. Touch them and you become one of them. They were required by law to keep their distance from people so as not to contaminate anyone else. One rabbi boasted that whenever he came near a leper, he flung stones at them to keep them away.[6] But Jesus didn’t throw stones. He reached out His hand and did something for this man that no one had been willing to do for years. Who knows how long it had been since he had felt the touch of another hand upon him? His own family did not even dare touch him. But Jesus is not afraid to contract what the leper had. Instead, He desired for the leper to become infected with His contagious compassion. He touched him.
2. Compassionate Words
I am willing; be cleansed. Now you understand that the Word of God is authoritative. By His spoken word, all that exists was created. Hebrews tells us that He upholds all things by the Word of His power. He didn’t have to touch the leper. These compassionate words were sufficient to effect his healing. But often times our words must be accompanied by works which demonstrate our compassion to those in need. Jesus touched him to demonstrate that. But He also spoke the divine decree for the leper to be cleansed. He assured him of His willingness, and then declared that the miracle be done. And with that powerfully compassionate word of healing, Mark tells us Immediately, the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Even disease must submit to the authority of Christ.
Combined with His powerful compassion, Jesus spoke to this newly cleansed leper …
B. Perplexing Commands (vv43-45)
You have heard of show and tell. Here Jesus commands the leper to show, and not tell. He said, “See to it that you say nothing to anyone.” Why would He say such a thing? Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus admonished people to secrecy about His person and work. Three times He commands the silence of the demons. Four times following miracles, He orders secrecy. Twice He requires it of the disciples. Didn’t He want people to know who He was and what He could do? Actually, yes; but just not yet. He did not want to be pursued out of premature and false understanding – as if He was a circus performer out to do great magic tricks. He had just escaped
But Jesus did give Him an explicit command to take action as a testimony to what had been done for him. He said, “Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” Jesus did not come to invalidate the Old Testament. Here we see His own submission to the demands of the Law.
Leviticus 14 details exactly what those who have been cleansed of leprosy are to do. It is long and complicated, but I will try to summarize it as succinctly as I can. He is to go to the priest, and the priest will accompany him outside the camp – that is, to the outlying area away from the walls of the city. Then the priest will inspect him, and if the priest agrees that the leprosy has been healed, there is to be a sacrifice. The priest is to take two live clean birds, cedar wood, a scarlet string, and hyssop. He is to slay one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water as a guilt offering. He is then to take the hyssop, dip it in the blood and sprinkle the healed leper seven times with the blood and declare him to be clean. He is to take the living bird, and dip it into the blood of the dead bird, and release it to fly away. The cedar wood and scarlet string are to be dipped in the blood as well. Then the man is to go and cleanse himself, and come back in seven days. When he returns to the priest, he is to shave his head and face of all hair, wash his clothes and body, and offer two male lambs and a yearling ewe together with flour and oil as a sin offering. The priest will take the blood from the sacrifice and apply it to the cleansed leper’s right ear lobe, right thumb, and right big toe. Then he will take the oil and do the same, followed by pouring the remainder of the oil over the cleansed leper’s head. The Law also makes provision for those who cannot afford all these sacrificial supplies.
Now, these are the instructions Jesus told the man to observe as a testimony. I want you to imagine for a moment that you are the priest on duty that day. How many times in the centuries since the Law had been issued to Moses do you think they had ever had to perform this leper-cleansing ceremony? I would venture to say it had been a rare occasion. So here comes this fellow, probably pushing a wheelbarrow with a plank of cedar, a hyssop branch, a scarlet cord and a cage with two live birds in it. The priest probably had to go to the books to find out what to do with all this stuff. This was covered on one of those days he probably had daydreamed his way through seminary class thinking, “I will never need to know all this stuff!”
Jesus said this would be a testimony. How so? Look at the picture that the priest will see as he carries out the instructions of the law with this newly cleansed leper. Together they go outside the camp – to the area where three years later, Christ would go to die for sin on the cross. The bird is slain in an earthen vessel over running water. Jesus Christ was incarnate as a man – he took upon Himself this earthen vessel of human flesh, and was anointed by the Spirit of God in the form of a dove at His baptism in the running water of the
When the man returns, he offers a more costly sacrifice – the lambs. He offered the birds as a guilt offering, the lambs as a sin offering. This speaks to our need of a double-cure. We need cleansing because we are sinners by nature, and because we sin in practice. The blood of Christ is our double-cure, cleansing us of the guilt of our fallenness and forgiving us of the sins we commit. The blood of the lamb is applied to the ear lobe, a picture of our ability in Christ to receive the word of God. It is applied to the right thumb, indicating our new ability to do the work of God. Then it is applied to the toe, symbolizing our freedom to walk in the ways of God. And then the blood is sealed with the oil, an indication of the Spirit’s enabling us to do all of this for the glory of God. Then the oil is poured over his head, a picture of the need for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
What a powerful testimony this ceremony is to the life-changing power of Christ! What a vivid picture for us, not only of what He could do for the leper, but what He has come to do for all of us sinners by being our ultimate sacrifice for reconciliation with God. Now, we do not know if the formerly-leprous man did all of this as Jesus commanded. We know that he did disobey Christ in that v45 says he went out and began to proclaim it freely, with the result that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city. But that didn’t stop those who were desperately seeking the hope Christ offers from coming to Him. Even though He remained out in the unpopulated areas, the people were coming to Him from everywhere.
I find it interesting that in that day, Jesus commanded silence, but almost always there was disobedience in that those people went and told it anyway. Christ is no loner commanding silence. The Great Commission has ordered us to go and make disciples of all nations, to preach the gospel to all creation, to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins, and to be Christ’s witnesses. But even though the command has changed, the result has not. We are still guilty of disobeying it. When Christ ordered silence, the people spoke. Now He commands us to speak, and we are silent. But the world is full of those who need to hear: those who are afflicted, not with the leprosy of the skin but the leprosy of the soul. Just as this man’s disorder was decaying his body from the inside out, so sin has radically affected all of humanity. It is destroying lives as it produces its death radiating outwardly from the core of our being. But Christ has been moved with compassion in response to our condition. He has reached out to touch us in our leprous state by taking on human flesh, identifying Himself with our own condition, and carrying our sins to
[1] James R. Edwards, The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to Mark (
[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew (Volume 1, Revised Edition),
[3] Cited in Ibid.
[4] Personal class notes, Dr. Bruce Little, The Problem of Evil, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary,
[5] Kenneth Hagin, How to Write Your Own Ticket With God,
[6] Barclay, 296.
No comments:
Post a Comment