Read Mark 1:40-45
A few thoughts…..
1.vs 40- a man with leprosy came to Jesus! Notice this man’s name was not mentioned! He was defined by his illness!! (Eg. John 8:3- the woman caught in adultery! Mark 5:25- woman subject to bleeding)
DO WE DEFINE PEOPLE BY THEIR ILLNESS OR PAST MISTAKES? WHOM ARE WE TEMPTED TO LABEL? (How often do we label people based on their jobs? (Eg. Acts 10:1,6- Cornelius the centurion, Simon the tanner!)
How often do we label/define people as drug addict, or ex-con and hold them by their illness or past mistakes?
WILL WE LEARN TO INSTEAD SEE THE POTENTIAL GOD SEES IN PEOPLE? In Mark 5:25,34 Jesus calls the woman subject to bleeding, daughter. She goes from an unknown, unnamed woman defined by her illness to becoming a daughter of the God of the universe! In Judges 6:11-12 God chose to call Gideon ‘mighty warrior’ while he was still hiding in the wine press threshing the wheat from fear of the Midianites. God called Gideon not as he was in that moment but by the potential He saw Gideon would become!!
Therefore choose to see the potential that God sees in people!! Will we choose to see that “drug addict” as that potential “mighty man or woman of Jesus” and speak that potential over them?
vs 40- this man had leprosy. According to Leviticus 13:45-46 a leper had to shout out ‘UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN’ and be seperate from society!! They were considered unclean and defiled!!
2.WHAT WAS THIS LEPER WILLING TO DO?
a)vs 40- come to Jesus! He was willing to push through society’s expectations and come to Jesus!! He was willing to look foolish and be despised by the crowd! This act of coming to Jesus could have gotten him stoned as well!! Therefore he was willing to risk potential death to come to Jesus!
b)He came to Jesus ON HIS KNEES and called Him LORD (Matthew 8:2)!! This shows an attitude of humility and worship!!
c)He came in FAITH (Mark 1:40)!! The leper said “If you are willing, you CAN MAKE ME CLEAN.”
He knew Jesus had the power to heal him and make him clean!! He only asked Jesus if He was willing!! (Contrast Mark 9:22 where the father of a demon-possessed boy questioned IF Jesus could heal his son!)
3.vs 41- Jesus was filled with COMPASSION!! (Matthew 9:36, Luke 10:33, Matthew 14:14, 15:32 18:27) The Word is ‘splagchnizomai’ which can mean moved from the bowels!! In the majority of cases where this word is used, it was usually followed by a RESPONSE! This tells us that Compassion is only compassion if we follow it with a response!! Otherwise it is just emotion!
DO WE HAVE THE SAME COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE, JESUS HAD?
Normally when a person touched a leper, it would make them unclean!! But when Jesus touched this leper, it made the leper clean!!
4.vs 43-44 Q. WHY DIDN’T JESUS WANT THIS MAN TO TELL ANYONE? (Luke 4:43-44) The answer could be because Jesus’ primary purpose was to preach the gospel, not physically heal all people!!) Also we see from vs 45 that it impeded Jesus from being able to minister in this town.
Notice also that Jesus had a particular harvest field this man was meant to preach and testify to!! He was meant to testify to the priests!! DON’T NEGLECT THE HARVEST JESUS HAS CALLED YOU TO! So many of us as Christians sometimes want to go half way across the world to places like Africa on mission and yet neglect the Harvest field Jesus has given us to share His gospel in our own neighbourhoods and sporting teams and workplaces!!
(Acts 16:6) We don’t always see the bigger picture of why Jesus doesn’t want us to do certain things! But will we trust that He knows the bigger picture!!
(In Leviticus 14 we are told there are certain ceremonies the priest must carry out in response to a person who had been healed from leprosy! It seems in the OT there were only 2 reported healings from leprosy. One was Miriam in Numbers 12:10-15 and a second was Naaman in 2 Kings 5. But in both these cases there was no mention of that ceremony being done by the priests. So potentially, this would be the first time these priests would have to carry out this ceremony!! And what a witness and testimony this would be to the power of Jesus!!
5.vs 45- the result of this man’s disobedience was that Jesus could no longer enter any of those towns but had to stay outside, and in lonely places! JESUS TOOK THE LEPERS PLACE!! This was where lepers were meant to stay- outside the town, in lonely isolated places (Leviticus 13:46)! (2 Corinthians 5:21- Jesus became sin for us, so we could become the righteousness of God!) JESUS TOOK OUR PLACE!
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