Jesus and a Leper
Part 2
6th October 2012
Last time, we started looking at:
Matthew 8v2-4
A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured
of his leprosy.
Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the
gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."
We saw that the leper, an outcast, came to Jesus and worshipped Him, and Jesus welcomed him, though the rest of society would not.
The leper said something to Jesus that's absolutely true, and yet not believed by huge numbers of people. He said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean". In the leper's mind, there was no doubt that Jesus could heal Him. The only question was, did Jesus want to heal him?
Jesus is Lord of Heaven and Earth. He can do anything He wants. Of course He can. But we know from experience that Jesus doesn't heal everybody of everything. On the other hand, we know that Jesus is good. He loves us - leper and healthy, clean and unclean, he loves us. He wants to help us, but not necessarily in the way we would choose.
We can be so quick to criticise God, saying "well, I think God should do this!" or "How can you Christians worship God when there's so much suffering in the world?". Who do we think we are? Why do we imagine that we have the right to criticise God? Do we really think we know better than He does?
The leper called Jesus "Lord", quite rightly. If we acknowledge Jesus as Lord, then we also acknowledge that it's not for us to tell him what to do.
I believe that God wants to help and heal and restore every one of us. But he wants to do it His way. And being God, he has that right. And being all-wise, he knows what's best. Whenever we come and worship Him, He wants to do something for us. But we don't always know what.
And Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. He said "I am willing", "Be clean!" and Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. Don't we all want a touch from Jesus?
Jesus didn't need to touch the leper in order to heal him. He could just as easily have healed him from a distance, as he did for the centurion's servant later in the same chapter. But he reached out and touched him. He did this to heal something far more profound than leprosy. At the moment that Jesus touched him, Jesus, God the Son, became unclean. He chose to touch someone that was untouchable. He entered into the leper's world, and life, and pain, and rejection. He identified with the leper. The leper wouldn't have been touched by anyone else, probably for years.
Who would want to touch a leper, with his deformed hands and face, with his wield, hard, shiny skin, with the possibility of catching his disease? Jesus would!
And if you feel like an outsider, if you feel untouchable because of your past, or because of your sin, or because of what you look like, then Jesus wants to touch you. He wants to stand with you, to identify Himself with you.
That's why He came to Earth - to identify Himself with us. And He shared our moral uncleanness, just as He shared the leper's physical uncleanness:
Isaiah 53:4-5
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by
him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us
peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Jesus said He was willing to heal the leper, and the leper was cured immediately. Jesus can do anything He wants to do.
The Greek word for "cured" really means "cleansed". Are you aware of a need to be cleansed? If you come to Jesus, and worship Him, and ask Him, then He will reach our and touch you, and cleanse you.