Mark 1: Background: What is leprosy:

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1 1 Mark 1:40-45 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, If you will, you can make me clean. 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will; be clean. 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them. 45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. Today I would like to do something a little bit different. Instead of doing a typical multi point sermon such as point 1, point 2, point 3 I would like to paint an overall picture of what is happening in this text. I d like to give you the background of why this is socially significant and perhaps we can learn something about Jesus character from it. Background: What is leprosy: Leprosy is also called Hansen s disease. It is a very disfiguring disease. It can cause you to lose the ability to feel pain and because of that you can lose extremities due to repeated injuries or infection due to unnoticed wounds. It can spread by getting sneezed or coughed on. During Biblical times, many skin diseases were called leprosy. This includes what we today call leprosy as well as many others. They couldn t diagnose or distinguish between the various types of skin diseases, so they were all treated the same based on the laws handed down by God to Moses. We can read about these laws in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14. In fact, turn there. We won t read them all now, but I encourage you to do so on your own. Look at chapters 13 and 14. In my Bible it s about four and a half pages of rules, just about skin diseases. So for something to take up over four whole pages in the Bible, it s a pretty big deal. Chapter 12 is about childbirth and look how small that is compared to skin diseases. Childbirth only takes up eight verses. I don t know about you, but any woman that I ve talked to who have given birth will tell you that it is a very big deal.

2 2 Just for the priest to determine if you had leprosy or not could take up to two weeks. They would put you in isolation for that time. You couldn t be with anybody for up to two hole weeks. If they did find you to have leprosy, it was almost a death sentence. Socially it was a death sentence for sure. Once they determined you were a leper, you were kicked out of society. You had to leave your house, the town, your friends and even your family. You went outside of the city and lived with the other lepers. Since you may not have had the exact same disease as the rest of the sick people, you would contract whatever they had as well. In Leviticus 13:45-46 we can read what lepers had to do for the rest of their lives. Leviticus 13: The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, Unclean, unclean. 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. You weren't even allowed to comb your hair. You had to purposely wear torn clothes. Why do you think they had to cover their upper lip? It wasn t just their lip that they were covering. They were covering their whole mouth from the bottom up including their upper lip, like a mask. This was two fold I think. One is that it covered their mouth so that the disease wouldn t spread so easily. They wouldn t cough or sneeze on people. Now at the time, they didn t realize this, but it was a way for God to protect them from spreading disease. The second thing this did was to make it very clear to everyone else to stay far away. The sick person had to cry out Unclean! Unclean! for all to hear. There was no keeping your illness a secret back then. If you were sick, you were required by law to make sure that everyone else knew it. Now days we have HIPAA laws. We treat medical conditions with a lot of secrecy and privacy. That was not the case back then. Everyone knew that you had a disease and it was your job to make sure they all avoided you. What do you think this did to your social life? How do you think people treated you when they saw or heard you coming? Nobody wanted to be anywhere near you! Because if they touched you, they too would become unclean and have to wash and be excluded from society until evening. And if they happened to catch whatever it was that you had,

3 3 they would suffer the same fate as you. They would be a literal outcast from society, treated as a monster for the rest of their lives. There was no cure for these diseases. Even though God provided a procedure and rules for being re-accepted back into society if you were cured, it basically never happened. That is why they treated lepers as being cursed by God. It was almost a fate worse than death. You were alive, but you were treated horribly by everyone while you lived in the worst of conditions and your body succumbed to the pain and disease until you eventually died all alone. You can see now why it was such a big deal to be cured from this fate. It was more than just being cured from a disease. It was having your life restored back to you. Getting your home and your family back. How Does Jesus Treat Him? When this man sees Jesus what does he do? Does he keep is distance and call out Unclean! Unclean!? No, he came running right up to Jesus and fell on the ground before him. This man is breaking the law. Now anybody else would have turned and ran away as fast as they could, but what does Jesus do? He reaches out and touches him! What does that show us about Jesus? Well it actually shows us a couple of things about Jesus. 1. First is that this man s uncleanliness doesn t affect Jesus. According to Jewish law, Jesus should now be unclean, but that s not the case. In fact with Jesus, it s just the opposite. Jesus imparts his cleanliness to the unclean leper. We have another word here that I need to take a minute to define. The word is imputed. This is another one of those words that gets used by preachers and we kind of wonder what does that mean. Well here in this story we see a good example of it. The man was unclean, but Jesus touched him and transferred his cleanliness to the unclean man. A basic definition of imputed could be To put something in another person s account. We want to understand this word because it affects how we understand the work on the cross. Now I don t want to get hung up on the difference between imputed and

4 4 imparted, but I do want us to understand this concept. Basically it was Christ s perfection that was given to us. Just like the leper was cleansed from his disease by Christ s touch, we are cleansed from sin by Christ s death on the cross. Christ lead the perfect life. He fulfilled all of the law, and he paid for all of our sins. He then takes all of that and gives it us. He credits it to us. He puts it into our bank account. When God the father looks at us, he sees all the work that Christ has done for us. That is the basics of imputed. The story of the man with leprosy is an example of that. Christ s cleanliness or perfection is transferred to the leper. 2. The second thing that we see from this passage is that Jesus has compassion. Verse 41 says: 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will; be clean. That is a compassionate act. Like when a friend comes to you with some bad news, you may put put your hand and rest it on their shoulder as comfort to them. It indicates that we are participating in their sorrow. And as we just saw, Christ does participate with this man and he heals him. Some of you may be reading out of the NIV and while I do like that translation, I think that it mis-conveys the emotion of Jesus here. The ESV version states that Jesus was moved with pity. The KJV says moved with compassion But the NIV translates it that Jesus was indignant and that gives a totally different feel to the passage. So I thought that I would explain why the NIV chose those words. The text could actually be translated either way, it is a statement that shows Jesus was filled with emotion. The translators of the NIV combined the emotion of verse 41 with verse 43 where Jesus sternly warns the man not to tell anyone. They thought that since Jesus sternly talks to the man, that Jesus must have been upset, but I don t think that is the case at all. We never see Jesus being upset with someone for suffering. He is always compassionate to people who humble themselves before him. The Bible portrays Jesus

5 5 as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Who puts the needs of the sheep before his own needs. We can see just a few examples of this in the three passages below. Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Luke 7:13 (When Jesus brings the widow s son back to life) When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, "Do not weep." Matthew 15:32 And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, "I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way." Jesus had true compassion for people and it caused him to act. Compassion will create action. This is more than just feeling sorry for someone. We can feel sorry for someone and still not do anything to help them. Compassion on the other hand drives us to act, and that is what we see with Jesus. When we have compassion, we are showing God s love to others. God uses our compassion toward others to help soften their hearts to him. We have compassion on people and help them in Jesus name. This gives glory to God. We should also note that it was Jesus who first had compassion on us. We were lost sinners destined for hell. Christ loved us enough to come to earth and heal us. Not only did he heal many sick people while he was here such as this leper, but he died on the cross and paid for all of our sins. He healed our souls for eternity. And he did this while we hated him. But now that he has shown us love, we return it back to him. 1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. As you can see, God had compassion on us, and now we can return it to him by having compassion for others.

6 6 Proof of Healing We also see in verse 44, Jesus tells him to go offer the sacrifices that were required by Moses for the cleansing of leprosy. Jesus tells him to do this as proof of his being healed. This was for a number of reasons. First of all, everyone knew that this man was a leper. Once he was healed, he couldn t just change his clothes, comb his hair and walk back into town. There would be an uproar. He may even get stoned. If a man who was known to carry disease walked into a crowded market, you can only imagine the chaos. Some people would be running away while others would be yelling at him and throwing things to keep him back. No that wouldn t work, there was an orderly way to let this man come back into society and have the people reaccept him. This procedure is explained in Leviticus 14:1-20. It was a week long process and a big deal as well. It took two birds and three lambs to complete the ceremony plus some other supplies. I don t think that it happened very often either. We already mentioned that there was no known cures for these diseases. So the priests never got to practice them. Imagine how that would look. This man who is a known leper shows up to the priests and claims that he is healed. Can you imagine the looks and reaction of the priests? They would have all kinds of questions. The first and foremost question being How were you healed?, and the man would tell them that Jesus did it. So now the priests are faced with a delima. They didn t like Jesus or his teaching, but they are being forced to admit that he can heal people. They have to admit it because they are the ones who inspect the disease and then carry out the ceremony. They can t deny that he is healed. It is obvious. So now, by their actions they are being a witness to Christ and they don't really have a choice. It s no wonder that they wanted him dead. He was creating work for them and he was forcing them to acknowledge his power by their actions, even if they denied him with their mouths. Then, once they believed that he was in fact healed, they would have to dig up the instructions for the ceremony. Now if you read Leviticus 14:1-20, I don t know about you, but I could never remember all of that. I bet they had one priest holding the scroll and reading the instructions while a second one carried out the work. And everyone else watched. They didn t get to see this very often and it would be the talk of the town.

7 7 Guess what else they would be talking about? They would be talking about the man who healed him. They would be talking about Jesus. They would be giving glory to God even if they didn t like Jesus. This is the second thing that Jesus is referring to as proof. Jesus is proving his deity. He is proving that he is God. Other prophets have healed people in the past, but they did it in the name of God. Jesus is different. He is doing it in his own name. He says is verse 41 that I will. He makes it clear that he is doing this on his own power, because he is God. Next week we will look at this more closely when we get into Mark chapter 2. Strong Warning So let s talk about this strong warning that Jesus gives the man. sternly charged - ESV straitly charged him - KJV strictly warned him - NKV sent him away at once with a strong warning - NIV Why did Jesus speak so strongly to the man? Was it because Jesus was upset with him? No, it was because he knew the man would do what Jesus told him not to do. It s kind of like when your two year old is about to touch something that they know they are not supposed to. They reach up for it and look back at you to see what you are going to do. How do you speak to them at this time. Is it in your sweet and comforting voice? No, it is in your stern voice. You don t yell at them, but at the same time the tone of your voice is conveying that you are serious. And like a two year old, the man goes out and does what he was told not to do. In verse 45 we see that because this man disobeyed Jesus, that Jesus could no longer walk about freely. So many people were coming to him to be healed that he couldn't even enter town. Remember last week we talked about Jesus wanting to preach and teach the people, not just heal them. And now it was even harder for him to do that because of the number of people coming to him for personal gain instead of for true spiritual healing. Jesus knew that if everyone found out, his job to preach would be even harder. He knew this, and he knew that the man would disobey him. So if Jesus knew all this, why did he still heal the leper? Because Jesus had compassion on him. Because Jesus

8 8 loved him. Jesus knew that this man would tell everyone, but he healed him anyways. This goes to show Jesus compassion even more. Final Thoughts: As we look back on these last few lessons, there are a few things that come to mind as being overall themes. Certain ideas are recurring throughout these stories. This is part of us getting to know Christ, becoming familiar with his personality. Understanding how he would respond in a situation and why. One example is the condition of our hearts. How Jesus is more concerned with why we do something than he is about what we do. Another theme that we have seen multiple times is that it is more important to help peoples souls than their bodies. We talked about compassion today and how true compassion drives us to act. We see someone in need and we should feel driven to show God's love to them by helping them. But what is more important, to help their bodies or to help their souls? We see people whose souls are lost and suffering every day. They may look healthy and have plenty of money, but their souls are sick. Shouldn't we feel compassion for them and want want to help them with that sickness? Isn't that what Jesus was doing when he said, Let's move from here so I can preach the good news of God? Everyone wanted physical healing from him, but what he really had compassion for was their souls. He knew that it was more important to preach the truth and good news of God than it was to take away their sickness. So while it is good for us to help with peoples hunger and lack of clothing, it is more important that we share the good news of Christ with them. The helping of their physical needs can lead to that opportunity, but what good is it to feed them if we don't share the love of Christ at the same time. Without the love of Christ our actions are just good deeds. We may fill their bellies (which is a good thing), but we should really be trying to save them from hell. Christ was healing their bodies while he preached the good news of God. He was giving them the medicine that they needed to go to heaven. He was showing them how to join him in eternal glory. To bask in God s greatness for all eternity. Thanks to God s love for us and for his work on the cross, that is what we can now look forward to. That is our hope, and Christ is our Joy!