Luke 5:12 - 16
12 While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.[b] And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” 13 And Jesus[c] stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” 15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. Why did Jesus touch the man? He would become unclean.
2. Why did Jesus charge the man not to tell anyone?
3. How did the report spread even more? Did Jesus count on that happening?
4. Why did Jesus need to withdraw?
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary says:
ReplyDeleteThis is probably on the edge of the city because lepers were shunned in Jesus' day and thus were not generally seen inside the cities.
What is important to note is that leprosy, or Hansen's disease as it is better know today (after the man who diagnosed its cause), is not a rotting infection as is commonly thought, nor are its horrible outward physical deformities imposed by the disease. the disfigurement associated with Hansen's disease comes solely because the body's warning system of pain is destroyed. The disease acts as an anesthetic, bringing numbness to the extremities as well as to the ears, eyes, and nose. The devastation that follows comes from such incidents as reaching one's hand into a charcoal fire to retrieve a dropped potato, or washing one's face with scalding water, or gripping a tool so tightly that the hands become traumatized and eventually stumplike. In Third-World countries, vermin sometimes chew on sleeping lepers. The poor man in our story had not been able to feel for years, and his body was full of leprosy, mutilated from head to foot, rotten, stinking, repulsive.
Anyone familiar with the Law of Moses would have quickly seen the impropriety of this scene
Leviticus 13:45, 46+ (cf Nu 5:2-4, 12:14, 15, 2 Ki 7:3) “As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered (UNCOMBED), 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.
Hughes adds "We can hardly imagine the humiliation and isolation of this leper's life. He was ostracized from society because it was thought at that time that leprosy was highly contagious (which it is not). . . ."
Jesus knew the Law of Moses and yet He does not chastise this man for (1) approaching Him (recall the 10 lepers "stood at a distance" - Lk 17:12) and (2) not crying out "Unclean! Unclean!" Jesus saw the man's heart and his intent, not his scaly disgusting rash! And Jesus looks at you and I that same way -- at our heart, always looking for a heart of loving obedience (empowered by the Spirit).
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteBock adds that "lepra appears to be a broad term for a whole series of skin diseases, rather than referring just to Hansen's Disease"
William Barclay - “In Palestine there were two kinds of leprosy. There was one which was rather like a very bad skin disease, and it was the less serious of the two. There was the one in which the disease, starting from a small spot, ate away the flesh until the wretched sufferer was left with only the stump of a hand or a leg. It was literally a living death.”
Guzik on leprosy - The Jews thought two things about a leper: (1) you are the walking dead and (2) you deserve this because this is the punishment of God against you. Jewish custom said that you should not even greet a leper. Custom said you had to stay six feet (two meters) from a leper. If the wind blew toward a person from a leper, they had to keep 150 feet (45 meters) away. One Rabbi bragged that he would not even buy an egg on a street where he saw a leper, and another boasted that he threw rocks at lepers to keep them far from him. One other Rabbi didn’t even allow a leper to wash his face. The only thing more defiling than contact with a leper was contact with a dead body. For these reasons leprosy was considered a picture of sin and its effects. It was a contagious, debilitating disease that corrupts its victim and makes him essentially dead while alive. Therefore society and religious people scorned lepers. Rabbis especially despised them (Enduring Word Bible Commentary)
He did not doubt Jesus could but rather if He would. It was not a question of Jesus capability but willingness.
Jesus did not consider this distinction between clean and unclean valid. A person's outward condition did not make one unclean; rather that which proceeds from the heart determines one's standing before God (Mark 7:1-23; compare Acts 10:9-16). Therefore, Jesus did not hesitate about touching lepers (Mark 1:40-45) and even commanded His disciples to cleanse lepers (Matthew 10:8).
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteJesus touched an untouchable! The Clean One becomes ceremonially unclean! It is a poignant picture of how Jesus was made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Cor 5:21+) Amazing grace indeed! He could have simply spoken the word, but the touch emphasizes Jesus' great compassion for all who feel ostracized and isolated. We are never too defiled or too far from His healing touch!
it is of the very essence of Christianity to touch the untouchable, to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable. Jesus did—and so must we.
When Jesus heals, His healing is 100% and immediate. Watch out for charlatans who claim to have a gift of healing and are unable to heal immediately like Jesus.
To the people of Israel, leprosy was not simply a fatal physical illness. Leprosy was seen as divine judgment for sin—a physical disease with spiritual roots. Since the cause of the disease was considered spiritual, the priest diagnosed the illness and, if the person was stricken with leprosy, prescribed the appropriate verdict: Isolation from family, home, community, and the corporate religious life of the nation. Not only did the Rabbi from Nazareth cleanse the man of his disease, but also by touching him He welcomed him back into the community.
Of all diseases, leprosy is the only one singled out by the law of Moses and linked with sin. It’s not that having leprosy was sinful, nor was it the result of sin. Rather, the disease was seen as a graphic symbol of sin. If we could see sin, it would look something like leprosy.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteMark records his disobedience "But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere." (Mark 1:45+).
esus instructed the man not to reveal who had healed him, but the cleansed leper became an enthusiastic witness for the Lord. (Jesus commands us to tell everybody, and we keep quiet!) Because of this witness, great multitudes came to Jesus for help, and He graciously ministered to them. But Jesus was not impressed by these great crowds, for He knew that most of the people wanted only His healing power and not His salvation. He often left the crowds and slipped away into a quiet place to pray and seek the Father’s help. That’s a good example for all of God’s servants to follow.
So far as the record goes, this incident in all 3 synoptic Gospels is the first time that a cleansed leper would have gone to the priest in the manner prescribed by Moses. Jesus full of mercy would give the priests another chance and this time would send not one healed leper but ten cleansed lepers to the priests (Read Lk 17:12-19+) Surely this would break through their hardness of heart! But it was not to be!
Arnold Fruchtenbaum writes that "Although the priesthood had all these detailed instructions as to how they were to respond in the case of a healed leper, they never had the opportunity to put these instructions into effect, because from the time the Mosaic Law was given, no Jew was ever healed of leprosy. As a result, it was taught by the rabbis that only the Messiah would be able to heal a Jewish leper." Indeed, to the rabbis the cure of a leper was as difficult as raising a person from the dead.
MacArthur explains that "The process by which a cleansed leper was readmitted to society involved going to the temple for an examination by a priest, shaving, bathing, washing his clothes, offering multiple animal sacrifices, along with an offering of grain and oil (Lev. 14:1–20). The entire procedure lasted for eight days (Lev. 14:10)."
MacArthur adds that "If he obeyed and went to recount to the priests how Jesus had healed him, it would be a powerful testimony to them that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and Son of God. This testimony would be either convincing to the priests so that they would acknowledge the claims of Christ, or if they rejected Him self-indicting, since they had personally examined the miraculously healed leper."
given such a startlingly bright divine light, we can begin to grasp the depth of their hatred of God and hardness of heart. Religion can be a deadly thing and take you straight to the Lake of fire!
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteArnold Fruchtenbaum has an interesting note on leprosy in his article entitled "The Three Messianic Miracles".... Some time prior to the coming of Yeshua (Jesus), the ancient rabbis separated miracles into two categories. First were those miracles anyone would be able to perform if they were empowered by the Spirit of God to do so. The second category of miracles were called "messianic miracles," which were miracles only the Messiah would be able to perform. Yeshua did miracles in both categories: general miracles and also messianic miracles. So because of the rabbinic teaching that certain miracles would be reserved only for the Messiah to do, whenever He performed a messianic miracle it created a different type of reaction than when He performed other types of miracles.
The first messianic miracle was the healing of a leper....From the time the Mosaic Law was completed, there was no record of any Jew who had been healed of leprosy.
Leprosy was the one disease that was left out of rabbinic cures; there was no cure for leprosy whatsoever. Yet Leviticus 13-14 gave the Levitical Priesthood detailed instructions as to what they were to do in case a leper was healed. On the day that a leper approached the priesthood and said, "I was a leper but now I have been healed," the priesthood was to give an initial offering of two birds. For the next seven days, they were to investigate intensively the situation to determine three things. First, was the person really a leper? Second, if he was a real leper, was he really cured of his leprosy? Third, if he was truly cured of his leprosy, what were the circumstances of the healing? If after seven days of investigation they were firmly convinced that the man had been a leper, had been healed of his leprosy, and the circumstances were proper, then, on the eighth day there would be a lengthy series of offerings.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-5-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteJesus "response (to the large crowds reflecting growing popularity) was not to rest on popular approval but to renew His dependence on His Father by praying in a solitary place."
And one temptation in context would be to yield to the affirmation by the crowds, the "idol" of popularity.
that he needed fresh power, that as the servant of God he must wait upon God for fresh power for his great life-work. We should have said, “We must seize this golden opportunity of publishing our message. But our Saviour did not wish for fame, he cared nothing about excitement and popularity; so “he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” for more of that real power which touches the hearts of men so as to save them, caring nothing for that power which merely attracts a crowd, and excites momentary attention. O servant of God, when thou art succeeding best in thy service, imitate thy Lord, withdraw thyself and pray!
Jesus was fully God, yet He was fully man. As a man, His power, wisdom, and grace flowed not from His divine nature but from His utter dependence on God. “The Son can do nothing of Himself,” He said (John 5:19). How much did Jesus do apart from God? Nothing!
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2017/04/mark-135-45-35-very-early-in-morning.html says:
ReplyDeleteAnthropologists carefully distinguish between disease -- a biomedical malfunction afflicting an organism -- and illness -- a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost. Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one. It is attributed to social, not physical, causes. Thus sin and sickness go together. Illness is a matter of deviance from cultural norms and values.
Freeing a person from demons, therefore, implied not only exorcising the demon but restoring that person to a meaningful place in the community as well.
This is a long introduction to help explain the fact that Peter's mother-in-law, immediately after being healed, was serving (diakoneo) them.
Peter's mother-in-law lies wracked with fever. She cannot fulfill the role of preparing and serving a meal to the guests, which would have fallen to her as the senior woman in the household. Jesus' healing restores her to her social position within the household.
An observation about all of these healings in the first chapter of Mark is that faith is never mentioned -- not until 2:5
What is so enticing about "going back" is all the successes back in Capernaum. Miracles were happening. People were being cured. The entire city was at the door. There has been no opposition to Jesus and his ministry. Who wouldn't want to continue such "successes" in ministry. Who of us clergy wouldn't wish to have everyone in town fighting to get into the church?
Congregations need to live in the tension of the eternal sameness of Jesus Christ and God's power which is always leading us into something new. As I noted earlier, the Greek word aphiemi suggests leaving the past behind in order to enter into a new future. It's easy to leave the past when it is demonic, evil, sickly, full of failures; but leaving a successful past behind in order to move ahead (like the first disciples leaving their businesses and families or Paul leaving behind his good, upright, moral, life) is much more difficult.
My 2 cents on why Jesus left:
I think it behooves us to watch carefully how Jesus handled a successful ministry. We have a tendency to want the circus - to attract crowds of people. It is at that point Jesus usually leaves. Why?
I believe that it because when a group gets too large, it loses it's effectiveness. Too big of organization loses people in the shuffle. As time goes on, you have a growing percentage of people who become uninvolved. Uninvolved people in a group of believers grow to be toxic to the group. Instead of looking to worship with the group, they instead look to see how the organization can serve them - and when it doesn't do the job (for which it's not intended to), they start to criticize, gossip, and ultimately tear down the church/organization.
Jesus focused on His Twelve. Although His mission was to preach the good news, He didn't stick around very long after. He did spend a lot of time with His disciples to teach them how to disciple others.
It's counter-intuitive to the way we think (like so many other things Jesus knew). We see the crowds come running, and we think that's our ministry. We will do anything to keep the crowds entertained. We will curtail our message in any way we can to keep them coming. Jesus recognized the crowds for what they were and left them.
Even the Apostles, after Jesus died, tended to do things the old human way. When the early church in Jerusalem grew large, God had to send persecution so that they would spread out.
Assuming that what I am saying has merit, it has a lot of implications for how we do ministry today. I am suggesting that we need to think about how Jesus reacted to "success", verses the way we react, and seek God's wisdom on how we can better follow His model.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2017/04/mark-135-45-35-very-early-in-morning.html continued:
ReplyDeleteAfter healing a man of leprosy (Mark 1:41-42), "Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 'See that you don't tell this to anyone...'" (Mark 1:43-44). To our way of thinking, it would seem that Jesus would want everyone to know about the miracle. But Jesus knew that publicity over such miracles might hinder His mission and divert public attention from His message. Mark records that this is exactly what happened. In this man’s excitement over his being miraculously healed, he disobeyed. As a result, Christ had to move His ministry away from the city and into the desert regions.
In addition, Christ, though he had cleansed the leper, still required him to be obedient to the law of the land — to go at once to the priest, and not to make delay by stopping to converse about his being healed. It was also possible that, if he did not go at once, evil-minded men would go before him and prejudice the priest and prevent his declaring the healing to be true because it was done by Jesus. It was of further importance that the priest should pronounce it to be a genuine cure, that there might be no prejudice among the Jews against its being a real miracle.
Finally, Jesus did not want people focusing on the miracles He performed, but rather the message He proclaimed and the death He was going to die. The same is true today. God would rather that we be focused on the healing miracle of salvation through Jesus Christ instead of focusing on other healings and/or miracles.
Questions and findings:
ReplyDelete1. Why did Jesus touch the man? He would become unclean.
Jesus is making multiple points by touching the unclean man:
a. He has mastery over everything. Nothing can make Him unclean.
b. He has compassion on a man who has not been touched in a long while. It really got the man's attention.
c. Jesus knew that clean and unclean is a matter of the heart, and not a matter of externals.
d. It shows us the love He has for us. We were unclean just like the leper, yet Jesus was/is willing to come down and live among us, touching us, and cleansing us.
2. Why did Jesus charge the man not to tell anyone?
There's a few reasons for this:
a. He didn't want attention drawn to His miracles, but His message.
b. He wanted this man to be a testimony to the priests, by first showing them this incredible miracle that they have never seen before. The priests would see it and seek for the cure. If they knew this was of Jesus, they would immediately harden their hearts.
c. Similarly, Jesus wanted the man to be declared clean. If the priests knew who did this, they may not want to declare the man clean just to spite and deny Jesus.
3. How did the report spread even more? Did Jesus count on that happening?
Jesus may have predicted that this would happen, but he certainly didn't want it to happen. People love a circus. They will gather from all around to see one. Jesus was not a circus, but was made into one. This circus mentality in the people closed their ears to His message. They were no longer able to hear.
4. Why did Jesus need to withdraw?
To take the circus away from people. He needed them to hear His message. If He withdrew, the people would have to come to Him in the wilderness, and maybe then, hear His message.