Just Another Day at the Office
Tom Shrader walks through Mark 1:21-46, examining three miracles that reveal Jesus' power over demons, disease, and leprosy as demonstrations of His authority and compassion. He draws out the distinction between knowing about God and truly knowing Him personally, using the demon's recognition of Jesus as a pointed illustration that correct theology without conversion falls short. The teaching closes with an extended application of leprosy as a picture of sin, calling unbelievers to repentance and urging believers to let gratitude — not duty — drive their service.
“For nearly 2,000 years, the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restlessness and fruitless yearnings.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2003/2004)
Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 49 min
Themes: authority of jesus, compassion, miracles, sin, repentance, gratitude, service, knowing god, new believer, struggling with duty over joy, feeling distant from god, seeker, young adult, mentor, questioning faith, serving out of obligation
Scripture: Mark 1:21-46, Mark 10:45, Matthew 5:21-44, Matthew 8:15, Luke 4:39, Luke 5:19, John 5:19, Luke 22:31, James 2:19, Colossians 4:2, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Leviticus 14
Theological Themes: christology, divine authority, soteriology, conversion, sanctification, spiritual warfare, demonology, grace
Full Transcript
Introduction: A Day in the Life of Christ
We are going to look at a study in the life of Christ, and I invite you to open your Bibles to Mark chapter 1. I've titled this message "Just Another Day at the Office" — a day in the life of Christ. I've provided some parallel passages you can turn to as you study on your own.
Let me remind you of the context. I'm going to use the word "intern." Jesus has just picked up four interns: Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They followed Him immediately. They stopped what they were doing, had a radical change in their lives, and became His interns. One of the things I was thinking about through all of this is that we can give a lot of head knowledge in training, but the most beneficial of all is seeing it and doing it. These guys have been interns for just a short period of time, and they are in for an extraordinary day.
Three Demonstrations of Power
Jesus is going to demonstrate His power in three ways. In verses 21 through 28, His power over demons. In verses 29 through 39, His power over disease. And in verses 40 through 46, His power over leprosy.
Now, when I say Jesus is going to teach, your mind — like mine — probably thinks of Him going to the synagogue, unrolling the scroll, reading it, and giving it sense. Or you may think of Him delivering something like the Sermon on the Mount, or speaking to the five thousand, or perhaps with a smaller group of a dozen people. When we think of teaching, we think of verbal communication — talking. But Jesus, in the day we are going to look at, is teaching through miracles.
Mark is an interesting gospel. As we go from gospel to gospel, it is important to remember what the author has in mind. Here is the key verse in this whole gospel, chapter 10, verse 45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, to give his life a ransom for many." As you look at the gospel of Mark, you see Jesus serving, and then you see the ultimate service — the ultimate sacrifice — as He dies on the cross. In Mark's gospel, he records more miracles than sermons. This book is preeminently a book of miracles.
And yet I want to suggest that Jesus is teaching through these miracles. In a sense, they are almost parables. Much like when He allows the blind man to see, there is a deeper truth — He comes to us in our spiritual blindness and opens our eyes so we can see.
Jesus Enters Capernaum
Verse 21 begins: "And they went into Capernaum." Let me put the map up for you. Most of you have maps in the back of your Bibles — I think you only look at them when the message is extraordinarily boring — but they are helpful, and there is a reason they are there. If you have a map of Palestine at the time of Jesus, you would see the Sea of Galilee far to the north. I made the point last week that all the spiritual giants were down in Judea and Jerusalem. Jesus goes up to the Galilee of the Gentiles, the area that the super-religious Jews looked down on. That is why, when Jesus comes on the scene, people are saying, "Can anything good come from Nazareth? You're not going to see the Messiah come from Galilee, are you?" And yet that is exactly where Jesus is.
Capernaum was a flourishing city in that day. It is now uninhabited, with some ruins remaining — likely in the place where the synagogue where Jesus taught once stood. So verse 21 tells us that immediately, as was His custom — the other gospel writers tell us this custom went back to when He was a little boy — He entered the synagogue and began to teach.
The Authority of His Teaching
"And they were amazed at His teaching." The word "amazed" literally means to strike with panic or shock. William Barclay uses the word "thunderstruck." His teaching carried a punch. What amazed them was this: He was teaching as one having authority, not like the scribes.
Here is how the scribes would teach. They would simply quote other people: one rabbi says this, but another rabbi says this, and another rabbi says this. Jesus said no — here is what I am saying to you. Keep your finger in the gospel of Mark and turn to Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount, and you will see this pattern clearly. Verse 21: "You have heard that the ancients were told" — in other words, you have heard all of this quotation, all of this going on. Verse 22: "But I say to you." Verse 27: "You have heard that it was said." Verse 28: "But I say to you." Verse 31: "It was said." Verse 32: "But I say to you." Verse 33: "Again, you have heard that the ancients were told." Verse 34: "But I say to you." Verse 38: "You have heard..."
The Authority of God's Word
Verse 39: "But I say to you." Verse 43: "You have heard it said." Verse 44: "But I say to you." Jesus is teaching in a way that literally strikes them with shock. They have never heard anything like this in their entire lives. It was real. It was vibrant. It was fresh. It was alive. It was God's Word.
That is what will happen when you or I teach, as long as we stay right here with this. At Priority Living, we teach a little differently. There we tend to go topical — eight weeks on sex, eight weeks on money, eight weeks on power, eight weeks on leadership. People who aren't Christians come in and say, "I never read the Bible. You're telling me that's what the Bible says?" Here we tend to go through a book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. I was finishing up a short series last Wednesday in the book of Ecclesiastes, and I literally made myself laugh the whole day. I would read an incredible verse and say, "Man, this is even better — look at this." Verse after verse just laid you open, and you said, "That's exactly right? This is the book."
Sometimes we underestimate this. This is the book that corrects all the other teaching. I was in a bookstore this week looking for a book — I am very secure in my manhood, which is why I am sharing this. I came across a book whose foreword was written by Katie Couric, and it was written by a woman, so it was a chick book. I read about twenty pages of it and it was really good. So I went to another bookstore — one I was already battling with because they had abandoned their biography section, which seems to me a fundamental error.
I walked in and said I was looking for a book. They asked for the title. I did not know. They asked for the author. I did not know that either. They told me that was going to make things a little hard. We finally worked through it, and I told them I knew it would be in the biography section if they had one. I described the book and the clerk said it would be in the women's health section. I had never visited the women's health section before. Ladies, you have a lot of issues — and a lot of problems — that I was not fully aware of until I spent time in that section.
The irony was not lost on me. Before I even asked for help, I had already been through the recovery section and the self-help section, and I was struck by the sheer volume of information out there. All of it, though, has to be put through this grid. That is my point.
The Sermon on the Mount as Life's Blueprint
The psychiatrist J.T. Fisher wrote this: "If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene, if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage, if you were to take the whole meat and none of the parsley, if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summary of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison." Now listen to this: "For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restlessness and fruitless yearnings. Here rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment."
That is what I am trying to say. This is the book of life, written by the Author. It is very important to grab hold of that. I came home one day and Haley was doing math. I am not a big math person — in fact I was not very helpful with homework. I would come home and ask if I could help, and she would say, "No, Dad, it's English." The next night I would ask again and she would say, "No, Dad, it's science." So apparently I was not much help with anything.
One evening Haley had papers spread all over with equations. I said, "Haley, when I was in school, all the answers to the math problems were in the back of the book. Are the answers in the back?" She said yes. I said, "Well, just go back there and get the answer." She said, "I want to understand how you get the answer." That had never occurred to me. I just thought you were trying to get them right and get out of there.
I am probably not the model student, but here is what I have learned about life: all the answers to life are right here in the book most of you already have in your lap. All of life is an open book test, and nobody cares if you look for the answer. In fact, they are going to call you smart and wise if you do. That sentence from Fisher is amazing: "For nearly two thousand years, the Christian world has been holding in its hand the complete answer to its restless, fruitless yearnings." Does that describe you tonight — restless? All this stuff, and still something is missing.
A Demon in the Synagogue
Jesus preaches and they are amazed. The four interns must have been thinking, "I wonder what this is going to be like. Do you think we will be able to preach like this?" Just then, verse 23: "There was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out." Here is a man who has a demon living in him. Matthew writes this — and I especially want us to see that this demonized man —
The Demon's Confession
The man was completely under the sway of evil. His personality had been damaged to the point that the demonic spirit usurped the core of his self and even utilized his voice. Jesus is preaching, and the Word is piercing, and the demon can't take it anymore and cries out.
He poses two questions in a statement: "What do we have to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth?" One scholar tells us this was a common Old Testament formula, roughly equivalent to saying, "You have no business with us yet. Get away. You haven't come to destroy us. Is that why you're here?" And then comes this statement worth pausing over: "I know who you are, the Holy One of God."
Jesus is teaching, the synagogue is filled with people, and so far the only one who has the theology right is the demon-possessed man. He is the only one who has spotted who Jesus truly is. That detail deserves a moment of reflection.
James puts it this way: "You believe in God, good, you do well. The demons believe and shudder." There is a massive difference between knowing about God and knowing God, and as simple and familiar as that distinction may sound, it is critically important. You can have all the right theology in the world, but if you haven't come to Christ in repentance and faith, if you don't believe in Him, if you haven't confessed Him with your mouth and believed in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you are not a Christian.
You can pass every test. You can be on Bible Jeopardy time after time. Since coming to faith in March of 1980 — almost twenty-five years ago — and especially since entering ministry, dozens of men have crossed my path who know this material far better than I do, and they are not shy about letting me know it. They email, they argue, they slice and dice the text, they've been through seminary, they have the Greek and the Hebrew — they have everything except one thing: they have never been converted. They know an enormous amount about God, but they do not know Him.
Knowing About Someone Is Not Knowing Them
Here is a simple illustration. Everyone in this room knows a great deal about George W. Bush, John Kerry, and Ralph Nader. We know a lot about these men, but none of us actually know them. Nobody can pick up the phone and say, "Hey, George, how's it going?" We know about him. That is the difference.
You can attend church regularly, be around the ministry week after week, and know this material cold — and still not be converted. There are people in our own ministry exactly like that, and they will tell you themselves they are not converted, even as they know the Bible inside and out. Knowing about God does not mean you know God.
Jesus Confronts the Unclean Spirit
Picture the scene. Everyone is excited because Jesus has come to town. The little synagogue is packed beyond capacity. Jesus stands up and preaches, and the people are thunderstruck. Then, in the middle of it all, this demon-possessed man cries out and challenges Jesus — and you can imagine the silence that followed. What is He going to do? What is He going to say? How is He going to handle this?
There is no need to wonder. In verse 25, Jesus rebukes the man with two commands: "Be quiet" — literally, be muzzled — and "Come out of him." At that the man was thrown into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice, and it came out of him. No words from the spirit are recorded; it may have been nothing more than a howl.
Verse 27 gives us the expected reaction: they were amazed. The English word is the same as in verse 22, but slightly different in the Greek — this one means to be astonished, frightened, or even terrified. They began debating among themselves: "What is this? A new teaching with authority." They were astonished on two fronts — amazed by His teaching, and amazed that He commands unclean spirits and they obey Him. They are asking who He is and what is going on, but no conclusion is reached at this point.
Verse 28 follows predictably: immediately the news about Jesus spread everywhere into the surrounding areas of Galilee. It did not spread over months or weeks or even days, but over hours — maybe minutes — carried as fast as people's feet could take them. Everything happening in Jesus' ministry is spreading like wildfire.
A Sabbath Meal and a Sick Mother-in-Law
That is the end of the first of the three scenes. The second scene begins in verse 29. Notice, by the way, that the word "immediately" appears constantly throughout this passage. Mark writes an action gospel — things are moving along, boom, boom, boom. His primary source was likely Peter, so it is easy to imagine everything moving at a rapid pace around him.
Immediately after they came out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. It was customary to eat the main meal right after synagogue on the Sabbath, so this would have been around the sixth hour — around noon. They are going to Peter's house to eat, and Peter's expectation is that his mother-in-law has prepared the dinner.
But something has come up. Verse 30 notes, first, that if Simon Peter had a mother-in-law, you would naturally conclude he also had a wife. Simon's mother-in-law was lying sick with a fever, and immediately they spoke to Jesus about her. She is not gravely ill. This is not a life-threatening situation. She is, however, most likely incapacitated in the way all of us understand — that condition where you ache everywhere and cannot do anything.
The Healing of Peter's Mother-in-Law
She's sick. Again, all the guys are going over there to eat, hungry. Jesus came to her and raised her up, taking her by the hand, and the fever left her, and she waited on them. I want you to see two things. Look at the healing. Let me provide for you the parallel passages. Luke 4:39 says this: "And standing over her, he rebuked the fever, and it left her, and she immediately arose and waited on them." Matthew 8:15 says this: "And he touched her and the fever left her, and she arose and waited on him."
So there are the parallel passages as you look at them. You have a composite picture here. You see Christ standing close to her bed, taking her by the hand, rebuking the fever, gently raising her up. We probably have to read into the text that Peter and the others are standing there wide-eyed. Jesus heals here by simply a touch.
As we work our way through the Gospels, we will see Jesus heal in so many different ways. One of the authors writes this: "The reasons for the different ways in which He healed rested on the mental and moral condition of the people themselves and what He wanted to communicate. Here He's reaching down, taking a dear woman by the hand was simply a natural instinctive action springing from Jesus' sympathetic love."
He healed her. Again, not gravely ill — and I laugh when I say it. If we're going to put it on the miracle scale, it falls as not a big miracle, but I don't know how you can call any reversal of the roles of nature a small miracle.
Responding with a Grateful Heart
Look at her response. She waited on them. She springs up, she responds, she begins to serve. When we talk about service, if your motivation for service is anything other than thanksgiving, you're going to wear out. That is her motivation. She's responding. She's so grateful. I can see her going up to Peter and saying, "Feel my forehead. I was burning up just a second ago. Feel it. Everything's gone. I've been healed. It's extraordinary. What can I do to serve you?"
She's not trying to repay Him. She's not moving out of responsibility or obligation or duty. If you're going to serve or volunteer out of that sense, you're going to crash and burn before long. The motivation here is that she's responding out of a grateful heart, a thankful heart.
When you sit and understand what Jesus has really done — if you're here tonight and you were a sinner, He healed you spiritually. All physical healing is temporary. We get all excited about physical healing, but even in this case, all these people who are healed eventually die. Physical healing is not nearly as significant as spiritual healing, not nearly as significant as a heart that was stone and is now a heart of flesh, a heart that hated God and now loves Him. There ought to be thanksgiving that oozes out of us. "Come, learn, and serve" should be a lot more than just words on a page. It expresses the desire of our heart.
A Christmas Lesson in Thanksgiving
When the kids were small, it used to drive me nuts at Christmas. We'd stack all the gifts around and they'd just rip them open. They'd rip one open and say, "Oh, wow, thanks," then rip the next one, "Oh, wow, thanks," then the next one, "Oh, wow, thanks." It used to bug me. I'd say to Susan, "That bugs me so much," and she would say, "Tom, they're three. They don't understand." I'd think, they ought to understand. You'd think they'd get it.
So one Christmas day, we had gone through this drill and I'm sitting there by myself after all the excitement settled in — the girls had gone across the street, Susan was cooking or doing something — and I'm sitting there laughing to myself. And I said, "I'll bet that's what I'm like with God." I'm ripping open a great house — wow. A great life, great kids, health, a great job — you got anything else? Yeah, there are even bigger ones for later. And all the while, there's no thanksgiving.
When there's no thanksgiving, I'm missing the key motivator in all my life. Not to repay Him, not obligation, not duty — but: You've done so much, I'm so grateful, how can I serve?
The Whole City Gathers at the Door
Verse 32: "And when evening came, after the sun had set, they began bringing to Him all who were ill and those who were demon-possessed. And the whole city gathered at the door." The law said that the Sabbath ended when three stars appeared in the sky. So the evening comes, and they're watching — there's one, there's two, there's three — grab them. They take everybody and race over to where Jesus is staying.
Verse 34: "And He healed many who were ill with various diseases, and He cast out many demons, and He was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who He was." Imagine the scene. Here is this flock of humanity heading for Peter's house — all sorts of various diseases, demon-possessed people, a chaotic scene of pushing and shoving. Jesus heals one, and they break out praising God, thanking Him for who He is and what He has done. Imagine the noise and the
Prayer and Dependency on the Father
The pushing and shoving, the smell, the chaos — it is easy to read this passage and say that people are coming to Jesus just to see what He can do for them. Well, yes, that is exactly why they are coming. I do not want you to get so spiritual that you miss the human side of this. I am open to this in my own life because that is how I first came to a Bible study. I was not looking for God, I was not looking for a Bible, I did not want anything spiritual. I went because I thought that somehow it would do me good, that it would help me, because my life was a mess.
You ought to understand that about the people you deal with. There is no record here that Jesus is preaching a sermon to the crowd. They come with human needs. The people around you come with human needs, and sometimes we think it is so spiritual to drop our Bible load on them. There is a time and a place for that, but they are coming hurting. They have needs. They are in a world where nobody cares about them — do you?
Jesus deals with that. Then, early in the morning, while it was still dark, verse 35 tells us He arose and went out. He departed to a lonely place, and there He was praying. That seems to be a characteristic we see in Jesus' life over and over again — He prays.
Why would Jesus pray? In John 5:19, Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing by Himself." Apart from the Father, there is nothing He can do. Jesus is acknowledging His dependency on the Father, and He is teaching us a very important lesson. On the night He was betrayed, in Luke 22:31, Jesus says to Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you."
It always strikes me that Jesus is praying constantly. He seems to be the one who needs it least, yet He prays most. We need to be praying most, and we tend to pray least.
Why We Pray
We have all sorts of discussions around here about prayer. Why do we pray? Does prayer change anything? Why would I even pray? Let me give you one powerful reason, though there are others: because He told you to. I was sitting with a man who was debating prayer — does it change anything, all those different angles. He said he did not know why he should pray because God already knows what He is going to do. I asked him if he could think of any reason to pray, and he said, well, he supposed it was because God said to. The Creator God of the universe told you that you should pray. That seems like a pretty good reason right there.
When Jesus prayed, I am guessing He prayed differently than we do. We have that little acrostic, ACTS — Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. There is no Confession going on in His life. He is not spending any time confessing. For Him it is adoration, thanksgiving, and supplication, and He is praying for many things. He is praying for Peter, among others.
You and I should be people of prayer. My head drops when I say that, because I have yet to meet somebody who says they are content with their prayer life. It seems to be an area of massive struggle, and I am not sure why. Paul writes in Colossians 4:2, "Devote yourselves to prayer, keep alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving."
Capitalizing on the Moment
Verse 36 tells us that Simon and his companions went hunting for Jesus. When they found Him, they said, "Everyone is looking for you." That could mean a number of things. He could simply be passing on information. Or he could be saying: last night was incredible, the iron is hot, let us strike while we can.
Jesus says to him, "Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, in order that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for." He is saying that He did not come primarily to heal. Healing is part of it, but healing is only a sign — it is nothing more than a pointer toward the real thing. So they went throughout the synagogues of Galilee, preaching and casting out demons. For a period of time here, Jesus becomes something of a traveling, itinerant minister.
The Leper
That is the second incident. Here is the third, and it involves a leper who comes to Jesus. At first glance we might think: a leper — how is that going to apply to us? Let us see if we can make it apply. The leper came to Him, beseeching Him, falling on his knees and saying, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." According to Luke 5:19, this man was, in the text's own words, "full of leprosy."
Since we do not have a real understanding of leprosy, let me read what William Barclay writes about it. "The whole appearance of the face is changed till the man loses his human appearance and looks. The nodules grow larger and larger. They ulcerate. The voice becomes hoarse. The breathing wheezes because of the ulceration of the vocal cords. The hands and the feet also ulcerate. Slowly, the sufferer becomes a mass of ulcerated growths. The average course of the disease is nine years, and it ends in mental decay, coma, and ultimately death. The sufferer becomes utterly repulsive, both to himself and to others."
Other scholars tell us that part of what happens when leprosy begins is that it acts like an anesthetic — it numbs the nerves. Beyond fingers beginning to rot away, the sufferer loses all feeling entirely. A man could be hammering away as a blacksmith, beating on his own hand, and never realize it. He could thrust his hand into hot coals and not understand what was happening. There are many accounts from that era describing how, once leprosy had taken hold, poor hygiene being what it was, rats and mice would come in and begin to chew at the sufferer in the night, and he would never even know it.
The Leper's Question: "If You Are Willing"
This is a repulsive sickness. The Scripture had commands for these people. They were to walk around in such a way that their clothes were torn, their hair was unkempt, and they had to cry "unclean, unclean" to all those around them. That is the backdrop here.
The man comes, and look at what he says. He says two things that are interesting. First, he says, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." He is saying, I know you can make me clean — I don't doubt that, I have that figured out. But are you willing?
That seems odd against the backdrop that you and I live in, where there is so much preaching and teaching that says Jesus wants you healthy, that it is God's will that you be healthy — and they always end with wealthy. The claim is that God wants you healthy and wealthy and does not want any suffering. But this man's words give us pause: if you are willing. Is it possible that God would want somebody sick? Is it possible that God would want someone to suffer emotionally, physically, financially?
The answer is yes. God may want you sick, and He may want you struggling. Paul has a thorn in the flesh and prays three times for God to remove it, but God does not. And what does Paul get? He gets a very valuable lesson: "God, your grace is sufficient."
How Our Suffering Benefits Us
I sat down one morning, with the lesson finished, thinking about this point. I did not want to exaggerate it. I literally scribbled out a list in two minutes and had it added to the slides: How does our sickness benefit us? And maybe it is not physical sickness — maybe it is some other infirmity. How does your suffering, your pain, your hardship benefit you?
Number one, you have to admit that you are weak. I am absolutely comfortable saying that Muhammad Ali is the greatest heavyweight who ever lived. Not long ago I watched the Cleveland Williams fight — three rounds, from Houston, Texas. Susan was walking through, and she is not much of a fight fan at all. I said, just watch this for a second. She had not really watched Ali fight in his prime, and she said, "He is amazing. He is the greatest." And yet, if you see him now, he cannot even stop his hands from shaking. I do not say that to belittle him at all, because there is nothing he can do about it — and that is the entire point. He is the greatest, but he has to admit he cannot even hold his hands still. We can be strong and healthy and working out, but some little virus we cannot even see without a microscope can wipe us out completely. You have to understand and admit that you are weak.
Here is the second thing. If you are a Christian, suffering makes you more dependent upon God, and you illustrate that in your own life. One of the times you are most passionate in prayer, one of the times you most acknowledge that you need your daily sustenance from Him — that is in the midst of hurt and pain.
Third, it moves you to compassion. I find myself talking a lot lately about Larry. Larry would describe himself as a non-believer, as the most selfish person who ever lived. I will tell you he was the most compassionate person I was ever around — I knew the Larry whose life was changed. I would sit with him and describe a couple from the church going through difficulties, thinking about divorce. Larry would not even know them, and he would just begin to weep. And it all flows out of the excruciating, daily, chronic physical pain that he lived with. That kind of suffering allows you to say, "I know how you feel."
Let me read two verses you should be familiar with. Second Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with a comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Your hardship allows you to sit down with somebody going through a hard experience and say, "I know how you feel. I have been there." And there is a connection that takes place.
Fourth, hardship intensifies your focus — and that can work positively or negatively. Negatively, you can become so obsessed with the hardship that you become selfish and narcissistic about it. But positively, it allows you to begin to see things as they really are, and it gives you an extraordinary platform. As a Christian, everybody is watching you. When you are moving along and everything is going well — if you are an athlete making all the shots or completing all the passes, success after success — everybody is watching, but they are saying, "Who cannot be faithful in that?" But when there is suddenly an injury, when there is suddenly hardship, people are really watching. It is one thing for me to say that suffering has meaning and purpose and that it is all right. It is another thing entirely for you, in the midst of it, to say that to the people around you.
The Touch That Changed Everything
So the leper beseeches Jesus in verse 40: "If you are willing." And He is moved with compassion, moved with pity. He stretched out His hand and touched him, and said, "I am willing — be cleansed." It is almost inconceivable that this may have been the first loving, compassionate, gentle touch that man had felt in years and years. And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed.
Let me make a quick point here. If somebody is talking to you about healing, it is not this — you are healed, now go claim it, and it will...
Biblical Healing Is Immediate and Complete
Jesus does not heal in a way that unfolds over a couple of months. When Jesus heals, biblical healing is now. It is definitive, thorough, systemic, and complete. There is perhaps only one instance where He said to go and wash, but even then, a demonstration was taking place and the healing was already present.
I remember Sue Wright. She got sick and was in the hospital, and one of these health-and-wealth preachers came to visit her and said, "You're not even here. You're not even in this bed." Sue said, "Well, then why did you come to visit me?" The idea that you are not really sick, that you just do not have enough faith — that is a bunch of bunk. These are either people who are ignorant or they are huckster false teachers, and we need to understand that. This is destructive teaching.
The Command to Keep Silent
His healing is immediate, thorough, and complete. Mark uses the word "immediately" again and again — it is woven throughout this Gospel. Jesus sternly warned the man and sent him away, saying, "See to it that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for the testimony to them."
Jesus gave him two instructions. First, go to the priest and report what happened. That is in line with Leviticus 14 — if a leper was cleansed, he went to the priest, and his very presence testified that God was at work. None of the priests in Jesus' day would have ever seen this. There is no record of anyone being cleansed of leprosy since Naaman the Gentile, hundreds and hundreds of years earlier.
But before sending him to the priest, Jesus said, "Do not tell anyone else." That feels almost unfair, does it not? Here is a man who has suffered this terrible disease, who has endured years of probable shame and certain hardship, and Jesus tells him to stay silent. The man could not resist. And while my heart goes out to him, what he did was still disobedience.
He went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter the city. He stayed out in the unpopulated areas, and people were coming to Him from everywhere. Jesus had said He did not want anyone told about it — in part because He wanted to keep working in the city. Instead, the crowds became so overwhelming that He could no longer do so, and He moved out to the unpopulated regions.
Leprosy as a Picture of Sin
Leprosy has always been a picture of sin. It is a picture of how deadly sin is, how it corrupts us. The leper and everyone around him are repulsed by the disease, and there is no denying it exists. Sin in your life may look a little different, though.
If you are here and you are not a Christian, you may not even understand that you are deathly ill — fatally ill with sin. You may diagnose your problem in all sorts of other ways. You may say your problems are psychological, economic, or philosophical. But your problem is sin, and you need to see that. Just as you respond viscerally to this physical description of leprosy, you need to respond with equal intensity to the sin in your life.
Two Wrong Responses to Sin
I see two responses to sin, and they are exact opposites. The first is the person who says, "I have sinned so badly that God could never forgive me." I have sat with probably half a dozen people over the years who have laid out what they have done and said, "This is so awful. God could never, ever forgive that." The problem with that position is that you are calling God a liar, because He says that if you confess your sin, He will forgive it. There is nobody debating that you are unworthy. But if you are saying you have sinned so grievously that God can never forgive you, you are wrong.
The other extreme is the exact opposite. You are sitting there saying, "I am too good. I do not need a Savior. Nobody is perfect. Boys will be boys. I have these little foibles, these little peccadillos, but they are really not that big. It is hard for me to imagine that God is really going to send someone to hell for this. I mean, I am not Saddam Hussein. I am not Adolf Hitler. I am not Jeffrey Dahmer." Both of those responses are absolutely wrong.
The Only Solution for Sin
Here is what Scripture says, and it is simple. You have spiritual leprosy. You have a fatal disease that is destroying you, and you may be numb to it. There is something in your life you cannot explain — something is wrong, something is missing. You have talked to your friends and they say, "I do not understand why you are not happy. You have everything." And yet, by yourself, you are miserable. That is sin. Your problem is sin, and you need a solution for it.
You need forgiveness, and there is only one place you will find forgiveness — at the cross, at Jesus Christ. That is why He died. If you are here tonight and you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I pray that thanksgiving would be the driving, motivating factor in your life, spurring you on to serve and to minister.
If you are here tonight and you do not know Jesus Christ, you can experience eternal life right now. You can know tonight that you will spend eternity in heaven. Maybe you have been searching — and by that I mean God is working in your heart — and all of a sudden there is this yearning, this reaching for something. That is God. That is God calling you.
An Invitation to Know God Personally
Respond. What does it mean? Repent and believe that Jesus is who He said He was, and He will do what He said He'd do. Talk to the people who will be in the front of the worship center here after the service, or the person who invited you, or call this church tomorrow. There will be people who want to meet with you and talk to you about what it means to know Jesus Christ in a personal way.
You may know a lot about God. You have an opportunity now to know Him. That is an extraordinary thought — the Creator God of the universe, you can know in a personal way.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this through. Thank you. Thank you for what you have done for us. Thank you for your people. We are not talking about a temporary physical healing. Even for all the many blessings that you shed upon us, God, we thank you for them.
But above all, we thank you for Jesus Christ, for His life, for His death, for His resurrection. Father, thank you for saving us from our sin. For those that are here that do not yet know you, God, we pray that you would touch their heart, and today, tonight, could be a time of salvation. Father, we pray that to you in Jesus' name, amen.