“And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.” (Mark 1:41)
This Scripture tells three things. Jesus was moved by compassion for the leper. He touched the untouchable. And He chose to heal the leper. These three things were so out of the ordinary and distinguished Jesus as the Messiah. After Jesus heals the leper, He tells him to show himself to the priest. (Matthew 1:44) This was the sign that should have shown the priest that Jesus was the Messiah as written in the Old Testament. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” (Isaiah 35:5-6) But the priests refuse to recognize the Messiah.
When John is imprisoned, he sends word to Jesus by his disciples asking if He is the Messiah. Jesus’ answer tells John that yes, His works show that He is the Messiah. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” (Matthew 11:4-5) By His works alone, Jesus shows He is the Messiah. But Jesus fulfills every one of the Old Testament prophecies about Him.
Jesus was moved with compassion. In those days there was no cure for leprosy. If you got leprosy, you were banished from society. You lived a life apart from your family and outside of areas where people were until you died or miraculously healed. You were to yell, “Unclean,” so people would run from you. There was no compassion for a leper and no exception, no matter if the leper were family. But God is full of compassion for mankind who are in bondage to the devil. Jesus demonstrated that. But just how compassionate is the Lord? “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:15-16) His compassion surpasses that of a mother. What mother doesn’t have compassion on her child, when he (she) is hurting?
In Mark 1:41, Jesus touches the leper. To touch a leper was to get leprosy. But the opposite happened. The touch from Jesus healed the leper. I believe it not only healed him physically but healed his soul of all those years of loneliness and isolation he had suffered because of leprosy.
The words, “...I will...” had an impact then and have an impact now. Jesus chooses to heal. He was willing to heal then and is willing to heal now. We must believe that it’s God’s will for us to be healed from our diseases. There are many who pray for God to heal them, if it’s His Will. This was Jesus’ ministry then and He does not change. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8) We live in this world that is sinful, perishing and toxic. Our spirits which are born of God are untouched by this world, but our bodies are susceptible to it physically and in our soul. But God... But God in His compassion is willing to heal us. The Bible nowhere says we are going to live in divine health. It is possible, but this is not entirely universal for His children. We may be touched in our bodies with some kind of sickness, BUT THERE IS HEALING FOR US. And in that we must believe and be firm about. “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1Peter 2:24) Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe He received those stripes? Then by those stripes Jesus received, you are healed. God chooses to heal us. He is full of compassion and is willing to heal us.
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