Leprosy is a disease of the flesh, but it has reduced this man to his knees that he might know the depth and depravity, the sickness of his soul. And this text is really of no great use to us until we understand in our souls that each and every one of us are spiritual lepers. Welcome back to MidAmerica Reformed Seminary's Roundtable podcast, a broadcast where the faculty of MidAmerica discuss everything from Reformed theology, cultural issues, all things seminary, and where occasionally you'll hear a notifying message or two. This is episode 62, and I'm your host, Jared Luchobor. Thanks for tuning in. Wrapping up round two of chapel messages from our faculty members, Instructor of Ministerial Studies, Dr. Eric Watkins, addresses us today with a message on Mark 1, verses 40 through 45, speaking on Christ healing the leper and the messianic secret. What can we learn from this account? After healing the leper, Jesus sternly charges him not to tell anyone what has taken place, but he does anyways. So what do we make of the leper's disobedience here? Let's hear what Dr. Watkins has to say about this passage. Let's turn our attention to God's Word. If you would please open your Bibles to Mark chapter 1. Familiar story, Jesus and the leper at the end of the chapter. This is God's Word from Mark chapter 1 beginning at verse 40. Let us not only strive to hear it, but even to heed it faithfully together. And a leper came to him, imploring him and kneeling, said to him, If you will, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once 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. 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 he was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter." That's the word of God. Let's pray again briefly. Lord and God, we ask now that the ministry of your Holy Spirit, which first inspired these words, historically has preserved these words, would now add your blessing as they are read and our hearts are exhorted from them I don't know if many of you can remember a time when you've been on your knees before God begging Him for something. It's a rather humbling occasion. It's a difficult emotion or nerve to even strike. And to ask you to remember it, I can think of two occasions in my life where I found myself in such a position. One was just in the midst of just a real pastoral heartbreak over some families in my church. And it was somewhat gutting to me and praying in a posture on my knees, crying, just weeping through it. Another was when my oldest son was four. He had a very serious illness. We found ourselves in a children's hospital for a week. And this big strong guy, or at least one that thinks he is, there's nothing more humbling than being completely helpless and yet wanting to do so much for someone you love whose very life is on the line and there's nothing you can do but pray. And so from the depth of your soul, the bottom of your heart, and with the strength of all your emotion, you fall to your knees and just beg God for the life of another. Here, in Mark 1, we find a man who comes to Jesus, begging not for the life of another, but for his own life, Jesus meets this leper. I'm going to cover three points. This dreadful disease, the compassionate cure, and then the messianic secret. I named it that way especially just for Dr. Menninger. So let's talk about this dreaded disease, leprosy, and that which sets the occasion here before us. In the Gospel of Mark, this is my view, shared by others, that place is somewhat significant, maybe even more than in other gospel accounts. where a number of times where things happen is worth noting. So there's a bit of a narrative transition from where Jesus just was in the previous section in the synagogue, and now, somewhat vaguely, the text simply says, and a leper came to Jesus. The question that might be wondered is, where does this leper meet Jesus? Normally, and I'll come to this more in a moment, a leper would find himself isolated and living in remote places. And if the leper came to Jesus in the synagogue, that's a pretty bold move. Leprosy as a disease is one that is somewhat familiar to many Christians. To say leprosy in the first century would be like saying coronavirus today. To have leprosy was arguably one of the worst things that could happen. It was akin to something like the Black Plague in that it prolifically spread throughout the region. And for many, it was fatal. Now, you have to be careful when you preach. I'm working through the Gospel of Mark in our church, and I have a retired doctor in our church, and I talk for a few minutes about leprosy like I'm doing now. And of course, I got an email the next day from the doctor just correcting the minutia. He wanted me to make a greater distinction between malignant and non-malignant leprosy. I'm like, you know, I can barely spell those words, but if you want me to try to say it, I will. So apparently, there is leprosy that is contagious, and there is leprosy that is not. There is leprosy that is malignant. There is leprosy that is not. So the exact nuances of this leper's leprosy are not altogether known, but what is known is that from the biblical material, even in the Old Testament, to have this disease was to be an outcast. It was to have the very plague and sentence of death literally painted atop your body. The pictures that you can imagine are probably not far off. It was a visible skin disease for the most part, sometimes slowly consuming the skin that's malignant non-malignant might just stay put but nonetheless wherever it was it would give this unlovely unpleasant visible effect to the body it could not only affect the outside of the body it could enter into the bloodstream and slowly eat away the bones potentially eat away the flesh it could be a fatal disease in Numbers 12 when Miriam attempts to overtake the authority of Moses, she is struck down with leprosy, and referred to by her brother Aaron as being as one who is numbered among the dead, even while she lives. Such was the nature of this dreaded disease we know as leprosy. It was a living hell. It was to be trapped inside a body that was not simply wasting away, but wasting away visibly and wasting away in a way that would make people not want to be anywhere near you. You've heard the idea that a leper, when walking through a crowd of people, would have to self-identify loudly, announce himself unclean. Unclean. Imagine the life that that implies. Not only do you have it in your body, whatever physical effects come along with that, but the social effects that come as a consequence of that and the emotional effects that follow the last two, physical and social. A leper could not be touched. A leper would most likely live in isolation. A leper was ceremonially unclean and could not come near the holy places. So a leper would not only live alone, estranged from people, perhaps even more so, estranged from the greatest person in all of Israel, from Yahweh himself. The leper must worship from the greatest distance if the leper were willing to worship at all. You surely can appreciate that to be struck with such a dreadful, unlovely, unwelcome disease might cause such a leper to have little interest in worship. How does one draw near to God when your very body screams that you are under His curse? How does one aspire to worship joyfully when every day is made up of anything but joy? Whoever Jesus was, the leper had surely heard of Him, and brave and bold as it is, the leper comes to be Jesus, hoping to be healed. This takes us to our second point, the compassionate cure. desperate times call for desperate measures. If the leper came to the synagogue, he would have parted the crowd of people like a boat passing through the sea, moving water on either side. If he met him out in a remote place, it would still be striking that this leper would presume to come to Jesus, and the leper comes to Jesus and immediately falls down on his knees in a posture of humiliation and begins to implore, stronger word perhaps, capturing the Greek, begged Jesus for his life. He is literally on his knees before the Savior. If you've ever been in such a position, you know what desperation feels like. If you've ever been in a desperate situation, you know what a wonderful tingle it can be to imagine for a moment that there's hope, that somehow this desperate dark cloud that looms over my head might be relieved. And so hear this leper has heard of Jesus the healer, whether or not his theology is altogether sound, whether or not he gets every detail just right, really doesn't matter. All he knows is a healer has come, and his name is Jesus, and he will have an audience before him. This is a passionate moment of surrender that one might argue is actually good for our souls. Perhaps we are no better than when we were on our knees. there before Jesus, casting all of our cares upon him. It is, on the one hand, tragic that this man has leprosy, and yet there is something beautiful about it, because this dreadful disease has brought him into the presence of Jesus. Blessed disease, as it might ironically be described. And what does he say to Jesus? If you are willing, you can heal me. A statement of faith bound to a statement of surrender. I know you can, but this is up to you. If you are willing, you can heal me. He does not demand. He does not negotiate. He does not reason. He simply pleads that Jesus would do for him what he has long wanted someone to be able to do. An emptied soul is an open heart. And Jesus responds not simply with a gesture of goodwill, but with the cure of compassion, and Jesus heals the leper. But the manner of Jesus healing the leper is perhaps the most striking feature of this entire little section. Jesus does not simply say, I will be healed, and go your way and make the offering in the temple as required by Moses. Jesus does not say, go home in three days from now. you shall be healed. He does not heal them the way that he tells Naaman to be healed. Go and bathe in this river and your leprosy will be gone. But Jesus actually does one of the most remarkable things, and I would argue surprising things, that he will ever do anywhere in the Gospels. When this leper comes and falls down before him, begging for his life, Jesus not only speaks to him, what does he do? He touches him. Jesus touched the leper. I'm supposed to pause for a while here. Jesus stretched out His hand, those beautiful human hands. Son of God become Son of Man hands. Savior of the world, compassionate physician, shepherd of Israel, those hands stretched out to touch this leper. How long had it been since He'd known the sensation of human touch? If you're a leper, you are effectively condemned to isolation, the consequence of which is that no one should touch you unless they themselves were a leper as well. There's a profound ministry in human touch in nursing homes. They encourage you. One of the best things you can do there in a nursing home is to actually touch people. My first college degree is in therapeutic recreation, which is why I'm such a fun Orthodox Presbyterian. You have the official beach body, but I am a fun orthodox Presbyterian trained to be so. This is more ironic. This is not in my notes. I'm going to move on. But one of the things that you learn in such a degree in therapeutic recreation is that when going to minister to people in something like a nursing home is just the profound value of human touch and frankly the interruption it is to their normally untouched life to have someone actually touch them, to hold their hand. to put a hand upon their shoulder to hug them. And for a person in that situation, it would mean all the world. How much more for this leper, whose inability to be touched is not because he is aged, but because he is cursed, and his very body signals it loudly. Jesus touched him. In that very moment, his skin was made clean. Now, I don't know if anyone else was around, but I know the leper was. Can you only imagine? Jesus reached out and touched me, and my leprosy went away." Now this is beautiful. This is also the gospel. This is the great exchange. This is double imputation. For in touching the leper, for an average man, that would be to expose oneself to the curse and uncleanliness the ceremonial uncleanness of leprosy, and in this exchange Jesus, who makes himself to a certain extent vulnerable, making contact with the leper, heals the leper. But isn't that a beautiful picture of the gospel, the very work of the Savior who comes to heal all our diseases by bearing them upon Himself, not to save us from a safe distance, not to save us merely by His words but even by His deeds, to lay down His life even as He now stretches out His hand, Jesus, who's come not to call the righteous and the healthy, but sinners who are sick. Leprosy is a disease of the flesh, but it has reduced this man to his knees that he might know the depth and depravity, the sickness of his soul. And this text is really of no great use to us until we understand in our souls that each and every one of us are spiritual lepers. On the outside, we look okay. But on the inside, we're wretched and unclean. On the outside, we display our righteousness. On the inside, it's all as filthy rags. On the outside, we might look well. But on the inside, we have great need of a physician, and there is no better place in the world, no safer place in all the world, than to be on our knees before Jesus, asking for our life. If you are willing, you can make me clean. and in the confident, saving touch of the Savior. Leprosy is a dreaded, deadly disease, but it's not the worst. Do you know what the worst disease in the world is? It's not the Black Plague. It's not coronavirus. It's sin. Sin is the worst disease in all the world. Everyone has it, and it's fatal, curable by only one, Jesus, who touches. this leper. If you know this Jesus, you know what it means to be made whole. If you know this Jesus, you know what it means to be made clean. And if you know this Jesus, you know what it means to be touched by the sweetest, purest, most intimate contact that we can possibly have as the very Savior who created us. redeems us and makes contact with us in this world, healing us that we might be with Him in the next. Now, time is never my friend. I have a very postmodern relationship with time. What feels like 20 minutes to you might only feel like five to me. The last point I want to address is this messianic secret. It's a strange thing that at the end of our text here, Jesus tells this leper, after this wonderful display of compassion, the power of the age to come that reaches out and touches him and heals him of his disease, and yet Jesus tells this man, don't tell anyone, simply go to the priest and offer your sacrifice. It's not just here that Jesus will give this negative command not to tell, anyone about what he's done. He'll do the same thing with a deaf man in chapter 7, and he'll do it again with Peter in chapter 8, when Peter will say to Jesus, you're the Christ. And Jesus will say, yes, don't tell anyone. And Peter will say, and you're not going to the cross. And Jesus will say, you definitely don't get it. You really don't get it. And it speaks to something we need to understand. Why is it that Jesus gives this command to not go out and to tell other people what Jesus has done? The answer is this. The answer is because the leper, as with the disciples of Jesus at this point being gathered, and for a while yet in the gospel, really don't understand who this Jesus is. He's an itinerant preacher, but his reputation is for healing. The expectation is for a Messiah to come and bring a kingdom, which means squash our enemies, heal our disease, and bless us here in the land. It's very horizontal. It's very earthly. It's very flat. But what Jesus has brought is not simply better, longer life, but the very gift of eternal life. Not an extension of this present evil age, but with him comes the very powers of the age to come, the age of the Spirit that will come as a result of His resurrection. And until His people, His disciples, and even this leper, understand the necessity of the death and resurrection of Jesus, they're not ready to preach. And so the leper is told, not yet. The deaf man is told, not yet. Peter is told, not yet. But we are not told, not yet. We now exist as those who stand on the other side of the resurrection, and the messianic secret is gone. We now exist at a place in history where the intent of the kingdom and the Messiah's coming is now understood, and rather than being told not to go and tell people, we are actually commanded to go and tell, to say, the Savior has made a wretch like me whole. This is my final little point. I feel badly for how much I'm skipping, but such it is. I often wonder, we talk about here in these circles, things like evangelism. What is the engine that really drives that? Because there is a sense in which what the leopard does is blissful disobedience. Jesus says, don't tell anyone, and the guy does what? He just runs out and does the exact opposite. It's like the most excused sin in the whole Bible. He directly defies Jesus, does the exact opposite of what he said. We all kind of quietly applaud him like, yeah, that was pretty cool. But why? What made this leper, who had lived his life in avoidance of people, all of a sudden wanted just, I mean, just at literally the disobedience of Christ's word, he still went out and did it. Why? He's overwhelmed with gratitude. Those who know the depth of their sin and the extent of their disease also know their need of a equally great, if not greater Savior. A broken soul is an empty heart that's just waiting for great grace to be poured in. And when that heart and soul is filled up with the healing grace of God, you can't keep that a secret. You can't keep that a secret. The engine that drives our desire to tell the world about this Jesus is that he's healed a sin-stained, wretched, dying sinner like me and like you. And that's not anything that we need to keep a secret, brothers and sisters. We have a wonderful physician in Jesus, and the whole world is terminally ill outside of Him. So go and tell. Not driven by guilt, not manipulated by the chapel speaker, just thinking about the precious work of the Savior who came into this world to touch broken, needy sinners like me. Think about those last words that Dr. Watkins said there, the precious truth there of the Savior who came into this world to touch broken and needy sinners like you and me. A fitting transition into our next series of episodes where our two resident Old Testament professors, Reverend Andrew Compton and Reverend Mark Vander Hart sit down to talk about Advent and the coming Savior, focusing particularly on Genesis and other Old Testament texts next week. For more podcast episodes, you can find us on our website at midamerica.edu, subscribe to YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, be sure to search for and subscribe to MidAmerica Reformed Seminary's Roundtable. I'm Jared Luchobor, till next time.