11.21.12
Matthew 8.4 4 And Jesus *said to him, “See that you tell
no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses
commanded, as a testimony to them.” NASB
As I read through the Bible every year, I see old things
and new. I see stories that I am quite familiar with and things that catch my
attention for (what feels like) the first time. Probably it’s my personality
but I tend to catch small or quirky things – maybe that matches my mind: small
and quirky. I love looking for the obscure that is right out in the open…like
what I saw today.
What I saw made me think. What I saw made me realize it’s
something I’ve sort of glossed over all these years. I started reading the
Bible through every year in 2002. I wish I would have seen the beauty and
majesty of doing this when I got saved in 1983. I wish I could have had a group
of small and quirky friends who would’ve sat down with me and had conversations
about the Bible and what it says and maybe, why it says what it says. I didn’t
come to teach the Bible, I came to learn from it (a lesson that has been
especially hard to learn with a small and quirky personality like mine.)
Jesus did the unthinkable: He touched a leper. I’ve done
a little research on leprosy and found that it is a dreadful bacterial condition
that is curable and not contagious. But in Jesus day there was an enormous
social stigma surrounding leprosy that remains to this day. (And what is called
leprosy in Scripture may or may not
be leprosy per se, but also various other skin diseases or conditions.)
Bottomline: there weren’t hospitals and forms of treatment for leprosy back
then – only rejection. Lepers were “unclean” outcasts and forced to live apart
from the rest of society.
Leprosy is dealt with in the Leviticus 13 and 14 (not my
favorite passages in Scripture). The prescribed treatment for the leper was to
see the priest and offer sacrifices for his healing. The priest way back then
saw the result of their rituals for cleansing; and Jesus told the man He
touched and healed, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the
priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
The only way, back then to be healed from leprosy, was to submit to God. It was
that way in Jesus’ day as well, and it seems they’d forgotten that.
Jesus was instructing the man to do what he did in order
to remind the priests: this thing still
works. By the time Jesus was on earth, the priests had all but given up on
healings because they’d all but given up on God. Kinda like us today, we’ll go
just about anywhere to take care of our maladies rather than just go to God (and
the church as a testimony to them.)
Healing isn’t the issue in this little obscure verse: God
is. No matter our malady, God is the issue, and going to God is a testimony to
cynical clergymen and lazy laypeople of Who is really in control of our lives
and circumstances. If I am sick I do
want to be healed; but if I am out of sorts with God, I want to get back in
sorts at all cost. What I really want
is for God to make me ready for heaven; and
I want Him to do whatever it takes on earth to get me there. What is a
season of sickness compared to eternity in His presence?
The testimony is God and my interacting with Him. If I am
healed then I go to my deathbed saying so. If I am not healed I go to my
deathbed proclaiming God’s greatness and mercy, and believing that I am ready
for an eternity of no sickness, sorrow, sin, or sadness…
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