SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/22/2021 10:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Wretched Man: A Leper”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 8:1-4
Message of the verses: “1 When Jesus came
down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. 2 And a leper came to Him
and bowed down before Him, and said, "Lord, if You are willing, You can
make me clean." 3 Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, "I
am willing; be cleansed." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 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.’”
In
the past we have spoken about how many of the people who followed Jesus were
only doing so because of the fact that He could do miracles, and that was the
case with many who came down the mountain with Him after He was preaching “The
Sermon on the Mount.” It seems that they
were not looking for a Messiah, but just someone who could do miracles and
perhaps free the nation of Israel from being under the power of the
Romans. John MacArthur calls these
people “uncommitted observers.”
We
will be looking at a man who was a leper and when I was listening to the sermon
for this section of Scripture MacArthur spoke a lot about what exactly a leper
was as far as the physical problems that come with being a leper, and he also
went into some detail from the Old Testament about what the priests had to do
when it seemed that a person was a leper.
I am not sure that I want to get into all of those details but to say
that being a leper was a terrible thing.
What I do want to get into is the spiritual things that go along with
being a leper. One of the things that I found
interesting is that scholars have stated the this disease probably started in
Egypt as they had found in some of the Pyramids bodies that actually had the
disease of leprosy.
I
think that what I will do is give a couple of quotations from different people
that MacArthur quoted about this disease, and that will be all we will do for
this SD.
“In
his book Unclean! Unclean! L. S.
Huizenga describes some of the horrors of leprosy.”
“The disease which we today
call leprosy generally begins with pain in certain areas of the body. Numbness follows. Soon the skin in such spots loses its original
color. It gets to be thick, glossy, and
scaly…As the sickness progresses, the thickened spots become dirty sores and
ulcers due to poor blood supply. The
skin, especially around the eyes and ears, begins to bunch, with deep furrows
between the swellings, so that the face of the affected individual begins to
resemble that of a lion. Fingers drop
off or are absorbed; toes are affected similarly. Eyebrows and eyelashes drop out. By this time one can see the person in this
pitiable condition is a leper. By a touch of the finger one can also feel
it. One can even smell it, for the leper
emits a very unpleasant odor. Moreover,
in view of the fact that the disease-producing agent frequently also attacks
the larynx, the leper’s voice acquires a grating quality. His throat become hoarse, and you can now not
only see, feel, and smell the leper, but you can hear his rasping voice. And if you stay with him for some time, you
can even imagine a peculiar taste in your mouth, probably due to the odor. ([Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1927], 149; cited in William
Hendriksen, The Gospel of Matthew [Grand
Rapids” Baler. 1973]. 388)”
In looking at this next quotation I
will wait to do it in our next SD as it is rather long. The quotation will talk about Hansen’s
disease which is what leprosy is called today, and then after that I believe
that will be sufficient in understanding what this disease, physically is all
about.
3/22/2021 11:03 AM
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