SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/26/2021 11:29 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-5 “Wretched Man: Leper”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
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.’”
When
speaking of faith the first requirement of faith is obedience. As soon as the leper was cleansed, “Jesus said to him, ‘Se that you
tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest, and present the offering that
Moses commanded, for a testimony of them.” I mentioned in our introduction to the first
fifteen verses in Matthew 8 that I had studied this same story when I was going
through the book of Mark, and in that section from Mark, John MacArthur
entitled his sermon “Jesus changes places with a Leper.” Well the reason for that title is what we
will be looking at in our SD for today, and the cause is that the leper did not
obey the command that Jesus gave him which we just looked at in the highlighted
part from above. We must always obey
what our Lord commands us to do, and if we don’t then there will be
consequences as we will see in this section.
I have to say that if the situation that this leper was going through
were something that I was going through for many years like him that there is a
good chance that I would have done what he did.
This man received a new lease on life, a life that had kept him from
being around people, a life of hurting, a life of having an awful odder to his
body, a life of misery and hopelessness, and now all of this was turned
around. I can’t help but talk about the
spiritual issues of what is going on here and that in a spiritual sense all
people who are not born-again believers spiritually have the same issues as
this leper. I remember that once I
became a believer that I wanted to tell all of my friends that I use to hang
out with the good news of the gospel, and I expected them to rejoice with me to
ask me questions about how they could have the same experience that I had, but
they had no questions, and experienced no joy like was filling my soul once I
became a believer on Jan. 26, 1974, sad to say that they are still spiritual
lepers.
Leviticus
14 tells of what a person is commanded to do after being cleansed from leprosy
and I will leave that up to you to read if you are interested in that.
MacArthur
writes “Jesus may have told the man not to say anything about his healing in
order not to increase the crowd’s adulation of Him simply as a miracle worker,
or perhaps He wanted to discourage their looking to Him as a political
deliverer. It may have been that the
Lord was still in His period of humiliation and that His exaltation by the
crowd at this time would have been premature in the divine plan.
“All
of those reasons could have been involved, but Jesus’ instructions to ‘go, show
yourself to the priest, and present the offering that Moses commanded,’ was
specifically given ‘for a testimony to them,’ that is, to the multitude and
especially to the Jewish leaders.” I
have to believe that was in the plan of our Lord more than anything and yet the
man did not follow His command. Think if
the man goes up to Jerusalem to offer that sacrifice and the story that he
could have told the priests whom he had to go to. What a wonderful story, what a wonderful
testimony could have happened, but failed to because he did not obey our Lord’s
command. This man had shown such
confidence and humble faith in his joyous exuberance did not also show
immediate obedience. I mention looking
at this in Mark’s gospel and he adds the following “But he went out and began
to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that
Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated
areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere.”
MacArthur
writes “As Jesus remarked several times in various words, ‘Which is easier, to
say, Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk? (Matt. 9:5; cf. Mark
2:9; Luke 5:23). The Lord’s greatest purpose
was to cleanse sin, not sickness, and even His physical cleansing became
illustrations of the spiritual cleansing He offered. The healing of leprosy was especially
powerful in that regard, because its great physical destructiveness,
pervasiveness, ugliness, and incurableness of sin.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am so thankful for the salvation that was
given to me at the expense of my Savior and Lord. Following His commands will continue to bring
peace to my heart, but not following them will take joy from me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust the Lord to continue to teach me the
process of revival so that I can share it with our prayer group on Wednesday
evening.
3/26/2021 12:22 PM
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