MORNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/28/2026
9:17 AM
My
Worship Time Focus: “The Divine
Compassion”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
5:13-16
Message of the verses: “And He stretched out His hand and touched
him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”
And immediately the leprosy left him.
And He ordered him to tell no one, “But go and show yourself to the
priest and make an offering for your cleansing, just as Moses commanded, as a
testimony to them.” But the news about
Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and
to be healed of their sicknesses. But
Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”
“41 Moved with pity, he
stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”
This is from Mark’s gospel 1:41 and shows us that Jesus was moved with
compassion, or pity as it is translated in this verse, and this leper was a
very helpless man as his plight was desperate.
Jesus, disregarding the prescription of Leviticus 5:3 which says “3 or if he touches human uncleanness, of
whatever sort the uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean, and it is
hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and realizes his guilt;” stretched
out His hand and touched him. The
gospels tell us that Jesus would frequently heal with a touch (cf. 4:40; 7:14;
13:13; 22:51; Mark 6:5), but to touch a leper was really shocking and
unprecedented, but this was not the case for the Son of God. No one in Israel—least of all a rabbi—would have
defiled himself by touching a leper. But
sovereign love responded with sovereign power.
Jesus said, “I am willing; be cleansed,” and immediately the leprosy
left him.” As was the case with all
of Jesus’ healings, the leper was healed instantly, and completely. There was no lingering recovery period while
the leprosy gradually got better. This
was seen earlier in the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, as after the healing
she got up and waited on the people who were in her house. MacArthur writes “Modern medical treatment
can cure leprosy, but cannot completely reverse the disfigurement and damage
the disease causes to the human body.
But the disfigurement caused by this man’s leprosy was also healed by
Jesus’ creative power, leaving no trace of the disease or its effects on his body. He was healed restored, and physically fit to
take immediately a long journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.” I have to believe that this long journey he
took did not feel that long to him as he would have been rejoicing in the fact
that his leprosy was not completely gone.
Now after Jesus healed this man He ordered
him to tell no one, for the moment.
There was something that now cleansed leper needed to do at once, so the
Lord commanded him, “Go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering
for your cleansing, just as Moses commanded.”
MacArthur says “The process by which a cleansed leper was readmitted
to society involved going to the temple for an examination by a priest,
shaving, bathing, washing his clothes, offering multiple animal sacrifices,
along with and offering of grain and oil (Lev. 14:1-20). The entire procedure lasted for eight days
(Lev. 14:10). If he obeyed and went to
recount to the priests how Jesus had healed him, it would be a powerful testimony
to them that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and Son of God. This testimony would be either
convincing to the priests so that they would acknowledge the claims of Christ,
or if they rejected Him self-indicting, since they had personally examined the
miraculously healed leper. Further, it
would buy time for Jesus, since a miracle of that magnitude would surely swell
the already large crowds that followed Him—crowds so huge that they had forced
Him off the shore of the Sea of Galilee and into Peter’s boat.
“But selfishly overjoyed at his remarkable,
miraculous healing, the man ignored Jesus’ command and instead ‘went out and
began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around’ (Mark 1:45),
forfeiting the opportunity for such a powerful testimony. As a result, the news about Him was spreading
even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of
their sicknesses. So vast were the
crowds that Jesus ‘could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in
unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere’ (Mark
1:45). The disobedience of the cleansed
leper had put limitations on Jesus’ ministry and forced Him into the
countryside away from the populated towns.
The ones who could find Him in the wilderness dis do, but surely many of
the most disabled in the towns were not able to experience His healing word and
touch. To maintain His focus on
preaching the word and sustain the power of His ministry Jesus, in His
humanity, needed communion with the Father.
Therefore, even in the unpopulated areas He would often slip away deeper
into the wilderness and pray (cf. Luke 4:42). Prayer was an integral and essential aspect
of Jesus’ life and ministry.” I wrote
about this when studying Luke 3:21 in an earlier SD.
5/28/2026
10:08 AM
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