TOUCHING THE UNTOUCHABLE—Luke 5:12-16
Proposition: “Jesus as the Great Physician heals the untouchable or those that others reject.”
Objective: My purpose is to help people see there are no untouchables in the kingdom of God.
INTRODUCTION:
Based on the 1947 novel The Untouchables was a series centered on a greatly embellished version of the real life Eliot Ness, played by Robert Stack, and his incorruptible treasury agents whom Chicago newspapers had dubbed "The Untouchables." These were people who were larger than life, who seemed to be above the natural pecking order, who not only followed the law, but were the law. Our passage has an untouchable, doesn’t it? Jesus is the Elliott Ness of our story, a one man crusade against evil.
We do not have to be miracle-workers to touch the untouchable. Are you willing to touch those that others have written off? Are you willing to touch the despised, the mistreated, and the feared? Are you ready to love the unlovable, to welcome the unacceptable, and to forgive the unforgivable? Jesus did the unthinkable. He touched the untouchable.
Leprosy was one of the most dreaded diseases because it caused not only physical affliction and isolation, but psychological and mental affliction and isolation as well. Lepers in Jesus’ time where both shamed and despised and treated as the untouchable. Their physical condition was terrible as they slowly lost their limbs and withered away. They were not only shunned but regarded by some as "already dead" even by their relatives. Another family would come and bring him food every day. But they couldn’t get close. They would leave it at a certain place on a rock and when they withdrew, he would go pick it up and eat it. In this way, he watched his children grow up, yet was never able to touch them. He watched his wife cry as she left the food, but he was never able to comfort her. After several years of this, he started wishing they wouldn’t come any more. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see them…it was that had lost an ear already and several of his fingers and toes. His face was horribly disfigured. His hair was falling out. According to Jewish law, he wore rags for clothes, his hair was to be uncovered and disheveled, and he covered his face with a cloth (Lev. 13:45). The Jewish law forbade anyone from touching or approaching a leper, lest ritual defilement occur. The leper did something quite remarkable. He approached Jesus confidently and humbly, expecting that Jesus could and would heal him. Normally a leper would be stoned or at least warded off if he tried to come near a rabbi. Jesus not only grants the man his request, but He demonstrates the personal love, compassion, and tenderness of God in His physical touch.
LEPROSY is a vivid and graphic physical picture of the spiritual defilement of sin. Sin is ugly, loathsome, incurable, and contaminating; it separates men from God and makes them outcasts.
I. THE REQUEST: HIS CONCERN (v. 12) “Lord, if You are willing You, can make me clean”—The language suggests an advanced case. In its final stages it causes disfigurement of the body, as the various members decay.
1. The place “When He was in a certain city”—This picks up 4:43—Jesus was in “one of the towns,” perhaps on the outskirts, for lepers were not generally seen inside cities & towns.
2. The predicament “A man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus”—His leprosy must have reached a very advanced stage. Barclay speaks of the progression of leprosy: It might begin with little nodules which go on to ulcerate. The ulcers develop a foul discharge; the eyebrows fall out; the eyes become staring; the vocal chords become ulcerated, and the voice becomes hoarse, and the breath wheezes. The hands and feet always ulcerate. Slowly the sufferer becomes a mass of ulcerated growths. The average course of that kind of leprosy is nine years, and it ends in mental decay, coma and ultimately death. Leprosy might begin with the loss of all sensation in some part of the body; the nerve trunks are affected; the muscles waste away; the tendons contract until the hands are like claws. There follows ulceration of the hands and feet. Then comes the progressive loss of fingers and toes until in the end a whole hand or a whole foot may drop off. The duration of that kind of leprosy is anything from twenty to thirty years. It is a kind of terrible progressive death in which a man dies by inches.
3. The penitence “He fell on his face and imploring Him”—The posture of the man is an expression of reverence or respect. This man did not know whether the help he craved would be given to him. Note the humility of the request.
4. The plea “Lord…You can make me clean”—Note the faith of the request. The Law required the segregation of lepers outside the towns (Lev. 13:45-46). The leper did not doubt Jesus’ competence to heal; He was uncertain of His attitude. No group was more pitiful than lepers. This disease was a slow, lingering death, dying inch by inch. And to make matters worse, they were cut off from any contact with the rest of society, including their own families. In desperation, He begged, "Jesus, if you are willing - if You don’t despise me like everyone else - if you’re not afraid to lay your hands on me like everyone else - then you can make me clean." Can you hear the leper’s agony in this question? Can you hear his mental and emotional anguish? He was sick of being treated like garbage. He was sick of being rejected and despised. Nothing but a corpse was more unclean than a leper. Note the Lordship reflected in the request.
Illus: Dr. A.B. MacDonald, writes about the leper colony, in Itu, of which he was in charge, wrote, “The leper is sick in mind as well as body. For some reason there is an attitude to leprosy different from the attitude to any other disfiguring disease. It is associated with shame & horror, & carries, in some mysterious way, a sense of guilt, although innocently acquired like most contagious troubles. Shunned & despised, frequently as lepers consider taking their own lives & some do.”
II. THE RESPONSE: HIS COMPASSION (v. 13) “I am willing, be cleansed”—Since the disease was usually considered incurable, the sudden healing may have been a surprise to the man & to all who knew him. Yet Jesus dared to touch the leper & to speak the authoritative word that caused him to be cured. Here is another example of His acceptance of the unacceptable.
1. The acknowledgement “He put out his hand”—Instantly the response came as had the sufferer’s prayer. This was probably the first non-leper to do this. To touch a leper was dangerous medically, defiling religiously, and degrading socially. But the Savior contracted no defilement. Instead there surged into the body of the leper a cascade of healing and health.
2. The acceptance “He…touched him”—The healing power did not originate in His fingers or His garment. It came straight from the divine and human Jesus, from His ultimate will and infinitely sympathetic heart. There was healing power in that touch. To touch a leper would make that person ceremonially unclean!
Barclay states also that in Palestine in the time of Jesus the leper was barred from Jerusalem and from all walled towns. In the synagogue there was provided for him a little isolated chamber, ten feet high and six feet wide. The Law enumerated 61 different contacts which could defile, & the defilement involved in contact with a leper was second only to the defilement involved in contact with a dead body. If a leper so much as put his head into a house, that house became unclean even to the roof beams. Even in an open place it was illegal to greet a leper. No one might come nearer to a leper than four cubits—6 feet. If the wind was blowing towards a person from a leper, the leper must stand at least one hundred cubits (150 feet) away. One Rabbi would not even eat an egg bought in a street where a leper had passed by. Another Rabbi actually boasted that he flung stones at lepers to keep them away. Other Rabbis hid themselves, or took to their heels, at the sight of a leper even in the distance. There never has been any disease which so separated a man from his fellow-men as leprosy did. And this was the man whom Jesus touched. To a Jew there would be no more amazing sentence in the New Testament than the simple statement: "And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper."
3. The assertion “I am willing, be cleansed”—This word, not the friendly touch, brought the change in the man. To touch a leper meant that you could no longer enter into the Temple to worship—ceremonially unclean. Jewish people were not even allowed to breath the same air as a leper - that is why lepers had to cover the bottoms of their faces - and, everywhere they went they had to cry out "Unclean! Unclean!" This was a warning required to be given so clean Jewish people could avoid them! The "Talmud" stated that a leper could not get within six (6) feet of a "clean person!"
III. THE RELEASE: HIS CLEANSING (v. 13b) “Immediately the leprosy left him”—This was not a gradual healing process in which there was a slow remission of the disease.
1. The suddenness “immediately”—This heightens the miracle and emphasizes Jesus power. The leper’s need and faith found an immediate response in the Savior’s eagerness to help. And in this readiness His power and His love embraced each other. The healing was sudden and immediate.
2. The success “the leprosy left him”-- Think what it must have meant to that hopeless, helpless leper to be made completely whole in a moment of time! 1 moment full of leprosy & the next moment there was not a bit of disease left. Wow!
Illus: Philip Yancey tells of one experience of his friend, Dr. Paul Brand, a leprosy specialist as he treated a young man in India: “In the course of the examination, Brand laid his hand on the patient’s shoulder and informed him through the translator of the treatment that lay ahead. To his surprise the man began to shake with muffled sobs. "Have I said something wrong?" Brand asked his translator. She quizzed the patient in a spurt of Tamil and reported, "No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until he came here no one had touched him for many years."
IV. THE REQUIREMENT: HIS COMMAND (v. 14) “Go and show yourself to the priest”—The Law provided that cases of leprosy must be inspected by the priests, who acted as a board of health in the Jewish commonwealth (Lev. 14:1-32).
Lepers were outcasts, unclean & untouchable. Jesus, with mercy & compass-sion, not only healed the man but also risked becoming diseased by touching the leper. But to Jesus, he was not unclean, but simply a human soul in desperate need. We can be fairly cold in the conditions we often insist on in helping people. How can we be a people that are even respected by others when we act so cold to so many?
1. The silence “He charged him to tell no one” (v. 14a)—This is opposite of what we might expect to hear Jesus say.
1). To prevent premature identification as the Messiah. As the coming Messiah He becomes a religious threat to established Judaism and a political threat to the Roman rulers.
2). To prevent being mobbed. Jesus reputation as a healer brings crowds (Mark 1:45)-- the leper doesn’t keep silent.
2. The submission (v. 14b) “Go and show yourself to the priest”(Lev. 14:2-32) (to present for consideration)—The priest could not heal; all he could do was to pronounce a man healed. Priests alone could legally readmit into the community those who had contracted leprosy.
3. The sacrifice (v. 14c) “Make an offering for your cleansing”—Luke relates very specific rituals though which a man was required to go in order to be brought back into the worship of the Temple.
Illus: Philip Yancey writes about a man named Henri Nouwen who has worked among AIDS victims in San Francisco. Henri Nouwen tells of young men who are dying, many of them banished from their own families, forced to hustle on the street. Many of them have had hundreds of relationships. But they are dying, they are cast off from society. They are rejected. And Nouwen says that all they want is to be loved. They want a safe place. A safe relationship. A place to call home. Someone to accept them. Someone to love them. Someone to forgive them. Of course, they are looking for love in all the wrong places, but that is no reason to reject them or fear them. Henri Nouwen has also worked among orphanages in Peru. And here is what he writes: "How little do we really know the power of physical touch. Those boys and girls only wanted one thing: to be touched, hugged, stroked, and caressed. Probably most adults have the same needs but no longer have the innocence and unself-consciousness to express them. Sometimes I see humanity as a sea of people starving for affection, tenderness, care, love, acceptance, forgiveness and gentleness. Everyone seems to cry, ’Please love me.’" That was the cry of this leper. That is the cry of many people we all come into contact with every day. Let us be like Jesus, and reach out and touch the untouchable.
V. THE REPORT: HIS CONCLUSION (vvs. 15-16) “The report went around”—In spite of Jesus’ exhortation not to spread the healing, it was spread anyway.
1. The testimony (v. 15a) “The report went around all the more”-- The fact that a man would go to the priest claiming healing from leprosy would alert the religious leaders that something new was afoot in Israel. Why did Jesus command him not to tell anyone? Perhaps for two reasons: (a) The man was to go immediately to the priest to be a testimony. (b) When the news of Jesus’ healing power spread, He was constantly besieged by people. Although Jesus asked the leper not to tell anyone except the priest, word got out, and multitudes flocked to Him to be healed.
2. The togetherness (v. 15b) “Great multitudes came together”— The more the report spread, the more the crowds came. It was only because people wanted something out of Him. Many desire the gifts of God but repudiate the demands of God.
3. The timeliness (v. 16) “He…withdrew…and prayed”-- Our Savior was a Man of prayer. It is fitting that this Gospel, which presents Him as Son of Man, should have more to say about His prayer life than any other. So Jesus withdrew & prayed. This shows His reluctance to be known as a miracle worker.
CONCLUSION:
1. God wants everyone to be saved.
2. There is healing in the touch of Jesus. Jesus does the unthinkable. He welcomes the unacceptable. He forgives the unforgivable. He touches the untouchable.
3. If you’ve been touched, you will testify.
Illus: The movie “The Elephant Man” was based on a true story of a man living in London during the 19th century. John Merrick was terribly disfigured by neurofibromatosis. His own family rejected him because of his hideous appearance. Dr. Fredrick Treves found John working in a circus as a sideshow freak. Dr. Treves took John to a London hospital and began to treat him as a person instead of some sideshow oddity. He provided books for John and soon discovered he was a kind, intelligent person. After a newspaper reported on John’s progress, Madge Kendall came to visit him. Madge was a talented actress and a beautiful woman of high society. She was also a committed Christian. On one visit she presented John Merrick with a copy of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” He felt like an ugly beast cowering before a fairy princess. He was at such a loss for words he opened the book and began to read. His voice was squeaky and broken as he read the words from the second act: “See! How she leaned her cheek upon her hand that I might touch her cheek.” As he read that line, Madge Kendall slipped quietly into the seat beside him. She responded with the words of Juliet she had memorized from her years in the theater. John read and she recited the rest of the act together. When it was done, Madge Kendall leaned over and kissed his swollen, leathery cheek. And Dr. Treves later recorded that from that moment on, John Merrick was a changed man!
Sin has disfigured each of us until even our righteousness is as filthy rags. Compared to the perfect holiness of God, our sinful lives are hideous and grotesque. But the Lord Jesus Christ leaned over at Calvary and kissed our sin-shriveled lives with the mercies of heaven and since that day, none of us have ever been the same. “Lord, I need help. I have a sin problem. I know I’m going to die from this sin unless your forgive me. I know you can save me. Will You? I ask you right now to touch my sinful heart and take away my sin.”
He Touched Me
Shackled by a heavy burden
I was beneath a load of guilt and shame
Then the hand of Jesus touched me
And now I am no longer the same.
Chorus: He touched me oh He touched me
And oh the joy that floods my soul
Some thing happened and now I know
He touched me and made me whole
Since I met this blessed Savior
Since He came and made me whole
I will never cease to praise Him
I’ll shout it while eternity rolls.
Prepared by: Gerald R. Steffy
6206 N. Hamilton Road, Peoria, IL 61614
Phone: 309/691-3680 or 309/645-3677
E-Mail: grsteffy@yahoo.com To Receive
MY SERMON NUGGETS weekly
