Mark 1:40-42 -“Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed.”
Recently I had the opportunity to preach and this is an excerpt of that message. I will try to link an mp3 of the message if you would care to hear it in its entirety.
In the first chapter of Mark, a leper comes to Jesus, bows down before Him and states, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
In preparation for my message I googled leprosy and discovered that it is almost non-existent in the world today. There is a small colony in Hawaii with about four lepers in residence and a little over 200,000 in India. So it does still exist.
In the 1980s a medication was found to treat leprosy. It doesn’t fix anything that has been lost, but it stops the disease in its tracks. I am fairly certain that those attacked with this horrible disease are grateful.
But at the time when this event is happening in the world, there is no medical help at all. And the Bible doesn’t give us all the details about how the leper heard about Jesus or what caused faith to rise in his heart, but we know that something happened. And now he is before Jesus saying, “If You want to, You can heal me.”
Now lepers were considered unclean when Jesus was here; and this man probably had little, if any, physical contact by anyone other than other lepers. But when Jesus saw him, Jesus was moved by compassion and touched Him.
Compassion is birthed out of love. Jesus wanted to demonstrate to this man and to all those around that He came for love’s sake. Compassion is that reaction to a situation that touches an individual in a place that compels the individual to do something about it. And Jesus does that! He touches the leper and heals him.
There is a scripture in Psalm 145:8-9 that sums up the heart of our Father: “Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. He is good to everyone, and His compassion is intertwined with everything He does.”
How exciting it is to know that God’s compassion is intertwined in every thing He does. The God of the universe so loved mankind that He sent Jesus, His only Son to redeem us from sin, sickness, and disease. (See John 3:16-17) How thrilling to know that He has already done what is needed to effectively deal with every problem that can arise against the people He love.
So how do we access this compassion in our lives? It begins with us going to Him believing that He wants to help us. But not only does He want to help, compassion for us insists that He will. Can we believe that? Listen to the recording to hear more about His compassion towards us. Wonderful Jesus!Moved by Compassion
Wonderful Jesus! 