Monday Meditation
August 27, 2012
The Compassionate Man
And He put forth His hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be thou clean.”
Luke 5:12-16
There are beauties about the Lord Jesus Christ which set Him apart from all other men. Most of the time, we marvel, and rightly so, at what He did. His miracles were unique and distinctive – the credentials of the Messiah, the fingerprints of deity. In Numbers 5 for example, the purity of the camp was maintained by three classes of people being put “outside.” These included the leper, the person with an issue of blood, and those defiled by the dead. Yet the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, could deal with all of these, the leper, the woman with the issue, and the dead, and bring them back into the society of men and God. What He did marked Him out from all others.
But perhaps even more worthy of our worship is “how” He did what He did! That He could heal a leper is amazing. That He would heal a leper is even more amazing. Why should the high and lofty One Who inhabited eternity deign to care about an outcast of society in that day? That He could and that He would reveal something of His greatness and grace.
But that does not exhaust the beauty of this infinite Man. He not only could heal, not only wanted to heal, but notice “how” He healed. We are told that “He put forth His hand and touched him.” How long had it been since the leper had felt the touch of a human hand? How long since kindness and compassion had been shown to him? Yet the Lord Jesus touched him to communicate healing. That which no other could do without contracting defilement, the Lord Jesus did and communicated healing.
To do right is an admirable goal. To do right with the right motive is an elusive goal for most of us. To do right, with a right motive, at the right time, and in the right manner is a goal to which only the Master could attain.
We remember every movement
Faultless was and true
Every touch, beyond improvement
Through and through
IEY
Consider:
1. Only Luke tells us that the man was “full of leprosy.” Aside from the physician-eye of Luke, what else is conveyed by this expression?
2. The leper was instructed to go to the priest and to present himself there and to offer for his cleansing what the law required. In the Old Testament regulations, the priest was to be looking for the leper. Here was role reversal. What was the testimony spoken of in verse 14? Was it that Jehovah-Ropheka was in their midst?