A Study In Luke - Day 3

September 17th, 2024

Day 3 - Luke 5:12-16

12 In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. “Lord,” he said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.”

13 Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly, the leprosy disappeared. 14 Then Jesus instructed him not to tell anyone what had happened. He said, “Go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.”

15 But despite Jesus’ instructions, the report of his power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.

There is so much happening in this text that we need to break it into a few sections. The first section is about Jesus's healing and willingness to make it happen for the man with leprosy. It should be noted that Leprosy had a tendency to be a catch-all term for any skin disease, but it certainly could include actual leprosy as well.

The man asks Jesus to make him clean. This would have been a common understanding that the reason he was diseased was that he was unclean in some way. Sin was often connected to disease. While we know that this is not the case, we also know that Jesus has the ability to cleanse anyone, both bodily and spiritually. The man simply asked that he be “clean.”
Jesus was willing. This leads us to the next section: what happened when the man was healed.

Jesus tells the man to not tell anyone what had happened. This is probably due to a myriad of reasons, not the least of which being that he was kicking up a bit of a ruckus with all of the healing he had been doing.

Healing was usually the purview of the priests, and therefore, they did not take kindly to Jesus taking some of their business away. Jesus was healing for free, without any certifications or verifications of the effectiveness of the healing. This is likely why Jesus told him to go to the temple and be declared clean.

But even though Jesus asked him to keep it quiet, the word was getting out no matter what. This is often the way fame works. One deed leads to more and more recognition. And Jesus was getting a great deal of recognition at this point.