The Life of Christ

• To these the Rabbinical ordinances added twenty-nine more defilements, along with a third, fourth, and even fifth degree of defilement.

• All in all, the Rabbis wrote more in their Mishnah on the subject of defilement than on any other issue of human life.

In this elaborate code of defilements leprosy was the most serious of all, second only to defilement from the dead.

• Not merely actual contact with the leper, but even his entrance defiled a habitation and everything in it, to the “beams of the roof.”

Adding to the Rabbis’ evaluation of leprosy we must remember they loved to trace every disease to a moral cause.

• Mentioned among the sins that bring leprosy are those which include the tongue.

When the leper passed by, his cry, “Unclean!” was to incite others not only to pray for him — but primarily to avoid him.

• No one was to greet him; a distance of no less than four cubits (six feet) must be kept from him at all times.

• If the wind came from his direction, 100 feet was scarcely sufficient.

• One Rabbi boasted that he would not even eat an egg purchased in a street where there was a leper.

• Another Rabbi declared he always threw stones at them to keep them farther away, while others hid themselves or ran away.

• These were all demonstrations of their misguided zeal for God!

• Even the leper’s bed was to be especially low to the ground.

It is against this cultural backdrop that a leper approached Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”

• Was Jesus willing to even talk to a leper, or come closer than six feet to him, and most of all, was He willing to actually “ touch ” one with this disease?

• And ultimately, would He be willing to heal the leper?

No one knew.

• There was no Old Testament precedent for it — not in the case of Moses, Elijah, or any of the prophets.

• The closest reference was casting Miriam outside the camp for seven days or sending Naaman, a Syrian, to bathe in a river seven times. In both cases, they were healed, but it was still a “sending away” and nobody got touched!

• Didn’t Naaman even ask, “Why won’t Elisha come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy?” (2 Kings 5:11).

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