MARK 1:40–42 – And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”
THEME OF THE DAY: THE WILLING HEART OF THE LORD JESUS. Picture being the leper in today’s scripture. You are not running in the social circles of society. You are an outcast. People see you across the street and cry, “Unclean. Unclean. Run.” You even say it to yourself because you are unclean, but you have nowhere to run. You cannot hide from yourself. But it is worse. You are incurable. No doctor can help you. No one. But then . . . you start thinking aloud, “Hey, wait a minute. I heard there was Someone in the area doing amazing works of healing sick people. I think His name was Jesus. Maybe, just maybe, He can help me. I have nothing to lose. I am going to find Him” And he does . . .
As the leper falls before the Lord, begging Him to make him clean, notice two things. First, the leper does not question the ability of Jesus to heal Him – “If you will, you can make me clean.” There was never a doubt Jesus could heal him. That leads to the second thing we learn from the leper; his question and struggle were about the willingness of the Lord Jesus. We need to show some patience with the man in his doubts. He didn’t know much about Jesus; His compassion, tenderness, gentleness, and always willingness to help and heal the hurting. But what about us?
In the spiritual war God calls us to wage this side of heaven, our chief foe, the devil, exercises his chief tactic upon God’s children constantly – doubt, like the leper. He used it against our first parents and continues today. What did he do to Eve? He persuaded her to doubt God’s Word which leads to doubting God’s character, and particularly His love for us – Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1).
If the devil gets us to doubt God’s love, the Christian life suffers tremendously. We become paralyzed with doubting fears and anxieties. We lose our strength to obey God’s commands. We lose the joy of obeying God’s commands. We lose assurance of our standing with God. We are poor testimonies for Christ. And I only mentioned five areas of spiritual damage done when we believe the devil’s lies! There are more. If we doubt God’s Word, we soon begin to doubt His love. But we don’t have to give into this heinous tactic of the devil. We arm ourselves to defeat them by building a reservoir of God’s promises in our hearts and minds reminding us of His steadfast love, His unchanging character, and the certainty of His promises. Basically, start obeying this exhortation from the Apostle Paul to the believers in Colossae – Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16). And the more we put truth in us, the more battles of doubting the willingness of the heart of Jesus toward us we will win!
PRAYER: “Father, help me to not doubt Your willingness to help me when I face the trials in this life of faith.”
QUOTE: “The devil will tempt you to question God’s Word, which leads to questioning His love. Be aware.”
Because of Him,
Pastor Jim