#9 A Life-Transforming Touch Series

A Life-Transforming Touch

Series: Gospel of Mark

Chuck Sligh

February 16, 2020

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives.

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 1:40-45.

INTRODUCTION

The ability to touch and feel the world around us is critical.

Illus. – Back in the 1940s someone conducted a study of 26 children in an orphanage. The babies were more or less cut off from human contact in their cribs, or where a single nurse had to care for seven children. By the time the babies were 1 year old, the isolated orphanage babies were less curious, less playful, and more subject to infections. When they reached their second and third year of life, of the 26 children reared in the orphanage, only two could walk and manage a few words. [http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html]

Illus. – Pastor Jeff Strite tells of a former fire fighter who told him about the experience he often had at the scenes of house fires. There were times when they’d arrive on the scene to find people in serious shape and often in shock. But what they discovered was that if they quietly sat beside the victim and gently touched them as they spoke to them, the victim would suddenly calm down and be comforted by that simple touch. [https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/print?sermonId=180260]

The ability to be touched can make all the difference in our lives. And that truth makes the story we’re going to read about this morning all the more powerful.

Before we dive into our text—Mark 1:40-45—let’s get our bearings in the book of Mark. Mark’s main thesis is to prove to his readers that Jesus is the Son of God (Mark 1:1) Every event and every sermon recorded was chosen to drive this theme home.

But healing a leper was different altogether from all other healings, which is why Mark singles out this particular healing story. Lepers were thought to have been cursed by God, though this is not true. You just didn’t touch a leper, you weren’t allowed to touch a leper—but Jesus did.

Note with me three points, and then we’ll see what we can learn from this story

I. NOTE FIRST A DREADED DISEASE – Verse 40 – “And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”

This man was a leper, which meant he was in utter misery. The word leprosy in Israel was actually a generic term describing any serious skin disease. But of the different leprosies, the worst was what we today call Hansen’s disease. Bible scholars are pretty sure this is the form of leprosy this man had because Luke, a medical doctor, in his telling of this story, says the man was “full of leprosy” which best describes Hansen’s disease than any other skin disease.

Hansen’s disease causes horrible physical deformities. Those with the disease first lose their eyebrows and eyelashes, then their hair; then their ears and nose became deformed, giving them a bizarre, alien appearance.

The disfigurement associated with Hansen’s disease mostly occurs because the body’s warning system of pain is destroyed as the disease progresses. The disease acts as an anesthetic, bringing numbness to the extremities as well as to the ears, eyes and nose. The damage that follows comes from such incidents as reaching a hand into a fire to retrieve a dropped piece of meat, or washing one’s face with scalding water. Continuous damage to the extremities causes them to become stump-like. So, the poor man Mark describes would have not been able to feel for years, and his body was full of leprosy, mutilated from head to foot, rotten, stinking, repulsive.

But his worst misery was not physical, since the sense of pain disappears over time. His worst misery was the social stigma and wretched living conditions he was forced to live in. Because leprosy was contagious, society ostracized and rigidly segregated him and others like him to prevent contaminating others in the community.

The law of Moses stated that if anyone came close to a leper, the leper had to cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” to warn the other person away. So that he would be identifiable to others at a distance—again, for the protection of others—he had to shred his clothing and dishevel his hair, if he still had any.

Besides what was written in the Law of Moses, societal restrictions developed that would have totally isolated him from the religious life, functions, and feasts of Israel. His only companions were other lepers in the same miserable condition as himself. He could not come and go as he pleased. He was cut off from his family, from his former friends, and from the fellowship of the people of God. He had no hope and no future; all he could look forward to was death!