The Book Of Mark #09

• The bad news

• The good news

• The great news

Illus: The day after a man lost his wife in a scuba diving accident, he was greeted by two grim-faced policemen at his door. "We're sorry to call on you at this hour, Mr. Wilkens, but we have some information about your wife."

• "Well, tell me!" the man said.

• The policeman said, "We have some bad news, some good news and some really great news. Which do you want to hear first?"

• Fearing the worse, Mr. Wilkens said, "Give me the bad news first." So the policeman said, "I'm sorry to tell you sir, but this morning we found your wife's body in San Francisco Bay."

• "Oh how terrible!" said Mr. Wilkens, overcome by emotion. Then, remembering what the policeman had said, he asked, "What's the good news?"

• "Well," said the policeman, "When we pulled her up she had two five-pound lobsters and a dozen good size crabs latched onto her body."

• "If that's the good news then what's the great news?", Mr. Wilkens demanded.

• The policeman said, "We're going to pull her up again tomorrow morning and see what is hanging on her."

None of us enjoy having good news and bad news brought to us because many times the bad news outweighs the good.

But we all enjoy having someone come running up to us and say, “I have some good news I want to share with you!”

Everyone at some time has imagined what it would be like to have “Big Ed” appear on our doorstep with his television crew, telling us we just won the Ten Million Dollar Reader’s Digest Sweepstake.

We all like to hear good news. And sometimes the news can be so great that we feel like we are about to explode if we do not share it with someone.

Such is the case in our text. The Lord did a wonderful work in his life and the Lord told Him not to spread the news, but he went everywhere telling folks what the Lord had done for him.

Let’s look at the life of this man. We see several things I want to share with you.

I. HE CAME ASKING

Notice, he says, in Mark 1:40, “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.”

The story of this man simply begins, “And there came a leper to him…”

In the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, the word “leprosy” is a broad term that includes a wide range of skin diseases. The very worst of those diseases was what we know as leprosy today, a condition that is also called “Hanson’s Disease”.

We don’t know how severe the problem of this particular leper was, but let’s assume he had modern leprosy.

• It begins with little specks on the eyelids and on the palms of the hands. Then it spreads over the body. It bleaches the hair white. It covers the skin with scales and oozing sores.

• But that’s just what happens on the surface. Down under the skin, leprosy eats its way through the nerves. And soon the victim loses all sense of touch and pain, initially in the fingers and toes, then spreading up the arms and legs. So, a leper can’t feel anything.

That may not sound so bad. The last time you stubbed your toe when you tripped over a chair on your way back to bed, you probably wished that you didn’t feel anything. Maybe it was when you hit your thumb with a hammer or burned yourself on a hot pot. But what sounds like it might be nice, is absolutely horrible. Without the sense of touch, a person with leprosy eventually damages his toes, fingers, and feet. He will bump into objects, cut himself, get infections -- and not even notice.

Illus: Dr Paul Brand is a missionary who has conducted a great deal of research on the disease. He explains that in a leper colony in India, many of the lepers were missing fingers and toes. A lot of them seemed to lose them at night, for no apparent reason, they just disappeared. When someone finally stayed up all night to watch and see what happened, they found that rats were chewing off their fingers and toes at night -- but the victims didn’t wake up, because they didn’t feel anything.

As leprosy advances, a leper doesn’t even look human.

• No fingers

• No toes

• Many go blind

• Ulcerated growth all over their faces

• Nobody wants to get near them -- nobody wants to touch them

A leper becomes utterly repulsive -- both to himself and to others.