Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

One of the great wars of all time was a war where all men were on the same side.

The enemy was the small pox virus.

It made all other foes seem puny in comparison.

One of the greatest dangers for the Pilgrims and Puritans in coming to America, was this dreaded pox.

They died in large numbers from it, and they brought it to the Indians who had no immunity whatever, and tribes of 9,000 were reduced to a few hundred by epidemics.

Joel Shurkin in his book The Invisible Fire, traces the awful, but awesome story of this battle.

In 1722, one of worse disasters in the history of Boston hit with a spread of small pox.

So many people died that the church bells never stopped ringing day or night.

All businesses and public meeting were banned.

People were caught in a bind.

If they were inoculated for the disease they could get it and die.

If they refused it they could get it and die.

For decades this was the agonizing decision people had to make in the colonies.

Listen to this paragraph from the pen of Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography.

"In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way.

I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.

This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen."

Few if any wars in history created more misery than this war with an invisible but powerful enemy.

But the marvelous news is, by world wide cooperation, man was able to defeat this foe, and eradicate it from the face of the earth.

The last case reported was in 1977.

Most of us don't even know what small-pox is, because it is one of the major diseases that man has defeated.

This makes it all the more puzzling

that man has not yet been able to eliminate one of the oldest and most dreaded diseases-leprosy.

Leprosy is the only disease which is fully described in the Bible.

We know it was common in both the Old Testament and New Testament, but most of us think of it as an ancient disease of no relevance to modern medicine.

I have to admit it was a shock to me when a few years back I read a book by the Christian doctor, Dr. Paul Brand, who operated on lepers in the United States.

I never dreamed there were leper colonies in the states, but there are, and there are hundreds of people with leprosy in our nation.

Most of the world's leprosy victims are in Asia and Africa, but they are also in America.

The polite medical name for this disease is Hansen's disease.

It was named after the Scandinavian physician who in 1874 found the rod-shaped bacteria that caused leprosy.

This marked the first time a micro-organism was found to be the cause of a specific disease.

Obviously we cannot look at the vast history of this disease, but there are some facts we should have in our awareness to get the big picture of this second disease the Great Physician conquers in the Gospel of Mark.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 200 hundred known cases of leprosy in Israel.

We need to see here that Jesus did not buy the age old prejudice that leprosy was a curse of God.

There are some Old Testament examples where God did judge people, like Mariam, by giving them leprosy.

But this has been blown out of all proportion, so that all lepers have been seen as under the curse of God.

This has led to all kinds of unbelievable prejudice and cruelty.

Jesus treated them just like any other people with diseases.

Death is one of God's judgments too: Are we conclude that all who die are cursed of God, and to be treated as such?

The facts are, leprosy is a disease like all other diseases.

It has a known cause, which is bacteria.

Jesus did not discriminate against those with this disease.

He freely healed lepers when He met them.

We have no example of a disease that Jesus refused to heal.

He did not pick and chose, or discriminate against anyone on the basis of their disease.

Jesus was a general practitioner, and He accepted every patient who came to Him.

He never refused a patient, nor did He ever refer one.

He handled this leprosy with the same love and swiftness as He did the fever of Peter's mother-in-law.

Christlike compassion has no disease discrimination is the point of all this.

Show me an exception in the healing ministry of Christ, and then I will be open to arguments of why some diseases should not be healed.

Prejudice and discrimination has led to lepers suffering more from the depravity of man than from their disease.

The bacteria that causes leprosy does discriminate, however.

It can live in no other creature but man.

All attempts to cultivate it in laboratory animals have failed.

It also prefers men to women.

We see this in the New Testament, where all the victims are men.

We want to focus on this man in our text this morning, because even though the account of his healing is so brief, it gives us a glimpse at the three key tools that Jesus used throughout His healing ministry.

These three tools for healing are still powerful today, and they work for those who understand them.

All of us have these three tools, and so in a very real sense, all of us carry around a doctors bag with those instruments that can bring healing.

The first one is,

I. THE WILL.

You will note that the main concern of this leper was not if Jesus could heal him, but whether He was willing to do so or not.

"If you are willing you can make me clean," he said to Jesus.

As far as he was concerned the whole thing hinge on Christ's will.

The implication being, not everybody is willing to help a leper.

Who knows what the history of this man had been?

How many had rejected him as a patient?

We do not know his past, but it is obvious he had learned one thing clearly: There is only hope where there is a will.

Where there is a will there is a way, but where there is no will, there is no way.

When Jesus said, "I am willing, be clean," He opened the floodgate for faith, and the man was cured instantly.

Willingness was the wonder drug of the Great Physician.

Jesus did not hesitate or speculate, or go off to meditate on this case.

He just responded with what this man most needed, and revealed it was His will to heal him.

Very little happens in the world of healing unless somebody is willing.

When the Crusaders brought leprosy back to Europe from the Holy Land, there were people who were willing to care for them.

So hospitals were built called Lazarettos, after Lazarus, the New Testament leper.

At one time there were 2 thousand Lazarettos in France, and 200 in England.

The point is, where there are people willing, there will be help and healing.

The reason anyone can be made whole forever, is because God is not willing that any should parish, but that all come to repentance.

Any and every person can be saved, simply because God is willing that it be so.

The will is the greatest healing instrument in the world.

Wherever there is a willingness there is the potential for healing.

Jesus was never unwilling to heal anyone, or any disease.

That is why Jesus was the only 100% successful healer in history.

I never realized it before I began to study healing, but this is the only area of Jesus's ministry where He never failed.

Jesus was a powerful and persuasive preacher, but He did not win over the Pharisees.

He was an excellent teacher, but not everyone who heard Him accepted His teaching.

There was nothing that Jesus did that was 100% successful, except His healing.

When Peter preached to Cornelius and his household, he summed up the life of his Lord in Acts 10:38 like this, "...He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil."

He did not convert everyone who came to Him.

The rich young ruler went away, and left Jesus in tears.

But nobody ever went away from Jesus saying, "He never healed me."

He was willing that all be healed, and so there were none who failed to be healed.

Jesus was willing that people be healed even though their sickness may have been caused by their own sin or folly.

We see this in the young man in chapter 2, who was a paralytic.

He was the equivalent of an aids patient in our day.

His sin put him where he was, but Jesus was willing that he be forgiven and healed.

Since we have no example of a case where Jesus was not willing to heal, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that He was always willing that healing take place.

Modern doctors have confirmed that one of the keys to healing is the will.