Power of the Lord was with Him to Heal - a podcast by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Sermon preached on Luke 5:12-32 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 09/05/2021 in Novato, CA.















Sermon Manuscript







In today’s passage we have three episodes detailing Jesus’ continued ministry of word and power. A good summary of all three episodes can be given with the last sentence in verse 17. It says, “And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.” Each of these passage deals in one sense with Jesus’ power of healing. Let us spend time to review them each, one point at a time, and see how they all complement each other in explaining Jesus’ powerful ministry of healing.







Let us begin in the first episode and look at Jesus cleansing this leper. This is verses 12-16. The summary here is how Jesus makes the unclean clean. We have this leper. He’s covered in leprosy, verse 2. He is physically diseased, and thus would be referred to as unclean. This standing among Israel meant that he had to live alone, outside the city, and if anyone came near him he had to cry out, “Unclean, unclean”, lest they touch him and catch his disease. This was according to Leviticus 13, and it was basically a sort of quarantine of the sick to try to keep the healthy well. But you can imagine how sad and lonely this would have been. Some of us have had to quarantine just for a few days recently due to COVID-19. Imagine a presumably permanent quarantine like this.







So, you can appreciate that this man begs Jesus to heal him. He falls down on his face before Jesus begging him. This is great humility. This is great desperation. This is great faith, for he believes Jesus can heal him. Yet, apparently what he didn’t know is if Jesus was willing to heal him. He knows Jesus can, but will Jesus heal him? That is why he pleads for Jesus to have mercy on him in healing him. He says, “If you will, you can make me clean.” So then, I love Jesus’ response. He says “I will be clean.”







But notice what Jesus does at the same time. He touches the man. Maybe under ordinary circumstances such a note would not have been noteworthy. Sure, Jesus touches people often when he heals them. But this is a leper, someone who is presumably so contagious to the touch that he had to live separate. You didn’t go around touching lepers if you could avoid it. The concern would be that if you touch someone unclean that you would become unclean. Jesus touches this unclean man. But Jesus doesn’t become unclean in touching him. The reverse of the norm happens. By the power of God, Jesus the clean one, makes the unclean clean by his touch.







So then, he instructs the cleansed man to go show himself to the priest and make the appropriate biblical offerings that were instructed in Leviticus 14 to give upon his cleansing. In short, that offering involved two birds, one killed, and the other alive one dipped in the blood of the dead bird then set free. It symbolized life from death. And that is what this cleansed man had found. He really does get his life back. He’s able to go back and engage in normal society again. Not only that, his going to the priest highlights something even more important that he can do again. He can once again go to the temple and worship God. Before he would not have had access to the temple. He probably felt in some way cut off from his communion from God. Maybe that is why he as a leper wondered if Jesus would even be willing to heal him. But in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we see that Jesus indeed is not only able to make the unclean clean, but is heartily willing to do so. And this point of the man’s renewed access to God in the temple, hopefully shows that the ramification of this healing was more than just physical, but also religious and spiritual.







Interestingly,

Further episodes of Reformed Sermons and Sunday Schools at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Petaluma, CA

Further podcasts by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Website of Rev. W. Reid Hankins