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7/19 Reading Portions: Judges 2; Acts 6; Jeremiah 15; Mark 1
Mark 1:31, 41
And He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them…. Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”
TOUCH
In the first chapter of Mark, we have several recorded instances of the Lord Jesus healing people. Two interesting episodes were the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and the healing of a leper; and by them, we have two different responses. In the first event, Jesus was told by His disciples of the woman’s fever, while in the latter, the leper himself knelt before the Lord and begged to be healed. Both received a personal touch from the Lord’s hand. Simon’s mother-in-law immediately began to minister to the Lord and His disciples. The leper, however, who was “sternly charged” by the Lord Jesus to say nothing to anyone, but instead, was to bring the law’s prescribed offering to the priest (Mark 1:43-44). The cleansed leper “went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news” (Mark 1:45a), in disobedience to the Lord’s command. Our holy, righteous, and sinless Lord would not direct someone to violate God’s law; therefore, He must tell the cleansed man to offer the sacrifice prescribed and show himself to the priest at the temple in the “house of the leper.” For Peter’s mother-in-law, Christ’s personal touch and gracious healing produced loving and grateful service. The latter illustrates the corruptions of the flesh which lust against the Spirit (Gal 5:17). Although the leper was cleansed of his physical disease, the spiritual corruptions of his flesh still remained. For him, the cleansing of his flesh was more important than the conversion of his soul through faith; and disobedience was its fruit. While he may have been excited to tell what Jesus had done, his disobedience actually hindered the work of Jesus, for…
Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to Him from every quarter. Mark 1:45b
One touch from the Lord served Christ and His disciples; the other merely served self. Does a personal touch from Christ move you to serve self, or deny self to serve Christ and His church?