August 7, 2016
Scripture:
Read Isaiah 53:10. First, the Lord “shall see his seed”: the result of His work. Then, “He shall prolong His days”: resurrection. Finally, “the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”: fullness of joy.
Hymn 139 - What can wash away my sin?
Prayer
We’re back on our “When Jesus was here He…” series, and today we’ll look at a time that Jesus healed a leper. The Scriptures only mention Jesus healing 11 lepers; the group of ten and then the one we’ll look at. He probably healed more, but it just wasn’t recorded. John tells us that Jesus did a lot of things that weren’t written down.
Luke 5:12
This man was full of leprosy. Leprosy in the Bible is a type, or shadow, of sin. If we learn about leprosy, we can learn about sin. “Sin” is different from “sins”. You see, a person doesn’t do leprosy; they have leprosy. In the same way, we have sin, and because of that we do sins. Sin is a condition, like a sickness. This man was full of leprosy, just like some people are full of sin.
God wrote more in the Bible about leprosy than He did about the creation of the world. Leviticus 13:1-2 shows us someone just starting to get leprosy, not someone full of leprosy. The symptoms were a rising, a scab, or a bright spot in the skin. Leprosy was working in this person’s life, just as sin can work in ours. The rising is like some people who think they are above others. They don’t think they’re quite as bad as other people. They have the sin of pride in their lives. Scabs are crusts over sores. Sometimes we can let anger fester under the surface of our lives, and we hold a grudge against other people. We have a crust over things, but we’re not healed underneath. Then there was the bright spot. Some people like to hang out in popular areas, or bright spots, but often they aren’t the best places to be. This man was to go to the high priest to deal with his physical problem, but we are to go to Jesus to deal with our spiritual problem.
Leviticus 13:44 speaks of a person with leprosy in his head. He was totally unclean, and loathsome. Sin makes us unclean before God, and nothing but the blood of Jesus can cleanse us.
In verse 45, we find that God told lepers to rend their clothes. Naaman, the famous leper, was a Gentile, and not under these laws. He was a proud officer, and probably wore his uniform, nicely covering up his problem so no one could see it. God doesn’t want us to cover up and ignore our sin problem. He can see it anyway!
Verse 46 shows us that lepers weren’t allowed to go to their homes, or to the temple, or anywhere. They had to stay outside the camp, and yell, “Unclean! Unclean!” if anyone approached. It was a terrible existence.
Leprosy kills your nerves so that you can no longer feel. You become numb in the affected area. You can injure yourself, and not feel a thing. There are stories of lepers who have dropped boiling water on themselves, or had mice chew them, or fire burn them, and none of it hurt. They couldn’t feel what was destroying them. Sin affects us so that we can’t sense or feel what is wrong around us.
Next time we’ll see what happened to this man full of leprosy.
Colossians 1:9-17
Verse nine starts the part that can be called Paul’s Desire. He lists several important things here, and what he desires for the Colossians is also for us. One of the first things we can notice is that Paul is still praying for them. He desires that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. We’ve been hearing a lot about wisdom, knowledge, and understanding in Proverbs. They are very important. Some writers think that Paul pointed this out to the Colossians because they were going off to things of the legal aspect. How many of us seek for God’s will? How many of us are asking what would God have me do? What is God’s will for me? His will should be done in all wisdom.
1 Corinthians 1:30
There are four things mentioned in this verse - wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We can connect this with v. 9 in Colossians. Then, there is spiritual understanding. There is a lot to be understood in the world, but how many have spiritual understanding? 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that these things are spiritually discerned. We can understand physical things, but there are things that are way higher, and take spiritual understanding.
Knowledge here is the “what?” and wisdom is the “how?” You can have knowledge, but not understand it. Wisdom is how to apply knowledge you understand. It might be easy to memorize a formula (knowledge), but understanding it and having wisdom is something different. Paul was praying that that Colossians would have all three. He wanted them to know God’s will, have wisdom to apply it, and understand why to do it. It’s something to think about.
In v. 10 we see that the walk is practical. We may have the knowledge of God’s will, but are we walking in it? Are we walking worthy of the Lord? Our walk has an affect. It’s a testimony. And, if we are walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, our walk won’t be offending to those around us.
Then there is being faithful in every good work. It’s fruit bearing. Are we bearing the fruit of the spirit? We learn about fruit baring in John 15:5. Darby puts that last part of verse ten as “Growing by the true knowledge of God.” This verse shows us how to please Him in every aspect. For “even the Lord pleased not Himself.”
These are all various characteristics that Paul is desiring for the Colossians. We can see these are the steps up to the glorious view found in “His dear Son”. They should be important to us, and we should be seeking to go on in them.
Darby puts verse eleven as “strengthened with all power according to the might of His glory unto all endurance and longsuffering with joy”. It’s sticking to it. Going on against all opposition. Don’t get discouraged - keep focused. So, we have patience, longsuffering, and joyfulness. Patience, and longsuffering are one thing, but doing both with joy is totally another thing.
In v. 12, we find the importance of thankfulness. It’s thankfulness to the Father. Darby puts it as, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light.” We are prone to do things contrary to God, but He has made us fit. What wondrous grace! We have an inheritance of a hope to be in the presence of God Himself. It’s the hope of the saints light. We can see from where we’ve been taken. Redemption fits us for His sinless presence.
This is a good list to ponder.
Hymn 138 - “Whosoever heareth!” shout, shout the sound
Prayer