#34. Luke
Introduction:
In our text last Sunday we saw a man desperately in need of cleansing.
He was a leper. Jesus cleansed this man of his leprosy. In our text today
Jesus tells that same man that he is to be
a testimony to others. As we
proceed
in the message, I think you will see that the testimony he would
give about Jesus would leave men
without excuse for failing to believe in
Jesus as the Christ.
There were three specific commands that Jesus gave to this man.
I.
The command to tell no man
After Jesus healed this man of his leprosy Jesus issued a strange
command. V. 14, "And he charged him to tell
no man: but go, and show
thyself
to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses
commanded..." I said that Jesus gave him "a"
command. Actually, there were
three
separate commands in one. The first
command was that the man was to
tell no man that Jesus had
cleansed him of his leprosy. The second
command
was that he was to go and show
himself to the priests. The third was
that
he was to make an offering in
obedience to the law of Moses.
Now I said to you a moment ago that Jesus gave this man what seems at
first
to us to be a strange command. He
commanded the man not to tell
anybody
that Jesus had made him whole. This is
the very opposite to what we
might
expect. We would have expected Jesus to
tell him to go and tell
everybody
that it was Jesus who had made him whole.
We find it difficult at first to understand why Jesus would tell him not
to tell a soul. This is especially difficult to understand in
view of the
fact that in Luke
what great things Jesus had done
for him. Why would Jesus tell one man to
tell everybody and tell another
man not to tell anybody?
I do not think that there is any one single thing that answers this
question
completely. Mark
the man did not obey
Jesus. Instead of telling no man he told
everybody
that he could. The result was Jesus had to stop going into
that city
because
the people would almost mob Him every time He went in. Instead of
helping
the Lord's work in this city, this man was a hindrance to His work
at least in that particular
city. Instead of having a well behaved
crowd to
which
Jesus could minister, there was an uncontrollable mob gathered around
Him to which He could not minister. The Gadarean man
helped the cause of
Christ by obeying the Lord and telling
what great things the Lord had done
for him. This man did not help the cause of the Lord
in disobeying the Lord
and telling what great thing
the Lord had done for him.
Another reason Jesus did not want the man to tell anybody is that Jesus
did not want to get the masses
of people so excited about Him being the
Messiah that they would try to crown Him
as king. On
a few other occasions
the people did try to do that
very thing. On one occasion they tried
to
take Him by force and crown Him
as king.
Another thing that helps to explain why the Lord instructed him not to
tell was because He did not wish
to stir up the Jewish leadership against
Him at this time. It was not yet time for Him to be
crucified. But there
was already some opposition
against Him. Jesus wanted enough
attention
drawn
to Himself that He would have a crowd of people to minister to, but He
did not want enough stir up the
scribes and Pharisees against Him
unnecessarily
at this time.
Still another reason that He told the man not to tell who had cleansed
him from the leprosy and told
him instead to go show himself to the priests
is that the priests were the
very ones who were trying to discredit Him.
Jesus wanted them to examine the man and
to have them to proclaim that the
man really had been cleansed
from leprosy before it was told that Jesus is
the one who had cleansed
him. If the priest first publicly
acknowledged
that the man really had been
cleansed of his leprosy and then it was made
known
that Jesus is the one who had healed him, the priests would be put to
silence
and would not be able to discredit Him.
The priests and everyone
else would be without excuse for
refusing to believe that He is the Christ.
But whatever the reason, Jesus commanded
this man not tell, we know that He
had a good reason and the man
should have obeyed His command. Whatever
the
Lord commands, He has a good reason for
giving that command. Every man
ought
to obey whatever the Lord commands.
II. The command to go and show himself to
the priests
The second command that Jesus gave to that man was that he should go and
show himself to the
priests. Leprosy was hard to
diagnose. The spots which
would
appear on the face of a person as symptoms looked so much like spots
that were perfectly harmless
that one had to go to an expert to be able to
tell if he really had leprosy or
not. The priests were trained to be able
to tell the difference between
the spots which were caused by leprosy and
those
which were harmless. All people were
commanded under the law of Moses
that if they had such spots,
they were to go to
would
diagnose their case.
This man had gone to
It was now necessary for him to return to
by the priests so that they
could officially proclaim him to be free from
his leprosy. He was free of leprosy whether or not he was
ever officially
proclaimed
as free. But until he was officially
proclaimed as free from his
leprosy
by the priests, he would not be recognized by the general public as
being
free. So this man was to go to the
priests to be examined and to
officially
proclaimed as free from his leprosy.
Once he had been proclaimed
free of leprosy by the priests
and then it became known that Jesus is the
one who cleansed him, all men
would be without excuse if they failed to
believe
in Jesus as the Christ.
III. The command to make an offering
The third command that Jesus gave this man after He cleansed him from
his leprosy is that the man was
to make an offering in keeping with the law
of Moses. In the Book of Leviticus, the law of Moses prescribed that in the
event
that anyone's leprosy should disappear then he was to go to the
priests
to be examined. If the priests agreed that the man was indeed free
from his leprosy then he was to
make certain sacrificial offerings to the
Lord.
This was what God, through the law of Moses, required. It was right
for any man who was cleansed of
leprosy to make these offerings to the Lord.
It was wrong for any man who was cleansed
to fail to make them. Jesus did
not want this man to feel that
it would be alright for him to neglect
to do
what God required. Jesus wanted him to know that He who has been
cleansed
is now expected him to do what
is right.
The same thing is true of those who have been cleansed of sin. Now that
they have been cleansed of sin,
they are to start doing right. They are
to
obey the laws of God.
IV. The testimony to others
Luke reveals to us why it was particularly important for this man to
carry
out these instructions. Luke wants us to
know why it was particularly
important
for this man to go to
sacrificial
offerings that were required of him by the Mosaic law. (V. 14),
"...for a testimony unto
them." Luke said that this was to
be done for a
testimony
unto them.
How was going to the priests to be a testimony? Luke told the man to go
to the priests and show
himself to them and he said that it was to be a
testimony
to them. That is, this was to be a
testimony to the priests. It
was the priests who had earlier
examined this man and had seen that he did
indeed
have leprosy. It was the priests who
would examine the man again and
see that he was indeed free
from his leprosy. He definitely had
it. He
definitely
did not have it now.
Then when they would learn that it was Jesus who had cleansed this man
from his leprosy, this would
tell them something. It would be a
testimony
to them --the priests -- that
Jesus really is the Christ as John the Baptist
had said that He is and as many
of the people were now saying that He is.
The priests may not believe this testimony
and we know for a fact that many
of them did not believe it
because many of them were leaders of the
opposition
against Jesus. Never-the-less, they were
given a testimony that
would
leave them without excuse if they rejected Him as the Christ.
This would also leave all others without excuse if they rejected Jesus
as the Christ, the Savior of
men. It was well documented that this
man had
the leprosy. No man in that day could claim, as do some of
the modern day
skeptics,
that this man never really had leprosy at all.
The modern
skeptics
claim that he just had something that was mistaken for leprosy. It
looked
like leprosy. But this is most certainly
not the case. This man had
been diagnosed by experts as
leprous. He really and truly had
leprosy.
Furthermore he had it in a very bad
way. Luke said that he was full of
leprosy. Even the common people who were not experts
in the field of
diagnosis
could tell that this man had leprosy.
There simply was not a
shadow
of a doubt that this man had leprosy and had been healed of his
leprosy
by Jesus. Likewise there should be no
shadow of doubt that Jesus is
the Christ. There was no excuse for any of them to refuse
to believe that
Jesus is the Christ.
V.
Men today without excuse
So it is with men today. There is
no excuse for anyone today refusing
to believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of men.
There is no excuse for anyone to go on
without being saved. We do not have
that man who was cleansed of his
leprosy here with us to be a testimony to
us that Jesus is the Christ,
but we do have plenty of testimony. We
have
the testimony of those early
disciples who risked their lives to preach that
Jesus is the Christ. Many of them actually gave their lives rather
than to
deny that Jesus is the
Christ. Surely they would not have given
their lives
if they had not been sure in
their hearts that Jesus is the Christ.
Another testimony we have is that of angels. At His birth angels
appeared
to shepherds in the field and identified Him as the Savior of men.
We also have the testimony of God the Father, Himself. On two separate
occasions,
God spoke from heaven and identified Jesus as His beloved Son.
We have the testimony of the Holy Scriptures. The Bible absolutely
positively
identifies Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of
sinful
men.
We have the testimony of good men, women, boys and girls today. Some of
the best and most honest people
in the world today proclaim Jesus as the
Christ and profess Him to be the Savior of
their souls.
We have the testimony of changed lives today. Drunkards who have
trusted
Jesus Christ as Savior have had their live changed and become sober
men. Prostitutes who have trusted Jesus Christ as
Savior have become clean
moral
upright godly Christian women. Thieves
who have robbed and stolen
from others have become honest
citizens and have even become generous toward
others
wherein once they were selfish. Hardened
sinners who were steeped in
sin have become godly saints of
God. Skeptics, agnostics and atheists
have
become
promoters of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Hardened criminals have
become
godly examples of what a Christian ought to be.
Let me tell you that
there
so much testimony that Jesus is the Christ that every man, woman, boy
and girl is without excuse for
failing to believe in Jesus and trust Him as
personal
Savior.