Word of Salvation – Vol. 19 No.40 – July 1973

 

Law And Kingdom

 

Sermon by Rev. Jac. Jonker, B.D. on Matthew 8:1-4

Scripture reading: Leviticus 14:1-11

Psalter Hymnal (New): 445:1,3; 303:1,4; 298; 404:1,2,3

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

The three chapters of Matthew’s gospel – five, six and seven – record for us the so-called Sermon on the Mount.

These chapters comprise the most devastating literature of mankind.  When Jesus is called a revolutionary by some, it is because of what he preached to his people in those chapters.  So sharp-pointed is his attack on common religious attitudes and customs, that all through the ages of Christianity people have tried to isolate those chapters, to put them into the deep freeze.

One of the most common ways of doing this is by treating this sermon as a one-time business which, of course, requires special study to explain it.  In practice this is no more than bringing this sermon into line with what is thought to be the normal and general trend of Christian teaching: of Christian faith and morals.  The fact that there are no other elaborate sermons of our Lord recorded, should give us second thoughts.  Mostly his teaching is mentioned as a teaching of the WORD, without any further explanation.  It would be more to the point that we take the Sermon on the Mount as a specimen of what Jesus normally had to say to the multitudes.  He spoke about the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN and its implications and obligations.  Thereby he showed that God does not accommodate Himself to our human ideas.  He does not descend to our human level of reasoning and behaviour, because, to put it plainly: God does not go by the exterior of our life nor is he interested in the legalistic ways in which we defend what we do or do not do.  What God is after is what is in the interior of man, that is, what lives in his heart!

All secret things will be brought into the open and will even be preached from the housetops!

Jesus Christ puts into the limelight what was the pride of the Jews: the prescriptions of the old ones!  In those manifold prescriptions, that purported to be an implementation of God’s law, they ran counter to God’s intentions with the law.  Actually they murdered that law of love and mercy.  “You have heard that it was said by the old ones but I SAY YOU…!” is a turn of phrase that occurs often in Jesus’ addresses to his disciples and the multitudes.

No wonder that this approach had its results!

With remarkable force this is put before us when, straight after his account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew tells us about the leper who forced his way through the milling crowd around Jesus to kneel down before Him saying, “Lord if you will, you can make me clean.”

This man flouted the Law of Moses!  What he did was an unheard of violation of the rules laid down for the behaviour of lepers.  They had to stay far from contact with other people, they had to warn them by crying out “unclean, unclean”, and as they were not always able to shout, they had to ring a bell.

And what is told us in our text?  That while Jesus was surrounded by great crowds a leper pushed his way through them to approach Jesus.  That is what you get when a rabbi preaches that the prescriptions do not mean a thing but that the only important thing is what lives in your heart!  Well, it is fully clear what lives in the heart of this leper: he just wants to be cleansed!  And there he goes!  Flouting the law; shouting his need!

+ + + + +

What this man does is not so shocking to us.  Our respect for the law, any law, is not so deep rooted to start with.  Furthermore we are not concerned with leprosy, for we know that it exists and, according to doctors, is a bad disease, but not so readily contagious after all.  We have some colonies of lepers in the tropics, even in Australia but leprosy for us is a word out of the book, a theory.  There are other illnesses that horrify us and “smoking is a health hazard according to the medical profession”, but that’s about all.

The horror cases of sickness in our society are well isolated in our hospitals, which enables us to live as if they do not exist!  We live a rather well protected, bourgeois life of normalcy that is only interrupted by screenings on television of battle-scenes in Vietnam and accidents on the road.  In the last case we do not even see the victims with their torn limbs but only the smashed up cars.  We just do not know what horror and forlorn misery is until the day that it strikes one of our own loved ones!

On top of this we live by the miracle of the NEEDLE, whereby sedation is given to patients in their sufferings and much misery is smoothed away under the camouflage of a hospital bed with its immaculate bedcover.

What is worst of all is that it escapes us that leprosy in the Bible is the eloquent sign of what the SIN of man means.  That we, as sinners, are a horror to others and to God, that we are unclean and not fit to have contact with Him and each other, is not self-evident to us.  Sin for us is just one of those things.

We should know what a leper is… and then we should see ourselves as such a repugnant horror, eaten away by ulcers, losing fingers and toes, nose and ears… unclean, unclean… ring the bell to warn healthy people to stay away from us.

Brothers and sisters, what SIN is and what a SINNER is, is a very delicate subject.  We use the WORDS rather easily and superficially in conversation and for the rest it remains a technical term from theology.  When it is a subject treated on the pulpit we usually hear only very veiled descriptions and worn out phrases.  We must however face the fact that a leper is the untouchable, as a pariah in India, and that he is the personification of a sinner.

The Old Testament teaches us how important leprosy was as it is the only sickness treated circumstantially in the laws of Moses.

Instructions are given as to how leprosy could be recognised and how the patients had to be segregated from the rest of the community.  In case somebody who was stricken by the illness might find that he showed signs of recovery he had to go to the priest to subject himself to elaborate tests, taking several weeks.  When the priest had confirmed that the patient had recovered this person had to bring sacrifices to God, all prescribed minutely.

There is one conclusion only to be made from the laws and the facts of Israelite life, that lepers were the HORRORCASES of Israel’s society, showpieces of the total corruption of sin.

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Enough said to make us understand what a sensation it must have been that such a leper came to Jesus, pushing his way in through the dense crowds, against every rule in the book.

Even in the strict isolation in which this man had to live, he had heard about Jesus, about his criticism on the laws and about his miraculous powers of healing….!  That must have been somehow like it happens in our prisons – through a kind of grapevine.  When relatives left their gifts of food outside the villages for the upkeep of the lepers, they must have given the good news of this rabbi from Nazareth, who spoke about a new order of things, the Kingdom of God that had come near.

The man took courage and threw himself on Jesus’ mercy.  Kneeling down, he said:
            “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean”.

Is not this faith amazing?  So strong?  So unwavering?

Of course this has been criticised by many readers and theologians.  They say this is only a miracle-faith… it has nothing to do with saving faith.

Well, if this is ONLY a miracle-faith… whenever do we so-called Christian believers have such a faith?

What kind of a character do our prayers have in cases of sickness?

And, let us forget for a moment that sickness… when do we so firmly believe that Jesus can make us clean from sin?  Do we take Jesus to be so great?  When forgiveness is promised us because of Jesus’ sacrifice… do we believe that?  Do we dare to flout rules because we want to ask Jesus to make us clean?

ONLY A MIRACLE-FAITH… not good enough for our system of thought – what will we hear next?  Lord, if you will, you can…!  That leaves the decision to Jesus but it confesses his power.  We vacillating believers of today, we have to learn an awful lot from this miserable outcast… but then we have perhaps never knelt down for Jesus.  If all we do is listen in church without ever the struggle in personal prayer we are outside of the Kingdom of God!

And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying: “I will, be clean!”

He touched him… there you have it!  That is what Moses had warned against!  Lepers should not be touched… every person who inadvertently touched a leper should be put in quarantine; for he might be contaminated!

Moreover, what is the use of touching this man?  He is no invalid that has to be supported – like a cripple who has to cross the street!  Now Jesus himself is also unclean!

Let us behold what a Saviour this Jesus is!

He makes contact by touching the untouchable…!

He becomes ONE with the patient…!

ONE with this horror…!

ONE with this stain… this sinner.

What will happen now?  Who will be the stronger of the two?

The leper: to contaminate Jesus… OR will Jesus cleanse the leper?

Jesus touched him saying: I will, be clean!

Here the triumph is for Jesus – by a miracle: and immediately his leprosy is cleansed.

But what does this mean?  What is the actual character of this miracle by Jesus?

That can easily be seen!  Jesus cleanses the leprosy.  That means a repair of the wasting body, a restoration to health of sickness.  Herein we strike something that is worth our close attention.  Jesus acts in a way that is fully contrary to what we do.

For what with us human beings are the really big things?  What is eye-catching about what WE do?

We perpetrate acts of violence and destruction that entail death.  Look at your television screen: we are able in a split-second to blow up a building in Belfast… a man in a brawl in a pub knifes a mate… we drive a car and have a frontal collision: all the metal bent and bodies thrown out on the road… a firebug lights a bushfire and hundreds of acres of forest are devoured by flames…!  All the things in human life that happen suddenly are connected with violence and destruction, mutilation and death.

Now visit a hospital, where the best that medical science knows is used to heal our patients and all that takes time, lots of time.  It goes so slowly when we care for the sick and disabled.  Weeks in hospital and months – still weak – in bed at home…!  That is the best we can do.  To bomb a building takes only seconds but to rebuild it takes many months.

How wonderful that with Jesus things go the other way!

His healing is all of a sudden: a touching hand… a spoken word… that is all.

AND IMMEDIATELY HIS LEPROSY WAS HEALED.

No ambulance… no nurse… no convalescent home… no hospital… no doctor… no needles… he was healed straightaway… immediately.

Can you guess the expression of complete amazement on this man’s face when he looked at his fingers?  He wound the dirty bandages off and look: his fingers were all there… no more white sores, no more missing knuckles…. and his feet… no festering stumps but normal, healthy feet… then he felt for his former nose, and WOW it was back again ALL THE ULCERS GONE… healed… immediately!

Now he was no longer a horror but a new man, a healthy man, an ordinary everyday man.

Stupendous it was.  To use another of our modern words: fantastic!  Jesus had acted contrary to the law given by Moses and shown that he was Lord of the law, just as he was Lord of life.

Will this now become the moment to start a big propaganda drive in Palestine?  Will this man call a mass-meeting of all Israel’s lepers to be helped by Jesus?  That could have been a wonderful parade of Jesus, the miracle worker.

But, no, this is completely out of the question.

Jesus said: “See that you say nothing to anyone.
            but go, show yourself to the priest,
            and offer the gifts that Moses commanded, for a proof to the people.”

The healed leper had to keep his mouth shut!

Jesus’ miracles are no matter for shallow publicity.

He performs his miracles as a proof of his divine mission, that he is the promised Messiah, the Son of the living God.

At the same time they are an illustration of who God, Jesus’ sender, is and what he wants to do for mankind: that God is the God of mercy and therefore of help and of life.  God does not turn his back on sinful man but wants to accept him in grace.

Jesus did not come as a special doctor to heal a few hundred or possibly thousands from their bodily misery but he came to be the Saviour of God’s world.  His aim was to bring reconciliation between God and man, to bring PEACE.

+ + + + +

While we are prone to make from all good things a subject of pious jubilation as if God was so much interested in the words we use, Jesus has a somewhat different view.  It may then be that he is come to criticise the faulty implementation of Moses’ law.  But this does not mean at all that the rank and file of normal people are exempt from that law.

Jesus tells this man: go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to the people.

This offer has to consist of: two male lambs without blemish; one yearling ewe; three tenth of a measure of fine flour mixed with oil; one measure of olive oil.  Or if he is poor: two doves.

When he comes through the tests of the priest and is declared clean according to the law, then the priest and all the people will have to concede that in Jesus Christ no revolutionary came to break the law but the promised Messiah who will fulfil the law.

So we may accept that this man has gone to the priest and in due course was declared clean.  The priests no doubt will have inquired what had caused his healing and the healed man will have testified about the man whom he had called “Lord” and who had healed him – all of a sudden with nothing but a word spoken.

Now a difficulty crops up: where was this man and where were those priests when Jesus stood in front of Pontius Pilate and was pronounced innocent?  Where were they when afterwards the scribes incited the crowds to ask for Jesus’ death on the cross?

Where again were all the other lepers that were healed by the Lord?  Where again were the lame and the blind, the deaf and the dumb?

We never read anything more about them…!

Is it then possible to benefit from Jesus Christ and to remain silent about it?  What would you say congregation?

Do you know persons who found forgiveness for their sins by Jesus and who never speak about it?  Who perhaps neither bring the offerings that Jesus expects from them?  Would they be healed or still be smelling lepers?

There is another question that we have to look into: HOW DID THIS LEPER KNOW OF JESUS?  And from where came his faith expressed so clearly: if you will, you can make me clean?

Only one answer is possible: he had heard about Jesus and his message of the Kingdom of God that promised comfort for the miserable and help for the sick.  That is all!

Do you realise, brothers and sisters, that this is exactly similar to our situation?

We have heard the good news of God’s grace from our bible, written in the New Testament by apostles of Jesus and their companions, who all of them testified about what they had heard and seen and even TOUCHED of the Son of God!  So we know.

And this is a cause for us to go to Jesus?

We do not have to thrash our way through a crowd; we are not hamstrung by old fashioned laws of the Old Testament.

The leper from our text went, elbowed his way, knelt down confessing: Lord, if you will, you can make me clean!

Are we better than this leper?  Or are we stained and ulcerated by sin – worse than leprosy?

Do we seek Jesus… to kneel down before him, to confess that we are unclean and need to be cleansed?

It is true today, that He will make us clean!

He will… He can… no trouble there… but do we ASK?

Amen.