Jesus Trades Places with a Leper, #1

Now we find ourselves in the last paragraph of the first chapter of Mark. Mark chapter 1, verses 40 through 45, that ends chapter 1. Now I told you we'd be moving through Mark faster than we moved through Luke ten years, or Matthew eight years plus. And just to prove that to you, we've been eight weeks in Mark and we are now at Jesus' healing the leper. If we were in Matthew, we wouldn't run into that until chapter 8 of Matthew and we would be three years in Matthew before we got there. Now if we were back in Luke, we wouldn't run into this until the middle of the fifth chapter of Luke and we would have been two and a half years in getting to this. So we are definitely moving faster.

As we said about Mark, Mark's gospel tends to be classified under the category of immediately, the common word that is used over 40 times. It's a fast-paced gospel, no wasted words, he moves rapidly and we're doing the very same thing.

Now as we come to the account that's before us which is included in Matthew 8:1 to 4 and Luke 5:12 to 16, we come to one of two occasions in the four gospels where Jesus actually heals a leper. Leprosy is common in Israel according to Luke 4:27, and had been common in Israel for a long time. So it is very likely Jesus healed many lepers. In fact, in Mark chapter 14 and verse 3, we come to an occasion where Jesus is at a gathering with a whole lot of people in the home of none other than Simon the Leper.

Well, he wouldn't have been a leper then cause if he had been a leper then he would have been an outcast and he wouldn't have been able to hold a party at his house and have people attend, which...

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/41-7