Jesus Trades Places with a Leper, #2

The only thing that moved Jesus to heal a man is indicated in verse 41, His compassion, He was moved with compassion. He felt the man's pain. He felt the agony of this man's isolation, physical distress, social isolation, religious isolation. The man's plight triggered Jesus' compassion. God is a God of compassion. God is a God of all compassion. God feels the pain of sin's effects on sinners and Mark chapter 6, for example, and many other places, but close by in Mark chapter 6 and verse 33, “The people saw him going and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them. When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd and He felt compassion.”

This is the heart of God who feels the pain of suffering in this world. That's what motivated Him. It wasn't some trigger by the man's level of faith, for Jesus healed everybody all the time, faith or no faith. Jesus stretched out His hand, I told you last week He healed with a word and a touch, He stretched out His hand, touched him and then said to him, “I'm willing, be cleansed.”

Now in Leviticus 5:3 there's a law forbidding anyone to touch a leper. But Jesus couldn't be defiled by anyone...He could not be defiled by anyone. Do you understand that? There's no record in the Scripture that Jesus ever had an illness, a disease, no record that He ever had a cough, a cold, a sneeze, no record that He ever had any infliction upon His perfect sinless body...

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