The Chosen Ep 6: “Tell No One”
We are in the sixth week of The Chosen, and we are introduced to two characters whose lives have been turned upside down. One by leprosy, and the other by paralysis. These two men are written about in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In each account the leper is told something that may seem confusing. Jesus said, “tell no one…present yourself to the priest…” The leper is healed. So why does Jesus command him to “tell no one?” If we look at the Law of Moses, we read in Leviticus 14:2-3,7,8
2 “This shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, 3 and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall look. Then, if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person… (a ritual is performed) 7Then he (the priest) shall pronounce him clean… 8 And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. And after that he may come into the camp…
Having the priest pronounce the leper ‘clean’ meant that the community would accept it. They trusted in the process and words of the priest, not just the words of the leper. If he was going to be restored to his community, he needed the priest’s pronouncement. For us, we can have all kinds of guilt and struggles, but when we hear the forgiveness for our sins, the restoration of our lives to God, it is true, and it should be accepted by our community. We as a community help a sinner embrace a new identity, that as one redeemed by Jesus, by seeing them as made clean and whole and covered by The Blood. We explore this idea more as we talk about God’s authority and Word.
-Pastor Kyle