June 21, 2026 - The Gospel of Luke - Week 8 - Willing to Restore

In Jesus' world, this was not fiction, and it wasn't a game.

This was what it meant to be unclean.

If you've been around church life for a long time, or maybe you haven't, and you've heard the phrases clean or unclean, and if you had open wounds covering your body very much like leprosy would, life was incredibly difficult for you.

So in verse 12, this is what we read.

"In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy." As a first century Jewish person, to hear Jesus was about to encounter someone with leprosy, uh, with a skin disease, it would have actually freaked you out, not just because of leprosy as a skin condition of suffering physically.

It was also a social death.

Skin diseases affected the rich, the poor.

Anyone could contract this disease.

And we don't know this man's history, but his condition would have spoken volumes to the readers or those hearing Luke's gospel read.

This man was an outcast and essentially had been erased from society.

Leviticus chapter 13 and 14, which I'm sure you love for your devotional time, was details on clean and unclean skin.

But skin diseases were so serious that God gave Moses some rules on how to handle disease, mainly to prevent the spread.

Very practical.

Leviticus 13 says, "Those who suffer from a serious skin disease must tear their clothing and leave their hair uncombed.

They must cover their mouth and call out, 'Unclean, unclean,' as long as the serious disease lasts.

They will be ceremonially unclean.

They must live in isolation in their place outside the camp." This was separation, and it was awful for the individual.

It was harsh, but it was nec- necessary to protect the community.

And here we are in Jesus' day, and this man has been feeling the full weight of being unclean.