God's Good Grace In God's Good Time

"Today's Devotion" For June 29, 2005

Read: Matthew 8:1-4; Leviticus 14:2-32

GOD'S GOOD GRACE IN GOD'S GOOD TIME

"...'Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.' Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. 'I'm willing,' He said. 'Be clean.'" (Mt. 8:2-3)

How important is God's grace and mercy to us? It's a pretty good bet that they were important to the leper Matthew talks about in our Gospel reading for today. Here was a man who was shunned and feared because he had a disease considered incurable and contagious. According to Levitical law, he was required to live apart from other people, except, of course, other lepers. Anyone coming in contact with a leper was to be considered "unclean," so such persons became isolated from everyone, except those who were suffering as they were. It was not a great existence and, certainly, such persons clung to the impossible hope that they might, at some point, be healed. So how gracious and merciful was the hand of God upon this particular individual that he was able to come to Jesus, worship Him, and seek healing from Him? Imagine this man's joy when, in the midst of his isolation and quarantine from the community, covered with rotting and decaying flesh, and most likely experiencing pain he has the opportunity to come to Jesus, worship Him, and seek healing from Him.

The only hope this man had for healing was Jesus. By faith, therefore, this leper reached out to his Lord and Savior, trusting that Jesus' heart would lead Him to a compassionate response. God's grace and mercy for this leper leads Jesus to hear this man's prayer and answer that prayer, healing him and sending him on to fulfill the Law and the Prophets by showing himself to the priests. Jesus' love and compassion knows no bounds - He risked being "unclean" when He touched the leper to heal him. God's grace came to this man, this leper, in God's good time and for God's good purpose.

The healing of this leper stands on its own as a marvelous testimony to the grace and mercy of God. It's a wonderful picture of the Father's blessings to a sinful world through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Yet this account by Matthew has an even deeper meaning and intent for disciples of Jesus Christ. In a curious ending to this encounter between Jesus and the leper, Jesus instructs the man to do two things. First, he is to show himself to the priests to prove he'd been healed and make the sacrifices of atonement to God (which is according to Levitical law). But Jesus puts a curious twist on the meaning of the sacrifice, noting it would be a "testimony to them," perhaps as an acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah. The second thing Jesus instructs the leper to do is, perhaps, even more curious. He is to keep silent as to how he had been healed and Who had done so. What an incredible command by Jesus. This newly restored human being couldn't tell anyone else than the priests how he was healed. Why would Jesus put this former leper in such a position, asking him to keep silent when he was so grateful to be healed and restored to his family and friends?

The answer lies in Jesus' purpose for coming to earth. By God's good grace, in God's good time, Jesus came into the world, took on human flesh, put Himself under the Law so that He could obey it perfectly in our place, and then went the way of the Cross, an innocent man, bearing the guilt and sins of the world upon His head. Jesus' sacrifice for the sins of the world, so that all who believe in Him "should not perish but have eternal life" (Jn. 3:16), had to occur at the right time, in God's time, and couldn't be rushed or changed. Jesus' own testimony in Gethsemane, "Father, if it is possible, take this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done" (Mt. 26:39) makes it clear that God has a time and place for accomplishing the salvation of the world. It was essential that people didn't believe in Jesus because of His miracles. It was important for the world's salvation that people didn't believe in Him because He healed people. It was also important that His death occur when it was the "right time" according to the Father's timing.

God's good grace in God's good time is an important reality for us as God's people, redeemed in Christ. God's timing is everything when it comes to our service to God. Sometimes, according to God's timing, it can just be important for us to be silent; at other times to shout His praises at the top of our lungs. To carry God's good grace in God's good time to others is our calling from our gracious and merciful God. Our witness as Christian men and women is not only to tell others about Jesus, but also to know when it might be best to hold off telling and just let our actions set the pace. How good it is to live each day knowing that "God's good grace in God's good time" is at work in our lives and in the world.

Prayer: Father, I know that my time isn't Your time. All too often, however, I get impatient for things to happen, for things to get done, and for resolutions to my problems to happen yesterday. While one of the things that's obvious in the account of Jesus healing the leper is that Your healing power is available to me everyday, more especially do I hear You telling me that Your blessings come to me according to Your good grace in Your good time. Help me to trust Your timing for my good, dear Father. Strengthen my faith in Jesus, that I may trust Your timing completely, knowing that You will accomplish Your Will for my life according to Your wisdom. Give me a wise and discerning spirit so that I may understand how to be an effective witness, sharing Your good grace in Your good time, so that they might come to faith in Jesus and be saved. In Jesus' precious name I pray. Amen.
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--Pastor Boeck

Copyright © 2005 Rev. Richard J. Boeck, Jr. All rights reserved.