Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

September 4– Morning

 by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“I am willing; be clean!” 

—Mark 1:41

It was the primeval darkness that heard the Almighty’s command, “Let there be light,” and immediately there was light. The word of the Lord Jesus is equal in majesty to that ancient word of power. Redemption, like creation, has its word of might. Jesus speaks, and it is done. Leprosy yielded to no human remedies, but it fled at once at the Lord’s “I will.”

The sinner is in a plight more miserable than the leper to whom Jesus was talking; let the sinner, then, imitate the Leper’s example and go to Jesus, “begging and kneeling down to him.” Let him exercise what little faith he has even though it should go no further than “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

In reading this passage, it is worth noting that Jesus touched the leper. This unclean person had broken through the regulations of the ceremonial law and pressed into the house, but Jesus, so far from chiding him, broke through the law himself in order to meet him. He made an interchange with the Leper, and by touching him Jesus himself became defiled.

Even so Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us. O, that poor sinners would go to Jesus believing in the power of his blessed substitution and learn the power of his gracious touch. The hand that multiplied the loaves, that saved sinking Peter, that upholds afflicted saints, that crowns believers– that same hand will touch every seeking sinner and make him clean.

The love of Jesus is the source of salvation. He loves, he looks, he touches us, and we live! [M&E]