He Reached Out, Matthew 8:1-4
Leviticus 13 and 14 span just over a hundred verses, and the subject is gross: skin disease. Splotchy patches. Oozing sores. Swellings. Hair within the spot turning white. Whether the discoloration sat on the surface or appeared deeper than the skin, if the priest could not tell, the person was isolated for seven days, then another seven if necessary. Two weeks waiting for a verdict about a spot on their arm.
Notice who is doing the looking. Not a doctor. A priest. And for the priest to proclaim you “unclean” was not a medical diagnosis; it was a religious verdict.
The Hebrew word behind it is tzara'at, and our English Bibles usually translate it as leprosy, close enough to be useful, but different enough to be worth mentioning. The word covers a range of skin conditions. But it also describes mildew creeping across a wool garment and stains spreading through the plaster of a house. The common thread is not a specific disease but an affliction that spreads where it does not belong and must be dealt with.
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." —Leviticus 13:45-46
Tear your clothes.
Let your hair go.
Cover your mouth.
Announce your uncleanliness.
You become the warning label.
Numbers 5:1-4 gives us the reason for the contaminated person being sent outside the community: God lives in the middle of this camp, so what is unclean goes out of it.
There was a way back. Leviticus 14 lays out a ceremony for it, and the same priest who put you outside is the only one who can bring you in. But you do not get to walk in and say you feel better. A Priest has to look at you and say it.
That is the world Matthew is writing into. So listen to how chapter 8 opens.
Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Matt 8:1-2
Imagine what this guy had gone through leading up to this moment. Max Lucado, from his book, Just Like Jesus;
One year during harvest, my grip on the sickle seemed weak. The tips of my fingers numbed. Within a short time I could grip the sickle but barely feel it in my hands. By the end of the season, I felt nothing at all. The hand grasping the handle might as well have belonged to someone else; the feeling was gone. I said nothing to my wife, but I know she suspected something. How could she not?
One afternoon I plunged my hands into a basin of water intending to wash my face. The water reddened. My finger was bleeding, bleeding freely. I didn’t even know I was wounded. How did I cut myself? I didn’t feel anything.
It’s on your clothes, too,” my wife said softly. She was behind me. Before looking at her, I looked down at the blood spots on my robe. For the longest time I stood over the basin, staring at my hand. Somehow I knew my life was being forever altered.
“Should I go with you to tell the priest?” she asked.
I turned and looked into her saddened eyes. “No, I’ll go alone.”
Standing next to her was our three-year-old daughter. Squatting, I gazed into her face and stroked her cheek, saying nothing. What could I say? I stood and looked again at my wife. She touched my shoulder, and with my good hand, I touched hers. It would be our final touch.
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The priest didn’t touch me. He looked at my hand, now wrapped in a rag. He looked at my face, now shadowed in sorrow. I’ve never faulted him for what he said. He was only doing as he was instructed. He covered his mouth and extended his hand, palm forward. “You are unclean,” he told me.
With one pronouncement, I lost my family, my farm, my future, my friends.”
My wife met me at the city gates with a sack of clothing and bread and coins. She didn’t speak. By now friends had gathered. What I saw in their eyes was a precursor to what I’ve seen in every eye since: fearful pity. As I stepped forward, they stepped back.
For five years no one touched me.
No one.
Not my wife.
Not my child.
Not my friends.
No one touched me.
They saw me.
But I didn’t feel their touch.
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I approached Jesus out of desperation.
You must remember, I’m a farmer, not a poet, so I cannot find the words to describe what I saw. Delighted: Before He spoke, I knew he cared. Somehow I knew he hated this disease as much as, no, more than I hate it. My anger became trust and hope.
From behind a rock, I watched him descend a hill. Throngs of people followed him. I waited until he was only paces from me, then I stepped out.
“Master!”
He stopped and looked in my direction as did dozens of others. A flood of fear swept across the crowd. Arms flew in front of faces. Children ducked behind parents. “Unclean!” someone shouted. Their panic I’d seen a thousand times. His compassion, however, I’d never beheld. Everyone stepped back except him. He stepped toward me. Toward me.
Five years ago my wife had stepped toward me. She was the last to do so. Now he did. I did not move. I just spoke. “Lord, you can heal me if you will.” Had he healed me with a word, I would have been thrilled. Had he cured me with a prayer, I would have rejoiced. But he wasn’t satisfied with speaking to me. He touched me.
Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. Then Jesus said to him, “Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.” Matt 8:3-4
“I will.” His words were as tender as his touch. “Be healed!”
Energy flooded my body. I felt warmth where there had been numbness. I felt strength where there had been atrophy. My back straightened, and my head lifted. I now stood eye level with his face. His smiling face.
He cupped his hands on my cheeks and drew me so near I could feel the warmth of his breath. “Don’t tell anyone about this. But go and show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded for people who are made well. This will show the people what I have done.”
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And so that is where I am going. I will show myself to my priest and embrace him. I will show myself to my wife, and I will embrace her. I will pick up my daughter, and I will embrace her. And I will never forget the one who dared to touch me. He could have healed me with a word. But he wanted to do more than heal me. He wanted to honor me, to validate me, to christen me. Imagine that…unworthy of the touch of a man, yet worthy of the touch of God.
—
Now, let’s leave the imaginative work of what this leperous man was experiencing and look at the significance of what was happening right before his healing.
Jesus has been up on a hill giving his most famous sermon for three chapters, the Sermon on the Mount. This is how that sermon ends.
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law. —Matthew 7:28-29
Turn the page, and the crowd that just heard him preach is coming down the hill behind him, and the first person to reach him is a man who was not allowed to be there. The person Leviticus puts outside the camp.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit." Here is a man with nothing left.
"Blessed are those who mourn." This man was mourning the loss of everything.
In that same sermon, Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law. Then he reaches out and touches the one the law said do not touch, and sends him straight to the priest with the offering Moses commanded.
Chapters five through seven are the words. Chapter eight is what the words look like with skin on.
DIRECTION CHANGE
Everybody standing on that hillside knew which way this was supposed to go.
In that world, uncleanness ran one way. The clean thing was always at risk. Mildew does not become wool. Wool becomes mildewed. Rot does not turn back into fruit at the bottom of the basket; the good apple goes soft next to the bad one. That is the logic behind Leviticus 13. Something is spreading where it does not belong, and if you touch it, it is coming home with you.
A clean person could become unclean in a moment. An unclean person needed a priest, a ceremony, birds, blood, oil, and time to become clean (Leviticus 14:1-32).
Uncleanness spread easily. Cleanness did not. Everybody knew it.
When Jesus put His hand on that man, everybody in the crowd saw something they did not expect. The disease did not climb up Jesus' arm. Cleanness flowed down it.
THE DISTANCE BARRIER
Picture that man alone outside the town. He was not there because anybody hated him. He was there because of Numbers 5. For centuries, anything unclean was moved away from the middle of the camp, or later, the city. It was not punishment. It was a distance barrier. Holy at the center, where God dwelt in the tabernacle. Unclean at the edge. And a whole nation arranged in between.
For fifteen hundred years that arrangement held, and it was not cruelty. It was protection from contamination.
Jesus reached out and touched him. "I am willing," he said. "Be healed!" And instantly the leprosy disappeared. —Matthew 8:3
Watch what just happened. Jesus closed the gap between the holy and the unclean. God's aim was always to dwell with His people. The distance barrier was the tragedy, not God's preference.
God did not soften His holiness to do it. He never had to. God's holiness was never something human uncleanness could threaten. Jesus was not the least bit concerned about what was on that man's skin.
On that day, the distance began to disappear. At His death, in Matthew 27:50–51, God tore the veil of the Holy of Holies from top to bottom. The barrier was gone. Through Jesus, God's presence would no longer remain behind a curtain. He would dwell within His people.
THE CHALLENGE FOR US TODAY
Jesus did not simply heal one man that day. He showed us the direction of the Kingdom.
For centuries, uncleanness pushed people farther away. Jesus came and started moving toward them instead.
For centuries, the distance barrier kept the unclean at the edge. Jesus crossed that distance. Then, through His death and resurrection, He removed it.
Now He lives in us, who believe in Him.
That means the direction of our lives should look like His. We move toward people, not away from them. We cross the distances that fear, shame, sin, and unbelief have created. We do not wait for people to find their way to Jesus. We carry the presence of Jesus toward them.
Every one of us knows someone who feels like they belong outside the camp. Someone convinced them that they have wandered too far. Someone who cannot imagine that God would ever move toward them. Someone who has rejected Jesus, doubts He is who He has claimed to be, or has never truly considered that He might be.
So let us be the people who take the first step. Let us cross the street, the office, the neighborhood, the lunch table, or the family divide. Let us move toward the spiritually lost with the same compassion Christ showed the leper.
Because every time we move toward someone with the hope of Christ, we remind the world which way the Kingdom moves.
©2026 Greg McNichols, All rights reserved.
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