A touch from the Master's hand 

Jesus’ hands would have been rough hands, marked and creased by the scars of many a splinter and many an errant chisel blow. They would have been dark hands. The people of the Middle East have skin deeply coloured with the rich brownness of the sun. And they would have been strong hands, hands that could lift great boards and boulders. You see, carpenters did not work in a shop building tables and chairs in those days. Instead, they were more like a combination of lumberjacks and stonemasons. They moved and cut huge blocks of wood and stone in order to do the big jobs—fashioning huge beams to support a roof, laying in a stone wall, or crafting large yokes for the oxen. It took strong hands to do that kind of work.

Yet there would have been a kind of gentleness about the hands of Jesus, too. They were so gentle that they could tousle the hair of a little child without frightening the child—so gentle that they could be extended to a woman taken in sin and lift her to her feet again with great tenderness. And, alas, they would have been wounded hands. The poet writes:

The hands of Jesus are very frail, 
For they were pierced with a nail, 
But only those reach heaven at last 
Whom His nail-pierced hands do clasp.

So the hands of Jesus were rough, dark, strong, gentle, tender, and wounded. But oh, was there power in the touch of those hands. I never hear the song “He Touched Me” without being moved at the core of my spirit. In the Gospel of Matthew—there are at least four different places where the Gospel writer speaks of Jesus touching people. And what we learn from Scripture is that the touch of the Master’s hand brings powerful results.
 

THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER’S HAND BRINGS CLEANSING.

Here we see a leper fall on his knees before Jesus to plead for healing. Now Leprosy was, and is, a loathsome disease. It began as a severe inflammation of the skin. It would proceed quickly to a deeper infection. Soon the nerve endings would be affected, and the sense of touch would vanish. Tendons would contract until hands became claws and limbs twisted and bent. With no physical feeling, body parts would sustain damage and infection. The deterioration process would continue until the body parts were destroyed. So ugly, so pervasive, and so horrible to behold was this disease that in the world 2,000 years ago, those who had leprosy were separated from all other people. They were not permitted to live at home. They were not permitted to work. They were not permitted in public worship. They were not permitted to come within six feet of any healthy person. And if the wind blew, they were not permitted within 150 feet of those who did not suffer from this horrible disease. They were altogether rejected by and isolated from society. No family. No friends. No community. No home. No access to God, at least in the fellowship of worship. All that was left for them to do was to wander about ringing a bell and crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” so that others would be warned away.

So this leper fell on his knees before Jesus, and Matthew says: “Jesus touched him.” Think of what that must have meant. It was the first time that anybody had touched him in years. But Jesus stepped across the horrendous barrier of this disease and touched him, and the man was cleansed.

Of course, leprosy is not the scourge of the world it once was. Today it is called Hansen’s disease and can be controlled by medication. So I don’t want to speak any more about the physical aspects of leprosy. But the fact is that leprosy has always been used as a synonym for sin—and there are some remarkable parallels between leprosy as a disease and sin as a state of the human condition.

Leprosy destroys the person who has it—so does sin. In almost everything we do in life, the longer we are engaged in it, the more proficient we become at it. The first time you take a needle and thread in your hand, you cannot sew. But if you work at it diligently, then in time, you will master the art of sewing. The first time you try to hit a golf ball, it goes nowhere—or worse, it goes everywhere! But after hours and hours of practice swings, you begin to hit the ball well. In every human endeavour, the more we engage in something, the better we can master it—in every human endeavour, save one. The more we involve ourselves in sin, the less we can control it, and the more it controls us. The more we try to master it, the more it becomes the master of us. It destroys as surely as leprosy destroys.

And sin separates just as leprosy does. It separates the sinner from other people and from God. Those who are caught in the grip of sin want no fellowship with those whose level of life is above their own. They don’t want them anywhere near. They don’t want them within six feet or, better yet, within 150 feet. And they are separated from God. It is not that God will not come near the sinner—God is longing to do that—it is that the sinner does not want anything to do with that which is good, especially with that which is perfectly good.

But if the one captured by the disease will only come like that leper of old and say, “Master, I wish to be clean”,—then Jesus, with all the infinite love of which He and He alone is capable, will reach out and touch—and with the touch there comes the gift of forgiveness, the gift of wholeness, the gift of new life. “Master, touch me, for I would be clean.” The touch of the Master’s hand is a cleansing touch.

The touch of the Master's hand brings healing.

The incident took place at the house of Simon Peter in Capernaum. His mother-in-law was in bed with a great fever. More than likely, it was a case of malaria. Jesus went to her and took her by the hand—He touched her—and as He touched her she was healed. She was given the gift of physical healing.

I am forever being asked, “Can faith heal?” The answer is “No.” But Jesus can. And faith in Jesus can open the door to the possibility of Jesus’ healing. In fact, it inevitably brings healing, invariably brings healing. Oh, it is not always physical wholeness which comes. The disease may be some terrible malignancy of the body, and we pray about it, and the malignancy advances. It is not always physical healing that comes. But there is healing—healing of mind or body or spirit. In one way or another, this healing comes.

This does not mean that we turn away from medicine. Not at all. Jesus said that His people would do greater works than He did. And that’s true. Every day, for example, more people are healed in hospitals worldwide than Jesus healed in all of His ministries. We do greater works than He did. But there are some instances when the healing rests with Him alone, whether it be healing of the body, mind or spirit. And as He was ready to give the gift of healing twenty centuries ago, so He stands ready to give the gift of healing today.

A number of times, we have seen physical healings wrought by the hand of Jesus. There are as many miracles today as there were twenty centuries ago. And I have also seen the miraculous power of His touch, minds and spirits as well. The touch of the Master’s hand is a healing touch.