Jesus and disciples made many journeys into Jerusalem and the gospels record some of these during the 3½ years of his ministry. Yet what happened to cause the people to celebrate one of his final entries into the city and come to call him Messiah? They had been waiting a long time to be freed from the rule of the Romans, and even longer for the arrival of the promised Messiah, so how did they know Jesus was the one?
Recognising the Messiah
Throughout the ministry of Jesus, he revealed the love of God through his actions, including releasing healings and miracles. Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah was confirmed by these miracles.
There were other teachers in his day who trained their followers like Jesus did. But not only did Jesus teach a different ‘yoke’, one that transformed the teachings of the law to bring life rather than death, but he also suggested that he was the Messiah, the promised one. John 4:25–26
To the Jews, simply claiming to be the Messiah disqualified you and you were ruled out as a fraud. So there is no record of Jesus publicly decreeing that he was the Messiah but is was clearly implied in the gospels.
The crowd that witnessed his miracles in Galilee and Bethany are likely to be those that welcomed he triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and hailed him as their king. But what had happened in the days prior to his entry for him to become publicly hailed as a coming king and Messiah?
Healing the Leper
Recorded in three of the gospels, we read one of the four key Messianic miracles, ones that the Jews believed that only the Messiah could perform.
While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. Luke 5:12–16 (Also see Matt. 8:2–4; Mark 1:40–45)
Show yourself to the priest
From the time that the Mosaic law was introduced, there was a part of the law that had never had any use. It can be found in Leviticus 13–14 and gives specific instructions about what a priest should do when a leper was healed.
However, there was no cure of leprosy and there was no record of any Jewish person being cleansed of leprosy in over 1,400 years from the time of Moses. (Naaman, who was a Gentile and a Syrian general, had his leprosy cleansed, but he was not a Jew.) So it became established that only the Messiah could heal a leper.
In Luke 5:12 we read about a man with fully developed leprosy and who was close to death, but he recognised the authority of Jesus as the Messiah so expected to be healed by him. After being healed, Jesus instructs the man to go and show himself to the priests.
The implications
This would be the first time that they would have needed to instigate the Levitical teachings of dealing with a person healed of leprosy and would need to make a decision about who Jesus was.
The priests would then need to spend the next seven days conducting an investigation into the miracle which would ultimately show that Jesus healed the leper, a miracle that under Jewish Law only the Messiah could do. Jesus was not only obeying the law in sending the man to the priests, but also forcing them to come to a decision about who Jesus claimed to be.
Jesus under investigation
After showing himself to the priests, the news soon spread and Luke starts to record that the priests from all around the region came to hear Jesus in Capernaum. Their purpose was to make a decision based on what they observed and from interrogation. (See Luke 5:17)
On a separate occasion, when the paralytic was lowered through the roof to receive his healing, Jesus publicly told the man that his sins were forgiven which he knew would gain the attention of the priests. (See Mark 2)
As this was a time of ‘observation’, they could not yet question him. Instead, they reasoned in their hearts that he was either a blasphemer or that he could be the Messiah. However, Jesus perceived their thoughts and questions them publicly, drawing attention to not only forgiving the man’s sins, but then performs a miracle in front of the priest and the crowd. Jesus continues to heal the man and demonstrate visibly that God had healed.
It was only then that the investigation entered the second phase where the Pharisee church leaders could question Him and raise objections during the investigation phase.
Revealing Jesus as Messiah
According to Jewish teachings in the Babylonian Talmud (Nedarim 64b), lepers were considered dead and according to the Babylonian Sanhedrin, restoring life to the dead was one of the greatest of all miracles.
Leprosy was the one disease that the Rabbis could not cure miraculously through prayer. Only the Messiah would be able to do this. The Bible treats leprosy as a disease that is the result of sin, as pollution or defilement and under Mosaic Law touching a leper defiled a person.
We see Jesus stretching out His hand and touching the leper, which would make him unclean, but in doing so, the man is totally cleansed and is miraculously healed.
This miracle showed that Jesus was able to cleanse leprosy, a disease which was symbolic of sin itself and, therefore, should be able to cleanse sin and bring salvation. This help to establish and reveal Jesus as the Messiah and the people soon celebrated the arrival of their King at what was soon to become one of his final entries into the city of Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion.
