15 Luke 5:12-29 (The Leper and The Paralytic)

Last week, we saw Jesus' interaction with, and call of, Simon Peter. Even though Simon had seen Jesus perform many healings, it was the manifestation of a major catch of fish to get his attention. As a result, Simon confessed his sinfulness, willingly left his business, and followed Jesus. * From this point, Jesus begins to travel throughout the regions of Galilee and Judea, and uses Simon's house as his "house of operations" while back in Capernaum - His adopted city. * Today, we begin to follow Jesus on these journeys. Immediately, we are introduced to one of Luke's favorite words when it comes to describing Jesus' travels: egeneto - translated in the NKJV as "Now it happened ... " or "Now it came to pass ..." Egeneto is used 208 times in the New Testament; 129 of those times are by Luke! (Luke - 75; Acts - 54) The next closest of usages is Mark, John and Revelation with 18 each! Egeneto is the aorist indicative of ginomai, which means "cause to be" or "to become." When Jesus came to the earth, He had a plan and a purpose. There would be appointments that He would "happen" to keep and people that He would "happen" to meet. Over the next weeks and months, as we see many of these appointments, we need to recall that God is still is control of "Now it came to pass ..."! * Today, through Jesus' interaction with a Leper and a Paralytic, we will begin to see in detail Jesus compassion and power to heal. In His interaction with the paralytic, Jesus will deal with an individual who would be classified - according to current APA DSM criteria - with conversion disorder (or functional neurological symptom disorder).