Matthew 8:1-17 - An Outcast, an Outsider and an Obsolete

Uh we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We have extra copies.

If you didn't bring one with you and you'd like one, raise your hand up real high.

I will take 17 verses from Matthew chapter 8, and we'll make sure you get a copy.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

You can also, I believe you can sign online here in the network in the building.

And if you have a Bible on one of your devices and would like to follow along that way, you're welcome to do it.

Our study of Matthew, we're calling the king and his kingdom.

Matthew's not the king, Jesus is.

Matthew keeps pointing us to Jesus.

Matthew, the former tax collector named Levi.

And as a former tax collector and accountant, he groups his data just like he would on a spreadsheet.

One of my friends here and one of our council members here at the church is a money guy and a spreadsheet guy, and he says he thinks all the problems of the world could be solved on a spreadsheet.

Maybe you think that too, I don't know, but it seems like Matthew knows how to do spreadsheets.

Uh GL line number, that's General Ledger, for those of you that don't know.

I just know a little bit about this stuff.

I don't know a lot about it.

But general ledger line one is about the person of Christ, including chapters one through four.

General ledger line two, Matthew uh enters data concerning the principles of Christ.

And the most famous of chapters five, six, and seven that we call the Sermon on the Mount in our own day and time.

Now, as we come to uh general ledger line three of Matthew's spreadsheet that we'll call Matthew's gospel, uh we're entering chapters eight and nine, and we'll have at least nine, ten or so of the miracles of Jesus, and they will uh not just be about the uh the person of Christ, the principles of Christ, but about the power of Christ.

I borrowed that alliteration from John Stott, who certainly is the king of alliteration in many ways, and helps me remember.

That's what I need to do, is equip myself to be able to remember some of this stuff.

So we have a look then already at the person of Christ, the principles of Christ, and now the power of Christ.

And so uh to quote John and uh uh as he as we sort of set ourselves up for the reading, in the ministry of Jesus, words and works, words and deeds, like you just mentioned up here in your uh uh sort of the catechism that we uh recited.

In the ministry of Jesus, words and works, gospel preaching and compassionate service went hand in hand.

His works expressed his words.

His words explained his works.

It should be the same for us.

Words are abstract, they need to be embodied in deeds of love.

Works are ambiguous, they need to be interpreted by the proclamation of the gospel.

Keep words and works together in the service and witness of the church.

I think he's right on in all of that.

And uh, as we turn to the text now, would you pray with me our prayer uh for illumination?

Just bow your heads.

Uh, gracious holy God, give us diligence to seek you, wisdom to perceive you, patience to wait for you.

Our Father, grant us a mind to meditate on your holiness, ears to behold your majesty, eyes, Lord, that we might see truths that are timeless from your word, a heart to love you, and a life that proclaims you through the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen and amen.

So let's take a look then at the first of these miracles in Matthew chapter 8, verses 1 through 17.

Matthew 8:1–17

And we're going to take three of these here together, and I'm going to read the whole passage and then we'll come back and kind of pick it apart a little bit, all right?

So when he had come down from the mountain, remember we just studied the Sermon on the Mount.

So when he came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.

So that's great and multitudes together.

I like the way that adjectival modifier is in there.

Great multitudes, as opposed to regular multitudes.

So that means like a lot of people, okay?

A lot of people followed him.

Um I'm reminded there, we don't always live up on the mountain in the Christian faith.

We sometimes have to come down into the valleys, and that's okay.

Why?

Because Christ is with us in both.

Verse 2 Behold, a leper came to him and bowed down to him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

And stretching out his hand, he touched him, saying, I am willing.

Be cleansed.

And immediately, a word I really love, immediately his leprosy was cleansed, Jesus said to him, See that you tell no one, but go show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses prescribed for a testimony to them.

Change of scene.

And when he had entered Capernaum, a centurion said to him, entreating him, and saying, Sir, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering great pain.

And he, Jesus, said to him, I will come and heal him.

But the centurion answered and said, Lord, I'm not qualified for you to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.

And I say to this one, Go, and he goes.

I say to another, Come, and he comes.

And to my slave, do this, and he does it.

Now when Jesus heard this, he marveled.

And Jesus said to those who were following, Truly, I say to you, I've not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.

And I say to you that many shall come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness.

In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And then Jesus said to the centurion, Go your way, let it be done to you as you have believed.

And the servant was healed that very hour.

When Jesus had come to Peter's home, and this is in Capernaum, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever, and he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she arose and began to wait on him.

When evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and he healed all who were ill.

In order that what was spoken through Isaiah, the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, He himself took our infirmities and he carried away our diseases.

So we'll stop there for today.

Big questions start to stir up when you start reading about the miracles of Jesus.

A lot of people will ask questions about that.

Um, did they really happen?

Um is this just myth and legend, or is this history?

Um these the kinds of things that Jesus could do, and if so, how is that possible given what we know about medicine and science and all that sort of thing?

So, great questions, um, reasonable questions, I think.

Can God heal diseases like this?

Can He just say a word and something happens miles away without him even going there?

And one of the things I've noticed as I've studied through the gospel accounts is that every time Jesus heals somebody, most of the times when Jesus heals somebody, it's he uses a method that he might not have used already.

He does things like spit mud and rub it on people's eyes, and then they can see.

With other people, he just touches them.

With other people, he speaks words, and something happens just because he spoke a single word.

And here we have three miracles, one at the request of the ill person, one on behalf of another person who's ill, and one that was performed on someone who didn't even ask.

Interesting.

So the minute we start to try and template everything that Jesus does, he will have none of that.

God will not be tamed.

God is not on the end of our leash.

Our prayers are requests, but they're not commands.

And I know there have been some strains of theology that have become quite popular and sold lots of books and attracted huge crowds, where people suggest that they can replace the sovereignty of God with the preferences of people.

We won't teach that here at all.

We don't want to mislead you.

God is sovereign.

There isn't a single square inch of his universe that he's not in charge of and in control of.

He hasn't misplaced one Adam, He hasn't misplaced anything.

He knows exactly what he's doing, and we can trust him completely because of who he is and how unique he is.

D.A.

Carson put it this way: the controlled universe, reflected in the Bible, as God as both its creator and sustainer-ruler.

He creates in an ordered way and sustains and rules in an ordered way, so that science is possible, but he's not bound by what he has created.

So he is at perfect liberty to do things another way, with the result that miracles are possible.

I don't know about you, but I get excited about that.

That's amazing.

It's as if a painter could enter the canvas they're painting on and become part of it and yet still be completely other.

We just talked about how Jesus had these two natures, and both human and divine, and that's the kind of amazing mystery that we're talking about here, that Jesus, the Son of God, could come and do these kinds of things.

If he is the Son of God, as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all suggest, as John, as Jesus himself even claims over and over again, seven different I am statements of Jesus in the book of John, for instance.

Making really bold claims.

And if he really is who he says he is, if he really is who Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all say that he is.

If he really is, as John said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

And then he goes on to tell us, just like Colossians 1 does, that everything that has come into being came into being because of him and through him.

And if that's true, cleansing a leper, you know, healing from a distance, intervening in someone's life that didn't even ask and healing them, walking on water, changing water to wine.

So easy for someone that can create everything out of nothing.

So if you believe Genesis 1:1, that there was at the beginning a creator of some sort, and there are many people who aren't even Christians that believe there's some kind of deity that did do that, that did indeed create the universe.

Genesis 1:1

If you believe that, this, all of this, all of these miracles we read about Jesus would be a pretty easy cakewalk for Jesus.

Lewis, the miracles, in fact, are a retelling in small letters of the very same story, which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

I think it was Chesterton said, a man can be blind to something as long as it's big enough.

You know, and that's what happens with us.

We just don't always connect the dots, do we?

Well, the miracles weren't just tricks he performed.

It's not just a bit of sensationalism.

It's not, he's not just trying to collect a huge crowd and get a big offering at some, you know, like some kind of a uh a showman would.

The miracles of Jesus actually had purpose.

They reveal his compassion.

I want to suggest to you that as we watch each and every one of these miracles as we read through Matthew's gospel, he really loved these people.

You'll see that specifically here in the text we have for today.

They display his authority.

I mean, just watch throughout the Gospels.

We'll see he has authority and power over disease, over disasters like storms, over demonic powers like demons who possessed others and pushed their humanity way back, and lastly, over death itself.

And again, I would suggest to you he's just the kind of savior I need.

He's just the kind of savior you need.

You need look no further.

He really is the one.

They affirm his identity.

Again, if he's claims to be the Son of God, if he claims to be the Savior of the world, if he claims to be the light of the world, the good shepherd, the bread of life, if he claims to have living water that will satisfy your soul like none other in this world, one would think he could do this, and the miracles at least affirm his identity.

They inspire faith, gratitude, and worship, which is what you and I were created for.

Worship is what we were created to do.

And every single one of us, whether you're a believer or not, every single one of us is a worshiper of something.

The question is, is it God that we're worshiping?

Or is it career or self or pleasure or possessions or opportunities or social uh uh acclaim?

Uh what are we worshiping?

So let's take the miracles one at a time that we've read already.

The setting, Jesus has come down off the mountain, presumably after giving the Sermon on the Mount.

Great multitudes are following him.

He's in the hometown of Capernaum, which I love.

We've been there over to Israel five times, and I love.

They even have a sign outside of Capernaum that says, hometown of Jesus of Nazareth, you know.

As if, as you would here in the United States, where you've got a little city where somebody's, somebody grew up or was born there, and they're well known for being connected to that city.

Capernaum's like that.

The event, all of a sudden, this leper approaches in the first miracle.

The crowd that's following Jesus probably parted like the Red Sea, man, because a leper was considered very unclean.

Today, leprosy is called Hansen's disease, named after the Norwegian scientist Gerhard Hansen, who discovered the bacteria behind the disease.

The terms leprosy and Hansen's disease are relatively interchangeable.

Um today, fortunately, antibiotics used during the treatment can kill the bacteria that cause leprosy.

But while the treatment can cure the disease and prevent it even from getting worse, it does not reverse nerve damage or any physical disfiguration that may have occurred prior to treatment.

That's what makes this miracle so unusual and amazing to me.

I love that word immediately.

Did you notice it?

Mark uses the word immediately about 40 times in his gospel.

His gospel, Mark's gospel is the short attention span theater gospel.

It's for people like me that can't pay attention very long, you know.

That's immediately, immediately, immediately, there's always these big changes in scene.

In the U.S., leprosy is rare.

According to the HRSA Health Resources and Services Administration, in 2020 we had 159 reported cases of leprosy.

But around the world, there are as many as two million people, uh, many of whom are permanently disabled as a result of leprosy.

The highest concentration of people with leprosy is found in India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and believe it or not, South America, Brazil in particular.

Overall, the risk of getting Hansen's disease for any adult around the world is very low.

Scientists are not clear exactly on how it is transmitted, but they do know it spreads.

Um, and oddly enough, really strange, but armadillos have been known to carry the bacteria that causes humans to come down with leprosy.

So if you have a pet armadillo, just keep your eye on whatever you call that animal, okay?

Um two kinds of Hansen's disease, tuberculoid leprosy, uh, is the less severe.

Symptoms include flat or slightly raised skin lesions, which are sharply demarcated.

This kind does not spread far and uh may recede or even disappear after a short period of time.

The second kind of Hansen's disease or leprosy is more life-threatening.

It's called lepromatis.

This is likely the kind of leprosy this man had, since we know from Dr.

Luke's account of this same story, that the man was full of leprosy.

Lepromatus often begins with the loss of sensation in one part of the body, then comes the appearance of hardened nodules in the surface of the skin.

These eventually ulcerate and produce a foul discharge.

The person's eyebrows may fall out, vocal cords ulcerate, and the voice becomes gravelly or raspy.

They breathing sounds like heavy wheezing.

The hands and feet ulcerate and then the muscles begin to waste away.

The tendons contract and the hands may become like claws.

Later stages, the fingers, toes, or even a whole hand or a foot may actually drop off.

Corneal ulcers or blindness can also occur if facial nerves are affected due to the loss of sensation of the cornea outside of the eye.

People with leprosy were outcasts.

Uh, they lived in isolation, they experienced a kind of living death, as one commentator put it.

But leprosy was not a disease one could ignore or hide for long.

Paul Brand and Philip Yancey point out in their book, in his image, the worst part about leprosy was that it took away the person's God-given ability to feel pain.

So a leper might put their hand on a hot firebrand or be bitten by a snake and not even know it.

Lepers became emotionally disconnected with their own bodies as those parts of their bodies are infected.

The Bible commentator William Barclay, the old Scottish Bible commentator, tells us that socially lepers were complete outcasts in the first century.

Lepers were banned from Jerusalem in all walled cities.

If a leper put their head inside a house, the entire house was declared unclean.

No one was permitted to come within six feet of a leper if the wind was blowing toward a person from a leper.

The leper must stand at least 150 feet away, was the rule.

One rabbi used to say that he would not eat an egg bought on a street on which a leper had passed.

Another rabbi boasted that they would throw stones at lepers to drive them away.

Still, other rabbis, upon seeing a leper in the distance, would simply turn and run so as not to come in contact with the leper.

I think we have to notice at least two things in this.

First, the approach of the leper to Jesus.

He came acknowledging his need.

Try to imagine the day when the man first discovered the possibility that he had leprosy.

Perhaps it was an itchy part of his skin that was flaking, and perhaps a lesion was forming there.

Might have been at work, might have noticed the numbness in one of his fingers, didn't go away.

Several days later, another finger goes numb.

Some skin problems developed, and all of a sudden it became clear what was happening.

He got sent home from work, told not to come back until the priest, the local priest, would confirm that he was clean.

At home, he stood outside the house, yelled through the window to his wife, and through his own tears, he asked her to bring out a change of clothes, some food, some money, and to set them down in the street.

He tells her he has to leave immediately without notice.

He couldn't kiss her goodbye.

He couldn't stroke her beautiful face.

He couldn't touch his nose to his daughter's nose that day.

He couldn't wrestle with his boys in the front yard without notice.

Because of leprosy.

He must leave everything and everyone he cares about and live in a leper colony with the rest of the outcasts until the day he dies, isolated and wretchedly unhappy.

But here in Matthew 8, probably years later, because he was full of leprosy, he's hiding behind a rock full.

Disease, he sees the crowd coming.

He's wrapped in bloody rags and bandages, wheezing and coughing.

He stumbles out from behind the rock and approaches Jesus.

The crowd gasped, repulsed in horror, and most of them shrank back to avoid contact while turning their heads in revulsion at the hideous man wrapped in those rags.

Some picked up rocks and thought maybe they would need to drive him away.

But this outcast was desperate.

And so he lunged ahead, bowed before Jesus, and with a raspy voice he garbled out the words, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me click.

What was the demeanor of Jesus when this man approached?

I love this.

We'll talk about that in a second.

Man came in humility, that's up on the screen too.

Came and showed respect, expressed confidence in Jesus.

All of that's true.

Kneeling, bowing, using words like sir.

Which I know some liberal uh scholars will say that just means mister.

But you know what?

The context won't permit that.

Why?

Because you don't just go to any mister and ask him to cleanse you from leprosy.

You don't just go to any sir and say, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

You don't risk having all those rocks thrown at you.

When you're that desperate like this guy is, acknowledging his own need, you come before Jesus like the poor in spirit.

And it's Jesus who says the poor in spirit are blessed.

It's Jesus who says that theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So he shows respect, he has confidence in Christ.

And I'll remind you that faith is only as good as the object of your faith.

I can have all the faith in the world in this chair up here.

But if somebody has loosened one of the legs and I come in and plop myself down on it, it doesn't matter how much faith I have.

It's not about the amount of faith, it's about the object of your faith.

And we're taught that over and over and over again in the New Testament.

It's not about how much.

Matter of fact, Jesus makes this point really clear when he says, you can have faith as small as a say it, mustard seed.

And if your faith is in the right object, then you're showing respect, you're properly directing your faith in the right one, the one that you don't need to look any further.

He really is the one.

He can do that.

The question is will.

And this man comes with that same proper spot where he's saying, Your will be done essentially.

Just as Jesus taught us to pray.

Now let's turn our attention to the response of Jesus.

We're taking more time with this miracle than we will with the other two, but I think it's important.

Jesus saw the man.

He didn't just see a leper.

Everybody else saw a disease.

Everybody else saw a problem coming their way.

Jesus saw a man.

Are we like Jesus in that regard?

For all the outcasts in our lives?

All the outcasts in our society.

You know, because there's part of me that wants you know that if you feel like an outcast, you know, you just need to come to Jesus.

He is.

We just sang it.

He is hope for you.

He is the healing that we ultimately need.

Whether he feels he heals us physically or not, he is the one we need to put our hope and trust in because ultimately one day he promises to set all things right.

And that's what we're looking for, is what he can do.

Jesus saw the man, he didn't just see a problem.

But I also need to see others the same way Jesus does.

Not as repugnant others, because I don't believe there should be any repugnant others if you're a Christian.

So if they voted the other way and they're atheists and they're wretched people, and they yell and scream and their dog barks in the neighborhood all day long.

Um or whatever.

There's no repugnant other.

Jesus got personally involved.

Stretching out his hand, Jesus touched him.

All the eyes are on Jesus when this thing goes down.

You know, everybody that's recoiled, picking up stones, what's Jesus gonna do?

You know, and then this amazing thing happened.

He got personally involved.

They had to be shocked and horrified that Jesus would now touch this guy.

Touching a leper was forbidden.

Why did he do that?

Why did he risk contracting the horrible disease?

Why did he not care first and foremost about his own well-being?

Touching the leper meant Jesus would be banished, at least for a while, from the temple because he'd be unclean.

There's never been a disease that so isolated someone from the rest of humanity as this one.

Yet it is to that kind of person that Jesus extended his hands and touched him.

The Greek verb for touch here is hapto, and it's more than just a glancing touch.

There's even one commentator that suggests he grabbed a man as you would grab a hold of somebody who's fallen off a cliff and you're trying to raise them up over the back to the top of the mountain or whatever.

The leper would have been thrilled to be touched by somebody.

He's probably been years without touch.

His family, his wife, his kids.

And somebody actually touches him.

And then Jesus restored the man.

What's fascinating to me is that if he's full of leprosy and his nose is gone because it's been eaten away, his ears are gone, his fingers have fallen off, immediately Jesus touches him.

And by the way, instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the man became clean.

That's the kind of stuff Jesus does.

But what was that like in that moment?

I just would love to have been there.

Immediately.

No salve, bake, do this four hours of this, change the bandages, do this, do that, do this.

No, immediately.

Whatever his name is, Eddie, whatever.

He's back in action.

He's cleansed.

It's undeniable.

It's not a it's not a shell game.

It's not the kind of thing you see sometimes on these televangelist type things that are, you know, swirling on a coat.

Nobody, Jesus doesn't squirt, throw coats at people.

That's one of the things he doesn't do.

But immediately this guy is healed.

And it's remarkable.

So much about this is remarkable.

Leprosy is like sin, they're very much alike.

It's a wretched condition of the body.

Sin's a wretched condition of the soul.

Sin eats away at our soul, at our humanity.

The question is, will we turn to Jesus?

Will we turn to him?

Jesus recommissioned the man.

I love that.

He said, go to the priest and tell the priest about it.

Show yourself to the priest.

And it's kind of like Jesus is literally saying to the man, he restores him and then he recommissions him right back in.

Now go to the priest, because and I'm wondering about this, and a lot of commentators speculate about it.

Did he do that so that the man, uh, was the man just kind of fulfilling some kind of religious rules?

Or did Jesus have something else in mind?

Go show the priest as a testimony to the priest that the Son of God has actually come.

Because you know how many times we have a record of lepers going before the priest, following that ancient Mosaic rule, and going to say, hey, look, I'm clean now.

We don't have very many records of that happening, actually.

So maybe for the first time in this priest's life, here comes Eddie walking in, and he's got all his digits, and he's smiling, and he knows he's gonna get to go home and see his wife and kids, and maybe even go back to work.

And it was a test.

Could it have been a testimony?

And Jesus says to him, though, don't tell anyone, but go see the priest.

Now, part of my job as a pastor and as a Bible teacher is that I get to state the obvious and then restate the obvious.

And I just keep doing it over and over again.

And some of you might awaken to this one day and say, we don't really need him to do that, you know.

But let me state the obvious here.

Isn't it ironic that Jesus tells this man not to tell anyone?

And he goes and tells everyone.

And then Jesus tells us to tell everyone, and we hardly tell anyone.

Some of you getting a little uncomfortable.

It's meant to make me uncomfortable.

Make us uncomfortable a little bit.

Take note a little bit of the centurion servant as well.

Here's the account of a Roman centurion here.

Uh we have it in verses 5 through 13.

Yeah, it gets a little more text, uh, doesn't it?

It's interesting.

This is the Roman occupying government.

Okay.

New Testament has three contexts.

The religious context is Jewish, the cultural context is Greek, actually.

Everybody's speaking Greek all throughout the Roman Empire.

And then the political context of New Testament is basically Roman.

It's this sort of Roman Empire all around the Mediterranean.

And so this guy represents the oppressive, heavily taxing, you know, even cruel in many cases, Roman Empire.

And yet he comes to Jesus.

This centurion uh would have been over a hundred soldiers, part of a uh a legion which would have been more like 6,000 uh soldiers there in the time.

But he would have been considered an outsider to the Jews of this day.

The Roman government, as I say, oppressive and cruel.

It's interesting, though, that the six different events that happen in the New Testament where centurions are mentioned, there seems to be some kind of a positive thing that happens in the context of the storyline when the centurions are present.

It's fascinating to me.

There was this man who, the centurion, who uh, and then there's a centurion that recognized Christ on the cross, said, Surely this man is the son of God.

Book of Acts, we read about a centurion named Cornelius, the first Gentile convert to the Christian church.

There was a centurion who suddenly discovered that Paul was a Roman citizen and rescued him from the fury of a rioting mob in the book of Acts.

And then there was that centurion who traveled with uh Paul all the way when he wanted to go to Rome.

So all of each and every time there's something kind of positive that's stated about these centurions.

With this guy, it's a remarkable thing that he even cared about the life of his servant at all.

Why?

Because his servant was property, considered just property.

Not a person, but just property.

And so in that day and time, I'm not saying I'm not saying it's right, I'm simply saying in that day and time, this guy could have just said, You're sick, you're ill, just set him out there on the street, just let him waste away.

That's what he could have done and been well within his, quote, legal rights to do that.

A good reminder that just because something's legal doesn't mean it's right.

A master could uh treat the slave who had become sick and could no longer work as somebody he wanted to just kill himself.

And yet here he is showing respect, caring for the life of a servant, even humbling himself before this Jewish man who doesn't have the seminary degree, he isn't one of the leaders, uh, but just seems to be this movement.

When Jesus heard this, verse 10 says, he marveled.

And again, I get to state the obvious again.

Um, when you are Jesus, my guess is you don't do a lot of marveling.

I mean, think about it.

You created everything that exists, and yet this says he marveled.

And that's because throughout the Bible, again, we often find faith where we don't expect to find it, and we don't find faith where we do expect to find it.

And that's one of these cases right here.

Um interesting.

Gotta keep moving.

Jesus heals Peter-in-law's, uh Peter's mother-in-law, rather.

Um, I don't know if you've ever struggled to approach God for healing or some other great need that you might have, but notice this one.

Nobody asked.

Nobody asked on behalf of her.

She didn't ask herself.

He just intruded, he just invaded, just like he did with the widow of Nain's son that had died.

He saw the funeral procession, moved by compassion.

Jesus walks up, in in just interrupts the whole thing and literally raises the kid from the dead.

Nobody asked.

Interesting, that says so much about Jesus, doesn't it?

Um, really amazing.

He sees needs and responds to needs.

Whether you're an outcast who needs to be brought back in, or an outsider that needs to be welcomed in, or you're somebody that you think it's all over.

You think I got no purpose in life.

And this was a sick woman in a culture that didn't respect women.

And this was a sick, possibly dying woman, um, and Peter's mother-in-law at that, and Jesus steps in.

The last couple of verses that we read there uh show us how Jesus fulfills ancient prophecies.

Look at 16, 7.

When evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed, he cast out the spirits of the word, healed all who were ill, and ordered that.

Matthew's so good at this.

What was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be, and here's one of Matthew's favorite words, fulfilled.

Right?

He himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.

It's so, so beautiful.

Three specific miracles of Jesus here.

Um, he heals the outcast, the outsider, and the obsolete.

And I have no idea where you're at in your own life with God or your spiritual journey, however you want to say it.

But I do want to point this out to you.

This is the kind of savior the Bible is presenting to you.

This is the kind of redeemer, this is the kind of healer, this is the kind of God the Bible, the God of the Bible, is all about.

Please don't get your theology from movies or popular books that are, you know, some kind of fictional account of something.

Just go right to the source.

Matthew was an eyewitness.

This is a guy who sat around the campfire with Jesus, who heard him preach things like the Sermon on the Mount, who walked the dusty trails with him, who actually saw these things happen.

That's who you ought to get your record of when you're trying to figure out who is Jesus.

Because in Christ, Matthew says the outcast is loved and cleansed.

In Christ, the outsider is welcomed in and healed.

In Christ, the obsolete are renewed and recommissioned.

I love this.

I love this.

The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it.

Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken.

His miracles are not just proofs that he has power, but also wonderful foretastes of what he's going to do with that power.

Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts that the world we all want is coming.

So said Tim Keller in The Reason for God.

If you haven't got a copy of that, you need to.

It's one of his older books, but it's certainly a great and a wonderful book.

I'll close with this quote from Dane Ortland.

For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness.

No one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.

If you haven't read Gentleman Lowly, I highly recommend that one as well.

And if you haven't turned to Jesus, these three miracles here remind us he's the one we should turn to.

He's the one we should come to, no matter what our lot in life may be.

Whether everything's fine, everything's wonderful, but yet you still have that haunting hollowness inside your soul that there must be more than this.

Or whether things are really difficult right now, you're perhaps mentally struggling or emotionally confused about something, uh, or perhaps wrestling with some great physical illness or some financial catastrophe has happened, whatever.

In any case, we turn to him.

We come to him because he really is all that we have wanted and all that we need.

It doesn't mean in every case he's gonna snap his fingers and remove the undesirable circumstances.

But sometimes the healing work that he does looks like that, and sometimes it looks like a peace that passes understanding, and you just have no idea why you feel at peace in the middle of this storm you're going through or this great loss you're suffering.

Sometimes it looks like that, and it's still him pouring his glory through it, and it's a beautiful thing, it's it's a transcendent thing because it's from him.

Let's turn to him now in prayer.

Lord, thank you for who you are.

The heart that you have for us, toward sinners such as we are.

All of us in some way outcasts, all of us in some way outsiders, all of us in some way really desperate for meaning and purpose in life and feeling obsolete in some way.

Lord, as we turn to you this morning and trust and hope in you, I pray, first of all, that it'll be you we turn to and not just what you can give us, but Lord, that we would say, if you are willing, Lord, we have great confidence in who you are because of what you've done in the past.

And all of these small miracles that point to that great one where you burst forth from the tomb, the resurrection.

Lord, you've shown us you can defeat our last and greatest enemy.

And so we turn to you.

Grant us the faith that leads to repentance.

Grant us, Lord, a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love toward us.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.