"I Am Willing" Matthew 8:1-4 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I want to spend the next few weeks, probably until Easter, going through Matthew 8.

This is a section of scripture that reads as if it were the greatest hits of Jesus.

It's a series of miracles.

In fact, it will be nine miracles that are broken up into three groups of three, all designed to show you that Jesus has the authority to say things that nobody else could say.

That Jesus has the power to do things that nobody else could do.

That Jesus stands unique over human history and over all of the man-made religions of the world.

That's what these miracles are designed to prove to you.

That's why Matthew puts them here.

And the context of where Matthew places them is very important.

This in Matthew 8 happens right after the Sermon on the Mount.

Now, the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

And these three chapters are easily the most transformative sermon ever preached in world history.

These three chapters, the Sermon on the Mount, turns the Israelite religion on its head.

It turns the Jewish world upside down.

To appreciate this, you need to know a little bit about the Pharisees and the scribes and where they came from and why they're new on the scene here.

Israel in the Old Testament, for much of their time, didn't have a temple, even.

I mean, after the civil war that took place after Solomon's life, Israel reconstituted itself and Samaria became its capital with no temple.

The besetting sin of the Israelites in the Old Testament was that of intermarriage, which led to idolatry.

The Israelites in the Old Testament, they loved worshiping foreign gods.

They acted as if they didn't even know a Torah existed.

I think many of their kings couldn't have named the first five books of Moses.

They didn't honor the Lord, they didn't keep his word, and God sent them prophets to confront them over and over again until finally he threw them out of the land.

They returned around 400 AD, rebuilt the temple, rebuilt the wall under Ezra and Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, and in a sense was reconstituted.

Only this time things went differently.

This time the nations of the world, when the Persian Empire fell, it was replaced by the Greek Empire, which persecuted Israel, attacked them.

Israel didn't intermarry with them.

Israel kind of circled the wagons and they developed their own identity.

Their own form of temple worship grew up there.

When the Romans occupied Israel, it maintained this Jewish identity.

But again, without prophets, these are the 400 years that we call the 400 years of silence.

God was not sending Israel prophets through this time.

They did not have a word from the Lord.

They had their temple and they had the nations of the world against them.

And what grew up in this vacuum was this religious tradition.

No longer were the Israelites of these silent years, no longer were they intermarrying, no longer were they worshiping idols.

Now they became fixated with their own identity, fixated with keeping the Torah.

But they didn't have a saving relationship for the most part with their God.

And that lent itself to this superficial understanding of what the Word of God says, this focus on the externals, this desire to be obedient to the Word of God from the outside in rather than from the inside out.

And through these 400 years of silence, the vacuum was filled by this religious tradition of the Pharisees.

They took the place of the prophets.

There were no prophets saying this is what God says.

Instead, it became the Pharisees who developed complex case laws and a complex system to apply the Torah to every part of life.

Whereas your typical Israel king in the Old Testament couldn't have named the books of Moses.

Your typical Pharisee could tell you how many commands are inside of the books of Moses and could apply them to any situation.

These Pharisees were tested, they were trained, they were technical, they were highly educated.

They were very important people in the Israelite culture.

And to prove it, you could just ask one of them.

They wore these ornate robes to distinguish themselves from everybody else.

They wore these really outrageous hats to demonstrate that they were a profound religious leader.

They would pray outside and on street corners so everybody could see how holy they were.

They would sound trumpets before they gave their gifts.

They could be found at any public gathering, and you could find them easily, not just because of their robes and their hats, but because they would sit on the front row.

Oh, they loved the prized seats.

They were such important people, and their importance derived really from one thing.

Their importance derived from their so-called ability to understand the Torah, to understand the law of Moses, and to apply it to Israelite life.

They were the experts in that, and that is what gave them their authority.

What a contrast with Jesus.

Because when Jesus arrives and he begins his ministry, he does not become a Pharisee.

He does not become a scribe.

He does not wear the ornate robe or the hat or blow the trumpet or pray on street corners.

He doesn't do any of those things.

He doesn't even go to minister in Jerusalem.

He goes out to Galilee, to the wilderness, and he begins to teach how the Pharisees are wrong about everything.

I'm trying to think of some kind of Americanized analogy to this.

And there's really nothing.

But I mean the closest thing I could think of is some kind of politician or political leader who arrives on the scene who teaches how our whole understanding of the Bill of Rights is totally wrong, and all of the case law the Supreme Court has has put out is just meaningless and worthless, and there's a totally different way we should structure our society, something like that.

And only this person has never been to law school.

They're not a Supreme Court judge, and they're not even doing it in Washington, D.C.

They're doing it out in the boondock somewhere like New Mexico or someplace.

I mean, nobody would take them seriously.

But what if they had tens of thousands of people going out to them?

What if everybody seemed to be listening to them?

If you have that kind of absurd analogy in your mind, you're starting to scratch the surface of what was happening in Israel at the start of Jesus' ministry.

As he goes out to the wilderness, he goes out to the Sea of Galilee and he begins teaching about how everything the Pharisees say is wrong.

How the whole Israelite self-identification as God's people is fundamentally misplaced.

That all they've they've thought about themselves and about the Torah for the hundreds of years before this is just wrong.

And he does so in such a really over-the-top way.

The Sermon on the Mount, the most repeated phrase in the Sermon on the Mount is, you have heard it said, dot, dot, dot, but I say to you.

For example, Matthew 5.21, you've heard it said to those of old.

Talk about a dismissive phrase right there.

You've heard it said to those of old, you shall not murder.

This is just one example.

But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

The Pharisees had built up this system of case law to justify all of their conduct when it was okay to kill, who your enemies really were and who they were not.

And you treated your neighbors one way and your enemies another way.

And they had a whole system about this.

They had a whole system about the Sabbath.

They had a whole system about marriage and how you could divorce your wife and how many times you could divorce different wives and what the circumstances under which you could get a certificate of divorce and how you could make oaths and vows and you could swear by the footstool of the temple, but of God's throne, but not by the one who sits on it, or you could swear by the gold of the temple, but not by the temple itself.

I mean, they had such an intricate system.

This is what gave them their authority.

And Jesus just goes line by line through it.

You've heard that it was said.

Don't commit adultery, heard that it was said.

I mean, he's talking about the seventh commandment here.

You've heard that it was said, don't commit adultery.

But I say to you, if you look at a woman with lust, you've already committed adultery.

You've heard it was said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Again, so much of the Pharisees' laws were about regulating punishment and vengeance and how much vengeance you could exact and what circumstance, and you know, an eye counts as an eye, and a tooth is a tooth.

And of course the Torah says, eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

It's the legal principle of Lex Talianus.

And Jesus just says, You've heard the Pharisees say this.

I tell you, if someone slaps you on the cheek, give them the other cheek.

And then he goes beyond even that.

If your eye causes you to sin, take it out.

Forget eye for an eye, Jesus says.

You're trying to so hard to say which of your enemies' eyes you get to take out.

You should take out your own eye.

Let's think about how outrageous this is.

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away.

It's better for you to lose one of your members than if you'd have your whole body thrown into hell.

Now we hear that in very Pharisaical-like tradition.

We have a complex explanation about why we don't have to actually gouge out our eyes, right?

Jesus is teaching about the power of sin and the futility of achieving sanctification through your own effort, you know.

And if you tried to do your own effort, you should pluck out your eyes.

And, you know, we got it, we got answers to this.

And those answers are good and they're helpful, but they're they're not even answering the question the Pharisees would have heard when Jesus said this.

They weren't stumbling over the cut out your eyes or cut off your hands part.

It's the last phrase they're stuck on.

The last phrase, Jesus says, then your whole body goes into hell.

Jesus is telling the Pharisees, they're going to hell.

He makes the point even more clear.

Later on, I tell you, you've heard it said, love your neighbor, hate your enemy.

I tell you, love your enemies.

Pray for them, so that you might be sons of your father in heaven.

Again, he's telling them your whole system about who your neighbors and enemies are, hogwash.

Also, you're not really sons of your father.

Footnote, you're not really in a relationship with the Heavenly Father.

That's Jesus' summation to the Pharisees.

He shreds their teaching on divorce.

You've heard it said, whoever divorces his wife, I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except for adultery, except for reason of adultery, causes her to commit adultery.

I mean, on and on.

He shreds their system on vows, he shreds their system on the Sabbath, he shreds their system of wisdom.

Who exactly is this?

Who can do this?

He's a carpenter's son.

He didn't go to the right schools.

He's from Nazareth, raised in Egypt.

Who is this person?

And the Pharisees were saying and saying and saying, and Jesus came back to them, naysaying and naysaying and naysaying.

The Pharisees said and Jesus unsaid.

The Pharisees proclaimed and Jesus unproclaimed and then re-proclaimed something entirely different.

This would be one thing if nobody listened to him.

But look at the first part of chapter 8.

When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him.

Here is the problem.

If he was a crazy ranting dude on a street corner, ignore him.

But tens of thousands of people are listening to him.

That's the problem.

Look at the end of chapter 8.

When he finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching.

That's one of those great understatements of the Bible.

The crowds were astonished.

Yeah, no kidding.

They'd never heard anything like this.

They'd never seen anybody take on the Pharisees like this.

And he did so with this one word.

Again, look at the last verse of chapter 8.

He was teaching them as one who had, here's the key word, authority.

Unlike their scribes.

I mean, that's the most damning thing you could say about the scribes and the Pharisees, right there.

Jesus actually taught as if he knew what he was talking about.

He had real authority, not like that pseudo-authority they had.

You know, our own university system today has so many degrees, they're just degrees in nonsense.

It's people that defer, confer degrees upon one another in ridiculous things.

They're experts in nothing, but they're proclaimed by other experts in nothing that they're experts in something.

That is the pharisaical system.

And Jesus blows it wide open.

Who exactly does he think he is?

The conundrum of the end of the Sermon on the Mount?

Simply this.

Who is this person?

Now I wish we could go through all of Matthew's gospel.

It's tempting for me to just say, all right, next three years, here we go.

But I would feel like such a cheater by starting in chapter 8.

But this is the repeating question of the gospel of Matthew.

Who is Jesus Christ?

That's the question Matthew's going to set out to answer here.

It's the question Jesus is going to ask the crowd when they lower the man through the roof.

It's the question the disciples are going to ask on the boat when he rebukes the wind and the waves.

Who is this guy?

The Pharisees are going to ask it of Jesus when his disciples are plucking grain in Matthew 12.

Who do you think you are?

Jesus is going to ask Peter, who do the crowd say that I am?

Jesus is going to ask Peter, who do you say I am?

And that's the focal point of the whole book, Matthew 16.

And Peter gets it right.

You're the Christ.

But for now, Matthew is structuring this to answer our question.

Having finished his Sermon on the Mount, who in the world is this?

So let's see if Jesus can prove that he has more authority in the law of Moses than the Pharisees.

Let's see if he can prove that he has a better understanding of what cleanliness and uncleanliness, holiness and sin is than the Pharisees.

Let's see if Jesus is more of a master of the ceremonial laws of purification and what makes something kosher than the Pharisees are.

Let's see.

Verse 2.

Behold, a leper came to him.

I love that the ESV starts with and behold, because this is outrageous.

Some of the translations drop off the end behold, but the SV keeps it here just to rattle your cage a little bit.

Look at you can translate and behold with like this.

Narrator voice.

You're not going to believe this.

A leper.

But that's where he goes.

If Jesus is going to do a miracle to prove his authority, can't he go to, like, I don't know, a Pharisee?

Can't he go to a centurion?

I mean, he'll get there eventually, next week.

But shouldn't he start with the healing important people?

Shouldn't he start with people who have power?

Shouldn't he start with doing something that's not a leper?

The Jews, the Pharisees particular, had 68 things, a list of 68 things that could defile a person.

They were ranked in order from worst to least, but all of them would defile you.

The worst thing to touch is the dead body.

That's the worst.

The second worst thing to touch, a leper.

And the logic behind that is that both of them are impossible to reverse.

You can't reverse death, and you can't reverse leprosy.

So you touch a dead body, then you have to be outside the city gates for a week to make sure that you're not defiled.

And if you touch a leper outside the city gates for a week, then your head is shaved, your eyebrows are shaved, you present yourself with an offering before the priest who examines you to see if you have signs of leprosy.

I mean, this is bad news.

In our world, leprosy is called Hansen's disease.

And I mean, it erases you.

It is one of those diseases.

It's not, it's a skin affliction, but it's not from the outside in, like it's not a rash.

It's not just blemishes on your skin.

Hansen's disease is different.

It's working through the nervous system, it's decaying the tissue on the inside of your body.

That's why the outside is affected.

I'm sure you know all this, but just to remind you, I mean, leprosy, it's decay of the nerves.

And diseases change over time.

It's possible Hansen's disease today isn't exactly like what it was in the New Testament time or even in the Old Testament Levitical law.

But I think the general principle is likely the same.

The nerves are decayed, the tissue is really decomposing, and you're rotting it by how you use it.

If you've ever had your ankle fall asleep or your leg fall asleep, maybe you stand up and you there's a chance that you can sprain your ankle by rolling it because you don't feel how it is underneath you.

That's what leprosy is, but all the time.

You hurt your toes and your feet because your shoes don't fit.

I read a secular scientific article this week about a guy in Africa who was observed somebody with a key that was stuck in the door.

And the guy had a leper come wrestle the key, and the leper broke his finger off, forcing the key in the door.

Because there's enough strength in the arm.

It doesn't decay the arm strength.

He just can't feel it on the hands.

Maybe you've had like a mark or a cut or a scratch or something affecting your skin, and you just you keep picking at it.

And you rub it, and then it gets red, and if you keep rubbing it, then you get like a little mark on your face, and then you get like a little kind of a welt on your face, and eventually you're gonna rub off your skin on your chin.

You're healthy and you can do this to yourself.

Leprosy is that to your body.

Highly contagious.

You know, it's that same article I read said that there's a in our current world, probably a 90% immunity rate to leprosy, to Hansen's disease.

That there's a genetic deficiency in some people that if you're exposed to it, 10% of the population is the capacity to contract it.

We have no idea what it was like 2,000 years ago because that kind of thing varies over time and diseases morph and respond to vaccinations and immunities and treatments and all that.

But it seems that it was more contagious even back then.

But even with that 10% threshold, well, I mean, what if the big disease we fear today is cancer?

What if cancer was contagious and airborne?

And somebody walked in this room with cancer, and you only have a 10% of catching, a 10% chance of catching it by staying in this room.

That's what would happen.

Remember the AIDS outbreak, and it was people didn't really know what it was or how contagious it was, and could you play sports if you had AIDS?

And what if you sweat on one of your opponents?

And trainers wear gloves, and you get blood.

To this day, if you get blood on your uniform, the officials will stop the game.

Stop the game! Somebody's got blood on their shirt.

Stop the game, he's got to go off and come back with a clean jersey.

Leprosy is worse than all of that.

I think middle ages, like if somebody in a house gets a bubonic plague, they burn the house down.

That's what we're talking about, or black plague.

Or that awful book somebody gave my kids before, The Velveteen Rabbit.

Oh my goodness.

That's not a children's book, that's a horror book.

Grandparents, do not give that book.

My brother got married in Malaysia.

I was flying out there, and there was a SARS outbreak.

And the airport turned away all the planes, and we had to land in Thailand, and eventually we got to go to Malaysia, but they had set up these sensors at the airport, and we had to walk through like kind of like the X-ray sensors we have now.

You put your hands up there, only it took a lot longer, and this was every person entering the country and they had to go through this like whirling, being in a washing machine kind of thing, as it scanned your whole body for any parts of your body that had a variation in temperature and you know all this kind of stuff, and secondary screening was heat sensors in different parts of your body.

It was insane to get into the country over SARS.

Now you're in the world of leprosy with no technology, no scanning systems, no rapid response CDC teams to deploy.

You're not allowed to touch a leper.

Nothing is worse than that.

Leviticus 13, 44.

If a man is afflicted with a skin disease, he's unclean.

I mean, how hard is it?

He's unclean.

The priest pronounces them unclean.

The person who's inflicted with this disease needs to tear his clothes so she can see his flesh.

He's no longer allowed to cut his hair.

So remember, if you think he might have leprosy, you're outside the city gate for a week, you come back in, pre-shaves your head and your eyebrows to inspect.

If you have leprosy, you're declared unclean.

You're no longer allowed to do your hair.

You're no longer allowed to cut your hair, you're no longer allowed to tie your hair.

The idea is they're going for the crazy werewolf look here.

Your clothes have to be torn, your hair has to be unkempt.

You need to look like you're a mess because you're a mess.

You have to, Leviticus 13, 45 says, put your hands up to your mouth and cry out, unclean, unclean, whenever anyone comes near you.

You will remain unclean.

You are unclean.

You must live alone in a place outside of any city or camp.

You are banished.

That's not a description of an illness.

That's a death sentence, is what that is.

Remember in Naaman, the leper in the Old Testament, Syrian general?

An Israelite servant girl says, hey, there's somebody in Israel that can carry you.

Go there.

So he goes to the king's palace with his army and everything, rings the king's doorbell.

I'm here for my healing.

The king's response, 2 Kings 5, says, Is this a joke?

Remember what he tells his advisors?

I think he's trying to start a war because, he says, Am I God that I can resurrect, or am I God that I could heal a leper?

This is impossible to do, he says.

This will be war.

That's who comes to Jesus.

The guy who should be announcing unclean, unclean, the guy it's impossible to heal, he comes to Jesus.

I mean, this is ridiculous that a leper would have the audacity to walk into a massive crowd, which I'm sure parted for him, kneels before Jesus, and describes Jesus as Lord.

Now, you could almost close the sentence there.

That could be proof number one.

Even a leper recognizes who Jesus is.

Mark's gospel, the first two people to ID him are the demons.

Matthew's gospel here, you've got this leper.

You're the Lord.

But he doesn't stop there.

If you will, you can make me clean.

Notice what the leper doesn't ask for.

He doesn't ask to be healed.

He uses the word cleans, cleansed, cleaned.

This is a covenantal word.

Remember, the Israelite system is split between kosher and unkosher, clean and unclean.

And he wants back into the covenant.

He wants back into God's family.

He has no access to the temple.

He has no access to the feast days.

He has no access to the corporate worship of Israel.

He has no access to God and the whole religion of Judaism.

He is cut off.

And that's what he asks for.

He doesn't put in the language of Lord, heal me.

He puts in the language of Lord, restore me to worship.

I want back in God's family.

Let me in.

And he does it with a question.

If you will.

Now again, everything about this is opposite.

You would expect these to be reversed.

If you can do it, will you?

That's the way you would normally ask the question.

When you're asking somebody an authority for something, you always ask it that way.

I don't know if you can do this, but if you can, would you?

That's the way we ask things because we're presupposing the person has the desire to do it.

We're just concerned if they have the capacity to do it.

Not this leper.

He flips it around and tells Jesus, obviously you have the power to do this.

That's not in dispute.

I want to know if you have the desire.

This gets at the very nature of what it means to be in a relationship with God.

Does God have the power to forgive you from your sin?

Does he have the power to take your sin away?

Does he have the power to forgive you for being a sinner?

And of course he has the power.

He can do anything.

He's God.

Of course he has the power.

And so where our assurance gets eroded and where we become, we skew our relationship with God, is we put it into the willingness category, and we wonder, I don't know if God wants to be in a relationship with me.

I don't know if he wants to forgive me.

I don't know if he desires to.

I don't know if he's willing to.

This is, you get this question wrong, and you you fall into a works righteousness religion.

This is what's behind every other religion in the world that teaches you you have to do things to get to God.

You have to somehow leverage what you have to persuade God to respond to you.

And so you bring him sacrifices and you say the right prayers in the right days, and you do the right pilgrimages and the right pillars and the sacraments and the right works, the right merit.

You need to achieve it so that God would be willing.

You're trying to persuade God to do this.

We so quickly in our relationship with God become like the child who says, you know, I cleaned my room and I did this and I did that and I did this and the other thing, so now do you love me?

Well, no, it doesn't work like that.

I loved you before you.

Those things, in fact, if you do those things to get to my love, there's something very seriously wrong.

And that's what this leper starts with.

Do you have the willingness, Lord?

I know you have the ability.

Are you willing to reconcile an unclean person like a leper?

Well, that's our question.

Let's look at Jesus' answer.

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.

This is as audacious as the leper going through the crowd.

Does Jesus need to touch him?

Of course not.

In fact, the next healing we'll look at next Lord's Day, he does long-distance style.

He doesn't need to touch the person to heal him.

But he touches him.

I mean, this story could not possibly get any more ridiculous.

The leper comes to Jesus and then Jesus touches the leper.

You can picture all the disciples going, no.

Why does Jesus touch the leper?

And there's lots of answers.

You can probably come up with ten ones that I won't even give you.

I'm just going to give you a few of them.

I think he's demonstrating his own compassion towards the leper.

Certainly.

Treating him like a person, not like a problem.

I think he's demonstrating his fulfillment of the Old Testament law.

I mean, the Old Testament law has a complex response to lepers here, and Jesus is violating all of it.

He's showing that it's fulfilled in him.

He completes, he fulfills the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament.

Beyond that, he's demonstrating his own perfections.

You know, if you touch a leper, you get leprosy.

If Jesus touches a leper, the leper gets healed.

Chuck Swindah often says, when you garden with a white glove, the glove gets dirty.

The dirt does not get glovy.

That's what Jesus is doing here.

He's touching the leper to demonstrate that this is a one-way street.

Leprosy does not go up his arm.

Jesus' compassion goes down his arm from his heart, right to the leper.

But I'm telling you, there's no comparison to how outrageous this is.

No comparison.

Jesus touching a leper is just a slap in the face to every Pharisee, to the whole Jewish traditionalism, the whole concept of clean and unclean.

It's all.

Do you realize what Jesus is doing here?

Is he saying, he's dismissing the whole system the Pharisees had built up.

He couldn't do anything more outrageous than touching a leper, honestly.

Unless he did it on the Sabbath.

We'll get to that later.

I mean, this, do you understand that this right here is the attitude that will get Jesus killed?

This attitude towards the Pharisees' religion and their systems will get him killed.

The leprosy is not what's going to kill him.

It will be the Pharisees, and it'll be for stunts like this.

Jesus is going out of his way to demonstrate that he cannot be defiled.

He is above the law.

He's superior to the law.

He can touch a leper and not be made into a leper.

He can touch a leper without breaking the law because he fulfills the law.

And immediately the leper is healed.

He's cleansed, it says, immediately.

Right away, this happens.

Not like the fake healings that our world is filled with today.

Oh, the guy healed my back.

I feel it getting so much better.

Immediately, boom, no leprosy.

Jesus said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone.

You know how earlier I said the story couldn't get any more ridiculous?

Well, never mind.

He just heals a leper in front of this scene, in front of thousands of people.

He heals them and then says, Don't tell anyone.

Don't want this to get out.

I mean, are you kidding?

He's not supposed to.

He gives the explanation here.

Go to the priest, offer the guilt offering that Moses commanded.

Let's prove to them what's supposed to happen when a leper is healed.

He goes to the priest, he's examined, remember, head shaved, eyebrow shaved, all that outside the city for a week, come back, examination.

Okay, he's healed.

He gets a certificate from the priest declaring that he is, you know, not a leper, no leper.

I don't know what it says.

This had never happened before, so I don't think the priest had these files, I mean these forms on file or anything.

You're like, oh, a healed leper.

That's form 18B, you know.

This had never happened.

But he's supposed to go to the priest.

The priest examines him, the priest gives him a certificate.

The certificate is important because he's now allowed to live back among people.

And so you see the guy and you're like, oh, aren't you the leper?

No.

See the sign?

Not leper.

It's important.

So Jesus says, go get your not leper sign first.

But don't tell anyone, because do you think after all of this, the priest, any priest, would ever give a certificate like that to someone who was healed by Jesus?

No way.

Not after what he just did up in the Sermon on the Mount.

This reminds me so much of Matthew 5, and it's worth spending a minute, I mean, John 5, it's worth spending a minute there.

Just don't turn there, but just remember the story.

Jesus goes into a crowd in Jerusalem, and there's a guy who'd been lame for, I forget, I think it's like 38 years.

He had been lame.

All he has in the whole world is his mat, and he's stuck there.

And Jesus goes to him, and Jesus asks him, Do you want to be healed?

Which is a funny question in its own right.

And the guy says yes, but he's just not fast enough to get to the water because he can't walk.

So the whole thing is funny.

So Jesus heals him.

He says, Pick up your mat and go home.

And then Jesus disappears in the crowd.

Now, the guy is carrying a mat on the Sabbath through a crowd of people.

This is not allowed.

The Pharisee said, You're allowed to carry as much weight as a dried fig in a spoon.

That's what you're allowed to carry on a Saturday.

A mat is bigger than a dried fig in a spoon.

And here's a dude.

This guy would stand out.

He's hauling a mat, he would stand out because he hasn't walked in 38 years, but also because he's hauling a mat through a crowd at a crowded fountain on the Sabbath.

And the Pharisees immediately accost him and say, What are you doing?

How dare you haul your mat on a Sabbath?

They're stuck on that part, not the he hasn't walked in 40 years.

And he he has a great defense, remember?

He says, The man who healed me told me to take my mat.

And they say, Okay, tell us who this person is then.

And the guy says, Do you remember his answer?

Very profound.

I don't know.

I mean that answer saved his life, probably.

So they then turn.

They don't know what happens.

Jesus finds him, by the way, and says, Hey, by the way, it was me.

This is what we're happening, is happening here in Matthew 8.

Jesus says, Go to the priest, don't tell anyone, or you will never get the certificate.

Now we know from the other gospels that this leper did not obey.

Anyway, he goes away.

Enjoy telling everybody who will listen.

And so we don't get to see the expression on the priest's face when the leper shows up.

I mean, what an outrageous story.

What are we supposed to do with a passage like this?

It starts with you understanding the way leprosy and sin are connected.

I mean, I hope you see yourself in this passage, and I hope you don't see yourself as Jesus, and I hope you don't see yourself as the crowd that is just spectators to this event.

Bad.

I hope you see yourself in this story as the leper.

Leprosy and sin have so much in common.

They both destroy your life.

They both will kill you.

They both work from the inside out.

What goes into your mouth doesn't defile you, but what comes out of your heart, just like leprosy, it's not what's on the outside that makes it so evil, it's what is working on the inside.

That's exactly like it is with sin.

Leprosy is contagious, so is sin.

Bad company corrupts good morals.

Leprosy erases your own identity.

That's what sin does too.

It erases your image.

It erases your self-image, it alters you, it distorts you.

Leprosy works by deadening your senses.

That's how sin works.

It deadens your senses to its reality.

Leprosy makes you think that you can do things or that you're stronger than you actually are until it breaks your hand off.

And that's what sin does as well.

It erodes you, it lies to you, it erases you, you deny that you have a problem.

When in reality, if you saw yourself as you are, you should walk around shouting unclean, unclean.

And so the question then is simply this.

Is God willing to save you?

He's able, granted.

But is he willing?

And this passage gives us a window into Jesus' answer.

Of course, I'm willing.

Why do you think he came?

He didn't come to the world to condemn the world.

He came to the world to give it life.

The Father sent his son into the world, not reluctantly, but with joy.

The Son comes in the world not reluctantly, but with love.

The Holy Spirit will come into the world to draw people to the Father, not reluctantly, but with delight and with life.

I'm too far gone.

I've done too much wrong.

I keep sinning in the same way.

There's no way God would still love me.

He would not be able to love even me.

He would not be willing to love even me.

And Jesus says, I am willing.

In fact, it'd be better if you flipped the question around.

Are you willing to come to Him?

Are you willing to come to faith in Christ?

Are you willing to come do what the leopard did and throw yourself at the feet of Jesus and call him Lord?

Are you willing to say, Lord, I'm here.

Forgive me of my sin.

It's self-righteousness that keeps people away.

It's self-righteousness that kept the Pharisees away.

They would not do what the leopard did.

And I fear that there are people today who will not come to Christ because they don't want to be seen like one of those sinners that needs salvation.

Oh, brothers and sisters, I hope you see yourself as one of those sinners that needs salvation.

I hope you see yourself as morally bankrupt, eager, dependent on the Lord, a beggar looking for the good news of Jesus Christ.

And I hope you realize that when you come to Jesus Christ, He is willing to save.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a willing Savior.

That those who come to you and fall at your feet and call you Lord will by no means be cast out.

You extend your hand to them, you touch them, you receive them.

You do more than that.

You bring them into their family, you adopt them, you call them your own brothers and sisters.

You do this by faith.

Our faith that you give us.

You are so willing to save.

So Lord, I pray for people who are here this morning that have never fallen at your feet, so to speak.

They've never called you, Lord.

I pray that they would do so this morning.

Pray that you would save those who call on you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here are the parting words from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to solve a crisis, please visit our first website, iBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of the local church, you live in the Washington DC area.

We'd love to have you worship with us.

We'll look at it in North First Church.

For more information about when and where we worship, that's our first website.

I hope that the first point is this and they have first service.

But no matter where you live, it's our host.