The King of Compassion

The morning church Today's scripture reading comes from

Matthew 8 verses one through 4. If you're using the Bible under

the seats, this can be found on page 762.

When he came down from the mountain, for this is Jesus

cleanses A leper, when he came down from the mountain, great

crowds followed him. And behold, A leper came to him

and knelt down before him, saying, 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 his leprosy was cleansed.

And Jesus said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but

go show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses

commanded before approved to them.

This is God's word. What's going on?

Port City family and friends. How are we doing?

Good. Well, my name is Tanner.

I'm the lead pastor here. It is a joy to be with you.

And at Port City. We are a teach a man to fish

kind of church, OK. We, we like to give you fish.

We also like to teach you how to fish.

OK. And when it comes to Bible

reading, we want to teach you how to fish.

We want to teach you how to read the word for yourself.

So as we dive into a new series in the book of Matthew, we we

got miracles going on. We got some really awesome

stuff. There's the number one rule of

Bible reading that we got to remind ourselves of you ready.

The Bible is not primarily about you.

Big facts. It's just true.

The Bible situates us. It situates us.

Our story matters. Your personality matters, but

it's not primarily about you. It's about King Jesus.

It's a window into his world. It is not a mirror for your

world first. It's a window into the Kingdom

coming among you, to Messiah among us.

And so as we come to the text, we come to find him.

And here's the great irony. If you want to find you, you got

to find Him first. Many people come to the Bible

thinking and asking good questions about how does this

apply to me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

And the problem with that is you actually won't be transformed

from glory to glory because the transformative agent is God, not

you. So we come to the Scriptures to

find Christ, and then from there we find ourselves in him.

And that's where the change happens.

So what I want to do, because I want to pray just for us, we're

going to be in Matthew chapters 8:00 and 9:00 for the coming

weeks. And just this, this posture of,

of, of seeing Christ and seeing who he is and who Matthew wanted

us to see Jesus Messiah as. OK, so let me pray and then

we'll dive into our text for today.

Our Father, we, we love you so much.

God, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of

Christ. God, we need your word.

God, we need you to open our eyes to see God.

What we can't see apart from you, God, we can, we can read,

we can string together syllables, we can understand

God, but we need you to illuminate our our mind to

understand why you have Matthew, write this book this way.

Show us King Jesus, show us ourselves as we see him, may we

be undone and grab hold of him. So God, do these things for your

glory and and bless this time for your glory.

We pray in Christ's name, Amen. Well, y'all, we're about to dive

into this first healing here. It's going to be awesome.

What we're going to see in the coming weeks, y'all, is this

combination with Jesus that he's full of compassion and

authority. You could say God is willing and

able. Isn't it good?

We got a God who's willing and able.

It's good to have a God who's willing.

But if you got a God who's willing but not able, that's no

bueno. If you got who is able but not

willing, that's no good either. But in the Scriptures, we see a

king who is willing and able to transform people who come to

him. Amen.

So that's what we're going to see and my hope for us is that

as we see him, we walk out with a more profound awareness of our

need for Him and how he can and will meet us in our need.

Amen. So our three points we're going

to, we're going to dive into some context.

First you got to know the context.

Then we're going to look at the story from the perspective of

the leper, from the perspective of Jesus, and then lastly from

the perspective of the priest. If you are ready, let me hear

you say I'm ready. OK, let's talk context.

Yeah, I was thinking about how to explain how context works.

Anybody remember Finding Nemo? Anybody.

One of the greats. Do you remember how Dory has

short term memory loss? You remember that?

OK, so at the end of the movie, Dory now has been hanging out

with with Marlon the whole movie, P Sherman 42, Wally Way,

Sydney, all that, the whole movie.

And they get in a little spat, you know, they fight and they

separate and Dory is swimming off.

She's like, Oh no, I'm supposed to remember something.

And somebody comes up to her. It starts talking about Nemo.

And she goes Nemo. That's a nice name, yo.

That is us with the Bible. Many times the author is

screaming. There is so much back story.

And we're like a leper. That's kind of cool.

And we're just like, we just don't see it.

Now, you do not have to be a Bible scholar.

Let me give you, let me give you just you don't need to have read

this thing 10,000 times, OK? Part of what you need to hear is

every author is doing what I just described.

And there's so much action-packed into, it's kind of

like when you send an e-mail with like 10 hyperlinks, like,

hey, as I said on Friday, link, link.

What I need y'all to do is this link, link and check this out

before you say back to me, respectfully put some respect on

my name, Sign so and so and check this article.

That's basically what the biblical authors are trying to

do. So when we come to the text,

there's a lot going on. We're not just jumping into a

story and asking our questions about how that applies to us

right away. Does that make sense?

It's not that those questions are bad.

We just got to wonder what was Matthew doing?

So there's like 100 things Matthew's doing by the time we

get to chapter 8. I'm gonna give you just three.

OK, Matthew chapter one, verse one says this.

This is the genealogy of the book of Jesus Christ, the son of

David, the son of Abraham. The word genealogy in Greek is

the same word that the the Septuagint would use for in the

beginning, like in the first 3 words of the Bible, Genesis.

So what Matthew's communicating is a new beginning equal to the

creation of the world is happening in this Jesus Christ,

the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Son of David means king, OK, son of Abraham means the one through

whom all nations will be blessed.

So from the opening words he's saying this Jesus has continuity

all the way back to chapter 1 verse one of Genesis.

In the beginning something new is happening under this king for

all nations. Later in chapter 2 you might

know the Christmas story where King Herod tries to kill every

baby under the age of 2 to get rid of this king he heard about.

Y'all remember that? Does that sound like another

biblical figure who they tried to get out of the picture by

killing all of the babies under the age of two in the nation of

Egypt back in the book of Exodus?

So something new is happening that led to an exodus when that

last baby got saved. This baby is going to make it

out and a new exodus is going to happen.

Then we get to chapter 4 where Jesus goes into the wilderness,

not for 40 years as the people of God once did, but for 40 days

fasting, and he stands up to Satan's temptations and doesn't

test God, but he trusts God. And then in chapter 5, he goes

up on a mountain, which to a Jewish mind, they're thinking

Moses, but he doesn't go up on the mountain to get God's law

and bring it back down to the people who can't go up on the

mountain with God. He brings all the people with

them, sits down and doesn't ask God what's the law.

He just starts speaking to him. So there is a new Moses, a new

David, a new Abraham in our midst.

And he just gave the dopest sermon of all time for three

chapters that we preached on for many weeks.

So you could go back and listen to it.

And then we come to today's story.

Are you all track with me? So that would be like if we just

take all that like Nemo, That's a nice name, y'all.

The the leper. Everything about the way this is

constructed matters. You want to know how many

miracles there are in chapters 8 and 9?

Y'all, There's 10 miracles. OK, to the Jewish mind, 10 is a

big deal. 10 commandments, 10 plagues, right?

The 10 plagues were D creation. Creation was unraveling.

Now we're going to have ten miracles where Jesus restores

things as they were designed to be.

And the book of Numbers tells us in chapter 14 that the people of

God tested God, tested Yahweh these 10 times.

They did not trust him. So now we have this Jesus who's

going to do 10 miracles. This is very intentional what

Matthew is doing. So can you see why immediately

asking the question, can this still happen today is a good

question, but maybe not all of Matthew's intention.

Are y'all with me? OK, so let's look at this from

the perspective of the leper, OK?

The leper starting in Chapter 7, verse 28, the couple verses

right before our Texas said this.

And when Jesus finished saying these things or these sayings,

the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was

teaching them as one who had authority and not as their

scribes. When he came down from the

mountain, great crowds followed him.

And behold, A leper came to him and knelt before him, saying,

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 his leprosy was

cleansed. And Jesus said to him, See that

you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest

and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.

OK, three notes about the leper to make.

OK, number one is the leper's condition.

Number 2 is the leper's posture #3 the leper's plea.

First, the leper's condition. Somebody say leprosy.

If you're looking at your Bible, probably right above the word

leper, it has a little note, maybe a little number one or two

or three, and then down low. It's going to tell you that this

word covers a range of skin conditions.

Let me tell you why it's trying to tell you that, because where

my mind immediately goes is that this is a medicinal medical

issue needing healing. I think rotting clothes.

I think a horrible situation. And it's not that that isn't

possibly the case, but the biblical understanding of

leprosy, that's what you got to get in your mind, was not

primarily that this man needed a doctor.

He needed a priest to pronounce him clean, OK.

He does not just have a medical issue that needs healing.

Notice he did not say, if you are willing, you can heal me.

He said you can make me clean, OK.

In the Bible's understanding of this, the Bible's imagination of

what comes with leprosy goes all the way back to Leviticus 13 and

14. And it was not just early.

God was not just ahead of the curve with medical things of how

to keep his, his camp clean of contaminants.

That's not all that was going on.

The primary issue was about who's able to be in God's

presence. That's the issue with being

unclean. If you are labeled unclean and

the priest goes through all the process and you are declared

perpetually unclean, it is a statement that you will never be

in God's presence. It is a label.

It is a a presence issue more than it's a contagion issue.

Now that doesn't mean where our mind goes couldn't have been the

case. It just means what the primary

issue is that he needed a priest and he is unclean.

Does that make sense? Y'all with me?

So what comes with being labeled unclean is a layer upon layer

upon layer of shame at the temple.

You ain't there. You're not allowed to be in

God's holy of holy in His presence.

The people of Israel were to be a Kingdom of priests.

That's what the book of Exodus says.

The whole point of him bringing them out of Egypt was so they

could represent Yahweh's goodness to the rest of the

world. So if you're saying this man

can't be in God's presence, what does that mean about my

identity? If you're in Israel and can't go

in the temple, it's almost like you're not really Israel.

Are you with me? You're not really one of us.

This, this man's phone had not rang for a while, no texts, was

not picked on the kickball team for so long that eventually you

stop showing up. Yo, there's a suffering that's

deeper than the physical. There's a suffering with the the

the pronouncement of unclean that carries with it levels of

shame that are hard to put into words.

It's a very exilic lifestyle and it's one of just utter

destitution and desperation for this man, which leads us to the

lepers posture. So there's this moment, y'all.

One of the things that Leviticus 13 or 14 is very clear about is

once you're pronounced unclean, you had to walk around saying

unclean, unclean. You had to make others aware of

it. So before you saw him, you heard

him. So he came shouting unclean.

Unclean at some level was probably an earshot of the

sermon. And he'd heard enough, seen

enough in Messiah to throw himself upon the ground, knelt

down. I bet the whole place just went

silent. Hear this man shouting unclean

and then he throws himself down and they're all like, what's

Jesus going to do? So remember in the the Old

Testament imagination, if you touch something unclean, you

become unclean again. That doesn't mean you catch a

disease. It just means like if you touch

a, a carcass, a dead body, the idea is you're now you're

unclean for seven days. You got to remove yourself.

It was all to point out the holiness of God and how you

can't just come to him in any kind of presence.

That's how holy God is. And leprosy represented a range

of skin conditions where once pronounced unclean, you unclean.

And this man throws himself down.

I mean, just totally kneels down on the ground in front of the

crowd, gets in front of Jesus and throws himself on the

ground. He throws himself down before he

says the word. Isn't it so often the case that

your posture precedes your your words?

You know, if you walk up to the Chick-fil-A counter, you're not

on the ground, You're not back to him.

You look him right in the face and say, I'll have a number one,

please. Number one with Chick-fil-A

sauce. You are you are you are

presenting yourself, posturing yourself.

Your posture always proceeds your plea and what we see in his

posture has so much to do with the life of faith.

And y'all want to say this as we throughout this series, what

we're going to try to do there's things from the individuals

throwing themselves at Jesus feet to learn for sure, but

y'all, the main thing we learned from them is that faith is not

primarily about you. Y'all check this?

We don't. When the leper throws himself

down, we don't applaud the leper.

We wonder what he saw in Jesus to get him to do it.

He saw something in the Messiah and he threw himself on the

ground. Are you tracking with me?

He'd heard enough. He'd seen enough.

He threw himself down. It's not a a good move that

Jesus like. Oh, gotta gotta it's it's not

something he is to be praised for in the sense that he has

like a faith gene. You know, God is not a genie.

We're like, he did something so outrageous.

I have to pay attention. Faith is responding to what you

see in the other. Faith is a response to what we

see in him. It's about the object of the

faith, not the one who possesses the faith.

Y'all the the Christian faith is like a bunch of people falling

off a Cliff. You falling, you dying, you

going to die. And you hear there's a branch.

You grab the branch. Do we praise the grab or do we

need to focus on the branch? The branch is worthy to hold

you. The branch is what saves you.

We don't go. How did he do it?

How did he grab on? It's like, hello, he heard there

was a branch. Does that make sense?

And So what we, what we emulate is what he saw.

We don't look at the leper. And if we do look at him and we

get next to him, guess what he's going to do?

He's going to say look at Jesus. We look with the leper many

times. And I'm just going to be honest,

what I hear in the bloodstream of of American Christian faith

experience is that sometimes we put our faith in faith, y'all.

We put our faith in Christ, not in our faith, not in our ability

to kneel. Something about the Christ

pulled the kneel out of him. Does that make sense?

We kneel because we see we are not to be praised for our kneel.

He's to be praised that he's worthy to kneel at.

He pulls something out of you. That's the life of faith.

If you want your faith to grow, don't focus on you, focus on the

Christ. If your understanding of the

object of your faith grows, your faith will grow as a byproduct

of your understanding that it can hold you.

Does that make sense? We are a people of the branch.

Does that make sense? We are a branch people.

The leper was a branch person. He saw something.

We kneel because we see the lesson of the leper is Jesus.

You know, like so the the posture is a good picture for

us. A man kneeling, humility.

I could give you 3 points on humility right now, but y'all,

the point is that Jesus is worthy to kneel at that.

He saw this man. Does that make sense?

So his posture is throwing himself down.

And then comes the plea. The plea, it's probably silent.

Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

It's a public declaration of trust.

You know, if at some point there's no plea, there's no

trust. There is a moment where faith

looks like do it like asking the branch, like it's not knowing

the branch can hold you doesn't get you held.

You know, like there comes a moment where you grab the branch

and the kneeling, the pleaing is saying grabbing, right?

That this is the life of faith. It's not to be praised for

having it. It's praiseworthy that you can

be held, but you got to grab. You got to grab and he throws

himself. There comes a moment when our

trust is shown or it's not real. That doesn't mean his words are

magic, right? It just means that he, he has

seen something in God and he grabs him.

Let's look at this story from the perspective of Jesus.

We're going to look at Jesus's stretch and then Jesus's words.

And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will

be clean. And immediately his leprosy was

cleansed. And Jesus said to him, see that

you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest

and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.

Y'all in Jesus stretch again, just put yourself there.

This is a man you won't talk to if you're in that community.

There are people in our city that you see and probably recoil

from a little bit, right? We don't like to admit that

stuff, but there's a sense of discomfort with certain groups

of people, and you got to work through that.

I got to work through that. You feel it.

You know it when you feel it, OK?

Everyone in that community had that towards this man, and he

just threw himself down before Messiah.

I bet some of the mindset is, how dare you?

How dare you taint his reputation?

You're putting him at jeopardy. You know, it would have been

like not in our town, you know, like not don't, don't do that.

The Messiah here and I bet they're just like, what's he

going to do? He about to make him unclean and

just this pause this this panic inwardly.

Did he really just do that? And then Jesus stretches out his

hand. Y'all in the stretch again, in

the the Jewish mind, only one person stretches.

OK this is a a a phrase that picks up on what Moses and Aaron

did 8 times in the book of Exodus.

But then it said about Yahweh himself through their

stretching. He was stretching.

His deliverance of of the Israelites from Egypt was

described in Exodus 15. When they get delivered, they

sing the first worship song of the Bibles in Exodus 15, and

they say you have delivered us by stretching out your hand.

The idea is that only one stretches out their hand.

Matthew wrote those words with that imagery in mind.

A new exodus is happening right before our eyes, and the path to

it is through Jesus directly stretching out his hand and then

touching the man. He touched him.

That's so fitting. He could have said be clean.

We see in the rest of Jesus's miracles, his healings, all that

he could do. He could have said clean and

they would have been like whoa, that would have been cool.

You've got to understand that everything he does is on

purpose. It says it's he stretched out

his hand and touched him saying I will be clean.

The touch and the declaration were synonymous.

So he is touching him to cleanse him.

Y'all, this is such a good picture of the gospel that

through the touch of Christ we are cleansed.

Y'all, through the touch of the one who is clean, the unclean is

made clean, and the clean somehow didn't get uncleansed.

It's this idea that in the Messiah there's a substitution

that occurs. The unclean becomes clean.

Y'all, this is the gospel. This is what all of the

Scriptures point to. And notice what Jesus doesn't

do. Hey man, I know you're unclean.

You're not. You're not as bad as you think

you are. I love you.

He did not tell him his situation is not as bad as he

thinks it is. Are you with me, yo?

The leper's assessment of his situation was very accurate.

He was very aware of how destitute he was.

That apart from a miraculous cleansing, I am unclean, yo.

The leper knew where he was at before the Lord.

The question is, do you? The leper was aware that apart

from intervention, I'm unclean. You apart from God's

intervention, our situation is hopeless.

More hopeless than a leper. Skin condition is hopeless.

Our situation is hopeless. That's what the Bible teaches.

We don't just need a little bit of help.

This man had tried everything they used to say It's like a

garment of stains, so deeply stained you just can't get it

out. I've even got shirts.

Even in 2025, I know you got a shirt you can't clean.

You got at least one that you hope people don't point out.

I know which shirt I'm thinking of it right now.

I'm thinking I've used the bleach, I've used the stuff,

we've used the marker. We've done it.

And this is just grease from eating chicken, which was dumb.

I should have changed the shirt. But yo, there is a a filth in

the imagery of the leper that is a parable of our condition.

We can't be made clean apart from Messiah touching us.

Y'all, the gospel is the good news that Christ Jesus died in

the place of sinners, was resurrected so that when he

touches us with the healing touch in the gospel, he absorbs

our uncleanness. He absorbs that which shames us,

He absorbs that which keeps his eggs out, He absorbs everything

that puts us on the outs with God.

Y'all, our sin puts us on the outs with God, and it's deeper

than guilt. Yes, Christ died to purchase a

new record for you, but it's deeper than that.

Your exclusion from God is deeper than just the wrongs

you've done. You are unclean.

Christ cleanses us. He allows us to come back before

the Father. This is the great exchanges.

We go out once in Christ as if we are Him and no longer as the

leper. That's the great exchange of the

Gospel and in Jesus's words, this declaration he makes over

him, right? He stretches, cleanses.

I will be clean and we'll talk a little bit in a minute about the

priest and that dynamic. But he says go show yourself to

the priest, say nothing to anyone, offer the gift that

Moses commanded for a proof to them.

I just imagine that walk to the priest.

I just imagine the leper walking and just what's going through

his mind and we'll talk here in a minute.

He's not going to the priest because he needs it.

The priest needs the leper. The leper don't need the priest

no more. But what's so amazing about that

is the leper on the way there? Y'all, his whole world just

changed. He didn't just get some status

that don't impact his life. Everything changed.

A whole new world was built through Jesus's word.

That's what words do. They build worlds.

And when Jesus cleanses you, it changes your world.

It changes his social dynamic. It changes his religious

dynamic. He doesn't need to beg for

anything at the temple no more. He doesn't need to feel

excluded. He doesn't even need to go to

the temple. The good news of the gospel is

in Christ now. You are the temple, my guy.

We going to find out in a second.

The priest is out of a job. That's what he about to find

out. So the idea is by declaring this

over him, he's on that walk. He's just thinking, wow, my

whole life just changed. The Son of God Messiah just

looked at me and said you're in, you've been out your whole life,

you are in and no one could kick you out.

Nobody. You don't have to say anything

to anybody. A lot of people focus on don't

say anything to anybody in the messianic secret, which I think

is at play a little bit. But I also think part of what

he's doing is he's just saying you got nothing to prove you in.

I heard a song this week and it hit me.

The door you're knocking on is open and you have been welcomed

in the gate. The way is standing wide, never

to be closed again. There's a place here at the

table. Nobody's going to take your

seat, so you can come and go as much as you need.

Be yourself and be at peace, y'all.

There's a peace Messiah can give you that nobody else can.

When you're kicked out of all other tables, that's the one

you've always got to see. That and you can come in freely

to the Father, the one who made you in his image.

His whole world changed with that word.

Let's talk about the priest. Let's talk about the priest.

Why did he send him to the priest, y'all?

He sent him to the priest for a very simple reason.

Because who declares that lepers are clean priests?

A leper has just been cleansed. So go show yourself to the

priest as a proof to them. OK, here's the idea.

They're going to hear you or Clint.

Like they've seen this guy. Somebody declared him unclean.

He's been cleansed without them. What he's communicating is your

whole system is now obsolete. Somebody came in that fulfilled

all of the pictures that everything you've ever done

pointed to the temple, the priesthood, all of it was good.

It was a gift of God. And somebody would step into

those and feel that in such a way that we're in a whole new

era. And that's what's happening

right now. And what's so cool about that is

that would be a bit of a that would be a bit of a shocker to

the priest if he's really paying attention.

Basically it means Messiah's here, you can go home.

You don't have a job no more you out of a job.

And now if he's in love with the system and the job and all that

stuff, he's going to be infuriated by Jesus arrival,

which many were, because when you want status quo, Jesus is

always going to be an offense to you.

But if you want a whole new world with Christ at the center

revolved around him in the system to, to, to be done

because the Christ has come, he's going to be happy.

Here's the idea. He sent the the leper to the

priest. Like just imagine it.

Jesus tells the leper to go to the priest.

I think Jesus, after that priest, he's trying to help him.

See, my friend, before I came, you thought you were the priest

and he needed you. Now what I need you to

understand is you need him. OK?

The point is he sends the leper to the priest so that the priest

can understand. You are now the leper, My

friend. You need cleansing.

Who's your priest? Does that make sense?

Like the idea is that in Christ the tables have turned.

Y'all. In Christ we don't go to a

priest. He is our priest.

And in Christ we all are. Like the leper.

We all need cleansing. The leper is your lesson to that

priest. He went to work to be a cleanser

and he leaves work thinking I need to be cleansed.

The Messiah's here. Isn't it so fitting in the book

of Matthew? Because the first miracles

happen in chapter 4 but they're not named.

It just says Jesus was healing the crowds, right?

This is the first one with the face.

Isn't it so fitting? The first miracle is about

access to God. Y'all listen to me.

We got to be real for a second y'all.

Every miracle points to who the Christ is.

They're a sign and they point to something that is coming in its

fullness, but something King Jesus the Messiah brought.

There were many in the crowd that day.

Maybe the priest himself that went home and missed it.

If you think maybe I'll hit the Lotto and be the one who gets

the healing from Jesus tomorrow, you're missing the point.

There were many. Jesus did not heal.

There were towns he would not go into.

There was many layers to the ministry of Jesus.

OK, and the point was not that it's all changing right here now

it's just a taste. Every miracle, it's just a taste

of what is to come. Y'all, There is a world coming

where leprosy's gone. There's a world coming where the

whole system, though obsolete now, doesn't even exist no more.

And the idea is we don't go home thinking, oh cool, I saw Leopard

get healed today. Nemo, that's a nice name.

The point is, where is the story going?

Who is this Messiah and how much do I need him and how will he

meet me? So I just don't want you to miss

that. I don't want you to miss it

thinking he only loved the leper.

He loved everybody by healing the leper.

It was a picture of what they all needed and what He wants to

be for them all. All signs point to the need we

have in Christ and His desire to meet it.

And there is a day coming y'all where no more miracles are

needed. One of my favorite artists.

He says I believe that we gonna win.

What He don't heal now, He gone then.

OK, that's kind of the idea. There is a day coming where all

of this conversation is obsolete in the slice, the peace, the

taste that Christ has given and that still happens in many parts

of our world and many times y'all, the goal is never the end

breaking of the Kingdom that happens in that slice.

But to point, if you can get the miracle and miss the Christ, you

missed it. You didn't get a miracle you you

got duped. Does that make sense?

I don't want you to get duped. You need Christ, that's who you

need. So I don't know what you who you

think you are in the story today.

You are the leper, that's who you are.

That's who I am. That's our need level.

Y'all, there's a story, some of y'all know this in Luke 17 where

Jesus heals 10 lepers. He says y'all start walking

towards the priest. They all do 10 of them Luke 17

and only one returns to Jesus. 9 kept going.

They got what they wanted and kept moving.

Y'all the point of Jesus He he turns to the one which of course

is a non Jew right? He says where are the 9?

The idea of Jesus touch is to keep bringing you to him.

Does that make sense? The point of salvation is

ongoing dependence. He's not saving you so you don't

need him. He's saving you so you will need

Him. He's cleansing you so you'll

keep coming to Him, so your confidence before the Father is

full so that you can come to him.

Full of the blood of the Lamb with the Spirit sealing you so

you could come all the way to the throne of grace to find the

mercy and help you need in time of need.

That's the point of the gospel. It's not so you could say your

team Jesus or I got this cool thing happened to me one time

with Jesus. The point is so you can walk

with him in dependence, like a branch upon a vine.

The point is to walk with Him all day, every day.

He saved you so He could keep filling you, so you could bear

fruit and walk with Him. So what you don't need today, my

friend, what you don't need is a few hacks.

What you don't need is just a little bit of help.

What you don't need is to be told you're not as bad as you

think you are. What you need is a reality

check. That's what we all need, and

that's what Christ gives us. That's what He wants to keep

giving us, and He wants to keep meeting our need.

For some of you, I think today is the day of salvation.

You need to agree with God that you are not well.

He wants to set you free, but it always starts with truth and the

truth is apart from Him, you are not well.

You need cleansing, you need healing, you need to be brought

in. It takes Messiah's blood for you

to be well. And for some of you, I just pray

that you would trust Christ that you will put your trust in what

he's done and not and what you do.

And then for the what's so cool about this is for those of us

who are in Christ is from the second you are a healed cleansed

leper. Guess what you never forget.

I used to be a leper right, like I I was there.

That was me. You just become a healed leper

in a community of cleansed lepers who are then showcasing

the Messiah's goodness to the to the priest in our life.

Are you with me like it gives us our identity, our belonging and

our purpose back that we lost sin took it.

We get it back. This is who I am in Christ can't

be taken. This is who I belong to and this

is the mission I'm on and it's easy to talk about what God has

done when he's really cleansed you.

If you've always had a hard time sharing about Christ, I resonate

with that. There's something in your life

ain't hard for you to talk about.

I promise. There's something that just just

effortless y'all? B&J juice bar smoothies Princess

Anne AB over by Norfolk State easy for me to talk about.

So easy BAJ juice bar now I would rebrand it with a little

more clarity. That's a hard name.

I was like what do I type of my thing?

But it's incredible. It is not hard for me to talk

about B&J juice bar and I bless you in Jesus name and you could

go there and here's the idea. Why is it easier for us to do

that than to talk about what Christ has done.

If you were that on the outs and you bring that far, brought in

through his blood and given a family to belong to in a mission

to be a part of. You don't have to be an expert

to make a big impact for Jesus. That's the good news.

You just got to have a story, but a story that won't help

nobody is when you started going to church, a story that won't

help nobody is you like that guy, he's a good preacher.

Listen to the sermon, tell them what Christ did.

Tell them who he is. He is the leopard cleansing

Messiah. He is the one who saved me, who

told me who I really AM and brought me out of it and chose

me for who I am. And now he keeps watching me and

I get to walk with him. That's all we got to do.

Many y'all know the song? Jesus paid it off.

This is one of my favorite lines in any song ever.

I'm going to read this. We're going to be done Lord.

Now indeed I find thy power, and thine alone can't change the

leper spots and melt this heart of stone, because Jesus paid it

all to him I owe sin had left a Crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. Let's pray.

Our Father, we love you. God, we're just reminded today

of who we once were. Reminded that God, we thought we

were so cool. We thought we were on top of the

world. We thought we were kings and

Queens and running the show. And then there comes a moment

where by your grace, you remind us we're not.

You show us we're not. God, we see our sin for what it

is. We start to hate it.

God, I pray even for some of my friends under the sound of my

voice. You would just lovingly show

them reality apart from you, God.

But the good news is so much greater than the bad news, which

is that you see us at our worst when we're most unclean.

When others distance themselves from us, You move towards us,

Father, You are the God who does not run away from us.

Because somebody needs to hear that today.

Somebody has been run away from their entire life and they're a

mess. God, would you help them to

agree with your assessment about their need for you and your

willingness to meet them in it? God, you are willing.

You are able to save. You are able to cleanse, you are

able to change generations of sin and brokenness.

God, you're able to restore families.

You're able to do things nobody else can do.

And it's by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the

cross and the resurrection of God.

We just pray that power over our church.

We pray God that you would God you would set people free from

bondage God and you would show them that you love them and

thank God for your church. God just make it as easy as

talking about NFL or whatever it is the good weather outside.

God just make it so easy for us to tell people our story that

you, God saved us, that you God reached down when no one else

would, That you saw us when we felt unseeable, that you father

died. You sent your son to die in our

place. We love you, we praise you.

Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.