Lord If You Are Willing Make Me Clean

Okay, let's start out with uh what we have here visually.

Okay, we have two rooms, and uh as we start in this room to the right, uh we see this would represent a messy room, a messy situation.

Uh in the book of Matthew, chapter one, um Matthew writes, and and he's recounting this moment when the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, okay, whose whose fiance, uh Mary, is ultimately pregnant with Jesus.

And he's not buying the story, and so it takes an angelic message to let him know that there's more going on here.

And so what the angel of the Lord says to Joseph is he says, Hey, uh, Mary's gonna give birth to a child, and you're to name him Jesus.

And then he says something really powerful.

He says, For he will save his people from their sins.

For he will save his people from their sins.

When we think about Jesus saving people from their sins, um, we kind of think about this, right?

We think about Jesus shows up into our lives, and no matter how, no matter how much we have it together in certain areas, I would say many of us, if not all of us, at certain points feel like our lives are like this.

Uh something's broken, or maybe a lot of things are broken.

Like if you think about this environment, uh, there's a whole bunch of stories here that have contributed to the current state of affairs.

Um there's stains on the carpet, somebody spilled something.

Uh, there was probably a fight that took place that broke the furniture, knocked over the lamp.

Okay, there this thing's been cut, you know, with a knife.

There's messes that nobody cleaned up and that are not going to clean themselves up.

Uh if you've ever been in a messy space, okay, you know sometimes this the stuff you can see and clean up, but then there are some stains that don't just come out.

And then there's stuff going on even behind the drywall.

For some reason, that light keeps flickering.

There's something wrong with the electric, or maybe the lights aren't on at all because nobody paid the bill.

You get what I'm talking about?

The room is, there's stories here.

And some of it is stuff I did, and some of it is stuff they did, but the bottom line is this is what life often feels like.

When we think about Jesus saving the world from sin, it's what we celebrate at Easter, right?

The first thing we think is Jesus shows up to this place and he's knocking on the door.

And if you open it up, he comes in and says, Don't be ashamed, don't be afraid, we're gonna clean this up.

And here's how we're gonna do it we're gonna do it at my expense.

We talked about this at Easter.

We said, Jesus paid your debt.

He didn't buy your debt.

You don't have a new third-party lender.

Jesus paid it off.

You don't owe a thing, right?

It's paid off.

And so Jesus shows up and he says, This is gonna cost something.

We're gonna have to replace some furniture and we're gonna have to fix some stuff and it's not free, but that's okay.

My blood pays it in full.

And so the blood of Jesus and the resurrection, power of Jesus, ultimately frees us from everything that happened in our past.

How many of you know that's good news?

So that's saving the world from their sin.

But there's more to it because at some point, okay, if Jesus shows up into this environment and he repairs everything and fixes everything, gets it in good working order, now we have this.

But but you know, we've been around a little while here at this point, and we understand that you could go from this to this back to this.

Not you guys, but first service has some people with some patterns, some patterns they've started to pick up in their lives, and even though somebody paid it off, they ended up right back with another broken lamp.

And so there's something that happens, like at some point, we go from uh Jesus coming in, paying in full, and getting things in order to learning how to live a life that's in order.

It's receiving Jesus as our Savior, but also our Lord, that dictates how we live our lives and how we think, because there's stories here.

And the stories are people maybe who lost their temper, people that didn't know what to do with their anger, people that don't know how to do healthy conflict, people that have patterns and habits and things that they need to unlearn, and things that might even be confusing to them.

But there's a reason that we got here.

And if we don't figure out how to move from here to here, okay, this right here, this is God's will for your life.

That you would live in purpose, that you would live a life in order.

Don't hear me wrong.

I'm not saying sinless perfection.

I'm not saying becoming so legalistic that that you're never gonna spill anything again or that a lamp's never gonna get knocked over.

Okay, those things will happen.

I'm just talking about the purpose and the plan that God has for your life.

It is God's plan that we don't just keep going back to this, keep going back to this.

So when we think about Jesus saving us from our sin, it's not only saving us for the sin that created the mess, but saving us from a new sin, from a life of sin that would just take us right back to the mess that we made again and doing it over and over again.

And so throughout this series, we're calling it cleaning house.

And we're gonna look at not only receiving God's grace, but going through a process to where we can live our lives in order.

Okay?

All right, so let's jump back into our Bibles.

We're in Matthew chapter 8.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

If you have your Bible, we um we spent the last number of weeks in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus goes into rabbi mode.

He's he's teaching in three chapters about the law and the Torah and the fulfillment of the law, the purpose of the law.

And we we spent a lot of time in that, so I'm not gonna re-preach all that, but what Jesus did is what rabbis would do, which is they would teach in the classroom, but then they would take all of that data and they would take it into the real world so that their students or the people that were their disciples would be able to see how these concepts show up actually in life.

And so Jesus in Matthew chapter 8 takes uh the disciples from the classroom into the real world.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

And Matthew writes this so beautifully.

He writes it almost like a screenplay, right?

The Sermon on the Mount, it's this huge crowd, and Jesus is teaching them, and that that's how we end Matthew 7, and then look at the beginning of Matthew 8.

We just keep reading in our Bibles.

It says in verse 1 When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.

Alright, so Matthew, Matthew wants you to see the movie in your head, he wants you to see the scene.

All these people, Jesus gets done, he says his last word, and then he starts walking off the mountain, and everybody's following behind.

They're gonna watch the rabbi.

And in verse 2, it says, A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

And Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

I am willing, he said.

Be clean.

Immediately he was cleansed, cleansed of his of his leprosy.

Okay, let's talk about this a little bit.

So, leprosy, what is leprosy?

Uh, leprosy is a word or a term that's used in the Bible to describe a really broad set of skin disorders.

Um, so it's everything from like highly contagious flesh-eating bacteria, um, that if you come in contact with somebody uh with that, you could you could catch it as well.

But it's actually much broader than that.

It's actually everything all the way from like severe, from that to like severe acne and things that weren't communicable diseases.

Um, but of course, in that day, based on their understanding, and even based on the law in Leviticus, so if you go all the way back to the beginning of your Bible in Leviticus, they create some laws around how we do community.

And so if somebody had that one of these like leprosy or skin uh disorders, they would be quarantined.

Basically, you'd have to keep distance, you have to social distance away from them because you don't want to pass it through the community.

The spirit of the law was that we don't want the entire community to be wiped out from a flesh-eating bacteria.

But what it turned into was everybody who had visible um skin disorders often were pushed out into the perimeter.

And so, even your own family, like if it was your your brother and or your sister and you touched them, you you came in contact with them, you would also be unclean for a certain period of time.

All right, not to bring up old stuff, but y'all remember uh social distancing and quarantining and all that kind of stuff.

And I saw some of you start twitching when I once I brought it up, you're like, I'm not going back.

I'm not going back.

All right.

But but no, it actually kind of helps us understand this text because that that's what would have to happen.

And some of you, like, you love your family, but you went to a totally different part of the house because you're like, hey, I'm gonna have to like basically miss work, I'm gonna have to like not be able to live.

So even like a person with leprosy, although they wouldn't want to be isolated, if they love their family, often they would say, No, don't, yeah, I'll I'll quarantine myself.

I'll be alone because I don't want you to lose your life just because I have a skin disorder.

And so this man had been so used to being alone.

Now, if you went into the community with leprosy, you had to warn everyone.

And you would warn them by yelling out, unclean, unclean, unclean.

So, what you're doing is telling everyone that if they touch you, they're going to have to quarantine for a period of time so they can go present themselves to the priests who would ultimately say, Okay, cool, you didn't get it, you're good to go back to work, you're good to go back to the temple or to the community.

And so, so imagine that you're walking through community and you're yelling, you're having to yell out unclean.

How will people look at you?

How would people think about you?

If you want to really feel this text, when we get done today, go to Easton.

Just walk right down Main Street, just walk right down the middle of it, just yelling unclean and see what kind of sideways looks you get.

People, the Red Sea will part for you.

So if you do that, all the customers will walk away, you can walk right up to the cash register and say, just kidding.

But no, you think about that.

Like, what would you do if every time you went in the community you had to yell unclean?

Okay, a couple of things.

One, it would start to impact the way you see yourself.

I mean, we talk about this, like you know, you gotta be careful with the things you say to yourself.

If you're always talking yourself down, you start becoming your own worst critic, it's it's bad news.

And so if everywhere you go, you're yelling out how unclean you are, that's gonna impact your words on your own life.

But on top of that, it started to spill over from just somebody, you know, who has a who has a disease or a communicable disease that we, you know, we want to be sanitary to then the the core of that person, and of course they lost community.

So when Jesus goes, or sorry, when this man comes to Jesus fresh off the Sermon on the Mount, going right into application, Matthew wanted you to know that this man with leprosy kneels at Jesus' feet, and then you didn't you didn't miss this, right?

He said, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

When you look at the original text, some of you, depending on your Bible translations, it says, If you're willing, you can heal me and make me clean.

But if you look at the original text, the original language, there's no word in there for heal.

So he doesn't say heal.

Now it's implied because he's saying you'll get rid of this leprosy.

But there's a word for heal, it's like the word cure, and he doesn't use that word, he only uses the word that we would eventually create the English word catharsis, which is basically make me clean.

Can you make me clean?

Can you cleanse me?

And so the spirit of what this man is saying is basically this um it's not even about these sores.

The pain of the sores are nothing compared to the fact that I'm unclean, I've lost my community, I've lost my relationships, I've got no relational intimacy, I can't even go to the temple.

Everybody, my own family, everybody is on the outside.

I am isolated.

So as Jesus is cleansing this man or healing him, it's not even just about these sores hurt, it's about his personal isolation.

Jesus is giving him back community, he's giving him back relationship.

And dude, I get a little bit in my feelings every time I read this story, it hits me every single time I get emotional thinking about this guy who had not been touched in a long time.

I mean, think about this.

Like, we know like babies, if they're not held in touch, they die.

We know people, even though they're adults, they won't die from lack of touch, but it's tremendous suffering.

And so you have this guy who's had no contact, he's had no community, and he goes and he kneels before Jesus and he's like, I don't know if you're willing, but I know you're able.

And if you're willing, would you restore community?

Would you restore relationship?

I can handle the sores, but I can't handle the isolation.

And I think often when our lives are like this, it tends to create isolation.

There's some of us in this room like we're thankful that nobody knows what's going on inside.

What's going on behind closed doors, what's going on in the in here, in the privacy of our minds and hearts.

It's like if you knew how disorderly it was, how unclean it is.

And so often it's why we don't invite people over.

We don't invite people in.

Maybe you have invited people in, maybe you've asked for help before.

Yet when they came in and they saw the magnitude of the mess and they learned the backstory, it came back to bite you.

And so what do you do?

But you you you you stay at a distance.

And and so this man has this question, he's like, if you're willing.

And the story gets me every time because Jesus touches the guy.

When's the last time this guy been hugged?

When's the last time the man had been touched?

His own family probably wasn't touching.

And so he's like, if you're willing.

And so what we learn from this, and what Jesus the rabbi wanted everybody to know, fresh off a Sermon on the Mount, is I'm willing.

I'm willing.

Some of you today, deep down, deep down, are afraid even to let God in.

Afraid to let God in.

Are you willing?

And we learn that Jesus is willing.

He keeps going from there, and the this text is interesting because if you keep reading through Matthew 8, you'll see he goes up to a Roman centurion.

And we're gonna get into this a little bit more next week, but the Roman centurion was religiously other, so he would have been a pagan.

Um, he also was politically other, but it's more than just, you know, because they weren't voting for anybody.

Uh, so there it wasn't that, it was that he represented the Roman government, and where they're at, they're in what we would call the religious triangle.

So you have um it's Capernaum, it's Chorism, it's Beth Seda, it's basically all people from Israel, all Jewish people, and then this is like the epicenter of the Pharisees and the religious elite and the highly religiously educated.

And so um the only pagans in that area would have been Roman soldiers.

And we talked about this during the Sermon on the Mount.

You remember we talked about Angaria and where the Roman soldiers would make you carry their gear for like a mile?

And it was a show of force because the Roman soldiers were so terribly outnumbered by the Jewish people that if the Jewish people decided to revolt, they they could, you know, they they could put up a fight.

There's no way we can't hold these people off.

They outnumber us tremendously.

So what they would do is show force to remind these people yeah, if you guys rise up, you could kill us, but the Roman government is behind us and they're gonna come kill y'all.

So, like you kill me, you they're gonna kill you.

And of course, we know historically in AD 70, it was gonna spill over really bad and lead to the destruction of the temple.

So this is a tremendous tension.

And so you have this Roman soldier in this religious triangle who's very much religiously other and politically other, and Jesus helps him.

Jesus heals his servant.

We're gonna get more into that next week.

So, so that was one that you know would have them reeling.

Like, wait a second, Jesus just touched a leper, Jesus just helped a Roman officer, and so they they they go all the way, Jesus heals his way basically to the Sea of Galilee.

Okay, now let's get our geographic bearings.

They're in the northwest part of the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus says, Okay, guys, get in the boat, we're gonna go to the other side of the lake.

We're gonna go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Um, this would have been really disorienting because although these guys were fishermen, there was very much boundaries around the Sea of Galilee.

You these guys probably had never been to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Even as fishermen, they would fish about a hundred yards off of their own coast.

Okay, we stay in our neck of the woods because where he's taking them is Paganville.

Okay, this is the decapitalis, this is the ten towns.

They hate this place so bad that even like uh it's not in the Bible, but rabbinic history is if you even said decapitalis, you were considered unclean.

That's not a joke.

If you said decapitalis, you were considered unclean.

That's how much they did not like the decapitus.

So Jesus says, hey guys, get in the boat, we're going to pagan town, we're going to the east side of the Jordan River.

And when I say we're going to the east side, I'm not saying we're moving on up.

I'm saying we're moving on down.

All right, you're going to the east side, and these guys, okay, this would have been like, what are you doing?

Um, if my mom knew I was going to the decapitolis, my mom would kill me.

I've never been to the decapitus, I don't plan to go to the decapitolis.

And the fact that they're still learning to trust Jesus, it would have been disorienting that he's inviting them to go to the Decapolis.

It would be like this.

Let's say we were like friends, and you're like, hey, this guy's teaching some good stuff, but I don't know if I can trust him.

And I was like, hey, look, we're gonna go to, and I name some part of town where all the bad stuff happens.

And you're like, why?

Because in your mind you might be thinking, this dude's either very legit, and we're gonna come down here, you know, in where all the bad stuff happens and do ministry, or this dude is very illegit, and he stands up in front of everybody and talks about the Bible, but then he's going down there snorting stuff off of other people and doing crazy stuff, right?

And so you're like, which dude, what which one are you?

So when Jesus is saying we're going to the east side, we're going to the decapolis, this is very unnerving to these young disciples.

Okay, so they get on the, they get in the boat, they go out, and a storm kicks up.

You remember our conversation about the Sermon on the Mount?

We talked about how Jesus is sort of fighting back on some of their theology around the material, immaterial world.

So in their minds at that time, the material and material world were completely connected all the time.

So, in other words, the things that I can sense with my five senses and the things that are metaphysical, it's all connected all the time.

And we know that there absolutely is connection between the metaphysical and the material, but not everything that happens in the material world has some metaphysical reason.

And Jesus says that in the Sermon on the Mount.

You know, ultimately they thought if you were successful, it's because God was blessing you.

Jesus says, no, blessed are those who mourn.

He says, God create uh God sends rain on the just and he sends rain on the unjust.

And sometimes you do good things and bad things happen.

And sometimes people do bad things and good things happen.

But for them, every time there was a storm or something bad happened, it was the judgment of God, essentially.

So they get out on the water and a storm kicks up.

And now Matthew is about to write some really good stuff.

And I don't want us to miss a thing.

Okay?

They get out on the water and Jesus is asleep in the boat.

Can you think of any other story in the Bible?

If you've read your Bible before you grew up in Sunday school or you've been in church, can you think of another story where someone's in a storm and they're sleeping?

I'll save you the suspense.

Jonah.

Remember the Jonah story?

What Matthew is doing here, and it's really powerful, he's laying Jesus and the disciples' story on the Sea of Galilee over the Jonah story.

And he's making a point.

Okay, so let's go, Jonah, real quick.

Some of you don't remember the story, or you never heard it.

Okay, so there's this guy, Jonah.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah and says, I want you to go to Nineveh and preach.

What is Nineveh?

Nineveh is modern day Iraq.

At that time, it is the capital of the Assyrian Empire who were oppressing the nation of Israel.

The Assyrians, if you read them historically, they were barbaric.

So there was a hatred.

There was an anticipation of judgment of the Assyrians.

One day, God's gonna smite these people.

One day, justice will be served.

And that justice will look like judgment to the Assyrians and to the people of Nineveh.

And so God says to Jonah, I want you to go.

To Assyria, I want you to go to Nineveh and I want you to preach.

And Jonah goes, Yeah, no.

I don't think I want to do that.

And so he gets in a boat and he goes to Tarshish, which is modern day Spain.

He's like, you know what?

You can miss me with Baghdad.

I'm gonna go to Spain.

And so he starts heading to Spain, and a storm kicks up.

You remember this?

Storm kicks up, he's sleeping in the boat, and they're freaking out.

And Jonah goes, Look, it's me.

I'm disobeying God.

It's everybody's gonna die unless you throw me overboard.

They throw him over, storm immediately calms.

Okay?

And then and now is where it turns into a kid's story, and it's Jonah and the whale.

And then the the theological theologians are like, it wasn't a whale, it was a big fish.

But it really doesn't matter, okay?

Because it's not about the big fish or the whale or whatever it was.

The story is really about a guy who got confused between judgment and justice, and he really just wanted people to burn.

And so he ends up, goes to Nineveh, and he does finally what he's told because you know fish spits him up on the on the on the you know coast, and he goes up and he and the whole city repents.

The leaders go, you know what?

I we see the error of our ways, and we need to change.

And so they go, and he had told him 40 days, God's gonna cook you.

And and they go and they go, you know what?

He's right, and they all change, and God gives them mercy.

So you would think the story is like Jonah would be like, God, thank you for using me for your vessel.

Uh, but that's not that's not what happens.

Look at Jonah chapter 4, verse 1.

Jonah 4:1

It says, This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry.

So he complained to the Lord about it.

Look at this.

Jonah.

He says, Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord?

That's why I went to Spain.

Tried to.

I knew that you're now don't miss a word of this.

I knew that you are merciful and a compassionate God, slow to get angry, and filled with unfailing love.

You are eager, you are eager, you are eager to turn back from destroying people.

Just kill me now, Lord.

I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.

From the man with leprosy, we learn that Jesus is willing.

From the Jonah story, we learn that Jesus is eager.

He's eager.

And Matthew lays this story right over top.

It's in fact, I'm gonna show you, we'll go Bible study real quick.

Uh, and look, look at these parallels.

Look, look what Matthew he's making sure nobody misses it.

Matthew 8, 24, it says a fierce storm struck the lake and the waves began to break into the boat.

That's Matthew 8.

Look at the parallel text in Jonah 1, it says a violent storm threatened to break the ship apart.

Um, Matthew 8, 24, it says, but Jesus was sleeping.

In Jonah 1, 5, it said Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold.

Okay, I can't prove this, and don't go out here and say, I'm a false teacher because I can't prove it.

And I'm saying I can't prove it.

But there's a little part of me that wonders if Jesus was faking asleep, just so they would know it was the Jonah story.

You know what I'm saying?

I guess like that's a rabbi move.

That's what you would do.

You go down there and be like I don't want you to miss this.

It's just a coincidence.

They're both asleep in the storm.

Uh it says in verse 3, Matthew 8.25 says uh the the disciples say, We're gonna drown.

In Jonah 1, 5, it says that the sailors were fearing for their lives.

They thought they were gonna drown.

Matthew 8, 26 says he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm.

Jonah 1.15 said, then the sailors picked up Jonah, threw him in the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once.

There was a great calm.

Matthew 8, 27, it says the disciples were amazed.

Who is this man?

They asked.

Even the winds and the waves, open.

And Jonah 1.16 says the sailors were awestruck by the Lord's great power.

Okay, so here's what Matthew is showing.

He's showing that there's this really old, subversive story all the way back, way before Jesus.

Like some people think that there was the Old Testament God who was just angry with everyone, and then you have hippie Jesus that came and is now about love, and God totally changed his mind.

Like he used to be like a young dad, and now he's like a grandpa through Jesus or something like that.

And yet, what what you know Matthew is showing is no, this is who God has always been.

Go back to this Jonah story.

Jonah.

It was Jonah who wanted them to cook.

It was Jonah.

And in fact, at the end, he goes, I knew it, I knew you were gonna do this.

I knew you were gonna be merciful.

I knew you were wanted to give grace.

I knew this was gonna happen.

And and he cascades into, you know, ultimately suicidal depression because so badly he wanted his form of justice and a form of judgment and what he thought should happen.

And yet God was showing grace all the way back then.

So what Jesus and Matthew are showing us is that these disciples, they wanted to go to the east side of the Jordan of the Sea of Galilee about as bad as Jonah wanted to go to Nineveh.

And when they saw the storm, they thought, oh, we're going in the wrong direction because we're going to, you know, the bad land, and yet Jesus steps up as God and controls the wind and the waves and saying, we're going in the right direction.

You can imagine like these lessons, like a little bit of sensory overload.

I'm trying to figure out, I've tried to unlearn what I was taught.

I'm trying to figure out the heart of God, and that's why he uses this old story of Jonah.

Okay, so it's starting to click.

And just when the disciples are starting to get to the place where maybe they're going to embrace the Decapolis, they land.

And it says in Matthew 8, 28 and 29, it says, when Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake or in the region of the Gatarenes, two men who were possessed by demons met him.

My mom would kill me if we went to the Decapolis.

Jesus, are you sure there's this is a good idea?

A storm kicks up, Jesus comes the wind and the waves.

My adrenaline's just starting to come down.

We hit the shore, and the two freakiest dudes you've ever seen in your life.

Like the freakiest guys in the whole Bible, okay, are waiting on you on the other side, right?

This it's like funny almost, right?

It's like I've never been here before, and I've heard it's really bad, and you get there, and like like the worst of the worst is there.

And so they came out of the tombs.

Okay.

And when you were you can't make this stuff up.

This is really good.

Um, you know, Luke and Mark both talk about um they say they were actually they were naked, all right?

So they're not wearing any clothes.

So they come naked out of the tombs, they're screaming, um, they've been violent, they've driven everybody away.

It says in verse 29, they're screaming at him.

Why are you interfering with us, son of God?

Have you come here to torture us?

So they become violent, people would try to chain them up because of their violence, and they they they would break the chains, and so people just started when you read uh in Luke and Mark and Matthew about this story, that the demoniac is just completely isolated because nobody wants to be around because he's violent.

So the best we can do, like nobody can get him under control.

So we're gonna let you have your mess over in the cemetery, over by the tombs.

And Jesus shows up and and notice the language of the demoniac.

He says, Are you here to torture me?

Sometimes when you're living in bondage, I mean, this this is a guy who was in so much bondage that he had hurt people, he had been violent, he had pushed people away, and he was bound, demonically bound.

In Luke, after Jesus cast the demons out of him, it says that they found him sitting fully clothed in his right mind.

Yes, sir, in his right mind, but on the front end, when he saw Jesus, it looked like torture because sometimes going from the reality of this, all the backstory, the stuff I did, the stuff they did, but this is my reality.

To go from here to cleaning all this up to staying free feels like torture.

I'm gonna have to have some conversations I've been avoiding a long time.

I'm going to have to forgive some people who I've been wanting to cook.

I'm going to have to admit some stuff that I've been lying about.

I'm going to have to bring some stuff into the light that I've been sweeping under the rug.

There's some smells in this house.

I don't even know what it's coming from.

I just know it doesn't smell.

To deal with all of this feels like torture.

Have you come to torture me?

And the reality is Jesus came to set him free.

Don't let the feeling of what it would take to get from here to there and the belief that I can't, because some of us have cleaned this up a few times and we just have some habits and some mindsets and some things that I keep.

I replace the furniture a few times.

This isn't my second lamp, okay?

I've had multiple lamps at this point.

I've done this a lot, and so what happens is we lose hope.

And we believe that I have to live like this.

Some of you were born into this.

Some of you, you you you look at people who have their life in order and you go, must be nice.

I've tried it.

And in some unhealthy way, you become comfortable living in mess because I know how to live in mess.

So I'm just gonna keep everybody on the outside.

I'm gonna, when I get to the other side of the closed door, I'm gonna go out and act a certain way, but I'm gonna keep everybody at an arm's length.

I'm either gonna be yelling unclean or I'm gonna be like the demoniac pushing people, maybe with my violence.

I'm gonna scare them enough to keep them out on the perimeter, because if I open the door and let you in, and maybe some of you have let people in, and they came in and sniffed around and looked around, and it caused more pain and more shame.

And you go, it's just be easier for me to close this door.

So I can't promise you how everybody will react to your leprosy.

I can't promise you how everybody will react to who you are, but I can tell you this: based on Matthew 8, Jesus sees something different.

Everybody saw the skin disorder, Jesus saw something different.

Everybody saw the Roman soldier, Jesus saw something different.

The disciples see a man full of demons and a man living among the tombs, and a man who's not in his right mind, and Jesus saw something different, and today he stands at the door and he knocks.

I can't promise you you can trust everybody, but you can trust Jesus.

Will you open the door and welcome him in?

I'm here to tell you today, he's not only willing, he's eager.

And if you invite him in, he will not harm you.

There's a difference between hurt and harm.

Sometimes to go from here to there feels like torture, but the reality is sometimes to get healthy and that whole process to talk about stuff you've been burying, to dig up some skeletons, or to let some ghosts out of the closet, or to talk about where you've been, or to admit what you've done, like that whole process, it does hurt.

Sometimes it takes an incision, it takes rebreaking a bone, it takes doing something that might be a painful rehabilitation process, but the reconciliation and the rehabilitation is possible, it leads to hell.

And so Jesus would never show up to harm you, but yet sometimes it does hurt.

And so the demoniac in that moment, he sees torture when Jesus intended freedom.

And so today, I don't know who I'm talking to, but my hunch is there are probably some of us today who have lost hope because you think, you know how many times I've tried to clean this thing up?

And by the way, this isn't all my fault.

There's some backstory here.

Some of you will go, okay, the lamp was me.

Okay, I did the lamp, but I didn't break that chair.

All right, it's my favorite chair.

I would never break that chair.

That's a great chair.

We spent a lot of money on the chair.

That wasn't me.

Somebody else did that.

Okay, it's it's it's a it's a complicated story, and there's gonna be some pain in the process.

Today's not about thinking about all that.

Today is about accepting by faith the belief that you have Jesus knocking at your door, and he's not only willing, he's eager.

He's not only willing, he's eager, he's knocking.

Will you open?

Will you let him in?