Jesus Heals the Man with Leprosy

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. Let's open to the gospel of Matthew chapter 8. Matthew chapter 8 and the title of this message is The Compassion of Christ.

The Compassion of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount

Do you know that Jesus has great compassion? As we go through the gospels, if we look at the scripture honestly, we will find that Jesus is not one-dimensional. Today, I think a lot of people look at Jesus that way, that he is all compassion or all love and compassion all the time.

Well, we just finished with the Sermon on the Mount and we saw there's a lot of challenging statements, some hard words in that sermon. The most famous sermon of all time. But it had some positive encouragements, didn't it?

Especially the Beatitudes. And I think that's what we see here in Matthew chapter 8. Just a really positive, encouraging passage of scripture. So my point in bringing that up, we don't want to filter out the parts of the Bible that we don't like to get a one-dimensional God who fits into our box.

We need to take things as they come. But we do like those positive and encouraging passages, don't we? So let's look at this one that I think really highlights the love and mercy and compassion of Christ.

The Centurion's Faith and Jesus' Authority

Matthew chapter 8, we'll read starting in verses 1 through 13. Matthew 8, verse 1. Now, when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him pleading with him, saying, Lord, my servant is lying at home, paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.

And Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. For I am also a man under authority, having soldiers under me.

And I say to this one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes. And to my servant, do this, and he does it. And when Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed, assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.

And I say to you that many will come from the east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then Jesus said to the centurion, go your way, and as you have believed, so let it be done for you. And his servant was healed that same hour. And may God add a blessing to the reading of his word. So, in these verses we see, I think we see the great compassion that Jesus had for people.

And he shows compassion by reaching out to some of those people that Jewish society would have just rejected. So, you have two people, really, that we're going to focus on, at least at first. You have the leper and a Roman soldier.

And the fact that Jesus was not only willing to get near the leper, the fact that Jesus actually reached out and touched the leper, I mean, this was just unheard of. So, let's start at verse 1. Verse 1 of chapter 8 says, He, that is Jesus, when He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him.

So, if you remember from last time, chapter 7 ended the Sermon on the Mount, right? We've been going through that for months. So, Jesus finishes His message and He calls on His followers and the multitudes and whoever is listening, He called upon them to build their lives on the rock.

So, basically He's saying, believe in Me, follow My teachings, apply My teachings. That is how, by building on the rock, that is how you build a life that will both endure the storms of life and will endure on the day of judgment.

So, He is teaching them and us how to live. And, you know, Jesus doesn't just teach with His words. He also teaches with His works, right? Because it's really useless if you say something, but you don't actually do it.

Or if you say, I believe the Bible, but you're never actually applying it or living it out. I mean, what good is that? Look at verse 2, And behold, a leper came to Him. So, Jesus is teaching mercy. He's teaching the compassion of God.

He is the compassion of God in human flesh, you could argue. So, when a leper came to Him, will Jesus turn this leper away? Most people would not want to get near the leper, for obvious reasons. So, notice first, the leper worshiped Jesus.

And Jesus receives that worship. That speaks to the deity of Christ. And the leper has no doubt that Jesus has the ability to heal him. It's really only a question of, will Jesus heal me? Because as a leper, he's used to being treated like this.

People just don't want anything to do with this guy. People would be staying far, far away from him. And, you know, in some ways, that's understandable. I don't know how much you know about leprosy or leprosy back in Bible times.

But it was thought to be highly contagious. It's not really as contagious as they thought. But if you got leprosy, I mean, this could be deadly. If someone contracted leprosy, they had to quarantine themselves.

And it's not the type of quarantine that we did three years ago. Of course, some people didn't quarantine, I guess. You know, where you go in your room and just shut the door. Where you just kind of stay off by yourself.

No, this was like you had to live alone. You had to go far outside the city and live by yourself. So it was a lonely existence. You couldn't come within so many feet of other people. It was more than six feet.

And if someone approached you, you had to yell out, unclean, unclean. And you just had to keep people away. So again, it's a lonely, miserable existence to have leprosy. And that's not to mention the disease itself.

Their skin became scaly and dry. They would lose feeling in their body parts. There would be deformity and nerve damage that could lead to paralysis and eventually death. Now today, it's treatable. If somebody gets leprosy today, it's not really something people would worry about.

But back then, they didn't understand. And they didn't have any cure. So it was one of the most frightening illnesses imaginable. And anybody could get it. So here's the thing. The fact that Jesus touched the leper.

Jesus spoke to him. He approached him. And he touched him. You know, Jesus didn't have to touch him. Think about the other miracles Jesus did. In this chapter, he just speaks the word and it's done, right?

That's what he could have done with the leper. The leper's, you know, 30 feet away. And Jesus speaks the word and he's healed. But he makes it a point to touch the leper. This is significant. And it shows the great compassion and tenderness of the Savior.

Mark adds this detail in Mark 1 .41. And you notice the miracle happened right away. He was healed instantly. So the point is, Jesus didn't just teach love thy neighbor. Jesus lived it out. Jesus showed it.

It was an example, part of his life. And that's what we need to do as well. If we say we believe and we want to show the love of God to people and we believe, love your neighbor, we need to show that love to others.

We need to be willing to help other people. And show people and teach people not just with our words but also with our what?

Our works.

And, you know, there's more to the application, not just that we should show compassion, but there's an even greater takeaway. But we'll come back to that. But look at verse 5. It says, Jesus entered into the city of Capernaum, which was on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a Roman centurion approaches him with this request to heal his servant.

Now, I can't just assume that everybody knows what a centurion is. There's at least somebody hearing this word centurion and, you know, what is that? Well, a centurion was an officer in the Roman army who had command over, take a guess, how many men?

Yeah, you think of a century and a hundred, so a centurion is a Roman officer in charge of a hundred soldiers. And the way the Jews viewed Roman soldiers, especially the officers, do you think they really liked people like this?

I mean, you can just imagine. Let's try to understand this for ourselves. Imagine if the United States was conquered, right? Let's say we came under German occupation, or the United States was conquered by the Chinese, and in every major city they were there with their tanks, with their guns, making sure we didn't have any funny ideas of getting our freedom back.

You probably wouldn't like these people too much, would you? I don't think so. So, and that's totally understandable. However, on a human level, if you saw someone suffering, you'd probably have compassion for them.

Or, you know, maybe some people wouldn't. But Jesus, you know, Jesus sees the heart, right? Jesus saw there was something about this centurion. He was not like the rest of the Roman soldiers. And we know that because the centurion reached out to the Jewish Messiah.

I mean, this is not something a Roman would do. Now, maybe they, you know, the people under him wouldn't have given him a hard time, but, you know, this was not something you normally would do. So, the centurion humbled himself and turned to Christ for help.

This Roman expressed faith. And there's evidence here based on what Jesus said. He showed more faith than 90-something percent of the Jews of that time. So, the centurion, like the leper, he believes Jesus has the power to heal.

Also, the centurion was acutely aware of his own unworthiness. And that's kind of the part I want to focus on. Are we aware, because we've hopefully all here, we've turned to Christ, but are we aware of our own unworthiness?

I would argue you have to be aware of that before you can truly turn to Christ. In Luke's account, he indicates that the Roman thought himself too unworthy to even approach or speak to Jesus. Instead, he reached out through intermediaries.

That's not brought out in Matthew's account, but that's apparently what happened. Hey, can you go ask Jesus for me? So, that's what's taking place. So, with both of these stories, the leper and the centurion, both men had faith, but both recognized that they were unclean.

The leper was unclean because of his disease, and the centurion was unclean because he was a Gentile. He was outside of God's covenant community of faith. And both men would be viewed as what by the Jewish people?

Undesirable.

Undesirable.

I mean, they'd be viewed as a lot of things, I'm sure. But they'd be viewed as sinners. I mean, these people are sinners. They are outside of the grace of God. The Roman, for sure. I mean, the Romans were cruel.

This man was violent. That's what they would have assumed, even if it wasn't true. So, the Roman, he's a dog. He's a sinner. And then you say, well, how would they say that about the leper? I mean, here's this poor guy, you know, living off by himself.

Why would they say that about the leper? Because that's the way they thought back then. Some people still think this way. That if something bad happens to you, if you have a disease, there's some tragedy, well, you must have done something to deserve it.

God must be punishing you. So, if you contract an illness, that's the judgment of God. That's the way many of them thought.

Now, is that true?

Not necessarily. So, the point is, both men would have been seen as sinners, as undesirables, as outcasts. But how did the Lord see them? The way God sees things is often very different than the way we see things.

Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornick Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message, or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, morriscornickchurch .com.

We'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.