Matthew 8:1-17 Healing for the Outcast

You are listening to Recast Church of Mattawan's podcast. Join us as we are in a sermon series entitled,

Not Your Average Savior, A Study in the Book of Matthew. Well, good morning.

How's everybody doing? Everybody's doing all right? Okay, good. Make yourself comfortable again.

Get coffee, get some donuts, whatever it takes to kind of get the wiggles out during the message.

No problem. You're not going to distract me. Say happy Mother's Day again to all of you mothers that are here.

Again, one more time. I want to explain to you, I know that it would be tradition at many churches to do a

Mother's Day message. How many of you kind of have been to a church where they would do a Mother's Day or Father's Day message on certain, you know, or just something like that?

I'm not trying to be counter -cultural. That's not my goal. But I am not doing a

Mother's Day message this week. I think there's only so many topics or so many passages in scripture, I could get myself on kind of a merry -go -round of preaching the same messages every year, the same time, regarding different things.

And it's my conviction that God's Word should have an impact on all of us all the time. Does that make sense? So I hope that the message this morning speaks to mothers and to fathers and to those who are married and to those who are not married and to those with children and to those without children.

So it's my hope that every time we open God's Word, everybody gains something from it.

Does that make sense? And also, I don't want to marginalize half of all of you by preaching to just one segment.

So I would like it to be something that impacts all of us. We've been in the book of Matthew since December.

Hopefully, you've been getting to know Jesus. The title of the sermon series is Not Your Average Savior, Meeting Jesus in the

Book of Matthew. That's been the goal of my heart is to see us understand a little bit more about who

Jesus is as we've gone through this. Hopefully, you have gained some understanding about Jesus, have gained some understanding about the way that he ministered, the things that he did.

Our text this morning is moving us out from a larger section that was about his teachings. So we spent several weeks in the

Sermon on the Mount where we heard the type of teaching that Jesus offered. And how did the people respond?

Do you guys remember? How did the people respond to his teaching? Shocked, astonished, amazed.

They were in awe of his teaching. You gotta remember that he's opened his mouth and he's spoken to them.

And they are amazed and astounded. And he hasn't even done miracles yet. So we're gonna see him actually do some miracles this week.

And we're gonna enter into a part of the text where we're gonna see Matthew give a series of miracles, not just this week, but on down for a couple of weeks.

And Matthew was seeking to show how unique Jesus is. And he did that by demonstrating his teaching.

And now he's gonna show us Jesus' miracles, three healings. And I think that these three healings are singled out because of his attitude towards three categories of people, all three being outcasts in his culture.

So you'll see the title, Healing for the Outcasts here. Open your Bibles, please, to Matthew chapter eight. We're gonna be looking at one through 17.

That's page 692. And if you don't own a Bible, please take that one home with you. That is a gift from us to you.

If you don't own a Bible, take that one, 692. Follow along as I read Matthew chapter eight, one through 17.

When he, that is Jesus, 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.

When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.

And he said to him, I will come and heal him. As the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.

For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me. And I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes.

And to my servant, do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, truly,

I tell you that with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from the east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness.

In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the centurion,

Jesus said, go, let it be done for you as you have believed, and the servant was healed at that very moment. And when

Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother -in -law lying sick with a fever. He touched her, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him.

That evening, they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.

Let's pray. Father, as we come to this text, it's something that's so foreign to us, something that is so outside of our experience to see

Jesus Christ physically healing people. And yet, Father, I believe that you have some lessons for us to learn about the nature of who you care for, the nature of who you love, and then in turn, how we as a church ought to show compassion and concern for others as well.

Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the lessons that you would have for us from this text, that we would leave here changed, that we would be doers of the word and not just hearers of it.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. When is the last time that you met somebody who would be considered an outcast of our society?

Think about that. Has it been recent? Has it been fairly recent?

Has it been a long time since you've met somebody like that? Who are the outcasts of our society?

Can you even, I had a hard time with that, honestly, this week, of actually determining in my mind who are outcasts.

Maybe homeless people. Would that be someone that you would think of as maybe an outcast in our culture, in our society?

I was thinking maybe drug dealers, maybe. On the other hand, maybe we've all met drug dealers.

I think they probably look a lot like us. So maybe they're not so outcast after all.

I had a hard time, in my mind, drawing an analogy between our culture and Jesus' culture, because Jesus' culture had real, genuine outcasts who were definitively declared to be outcasts.

And it was the way of the society that he lived in. Here in our text, we're gonna see Jesus interact with three different people that in his society were considered to be outcasts, at least in varying degrees.

And I believe they're highlighted in the text because of their status. If we were to go down to verse 16 for a second, I just read it, it's the second to the last verse in our text this morning.

It says, that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.

We're gonna hear three specific stories of healings, three among many.

There were many stories that Matthew could have picked from. Matthew was present. Matthew was watching these things. He was in the crowd.

And he singled out three stories to tell. There were many, many, many stories to tell. How many lives did

Jesus change and impact while he was here on this earth? Hundreds of thousands.

And here we're gonna see Matthew picking out three. And I believe they're significant.

Anytime that we're looking in the Gospels, we're looking at why did the author choose, how many of you know when you're writing a biography about a person's life, you could fill volumes?

So anytime that a biographer, somebody who's writing about the life of an individual, this case it's theological biography, they're picking out stories for an intention, for a reason, to get a point across.

And anytime that I'm looking through the Gospels, anytime that you're reading in the Gospels, studying in the Gospels, you should ask yourself why did the author include this?

Why did God want this story here? And here we're gonna see three people that are singled out because of,

I believe, their status in the culture. We're gonna see Jesus caring for these people who were marginalized.

They were on the fringes of that culture and that society. We see that the context of this, right from the beginning, gotta turn back a page here.

In verse one, when he came down from the mountain, so he's been up there on the mountain teaching them.

Remember this? He pulled his disciples up, sermon on the mount, he's up there talking with them. Crowds begin to gather as he's teaching.

So what you should have in your mind is that the sermon went for a while and people started to come in and they were hearing where he was at and they were flowing in and eventually this mountaintop or this hilltop is full of people.

And to the degree that there's a great crowd that is now following him in eight one. We're gonna see the first healing here, the healing of somebody who is designated as unclean in verses two through four.

We see in our text in verse two, and behold, all of a sudden, you're meant to see this as a sudden occurrence.

All of a sudden, a leper shows up on the scene. Comes up to Jesus and bows down to him.

Now what is a leper? Is it a big cat that lives in South America or you know?

No, it's not. How many of you have heard that word or have some kind of a thought in your mind of what a leper is?

Okay, most of you have heard that word. A person suffering here in this context, it's a person suffering from some kind of a skin disorder.

It's a visual disease. It's something that is on the outside of them that is visible and considered to be contagious in that day and age.

Now remember, we're not talking about a lot of modern medicine back then. A lot of specific diagnosis, diagnoses.

So what we're looking at is leprosy with a catch -all skin disorder that was perceived to be contagious and perpetual.

Not just acne or something like that, but something that they thought was going to be contagious and dangerous to those people around them.

Now we have a modern disease that we often think of as leprosy. It's called

Hansen's disease. That's the actual designation of it, Hansen's disease. And often we misapply that to assume that that's what this man had.

Now Hansen's disease is a neurological disorder. How many of you have heard this before? Neurological disorder where the extremities, the nerves in your extremities begin to become influenced to a degree that you lose feeling in your fingers, your feet, your nose, and all of your extremities to the degree that you no longer have the sensation of pain.

And so what happens if you step on a nail and you can't feel it? Okay, you end up getting an infection.

And eventually these people would literally start losing limbs. It was a very, very horrendous thing.

Not extremely contagious like what we might assume, but still contagious nonetheless, caused by a bacterial infection of a certain kind.

So that's what we're, it's not definitive that that's what this guy had, but one thing that is well established is that anybody who carried the label in Jesus' day of leper was an outcast.

And this individual carried that label. So he was an outcast. He was declared to be unclean by the priest, and he was cast outside of the community, cast outside of daily affairs.

He was not allowed to appear and buy from the marketplace and all of these types of things. He was not allowed to associate with people in the same way.

We see that according to the Old Testament law, Leviticus 13, how many of you have read the book of Leviticus, by the way?

Okay, it can be a tough read, right? If you're reading through the Bible in a year, a lot of people get stuck in Leviticus and never make it out.

You know what I'm saying? Leviticus 13 and 14, two whole chapters dedicated to leprosy.

This is pretty intense. Verses 45 and 46 of Leviticus 13 says this.

The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean.

So basically they were supposed to dress like an 80s rock band. Let their hair hang loose and make sure they have a mustache.

He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean.

He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside of the camp.

How many of you would sign up for leprosy? Doesn't sound like a good disease to have in that day and age.

Further, anyone that touched a leper was declared to be unclean, had to go through a ritual of washing and cleansing, had to wait 24 hours before engaging in any religious activity or touching anyone else.

And it's important that we understand that uncleanness is not primarily a category of dirt or filth.

That's not what's implied by that word unclean, but it is a religious category that places an individual significantly outside of the worship community as well.

You feeling some of the weight of what it would be like to be a leper in that culture and in that society? It would be a horrible thing, a horrendous disease with horrible social ramifications.

So this is the guy that approaches Jesus. He's supposed to be shouting unclean, unclean as he approaches.

Can you imagine the fearful glances of the crowd? Now they're surrounding Jesus, they're on their way to a destination and they're walking along with him.

And here this man walks up and can you hear the gasps? As everybody kind of pushes against each other trying to get back away from this individual who can be seen and figured out who he is and what he has just by looking at him, by the way he's dressed, by the things he's saying.

And he pulls up and the crowd parts like the Red Sea. Nobody wants to be near this guy. And Jesus stands there as everybody backs up.

Now I find it unlikely that this man came right up to Jesus' feet. He probably stood a ways off.

Picture that there's this kind of shouting thing that's going on. He's probably from here to the back wall and he kneels down and Jesus is here.

And he begins to talk to him. And we see the attitude of this man's approach.

Notice just how desperate he must be, how bold he is to approach and be close to this crowd.

He's humble, he bows down to Jesus. He calls Jesus what in the text?

Lord, he calls him Lord. And then he makes this statement that is just a clear, amazing, powerful statement of faith.

If you will, he says to Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean.

If you will, if it is in your desire, if it is within your plan, I know it'll be taken care of.

Does that sound like faith to you? What an amazing statement of faith. What is our request?

What do we bring before God when we pray? Do we pray like that kind of faith? If you want this hurdle, this roadblock to be removed, it will be taken care of.

An implicit trust in the sovereignty of God. Do you see that here? Do you see how this leper was designating

Christ as sovereign over his life and saying, you are here and I am here and if you want this done, it's going to be accomplished.

Can you see that in the text? You see how he understood the sovereignty of God? This needs to be the way that we pray to God.

Acknowledging his ability. Do you believe that God is powerful? Do you? Do you believe that he is almighty?

Do you believe that he is sovereign? We believe he can do anything.

The leper doesn't question whether or not Jesus can heal him. His ultimate question is ultimately, is it your will?

And that is what prayer, that is the centerpiece of prayer. You're gonna hear me say that many, many times. The centerpiece of prayer is acknowledging the will of God and saying,

I would like things to go this way and I know that if it's your desire, they will go this way but I'm submitting myself to your will.

That's the power of prayer. The power of prayer is in changing us, not in changing God's mind about things.

Have you experienced that before? Have you experienced a prayer coming before God and receiving peace about a really difficult situation because you have laid it at his feet?

And said, if you wanna deal with this, you can. If you wanna leave it that way, you can do that too but I'm taking this burden off of my shoulders and laying it down at your sovereignty.

I'd like it to go this way and there's no problem asking that way. Do we ask for people to be healed? Yes, we do and we should.

Saying, God, I want this to be the case but I submit to your will in that.

I know that if you want it, it can happen. So I submit to you.

Notice what the man is asking for. He doesn't ultimately just come right out and say, heal me. He says, I wanna be cleansed.

A pretty technical word. Sure, he has this horrendous disease he wants gone but it is the ostracizing nature that he addresses.

I wanna be cleansed. I wanna be reinstated into my culture. I wanna be reinstated in my society. I wanna be reinstated into worship.

I wanna be cleansed. Not just healed but I wanna be made right. Imagine what this man had endured in his life.

The difficulties, the ostracization, is that a, or the isolation, there's the word

I was looking for. He's kneeling before the only one who can give him hope and I can imagine that the pause between the request, any pause, even if it was just a split second, it might seem like eternity between his request to Jesus and the reply.

But Jesus walks up to the man and reaches out his hand and what does he do? He touches him.

We don't know how long this man had the disease. The text doesn't tell us but it's pretty, you can be assured that nobody had touched him since he was diagnosed.

And Jesus reaches down and touches him. It's said in two different ways for emphasis.

Reached out his hand and touched him. Because it's such a dramatic thing. For something to touch a leper meant that it became unclean.

That is for something common to touch a leper meant that it became unclean. But Jesus, we see, is not common.

He is holy. And in touching this leper, he makes him clean.

And I don't know who the script writer was for this one but it just seems like, you know, not necessarily a riveting dialogue.

The guy says to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Jesus says, I will, be clean.

And off they go, do their own thing. It's like, wow, you know, I mean, maybe we could have written some like dynamics in there or something but wow.

Isn't that, in its simplicity, isn't it amazing? Jesus says, I will. And it's accomplished.

Amazing. Just, yep, here, let me reach down, pull you up, you're healed. Now, what is the nature of leprosy?

What did I say it was? An external disease. This would be a visual healing.

This would be something that the crowd would go, oh, no way, the spots are gone. This is one of those healings like the guy with the shriveled hand in the synagogue whose hand was shriveled up and not working and Jesus heals him and the hand is restored.

It's visual. It's something that would just be astonishing to see. Not like somebody who just says, you know,

I've got abdominal pain and you see these televangelists who are like, oh, heal your abdominal pain. Well, that's kind of a little hard for us to verify, isn't it?

Kind of get a little skeptical about those things. This is an amazing, amazing thing and it's visual.

It's right there in front of them. Jesus tells him that he should first head off to the temple in Jerusalem without delay, without telling others.

This is the idea of clean and unclean behind it. It's not that he wanted it to be kept a secret necessarily.

Now, we see that there's a theme throughout the Gospels of Jesus kind of wanting to not overstep and push people into trying to make him the king of Israel right away and he knew that if everybody was catching word of his miracles and all these things, eventually it was just gonna get to a frenzy but at this point, there's a different motivation for him saying this to the man, don't go and tell others because he wanted this man to follow the law in Leviticus 14, one through 32.

32 verses in the Old Testament dedicated to what do you do when you become cured of leprosy.

Now, I mentioned this is a skin disease so you were going, does this happen often? Was it often that people were healed of this?

Well, because it's such a broad spectrum of different diseases, a person could be diagnosed with leprosy and then eventually it clears up, so to speak.

And so then they would follow this prescription to go to the temple, have the priest confirm that they are clean, get his stamp of approval and then they're reinstated into society.

And that's what he's supposed to be doing here. So in Leviticus 14, one through 32, we see those instructions. He's supposed to go to the temple in Jerusalem, see the priest, the priest observes him for a couple of days, he offers a sacrifice, bathes and then is reinstated into society.

So if this man were to go to all of his friends and go back to his family and say, I'm clean, I'm clean. He's like, you haven't been to Jerusalem yet, stay away from me.

He has to go to Jerusalem to be reinstated. Does that make sense? So that's why Jesus is saying, don't go talking to everybody yet, go down, let the priest follow through the pattern of the way that this is supposed to go.

And he does. From this first healing, what kind of people do we see that Jesus loves?

Those who are marginalized, those who are on the fringes of our culture and our society. Or maybe those who shower every day and brush their teeth and dress real well.

If you were to look at churches in America today, who would we be most likely to say, we convey that God loves?

What do we convey more often than not? Sometimes I think we can accidentally convey that it is just those who dress well and look nice that God loves.

We give the impression that the Christian faith is for those who are wealthy, clean -cut, and have their act together.

Is that who Jesus came to minister to? He says, a physician doesn't need to see the healthy.

A physician comes for those who are ill, who need healing.

Jesus ministered to those who were cast off from society. He brought dignity and real compassion to those who were living in very, very hard places.

Praise God for that. If the church is gonna carry forward the ministry of Jesus Christ, if re -cast is going to carry forward the ministry of Jesus Christ, then we need to seriously consider what

God is calling us to. Maybe better yet, who God is calling us to. Some here in our church are ministering to those in nursing homes.

They're already there doing work. Come and see me if that's something that would interest you. Sierra works down at the

Gospel Mission. She's involved there. I'm sure there's opportunities for us to minister to those who are marginalized and on the fringe of our society, homeless and seeking help.

Some are looking into free pregnancy testing for young ladies in our community. If that's something that you'd be interested in, let me know.

And not only that, but we're engaging in a community -wide food pantry that Matawan Community Church is gonna be putting on down here.

They have a food pantry there already, but it's pretty small. There's a significant need to expand that.

Right now, they are serving the community on the third Saturday of every month in the morning.

Families will line up 12 deep there looking for food. They'd like to expand that to be once a month, but they can't do it themselves.

They need community assistance. They're actually talking about forming a new 501c3, what's the word?

Nonprofit organization that is community -based. They don't own that. Now, they're donating the facility for it right now.

If you're interested in something like that, actually, there's immediate action you can take on that. This Saturday, May 15th at nine o 'clock, they're gonna be doing a training.

He said anyone who comes is welcome to help and serve and to learn the ropes. Nine o 'clock, there'll be a training from basically nine to 10 about how do you take these families through?

What can they get? They have just shelves full and a refrigerator and a freezer. You personally walk a family through it.

You get a chance to interact with them, to talk with them, minister to them, provide food for them.

That's May 15th, nine o 'clock is the training there. Contact me if you wanna know more about that. I think if it works out,

I'm hoping to be there that morning, May 15th. But there's opportunities for us to serve the marginalized, those who are, in a sense, outcasts in our culture and society, those who are on hard times.

The second healing we're gonna see in verses five through 13, the second healing, a man very different in the social strata of the time, still an outcast nonetheless.

He's a centurion, he's a soldier, a Roman soldier, over 100, approximately 100 that are stationed there in Capernaum.

And we know that other gospels, the Gospel of Luke gives an accounting of the same event, and we learn there that the centurion was fairly well -known and actually had fairly good relations with the

Jews, and that he personally had funded, helped to subsidize the building of their synagogue there in Capernaum.

There's this house of worship for the Jews, and he was wealthy enough to help subsidize the building of that.

So he was kind of in with the Jews in a more positive relationship, but nonetheless, he is still an outsider to them.

He is a Roman, he is part of the oppressor, he's working for the man. You know who

I'm talking about. He's the equivalent maybe of a modern IRS auditor. Nobody here is an

IRS auditor, are they? They'll come and talk with me afterwards if they are.

We find out from context that Jesus comes back, is on his way back into his home base, the town of Capernaum, and we know even further down that his final destination as he's walking down from this hill teaching his followers is

Peter's house in Capernaum. We're gonna see that here in a minute. But as he's going along, this soldier approaches him with a request.

He says, my servant is ill and suffering. Notice so far that both healings, people were seeking out

Jesus. They saw something in him that they wanted and they were going to find it.

They saw him as the source or as the answer to their issues.

Not the source, but the answer. And in this case, this unnamed soldier comes and appeals, the word is there, appeals, begs, implores

Jesus to help his servant. And one more time, Jesus is addressed as Lord. The courtesy that is highlighted by the centurion's position over Jesus in their cultural hierarchy, the soldier is over this lowly

Jewish rabbi, and yet this centurion addresses Christ as Lord.

It appears likely from the description that the centurion has a servant who is suffering from polio. Polio was a very common disease in that day and age, and the symptoms are similar to what is described, paralysis with significant pain.

Notice that in the text, the centurion hasn't even asked anything of Jesus yet.

He says, Lord, let's see, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.

He makes a statement. And what's a little bit confusing, what can tend to be confusing to us is that in verse seven, we see a statement, don't we, in our text.

And he said to him, I will come and heal him. All right, all of you reading out of the English Standard Version or do some of you have different versions?

Does anybody's version have a question mark at the end of that? Because it should. The translators have been a little slow on the uptake to actually look at the

Greek and see the key indicators for a question mark at the end of this. Verse seven really should be something more like, you want me to come and heal him?

With the emphasis on the word me. You want me to come and heal him? That's what Jesus is saying, and he's literally asking a question.

That's pretty clear. Probably the next translation, the next English translation to come out will have a question mark at the end of that.

Scholarship is pretty clear on that, that it should be a question. And the point being that Jews in those days didn't associate with Gentiles, that is non -Jews.

So they would never enter the home of a Gentile. They would never go over to their house for dinner.

It was considered unclean to do so. One more time, a little ostracization from the community, being pushed out if they were to go and eat with a

Gentile. So they didn't do so. And you're never gonna see an account, you can comb over the Gospels, you can search through the life of Christ, you're literally never gonna see an incident where Jesus goes into the house of a

Gentile. He doesn't do it. He doesn't do it in this situation. We're gonna see that here in a minute. You see, the centurion understood the problem he was posing to Jesus, and so he replies with an amazing statement of faith.

He says, you know what, Jesus, you don't even need to come to my house. I know you, you don't even have to come over.

You can just say the word, and my servant will be healed. What? What amazing faith.

How many of you are challenged yourself by this level of faith? I know that if you just say the word, again, if it's your will, and you just say the word, it's gonna be done.

Wow, an intense level of faith that is there. He says,

I understand authority in verse nine. I am a commander of people, and I sit as one under authority of others, and I recognize what it's like.

If I say to one of my soldiers under me, go, he goes. He says, in the same way,

I recognize that you have the authority of God to order sickness to go away. No question in his mind that if Jesus said the word, it would be done.

Amazing level of faith. And something amazing happens in verse 10, where we normally see

Jesus doing amazing things, and the crowd marveling in wonder and astonishment at him.

We see the exact reverse here. We see Jesus marveling and amazed at an individual.

Complete reversal that's significant to our lives in 2010. You want to get

God's attention? How many of you would like to get God's attention? How many of you would like to have God's smile on your life?

You wanna cause him to marvel? Demonstrate faith in his son.

That makes God smile. Show faith and trust in Jesus.

Tell him that you implicitly trust his power and authority and his goodness. That is what gets

God's attention. Not our good deeds, not the things that we try to accomplish not coming to church, you know, none of those things grab

God's attention. Faith is what grabs God's attention. I wanna point out that God is not taken by surprise.

Jesus is not taken by surprise. The word marvel there is not one of, oh my goodness, I didn't see that coming. I didn't see that.

I never imagined that this guy would have faith like that. Whoa, I'm just totally blown away by that.

He's amazed in the sense that he is delighted and impressed at what he sees in this individual. Not surprised, but impressed.

And Jesus now uses this response from the centurion, the soldier, to teach something about the kingdom in verses 10 through 12.

He sees this outsider, this guy who is outside of the religious community, outside of the religious practices of the

Jews, and he sees him, and this guy is extending such a level of faith. Says, he didn't, where do we expect to see that level of faith?

Where do you expect to see the greatest faith in our culture? In churches, among the religious, right?

Isn't that where we naturally, our mind gravitates towards expecting that, maybe at a missions conference about people who are selling out and going overseas to win unreached tribes for Jesus?

Where does Jesus encounter the greatest faith? He encounters the greatest level of faith in those who are literally outside of the worship community.

One thing that these two people have in common, the leper, the centurion, one significant thing is neither one of them is even allowed in the temple.

Neither one of them, by their culture, is permitted to go in and offer a sacrifice to God. Imagine that?

This is the place where Jesus finds the greatest faith among those who are outcasts, are downtrodden, are crushed by their society.

That's where he finds this amazing level of faith. So there, therefore, he takes this in verse 10 and 11.

He marvels at those. He says, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such a level of faith.

But Jesus says there is gonna be a big surprise in the end. Verses 11 and 12. He says, there are many that we think.

There are many that we think will be there in the end who will not be in.

And there are many who we thought were out that will be in. We're poor judges, aren't we?

Would you agree with that? Are we poor judges? He says, there's gonna be this huge banquet in the end.

A picture of the kingdom of God. This huge banquet. And there are gonna be many from the east and the west. Gentiles are what are implied by there.

Guess who he's talking about? Us. We're in that east to west if we are following his son.

And we're gonna be invited to join Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. And notice that the kingdom then becomes a mixture.

Are there going to be Jews there? Yeah. Are there going to be Gentiles there?

Yes, there are gonna be people from all nations, all peoples, all tribes, all languages that are represented there as followers of Christ.

Can't imagine what this would have sounded like to a first century Jew's ears that was there in that crowd that day.

They really thought they were special to God because they were born Jews. They thought that that's what gave them the in with God.

But it would have really grated even harder in what Jesus says because he pictures that many sons of the kingdom, sons of the kingdom is those who believe that by birth they were favorites of God.

That because they were born Jews, they were born into a certain ethnicity that they were it in God's eyes.

That's what he means by sons of the kingdom. And he says many of those who are sons of the kingdom will face a horrendous final judgment.

Jesus turns back to the centurion after taking a teaching break, dismisses him with the promise that his faith, that is his belief has been rewarded.

And Matthew editorializes a little bit here and says, and his servant was healed at that very same moment.

So there had to be some corroborating evidence of that. You know, the centurion goes home and then reports back that, hey, we kind of lined up the times, why am

I, it was right then. Right then, that was the time. Jesus proves himself worthy of trust and makes it clear that faith in him is not just a

Jewish thing, but is open to anyone in the world who would come to him by faith. And those of us here in a relationship with Jesus Christ need to daily throw ourselves on his mercy by faith.

He has the power to change our lives. You agree with that? If you're looking for victory over sin, if you're seeking wisdom in making decisions, if you're seeking just power for your daily life, all of those are available if you pray by faith to Christ throughout each day.

I say throughout each day. Prayer is, you know, if you pray, how many of you would say you pretty faithfully pray before meals?

Okay, you got about 30 seconds of prayer in every day. That would be long prayers before we eat, right?

So maybe 30 seconds of prayer. Would you think that maybe we should do more than that?

Now, you know, there's nothing magical about getting up, you know, and setting the alarm at 4 .30,

4 .30, really? No, say 5 .30. Setting the alarm early, getting up and praying.

How many of you think that there's a benefit to that? Is there a good thing about that? About placing your day in the hands of a sovereign

God, recognizing that these events and these things that are gonna unfold before me, good things, bad things that are gonna hit me,

I want to acknowledge you in those things. That'd be a good thing. But what about praying throughout the day, even?

You know, you can get up early and have that time, that's a good thing, or close the end of the day by reflecting in prayer to God, thank you for these things, help me through these things, taking an assessment of your life.

Those are all good practices. Praying and talking to God throughout the day, on your way to that difficult meeting.

How many of you had a difficult meeting this past week? Handful of people. How many of you are looking forward to a difficult meeting this next week?

Great, that's always exciting. Give those things over to God. You know, on your way walking down to that meeting, are you talking to God or are you talking bad about somebody else in your mind?

I think you'll do that. Rehearsing my case, what a waste of time when it really comes down to what's most important.

The fact of the matter is, this next week we're all gonna come to the end of ourselves. Some of us, if you're anything like me, it's gonna be about 8 .30

tomorrow morning, right? You kind of get a shot in the arm, a dose of faith on Sunday morning, so to speak, and you're here and you're with God's people and you're praising and you're listening to God's word and it might be a good time, and then by 8 .30

the next morning, you're kind of like, what was that about yesterday? Because I've got a week ahead of me here. You need to tap in and tie in by faith with Christ.

The last miracle in verses 14 through 15 has less detail, has less obvious connection to the others unless you understand the culture of the time.

Not a great picture here when I'm talking about outcasts and things like that, but you're gonna see, if you were to study ancient

Israel and the place where Jesus was, you'll see that women were just as marginalized as the centurion, often as much as the lepers.

It's a very unfortunate reality of that ancient culture. We're gonna see Jesus heal a woman here.

And apparently Jesus' destination in our passage was Peter's house. This is an actual archeological site that's been dug up.

There's a church upon a church upon a church. How many of you know that in those ancient places, they built a pond, they just kind of crushed the rubble in and built another house on top of the rubble, crushed that one and built another house.

Well, what you have is you have churches that ancient tradition says this is the site of Peter's house.

And then you'll see a church built on top of a church built upon a church on top of a church. In archeology, they're digging down through these layers and excavating and stuff, and they're all declaring that this is

Peter's house. And then you get to the bottom, close to the bottom, and what do they find embedded in the floor?

Fish hooks. What was Peter's occupation? He was a fisherman.

So it's pretty, I mean, all tradition, all history is saying this is the location, and then you get down to the bottom and you find the fish hooks, and it's kind of like, hey, cool.

Pretty neat when we see things like that. So it's pretty well documented that this is an actual place in Capernaum.

You could go there and be there today. Peter's mother -in -law is lying sick with a fever, possibly malarial.

One thing you need to understand is medically, a fever was a diagnosis, not a symptom in those days. So if somebody had a fever, that was a medical condition, they considered it.

What she had, we don't really know. She's lying there sick. Jesus reaches down and touches her.

She immediately rises and fixes dinner. No talk about her drinking a Red Bull. No talk about her drinking a

Rockstar or a Monster or anything to get the energy back to be able to get up. She just, boom, she's like up and cooking.

How many of you, when you're sick, and then you start, you're kind of, you're on the mend, and you still maybe take one more day to kind of take it easy, because you know you're kind of coming back to it.

She's up cooking dinner right away. Who is Jesus healing? What does the text say?

Who's the lady? Peter's mother -in -law. Hey, it's

Mother's Day. I didn't even plan this, to have the word mother appear in the text.

I mean, I'm just marching through the Gospel of Matthew. This is pretty cool. Maybe this is a sign from God that we ought to heal some relationships with our mother -in -laws.

Okay, everybody's breathing a sigh of relief, because you're like, oh, I think he's joking. Really, joking aside, this is the primary reason why

I have no problem with ministers getting married. How many of you are familiar with the Catholic Church requirement that priests don't get married?

You familiar with that? This is different. You might have noticed, maybe, that I'm married with children.

And for those of you raised in a Catholic background, there's the potential for that to be confusing. But here we have

Scripture showing that those who are in the Catholic faith would declare that Peter was the first pope.

They'd say he's the first pope, the first father of the church. And he was married.

We see it clear here, and then we also see it in 1 Corinthians 9 .5. If you're into taking notes, jot that one down and look it up later.

1 Corinthians 9 .5 even shows more clearly, Paul declares that Peter was married.

Obviously, I only know one way to get a mother -in -law. Can you think of another one? Not many people out looking to hire one.

Sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm cooking a steak for my mother -in -law this afternoon, so I really do care for her.

She's a great lady. Verse 16 serves to show us that he performed many more miracles that evening.

This is a busy guy. And not only that, but it's just amazing. I just love the way that this is stated.

They brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word.

Just a word. Kind of like, I don't get the impression that healing people or casting out demons was hard work for Jesus.

Just with a word, it was done. Pretty amazing. Jesus was compassionate to the outcasts of his society.

He showed love and care for an unclean leper, a Roman Gentile soldier, of course, by healing his servant.

Remember, it wasn't the centurion that was healed. It was the servant and a woman who was suffering. But now we get down to verse 17.

We get to a deeper significance to the events that Matthew's recorded. Matthew says, okay, here's the reason. This healing ministry of Jesus fulfills a prophecy in the

Old Testament that Jesus would take away illness and bear away our diseases, as said in Isaiah 53 .4.

It's one more confirmation to the Jews that he was actually the Messiah. Now, how many of you know there are hundreds of prophecies in the

Old Testament about who the Messiah would be, what he would be like, that are fulfilled in the New Testament? You heard that before?

It's one of the reasons that I believe that this is the word of God. One of the evidences that this is

God's word. That hundreds of years before, centuries before Jesus shows up on the scene, there were prophecies about him.

But you know, some atheists and scholars that are opposed to Christianity have pointed out some viable, valuable things.

They've said, okay, Jesus says, the Old Testament in the gospel, or in the gospel, in the prophet

Micah, says that the Messiah will come into Jerusalem riding a donkey, a triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey.

So Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem the final week. What does he tell his followers to do? Go get a donkey.

I'm gonna do my triumphal entry here, go get a donkey. Now, what does that sound like to an atheist or someone who doesn't believe in God?

A setup, self -fulfilling prophecy, right? Here he is, and he's gonna make it happen so that he looks like he is the

Messiah. Well, he did do that. He did set these things up. Matthew declares it.

But here's the thing, is if you or I want to look like we're the Messiah, we could go get a donkey and ride into Jerusalem today, right?

Could we orchestrate the crowds to call us Messiah and shout at us and have a triumphal entry into Jerusalem?

It would be like you're a fruitcake and you're gonna get locked up, right? We could not orchestrate that event.

Not only that, if you're willing to do some miracles, I'll be willing to sit down right now and let you come up here and do the miraculous.

Because you know what? How do you orchestrate that? Do you see the significance of this miraculous?

The Old Testament is saying, he will come and he will perform miracles. He will heal the sick. He will bear people's illnesses away from them.

That's a pretty significant thing. That's hard to manufacture. Would you agree with that? It's an amazing, significant ministry that he has here and a significant pointer to his being the

Messiah, the one who would save his people from their sins. Pretty serious.

So we see that Matthew was saying, he did these things to indicate that. But Jesus doesn't just take away illnesses and diseases by his healing ministry on earth.

He has taken away our illnesses. He has borne our diseases on the cross.

That is our sin disease. His ultimate sense of healing happened when he took our sins on himself.

He bore the cancerous disease of sin that we find in our hearts.

The leper eventually died of something. The centurion's servant and even the centurion himself eventually gave in to death.

And Peter's mother -in -law is no more. She's not here with us. So my encouragement to all of us is to seek a healing that lasts beyond this life.

Is it cool? Is it amazing when God heals somebody, when somebody's diagnosed with cancer and then they go back in for an

MRI and there's no more cancer there and you're like, what in the world? I mean, God is amazing. He's miraculous. But how much more miraculous, how much more amazing when he bears our sin for us.

Seek that healing. We all have a sickness. We all have an illness in our soul that is sin.

Sin is not just something I do from time to time like losing my keys. It's not just, do you know what

I'm saying? It's not just something that, oh, oops, another mistake. Sin is something that is woven into the fabric of the human heart.

It must be forgiven. It must be cleansed. And that's what the cross is all about.

As we come to communion this morning, I want us to remember that Jesus bore our diseases. He took our illness upon himself even as we all were outcasts.

At the cross, his body was broken for us. At the cross, his blood was poured out for us. We take communion at recast every week so that every single service comes back to this point.

The centerpiece of the Christian faith is that Jesus died for our sins and rose again victorious three days later.

That is the centerpiece. Not all the things that we can do for him, but what he has done for us.

Jesus was crucified in our place, taking our punishment for sin upon himself that we might be healed.

Isaiah 53, four through five, the part that Matthew quotes here, I want to read it in its entirety. Surely he,

Jesus, has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he, the Messiah, was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Two big words for sin, transgressions and iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.