Durbin Sermon: Jesus Heals the Unclean

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mentioning something like 13 verses. It's a record, Pastor Jeff. 13 verses.

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Yes, we're actually going to go through 13 verses in the Gospel according to Matthew today. So, if you guys are with us for the first time, we're in the

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Kingdom of God series. That's an expositional walk through the

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Gospel according to Matthew, the most popular of the four Gospels in the second century of the church.

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This was quoted from The Most. It's a book that God has used to shape

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Christians' lives, to transform our minds, and to renew us for almost 2 ,000 years.

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This book is so filled with treasure. Verse after verse testifies to God's power,

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His goodness, His grace, the glory of Jesus Christ. And so, I'm humbled, personally, to be able to do this, to walk through this particular text, because there is so much here, and now we're in a new section.

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Again, as I said at the beginning, historical narrative, moving out of the didactic teaching, the Sermon on the

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Mount. Now we're walking with Jesus as He comes down the mountain.

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We're going to places like Capernaum, Capernaum and Peter's house, and it really is fantastic.

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So, if you would, stand together with me as I read the text. Hear now the words of the living and true

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God. When He came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him.

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Right away, a man with a serious skin disease came up and knelt before Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing,

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You can make me clean. Reaching out His hand, He touched Him, saying, I am willing. Be made clean.

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Immediately, His disease was healed. Then Jesus told Him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed as a testimony to them.

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When He entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed in terrible agony.

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I will come and heal him, He told him. Lord, the centurion replied, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be cured.

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For I too am a man under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my slave, do this, and he does it.

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Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following Him, I assure you,

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I have not found anyone in Israel with so great a faith. I tell you that many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

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The sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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Then Jesus told the centurion, go, as you have believed, let it be done for you. And his servant was cured that very moment.

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When Jesus went into Peter's house, He saw his mother -in -law lying in bed with a fever, so He touched her hand, and the fever left her.

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Then she got up and began to serve Him. When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon possessed. He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick, so that what was spoken through the prophet

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Isaiah might be fulfilled. He himself took our weaknesses and carried our diseases.

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Thus far is the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Father, I pray that You'd please bless us today by Your Spirit and through the proclamation of Your Word.

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I pray that You would give us eyes to see, hearts that have affections for You.

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Give us ears to hear. I pray God today, if in this room there are people here who do not know

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You, have not trusted in Jesus Christ, I pray that today would be the day of salvation, that You would grant faith, grant repentance.

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I pray that we would see Jesus Christ today and love Him. Please, God, let us be changed by You.

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Please, God, allow us to have faith, to have the faith of the centurion that recognizes our brokenness, that sees

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You as Lord, that sees You as the one who can speak and change the world. Allow us to have the kind of childlike faith that depends upon You, knows who

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You are, hears what You say, and believes it. God, get me out of the way.

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Cause me to decrease and fade into the background. Let Jesus be magnified.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Powerful moment. You guys can be seated. Matthew chapter 8.

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So here's the story thus far. Let me get you guys caught up. Matthew needs to show us through the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit. Peter says, holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

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What you have in your hands right now, what's coming into your hearing right now, is revelation from the true and living

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God, the eternal God, the all -powerful God, the covenant -keeping God. This is the

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God who promised Messiah was coming. Now, long before Jesus came,

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God had promised through His prophets that Mashiach was coming. And He was coming to bring about redemption and salvation.

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Listen, the promise to Abraham was that through Abraham's seed, singular, pointing to Jesus, ultimately, that he was going to have descendants as numerous as the stars, that God was going to bring the nations to Himself through this

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Messiah, that God was going to deal with our sins in the Messiah. You have from the Old Testament, Genesis to the last book of the

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Revelation of the Old Testament, constant testimony and promises about Messiah, who

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He is, when He's coming, literally to the day of when He's coming, what

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His coming is going to be marked by, all the details of His person, the promise of redemption and salvation.

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You have all these promises of the coming kingdom, this coming Messiah. Now, as Matthew opens up his story, he begins to let us know that this

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God has kept His promises. He starts off in Matthew chapter 1, showing us the genealogies, which most of us, if we admit, usually skip over.

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But it's an essential part of the story, because Abraham is there, the one to whom God promised the nations, blessing among all the nations.

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David is there, King David, the one that God told, you will have a throne who rules the world.

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That story is there. Now, here's what we want to get right now, as we move forward today into Matthew chapter 8. I told you when we started this study that Matthew is thinking in Isaiah.

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In the background of his mind, as he gives this revelation from God, Matthew is thinking in Isaiah. He knows the themes.

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He knows the promises. Of course, he's thinking throughout the entire spectrum of the Scriptures, but he's particularly thinking in Isaiah, and it comes up in Matthew 8 once again.

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It comes up for the first time at the beginning of Matthew, and the promise that there's going to be a virgin who conceives, who is with child, and he will be

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Emmanuel, which means what, guys? God with us. Matthew's thinking in Isaiah.

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The theme is always there, really, throughout the gospel according to Matthew. But here we go now.

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We've walked past now the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus proclaims in Matthew chapter 4, the gospel of the kingdom.

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The good news of the kingdom has come. Now the light is going forth to the Gentiles. It's there.

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And it says that Jesus goes forth doing three things, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing those who are sick and have diseases.

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So three things are part of his ministry, teaching, preaching, and healing. That's what

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Jesus' ministry is marked by, those three things. After Matthew chapter 4, after the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom, the

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King is finally here. He's finally arrived. We now get into the Sermon on the Mount.

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That's what we call didactic teaching. That's systematic, point -by -point, A, B, C, D.

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Here is what is true. This is why we believe it. Here's how you're supposed to act. And then

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Jesus actually gives us also the Beatitudes. This is divine happiness pronounced upon God's people.

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Now we're done. They marveled now at Jesus. Jesus does something, listen, that if I did, and he says things that if I said, you ought to get up, grab your family and friends, and turn around and walk out of here.

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Jesus tells people that there are going to be people on the last day who come before him and they say,

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Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name and that in your name? We did all these. We had awesome ministry,

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Jesus. We did it all for you. And Jesus says to them, depart from me. I never knew you, you workers of iniquity, showing that there are people who'd never knew

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Jesus truly. They never knew him. Not that they lost their salvation. They never knew Jesus.

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I never knew you. And then Jesus talks to people who hear his word and respond in one of two ways.

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One, class of people, they're wise people. They hear Jesus, they dig deep, and they put a foundation down.

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And there are those who don't dig a foundation, they don't think about the future, they just plop a house up on sand.

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And Jesus says, when the wind and the rain and the storms and the issues of life come, one of those makes it through the storm, the one on the rock.

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And he says, watch, the person in life who hears these words and builds on a rock is the one who builds upon his word.

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Now watch, their response was clear. They said, he speaks as one having what?

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Authority and not as our scribes. The scribes would appeal to somebody else who was a higher authority.

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They'd appeal to rabbi this guy, rabbi that guy. They would always make an appeal to somebody higher to give a punch, an oomph behind their teaching.

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But Jesus doesn't do that. He says things like this, listen, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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No man comes to the Father but by me. John chapter 8, he says this, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, but if the

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Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The Son sets people free from their sins.

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He says things like this, all of life goes down to two points. You're either going to build your life upon my word and be on the rock and make it through the storm, or you're going to be a fool who builds on the sand and you end in desolation.

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He says there are two gates, a small, a wide.

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There are two paths, a narrow, a broad. Two destinations, life and death.

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And he brings that all into his own message, drawing people saying it's me.

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I'm the one with authority. How does Matthew 28, 18 through 20 end? How does the gospel according to Matthew end, guys?

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It's Jesus saying what? After his death and resurrection, he says all authority, where?

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In heaven and on earth, has been given to me. He's not waiting for it in the future.

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It's all been given to him. And he says go therefore make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey. This is the authoritative

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Jesus. This is Jesus, listen, this is big, it's huge. The message of Jesus that rubs people raw, it comes against the thinking of our culture in very, very significant ways.

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Jesus says what? He says in John 8 about himself, unless you believe, ego eimi, unless you believe

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I am, he takes the name of Yahweh, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

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This is the Jesus that we're talking about, the Jesus who receives worship. People fall down and worship

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Jesus and call him God. Thomas, after the resurrection, says he's not going to believe it unless I can put my finger into the holes in his wrist and into his side.

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And Jesus shows up and Thomas falls down before Jesus and says the

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Lord of me and the God of me worships

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Jesus. Now Jesus finishes.

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They say he speaks as one having authority and not as our scribes. And then it says he comes down.

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Here's the background. Matthew chapters 5 through 9 contain both didactic teaching in the

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Sermon on the Mount and Christ's public ministry. One, we get the teaching of Jesus highlighted in the

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Sermon on the Mount, his particular doctrine. Jesus saying things like, you've heard that it was said, but I say to you.

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You have Jesus explaining in Matthew chapter 5, 17 through 19, don't even begin to think that I've come to abolish the law and the prophets.

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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And then he teaches people that anybody who teaches people to disobey even the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

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Christ upheld the law, the Torah. You have Christ's authority. Him saying, you've heard that it was said, but I say.

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You have him saying things like rock and sand and them understanding his authority. And now we have in Matthew chapters 8 through 9 beginning the mighty deeds of Jesus.

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You have, watch, Matthew 4 .23 and Matthew 9 .35 bookends.

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Matthew 4 .23, Matthew 9 .35 bookends. What are the bookends?

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It tells about Jesus' ministry. He taught in the synagogues. He proclaimed or preached the gospel of the kingdom.

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And third thing, he went about healing people. Now that's bookends,

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Matthew 4 .23, Matthew 9 .35. Now watch, between Matthew 8 and 9, there's about 10 miracles.

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One of them can be condensed into about one miracle. So typically, it's understood that there are about nine miracles coming up, nine miracles.

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It's been suggested that three of these miracles were healing miracles, three were displays of Christ's power, and three were restoration miracles.

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So breaking these miracles up, it's clear that there's a pattern here in Matthew. Three were miraculous healings, three displayed his power, for example, power over the demons, and three displayed the restoration power of Jesus.

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Matthew witnesses to the Messiah's authoritative teaching, Matthew 7 .28

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through 29, and to his mighty deeds, Matthew's chapter 8 through 9,

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Matthew chapter 8 through 9. Okay, now let's read the text together. I'm reading out of the

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Holman Christian Standard Bible. By the way, if you want to know what Bibles we love, we love the

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ESV, we love the NASB, we love the HCSB. We usually recommend those, more literal word -for -word translations, modern languages.

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The Greek is sharpened up into the English. If you love King James Version, we think that's a great translation, too.

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It's a little old English for my personal taste, so I like to read the modern translations.

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If you have a problem with that, that's your choice.

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Okay, Matthew 8 .1. When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him.

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Large crowds followed Jesus. So now, watch. This is what makes

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Jesus so amazing. Jesus is unique in the history of world religion, and unique in terms of his upbringing and where he came from.

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And listen, a lot of religious leaders in the world today, they give to us their own revelation.

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They write books. They have printing factories. You look at the

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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in New York. That's an organization.

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Since their inception, they were producing and printing en masse the writings of their leaders and prophets.

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Their leaders and prophets wrote stuff down and then gave it to us. And history works like that.

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Religious leaders would write down a book. They'd write down a text. You have people like the Dalai Lama. You have people like Joseph Smith Jr.

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in New York that have given to us their writings, pen things with their own hands.

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Here's what is unique about Jesus. Jesus changed the world. His coming marked the split of history.

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And yet Jesus was a Palestinian Jew in the first century, crucified as a common criminal on a

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Pontius Pilate. He had no army. He had no Internet.

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No newspapers to speak of. No postal service. And listen, Jesus never wrote a book.

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As a matter of fact, we don't have anything that Jesus wrote down personally. The only time we have a record of Jesus writing something was in the account of the adulterous woman where he wrote in the sand.

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And we don't know what he wrote. We can speculate, but we don't even know what it was. Here's what's interesting.

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Listen, large crowds follow Jesus. Large crowds. Again, no army, no

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Internet, no phone, no postal service. This is a message that's getting out by word of mouth in tiny towns with tiny little houses in a place that is far off outside of the realm of technology as we know it today.

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You see, everything traveled word of mouth, and it was growing quickly. And here's what's amazing.

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Listen, kids in the room, teenagers in the room, you will never know the struggle. You will never understand the struggle, right?

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Snail mail. Back in my day, I never thought I'd say that.

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Back in my day, if you wanted to communicate with somebody who's far away, you could generally write them a letter, right?

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And that letter oftentimes might take a week or so. You know, I remember being a kid, and my parents got me all these little comic books and magazines, and I would see all the little cool things like spy glasses and invisible ink and these things, and it was amazing.

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You know, you had to actually get a money order, and you had to put it inside an envelope.

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You had to tear the thing out of your magazine. You had to fill out what you wanted. You stuck it in there, and you sent it off.

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And then it was like a couple of weeks of pure anticipation.

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Every day coming home, checking the mail. Did I get my thing yet? Get my thing yet? And when it came, it was glorious, right?

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But it took for stinking ever, right? Or if you didn't want to send something to communicate, what'd you do?

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You picked up your rotary phone, right? You guys remember the rotary phones?

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You'll never understand the struggle, kids, right? Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

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Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. And what happens when you mess up?

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Click, and you da -da -da -da -da -da -da. Da -da -da -da -da -da -da. Right? It's such a frustrating thing.

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And here's the thing. There was actually a time that I remember that when you called somebody,

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I remember this, they didn't answer. They didn't know you called.

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Why? No answering machine. I remember getting the answering machine. It was like, what is this sorcery, right?

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An answering machine with a cassette tape, right? And it filled up with messages.

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You had to stop and rewind. It was so amazing, right? We got the answering machine, big old thing, like this big with a single tape in it, and you can actually have people leave messages for you.

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You'll never know the struggle, kids. You never know the struggle of A -O -L, right?

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Am I right? There was a time, not long ago, believe me, when dem internets wasn't as popular as they are now.

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And I remember you had to make a choice. This is a hard decision to make, right? You had to make a choice in a home with the internet between being able to use your phone and waiting for 30 minutes to download an email.

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And you made that choice. You were committed when you turned on your A -O -L and the dial tone came up.

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It was a glorious sound. We all really loved it, right? And then you had to get to a, when there was a website, and there weren't that many, but when there was a website and you would go to the website, there was 35 minutes of, right?

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And then when you found something on that website that you really wanted to see, it was painful to move the cursor over to the thing because you knew clicking on it was committing to more of this, right?

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And here's what we have to understand about, really, this moment with Jesus in Matthew 8, is that large crowds are coming to Jesus, and this all got out by word of mouth in tiny towns, with tiny little houses, with insignificant people now crowding to come and watch

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Jesus, to listen to Jesus' teaching, to hear Him preaching the kingdom of God, and to see

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Him actually heal people. People understood that the Messiah had come. Quickly, I want to say this.

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If you read first century accounts of what took place there in Second Temple Judaism in Palestine, you see that Messiahs were popping up all over the place.

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Why? Because Daniel's prophecy about when the Messiah would come was landing in their lifetime.

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Do you get that? Hundreds of years before Jesus came, Daniel tells you in two places,

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Daniel 2 and Daniel 9, the when of Messiah's kingdom.

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So they knew this was the time. You can count down to the day. Messiah has to be around right now.

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They knew it. False Messiahs everywhere. There were people, according to Josephus, drawing people out into the wilderness, one after the other.

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Messiah after Messiah after Messiah. And now here comes Jesus, with this authoritative teaching, calling himself

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Mashiach, and He's gaining followers, and He's actually performing miracles.

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He's healing the sick. He's healing the blind. He's cleansing lepers. He's giving people who couldn't use their legs their legs back again.

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He's raising little dead girls from death to life. And so word is getting out.

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Now, this is the account, and if you're taking notes, you want to take notes, mark this down. This is the account of the unclean

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Jew. The unclean Jew. There's going to be two accounts here of unclean people.

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The first is the unclean Jew. That's really important to get that down. Here's what it says in Matthew 8, verse 2.

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Right away, a man with a serious skin disease came up and knelt before Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing,

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You can make me clean. Now, the translation I have says serious skin disease.

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Some of your translations might say what? Leprosy. Leprosy. Now, that leprosy was seen as a curse and a sickness.

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That's really important to embrace. Listen, guys. Leprosy was not simply seen in this culture as a disease.

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Leprosy does still exist in our world today. It's a foreign concept to us because we've figured out ways to solve that problem.

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But listen, in this culture, that was the end. That was the end because they didn't just see it as a disease, a disease that would rot your body while you were alive, a disease that came with a foul odor.

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People knew that lepers smelled awful. Your body is rotting down to the bone, losing digits, losing parts of your body in this disease.

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You were considered an outcast. You could not be touched because, listen, if somebody got a hold of somebody that was a leper, they understood that that made them, quote unquote, unclean.

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And they knew that they risked actually contracting this from them, becoming a leper themselves.

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And so lepers were outcasts of society. They had to stay in a particular place, away from other people to keep them clean, to make sure that they didn't infect or make anybody else sick.

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That's how they saw it. But listen, they saw lepers as not only sick, but they saw them, it's a very important word, as unclean, ritually, spiritually.

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That's how they viewed them. It was a cultural mindset. You're not just sick.

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You are unclean. They thought that lepers were cursed by God.

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You're under God's curse. Apparently, God's judging you for something because this is a sign of something spiritually wrong, they thought.

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Now, is that true biblically? No. But that's the culture they were in with lepers.

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And lepers, listen, the first time I ever learned about leprosy, maybe it's true for some of you guys too. First time

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I ever learned about leprosy was watching Ben -Hur. Not the new

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Ben -Hur, but the original Ben -Hur. Do you guys know what

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I'm talking about? How many of you guys have seen the original Ben -Hur? Hands up. How many of you guys have seen the new

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Ben -Hur? Shame on you. Just kidding. I'm just kidding.

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No. So I remember being a kid and watching Ben -Hur, and I remember how horrified

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I was when I first saw that something like leprosy exists, that somebody's body parts will fall off, that somebody would be so diseased that you had to stay away from other people or you will make them diseased and their body parts will fall off.

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I remember being a young child watching Ben -Hur, and I was so terrified that I would maybe get leprosy.

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Right? That's how you think as a kid. And I remember myself being like, are we sure that you don't have leprosy?

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You're really worried about getting leprosy. And this was a real fear for them. And so lepers had to stay away from people.

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And now you have in the very text before us somebody with leprosy who is ritually unclean, seen as cursed by God, seen as an outcast, told not to touch people.

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This person comes and presents themselves before Jesus. Watch what he says.

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Or watch what happens. It says he knelt before Jesus and he says,

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Lord, this is clearly the leper before Jesus acknowledging who

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Jesus is. Think about this. Watch. Nobody wants to touch this guy. Nobody wants anything to do with him.

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This person is useless trash. This person is human garbage as far as their concerns.

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And it's a person they don't even want around. And Jesus receives this person.

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This person kneels before Jesus, falls down. I think here with the kneeling down and calling him

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Lord, he's acknowledging who Jesus truly is. And what does he say? Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

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Now stop and think for a second about that. This guy doesn't come to Jesus and say something like, you know,

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Lord, I think that you have the potential to be able to perform some magic or some miracle to make me better.

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I think it's a possibility that you can make me better. Like I heard the guys in the other town talking about you and they think that you might be able to address my problem.

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No, what does he do? This guy, who has no earthly right according to them, being even around.

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This guy falls to his knees before Jesus, recognizing who Jesus is.

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And he says, Lord, if you are willing, if you're willing, you can make me, watch, clean.

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He did not say, Lord, if you're willing, you can heal me. He saw what was wrong with him as he needed to be cleansed.

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He's not coming to Jesus merely for healing of leprosy. He understands that Jesus, the one he's kneeling before and calling

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Lord, he has the power to cleanse him spiritually.

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There's more going on here than this leper wanting his body to be all right again. He recognizes that he is spiritually foul.

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Something is wrong and Jesus can cleanse him. And so he acknowledges that Jesus had the authority to do as he wills.

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Now stop and think for a second, brothers and sisters, if you use the Bible as your guide, if that's your standard, who according to the scriptures has the ability to do according to their will?

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Only God. Psalm 115 verse 3. What's it say?

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The nations say to God, right? They're saying, where's your God? Where's your

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God? And what's the answer in Psalm 115 3? Our God is in the heavens.

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He does what? Whatever he pleases. They knew that God says he declares the end from the beginning and does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

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And no one can stay his hand or say, what have you done? And now here's a leper who is now the scum of society, who is not to be touched, who is foul and unclean, falling before Jesus, kneeling, saying,

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Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. It's a humbling moment.

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Have you ever thought about something? Take for a second.

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Be honest with yourself. Here's a leper. You risk contamination.

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You risk losing your fingers. You risk literally rotting while you're alive.

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You risk being ostracized. If you go near them and touch them, you're unclean.

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You can get sick. You can be diseased. Now, if a leper came to you today and embraced, tried to embrace you, how would you handle it?

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You know what's missing from this text with Jesus? Here's a leper who everybody wants to go away.

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And where's Jesus' gloves? Where are his gloves?

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Where's his mask? Where's the protective covering?

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Where is the stuff that would keep most of us safe? I mean, can you imagine the disciples when this leper shows up?

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How do you think the disciples were acting? What do you think's behind the text? Do you think that the disciples were like just coming to embrace this leper?

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Do you think there was some like fear and standing away?

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Because the text is interesting. Jesus doesn't have any gloves. He doesn't stand away from the guy.

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Watch. Watch this. It says in Matthew chapter 8, verse 3, reaching out his hand, he touched him saying,

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I am willing. Be made, listen, clean, not healed. Be made clean.

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Immediately his disease was healed. The ministry of Jesus is so fascinating because Jesus, if you study at the touch of Jesus, Jesus didn't just speak things to people and actually speak healing and speak life.

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He actually touched people physically. Just look at through the scriptures. Look through the gospels as to the touching of Jesus.

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And you know what the text emphasizes here? The text emphasizes that Jesus stretched out his hand.

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Here's a leper who is rotting, stinking, unclean, ostracized from society.

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And here's Jesus reaching out his hand to touch this leper, this person with this unclean sickness, because the leper says what?

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You can make me clean, not maybe. If you're willing, you can.

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The laws of the universe obey you. If you're willing, you can do it.

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I believe you. And Jesus reaches out his hand to him and heals him of his sickness, heals him of his uncleanness, the unclean

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Jew. He said, I am willing, be made clean. And that's a difference between be healed.

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He says, be clean. And notice that Jesus simply spoke it.

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Genesis chapter one. What do you see in Genesis one? Formless and void.

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And what does God say? Let there be what? Light. And God speaks light into darkness.

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And God says, let there be beasts of the field. Let there be birds of the air.

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Let there be. Let there be. God simply speaks and it comes to pass. And watch.

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Jesus says, be made clean. And then the universe snaps and obeys

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Jesus. That's the kind of Messiah that he is. They recognized it instantly just listening to Jesus and being around him is that the world will obey him.

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He's the master of all of this. He wields it all. And so they would fall before Jesus and simply say, look,

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Jesus, I know that I'm unclean. I know that I'm broken. I know that I'm unworthy.

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All you have to do is say the word, Jesus. And I'll be clean. Now there's a certain part of my role as a pastor where I have to just unpack the text.

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And a certain role as a pastor where I have to speak to you and to me and say, is that how you picture

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Jesus? Is that how you have put him together in your mind when you contemplate the grace of Jesus Christ and his mercy?

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Do you see him as somebody who doesn't want to touch you?

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Do you see Jesus? Have you painted a portrait of Jesus in your mind as someone who is unreachable, far off, not interested?

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Or do you see Jesus as he truly is, as the one who actually reaches out his hand to touch the unclean thing?

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Do you see Jesus as the one who reaches out his hand and he speaks a word and cleanses you?

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Do you realize that the universe was created by him and obeys his speech?

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Because that's the Jesus that we worship who's in the text. John chapter 1, it says of Jesus, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was

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God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Jesus, means he was the one that brought the universe into existence.

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And this leper receives healing, receives cleansing from his leprosy.

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Now let's follow me now in Matthew chapter 8, verse 4 now. This is a powerful moment.

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Then Jesus told him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed as a testimony to them.

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Okay, this is a big part of it. Don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody.

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Isn't that the first thing people do today in ministry is they want it on camera, right?

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As soon as a ministry happens, what do you want to do? Upload it to YouTube. Our first response when we see something miraculous or big today is

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I want the video. When you hear about a news report, what's the first thing you think of? Has anybody uploaded the video yet, right?

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We always want the action. Let me see this stuff and share the news story. Social media now is huge in terms of constant, quick information, right?

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And here we have Jesus doing something that is undeniably amazing to this leper, cleansing him, healing him of his sickness.

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Watch. Immediately. And what's he say to the leper? He says, don't tell anybody, but go offer yourself in this gift to the priests as a testimony for them.

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Don't tell anybody. Why would Jesus say don't tell anybody? Now listen, I can only speculate because it doesn't say in the text.

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So I'll give you a little speculation. I think that it's important for Jesus and his ministry to have authority over explaining his ministry.

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And I also know that for Jesus in the gospels, his feeding people, his healing people, that was not the thing.

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He was not simply a miracle worker and a wonder worker. Jesus did not want people to think of him as somebody they can simply come to to take care of their physical needs.

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He was not simply a signs and wonders kind of Messiah. Jesus had a message that went deeper than the healing of the blindness.

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Jesus had a message that went deeper than the healing of the leprosy. And he did not want people to come to him simply for the miracles.

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Think for a moment now, when Jesus had large crowds following him, right? Large crowds.

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And he turns these crowds away. Why? He said that they were not truly believing.

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John chapter six, large crowds not truly believing. They left

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Jesus. Why? When he talked about their condition, their sinful condition and their need for him, they turned away.

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And the people who remained, what did they say? He says, do you also want to go away?

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And they say, what? Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life. They understood by the grace of God what

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Jesus was there for. And I believe that Jesus tells them at this point not to go tell anybody, because at this point in his ministry, he is safeguarding his ministry from any idea that he is simply a miracle or wonder worker.

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That's my own thinking and understanding of that. But final thing

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I want to show you about this point. Listen, do you notice what Jesus says for him to do? Go to who?

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Come on guys, tell me, who did Jesus tell the leper to go to? Leviticus. In Leviticus chapters 13 through 14, in the law of God, there are specific prescriptions for people who have been healed from a disease to do under the law of God as part of purity.

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And Jesus, watch, doesn't violate the law of God at any point. He heals the leper.

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And then what does he do? He says, now you go and you go to the priest, you obey the law, the

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Torah, with your cleansing. Matthew 5, 17 through 19,

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Jesus says, what about the law? He says, do not believe that I have come.

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Do not even think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish, but to destroy.

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Next part. We move to Capernaum. When he entered into Capernaum, a centurion came to him.

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This section, this next section, describes the unclean Gentile. So first part of Matthew 8, you have the unclean what?

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The unclean Jew. He's unclean, a leper, but he's

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Jewish. This next section, Jesus is now dealing with an unclean Gentile.

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They saw in that day Gentiles as unclean. Did you know that, watch, you know the story of the

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Good Samaritan, right? I mean, even every unbeliever knows, like, be a

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Good Samaritan. Where'd that come from? It came from Jesus. Do you know that story was less about being a

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Good Samaritan in terms of making sure you take care of somebody by the road? That's there, but did you know that that was

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Jesus actually attacking the racism of his day? Because they saw

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Samaritans as, can I use a word that Dwight Schrute used?

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They saw Samaritans as halfsies, right?

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You're like a half -breed. You're like a mixture of real Jewishness and Gentile blood.

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You're unclean. They saw Gentiles as not to be associated with.

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They saw Gentiles as the unclean. So you go in Matthew 8 from the unclean

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Jew to now Capernaum, the unclean Gentile. It's a very small fishing village.

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For us, totally insignificant. Who cares about Capernaum? Who cares about a

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Gentile centurion in Palestine 2 ,000 years ago?

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Why is God preserving that story for us? Tiny town, tiny houses.

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By the way, the ruins of the synagogue are still there today.

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The ruins of the synagogue in Capernaum are still there to this day. Possibly ruins of Peter's house are possibly there as well.

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The synoptic gospel, the other example of this text is in Luke chapter 7.

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Synoptic means seeing together, right? So Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels.

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See them together. John is the unique gospel that has different things in a different form than the others.

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Luke also includes this account and he gives more details and more explanation.

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So I would go back to that later to read how Luke gives the accounts. The centurion has no right to come to Jesus in their day.

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That's what you want to understand. The centurion in this day has no right, according to them, to come to Jesus.

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No rights. He's an unclean Gentile and he was a junior officer in the auxiliary forces under the command of Herod Antipas.

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He was, which were, non -Jewish, drawn largely from Lebanon and Syria, says

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R .T. France in his commentary on Matthew. Now watch. Why is this story significant?

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Why should it pop in your minds? To the first century Jew, to the second century

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Jew, telling the story of God becoming a man to heal an unclean

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Gentile. It would be like today having

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Jesus go on Fox News to heal and love a

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Muslim imam who works for ISIS. How would that make you feel today if Jesus were doing his earthly ministry today and he went on Fox News to heal and care for a member of ISIS?

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You'd be like... And this is what the first century

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Jew who's reading Matthew is doing right now as they read Matthew chapter 8.

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They're going... Those are our oppressors, Jesus. Do you realize what that guy's doing to us?

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That's an unclean Gentile who eats unclean foods, who does not worship Yahweh.

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He is not circumcised. He is not part of us. And Jesus is just hanging out with them, healing them.

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That's what makes this story pop. Now listen. Let's read

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Matthew 8, 5 through 6 together. Notice that it says that he comes begging

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Jesus as a Gentile. He's begging him. This is a man who's in authority right now.

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This is a man who has military strength and power. This is a man who says to people, you do this and they do it because they know there's consequences that they don't.

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This is a man in the first century who doesn't need some Jewish prophet helping him.

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And yet he recognizes who Jesus is and he begs for Jesus' mercy and Jesus' healing.

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Notice that he was the oppressor. He was asking for healing of a

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Gentile. So watch. He is an unclean Gentile and he's asking Jesus to heal an unclean

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Gentile. Him and him. And so I want to point something out quickly.

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Do you ever notice here who keeps recognizing Jesus in Matthew? Go with me for a second guys.

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We're almost wrapping up here. So I want you to go with me on this. Do you ever notice in Matthew who keeps recognizing

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Jesus? Go back to the start of Matthew. Who were the first people that came to worship

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Jesus? Pagan Gentile Magi.

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First ones to recognize Jesus. Pagans. Do you know who else recognizes

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Jesus in Matthew near the beginning here? Demons. Demons know who he is.

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The pagan Magi are coming to worship Jesus. They recognized him.

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The demons recognize him. And now you have an unclean Gentile recognizing exactly who

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Jesus is coming to Jesus for help and for cleansing, for healing.

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And notice what happens in the text. If you read Matthew 8, 7 through 9.

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One, he recognizes his own unworthiness. Two, he recognized

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Jesus' authority as above his own. Three, he trusted in Jesus to be able to simply speak and his servant healed.

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He says, watch, I'm a man who has authority. I say to this one, do, and he does.

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I say to this one, go, and he goes. He says, watch. In saying that, what is he communicating? He recognizes that he has authority to speak and stuff happens.

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And he's saying, Jesus, I recognize that you have the authority here to speak and to take away paralysis.

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And he knows he's unworthy. If you read Luke 7 together with this, he doesn't even want to let

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Jesus into his house because he recognizes their own thinking in that day was that he is an unclean

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Gentile and he's not worthy to receive Jesus into his home. And so he says, Jesus, no. Look, I recognize how authority works.

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All I have to do is speak and people obey. And Jesus, if you speak, no more paralysis.

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All you have to do is say it, Jesus. And he calls him Lord. Lord, I'm not worthy.

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You can't come in my house. All you have to do is say it. Now watch Jesus' response.

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It's huge. Verse 10. Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him,

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I assure you, I have not found anyone in Israel with so great of faith. I tell you that many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

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But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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Then Jesus told the centurion, go as you have believed. Let it be done for you.

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And his servant was cured. Listen, at that very moment, this right here, this, this little story that you thought was just a moment of Jesus giving legs to somebody or taking away their paralysis.

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This, this is shouting to the first century Jew, the gospel.

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Why? You have an unworthy, unclean

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Gentile coming to Jesus and recognizing first his unworthiness. What does Jesus say?

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Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek.

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Blessed are those who mourn for they should be comforted. Here is the centurion who's unworthy in their eyes to come to Jesus saying,

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Jesus, I'm not worthy to receive you into my house. Jesus, you have the power to speak it into existence.

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And Jesus, say the word. You have the authority. And Jesus marvels at his faith.

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It's one of two times this is used here in the gospels. Once, only about a Gentile with his great faith.

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And the other time to diss Israel for their lack of faith. He marvels at this man's faith.

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And you know what he says? He points them to the fact that Gentiles are going to be at the table with Abraham in the kingdom of God.

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And there will be people who are the covenant people of God, Jewish people who call themselves Jews that are going to hell.

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In this text, Jesus nails racism. Nails it.

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Today, we deal, if you can't turn on the news today without seeing racism constantly before you, it's in your feed constantly.

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Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. All lives matter. No lives matter.

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Like it's just across the board. It's just the topic that we're all accustomed to.

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We're all confronted with it constantly. And here, Jesus is showing in this moment, in this way, by healing this person with a word immediately.

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He's showing that faith is the prerequisite to sit at God's table, not race.

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He says many will come from the east and west. Listen, pointing back to Isaiah 43, five through six,

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Psalm 107, verse three, that God is going to bring people from the east and the west.

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All the families of the earth, Psalm 22, are going to return to worship the Lord. Isaiah chapter two, the nations are going to stream up to the mountain of God and God's Torah, His law would go forth among the nations.

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The promise was that the Messiah was going to bring Jew and Gentile together into one body. And here, watch, is this little taste, this moment where Jesus receives this humble, broken, unclean, foul sinner.

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And he points to his faith and he says that, that is the faith of a believer.

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That is a faith that is a great faith. Let's do the so what. I didn't finish, to be continued.

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So what? I was thinking a lot about this in terms of what's before us in the text.

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I was thinking about how I see Jesus, how you see Jesus, how at times we create a fictional

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Jesus. Oh yeah, listen, we diss, we diss the cults and false religion for their false

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Christ all the time. You can go to our YouTube channel and you can see all the times that as a church we've invested in trying to reach

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Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, you name it. We're trying to show people that, look, your

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Christ is not the biblical Jesus. It's not Jesus. Look, here's what the Bible says about Jesus.

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This is your Jesus. But how many times, brothers and sisters, do we do exactly the same thing the cults do?

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And that we create in our minds a fictional Jesus. It's not really him.

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It's a Jesus who is so far off and so disinterested in the unclean sinner.

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It's a Jesus, listen, that doesn't like to touch lepers. And you see yourself that way maybe as a believer.

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You've sinned. Maybe you sinned greatly last night. Maybe you sinned greatly this morning.

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Maybe you've been sinning a lot lately and you feel just unclean. And you feel like you're the outcast in the church.

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You feel like you're the one that really people don't want to touch. You feel like you're the unclean person that really doesn't have a right to come to Jesus to ask for cleansing.

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But that's not Jesus, brothers and sisters. This Jesus, the only true

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Messiah, he's the kind of person that the unrighteous, foul, prostitute, rebel, tax collector, leper, unclean, unworthy, and foul

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Gentile could come to. And watch, when they came before Jesus, they fell.

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And what they recognize, not their worthiness, not that they should have been there, but they recognize their unworthiness.

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And they recognize that with only a word from Jesus, only a word, he could change the course of their lives forever.

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And Jesus' response to the foul, diseased, unclean leper, watch, wasn't even, and I love this, it wasn't even just to speak a word to get away his uncleanness.

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What did he do? He stretched out his hands and he touched the foul, rotting, unclean leper.

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Can you imagine what that must have felt like? That leper going so long without human touch, being seen as unclean, being seen as diseased, and stay away from me.

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When people saw them, they ran to the other side of the street and they told them, you stay on that side of the street.

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And then he comes before Jesus and kneels before him. He says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

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And then Jesus stretches his hand out and cleans him. Immediately. And the

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Gentile, his dearly loved servant that he has so much affection for, he says to Jesus, I'm not worthy of you.

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You're the Lord. All you have to do is say it, Jesus. And it happens. And then Jesus marvels at his faith.

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Let me ask you, what kind of standards for your faith are you setting that are not the standards of Jesus?

01:00:43

Do you come to Jesus with that kind of childlike faith? Do you come to Jesus with the anticipation that Jesus, all you have to do is say it.

01:00:53

And it's a thing. It exists. It's real. When I read these historical accounts of Jesus, it makes me repent.

01:01:06

Honestly. I spend my week in preparation of messages. I spend my week doing a lot of repenting.

01:01:15

Because when I read the text to prepare a message to bring to you, I honestly have to deal with my own heart as a creature.

01:01:24

I have to deal with the fact that I build up these portraits of Jesus in my mind at times that are simply not

01:01:32

Jesus. The real Jesus, the true Jesus is much more beautiful than we allow him to be.

01:01:40

He's the kind of Jesus that heals the sick, the unclean, the lepers, the outcast.

01:01:47

And the message of the gospel is that Jew and Gentile, sick and unclean, come to Jesus together, united in his work.

01:01:59

He heals the sick, the lame, the blind, the dead. He raises them.

01:02:06

And this room right now, if you're in Christ, you're the healed, unclean thing.

01:02:14

You are the one that couldn't walk. You are the one who was dead but is now alive.

01:02:20

Those miraculous signs were signposts pointing to something greater. The something greater is you.

01:02:28

You watch. Last thing I'm going to say here because it's important. It's very important. You might think so low of God's work in your life that you look at something like this as a

01:02:41

Christian and you say, I wish Jesus would do that for me. That's a miracle that I want to see.

01:02:49

A leper being cleaned and healed. A paralyzed person now getting legs.

01:02:56

A dead person rising from the dead, coming to life again. And here's the thing.

01:03:02

What you don't recognize is that those things, the leper, the paralyzed person, the dead little girl.

01:03:10

Watch. The girl died again. The leper died. The paralyzed who got their legs back died again.

01:03:20

Those were temporary things pointing to the greater thing that Jesus was accomplishing. And what you and I have to recognize is as you read these miracle accounts, these were signposts pointing to the greater.

01:03:32

The greater is what you already have in Jesus. Are you listening?

01:03:39

If you trust in Jesus, you're the unclean thing. That Jesus stretched his hand to and he cleaned.

01:03:50

If you're in Jesus right now through faith, you're the one that had no ability to walk, to get on your feet, to come to Jesus.

01:03:58

And yet he spoke and gave you legs to stand on. You're the one who was dead, but Jesus brought back to life.

01:04:07

John 5 24, truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my voice and believes him who sent me has eternal life, does not come into judgment, but has passed out of what death and into what life.

01:04:21

That's the message of Jesus. That's what these are really pointing to. The call of the gospel is

01:04:29

Jesus is Mashiach. He's Messiah. He died. He rose again.

01:04:37

He's ascended. He's seated. And he commands people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

01:04:46

And if you have eyes to see, brothers and sisters, if you can see Jesus and he looks beautiful to you, that's a gift from God.

01:04:54

And you've been cleansed and you are now alive. And to that, I say, praise

01:04:59

God. Let's pray. Father, I want to thank you so much for your word, this message. Please, God, bless it.

01:05:07

For those who heard, I pray that you would open the eyes of those who heard it.

01:05:14

I pray that you would heal those in this room, God of what's truly broken.

01:05:23

Give us faith, God, faith like the centurion, faith that knows who you are, that sees our own unworthiness and trust you.

01:05:37

Lord Jesus, I pray that you'd continue to change us as a church. Allow us to see you as you are and to trust your promises.

01:05:48

Allow us to have the faith of that centurion that believes God in what you speak.

01:05:58

Grant to us that now in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to go to the table now.