The Sin Virus (Part 1)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author Dr. Mike Abendroth.

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Today on No Compromise Radio we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

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It was in the middle 80s and in the scare, the rightful scare of all the

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HIV, AIDS virus and the epidemic and one of my friends was in a grocery store and saw someone fall down and go into convulsions and couldn't breathe and so my friend quickly who was trained in CPR got down and did

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CPR and mouth to mouth and blood on his face and on his saliva on his mouth and the paramedics arrived, the man was now breathing and they quickly donned on all kinds of different protective layers and gloves and face masks and said to my friend that the man there was dying of AIDS and so my friend for many years got tested thinking that I'm a dead man walking,

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I'm going to die from HIV and this is it. Well he never got

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HIV, he's still alive today but it reminds me we have not

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HIV but we have a virus and it's going to kill us, it's the Sin virus, S -I -N virus.

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That is why we need a savior to save us from our sins and if you ask the question who do you think

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Jesus is, if Jesus is only a teacher he can't deal with the sin issue, if you say well he's just a good example then he's not going to deal with the sin issue.

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Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Some said John the Baptist, others said Elijah, others

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Jeremiah or one of the prophets and he said to Peter but who do you say that I am? And remember Peter's great spirit driven words, you are the

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Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Messiah, you need to believe in the

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Messiah because you have the Sin virus and it's going to kill you and what

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I love about the passage today it just blazons forth the credentials of the

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King of the Universe who is the Messiah. Let's turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 8, get ready to be impressed with Jesus, his sovereignty, his love, his compassion, his power.

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You need to believe that Jesus has the credentials to back up his messianic claim.

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You need a savior because you're a sinner, we all are. Matthew chapter 8, over and over throughout the years

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I've just found my way back to Matthew as kind of just a dear friend. I think about Jesus the

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King of all the kings, kinging the Lord of all those lording and when I go back to Matthew, Matthew just arranges the gospel of our

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Lord in such a way where you say to yourself just like at the end of chapter 7, nobody speaks like this man.

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This is amazing, I'm astounded, I'm marveled, no one talks like Jesus.

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And then in chapters 8, 9, and 10 it's the same kind of wonder and exclamation where you say to yourself and no one does the things

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Jesus does. No one talks like him, no one acts like him, who is like Jesus?

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Do you see at the end of chapter 7 verse 28, when Jesus finished these sayings, that would be the

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Beatitudes, chapter 5, 6, and 7, the crowds were astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.

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Yes but really is he the Messiah? He talks a good message but is he the

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Messiah to come? And so what Matthew does is he arranges chapter 8 and 9 and puts about 9 or 10 miracles clumped together not necessarily in chronological order to show you that he is who he said he was.

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To confirm in your mind, to confirm in the reader's mind that Jesus has the credentials of the

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Messiah, proof that he had the right to speak the way he did because he could act the way he did.

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And so chapter 8 starts with three healings, a leper is healed, a Gentile is healed, and a woman is healed, picking up where chapter 4 left off.

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Chapter 4 verse 23 it says, and he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

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So his fame spread throughout all Syria, may the Lord do that even today.

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And they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them.

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No one ever spoke the way Jesus did, nobody ever acted the way Jesus did, and Matthew chapter 8 and 9 is given so that you the reader say,

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I believe the claims of Jesus. These miracles affirm his identity as the

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Old Testament prophesied of the Messiah to come, Isaiah 29, Isaiah 35,

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Isaiah 61. He's going to heal the eyes of the blind and open the ears of the deaf, yes this man is the

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Messiah. And so today we're going to look at Matthew chapter 8 verses 1 through 4, the healing of a leper.

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Matthew picks this one first because short of raising someone from the dead, this is the most fantastic miracle.

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This is not a leg lengthening deal, this is at the top of the list, short of only raising people from the dead.

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How do you cure someone who's not curable? Leprosy is not curable, you can't cure it.

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And so I like it that Matthew puts this one at the very beginning, showing the King's credentials.

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And as you look at the passage today, you should say to yourself as well, yes, Jesus is the Messiah, and I know

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I'm a sinner and I need this Messiah who saves sinners like me. Wait until you get into the passage, this is awesome.

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Chapter 8 verse 1, when he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him.

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Now there are reports of Jesus circulating out, infiltrating every nook and cranny of society, including the huts that are outside of the gates where the lepers lived.

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Even the lepers have heard about Jesus, and maybe they've even heard some of the sermons second hand where Jesus said in Matthew 7, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened for you.

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And if a leper had heard that message, the leper says, I know I can go get healed, I better go ask.

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Great crowds following, and then it says in verse 2 of Matthew 8, and this is the way

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Matthew writes to show the vividness of it. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him saying,

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Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Leper came up to him, what do you mean? Lepers are supposed to keep their distance.

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Lepers are supposed to be far away. There's not only a physical issue of contamination, but a social and a religious uncleanness.

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Remember what are lepers supposed to do? They're supposed to take their hand and cover their mustache it says, and say unclean, unclean.

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Everybody's paying attention right now. It's kind of a good effect, isn't it? Rabbis would say this is uncurable.

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How many lepers were cleansed in the Old Testament? I think you'll see two. Fifteen hundred years ago was the last leper that had ever been cleansed.

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And Mark says that the leper came beseeching him and falling on his knees. Just a little bit about the symptoms of leprosy.

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The word leper is just from the Greek word lepros, and it means scaly. If you see a fish, you know the fish has scale.

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It's just scaly skin. We're not sure what exact kind of leprosy this man had because things change over time and mutate.

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Is it an Old Testament kind of leprosy? And then now it's the modern version of Hansen's disease?

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There's some debate about that. But one thing we do know is it's a very wicked disease.

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Pretty soon you have areas of your body that are just kind of numb. It's like you hit your elbow on something, the funny bone, and your hands are just kind of numb.

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It starts off like that. And then you get a couple spots. It looks like scaly spots, but you know you have age spots after all, so maybe it's not that big a deal.

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Your hands and your extremities start turning white. Blood supply is decreasing, and so now you'll start getting ulcers on your body, hands and other places.

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Skin around your ears begins to bunch up, and it looks like you have cauliflower ears. The cartilage underneath your nose caves in, and your nose therefore is caved in.

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And your face over time starts to scrunch up, and some people say it looks like a lion. You can Google it sometime.

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Not now. Stay off the Google. Pictures of leprous folks, and their faces are kind of scrunched up, but I wouldn't say lion -looking.

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I'd say Sharpay, a Sharpay dog where there's just so many folds of the skin.

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Eyebrows are out. Eyelashes are out. And you know, it's one thing if their face is just deformed and their hands are deformed and the digits of, the end of their digits start falling off.

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Their toes fall off. Their fingers fall off. That'd be one thing, but they're so rotting that they begin to smell.

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And if you're just downwind a little bit or close to them, you could smell how bad they smell.

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And to top it all off, leprosy attacks the throat and the voice box, and the person begins to wheeze, and the person begins to gargle and gurgle.

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And so from the foul discharges of their body to just sounding weird and smelling weird, talking in a hoarse, raspy way, that's a deadly disease.

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Hansen's disease has studied lepers, and the tendons of the arm begin to shrink.

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And as the tendons of the arm begin to shrink, then the hands become claw -like and unusable.

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Can't really feel pain in modern Hansen's disease. I read about Paul Brand years ago. I've never forgotten to this day.

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In third world countries where there are lepers today, they'd always put a cat in the room with the lepers because lepers have no feeling in their toes and their fingers, and so the rats would just eat their toes off and their fingers off.

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But if a cat was there, the cat would keep the rats away. You were weak, prone to other diseases.

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It wasn't just a skin disease. This is not eczema or psoriasis. It was internal immune system issues.

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Listen to this biblical description of someone with leprosy. Numbers 12, when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold,

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Miriam was leprous as wide as snow. As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.

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Then Aaron said to Moses, oh my Lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned.

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Oh, do not let her be like one dead whose flesh is half eaten away.

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That's leprosy. Who's dead, like they're dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother's womb.

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As a leperologist said, it's like a painless death. If I was teaching a high school group and I had a bunch of kids,

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I would say true or false, there's zombies in the Bible. They'd think I was funny, but you know what? This is as close to a zombie as you can get.

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They're the walking dead. They're going to die soon. Their body's dying. They smell like death. They look like death. They are dying.

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And you know what? If it was just the physical, that'd be one thing. But the social stigma, tear your clothes, uncover your hair.

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And it says in Leviticus 13, remain unclean all the days during which he has an infection. He is unclean.

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

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Leviticus 13 says this is what you do if your clothes have been affected by touching somebody with leprosy.

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And it ends with burn the garment. Burn it in the fire. If your house has been marked with leprosy, this is fascinating.

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I think it's the only time it's used in the Old Testament, chapter 14, verse 38, and the priest shall come out of the house to the doorway and quarantine the house.

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This guy's supposed to stay away. He's not supposed to get close. He's supposed to be over there. He's supposed to stay unclean, unclean.

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And he is so desperate, he realizes his need. What does the text say? He came up to him and knelt before him.

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I don't even think he could feel his knees hit the ground. Why? Because you can't feel your extremities if you're a leper. He came boldly and confidently.

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He wasn't sneaking up around and kind of covertly hiding. And my question that's unanswered in the text, of course, is what was everybody else doing?

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Here comes a guy that's voice is gurgly. He smells like death.

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He looks like death. I'm not supposed to be close to him. And he's right up there with Jesus. He's desperate.

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Josephus said, if you see a leper, treat him like a dead man. So here comes the dead man walking. And the cry is insightful of the leper.

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I don't know how to say this with a gurgling voice, with a wheezing voice, with shortness of breath, but you can imagine what it would be like.

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How do you worship Jesus without a voice box? But he was able to muster this up.

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Lord, mark these words carefully, people are scattering, giving him a wide berth.

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If you will, you can make me clean. If you will, you can make me clean.

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Doesn't take you very often to watch TBN to realize this guy didn't watch TBN. I'm going to claim my victory.

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I'm going to name it and claim it. I'm going to grab it and nab it. I don't know what people, how they say these things, name it and claim it.

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Jesus, I know you can heal me. You have the power. But I'm just going to ask, would you, because you're sovereign.

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That's a lot different than claiming some healing. I know you have more power than I have leprosy.

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Luke 5 says he was full of leprosy. You're full of power. I'm full of leprosy. I know you can, but I just don't know if you will.

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Will you? Will you heal me? Falling on his knees.

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By the grace of God, he's been brought to some knowledge that Jesus is Lord. Will you do this? I submit to your sovereign hand.

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I acquiesce to your being a king. I don't even know if it's your will, but Lord, if it's your will, would you?

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Lord for the leper meant Lord. I don't know if you caught this or not, but in Matthew chapter 4, when

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I read verses 23 and 24, they brought to him all sick people, diverse diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, people who were paralytics and healed them, but not one leper was mentioned.

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I'm asking for something that hasn't happened for 1 ,500 years. I know you can do it.

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Would you? Doctors can't heal him. No medical possibility of being healed.

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One scholar said, James Boyce quoted him, and the scholar said, there never has been any disease which so separated a man from his fellow men as leprosy did.

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Will you, Jesus? I know you can. Verse 3, this is fascinating. No one teaches like Jesus.

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Nobody acts like Jesus. He's the Messiah, the only Messiah. Jesus stretched out his hand, his own hand, and then did the unthinkable and touched him.

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I wonder if the leper had been touched in the last five years of his life, last 10 years of his life.

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I know we'd try to tell the kids when we would visit grandma at the rest home and assisted care home, and make sure you go up and hold grandma's hand.

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Make sure you stroke her hair. Make sure you touch her forehead. Make sure you hold her arm.

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Why? Because the only person that touches grandma is the nurse, the doctor, the caregiver.

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He stretched out his hand and touched him. I don't know if he touched his hands with no fingers. I don't know where Jesus touched him.

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He's the guy that everybody's yelling, unclean, unclean. He has to yell unclean, unclean, and Jesus touches him.

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McLaren said this, the touch answered the if by something that spoke louder than any word.

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No rabbi would have dared to touch him, but Jesus put out his hand and touched him and then spoke the thrilling words,

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I will be clean. Friends, do you grasp just for a second how important the incarnation is?

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For all kinds of reasons, but the eternal son of God, the second person of the trinity cloaks himself with humanity, and then when

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I read Hebrews 4, it just floods my mind with emotion and meaning. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

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Mark says this, Matthew doesn't say it, Mark says that Jesus was moved with compassion, with pity.

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Mark says Jesus was emotionally moved. It was his motion. The Greek word is for his guts, his bowels.

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Somebody from the first service knew the Greek word. Does anybody know the Greek word for, used 12 times in the New Testament? Splank now, who said that?

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Oh nice, thank you. 12 times in the New Testament, used once of the Samaritan when the

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Samaritan wanted to be a good Samaritan and help and move with pity and compassion, but all the other times used of God.

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Used of God dealing with sinful people, saving sinners, forgiving sinners, touching sinners.

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It's used in Matthew 9, and seeing the multitudes, Jesus felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.

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He felt compassion, but you can feel compassion and not do anything about it. He felt compassion, and Mark says, and so does

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Matthew, and then he touched him. He didn't stop with feelings. Sometimes that's the only thing we can do though, is we can feel bad with people, for people, but we can't change the situation.

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John Calvin said by his word alone he might have healed the leper. Couldn't he have done that? Just be healed.

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Why did he have to touch him? He's going to heal the centurion's servant in chapter 8, verses 5 and following in the next account.

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He doesn't even have to be there. He could just say, you're clean. Why did he touch him? Because Christ was the compassionate

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Messiah as well. Calvin goes on, but he applied at the same time the touch of his hand to express the feeling of compassion.

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Nor ought this to excite our wonder since he chose to take upon him our flesh that he might cleanse us from our sins.

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Who's compassionate? What God of the Old Testament neighborhood was compassionate?

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Only Yahweh, Exodus 34. The Lord passed in front of Moses and proclaimed, the

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Lord, the Lord God, and what was the first thing on the list? Before gracious, before slow to anger, before abounding in love and kindness, the

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Lord was what? Psalm 116 .5. Yes, our

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God is James chapter 5. The Lord is full of compassion and here now

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Jesus does what no person would ever do. He touches the leper. And instead of getting contagion on him, it's the holiness of God contagious the other way, purifies.

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It imparts cleansing. Mark says, Jesus stated, I am willing.

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I'm always willing. Look at verse 3. And Jesus, Matthew 8, stretched out his hand and touched him, saying,

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I will be cleansed. I will be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

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This is written so that you realize I don't have any confusion about this leper being healed. Now think about it for a second.

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No more scaly skin. If you have no fingers, if this was an older leper, no fingers.

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I now have fingers. No more sharp looking face. It's just normal. No cauliflower ears.

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No, it's just normal. Not limping around. He smells good. He doesn't look white.

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Suddenly his voice is perfect. This is a huge deal. Jesus touches the untouchable and cures the incurable.

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And what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7 must be true. He is the Messiah. No scales, no sores, no scars.

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The worst social stigma that you could have. The most lonesome and the supernatural eternal son of God affirms his credentials.

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And how does Jesus heal? He heals unlike people who say come to the healing that's going to be down at the civic center.

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He heals instantaneously. Mark chapter 5, the lady said, if I touch his garments,

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I shall get well. And immediately the flow of her blood was dried up. Jesus heals completely.

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Jesus heals everyone. Everyone around those towns. Laying his hands on every one of them, Luke 4, was healing them.

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He didn't pick out, well, you know, I think I could heal you because you need your leg lengthened. But you over here, you can't heal.

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I won't heal that like these charlatans do. By the way, you can know these people today who say they have the gift of New Testament healings are frauds to the core.

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Because I want to see them at Children's Hospital, please. You're the most unloving, godless person in the universe if you have the gift of healing.

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And you're not at Boston Children's Hospital. And Jesus could even raise people from the dead. Luke 7, and the dead man sat up after Jesus said,

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I said to you, arise, began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. And fear gripped them all.

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And they began glorifying God saying, a great prophet has arisen among us. God has visited his people.

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When God does a miracle, then you say, only God could do the miracle. Jesus is God. He has to be divine.

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And then what happens here, verse 4. Jesus said to him, this is kind of a curt warning.

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It's more curt in Mark, but in Matthew, Jesus says, 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.

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I'd like to fully include you into society. This is the proper step.

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I'm under the law. I'm born under law. And so are you. It's Old Testament law. This is the way you go get cleansed.

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I want you in society. I want you to go give proof to the people. They're going to say, aren't you the leper?

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Yes, I am. Who did it? Jesus. Bear witness and testimony to that.

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Trap them in their denial of Jesus and Messiah. Those all could be reasons. But Mark gives us the main reasons why

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Jesus warned him. Actually, it says in Mark 1, Jesus sternly warned him.

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Translated one time in John 11 as deeply moved, and translated in Mark 14 as scolding.

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Why was Jesus so stern? The word is interesting. It's the word for a meddlesome horse that snorts.

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You can just see a horse's nostril flare out. You should see your faces right now.

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Flaring out, just kind of angry a little bit. And so here Jesus, of course, with righteous indignation, admonishes and rebukes urgently.

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Don't run out there and begin to tell everyone. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.