Well, my name is Eric. If you don't know me, I am glad
you're here with us today. We are in the book of Matthew.
We've been in the book of Matthew, I believe for, I don't
know, maybe 9-10 months, something like that.
And we've now reached chapter 8. We're in chapter 8.
We've finished the Sermon on the Mount, which was chapters 5
through 7. And the book of Matthew kind of
shows us some interesting things.
The author compiles kind of lumps of scripture together in
Matthew. Some of the stories will be in
Mark, also in Luke. But you can you can see that
there are differences in the way that they compiled their
information. And Matthew chooses to compile
like he did the Sermon on the Mount in this big narrative.
And now we've reached this section where we're talking
about miracles of Jesus. So in chapters 8 and 9, many
miracle stories of Jesus are kind of compiled together.
Not all of them are necessarily in chronologic logical order,
because that's not the point of the author.
He's trying to make a point through how he writes this down
inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so that kind of brings me to
a question I'd like to ask as we start talking about the miracles
of Jesus is what are they for? What's the meaning of them?
Is it just that, oh, Jesus does miracles and so miracles are
normative in in the believer's life and we should be looking
for them all the time trying to do them?
Or is it pointing to something, maybe an illustration of a
deeper spiritual truth? I believe that, yes, God still
does miracles today, but these aren't written so that we seek
them out all the time and we're looking for signs and wonders.
We've actually seen in Scripture where people are rebuked because
that's all they're looking for. They need, they need proof.
And yes, Jesus in this narrative and these eyewitness accounts,
it does prove his power. It does prove his authority.
It does confirm who Jesus is, that he's God in the flesh.
It shows us that he's a compassionate God as well, that
he cares about not only just our salvation, but even in the time
that we have here on earth, He cares about every little malady
and sickness and pain that we have going on.
It shows us that he's brought something with them when he
stepped on earth 2000 years ago. Our series is called The King
and His Kingdom. He's bringing a spiritual
Kingdom on earth and he's slowly taking ground and, and while
he's walking around, he's showing what heaven looks like
where there will be no more sickness or crying or pain or
mourning sadness anymore. But ultimately these are also
illustrations of some deep spiritual truths that I think
that Matthew wants us to know, the Holy Spirit wants us to
know. And, and Jesus is doing these
things knowing that we're going to be reading about them later,
trying to figure out what does this mean for my life?
What does it mean that Jesus is doing miracles?
So I want to get into that. And so today we're going to be
in verses one through 4 of chapter 8, and I've titled the
message the Great Physician. The Great Physician because he
is a healer. Ultimately Christ healed many
people. And today we're looking at how
he heals A leper. And it's a little bit about
leprosy. This 2000 years ago and beyond
was an incurable disease and it would be considered that only a
miracle could help a leprous person.
And what we find out is that the great physician, the only one
that has the power, comes in with a compassionate touch and a
word and heals this man. So let me read these verses to
you and we're going to get into it.
It says when he came down from the mountain, great crowds
followed him. And behold, A leper came to him
and knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand
and touched him, saying, I will be clean.
And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
And Jesus said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but
go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses
commanded for a proof to them. I've got three points as we walk
through this section by section or verse by verse.
And I want to show you how there is a deeper spiritual truth
underlying in this story of Jesus healing this leper.
And my first point is this. I want to look at the sinners
infection again. We go back to the first 2 verses
that says when he came down from the mountain, great crowds
followed him and behold A leper came to him and knelt before him
saying if you will you can make me clean.
Now as I said you know leprosy was something somewhat of an
incurable disease. What I want you to understand in
this point is that leprosy is an analogy or analogous to sin.
It too is an incurable infection that affects every part of our
lives. So let me tell you a little bit
of what I know about leprosy. Now, I'm not a doctor by any
means, but the studies that I know from what I know in
Scripture and and there are leprosy still exists today.
Many have called it, renamed it Hansen's disease because of the
stigma that comes along with leprosy or being a leper from
the Bible. They they thought we need to
have some compassion and rename it so that people aren't holding
those stigmas. But what is the big deal or what
is leprosy? It, it, it, it's where the nerve
endings in your skin and in your organs don't really have any
feeling anymore. And So what ends up happening is
the skin gets all kinds of rashes, it becomes unhealthy, it
becomes dry, scaly. And also when it gets injured or
cut and infected, it goes unnoticed for so long that
spots, if not whole areas of the body become hideous, disgusting,
even with a, a stench of an of infection and pus.
I know it's a gross kind of a, a picture I'm painting in your
mind, but I'm trying to show you that, that this is supposed to
be painting a picture for us of how, how, how infectious and
hideous sin is in our lives as well.
But most of us, you know, when we get a cut or when we feel
some kind of pain in our body, we're able to go see a doctor
or, you know, put some first aid on it or whatever.
But in this case, what happens is, you know, infections get so
bad that you lose extremities. Fingers, toes, hands, arms,
legs, parts of your nose are falling off.
And it's it's not a pretty sight.
And So what happened to someone who had leprosy was that they
were banished outside of their community.
They were, they were supposed to go live outside the city because
people didn't want to see them. And people definitely didn't
want to come into contact with them, afraid that the the the
disease would pass on to them. In fact, they were called
unclean. It's very interesting, by the
way, that that God made laws all the way back in the first five
books of the Bible that Moses wrote about leprosy with it
being an incurable disease. And here's what it says in in
Leviticus 13. It says the leprous person who
has the D disease shall wear torn, torn clothes and let the
hair of his head hang loose and he shall cover his upper lip and
cry out unclean, unclean. And he shall remain unclean as
long as he has the disease. He is unclean.
He he shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside
the camp. I when I first read this many
years ago, I'm, I'm wondering it was a funny picture I had in my
head. What does it mean that he
covered his upper lip? Unclean, unclean.
Why would he have to do that? But then I realized, you know,
when you're going to shout at people from far away, you
actually do this, right? You, you cover your mouth and
kind of make a, a little horn, you know, so that the sound
extends and, and, and this is the picture of this guy who is,
who is desperate and lonely. And when any human being comes
within a certain amount of of of feet from him, he from far away,
he has to by the law of God, say I'm unclean.
Don't come near me. Now imagine the loneliness, the
hopelessness, the the self loathing that a leper would feel
because of this. He wouldn't have been able to
have any close relationships. And in fact, this disease
ultimately kept him from being able to worship God the way in
which the community was prescribed to gather together to
go to the temple. He would have to be outside and
alone, and ultimately his relationship severed from God
and the people because he's unclean, ceremonially unclean,
to approach God. You see, that's what sin does to
us as well. The Bible says that we're born
with sin. We're born inheriting the nature
that the first human beings brought into humanity.
When they went against God, they decided, I don't want to follow
God's commands. I'm going to go my own way.
My way's a little bit better. I don't trust his words
necessarily. I'm going to do what feels
right. And so they did that.
They followed that feeling, and they brought sin into the world.
And now we all have this natural bent to want to do the same
thing as our our mother and father from the beginning.
And so does it sound familiar to you when we know what God's word
says or we've heard what it says and we say, well, I don't really
trust that. I don't really like that.
There's probably things in Scripture that all of us
naturally, when you hear it, you're like, I don't know, that
doesn't really fit my sensibilities or my my standard
of morality or that just seems harsh or not fun or controlling.
And so anyway, that is the nature that we have as this
separation from God, unable to worship him properly.
And not only that, but our sin, not just our sin nature that we
inherited, it's an infection that affects how we treat other
people. So we we sin against other
people. And now just like the leper, our
relationships are broken, right? Like our sin effects our
marriages. Like when we hurt other people
because of what we do from the natural man or the natural
woman. The the the things that we do
that are offensive or hurtful or selfish even causes that broken
relationship with our spouse. Don't we hate that?
Don't we wish that this part of us wouldn't do things to
displease the other person that we love, that we could be the
servant what we want to be without failing?
Don't we hate it when we when we mess up with that thing that
we're addicted to? We have these addictions in life
that God has said, no, don't do that.
That's going to be bad for you. I remember in my own life I had
broken so many relationships and hurt people because of my sin
and my addiction, and rightfully nobody wanted to be around me
except for my mom. Praise God for the grace of
Jesus Christ that she didn't want to banish me outside the
camp, but everybody else wanted to.
That is the analogy of our sin. This leper, then we need to look
at this guy and say that that that he's a picture of us.
This incurable infection that separates us from God and it
causes problems in our physical lives.
Our bodies aren't working properly anymore.
We get sick. There are diseases and illnesses
that are ever present in our world, in our communities, in
our in our bodies. Mental health issues are more
common than not anymore because of this infection.
There are trains that drive behind me when I'm preaching.
It's not supposed to be that way.
I heard that Satan is a train engineer maybe.
Is that in a song? I think so.
Anyway, there are mental health issues.
We and then we just not only, just all of that, again, we hurt
people. We hurt the people that we love
the most. So the people that are closest
to us are the ones that we hurt the most when we're they're
supposed to be the ones that we love the most.
And maybe we do love them the most, but we also hurt them
almost as equally as much as we love them.
We are in a desperate state, brothers and sisters in in this
world, we are desperate. The there's a theological term
for this. I'd call it total depravity,
total inability. We are completely depraved.
Even the good things that we want to do are tainted with
evil. Jeremiah 17 says even our, our,
our, our hearts are deceitfully wicked.
Isaiah says that our, even our good works are like filthy rags.
I mean, and so we have no goodness that can come to God
and say, Hey, you should choose me or you should forgive me
because of some of the good things that I do.
No, because why? Because Romans 3 says is that
there's no one who does good. There's no one righteous, no one
seeks, no one understands. No, not one.
That's the human condition. We can't even come to God
because of this broken state. We can't even seek Him.
We don't even understand his words in this broken human state
that we live in. In fact, favorite quote of mine
is from Jonathan Edwards. It says you contribute nothing
to your salvation except for the sin that made it necessary.
The only reason we've we're qualified for salvation is that
we're a Sinner, that we are in this desperate state.
But praise God, it doesn't just stay there, but this
compassionate God, this loving God looks down on us in our
state and says, I want to do something about that.
I want to heal them. So what is the hope of mankind
if we're all like lepers and this is an incurable infection?
There's only one person that can help us.
And so now I want to look at the Savior's cure, verses 2 and 3.
And behold, A leper came to him and knelt before him, saying,
Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will
be clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. Only the Great Physician could
heal this disease. It would have taken a miracle
for anyone to be cured and clean from leprosy at this point in
time. Now, one could argue that yes,
there are forms of leprosy enhancements, disease that are
curable or there's there's ways to help it now with modern
medicine. But the point is, is that back
then, 2000 years ago and prior, this was considered only by a
miracle of God. That's why we read that story,
by the way, the the Scripture reading of Naman the Syrian, he
was a Gentile man who had leprosy and his only hope was
that he heard about the God of Israel and said, I'm going to go
seek out this God because that God seems powerful.
He needed a miracle. And what happened was he came
and got healed. That was a story in the Old
Testament. So only the great Physician,
Jesus Christ could heal this disease, and only Jesus, the
great Physician, could take away our sin and make us clean.
It's interesting here in this passage, nobody would ever touch
a leper because that would make you unclean in the Old
Testament. Levitical law.
But Jesus, He doesn't break the law here because Jesus upholds
the law. Because Jesus is God, He is the
only one qualified to reach out and touch this man, to risk
touching this man. You see why others wouldn't
touch him is because they feared that this would transfer to
them. But Jesus being sinless?
God in the flesh, when he reaches out and touches nothing
of our sin could transfer to him and his body because he's
powerful enough, but all of his power actually transfers to this
man. That's a picture of our
salvation, by the way. And in a sense you could say
that Jesus did take on our sin for a moment on the cross.
He who knew no sin, Christ was made to be sin for us so that we
could become the righteousness of God.
And then the power is transferred to the man and the
healing power of the great Physician.
Jesus Christ touches this man and he is healed.
Mark 141 tells the story and it says moved with pity.
He did this out of compassion. I don't know about you, but you
know, it's been quite a, you know, intense few months as
we've been preaching through the Sermon on the Mount and here I
find this wrasp this this kind of exhale of here's the
compassion of Jesus. I don't know if that brings you
any joy or or relief that that your Savior, Jesus Christ,
although you come to him with your brokenness, with your sin,
the sin that you did this week, the uncleanness, where in the
Old Testament you wouldn't have been able to approach this God.
But God came to earth because he was moved by compassion in yours
and my desperate state, knowing that we can't do anything about
the sickness that we have apart from a healing touch of Jesus
Christ. What's that thing that you need
that compassion for from Jesus right now?
Maybe as John said and asked us in that part of our service that
we do every time the confession of sin part where we can confess
to the Lord as we're as we're praying God.
I trust that you can clean me. That's what that verse said.
It's faithful and just to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness in first John verse 9.
What is that thing? Did you know that you can just
confess that to you and him alone.
You don't need to confess that to a priest, even a pastor.
The Bible does say that sometimes though it is good to
confess to another brother and sister sin, that they can pray
for you and you can be healed as well.
But you have access to Jesus Christ himself for that sin that
needs to be cleansed. Or maybe it's a physical,
mental, emotional state that you struggle with that's just a part
of who you are, that you've tried everything in this life to
get rid of it, to make it better, to fix it.
Just know that Jesus has compassion on you during that
time. I love this verse in in Hebrews
415. It says, For we do not have a
high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet
without sin. The sinless God comes to stand
in our place, to transfer His righteousness to us, but he
still sympathizes with us. Oh, man.
So he comes in compassion and also power and authority.
He comes to remove the religious rituals it would have taken for
this man to be made clean. If you go to Leviticus 14, and
I'm not going to, you know, read the entire thing to you, but it
talks of all of the religious rituals that would have had to
have taken place in order for this guy if a miracle did happen
in his life and he did get clean.
I mean we're talking birds need to be sacrificed, waiting 8 days
dunking yourself in water, then some Rams and lambs being
sacrificed and waiting around and priests, you know, doing all
these different things to satisfy that broken relationship
between you and God. And Jesus said, Nope, those all
pointed to to a particular way in which you needed to be
healed, again pointing back to the great physician, Only
through him. So it's his authority and his
power alone. And so only through him can we
go to get healing from this disease.
Now this then is somewhat of an illustration of how a person
comes to faith in Jesus Christ. I mean, what it looks like I we
can see it right in there. He had heard about Jesus.
He'd heard about the things Jesus been doing, you know, his
preaching, other people believing in him and, and
somehow word had got to this leper.
And So what does he do when he sees Jesus from far off?
He comes up and he kneels before him, kneeling before him.
That's a sign of worship. That's a sign of respect, That's
a sign of submission, surrender. And he says, Lord, he calls him
Lord Master, this is God. He, he believes that Jesus is
God, Lord Master. He wants to submit his life to
him. And then he, he believes in the
power. He says if you will, you can
make me clean. So he doesn't say if you can,
will you make me clean? He says, if you are willing, I
know that you can. This is faith.
This is faith in the Lord Jesus, the power, his authority of him
being God in the flesh. And the leper sees it.
That's what it takes to start a relationship with God, to repair
that sin, that broken relationship to make you clean.
It's we call it repent and believe.
Notice your own sin. Notice your need.
Be desperate like this leper who says I'm willing to bow down
before you. I know that you and you alone
can heal me. We know that in Romans 10/9.
Again, it says if you declare that Jesus is Lord and believe
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
It's almost a gift to this man that he's in this desperate
situation, because how else do you get desperate enough to cry
out to Jesus unless your situation has so many different
dire consequences and needs? If you haven't been humbled,
it's hard for a prideful person to come to the Lord.
It really is. Why would they need a savior if
they can do it all on their own, if life is good, if they're
content, it's a gift. Think of it that way.
Think of that, that that you even have the ability to see
your sin and be disgusted with it.
That's a gift and that's from the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit comes and he convicts us.
He convicts our hearts and he says you need to look internally
and compare your life with what God has said in His Word and
where you fall short. Don't worry, Romans 3 says all
have fallen short. So humble yourselves with a
broken and contrite heart, and he will come to you and heal
you. And the Holy Spirit's doing this
work in us. It's such a beautiful thing.
First Corinthians 12/3 says Therefore, I want you to
understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says
Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in
the Holy Spirit. Nobody can really get to this
place of true faith that Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit.
And that's what we see here. It doesn't necessarily say it in
this text, but you have to interpret Scripture with
Scripture. You have to come to Scripture
with doctrine. And we understand that the Bible
tells us that God is doing that first initial work of the Holy
Spirit was working in this man to get to the place, using his
desperation to get to the place to call Jesus Lord.
The two wills collide. We often misunderstand will.
There's often debates about will and does man have free will.
And what I would just say to you in this text is look at this.
It says if you will, Lord, if it's in your will.
And Jesus says it is my will. So by this man's will, he
himself chooses to come to the Lord to bow down to him.
But it was also the Lord's will that this would happen at the
same time. There are two wills colliding
here and it's happening at the same time.
And beyond that it is a mystery on how it works.
But it is a beautiful one that we, we have our own choices and
yet God is willing and working in the background and his
sovereignty. That's what happens in this
man's heart. And it was a gift, as I said, a
gift to him to get to this place because those who are stuck in
their pride won't get to this place.
Jesus later in Chapter 9 is answering some of the challenges
from the Pharisees when they start to come up and question
him and they're wondering why is he doing these miracles for
these people that are unclean? Why not come to the righteous
people and help them, the religious people and help them?
Jesus answered so beautifully in Matthew 9 verse 12, but when he
heard it, He said those who are well have no need of a physician
but those who are sick. The reality is none of us are
really well apart from Jesus Christ, but Jesus will operate
as the great Physician on those who know they need Him.
He wants to give us all a heart transplant, and for many of us
He already has. And we can say it is well, it is
well with my soul. He is making us well.
He's making us more complete, day by day, week by week, month
by month. The hearts of the Pharisees were
prideful and arrogant. They thought that salvation was
in themselves following the law, not understanding that no one
could measure up to the standards of God.
Salvation is by grace through faith alone.
It is a gift from God that no man may boast about it.
So this man starts out in a relationship with God, and it's
a beautiful thing. This is an analogy of how a
person comes to faith in our desperate state.
But let's see now as we end this, as we get to our last
point, if he'll be able to not only just trust Jesus for
salvation, but for further instructions on what to do next.
So I've called it the doctor's orders.
You know, when you go to the doctor and you know, you start
getting better and he gives you the prescription and and you
know, things are looking good, but he tells you, now go do
this, you know, follow this diet or take this pill or change your
lifestyle in this way. Get some sleep, better sleep,
start exercising. This is again an illustration of
if. We'll go on to podcasts and
YouTube and we will listen to all this type of research on
physical and mental health and and we'll follow the orders of
a, an earthly Dr. on what to do for the most part.
Now, if you're anything like me, you know, I very skeptical of
modern medicine, but that doesn't mean I completely
discounted either. There's lots of good graces from
God. I believe there is a common
grace in modern medicine. This is a whole I'm getting off
topic here, but much more so if we will follow and trust a
little bit human people who tell us to follow these orders that
know better than us in many regards, why wouldn't we follow
the Great Physician and his orders to live out the rest of
this life? So a relationship with God
doesn't just end at faith, it starts there.
Being obedient to his commands honors God and proves that our
faith is genuine. And Jesus does care about how we
lived after we come to faith. So let's look at the last
section. It says, and Jesus said to him,
see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to
the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof
to them. You see, this can be interesting
here because you're like, why doesn't Jesus want to want him
to tell anyone? Aren't we supposed to go tell it
on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere?
Well, yeah, but in this case, remember, this is before the
church had started. Church doesn't start till Acts.
Jesus has a mission to complete. He's doing something.
This also has meaning for us then.
Jesus doesn't want to just do a one time healing on us.
He wants to continue to restore us.
And even in this man's life, he's prescribing him a way to be
restored to the community of God.
He's saying go to the priests first.
Don't go running around telling everybody else about what I've
done. Start living it out first.
Actually, this makes a great case by the way.
For yes, you have a testimony and you should go share it, but
some of us in our zeal should probably hang on and start
walking the walk for a little while they call it.
For some people, when you get this new found understanding of
God's grace and His sovereignty, they call it the cage stage.
You should be in a cage for a while and not be let out until
you get some maturity in you, you know?
But he's prescribing him away the way.
Because remember, Jesus never breaks any of the law.
He's come to fulfill the law. And in Leviticus 14, there was a
way, as I had said, when someone is healed of leprosy, they were
supposed to go to the priest and do this and that and all these
rituals, because it hasn't been fulfilled yet.
Christ hasn't died yet. We're still basically in the Old
Testament in a sense, in the Old Covenant, until he dies and the
the temple veil is torn and then we have no more need for a
temple. But in this period of time, he's
saying go to the priests and be a witness to them.
Remember also that Jesus came to first and foremost come for his
chosen people, Israel, and He was preaching the truth to them,
hoping that they would get it. Even the religious leaders know.
He also knew at the same time that they wouldn't, but it had
to be preached to them first. So go to the religious leaders
and say, and if He was to come and priests that know the Old
Testament would know. This is a miracle, just like a
lot of the other miracles that Jesus had done in front of the
Pharisees. It was Him proving a point.
He's come as King. Now.
You guys were temporary guardians of God's house, but
Jesus, God himself has come and he's come to take over and set
up his reign on earth. So here I am.
That's supposed to be assigned to the scribes and priests and
religious leaders that God came in and healed someone and and he
was willing to even do it by following God's own law in the
restoration of this man. Now, practically speaking, I
would say church isn't an individual or Christianity isn't
an individual sport. God didn't just come save us so
that we could just only have an individual relationship with
God, you know, but he wants us to be a part of a community.
He wants us to be a part of the church, the assembly, the
regular gathering together. Because through the scripture
reading and the prayer and the breaking of the bread and and
and the hearing of the preached word and the serving and the
worshipping, God is working out what He wants to do in you and
all of us when we come together. When we gather together to do
this, So what does this guy end up doing?
Well, it's not in this actual chapter.
If the only way you can find out what how he responded to what
Jesus said was you go to Mark chapter 1 and it says this.
But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to
spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a
town, but was out in desperate places and people were coming to
him from every quarter. So the guy failed.
Before we get too mad at him, isn't that like us?
Again, this is an illustration of us even after we got saved.
And Jesus said, now I want you to go do it this way.
We're like my way's a little better.
Or hopefully you forgive me again, You know, isn't that how
we think of it a little bit. Don't worry, that guy didn't
become a leper again. We can't do enough to lose our
salvation if Christ has truly come in and healed us from this.
But what I would say is this, we hinder God's work when we don't
do it his way. That's what I, I see right there
is that Jesus had a mission and it wasn't to become famous in
the sense of before he got to the cross, he, he, he, his life
was coming, setting up the Kingdom and he was going to come
and die for the people. But because of the work that he
was doing as he was getting to the cross, the three years that
he was here, it caused a lot of commotion.
A lot of people wanted healings and signs and wonders, and they
wanted him to perform for him for them.
But ultimately, Jesus had a mission to stick to.
So part of him saying don't tell anyone.
Don't tell anyone yet because it's not time yet.
Because if you do this, it's going to set apart, set in
motion some events that are going to make ministry more
difficult for me. That's what Jesus was saying.
And, and I guess how that would relate to us is we should just
look at the word when we want to go tell other people because
we're excited. We should do it the way he
prescribed, right? We should go live like we
believe for a while, start walking out the faith, be
growing in maturity, join a church, get some holiness and
sanctification and some accountability in our lives.
And then we can go and preach the Word and we can share the
Word and we can share our testimony and we can share what
Christ has done for us. And I don't want to go into my
pet peeve about how there are so many other people out there in
the world in Christianity who think I'm going to make this
more exciting. I'm going to spice it up.
I'm going to add some emotionalism.
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and I'm going to
bring it all together because Christ's word isn't enough.
Well, in a sense, when they do that, they hinder the mission.
I wish we could all come together in unity under the
Christian umbrella and trust that God's word is enough to
save sinners. Because it's only by the power
of the Holy Spirit that we come to faith anyway.
So manipulating people into it and coming up with all these
creative ways isn't really going to work.
But nevertheless, for us, we are better witnesses to the outside
world when we will follow Jesus well after salvation.
We all want people to be saved, but let's just do the clear and
prescribed work of the Great Physician and trust the Great
Physician to do the work that only he can do.
And so I'll close with this. Jesus is willing to heal and
cleanse from sinfulness all that would come to Him in faith for
many. You and I have already
experienced this life changing cleansing power.
So then the challenge to the believer then is to find out
what His commands are and then live them out.
And one of them is to be a witness.
When He said go make disciples, He said go into all the earth.
We are to go and to tell other people what He's done in our
lives by sharing and living out our testimony.
Be faithful in doing the ministry that He's given you in
His way. For the unbeliever here in this
room, can you see the infection of sin in your life?
Can you see the evidence of a broken relationship with God?
If you will believe in who the Jesus of the Bible is and trust
in His willingness to restore you, He has compassion on your
state, where you're at right now.
He wants to heal you. It may not be all physical
healing, and He may not take away all of the consequences of
decisions you've made in your sin, but what He can do is
ultimately forgive you eternally and promise you a spot in
heaven. But He does want to do work on
you now as well, and it's a wonderful thing to be adopted by
the Almighty Father who now can love us, watch over us, provide
for us, and discipline us when necessary.
Do you need to be made clean before God today?
Trust in Jesus. He is the sacrifice that is
greater than, more extensive than, more particular than, and
more holy than all of the rituals in the Old Testament
law. He is the one and only true God,
the Great Physician who can heal you and save your soul.
Let's pray, Father. Thank you.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming into our lives, for
coming into our sight and in our hearing, giving us the ability
to see you come down from the mountain so that we could come
and kneel before you. What?
What an opportunity. I pray it's not wasted among the
people here today. I pray that there, if there is
someone who does not believe in you, God, do the work that only
you can do through the hearing of all the scriptures and the
message, the singing, the praying, the preaching of your
word. I pray that that person would
come to faith in you. Do a miracle, Father, make them
clean, heal them of their infectious sin.
And Father, thank you for what you're doing in us.
Thank you that we're no longer that that person, that Wretch
that is separated from you, but you've made us clean and holy.
And now when you look at us, Father, we have the
righteousness of Christ. Thank you, Jesus, we worship you
today. Amen.