The morning church Today's scripture reading comes from
Matthew 8 verses one through 4. If you're using the Bible under
the seats, this can be found on page 762.
When he came down from the mountain, for this is Jesus
cleanses A leper, when he came down from the mountain, great
crowds followed him. And behold, A leper came to him
and knelt down 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 before approved to them.
This is God's word. What's going on?
Port City family and friends. How are we doing?
Good. Well, my name is Tanner.
I'm the lead pastor here. It is a joy to be with you.
And at Port City. We are a teach a man to fish
kind of church, OK. We, we like to give you fish.
We also like to teach you how to fish.
OK. And when it comes to Bible
reading, we want to teach you how to fish.
We want to teach you how to read the word for yourself.
So as we dive into a new series in the book of Matthew, we we
got miracles going on. We got some really awesome
stuff. There's the number one rule of
Bible reading that we got to remind ourselves of you ready.
The Bible is not primarily about you.
Big facts. It's just true.
The Bible situates us. It situates us.
Our story matters. Your personality matters, but
it's not primarily about you. It's about King Jesus.
It's a window into his world. It is not a mirror for your
world first. It's a window into the Kingdom
coming among you, to Messiah among us.
And so as we come to the text, we come to find him.
And here's the great irony. If you want to find you, you got
to find Him first. Many people come to the Bible
thinking and asking good questions about how does this
apply to me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
And the problem with that is you actually won't be transformed
from glory to glory because the transformative agent is God, not
you. So we come to the Scriptures to
find Christ, and then from there we find ourselves in him.
And that's where the change happens.
So what I want to do, because I want to pray just for us, we're
going to be in Matthew chapters 8:00 and 9:00 for the coming
weeks. And just this, this posture of,
of, of seeing Christ and seeing who he is and who Matthew wanted
us to see Jesus Messiah as. OK, so let me pray and then
we'll dive into our text for today.
Our Father, we, we love you so much.
God, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of
Christ. God, we need your word.
God, we need you to open our eyes to see God.
What we can't see apart from you, God, we can, we can read,
we can string together syllables, we can understand
God, but we need you to illuminate our our mind to
understand why you have Matthew, write this book this way.
Show us King Jesus, show us ourselves as we see him, may we
be undone and grab hold of him. So God, do these things for your
glory and and bless this time for your glory.
We pray in Christ's name, Amen. Well, y'all, we're about to dive
into this first healing here. It's going to be awesome.
What we're going to see in the coming weeks, y'all, is this
combination with Jesus that he's full of compassion and
authority. You could say God is willing and
able. Isn't it good?
We got a God who's willing and able.
It's good to have a God who's willing.
But if you got a God who's willing but not able, that's no
bueno. If you got who is able but not
willing, that's no good either. But in the Scriptures, we see a
king who is willing and able to transform people who come to
him. Amen.
So that's what we're going to see and my hope for us is that
as we see him, we walk out with a more profound awareness of our
need for Him and how he can and will meet us in our need.
Amen. So our three points we're going
to, we're going to dive into some context.
First you got to know the context.
Then we're going to look at the story from the perspective of
the leper, from the perspective of Jesus, and then lastly from
the perspective of the priest. If you are ready, let me hear
you say I'm ready. OK, let's talk context.
Yeah, I was thinking about how to explain how context works.
Anybody remember Finding Nemo? Anybody.
One of the greats. Do you remember how Dory has
short term memory loss? You remember that?
OK, so at the end of the movie, Dory now has been hanging out
with with Marlon the whole movie, P Sherman 42, Wally Way,
Sydney, all that, the whole movie.
And they get in a little spat, you know, they fight and they
separate and Dory is swimming off.
She's like, Oh no, I'm supposed to remember something.
And somebody comes up to her. It starts talking about Nemo.
And she goes Nemo. That's a nice name, yo.
That is us with the Bible. Many times the author is
screaming. There is so much back story.
And we're like a leper. That's kind of cool.
And we're just like, we just don't see it.
Now, you do not have to be a Bible scholar.
Let me give you, let me give you just you don't need to have read
this thing 10,000 times, OK? Part of what you need to hear is
every author is doing what I just described.
And there's so much action-packed into, it's kind of
like when you send an e-mail with like 10 hyperlinks, like,
hey, as I said on Friday, link, link.
What I need y'all to do is this link, link and check this out
before you say back to me, respectfully put some respect on
my name, Sign so and so and check this article.
That's basically what the biblical authors are trying to
do. So when we come to the text,
there's a lot going on. We're not just jumping into a
story and asking our questions about how that applies to us
right away. Does that make sense?
It's not that those questions are bad.
We just got to wonder what was Matthew doing?
So there's like 100 things Matthew's doing by the time we
get to chapter 8. I'm gonna give you just three.
OK, Matthew chapter one, verse one says this.
This is the genealogy of the book of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of Abraham. The word genealogy in Greek is
the same word that the the Septuagint would use for in the
beginning, like in the first 3 words of the Bible, Genesis.
So what Matthew's communicating is a new beginning equal to the
creation of the world is happening in this Jesus Christ,
the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Son of David means king, OK, son of Abraham means the one through
whom all nations will be blessed.
So from the opening words he's saying this Jesus has continuity
all the way back to chapter 1 verse one of Genesis.
In the beginning something new is happening under this king for
all nations. Later in chapter 2 you might
know the Christmas story where King Herod tries to kill every
baby under the age of 2 to get rid of this king he heard about.
Y'all remember that? Does that sound like another
biblical figure who they tried to get out of the picture by
killing all of the babies under the age of two in the nation of
Egypt back in the book of Exodus?
So something new is happening that led to an exodus when that
last baby got saved. This baby is going to make it
out and a new exodus is going to happen.
Then we get to chapter 4 where Jesus goes into the wilderness,
not for 40 years as the people of God once did, but for 40 days
fasting, and he stands up to Satan's temptations and doesn't
test God, but he trusts God. And then in chapter 5, he goes
up on a mountain, which to a Jewish mind, they're thinking
Moses, but he doesn't go up on the mountain to get God's law
and bring it back down to the people who can't go up on the
mountain with God. He brings all the people with
them, sits down and doesn't ask God what's the law.
He just starts speaking to him. So there is a new Moses, a new
David, a new Abraham in our midst.
And he just gave the dopest sermon of all time for three
chapters that we preached on for many weeks.
So you could go back and listen to it.
And then we come to today's story.
Are you all track with me? So that would be like if we just
take all that like Nemo, That's a nice name, y'all.
The the leper. Everything about the way this is
constructed matters. You want to know how many
miracles there are in chapters 8 and 9?
Y'all, There's 10 miracles. OK, to the Jewish mind, 10 is a
big deal. 10 commandments, 10 plagues, right?
The 10 plagues were D creation. Creation was unraveling.
Now we're going to have ten miracles where Jesus restores
things as they were designed to be.
And the book of Numbers tells us in chapter 14 that the people of
God tested God, tested Yahweh these 10 times.
They did not trust him. So now we have this Jesus who's
going to do 10 miracles. This is very intentional what
Matthew is doing. So can you see why immediately
asking the question, can this still happen today is a good
question, but maybe not all of Matthew's intention.
Are y'all with me? OK, so let's look at this from
the perspective of the leper, OK?
The leper starting in Chapter 7, verse 28, the couple verses
right before our Texas said this.
And when Jesus finished saying these things or these sayings,
the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was
teaching them as one who had authority and not as their
scribes. 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.
OK, three notes about the leper to make.
OK, number one is the leper's condition.
Number 2 is the leper's posture #3 the leper's plea.
First, the leper's condition. Somebody say leprosy.
If you're looking at your Bible, probably right above the word
leper, it has a little note, maybe a little number one or two
or three, and then down low. It's going to tell you that this
word covers a range of skin conditions.
Let me tell you why it's trying to tell you that, because where
my mind immediately goes is that this is a medicinal medical
issue needing healing. I think rotting clothes.
I think a horrible situation. And it's not that that isn't
possibly the case, but the biblical understanding of
leprosy, that's what you got to get in your mind, was not
primarily that this man needed a doctor.
He needed a priest to pronounce him clean, OK.
He does not just have a medical issue that needs healing.
Notice he did not say, if you are willing, you can heal me.
He said you can make me clean, OK.
In the Bible's understanding of this, the Bible's imagination of
what comes with leprosy goes all the way back to Leviticus 13 and
14. And it was not just early.
God was not just ahead of the curve with medical things of how
to keep his, his camp clean of contaminants.
That's not all that was going on.
The primary issue was about who's able to be in God's
presence. That's the issue with being
unclean. If you are labeled unclean and
the priest goes through all the process and you are declared
perpetually unclean, it is a statement that you will never be
in God's presence. It is a label.
It is a a presence issue more than it's a contagion issue.
Now that doesn't mean where our mind goes couldn't have been the
case. It just means what the primary
issue is that he needed a priest and he is unclean.
Does that make sense? Y'all with me?
So what comes with being labeled unclean is a layer upon layer
upon layer of shame at the temple.
You ain't there. You're not allowed to be in
God's holy of holy in His presence.
The people of Israel were to be a Kingdom of priests.
That's what the book of Exodus says.
The whole point of him bringing them out of Egypt was so they
could represent Yahweh's goodness to the rest of the
world. So if you're saying this man
can't be in God's presence, what does that mean about my
identity? If you're in Israel and can't go
in the temple, it's almost like you're not really Israel.
Are you with me? You're not really one of us.
This, this man's phone had not rang for a while, no texts, was
not picked on the kickball team for so long that eventually you
stop showing up. Yo, there's a suffering that's
deeper than the physical. There's a suffering with the the
the pronouncement of unclean that carries with it levels of
shame that are hard to put into words.
It's a very exilic lifestyle and it's one of just utter
destitution and desperation for this man, which leads us to the
lepers posture. So there's this moment, y'all.
One of the things that Leviticus 13 or 14 is very clear about is
once you're pronounced unclean, you had to walk around saying
unclean, unclean. You had to make others aware of
it. So before you saw him, you heard
him. So he came shouting unclean.
Unclean at some level was probably an earshot of the
sermon. And he'd heard enough, seen
enough in Messiah to throw himself upon the ground, knelt
down. I bet the whole place just went
silent. Hear this man shouting unclean
and then he throws himself down and they're all like, what's
Jesus going to do? So remember in the the Old
Testament imagination, if you touch something unclean, you
become unclean again. That doesn't mean you catch a
disease. It just means like if you touch
a, a carcass, a dead body, the idea is you're now you're
unclean for seven days. You got to remove yourself.
It was all to point out the holiness of God and how you
can't just come to him in any kind of presence.
That's how holy God is. And leprosy represented a range
of skin conditions where once pronounced unclean, you unclean.
And this man throws himself down.
I mean, just totally kneels down on the ground in front of the
crowd, gets in front of Jesus and throws himself on the
ground. He throws himself down before he
says the word. Isn't it so often the case that
your posture precedes your your words?
You know, if you walk up to the Chick-fil-A counter, you're not
on the ground, You're not back to him.
You look him right in the face and say, I'll have a number one,
please. Number one with Chick-fil-A
sauce. You are you are you are
presenting yourself, posturing yourself.
Your posture always proceeds your plea and what we see in his
posture has so much to do with the life of faith.
And y'all want to say this as we throughout this series, what
we're going to try to do there's things from the individuals
throwing themselves at Jesus feet to learn for sure, but
y'all, the main thing we learned from them is that faith is not
primarily about you. Y'all check this?
We don't. When the leper throws himself
down, we don't applaud the leper.
We wonder what he saw in Jesus to get him to do it.
He saw something in the Messiah and he threw himself on the
ground. Are you tracking with me?
He'd heard enough. He'd seen enough.
He threw himself down. It's not a a good move that
Jesus like. Oh, gotta gotta it's it's not
something he is to be praised for in the sense that he has
like a faith gene. You know, God is not a genie.
We're like, he did something so outrageous.
I have to pay attention. Faith is responding to what you
see in the other. Faith is a response to what we
see in him. It's about the object of the
faith, not the one who possesses the faith.
Y'all the the Christian faith is like a bunch of people falling
off a Cliff. You falling, you dying, you
going to die. And you hear there's a branch.
You grab the branch. Do we praise the grab or do we
need to focus on the branch? The branch is worthy to hold
you. The branch is what saves you.
We don't go. How did he do it?
How did he grab on? It's like, hello, he heard there
was a branch. Does that make sense?
And So what we, what we emulate is what he saw.
We don't look at the leper. And if we do look at him and we
get next to him, guess what he's going to do?
He's going to say look at Jesus. We look with the leper many
times. And I'm just going to be honest,
what I hear in the bloodstream of of American Christian faith
experience is that sometimes we put our faith in faith, y'all.
We put our faith in Christ, not in our faith, not in our ability
to kneel. Something about the Christ
pulled the kneel out of him. Does that make sense?
We kneel because we see we are not to be praised for our kneel.
He's to be praised that he's worthy to kneel at.
He pulls something out of you. That's the life of faith.
If you want your faith to grow, don't focus on you, focus on the
Christ. If your understanding of the
object of your faith grows, your faith will grow as a byproduct
of your understanding that it can hold you.
Does that make sense? We are a people of the branch.
Does that make sense? We are a branch people.
The leper was a branch person. He saw something.
We kneel because we see the lesson of the leper is Jesus.
You know, like so the the posture is a good picture for
us. A man kneeling, humility.
I could give you 3 points on humility right now, but y'all,
the point is that Jesus is worthy to kneel at that.
He saw this man. Does that make sense?
So his posture is throwing himself down.
And then comes the plea. The plea, it's probably silent.
Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
It's a public declaration of trust.
You know, if at some point there's no plea, there's no
trust. There is a moment where faith
looks like do it like asking the branch, like it's not knowing
the branch can hold you doesn't get you held.
You know, like there comes a moment where you grab the branch
and the kneeling, the pleaing is saying grabbing, right?
That this is the life of faith. It's not to be praised for
having it. It's praiseworthy that you can
be held, but you got to grab. You got to grab and he throws
himself. There comes a moment when our
trust is shown or it's not real. That doesn't mean his words are
magic, right? It just means that he, he has
seen something in God and he grabs him.
Let's look at this story from the perspective of Jesus.
We're going to look at Jesus's stretch and then Jesus's words.
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.
Y'all in Jesus stretch again, just put yourself there.
This is a man you won't talk to if you're in that community.
There are people in our city that you see and probably recoil
from a little bit, right? We don't like to admit that
stuff, but there's a sense of discomfort with certain groups
of people, and you got to work through that.
I got to work through that. You feel it.
You know it when you feel it, OK?
Everyone in that community had that towards this man, and he
just threw himself down before Messiah.
I bet some of the mindset is, how dare you?
How dare you taint his reputation?
You're putting him at jeopardy. You know, it would have been
like not in our town, you know, like not don't, don't do that.
The Messiah here and I bet they're just like, what's he
going to do? He about to make him unclean and
just this pause this this panic inwardly.
Did he really just do that? And then Jesus stretches out his
hand. Y'all in the stretch again, in
the the Jewish mind, only one person stretches.
OK this is a a a phrase that picks up on what Moses and Aaron
did 8 times in the book of Exodus.
But then it said about Yahweh himself through their
stretching. He was stretching.
His deliverance of of the Israelites from Egypt was
described in Exodus 15. When they get delivered, they
sing the first worship song of the Bibles in Exodus 15, and
they say you have delivered us by stretching out your hand.
The idea is that only one stretches out their hand.
Matthew wrote those words with that imagery in mind.
A new exodus is happening right before our eyes, and the path to
it is through Jesus directly stretching out his hand and then
touching the man. He touched him.
That's so fitting. He could have said be clean.
We see in the rest of Jesus's miracles, his healings, all that
he could do. He could have said clean and
they would have been like whoa, that would have been cool.
You've got to understand that everything he does is on
purpose. It says it's he stretched out
his hand and touched him saying I will be clean.
The touch and the declaration were synonymous.
So he is touching him to cleanse him.
Y'all, this is such a good picture of the gospel that
through the touch of Christ we are cleansed.
Y'all, through the touch of the one who is clean, the unclean is
made clean, and the clean somehow didn't get uncleansed.
It's this idea that in the Messiah there's a substitution
that occurs. The unclean becomes clean.
Y'all, this is the gospel. This is what all of the
Scriptures point to. And notice what Jesus doesn't
do. Hey man, I know you're unclean.
You're not. You're not as bad as you think
you are. I love you.
He did not tell him his situation is not as bad as he
thinks it is. Are you with me, yo?
The leper's assessment of his situation was very accurate.
He was very aware of how destitute he was.
That apart from a miraculous cleansing, I am unclean, yo.
The leper knew where he was at before the Lord.
The question is, do you? The leper was aware that apart
from intervention, I'm unclean. You apart from God's
intervention, our situation is hopeless.
More hopeless than a leper. Skin condition is hopeless.
Our situation is hopeless. That's what the Bible teaches.
We don't just need a little bit of help.
This man had tried everything they used to say It's like a
garment of stains, so deeply stained you just can't get it
out. I've even got shirts.
Even in 2025, I know you got a shirt you can't clean.
You got at least one that you hope people don't point out.
I know which shirt I'm thinking of it right now.
I'm thinking I've used the bleach, I've used the stuff,
we've used the marker. We've done it.
And this is just grease from eating chicken, which was dumb.
I should have changed the shirt. But yo, there is a a filth in
the imagery of the leper that is a parable of our condition.
We can't be made clean apart from Messiah touching us.
Y'all, the gospel is the good news that Christ Jesus died in
the place of sinners, was resurrected so that when he
touches us with the healing touch in the gospel, he absorbs
our uncleanness. He absorbs that which shames us,
He absorbs that which keeps his eggs out, He absorbs everything
that puts us on the outs with God.
Y'all, our sin puts us on the outs with God, and it's deeper
than guilt. Yes, Christ died to purchase a
new record for you, but it's deeper than that.
Your exclusion from God is deeper than just the wrongs
you've done. You are unclean.
Christ cleanses us. He allows us to come back before
the Father. This is the great exchanges.
We go out once in Christ as if we are Him and no longer as the
leper. That's the great exchange of the
Gospel and in Jesus's words, this declaration he makes over
him, right? He stretches, cleanses.
I will be clean and we'll talk a little bit in a minute about the
priest and that dynamic. But he says go show yourself to
the priest, say nothing to anyone, offer the gift that
Moses commanded for a proof to them.
I just imagine that walk to the priest.
I just imagine the leper walking and just what's going through
his mind and we'll talk here in a minute.
He's not going to the priest because he needs it.
The priest needs the leper. The leper don't need the priest
no more. But what's so amazing about that
is the leper on the way there? Y'all, his whole world just
changed. He didn't just get some status
that don't impact his life. Everything changed.
A whole new world was built through Jesus's word.
That's what words do. They build worlds.
And when Jesus cleanses you, it changes your world.
It changes his social dynamic. It changes his religious
dynamic. He doesn't need to beg for
anything at the temple no more. He doesn't need to feel
excluded. He doesn't even need to go to
the temple. The good news of the gospel is
in Christ now. You are the temple, my guy.
We going to find out in a second.
The priest is out of a job. That's what he about to find
out. So the idea is by declaring this
over him, he's on that walk. He's just thinking, wow, my
whole life just changed. The Son of God Messiah just
looked at me and said you're in, you've been out your whole life,
you are in and no one could kick you out.
Nobody. You don't have to say anything
to anybody. A lot of people focus on don't
say anything to anybody in the messianic secret, which I think
is at play a little bit. But I also think part of what
he's doing is he's just saying you got nothing to prove you in.
I heard a song this week and it hit me.
The door you're knocking on is open and you have been welcomed
in the gate. The way is standing wide, never
to be closed again. There's a place here at the
table. Nobody's going to take your
seat, so you can come and go as much as you need.
Be yourself and be at peace, y'all.
There's a peace Messiah can give you that nobody else can.
When you're kicked out of all other tables, that's the one
you've always got to see. That and you can come in freely
to the Father, the one who made you in his image.
His whole world changed with that word.
Let's talk about the priest. Let's talk about the priest.
Why did he send him to the priest, y'all?
He sent him to the priest for a very simple reason.
Because who declares that lepers are clean priests?
A leper has just been cleansed. So go show yourself to the
priest as a proof to them. OK, here's the idea.
They're going to hear you or Clint.
Like they've seen this guy. Somebody declared him unclean.
He's been cleansed without them. What he's communicating is your
whole system is now obsolete. Somebody came in that fulfilled
all of the pictures that everything you've ever done
pointed to the temple, the priesthood, all of it was good.
It was a gift of God. And somebody would step into
those and feel that in such a way that we're in a whole new
era. And that's what's happening
right now. And what's so cool about that is
that would be a bit of a that would be a bit of a shocker to
the priest if he's really paying attention.
Basically it means Messiah's here, you can go home.
You don't have a job no more you out of a job.
And now if he's in love with the system and the job and all that
stuff, he's going to be infuriated by Jesus arrival,
which many were, because when you want status quo, Jesus is
always going to be an offense to you.
But if you want a whole new world with Christ at the center
revolved around him in the system to, to, to be done
because the Christ has come, he's going to be happy.
Here's the idea. He sent the the leper to the
priest. Like just imagine it.
Jesus tells the leper to go to the priest.
I think Jesus, after that priest, he's trying to help him.
See, my friend, before I came, you thought you were the priest
and he needed you. Now what I need you to
understand is you need him. OK?
The point is he sends the leper to the priest so that the priest
can understand. You are now the leper, My
friend. You need cleansing.
Who's your priest? Does that make sense?
Like the idea is that in Christ the tables have turned.
Y'all. In Christ we don't go to a
priest. He is our priest.
And in Christ we all are. Like the leper.
We all need cleansing. The leper is your lesson to that
priest. He went to work to be a cleanser
and he leaves work thinking I need to be cleansed.
The Messiah's here. Isn't it so fitting in the book
of Matthew? Because the first miracles
happen in chapter 4 but they're not named.
It just says Jesus was healing the crowds, right?
This is the first one with the face.
Isn't it so fitting? The first miracle is about
access to God. Y'all listen to me.
We got to be real for a second y'all.
Every miracle points to who the Christ is.
They're a sign and they point to something that is coming in its
fullness, but something King Jesus the Messiah brought.
There were many in the crowd that day.
Maybe the priest himself that went home and missed it.
If you think maybe I'll hit the Lotto and be the one who gets
the healing from Jesus tomorrow, you're missing the point.
There were many. Jesus did not heal.
There were towns he would not go into.
There was many layers to the ministry of Jesus.
OK, and the point was not that it's all changing right here now
it's just a taste. Every miracle, it's just a taste
of what is to come. Y'all, There is a world coming
where leprosy's gone. There's a world coming where the
whole system, though obsolete now, doesn't even exist no more.
And the idea is we don't go home thinking, oh cool, I saw Leopard
get healed today. Nemo, that's a nice name.
The point is, where is the story going?
Who is this Messiah and how much do I need him and how will he
meet me? So I just don't want you to miss
that. I don't want you to miss it
thinking he only loved the leper.
He loved everybody by healing the leper.
It was a picture of what they all needed and what He wants to
be for them all. All signs point to the need we
have in Christ and His desire to meet it.
And there is a day coming y'all where no more miracles are
needed. One of my favorite artists.
He says I believe that we gonna win.
What He don't heal now, He gone then.
OK, that's kind of the idea. There is a day coming where all
of this conversation is obsolete in the slice, the peace, the
taste that Christ has given and that still happens in many parts
of our world and many times y'all, the goal is never the end
breaking of the Kingdom that happens in that slice.
But to point, if you can get the miracle and miss the Christ, you
missed it. You didn't get a miracle you you
got duped. Does that make sense?
I don't want you to get duped. You need Christ, that's who you
need. So I don't know what you who you
think you are in the story today.
You are the leper, that's who you are.
That's who I am. That's our need level.
Y'all, there's a story, some of y'all know this in Luke 17 where
Jesus heals 10 lepers. He says y'all start walking
towards the priest. They all do 10 of them Luke 17
and only one returns to Jesus. 9 kept going.
They got what they wanted and kept moving.
Y'all the point of Jesus He he turns to the one which of course
is a non Jew right? He says where are the 9?
The idea of Jesus touch is to keep bringing you to him.
Does that make sense? The point of salvation is
ongoing dependence. He's not saving you so you don't
need him. He's saving you so you will need
Him. He's cleansing you so you'll
keep coming to Him, so your confidence before the Father is
full so that you can come to him.
Full of the blood of the Lamb with the Spirit sealing you so
you could come all the way to the throne of grace to find the
mercy and help you need in time of need.
That's the point of the gospel. It's not so you could say your
team Jesus or I got this cool thing happened to me one time
with Jesus. The point is so you can walk
with him in dependence, like a branch upon a vine.
The point is to walk with Him all day, every day.
He saved you so He could keep filling you, so you could bear
fruit and walk with Him. So what you don't need today, my
friend, what you don't need is a few hacks.
What you don't need is just a little bit of help.
What you don't need is to be told you're not as bad as you
think you are. What you need is a reality
check. That's what we all need, and
that's what Christ gives us. That's what He wants to keep
giving us, and He wants to keep meeting our need.
For some of you, I think today is the day of salvation.
You need to agree with God that you are not well.
He wants to set you free, but it always starts with truth and the
truth is apart from Him, you are not well.
You need cleansing, you need healing, you need to be brought
in. It takes Messiah's blood for you
to be well. And for some of you, I just pray
that you would trust Christ that you will put your trust in what
he's done and not and what you do.
And then for the what's so cool about this is for those of us
who are in Christ is from the second you are a healed cleansed
leper. Guess what you never forget.
I used to be a leper right, like I I was there.
That was me. You just become a healed leper
in a community of cleansed lepers who are then showcasing
the Messiah's goodness to the to the priest in our life.
Are you with me like it gives us our identity, our belonging and
our purpose back that we lost sin took it.
We get it back. This is who I am in Christ can't
be taken. This is who I belong to and this
is the mission I'm on and it's easy to talk about what God has
done when he's really cleansed you.
If you've always had a hard time sharing about Christ, I resonate
with that. There's something in your life
ain't hard for you to talk about.
I promise. There's something that just just
effortless y'all? B&J juice bar smoothies Princess
Anne AB over by Norfolk State easy for me to talk about.
So easy BAJ juice bar now I would rebrand it with a little
more clarity. That's a hard name.
I was like what do I type of my thing?
But it's incredible. It is not hard for me to talk
about B&J juice bar and I bless you in Jesus name and you could
go there and here's the idea. Why is it easier for us to do
that than to talk about what Christ has done.
If you were that on the outs and you bring that far, brought in
through his blood and given a family to belong to in a mission
to be a part of. You don't have to be an expert
to make a big impact for Jesus. That's the good news.
You just got to have a story, but a story that won't help
nobody is when you started going to church, a story that won't
help nobody is you like that guy, he's a good preacher.
Listen to the sermon, tell them what Christ did.
Tell them who he is. He is the leopard cleansing
Messiah. He is the one who saved me, who
told me who I really AM and brought me out of it and chose
me for who I am. And now he keeps watching me and
I get to walk with him. That's all we got to do.
Many y'all know the song? Jesus paid it off.
This is one of my favorite lines in any song ever.
I'm going to read this. We're going to be done Lord.
Now indeed I find thy power, and thine alone can't change the
leper spots and melt this heart of stone, because Jesus paid it
all to him I owe sin had left a Crimson stain.
He washed it white as snow. Let's pray.
Our Father, we love you. God, we're just reminded today
of who we once were. Reminded that God, we thought we
were so cool. We thought we were on top of the
world. We thought we were kings and
Queens and running the show. And then there comes a moment
where by your grace, you remind us we're not.
You show us we're not. God, we see our sin for what it
is. We start to hate it.
God, I pray even for some of my friends under the sound of my
voice. You would just lovingly show
them reality apart from you, God.
But the good news is so much greater than the bad news, which
is that you see us at our worst when we're most unclean.
When others distance themselves from us, You move towards us,
Father, You are the God who does not run away from us.
Because somebody needs to hear that today.
Somebody has been run away from their entire life and they're a
mess. God, would you help them to
agree with your assessment about their need for you and your
willingness to meet them in it? God, you are willing.
You are able to save. You are able to cleanse, you are
able to change generations of sin and brokenness.
God, you're able to restore families.
You're able to do things nobody else can do.
And it's by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the
cross and the resurrection of God.
We just pray that power over our church.
We pray God that you would God you would set people free from
bondage God and you would show them that you love them and
thank God for your church. God just make it as easy as
talking about NFL or whatever it is the good weather outside.
God just make it so easy for us to tell people our story that
you, God saved us, that you God reached down when no one else
would, That you saw us when we felt unseeable, that you father
died. You sent your son to die in our
place. We love you, we praise you.
Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.