The Life of Jesus The..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Wednesday Bible study. Let's please open up our Bibles to the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter eight.

We are going to continue with our series of Bible studies on the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are approaching to the end of this series. As I said, we have chosen seven different moments of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are trying to see his ministry as the incarnated Lord Jesus and how he accomplished salvation for his people. Now, this evening, we are going to be addressing one of the other topics of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And those are the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ and the portion of scripture that we are going to be reading together.

It is found in Matthew chapter eight, Matthew chapter eight. And we are going to be reading From verse 1 until verse 17, that's going to be the person that we're going to be reading. Brother, I'm going to get you, please, to help us reading this. Matthew 8, chapter 8, verse 1 through 17. 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, can you make me clean? And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them. When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him.

Lord, my servant is laying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And he said to him, I will come and heal him. But the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I, too, am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, go, and he goes, and to the other, come, and he comes, and to my servants do this, and he does it.

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, Truly, truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping And to the centurion, Jesus said, go, let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment. And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with the fever.

He touched her hand and her fever and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve him. That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Amen.

This is the Word of God. Now, brothers and sisters, as I said, we're addressing the topic of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in this portion of the Scripture here, we have at least three types of three examples of the miraculous workings of the Lord Jesus Christ. And remember that I've said before, when I had the opportunity to share with you, that we could consider the Gospel of Matthew as a presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ from the author to a Jew audience. This is a document that was written with the purpose of sharing of this Gospel of God, this Gospel of the Kingdom to primarily a Jew audience.

And for that reason, we're trying to cover several particular moments of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, how He is portrayed as the Messiah, the Anointed, the Chosen One of Israel and the Savior of the world. For that reason, we started from Matthew chapter 1, going through the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ and showing that He was the promised King, the descendant, the offspring of Abraham, and according to the flesh, the King that will come from David. He was going to be born from a virgin, Virgin Mary, and He was going to be testified to the Gentiles, to the wise men. We also covered the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, how He fulfilled all righteousness of the old covenant law, and how the Father and the Trinity of the Father and the Holy Spirit testify and give the credentials to the Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ. We also spoke about the temptations in the wilderness and how even Satan, in a sense, credentialed the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and how the angels came and ministered unto Him.

And last week, we had the opportunity to address the beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Namely, after the end of the ministry of John the Baptist, starting in this province, in this district of Galilee and this area, this region of Zebulun and Nephtali. If you go there to chapter 4, which was the person of Scripture, that we studied last week, just in the end of the chapter, we're going to be given additional information about the beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is found in verse 23 and verse 4. It says, "...

and he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom," which is what we covered last week, "...and healing every disease and every affliction among the people." So here the author has given us the first information of this beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. saying that He started healing every disease and every affliction among the people. And then He tells us that the fame of the Lord Jesus Christ is spread very rapidly throughout this district or throughout this region.

After this portion of Scripture in chapter 4, we are going to be given three glorious chapters There are three glorious chapters, 5, 6, and 7. Yes, there are three glorious chapters that we know as the Sermon of the Mount. Here, the Lord is going to speak about the law as it was given by Moses, but now this is the greater Moses. This is very important because during that portion of the Scripture, the author does not address primarily what Jesus Christ does, but rather what the Lord Jesus Christ teaches. everything that he taught to the people.

And it is in chapter 8, the chapter that we are now going to study, when Matthew is going to start to write to his audience about the miracles that he performed. So in the end of chapter 4, he said that the Lord Jesus Christ started his ministry teaching and healing the sick and then he in chapter five six and seven he shows us the teachings of the lord jesus christ and on chapter eight he is going to show us the doings or the miraculous workings of the lord jesus christ namely his miracles during his ministry now what we are going to do is that we are going to address two primary thing, so two main points that I want us to have in our mind. And that is the first point, it is what is the main purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ? What is, in general, what is the main purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ? And once we have addressed that from a biblical evidence point of view then we will get into what Matthew is trying to communicate to his audience precisely here with these three examples of miracles that he has provided in chapter 8.

So it's very important that before we address those two points, the general purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, and second, the importance or the purpose of Matthew with these miracles, with these workings of the Lord Jesus Christ, that before we address those two things, that we understand the structure of the text that we have in front of us. So here in front of us, in these 17 verses that our brother has read for us, we have three different types, if you want, of healings or miracles better. You have in the first section from verse 1 through verse 4, you have the healing or the cleansing of a leper. That is the first miracle that Matthew has given us in this version of Scripture. Then in verse 5 through verse 13, we have the healing of the servant of Isenturion, which is something that we have studied in the past.

We have this second miracle in that portion of the Scripture. And then in verse 14 until the end of this section, we have kind of like two things there. We have the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, And also in verse 16, we are told that that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and also that he healed, in plural, those who were sick. So we're given those three, at least, Persian scriptures there. The healing or the cleansing of the leper.

Also, we have the healing of the servant of the centurion. And then in the end, we have the healing of Peter's mother-in-law with these demon-possessed people and also these other six that were brought to him. I think that perhaps, I hope that if time is sufficient, we will cover those three. If not, we will cover one or two, but trying to address those two topics. What is the main purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And what is the intention of Matthew when he's, after the glorious teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, now he gets into the miraculous workings of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's start with the first one, the main purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in order to do that, I'm going to bring your attention to Matthew chapter 11, Matthew chapter 11. And I want us to start the meditation on the purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ from this portion of scripture in Matthew chapter 11. Now, in Matthew chapter 11, we are going to have John the Baptist sending some of his disciples to ask a very important question to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we're going to read carefully Matthew 11 from verse one through verse six. And let's see the narrative of this story. Mikey, would you please help me just read in that section, please, brother? When Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities. Now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

And Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk. Letters are cleansed, and the deaf hear. And the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news and preach to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Amen. Now, brothers and sisters, I don't know if it happens to you, but I cannot avoid the uncomfortableness, if that is a word, of having here John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the one who was prophesied in the Old Testament as the forerunner of the Lord, the one that was going to come with the spirit of Elijah on the day of the Lord, the one that according to Luke was going to be a great man and who was filled with the Spirit even from the womb, the one who saw the Lord Jesus Christ and cried out, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the one who Witness the Lord Jesus Christ coming to him, baptizing him, and also the testimony of the Father saying that this is His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased, to whom the Scripture was said, that upon whom you see that the Spirit descends like a dove, this is the Son of God, having this man now. After all of these proofs, after all of these things that he lived and that he experienced, that his beloved cousin was the Lord, the Savior, the Messiah, the King, that he knew these things, and after some time, he sent some of his disciples to ask a question that seems to be here doubt that he was not a hundred percent sure that everything that he had seen and all of these things that he had witnessed corresponded to things were for the Messiah of the Jews. But we have that important question.

But in order for us to conclude and to understand biblically what is the purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are not to focus so much on the question but rather on the answer that the Lord Jesus Christ gives. Because she could have said, John, you are a relative of mine. You baptized me. You have seen all of those things. You saw me as how I was just going and got the Father testified and how the Spirit came upon me.

Yes, I am the Messiah of the Jews. Yes, I am the Savior of the world. But instead, the Lord Jesus Christ decides to do something very different. He points John the Baptist to the things he had been doing in the beginning and through his ministry, not only teaching, but rather the miraculous workings that the Lord had been doing. So we have in verse 4, And Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news. preach to them, not only the message of the gospel of God, this message of the kingdom that was at hand, but rather all the miraculous workings was what the Lord used in order to prove to his beloved cousin, John the Baptist, that yes, He was the Messiah. Now, brothers and sisters, there's not much effort that we have to do, biblically speaking, to come to the simple conclusion that the purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ was to attest of His Messiahship. was to prove that He was the Messiah, was to give a sign and to point to Him as the Messiah of the Jews. We have been studying that for many, many, many months now.

But if we needed some scripture to clarify that, then we should read them. And I'm just going to point you to Acts chapter two, if you can come with me in Acts chapter two, because here Peter is going to make this point very clear on the purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you go to Acts chapter two, When Peter, after they had received the power from on high, and he's preaching this first sermon to all these people, then in chapter number two and in verse 22 through verse 24, he's going to say something very important about the mighty works and the mighty things that the Lord Jesus Christ had been doing. So, Brother Jesus, if you can help me, please read in verse 22 through 24. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pains of death because it was not possible for him to be held by him. Amen. Now, please, he is very clear how Peter says that this man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, was attested to you by God.

But pay attention that the means by which Jesus Christ is attested is by mighty works and wonders and signs. And these mighty works and signs and wonders are works that were done by God through Him. So the source of these mighty works and wonders and signs is God Himself performing that through Jesus Christ, the Messiah, which is what Peter is going to defend after this portion of the Scripture. But also pay attention to what he says in the end of verse 22, after he says that this was performed from God through Him, in your midst, as you yourselves know. So, this attestation was not something that happened in private.

The purpose of these mighty works and wonders and signs that God performed through Jesus Christ was clearly made evident to the people that were questioning the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is exactly the point that the Lord addresses in John chapter 10. If you go to John chapter 10 verse 22, John chapter 10, verse 22. To verse 27, Samuel, if you can please help me read in that brother. At the time of the Feast of Dedication, at the time that At the time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem, it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon.

So the Jews gathered around him and said, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, bear witness about me. but you do not believe because you are not among My sheep.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." You cannot avoid to hear their desperation there when they're asking the question. Please tell us plainly if you are the Christ, but either you can hear the answer of the Lord, I told you, I told you and you do not believe. Not, I told you, yes, I am the Christ, but rather He says, the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, that it is the works, the mighty works and the mighty things that I have done among you and in your midst testify that, yes, I am the Christ. And not only that, that my authority comes from heaven.

That is what it was said to Nicodemus in chapter 10, if you go there. This was made known among the rulers of Israel in John 3, as I passaged with the study, of course, in the past. In John 3, in verse 1 and 2, he says, Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, John 3, verse 1. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This was a man who knew the law, who was instructed in the law, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know, we know that you are a teacher and this teacher comes from God. For no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him. So the Lord Jesus Christ had performed all these mighty works and all these miracles and all these signs and on top of that, that witnessing and that justification, they knew that the person that would come and do those signs was a person that was coming from God and not only that, but that God was with him. The main purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ was to attest, to confirm, to point to the Messiahship of the Lord Jesus Christ as one that is sent from God and that is with God. And that was the authority of the King of the Jews.

And we know that because we have studied that for a very long time. But what I want to point your attention to, it is rather to the understanding or to the intention of Matthew in pointing or speaking of those miracles that we had in Matthew chapter 8. So please return to Matthew chapter 8. And let's now pay attention to this text, because Matthew is going to be very careful in presenting to us these miracles in a particular way. You will see that before people here are healed, Matthew takes the time to clearly describe how the healing takes place.

So pay attention to the first healing. For instance, he says, when he came down, chapter eight, verse one, when he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. This great mountain is when he had been teaching what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. So when he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. Verse 2, And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

Now pay attention to how the healing takes place. And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean." Here we can see the active intention of this Messiah, whose mighty works, signs and miracles are for a witness unto the people of Israel of who He is, performing one of these mighty works in a very particular way. before healing this or cleansing this leper instead of just simply commanding with his mouth or simply just saying be healed he's intentional in stretching out his hand and touching the leper and when he does so then the person or the leper is clean See the intention of the Lord. Now go to the second one, because in the second miracle that we have here, we have now the interaction of the Lord Jesus Christ with a centurion.

And the centurion is going to tell the Lord Jesus Christ that his servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. Now, you can see in verse 7 that before the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of healing, he speaks of a genuine intention that he has. And then he says, and he said to him in verse 7, I will come and kill him. the active intention of the Messiah, King of the Jews, Savior of the world, in proclaiming His ministry, His might and His power, as He's about to perform these workings, miracles workings here for this servant of the centurion, is that not that He says, he is healed or because you have faith he's healed, but rather he says, I will come and heal him. I will come just in a similar sense how I stretched out my hand and touched the leper and then he was cleansed.

I will move, I will come to you and I will heal him. This is the intention that we have here. Now, if you go to the third miracle, in the case of Peter's mother-in-law, we are told that there is again an action and an intention of the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 14, we're told that, And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law laying sick with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever let her, and she rose and began to serve him."

So the Lord Jesus Christ here, again, he's intentional in extending or stretching out his hand and touching her hand in this case, and then she is cleansed or she is healed. This is very important, brothers and sisters. This is very important. And Matthew, or the author of Matthew, is trying to make a very important point on how the Lord is performing miracles. In order for us to understand that point, we have to return to our passage that we read in Matthew chapter 11, when John asked that particular question of if you are the Messiah.

There's a portion of information there that the Lord says that we did not address, but that he says very, very clearly. After John, just analyze with me, please, in verse two, how now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, that is, John was not ignorant. John is not that he did not know of the deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not that the Lord Jesus Christ was providing some new information to John, that all of these miracles are taking place, that all the lame is walking, and that the blind is receiving their sight, the leper is being cleansed and that the deaf can hear. It's not that John the Baptist is receiving new information.

He would have known through his disciples, of course, and the text says here that John had heard in prison about the deeds, about the workings of Christ. However, he sends two of his disciples and the answer that the Lord Jesus Christ gives to the two disciples also says, go and tell John what you hear and what you have seen. They have also witnessed or they were witnessing the deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet the Lord continues to give the answer based on his miracles, his mighty works and all the things that he had done. But then in verse six, he says something very interesting.

In verse six, he says, Unblessed is the one who is not offended by me. Blessed is the one who is not offended by me." Of course, the Lord is attaching this to what had just happened. That a person has come and asked a question in which there seems to be doubt of what the Lord Jesus Christ is and the things that He has done. And He says, blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

That word offended there is very important because it speaks of scandal. Or it speaks of, blessed is the one who does not stumble upon me. Blessed is the one who it is not scandalized because of the things that I do. Or blessed is the one that it is not ashamed of the things that I do. And he's attaching these to the question of the disciples of John and the question that John himself had sent through them.

The question that we need to ask ourselves to understand this is, what does the Lord mean? What is this offense? What is this scandal? What is this thing that he's saying that blessed is the one who will not stumble upon me or who will not receive an offense because of me? Let me submit to you that if we check a verse that is found in Matthew chapter 9, we might perhaps understand what the Lord is trying to do if you go to Matthew chapter 9.

We will see now a question that is asked to the Lord Jesus Christ, not from John the Baptist himself, but through his disciples. In chapter number 11, we have John the Baptist asking the Lord Jesus Christ a question through his disciples. But in chapter 9, we have the disciples themselves asking a question to the Lord that is going to give us, I think, important information to understand this scandal, this offense that the Lord Jesus Christ is to this first century Jewish society. Verse 14 in chapter 9, it says, Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, Why do we, the disciples of John, and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And then he's going to give the answer, but the answer is not going to be the important thing.

I want you to see the facts that are given to us in the question. These are facts. And the disciples give those two facts here, that it is that them, the disciples of John, fasted in the same way that the Pharisees fasted, which was different to the way that the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ would do those things. Actually, the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ were not fasting. This is very important, brothers and sisters, because the practices of the disciples of John were closer to the practices, the religious practices of the Pharisees and of course of the Sadducees and perhaps of the Essence, perhaps more than likely the Essence, but the practices of the disciples of John were closer to the practices of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, of this time and contrary or opposite to the practices of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this is very important, brothers and sisters, because this teaches us of not only the religious practice of religion in general in the first century, but also the general perspective that the people of Israel had of the forthcoming Messiah. We have read and I have explained even from Acts and we have mentioned in the past that even the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ were confused about this man, the things that he was doing, the things that he was saying, the things that he was teaching to the point that when he is resurrected and he's about to be ascended, they ask him, as we have addressed in the past, when are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? When the Lord had been teaching them about the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven, the question that they ask is, when are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And this is completely understandable, brothers and sisters, because for all of them, the coming of the Messiah represented the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, even by force. and the removing of all of these empires that were above them and the building up of the walls and the restructuring of society again and even the Messiah was going to be the king.

to the point that you remember when we started a church, that after the feeding of the great multitude, they wanted to make Him King. They wanted to make the Lord Jesus Christ the King because for them, the One that was going to come, the Lord from Jehovah, the Messiah, He was meant to be the One that was going to bring peace, stability, it was going to restore the kingdom and everything was going to go back to times of David and to the times of Solomon. That was the understanding but this Jesus Christ When he came, he was doing things in a very different way. And the way that he was doing things became offensive or became even a stumbling block, not only for the Pharisees, but even some of his disciples will doubt. Even the disciples of John and John himself then will question.

Yes, I know that I baptize you. Yes, I know that I saw the Spirit of God descending upon you. Yes, I know all of these prophecies. But this is not what we were expecting. And in Matthew chapter 8, the Lord, oh better, the Spirit of God through Matthew is precisely pointing us to the workings of Jesus Christ in a very offensive way to the Jews.

in a very offensive way to the Jews. All of these things that we describe here in chapter 8 of how he stretched out his hand and touched the leper and how the leper was cleansed or how he wanted to go into the house of the centurion and heal his servant on how he touched the hand of Peter's mother-in-law and healed her. These were unorthodox ways of performing these particular things to the point that for the Jew reader, for the person that is reading chapter 8, that person will have a sense that Jesus Christ is breaking the law. that seemingly the Lord Jesus Christ is breaking the law of Moses. And this is very important because in the previous teaching of the Lord that Matthew has presented, it's everything about the law of Christ.

It is about the law of God, the greater law, the revelation, the higher revelation of the law of Moses. Yet here, when after the teaching about the law, Matthew is going to present Jesus Christ as a seemingly lawbreaker. This would have been offensive and scandalous for those who would have read these particular things. So we are to understand those things. And I don't know if we're going to have enough time, but at least let me just try with the first one.

If we want to understand the glory of what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing here, we are to understand the Old Testament laws that spoke about the lepers. So now I'm going to point you to Leviticus chapter 13. I forgot for two seconds the chapter in Leviticus and I was like, wow. Leviticus chapter 13. Now, brothers and sisters, you must pay attention to the Word of God.

We're just going to be reading a scripture here, and I want you to see the understanding of what the leper is and what the law says about the leper so that we can understand what the Lord has done. I said 13, right? 13, verse 45. Brother, can you please help me reading this? Verse 45 and verse 46.

He shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose. And he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone.

His dwelling shall be outside the camp. Now, pay attention, please, brothers and sisters, to this. A leprous person, it is a person who was ceremonially unclean, that it was not worthy to be for worship, not apt for worship, but this person that is unclean, He used to be outside the camp. He used to be removed from the presence of the people. This is a person that is unclean.

So you understand the question of the leper when he comes to the Lord. Lord, if you will, you can make me clean because he was an unclean person. Now go to Numbers chapter 5, please. And in Numbers chapter 5, you're going to understand now the command that God gives in regard to those who are unclean in this case because of leprosy. Brother, please help me with that.

Yeah, 5, 1 through 4. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge, and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp in the midst of which I dwell. And the people of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp, as the Lord said to Moses, so the people of Israel did. Now, brothers and sisters, the leper was an unclean person that was to be put outside of the camp because it was unclean for ceremonial purposes.

And the commandment, the law that was given to the people of Israel is that they had to actively remove that person from the mist. Namely, they were not to be in contact with the leprous person or with the leper, otherwise they will also be made unclean. And that is made clear to us if you go to Numbers 19 in verse 22. Numbers 19 verse 22, the general loss of purification, speaking of the unclean person, Speaking of the unclean person, it says in verse 22, the last verse of Numbers 19, it says, And whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean, and anyone who touches it shall be unclean until evening. Brothers and sisters, the law of Moses said, that a leper was an unclean person and that people were not supposed to touch, not to come near, not to bring them into the camp because they will become unclean and therefore they will not be able to participate in worship.

They will be made unclean. Yet the Lord Jesus Christ, in his grace and his mercy and his glory and his perfections, when the leper comes to him and he kneels before the Lord saying, Lord, if you will, You can make me clean. He does not only do it, but he says that he wills and Jesus stretches out his hand and he touches the unclean thing. In the eyes of the Jews, he breaks the command. In the eyes of the people, he touches with his hand that which is unclean, making himself unclean.

And then this person, the Lord Jesus, with sweet words, I will, I do desire to make you clean. And he says, be clean with the power of his mouth. We need to understand the law of the cleansing of the leper for you to understand what the Lord has just done. Please go to Leviticus chapter 14. This is going to be rather a long portion, but we need to read it to understand what the Savior has just done.

Leviticus chapter 19, please. Chapter 14, sorry. Chapter 14 is just the chapter after the portion that we read. And we are going to read the first 20 verses here. Your Bibles, if you have the ESV, they have a very accurate title that it is laws for cleansing lepers.

At least that's what my Bible says. These are going to be the loss for cleansing the lepers. Now, brother, sorry, I'm just going to get you to read that again, please, from verse one through verse 20. I know that there is going to be many details on what they had to do, but just try to follow on the processes of what they were supposed to do in order to be made cleansed or clean once they were found to be lepers. So from verse one to verse 20.

The Lord spoke to Moses, of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp. And the priest shall look, then, if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedar wood and scarlet yarn and hyssop And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water. He shall take the live bird with the seed of wood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease.

Then he shall pronounce him clean. and shall let the living bird go into the open field. And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. And after that he may come into the camp, but live outside his tent seven days. And on the seventh day he shall shave off all his hair from his head, his beard, his eyebrows, he shall shave off all his hair, and then he shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and he shall be clean.

And on the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb, a year old, without blemish, and a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour with oil, and one log of oil. And the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who set the man who is to be cleansed, and these things before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of Mim. And the priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it for a gilt offering, along with the log of oil, and waive them for a waive offering before the Lord. And he shall kill the lamb in the place where they kill the sin offering, and the burnt offering in the place of the sanctuary. The guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest.

It is most holy. 14. The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of the right hand, on the big toe of his right foot. Then the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand and dip his right finger into the oil that is in the left hand and sprinkle some oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. And some of the oil that remains in his hand the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot on top of the blood of the guilt offering.

And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed. Then the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. The priest shall offer the sin offering to make atonement for him who is to be cleansed from his uncleanliness. And afterwards he shall kill the burnt offering. And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar.

Thus, the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean. Brothers and sisters, I don't know if you have noticed this, but what Matthew is writing and how he describes the story is not that the leper comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and says, please heal me. Rather, the question that he asks is, can you make me clean? Can you make me clean? That is, can you remove All that which prevents me from coming into the camp.

Can you remove from me all that which prevents me from coming into the temple, from coming into the presence of the priest? Because when you go in the portion of the scripture that we read, it says, that he shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall go out of the camp and the priest shall look then if the case of leprous disease is healed Then all the things that we read needed to be performed. It was not sufficient for the leper only to be healed of leprosy, but rather he had to go through a ceremonial process that will make him ultimately clean and to be accepted within the covenant people. sprinkling of blood from birds and we have body shaving, we have oiled anointment and we have sacrifices. All of those things, they need to be performed in order for the healed leper to be made clean and then accepted within the covenant people of God and then also to be presented for worship.

Yet the Lord Jesus Christ seemingly touches the unclean thing, and He cleans the unclean thing. And I don't know if you pay attention to verse 2, but verse 2 is glorious there in chapter 14, because it says in very subtle words, very subtle words in chapter 14, verse 2, it says, this shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. This shall be the law that it is available for the leper in order to be clean and in order to be retaken into the community and into the worship of the covenant people of God. All of these were the requirements of the ceremonial law. All the things that we have just read was the requirements of the ceremonial law for a person to be made clean, in this case, a leper.

Yet when the Lord Jesus Christ touches the unclean, he becomes the fulfillment of full of these laws that we have just read here of sprinkling and the body shaving and the old anointment and all the sacrifices law fulfilled in Christ but just the touching of his hand upon the leper and the leper now is not only healed but he is made Clean, seven, eight days he was supposed to wait with all of these ceremonies in order to be made clean. But then just the touching of the law fulfiller, the savior of the world, the one who came to take the unrighteousness of the world, to make them righteous, just at the touching of his hand, made automatically clean. So he says as the Messiah, See that you say nothing to anyone, the humble Messiah, but go, show yourself to the priest, because now you're clean, and offer the gift that Moses in the law commanded for a proof to them. that you have been made not only healed and whole, but that you have been made clean by God himself. And then you can come into the presence now of the priest saying, I am clean.

And I was clean by the hand of the Messiah. God himself was the one that cleansed me. Brothers and sisters, that is glorious because Christ came to fulfill the law. that it is everything that was presented in the Sermon of the Mount, yet here in chapter 8, Matthew presents the Savior as an apparent lawbreaker, but what it was lawbreaking for the Jews, it was lawful feeling for those who have faith in him because Christ did not come to the world to judge the world but he came to save the world so that he will make the prophecy that is in the end of what we read this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah he took our illnesses and bore our diseases he indeed did because he took the uncleanness of these people He indeed fulfilled the law. He was the law for the cleansing of those who were dirty.

Let me just address quickly the second one because the second one is also glorious, brothers and sisters. We have the second miracle of the servant of the centurion. Now, in the same way that he stretched out his hand and he touched this leper, In this second miracle, Matthew is very intentional in telling us that the Lord said, I will come and heal him. And we are to know that the centurion was a Gentile. And the Lord Jesus Christ, upon the invitation or upon the request of a Gentile, he says, I will come and I will heal him.

And the word come, I will come, that we have there in the end of verse 7 in chapter 8, is exactly the same word that is used to speak of Jesus Christ entering into the house of Peter in verse 14. And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law laying sick. Now, brothers and sisters, entering into the house of a person in first century Middle Eastern culture, was not just for you to be seated in a corner. If you entered into the house of a person, you were going to partake of the things in the house of that particular person. But there's something very important that we're told by the same Peter.

If you go to Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter 10, verse 28. Acts chapter 10, verse 28. Jesus Christ makes clear here his will to come and enter into the house of a centurion who was a Gentile and to partake in that house. Now, verse 28 in chapter 10, it says, And he said to them, this is Peter, You yourselves know how unlawful It is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean."

Brothers, now the story here is different, but Peter gives us important information there. The Lord manifested there His will and His intention just as He touched the leper, the unclean person, and he apparently and seemingly to the eye of the Jews was becoming unclean, but rather the holiness of the sanctification of the Lord cleansed the leper. Here we are also told that He at His will desire to go and be in the house of this centurion and to heal this person in the eyes and in the understanding of the Jews. This was also unlawful and the mixing of the unclean with the clean or the holy with the common. Yet the Lord Jesus Christ did not come to bring judgment He did not come to take the leper outside of the camp.

He did not come to take the demon-possessed person and to remove it from the midst of the people of Israel. He did not come to bring judgment upon the Gentiles. He did not come to bring the judgment that the law said that they deserve. But rather He came to, as the prophecy said, to took our illness and bore our disease sins on him. He bore our sins by fulfilling the law in reality.

He fulfilled the law. As I said, he did not come to judge the world, but he came to save the world. He's gonna come to judge the world when he comes for the second time, but when he came for the first time, he came to fulfill the requirements of the law so those who have faith in him will be made clean, will be made holy, will be made accepted in the covenant people of God. And brothers and sisters, our salvation is not any different to the touching of the Lord Jesus Christ to this leper, because in the eyes of God, we are unclean and we are unholy. And even though we don't even come to the Lord and say, Make me clean.

It is the Lord Himself that has to draw us to Him in His mercy and in His grace and in His kindness, so that we will come and say, Lord, Lord. Help me in my unbelief, clean me, purify me, cleanse me from inside. And the Lord is so glorious and gracious and loving that He indeed extended His hand and His heart and His complete soul in order to cleanse us and to make us acceptable in His presence, not to call us unholy or unclean anymore, But those who now are united to Christ are partakers of His purity and His perfection, so that as He is holy, we are to be holy. And those whom the Lord foreknew in eternity past, those have been sanctified by the Spirit to be sprinkled by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and to obedience, as Peter says in Peter chapter 1 in his first letter. This is not only the purpose of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, but this is the glorious intention of Matthew on bringing this offense to the flesh, bringing this offense to the carnality of the Jews by pointing that this one that it is a Nazarene, this one that is humble, this one that it is the son of someone of no reputation, this one that does not have the credential of a scribe or this person that comes from Nazareth, that this person indeed is the Messiah of Israel and actually the Savior of the world, that salvation is extended to the Gentiles because the kingdom is not the kingdom of Israel, but is the kingdom of God.

Praise God for that, right? Amen.