Matthew 8:1-4 You Don't Have to Have it Together (A Short Bible Study)

Did you know that you don’t have to have it all together to get God’s attention?  Well, now you do.  It’s true, Jesus is worthy of our honor and respect and yet he constantly invites in people like you and me who are ill prepared, confused, but know that we need his restorative touch on our lives. We’re in Matthew 8:1-4, the part of the story when Jesus meets someone who probably missed out on his famous Sermon on the Mount but needed his healing touch.

Transcript

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Did you know that you don't have to have everything all put together in order to get Jesus' attention? Well, now you do. It's true, Jesus is worthy of all of our honor and respect, and yet he chooses to invite people just like you and me into his presence, people who are probably a little bit ill prepared, maybe confused, but knowing that we need to experience his healing touch on our lives. On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am genuinely glad that you've joined us today. We're in Matthew chapter eight, verses one through four. It's the part of a story where Jesus is coming down from the Sermon on the Mount, and he encounters somebody who probably didn't hear any of it. We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. Go ahead and open your copy of God's Word to Matthew eight, verses one through four, and we'll read that together. But first, let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this good day. God thank you that we come when we come and meet with you, that that we learn, but more than that we are changed. That's what we desire today. Amen. All right. Let's go ahead and read this together again, Matthew chapter eight, starting at verse one. When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said. Be clean. Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, See that you don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Let's go ahead and pause and listen to God. Once again, if it helps you to have a better pausing moment, you can go ahead and pause this podcast. That's easy to say. All right, let's make a few observations, not just about the text itself, but what's leading up to it. The first thing I wanted to point out is that Jesus is moving in in quick, uh quick time here from teacher to healer. There are two things that Jesus did a lot of during his earthly ministry, teaching and healing. And he's just finished probably his most famous, uh, most influential uh sermon that we have uh recorded for us. And that's not to say that the other ones weren't good or helpful or transformative. It's just to say that this one, everybody knows this one, right? It is the Sermon on the Mount. It was one of the key pieces of him introducing his message, his understanding of the kingdom, what it meant for them and means for us to follow him, uh, how we understand the context of the old covenant and then this new thing where we get to follow Jesus. And it's just, it's incredible. It's life-changing for everybody who heard it, and we're still talking about it today. So he's just finished that. Uh, we can read Matthew chapter five through seven in a pretty short amount of time. I would imagine that the actual teaching time was quite a bit longer than the time it takes for you and I to read it. I don't think he just like spat it out verbatim the way that we have it, but uh, but I think it is a good representation, an accurate representation of what Jesus taught. So he's just finished that and he is walking down the mountainside, it says in verse 1. Large crowds are following him, understandably, and then his pathway is interrupted by a man who has leprosy. And this is one of those moments where we understand in kind of like real time that Jesus did care about the crowds. There are moments when he looks over them in other spots in the gospels, and it just says he he looks at them and he has compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He he cared about those moments and he understood that those big teaching moments were a critical part of his ministry. But he also understood that the individual mattered and matters for us today. And so this man comes and and he comes in and he he wouldn't have been allowed to be a part of those crowds. That's that's why he couldn't have participated. Anyone with an infectious skin disease, which is what we should understand when we read the word leprosy in the New Testament, it might have been like actual leprosy, the kind that you think about, you know, where uh parts of your body begin to shrivel up and you have sores that won't heal and those kinds of things. But any infectious skin disease was kind of in that category. Anyways, those things were contagious, and we uh we can appreciate that they were trying to keep society functioning, and also it was a part of God's law to them that if you had an infectious skin disease, you needed to live outside the camp, outside of uh the main area where people were living, and so they they lived in different spots. So he wasn't permitted to to mingle with the rest of society. His disease, unfortunately, made him an outcast. And it isn't to say that people didn't care for him or love him, it just meant that he couldn't participate. It would have been inappropriate and it would have caused a scene if he had been amongst the crowd, because people would have noticed his condition and uh they would have called him out on it. It would have caused quite a ruckus. So we're pretty certain he, you know, he wasn't there. Now, maybe he was just kind of off to the side somewhere and and sort of listening to what he could hear. That's that is possible, but there's a good chance he didn't hear all of the good things that Jesus had just taught. So Jesus moves again here from teacher to healer, and then uh this next little bit here, and I'm just thinking about all four of these verses kind of throughout our time here together. I'm not breaking it down verse by verse, but uh, we see him breaking good rules for better reasons. And I love that. It's not that Jesus was just breaking rules throughout his ministry for the sake of breaking them. Like he's not just trying to stir the pot or push buttons, you know, just for his own amusement or to whatever, to aggravate people. He he had reason for what he did. See, by rights, this sick man should have announced his approach towards Jesus with a pretty loud, unclean, unclean, and just letting people know that that he was infected. And it's possible, again, that he did that and it's not recorded, but it's not recorded. The other part about this here, the other rule that gets broken is Jesus had no business touching somebody who had an infectious disease. Ceremonially, it would have made him unclean. And then more than that, like that's the best way to contract somebody else's infectious disease when it's, you know, kind of in that mode. So there's just a there's a lot going on here that that shouldn't have happened, right? This man shouldn't have interrupted Jesus in the way that he did. Uh, we can certainly understand why he did what he did. I'm just acknowledging that by their rules, this encounter really shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't have happened the way that it did. Both men are are doing things that would have been uh kind of out of bounds, at least from an etiquette or a societal measure, uh, kind of an understanding. But he does, right? But Jesus does. He does touch him, he welcomes the man who is sick, and he doesn't follow those rules, and then he he breaks the rule and he touches him and uh heals him, makes him clean, and and just it's a it's an absolutely uh amazing moment. So he breaks good rules for better reasons, and then we see uh he that he actually asks this man who previously had leprosy to follow the rules. Why? In order to have a testimony to the priests. So here's here's kind of these contrasting messages that are contained there in verse 4, and I'll read it again just to refresh us. Then Jesus said to him, See that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commandment commanded as a testimony to them. So on the one hand, don't tell anybody, don't post it, right? Don't don't talk to your friends, don't, don't walk around shouting out what is what has happened, you know, don't gossip about it, none, don't do any of those things. But I want you to go over to the priests. I want you to go through uh the rituals that the law required. By the way, if you're curious about that stuff, you can read about it. I believe it's in Leviticus 13 and 14 where it talks about infectious skin diseases and what was required of them. It's actually quite a lengthy little bit and it has contingencies for different situations, but you can read about that there if you'd like. Um but but that's what the Lord asked him to do. I want you to be a witness to these people, but not everybody, at least not in that kind of a way, and I find that to be quite fascinating. The other thing I just noticed here is it is the upside down kingdom at work. It's this idea that God selects somebody who society would recognize as an outcast, somebody on the fringe, and he uses that person to teach those who are a part of the establishment. Here's a leper who has been healed, and Jesus says, Go and be a witness to these people, the priests, the people who had authority and power and influence, and were doing important work for sure. All right. I wanted to leave you with two questions for reflection. The first one is simply this what has Jesus done for you? Or you might be saying, What do I want Jesus to do for me? The man with leprosy comes to him and says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And he he wants that uh from him to be, you know, to be made clean and all that that meant, to re-enter society, to be a part of what's taking place. And I would imagine that while if you're watching or listening to this, that you haven't experienced leprosy necessarily, that that there are things that Jesus has done for you. What what are those things? And and then the follow-up to that is who is he asking uh you to tell as uh as a testimony about it? So uh sometimes it's not just the fact that the Lord has done this good thing in our hearts and lives, but we also need to be obedient in in just letting people know. And I I think sometimes it's really okay for us to just tell everybody. I think it's different today than it was then. I think Jesus had his reasons for why he said what he said. And yet I'm also convinced that sometimes there are certain people who really need to hear our story or your story. So, what has Jesus done for you and who has he asked you to tell it, to tell that story to? Uh, be obedient and rejoice in what all what God has done for us. Easy for me to say. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this amazing day that you've given us. God thank you. Thank you for healing that man. I I know that it changed his life. God thank you that you still heal us today. Thank you that we can come as we are, oftentimes a little dazed and confused, and we can find you the good teacher, the good healer. And that changes us. Be with us now. Amen.