Lord Over Sin And Death

Andrew Grey preaches from Matthew 8 v 1-17 on Sunday 18th January 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Can I ask you please to take up a Bible and in it turn to Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 8, and in the Black Church Bibles, that is on page 813. Christian people believe that the Bible is not just information about God, but it's a place and a way to encounter God, to actually meet Him, to receive from Him. And so we take the Bible very seriously, but we also expect in it and from it to meet with Jesus Christ, who is the center of the whole of the Scriptures. So Matthew chapter 8. Children, as ever, learning sheets. They're making uh their way around the room for you. So when we get to the reading and then the preaching of God's word, please listen really carefully. There are some things for you to listen out for, fill in, colour, draw. Then at the end of the morning, uh downstairs, actually, when we uh gather around the baptistry, there'll be some good things to enjoy from the chocolate tin as well. Let me pray and then I will read uh the word of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you open up your lips and you speak to us in the pages of the Bible, and we pray that for each one of us here we would hear the voice of Jesus. We would hear him, we would see him as he truly is, and we pray in his name. Amen. Amen. So, Matthew's Gospel, chapter 8, verses 1 to 17. Let's listen to the words of God. When Jesus 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. When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying 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 another, come and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he marvelled, and said to those who followed him, 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 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 gnashing of teeth. 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 a fever. He touched her hand, 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 are sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Thanks be to God for his word to us today. God's word to us today is about death. Something that we try to push away. We use words like passing, even transitioning. We do not want death to be real. In the gospel according to Matthew, we have just come down from the mountain where Jesus has been speaking of the way of Christian discipleship. And everyone that Jesus meets in the next two or three chapters, they look dead. They are in some way under the power of death, or they're about to die, or they actually are dead. There is a leper, there's a paralytic, diseased people, demon-possessed people, bleeding people, a corpse. Now the world we live in, it still has the same death rate. 100%. We dwell in the region and the shadow of death. That's how the Bible puts it. All of us, we live in death land. And yet, in the gospel, Jesus comes to us and he says, I will end the reign of sin and death. The next chapters in Matthew's Gospel give us a whole series of mini resurrections. Today we're just looking at the very start of chapter eight. These are resurrection miracles, they are life from the dead miracles. And they show to us the authority and the power of Jesus. Not in a general way, but in a very specific way. The authority of Jesus Christ, over death, and over death's companion, sin. And what we get shown here in Matthew's Gospel, chapters eight and nine, it is a glimpse of the kingdom of Jesus in its fullness. Look at the very last verse of our reading, verse 17. We read that sentence. Those words they actually come from the first part of the Bible, from the Old Testament, from Isaiah chapter 53. Maybe the Old Testament's greatest prediction of Jesus dying on the cross. And the Bible says that in dying on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ was victorious not only in taking his people's sin, but also in taking their sicknesses. Now the Bible is clear, Jesus' reign, his kingly rule, it is not yet fully established. It is the plan of God, the sometimes painful plan of God, that we still live and grieve alongside disease and mortality. Now you can actually bump into some false churches that would claim otherwise. You know, if you believe in Jesus, you will never get ill, which is just a lie. But the authority of Jesus in these resurrection miracles, think of them as being like a show home for what the kingdom of God will be like when it is fully built. A few years back they put up a housing estate in a field next to my parents' home, and the first thing they did was to complete a show home, to show what the whole estate would look like when it was once complete. It's to entice you in, isn't it? You know, this looks amazing. I want some of this. And that is what the Word of God in this chapter is doing for us. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ in his power and in his kindness, which he extends towards those who live in deathland, you know, people who live under the shadow of death and of sin. And here is what he promises to those who join his kingdom: removal of sin and one day freedom from all our sicknesses. And the reason he can extend that offer to us is that he has power over death and sin. Imagine if you can a very different world. Imagine if you can this world as it began. So we go back to the very beginning of the Bible, we find ourselves in the Garden of Eden, and we find ourselves in a perfect world. There are our first parents, Adam and Eve, enjoying fellowship with God, fellowship with each other in a perfect world, in which there were no wheelchairs or cancer wards or get well soon cards. But then, with sin, the world goes horribly wrong. When man rebels against God, everything is changed. There's a broken relationship between us and the Creator. Human relationships go wrong, and onto the scene comes sickness and bodily death as the accompaniment to the spiritual death, which comes to all of those cut off from the God who made us. And so at the start of Matthew chapter 8, you know, they come down from the mountain. They've just been hearing heaven's truth from heaven's lips, and it's into a very broken world that they come, that Jesus comes. First, there's a leper. And behold, a leper came to him. That's verse 2. And this is really, really important. In the Bible, leprosy was not just a terrible health problem. And the clue is in the word clean. He doesn't come and say, make me well. He in verse 2 he says, You can make me clean. Now, leprosy, it was like a living picture, a hideous living picture of being excluded from God. If you had leprosy, you could not fellowship in God's house. It kept you away from the company of the church. And it was like a 3D graphic picture of sin. So our disobedience of God. It's like a disease, and it ones that keep you and it keeps you away from God. If you touched a leper, you became unclean yourself. Cleanness was not contagious, contagion was contagious unless you were Jesus. Unless you were Jesus, the powerful Son of God. So imagine that leper there that day in this desperate situation. And Jesus reaches out to him in both compassion and power. He says, I will be clean. And it's not just a picture of Jesus' authority over physical illness, it's actually an invitation. It's an invitation to come to Jesus with our leprosy, if I can put it like that, our spiritual dirtiness. Because Jesus is both willing and able to bring cleanness, to clean us up before God. Well, Jesus walks on through this world of the walking dead, and he comes to Capernaum, and he's met by a Roman soldier, a centurion, from whom he hears these words. So here is a problem that this very powerful and very capable man cannot solve. So here he is. Think about who he is. He is a Gentile, uh, not a Jew. Uh he was an enemy Gentile. Remember the Romans at the time occupying the ancient land of Israel. And he comes to Jesus and he addresses him as Lord and he says, Help me, help. And what the centurion saw in Jesus was authority. Did he clock that? As he speaks with Jesus, he saw power to command. He understood the chain of command. He was an army officer. I issue an instruction, it is done. You, Jesus, you command this, speak to this, and it will be done. And Jesus was astonished at his words. And in verse 11, he makes this solemn statement about who will benefit from his power. He says, just look at verse 11. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Now, in that verse, Jesus is looking forward to the end of all things, to the fullness of his reign as God's king. And he describes it here as the Bible so often describes it as being like a feast. It's always been God's plan that Jesus would reign on earth as he reigns in heaven and have a people to share with him in his triumph, to eat and drink with him. And in the story of the Bible, that people is the family of Abraham, with whom he made a covenant of grace with him and his family with him to save them from death and sin. And the surprise here at this feast with Jesus are people you wouldn't expect to be there. And it's the clues in the points of the compass from the east and the west, far off people, spiritually far off people, morally far off people, like a pagan Roman centurion, unclean people, but who come to me, who cry out for help, they will know the joys of my kingdom. And the flip side, well, that's the next verse, isn't it? People who think they should be there, who presume on religious heritage, churchiness, and so on, Jesus will not save them from sin or death. And in a word, and in a word, this servant is healed from a distance, no consultation, no rehab. The very real and extraordinary power of Jesus over death and deathliness. Then, towards the end of our reading, verse 14, he enters the house of Peter's mother-in-law, who lay sick with a fever. Now, for most people in most of human history, a fever would likely end in death, and yet the Lord of life he reaches out, he touches, and he heals. So do you see here what we what we have in these words? It is a vision of Jesus' kingdom and its fullness and all its beauty and all of its wonder. And for the Christian person, this is what we get to experience in the presence of Christ in a renewed creation, all made new. All made new. And we long for that, don't we? Why not yet? Why not now? Lord, how long? We groan. It's actually part of Christian experience, isn't it? We know there is something wonderful coming, and yet here we are, and so we groan. And Jesus knows that. He knows the pain of sickness and of death. He knows what it is to die. But we also hope. Christian people hope. We look through a world of sickness to resurrection. It will be all right in the very, very good end. Our Savior here, pierced for our transgressions, he will take our illnesses and diseases to. And we know it's true because of his own resurrection from the grave. Well, what do we do with this, Jesus? The passage we're looking at this morning, it's got three resurrection miracles, and it's got three perfect responses. And just for a moment, look through the passage again with me at these three individuals who show to us what it means to trust Jesus with our death and with our sin. They will help us to trust Jesus with our deaths and with our sins. So the leper. We find the leper on his knees. He is a picture of dependence. I cannot do this. He bows down before Jesus in humility and in worship, and he says those amazing words, Lord, if you will, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus responds, those beautiful words, I will be clean. And that encourages us to trust Jesus with our dirtiness. When we feel the weight of our sin, we haven't loved God as we ought, we haven't loved other people as we ought. And all of a sudden that becomes a crushing weight and burden upon us. We get shown what we are really like. And actually, to see that and feel that is a precious gift from God. If then we would come to this Saviour, you know, join ourselves to him and be cleaned up by him. So there's the leper. Then the centurion. Doesn't he show us how to trust God? I mean, verse 8 is breathtaking, isn't it? Yeah, Lord, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word. Just say the word. Such humility, isn't it? This powerful soldier, he humbles himself and he has amazing confidence in Jesus. And he is actually the greatest miracle. It's not the healing, but the conversion, the heart change of this Gentile Roman army officer. What we see in him, you could call it saving faith. And that's why Jesus is so astonished. It's not that he was taken by surprise. God doesn't learn something he didn't know before, but there is something astonishing and wonderful in the centurion's words. You know, just imagine a child explaining quantum physics, or a politician apologizing before he is forced to. And now this man, this Gentile soldier expressing total faith in Christ. So, in other words, these are not normal words, these are extraordinary words. I wonder do you have similar confidence in Christ? Just think over the centurion's approach to Jesus. He comes in reverence, doesn't he? He knows he has no rights. I am not worthy. He's got no confidence in himself. There's no sense he's coming along with a basket full of good deeds or achievements or anything he can kind of barter with Jesus about. No confidence in himself, but total confidence in Jesus. And he knows he's got freedom to ask. It's wonderful, isn't it? And this is this is something that the Christian has, by the grace of God, freedom to come before God and ask. So the words of the centurion, they are the sound of saving faith, you know, breathed out in prayer. And it can come from the lips of anyone. You know, be they so ever far from God. You imagine you're about as far to the east or as west away from God as you can imagine. Well, actually, there are no boundaries as to who can come in and enjoy the blessing of Christ. And what about Peter's mother-in-law? Verse 15. It's just a little sentence there, but it's beautiful. She rose and began to serve him. She was a servant. Now it might be that some of us stumble on that word serve him. Many folks do not like the idea that Jesus is a king and his people are those who submit to him and. Serve him. He is a king. I am a servant. But do you see how he uses his authority? He uses his authority to love and do good to others. It's what he ultimately did when he was nailed to the cross on the first Good Friday. In fact, the Bible says that he is the servant. It is of the very essence of Jesus. And that draws something out of the Christian. Like in Peter's mother-in-law, she rose and began to serve him. So when you have been saved by Jesus, you want to serve him. It's the sense that Jesus is the king and he's now my king and he's a wonderful king. In his service, there is freedom, actually. It's what I was made for, and I don't want to serve myself anymore. Jesus, I want to serve you. It's that spirit. Well, as we finish up, at the heart of this passage, uh, Jesus tells us something about that future. Uh it's like a feast. Yeah, reclining at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The Bible speaks about this feast, which is the best way of imagining a perfect world with Jesus at the centre. It's a bit like a perfect Christmas meal. I don't know if that does it for you, but it's that, isn't it? And elsewhere, the Bible describes this as a feast of rich food, of well-aged wine, where he will swallow up the veil of death forever. That gets both sides of it, doesn't it? Sin and deathliness banished, joy and gladness with Jesus forever. And so the invitation is well, now, now, in the here and now, we're to trust him with our sin and with our deaths. Let's bow our heads, I'm gonna lead us in prayer. Let's pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his deeds, and especially we praise and thank you for his death and resurrection, which is for your people the end of sin and death. And we pray therefore for ourselves, each one of us, for the first time or the umpteenth time, that you would show Jesus to us, overcome our sins and rebellion. Show us how good it is to bow the knee and confess faith and serve your Son Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.