We had this college and young adult group when I was in Grand Island, Nebraska, and everybody was poor. We were all kind of relatively new to the adulthood thing. And it was really, really fun. And we met together every week, multiple times every week. It was like second college. It was awesome. And one of the things that we did as a fun activity was a debate series called, I think this was it, which one is worse. We divided into two teams for a whole semester, a fall semester. And then each team would try to come up with something that was very, very bad. And then they would send a representative forward at each meeting to have like a five-minute debate as to which of the two things is actually worse. And then there was an independent judge, a celebrity judge each week that really wasn't that celebrity-ish. And they would judge, and then you would accumulate points over the course of the semester. And we made an agreement at the beginning that the winners would get to go to our friend Brad's super swanky, cool house on the golf course and have an awesome Christmas party with sweaters and fancy drinks and stuff like that. But the losers would have to be out on his patio in the snow without coats, no coats, no drinks, no fun. And they had to watch the winners inside celebrating Christmas. And I am very pleased to say that the losers upheld their end of the bargain. They literally came to the party. They literally stood out in the cold. And one of the conditions was you have to act sad. You can't act like this is like quirky or ironic, funny. You must be sad. And they did that for probably 15 or 20 minutes. And then we just liked them so much it felt like we needed to let them in. And yes, I was on the winning team. Likewise, in Matthew chapter eight, we run into a similar situation, but without all the fun and quaintness. You get this great big party up on this hill where this homeless guy is saying all of this stuff that people really wish would turn out to be true. And it's kind of mind-opening and mind-boggling for everyone. And there's, I think, a lot of optimism as this is all happening. But there's one dude who is out on the metaphorical patio in the snow without a coat on and without a swanky drink, looking in and definitely sad because he can't go to the party and hear all of these amazing things that are being said. It's just not for him. He's not invited. He didn't win the game of life because this dude has leprosy. So there's all kinds of rules that we're going to look at later about why he just wasn't allowed to be around other people. And you might be like, well, why do we even need rules? Isn't it pretty self-evident? I mean, if you have leprosy, you don't want to rub that on other people and have them get your leprosy. So yeah, part of it's common sense, but part of it also is wrapped up in the religious context, the old legal context of what Christians called the Old Testament, of what people at the time called the scriptures. And so this guy is doing what he is obligated to do, and that is keep his distance. In fact, no, let's just go over there to Leviticus right now. Okay, Leviticus 13 and 14 are a Bible wonderland. And I encourage you to go there and just meditate deeply and spiritually on all of the amazing nuggets of wisdom and emotional impact that you get out of this. I'm just going to give you a few samples here from Leviticus 13, but I think it might be more effective if I do that in a really reassuring schmultzi devotional voice, so that you can better meditate on what has been written down here. Leviticus 13, 1. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. The priest is to examine the sore on his skin. And if the hair in the sore has turned white, or the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is an infectious disease. When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean. Skipping ahead to verse 18, for greater impact, when someone has a boil on his skin and it heals, and in the place where the boil was a white swelling or reddish white spot appears, he must present himself to the priest. The priest is to examine it. And this goes on and on to cover things like burns and sores on the head and chin and yellow pustules. It's really incredibly detailed on all of these things. But when we get to verse 45 of Leviticus, it says, the person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face, and cry out, unclean, unclean. As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone. He must live outside the camp. And then chapter 14 is all of the elaborate, complex process for what it takes to be readmitted to society and declared clean. And if we go into chapters 15 and 16, we learn more about this uncleanness and we learn that it is definitely contagious, which is clearly implied in what we just read in chapter 13, but overtly stated throughout the rest of Leviticus. So in the same way that my wrestling partner's stench and personal appearance made it clear to everyone that they were to steer away from him, he was announcing that he was unclean without saying a word. So the symbolic stench of the person who had leprosy or some sort of skin disease made it clear to everyone that they needed to stay away. And if that weren't enough, you also had to present yourself in a way that made it clear that you were not someone others were to come into contact with, and you had to verbally announce your not cleanness, as we discussed yesterday. So what an awful state of being. Did any of you get coronavirus or get contact traced because you were around somebody who did? And then you just got told, you got to go disappear. You just can't be a part of society for a while. Okay, I might get those measures and others might push back on those measures a little bit. But the larger point here is how did that feel? How would that feel? How weird was it over the last few months to have somebody around you cough or sniffle a little bit and be like, whoa, whoa, back off. Did you put distance between yourself and that person? Okay, now imagine that instead of it being like, I suspect you might be sick, but it could be any number of different kinds of sick. Instead, it's a kind of sick where you can see gigantic pustules on their skin, or you can see stuff like leaking out, or you can see stuff rotting off of their body. The revulsion and social incapacitation that would happen for the person who had these kind of skin conditions would be shocking to us. Absolutely unbearable. I get its societal necessity, I get its medical necessity, but there's another level to that rejection that you and I and my wrestling partner in middle school do not understand intuitively, and that is the religious rejection. I mean, maybe there's a coronavirus parallel here on the you can't go to church thing, but that was more of a nobody can go to church thing. Here, you're the only one who has to sit outside on the patio in the cold because you can't go to church, not just because you'll infect everybody else, but because the scriptures hold out this idea that there's a God-ordained metaphor here that that physical uncleanness is representative of the kind of uncleanness that all people bear to some extent in sin that we can't do anything about. It's not because of naughtiness, it just happened to us. So this guy cannot go and receive the Old Testament version of the sacraments. He can't go and commune and participate in the things that resolve sin, in the things that resolve broken relationships. Anything that is broken in this person's life stays broken. There's a distance then, not just between the individual with the skin disease and society, but also between the individual with the skin disease and God. This is a crippling thing to have to have gone through on every level. So this guy is outside the party looking in, and then the party comes down the hill to him, and I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for him to muster the social courage to do a thing that is absolutely forbidden and to do it in front of everyone, including this really impressive person. How's he gonna respond? What if you get smacked down by Jesus for breaking the law? But this dude takes the chance anyway. Picture the most offensive, bizarre antisocial behavior you could engage in in a store or a market. I mean, go big here. Picture something shocking and disgusting that would make everyone lose their appetite and despise you and make everyone feel like you were aggressing against them and putting them in danger. And just imagine that, maybe multiply by eight or ten times, and that is what this guy does. But he walks up, which is forbidden, and says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean, which means that he knew just from what he could maybe hear from down the hill, maybe just based on reputation that Jesus had already established, maybe in the same way that in Matthew 16, Jesus says to Peter, like, uh, that wasn't really your idea. God revealed this to you, maybe miraculously. Something happened and God made this evident. I don't know, but this guy gets it right in a way that I would not have got it right. I don't think you probably would have got it right, nothing personally. I think I like you, but I don't think we would do this. I don't think we would be so bold. He doesn't come as a rebel or one who wants to burn down the system. He comes in humility and he assumes the right posture before the king. Now think about it. What's the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount? It's the Lord's prayer, right? What's the initiating prayer, the initiating thing that a person who aspires to be a part of the kingdom must say and do? It's the Lord's prayer. What is the Lord's prayer? It's an oath of fealty, it's an oath of loyalty to the king. A thing that says, You're king, I'm not, I want what you want, not what I want. You're the one who's in charge of provision and taking care of my needs and justice and making things right and forgiveness and security and protection. And I trust you with all of that and forfeit my rights to try to own that for myself. That is the posture before the king that Jesus just described as being the right one. And who is the first person to assume it after Jesus explains it for the first time? It's not a Pharisee, it's not a Sadducee, it's not a professional religious person or teacher of the law, it is not Peter or one of the really elite disciples, it's not the disciple whom Jesus loved. It's somebody who is on the metaphorical patio sitting out the party, who has no business getting this right, but he does. Now think about the symmetry of this moment. How does the Sermon on the Mount open? And it says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. How does the Sermon on the Mount end? Remember, the chapter divisions are artificial. Well, a way to summarize what we're watching happen right here is Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. More about this tomorrow. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.