Matthew chapter 8. Brother Art, will you go back
in the office and get my phone? I need to turn my hearing aids
down. Matthew chapter 8. We've been
learning about faith. And so I want to give you an
illustration here of one who God has given faith, one who
comes to Christ through faith. This is what we've been studying,
so we'll see it now illustrated for us. It says here, when he was come
down from the mount, You know our Lord had been up there on
the Mount. He was preaching what they call
the Sermon on the Mount. And He just finished and He was
preaching. And it's appropriate that He
was preaching and then this man comes to Him because faith cometh
through hearing and hearing through the Word of God. So that was
appropriate because this is how God gives faith. and he's going
to work a miracle here. And that's appropriate as well
through preaching because the physical miracles that Christ
did are a picture of the spiritual miracle he works in giving us
life and faith. So that's what we have pictured
here through the preaching of the gospel. Now first of all,
no sinner is too sinful to come to Christ. No sinner is too bad
to come to Christ. Not any. He says here in verse
1, When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes
followed him, and behold, there came a leper. A leper. This was the worst, most dreaded
disease of that time that a man could have. If a man got leprosy,
he was sure to die. Unless God intervened, he was
going to die. And it's a picture of sin. Leprosy is a picture of sin.
At this time, leprosy was incurable. And so a man would die a slow,
lingering death. Well, that's a picture of sin.
You and I died spiritually in the garden and no man can cure
this. No man can cure us of sin. And
in spirit, we died immediately. But in body, unless we die just
immediately in God's purpose, we're going to die physically
a slow, long, lingering death. That's what sin has done to us. Sin is what makes you do what
you're told not to do. Sin is what makes you do things
that you know you're not supposed to do. That's what sin is. Eve had sinned in the garden
before she ever took the fruit. When she looked at that tree
and desired it to make her wife, she had already sinned in her
heart. And this is the problem. It's a heart problem we have.
And no man can cure that heart problem. Leprosy was a spreading
disease. It spread all over a man's body.
That's a picture of sin. Scripture says the whole head
is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even
to the head there's no soundness in it but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores. That's a description of leprosy.
But that's a description of our sin. It's from head to toe. We're totally, thoroughly corrupted
in sin. And leprosy was a hardening disease. Leprosy would cause, it's actually
a nerve disorder. And it causes the nerve endings
to die so that the leper could not feel any pain. He could put
his hand in a fire and burn himself and never feel it. That's what
leprosy would do. And sin hardens. Sin hardens. I was telling the young people
Friday night, the things that you did when you were five years
old that would just break your heart because it was against
your father or your mother. Well, when you got to be 10 years
old, those things didn't even faze you. And the things that
broke your heart when you were 10 years old, when you got to
be 20 years old, those things didn't even faze you. You just
get more hardened and more hardened and more hardened in sin. And
unless God intervenes and gives a man a new heart, he just goes
on becoming more hardened and more hardened and more hardened.
Scripture says this, it speaks of men having their conscience
seared with a hot iron. You know, I burned my hand real
bad one time working in a restaurant down in Tennessee. And it had
a big blister on it. It was just awful. But when that
thing finished being, you know, after the blister went away and
all that, I had such a callous on my hand. I couldn't feel anything
at all there. And I still don't have much feeling
there. If you really get burned, really, really badly get burned,
it'll destroy all the feeling that's there. Well that's the
conscience, God said. It becomes where there's no feeling
whatsoever. Who being past feeling have given
themselves over to sin. Past feeling. So God must intervene
or... That's our condition. We're the
leper. Lepers made everybody and everything they touched unclean.
And that's us by nature. You could do a good work and
the work be good and the work help somebody and do tremendous
amount of good for them. But between you and God, it's
a wicked work because you did it. And I did it. Because our
motive, the motive of our heart is wrong. We do things trying
to earn favor with God by nature. We do things trying to show off
before men by nature. All the motives of the natural
heart are wrong. And that's why when God told
Israel to build him an altar, and he said, but you make sure
you just make it out of stones, you get out of the earth, don't
you pick up your tool and start chiseling on it and try to make
it all pretty. It might look beautiful to you, but because
you touched it, you polluted it. That's us and our sin. We pollute everything. Under
the law, a leper had to be legally put out of the camp and had to
go dwell in a leper colony away from everybody. He had to be
separated out. What does scripture say about
sin? Our iniquities have separated us from God. It's our sin that
has separated us from God so that God can have nothing to
do with us because God's holy and we're sinners. And you know
the truth is we don't have any idea just how holy God is. We really don't. Even as believers
we don't, we know God's holy. We believe He's holy. But we
don't, we just can't enter into how holy God really is. Scripture
says God hates sinners. And now that's not, that's not
like a sinful hatred like you and I have. That's a righteous
hatred. God hates sinners. He doesn't
just hate your sin. He hates sinners. I was in a
college freshman English class, and I doubt they teach this in
college courses now. I don't know, but we were studying
the sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. by Jonathan
Edwards. And in the course of that sermon,
he says that God hates sinners. And of course, the classroom
was up in arms. This is in the buckle of the
Bible belt, you know, and they're up in arms and, no, no, God doesn't
hate the sinner. God just hates the sin. And I
spoke up and said, no, God hates the sinner. Well, before it was
over, the teacher wanted to debate this. And so there's the whole
class on that side, and there I am on that side. And I said,
well, I can't, I'm not gonna, I don't have any way of showing
this or telling you this, and there's no point in me arguing
with you about it. I said, but I'll bring my Bible tomorrow,
and I'll show you. Teacher said, all right. I probably
wouldn't allow that today either. And I carried my Bible in there
the next day. And I read some scripture to
him. And here's what the scripture said. The foolish, the foolish,
that's a man, the foolish shall not stand in God's sight. Thou
hatest all workers of iniquity. Not just the iniquity, he hates
the worker of iniquity. The wicked boast of his heart's
desire and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth. whom
the Lord hates. The wicked and him that loves
violence, his soul hateth. That's Scripture. That's how
holy God is. He can have nothing to do with
a sinner. The heavens are not pure in His
sight and you and I drink sin like water. That's how bad we
are. And God can have nothing to do
with us because He's holy, holy, holy. But now never imagine,
brethren, that you're too sinful to come to Christ. Never imagine
you're too sinful to come to Christ. The reason God chose
the people in Christ before the foundation of the world is so
that He sent His Son into this world to take flesh to bear the
sins of His people in His own body on the tree. So that God
is just now, His law was honored and He can give His people faith
and bring them to believe on Christ and in Christ they can
meet in harmony. Because both parties are equally
holy. Clay, you didn't say that. That's
right. In Christ, we're as holy as God. Because that's what Christ
was sent to make His people. We're holy and righteous in Christ,
so God who's holy and righteous can meet with us and we can have
peace with one another. So don't ever think you're too
sinful to come to Christ. God will only receive us through
faith in His Son. You have to come to Christ and
believe on Christ. And no man's too sinful for that. No man's too sinful for that.
Here's my second point. The truth is, the only way you
can come to Christ is if you are sin. If you're nothing but
sin. If you have nothing to bring. If you have absolutely nothing
but sin and you cannot bring anything to the table, you have
to come empty because you're so thoroughly corrupt in sin.
That's the only way you can come. That's the only way you can come
to God. Matthew 8, 2 says, Behold, there
came a leper, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt,
thou canst make me clean. Now here are five things included
in coming to Christ in true faith. Five things. Number one, when
a sinner believes on Christ, He's no longer ashamed to confess
Christ before the multitudes. Here were a multitude of people
following Christ. They're all walking along following
Christ. And behold, there came a leper. This man didn't care
what the multitudes thought. He didn't care what his fellow
man thought about him. This man had to get to Christ
and he came to Christ. He wasn't ashamed to come to
Christ. He wasn't ashamed. The Scripture says, Whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. That means this man
stepped out of that crowd and came to Christ because he believed
on Christ. He believed on Christ. He was
not ashamed. When you truly behold Christ
and you behold how merciful and how good and what He's given,
how He's laid down His life and became destitute in poverty to
make his people rich. When you behold that, brethren,
you won't be ashamed of him. You won't be ashamed of him.
But now let me tell you this. If you go through this life ashamed
of Christ and you're too good to come to Christ because you're
just righteous and you're not going to confess before me and
you're a sinner. And so you're ashamed of Christ. You won't
come to Him? Listen to what Christ said. Whosoever therefore shall
be ashamed of me and of my words, of my gospel, in this adulterous
and sinful generation. You see, there's the issue. You're
ashamed to come to Christ. But you're not ashamed to be
received and accepted by a sinful and adulterous generation. You're
too ashamed that you're going to offend the sinful, adulterous
generation. All your sinful, God-hating,
sin-loving friends, you're afraid you're going to offend them.
And you'd rather offend Christ. See, God gives you a new heart
and you don't care what that sinful multitude thinks. You got to have Christ. But He
said, Whosoever will be ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous
and sinful generation, of him also shall the son of man be
ashamed. Christ said, I'll be ashamed
of him when I come with my angels. That day's coming. That day's
coming. There's going to be a multitude
that were ashamed of Christ and Christ will not own them to be
His. He will not. Here's the second
thing that's involved in coming to Christ through faith is to
come humbled and broken in spirit. It says this man came and worshipped
Him. He came and worshipped Christ.
That means that leper stepped out of this crowd. Here's all
these people watching. And he came to Christ and he
hid his face in the dust at Christ's feet. That's what worship means. He bowed down. He bowed down. That's what sinners do in our
hearts when we come to Christ. We come and we bow down in the
dust before Christ's feet. Before His feet. We're haughty,
we're arrogant, we're proud sinners by nature. We think we're really
hot stuff by nature. And God has to give you a heart
to see what you really are. How filthy and abominable we
are before God And when He makes us see that, brethren, He brings
you down to the dust, in your heart, and you come down to Christ's
feet. Before, you might have been using
the excuse that you were too sinful to come to Him, but really
the problem was you thought you were too righteous to come to
Him. But when He gives you this view of ourselves and makes us
see what we really are, how vile and corrupt and awful we are
in our sin nature, then we come down. We come down in heart,
humble, broken, contrite in spirit. Scripture said, go to 1 Corinthians
14. I want you to see this. 1 Corinthians
14.25. Paul was talking about preaching
and this is what he says will happen. If you're preaching the
Gospel clearly and somebody comes in and hears it preached and
God blesses it to their heart, listen to what he says. 1 Corinthians
14, 25. Thus are the secrets of his heart
made manifest. They're made manifest to that
sinner. That sinner comes in, he sits down, he starts hearing
the gospel and God speaks into his heart and the secrets that
he didn't know about himself, the secrets that he really was
thinking in his own heart, that deceitful heart is desperately
wicked and he couldn't know it, but now God manifests it to him
and he knows his own heart. The secrets of his own heart.
The Word is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Who does it give discernment to? That sinner in whom God makes
it effectual. And he begins to hear it. John
Gill said this, The Spirit of God shows him the lusts of his
heart, filling the conscience with a sense of guilt and a consciousness
of deserved punishment, so that the person looks upon himself
as particularly spoken to, and as if the person speaking had
knowledge of all that was within him, and adapted his discourse
on purpose to him, and delivered it for his sake alone. I've heard
a bunch of you tell me that. That was spoken right to me.
That was spoken to me. And he said, that's what God
will do. He'll make you think that man, he's adapted his sermon
just to talk to me. I want you to know, if you hear
the word of God that way, yes sir, it is to you. Don't back
up from it. It is to you. And I pray God
it won't be coming to you and you just hear it as a man. I
pray that you hear it as it truly is, the Word of God, which works
in His people effectually. He said, verse 25, here's what
it does when it works effectually, and so falling down on his face,
that means worship. Worship, just what the leopard
did. Falling down on his face, he'll worship God. and concerning
that preacher and that church of God that was used to preach
the gospel to him, he'll report, God is in you of a truth. Nothing
like this ever happened to me before. God's speaking through
those people. God taught me I'm a sinner. God brought me down to his feet,
made me worship him. God's in that people. God's in
that people. He's preaching through that people.
The sacrifices of God, that which pleases God, are a broken spirit. A broken spirit. A contrite heart,
a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. God said, I dwell with the man
that's of a humble spirit. I'm there with him. And that's
the only way, you know he dwells with the man that's of a humble
spirit because that's the only way we get a humble spirit. It's
for Christ to enter in and bring us down. Bring us down. Number three. To come to Christ
is to come owning Christ to be your sovereign Lord. To do with
you as He will. This man came and he said, Lord,
if thou wilt. Lord, if thou wilt. He didn't come and say, well,
I decided I will let you heal me of my leprosy today. Nope. He came saying, Lord, you don't
even have to heal me. It's up to your will to do with
me what you will. That's when a man's been broken.
That's when a man's been brought down. He comes saying, not my
will but thine be done. Sinners are not saved by our
will. We're not saved by our will. We're saved by God's will. You are As Jonathan Edwards said
in that sermon, you're like a spider hanging from a little thin little
spider web above the flames of hell. Just hanging there. Ready
to fall any minute. And it's up to God's will. Whether
He'll pluck you from that fire and save you or let you fall. That sort of If God teaches us
that in our heart, it'll bring a man to do what this leopard
did, to fall at his feet and beg mercy from God. Otherwise, we'll keep boasting,
arrogant, proud, saying that's not fair, God's not treating
me right. All that is, is a man thinking
he's righteous and deserves to be saved. That's all that is.
That's all that is. He came saying, Lord if thou
wilt. Scripture says, God said to Moses, I will have mercy on
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion, so then it's not of him that willeth, nor
of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Salvations
of God that show with mercy to whom He will, whom He will, whom
He will. Fourthly, to come to Christ is
to come believing Christ is able, is to come believing Christ is
able. He said, Lord, if thou will,
thou can. If you are willing, Lord, you
can, you can. In Matthew 9, if you look down
there, just across the page in verse 28, these two blind men
came to Christ. And look what he said, verse
28, And when he was come into the house, the blind men came
to him, and Jesus said unto them, Believe ye that I am able to
do this? Believe ye that I am able to
give you sight? What does the scripture say?
Without faith, it's impossible to please God. For he that comes
to God must come believing that He's God and that He is a rewarder
of them that diligently seek Him, that He's able. Why did
Moses not stagger at the promises of God? Romans 4 says he didn't
stagger at the promises of God. He was strong in faith, giving
glory to God because he was persuaded that what God promised, God was
able to fulfill. Faith believes God is able to
save. This leper came to Christ because
he believed Christ was the only one able to make him clean. So he came and said, Lord, if
you will, you can. I believe you can. Do you believe
Christ can heal you of your sin? That's the issue, do you? Do
you believe Christ is able to heal you of your sin? If we do,
we come to Christ. That's right. If you're sick,
you go to the physician. That's what sick people do. And here's number five. Faith
comes to Christ confessing, I am a sinner. I started saying, My first point
was, never think you're too bad of a sinner to come to Christ.
My second point is, you have to come as only a sinner. You have to come as the very
worst sinner there is. Believing that about yourself.
That there's nothing you can do. Absolutely nothing you can
do. How do you get that out of this
text? He came saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me
clean. He was unclean. He knew his condition. He knew the shape he was in.
And he knew he couldn't do a thing about it. He couldn't do a thing about
it. That's what keeps sinners from
Christ. By nature, we think we can do something about it. By
nature, we think, well, if I just try to clean up my act and turn
over a new leaf and put away some sin, that won't please God. That's just the same old nasty,
filthy, dirty leaf flipped over. That's all that is. That won't
please God. We say, well, I just need to
do enough good works to make up for my bad works. God said,
Christ is going to judge us according to our works whether good or
evil. What does that mean? That means He's going to take
all your good works, I mean all your evil works, He's going to
put them on one side of the scale. He's going to take all your good
works and He's going to put them on the same side of the scale. And Christ is going to be on
the other. And you're not going to come up equal to Christ's
righteousness. You're just not. That's the righteousness you've
got to have is Christ. And everything outside of Christ
comes short of the glory of God. And that's enough sin to send
us to hell for a thousand lifetimes. We have to come as nothing, not
just saying I've done some bad things, not just saying I've
sinned a little, but coming owning the fact All I am is sin. All I can think is sin. All I can perform is sin. All I can speak is sin. I can't do one thing that's not
sin. That's to confess you're a sinner. The problem is most think they're
too good to come to Christ. Look down at Matthew 9 and look
at verse 9. Jesus passed forth and he saw
a man named Matthew sitting at the seat of customs and he said
unto him, follow me and he arose and followed him. And it came
to pass, Levi was so happy, he was not ashamed, he threw a party
in his house. Invited all his publican friends. Levi was a tax collector and
he invited everybody from work over to his house. And they was
all a bunch of thieving, corrupt tax collectors and a bunch of
harlots and sinners. That's all they was. And Jesus
said it meet in the house, behold many publicans and sinners came
and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees
saw it, these were the first Baptist church folks. These were
the folks that graduated from theological seminary. These were
the folks that were whitewashed and if you looked at them, you
thought them, the holiest folks there is. They looked and they
saw Christ sitting with this bunch of refuse, these sinners
and these publicans and then his disciples sitting with them.
And they said, why eateth your master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he
said unto them, they that be whole need not a physician, but
they that are sick. Those that are whole don't need
Christ a physician, only those that are sick. But go ye and
learn what that meaneth. And he quotes the scripture here.
I will have mercy, not sacrifice. Do you know what that means?
Do you know what that means? God says, I'll have mercy. I
won't receive sacrifices from men. I'm going to save by mercy
that I give, not by sacrifices that men give to me. For I'm not come to call the
righteous. You see that? Christ said, I
didn't come to call men that think they're good. I didn't
come to call men that think they're righteous. I came to call sinners
to repent. Those that I just explained to
you can't do anything but sin. How does a man get to be that
kind of a sinner? Well, he's that kind of a sinner
because we sinned in Adam and we come forth sinning. That's
all we do. He made himself that kind of sinner. But how does
he get to own himself as that kind of sinner? Only the Holy
Spirit has to teach you and make manifest the secrets of your
heart to you and to me. If you come to Christ as this
leper came, you'll find what this leper found. If you come
to Christ as this leper came, you'll find what this leper found.
Everybody does. Look here. Nobody dare touch
a leper. Nobody would touch a leper except
the great physician. He's the one that has the cure.
He is the cure. Look here, verse 3, And Jesus
put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. If you come to Christ not ashamed
of him, broken in contrite in spirit, owning Him to have the
sovereign right to do with you as He will, believing Christ
is able, confessing all you are sin. In other words, if you come
to Him through faith, immediately your sins will be made whole.
Christ will heal you. Immediately. Immediately. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth us from all sin. Now we're not talking about how
you're going to see yourself in your flesh and how other believers
are going to see you. We are talking about how God
sees you, cleansed of all your sin. It's gone. It's gone. That's what you find when you
come to Christ. Why did He touch him? We have
to have this union with Christ. We have to be one with Christ. That's what's pictured in that
touch. Christ has got to enter in and become one with Christ. And He says, I will. I will,
I'm willing to heal you. You've come in a way that pleases
me, I'm willing to heal you. And immediately he was healed.
And then you'll be a testimony to poor lost sinners. I titled
this the testimony. He said to them, go now, don't
tell anybody, go straight to the priest and offer the gifts
that were required by Moses, that Moses commanded for a testimony
unto them. This man, the Lord had made this
man a testimony unto everybody. What was he testifying? That
Christ is that high priest pictured in that law, and that Christ
is that offering pictured in that law, and that Christ is
the end of that law for righteousness to everyone that believes. That's right. He only sent him
there to do that because at this point Christ hadn't been to the
cross yet and put an end to it all in the veil rent. So he sent
that man, but he was testifying, he's the one that law spoke about
and he's the end of it. You come to Christ this way,
sinner, you'll be a testimony unto God, unto men. He'll make
you the testimony of who He is. Because only He can do that.
Only He can heal a leper. Only He can make a sinner whole.
Isn't that right? I pray God will bless that. Let's
stand together. Father, we thank You for Your
righteousness and holiness. We pray, Lord, Your kingdom would
come now into the hearts of some sinner that Christ the King would
be formed in your people. Make us come owning you to be
our sovereign Lord. Make us fall down at your feet
worshiping you. Make us confess what we are,
nothing but sin. Make us, Lord, to believe you're
able, to trust you alone. And don't ever, ever stop. We need this every hour. We need you to do this for us
every day. Keep us at the feet of Christ.
Lord, if you do this for us, we don't have to ask you to heal
our toe and all these other things. Lord, we have everything we need
if you just give this to us. This is our need. Christ. We ask Lord, give us Christ.
for your honor and glory. We ask it in His precious name.
Amen.