Well, good morning. If you would
care to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter eight, where our lesson
will be from this morning. Before we begin, let's bow together
in prayer. Our Father, how we thank you
for another opportunity that you've given to us to meet together
and to worship your matchless name. And Father, I pray that
this morning you would give us a spirit of true worship. Enable
us to bow humbly at thy feet and to worship you in spirit
and in truth. Enable us to bow, knowing and
freely admitting we are totally and completely dependent upon
your mercy and upon your grace, that you don't owe it to us.
It's all of thy free gift. And cause us to stay at thy feet,
knowing that there's no hope anywhere else. Cause us to continue
begging Thee, looking to Thee, depending upon Thee, depending
on Christ and Christ alone for everything you require and everything
that we need. Father, I pray for ourselves
in our class this morning. I pray for our children's classes. I pray for your people who are
meeting everywhere around this world today. Bless your word,
where it's preached. Get much glory. to yourself through
the preaching of your word this morning. Cause your word to go
forth in power, to reach the hearts of your people, to save,
to comfort, to strengthen. Father, get glory to your name.
Let us see your glory in our generation, in our day. We pray
a special blessing for our brother Eric as he's preaching in Pikeville
that you bless him especially and that you give him traveling
mercies there and back home safe to us. And we do pray a blessing,
Father, for those that you brought in the time of trouble and trial.
You know the need of all of your people everywhere. We pray a
special blessing for our brother, Bob Coffey, that you'd touch
his body, that you'd heal him and be with him and his family
in a very special way at this difficult time. All these things
we ask, and we give thanks to that name which is above every
name, the name of Christ our Savior. All right, Matthew chapter eight.
I've titled the lesson this morning, If Thou Wilt. I will confess
to you how much I have enjoyed studying this this week. This is one of my very favorite
interactions, I think, with the sinner coming to our savior.
And what I want us to see this morning is a picture of what
happens when God saves his people. And God saves his people. He
makes them clean and holy. He gives them a holy new nature
and he heals them of all their spiritual diseases. And more
than just healing, sometimes we think about healing, we think,
well, the Lord takes, you know, what I got and makes it better,
improves it. The Lord gives his people life.
When we talk about spiritual healing, the Lord gives his people
life, new life, eternal life that can never be lost. And my
first point about that is this, that when God heals his people,
he gives them life. He does it. He reveals himself
to them through the preaching of the gospel. Verse one, Matthew
chapter eight, when he was come down from the mountain, great
multitudes followed him. Now, our Lord finished preaching
what we call the sermon on a mound. A multitude was there who heard
him and they followed him down that mountain. They had to say,
never man spake like this man. They followed him. They just,
they were so blessed by what they'd heard. And now they're
going to see never man did like this man does. This leper that
comes to our Lord, he must have come to the Lord because he snuck
close enough to heard him preach. Now, according to the Mosaic
law, that was against the law, but somehow this leper must have
gotten close enough to hear the Lord preach. And it was hearing
the master preach. That's what gave him the courage
to come to the Savior. Now that's the need of every
sinner. That's the need of all of us here is to come to Christ. And the way that God has ordained
for his people to come to Christ is by first hearing the gospel.
You're not going to come to somebody you don't know. You're going
to have to hear the gospel. That's the way God has ordained
for his people to be drawn to Christ is through the preaching
of the gospel. And this man in our story this morning heard
directly from the Lord in the flesh. Why know when you and
I will come to Christ? When we tell you when God's pleased
to speak to our hearts, not just the flesh, when God is pleased
to speak to our hearts. Now you're going to hear from
a man. If you're going to hear the gospel, you're going to hear
a man preach it, but only God can speak to the heart. And when
he does that, we're going to be drawn to the Savior. And God
does that through preaching. Number two, seeing and hearing
Christ by faith is going to convince us of some things. We're going
to be convinced some things are true. Now, salvation is not just
knowledge, knowledge of the right doctrine. I can take our three,
four, five year olds and I can indoctrinate them. I can get
them to spit back the right doctrine. Salvation is not just knowledge.
but nobody is saved apart from it. We're going to have to know
who God is. We're going to have to know who
Christ is. We're going to have to know who we are. And this
leper did. Verse two says, and behold, there
came a leper and worshiped him saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou
can make me clean. Now this man was convinced of
two things. Number one, he was convinced he was a leper. Nobody could convince him he
wasn't a leper. He's convinced of that. And number two, he was
convinced that the Lord Jesus had the power, the authority
to heal him. Remember, we read up here in
chapter seven, verse 28, when Jesus came to pass, when Jesus
had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his
doctrine. For he taught them as one having
authority, not as the scribes. This leper was astonished too.
When he heard the Lord teach, he heard his doctrine, he was
astonished when he heard him speak with authority and not
as the scribes, and he was convinced of this. This man has the authority. He has the power to heal me.
Now, you and I will come to Christ for salvation when the Holy Spirit
convinces us of two things. Number one, when the Spirit convinces
us that we are a dead sinner, we have no hope, we can't do
anything for ourselves. And number two, when he convinces
us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the savior of sinners. If
God the Holy Spirit will convince us of that, nobody will stop
us from coming to Christ. And this leper came to Christ. And it's very significant that
a leper came to Christ because leprosy all throughout scripture
is a picture of sin. And it's a good one too, because
leprosy does to the body what sin does to the soul. Leprosy
was a particular mark of God's wrath. Remember when King Uzziah
went in and burnt incense before the Lord? The priest told him,
this doesn't pertain to you. You can't go before the Lord
without a high priest. And he did it anyway. And God
struck him with leprosy as a sign, a token of his wrath. You cannot
come to God without a high priest. There's got to be a mediator
between us and God. Well, that's you and me. We've
sinned against God. and we're under the wrath of
God. But Christ, he came to turn God's wrath away from his people
by turning it upon himself. Then second, leprosy has no human
cure. As a matter of fact, it was unlawful
for a man to try to heal leprosy. That just wasn't given to men.
Well, that's sin. Sin has no human cure. False religion makes up all kinds
of cures for it and all it is snake oil. There's no cure. And the gospel makes it unlawful
for us to try to heal ourselves of our sin. The gospel makes
it unlawful for us to try to earn our way to God by our works,
to try to heal ourselves by our works. Only God can forgive sin. Only God can heal sin. And here's
good news. There's no case of spiritual
leprosy that is so bad the blood of Christ can't make us clean.
Number three, leprosy. You know, we think of leprosy
as a skin disease, but leprosy is not a disease of the skin.
Leprosy attacks the blood, the flesh, the bones, the organs,
the eyes, the ears. It just rots away the flesh or
the extremities fall off. Well, sin is not an outward disease. Sin is not what we do. Sin is
what we are. It's in our blood. We're conceived
in sin. And sin rots us from the inside
out. Now, we see the outside. I mean,
the outside is bad. I'm not excusing it. But that's
not the problem. The problem is the sin is in the heart. And
sin affects all of our senses. It affects our heart. It affects
our nature. It affects our understanding.
It affects our memory. Sin destroys everything. And
it's from the inside out. Sin's an inward problem, not
an outward problem. And then this leper, he was cut
off from everything holy. He was cut off from religion.
It was against the law for him to go to the temple. He couldn't
do it. Well, that's what sin's done to us. Our sin has separated
us from our God by making us unfit to be in his holy presence.
Then fifth, the old Jews called leprosy the living death. And
that's what sin is, isn't it? It's a living death. And it began
that way. Remember, God put Adam in the
garden and he told him, eat all these trees you want, except
this one in the center of the garden. And he said, Adam, of
the day you eat that fruit, I command you not to eat. Dying thou shalt
die. That's the literal translation
of what the Lord said. Dying thou shalt die. And the
moment Adam took that fruit and ate it in open rebellion against
God, he died. He died spiritually. He lived
another 900 years physically. He was alive physically, but
he was dead spiritually. He was alive mentally. He could
still think he could come up with some excuses to God. Why
I did this, what was the woman that you gave me? He'd come up
with some excuses. He was alive mentally, but he
was dead spiritually. Well, that's the nature we're
born with. The only nature our parents had to pass on to us
was Adam's dead sin nature. So we're left with one hope,
with one cry, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
This living death is spiritual leprosy. Sixth, the Jews did
not consider leprosy to be a sickness. They didn't think of it as an
illness. They considered it an uncleanness. Now that's sin. Sin is not just what we do, although
that's bad enough, but sin is an uncleanness. It's not a sickness
we can overcome. It's an uncleanness that has
defiled our souls. And sin, now it must be paid
for. Sin must be forgiven. And we're
going to see this in just a moment, the importance of this. Sin must
be cleansed. Sin must be healed. It's not
just a sickness. It's an uncleanness. Seventh,
when someone came down with leprosy, they were sent to the priest.
They weren't sent to a doctor because there's no human cure.
They were sent to the priest. The doctor couldn't do anything
for them. Matter of fact, the priest couldn't either. All the
priest could do is say you're clean or you're unclean. But
there was no human help for a leper. And that's sinners, that's you
and me. Sinners, at least if God sends us a man to tell us
the truth, are not sent to religion to find a way to clean up our
sins. Sinners are not sent to the law or our works of the law
to try to clean up our act and do something for our sin, our
spiritual leprosy, because religion, the law, and our works can't
do anything for us. Sinners, if they would have any
hope, must be sent to Christ, the great high priest. He's the
only one who can help us. Eighth, we can hope to escape
being a leper. Leprosy is not a disease we see
much in our world today. Fred, it might be in the world
somewhere, but not typically in the United States. It's not
something. I mean, nobody woke up today thinking, I hope I don't
catch leprosy, or shaking somebody's hand. Nobody thought of that,
because it's something you just don't think about. I'll tell
you what. Unfortunately, we think about
the same thing about sin. We don't think about it as often,
probably, as we should. Nobody can escape being a sinner.
Nobody can. Nobody is exempt from Adam's
sinful nature. We've all come short of the glory
of God. We've sinned and come short of
the glory of God so that the Lord Jesus Christ is our only
hope. Thankfully, there's a hope. Aren't
you thankful there's a hope? It's Christ. And then last, lepers
were required to walk around crying unclean, unclean, so that
nobody would come close to them. They wouldn't infect anybody
else. Now we can cry unclean, unclean, all we want to. And
we ought to admit that. We ought to admit that about
ourselves. But you know what? If we have children, it's too
late. We've already infected somebody
else. We've already given them our sin nature. so that our children
are left in the same boat we are, with one hope, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now Luke, when he writes about
this leper, Luke tells us that this man was full of leprosy. And that is both awful and, I
don't know if you can say good news, hopeful, maybe it's awful
and hopeful at the same time, because a leper. If he was going
to be clean, if he was going to be pronounced clean, first
he had to be full of leprosy. A leper couldn't just have, you
know, a few spots on him and then those spots would go away
and he'd be pronounced clean. If one healthy spot existed anywhere
on that leper before he seemed to be clean, the priest could
not pronounce him clean, could not pronounce him healed. Now
why is that significant? Well, it's because you and I
are full of sin. And we have to see ourselves
as full of sin. We have to see ourselves completely
covered inside and out with sin. From the sole of our foot to
the top of our head, we can't see any soundness in us. The
only thing we can see about ourselves is sin. I mean, it's wretched. It's an uncleanness. It's nothing
but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. so that you can't put
your finger on one healthy spot in me anywhere. And if we think
we can find one healthy spot, just a pinprick of a healthy
spot in us, we will never be made clean. Ever. Because God
won't have it. See, our cleansing, our salvation
has to be completely because of the Lord Jesus Christ. If
if we think we've got one healthy spot left in us or God saves
us, you know, we're going to say. I had something to do with
it. God saved me and not that other
fella because he's full of sin and I had this clean spot. We
take some credit for it. And Scripture is playing on this.
Salvation is not by works of righteousness as we've done.
It's according to God's mercy, God's mercy to his people in
Christ. Salvation is all Christ. It's all of God's mercy. It's
all of God's grace. It's all of Christ's blood. It's
all of his righteousness. Salvation is all in Christ. And that's why we must be full
of leprosy. We must see ourselves as nothing
but sin before God save us. Then thirdly, there's a matter
of worship here. This leper came in worship. Well,
we will worship Christ when we hear him and see him by faith. This leper came and worshiped
the Lord. Now, I looked at that. There's
a couple of key elements about true worship here. Number one
is humility. Now, what is humility? Humility
is an accurate view of ourself. It's not a false humility. It's
not, you know, saying, you know, I'm not good at something. Really,
I am. It's an accurate view of ourselves. Well, for you and me, humility
is going to be lowliness of mind. It's going to see ourselves as
low and so low that we are completely unworthy of God's attention,
not just God's mercy. We're unworthy of his attention.
That's a slepper. He's humble, isn't he? He knows
what he is. He knows what he deserves. That's
why he came begging for mercy. Now that's worship. Worship is
an accurate view of myself and an accurate view of God so that
I come begging God for mercy, knowing I don't deserve it. Number
two, worship is admitting God's crown rights to do with me as
he pleases. And whatever he does with me,
is right. I can't complain about it. If
God refuses to show me mercy, I can't complain about it. And
if he does, I can't brag because it's his crown rights. Mercy
is sovereign mercy. True worship always says about
every situation, Lord, if you will, Lord, if you will, if you
will, you can make me clean. If you will, you can reveal your
Son to me and in me. If you will, you can show me
mercy. You can show me grace. If you will, you can save me. If you will. See, there's no
doubt about the Lord's ability to save, is there? None whatsoever.
He's God. Salvation is a question of willingness. Now, that's very different than
what you're gonna hear about every place in this town this
morning. Salvation is a question, not of my willingness to accept
Jesus as my personal savior. Salvation is a question of God's
willingness to show mercy to me and accept me in Christ, even
though I don't deserve it. And then third, God is truly
worshiped for who he is, for who he is, not because of what
he's done for us. This leper, much like the Syrophoenician
woman, another one of my very favorite stories of a sinner
coming to Christ. Both this leper and that woman,
you know what they did? They worshipped the Lord before
the Lord ever did anything for them. This leper, he didn't know
if the Lord was going to heal him or not. He didn't know who
he was. But he worshipped the Lord before he knew if the Lord
would do anything for him or not. He worshipped the Lord because
the Lord is to be worshipped. simply because who he is. It's
the only right relationship between God and us that we worship him. This leper, he is miserable. I mean, I just, I can't imagine
how miserable this man is. He's defiled. He's diseased. He's outcast from society. I
don't think I've ever read this thing whereby I just bet you
a leper who's full of leprosy is even an outcast in a leper
colony. Wouldn't you reckon? I mean, how miserable does this
mean? In his misery, he comes to the
Lord and worships. Not because the Lord relieved
his misery, but the Lord is to be worshiped. And the word worship
that Matthew uses here, it means to kiss. It means to lick the
master's hand like a dog licks his master's hand. It's to come
to the master like a bad dog seeking forgiveness. And everybody,
every sinner who ever comes to Christ for mercy comes just like
this leper, like a dog licking his master's hand, like a bad
dog coming seeking forgiveness from the master. It's the only
proper relationship between God and me. All right, here's the
fourth thing. When Christ reveals himself to
his people, he always says, I will. Now, I love what this leper says. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. I incorporate that phrase into
my prayers almost every day. Lord, if you will. He didn't
know if Christ would have mercy on him or not, but he knew he
had the power to heal him. and He's willingly submitting
to God's will. Whatever He does with me is fine
by me. If you and I would be saved,
we're going to have to come to a sovereign Savior. And by sovereign, I mean there's
nothing we can do to get Him to do anything for us. It's completely
up to Him. God does not have to have mercy
on you and me. He doesn't have to. You know,
he didn't have to because we come and bow at his feet. He
didn't have to because we say some magic words. God does not
have to have mercy on anybody. Now he's going to have mercy
on somebody, isn't he? I know that because what did God tell
Moses? I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. So God's going
to have mercy on somebody. I just don't know if it'll be
me or not. God doesn't owe me anything except his wrath. God does owe me that. But I do
know this, if He will, if He will, He can surely save my sinful
soul. I know that. He can do what I
can't do. He can do what the law can't
do and that it's weak through the flesh. He can save my sinful
soul. There is no doubt about the ability
of Christ to put my sin away. There's power in the blood. And
there's no sin so great that the blood of Christ cannot wash
it white as snow. If he will, if he will. I don't know if you will, but
Lord, I know that you can. And I'm not going anywhere. If
I'm going to perish, I'm going to perish at the feet of Christ
because there's no hope anywhere else. So I love what this leper
says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. I love the Lord's answer even
more. Verse three says, And Jesus put forth his hand and touched
him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. I love the Lord's tender and
gracious attitude toward this miserable wretch. He didn't argue
back and forth with this fella to see if he was sincere. He
didn't object because he was so gross looking. He was so diseased
and so full of sin. The Lord just reached out his
hand and touched him and said, I will. Mark says in his account
of this, that the Lord was moved with compassion. Can you imagine
such a thing? The Lord of glory is moved with
compassion. toward miserable wretches like
this fella. Maybe he'd be moved with compassion
for a miserable wretch like this fella. Oh, it could be. But I
tell you, nothing gets sweeter, man, than the God of glory moved
with compassion for a sinner. And to be able to hear the words
from his lips, I will. Now, Christ, aren't you glad
you're sent to Christ rather than the law? in religion. He's
so much better. You just can't even compare.
All the law can do is kill us. All the law can do is say whether
we're clean or unclean. But there's no power there. There's
no power to heal. There's no power to forgive.
There's no power to remove sin. Christ doesn't just pronounce
his people clean like this is a royal pronouncement and nobody
can argue against it. He makes his people clean by
washing them in his blood. And the Lord reached out and
touched this leper. Now, remember, he couldn't reach
out and touch a clean spot on this man. He's full of leprosy,
but the Lord, the master, touched him. Can you imagine how that
touch felt? Nobody touched this fella in
years. But the touch of the master when
he was moved with compassion, can you imagine how that felt?
This leper, his skin was crusty and white, it was cracked and
dry. Where a beard or hair is, there's
just little, from what I read, stiff white stubble. You rub
your finger across that stubble and skin would come off with
it. I mean, he's just, oh, so diseased. I read that a leper, when he's
full of leprosy, at the end of his disease, like this man is,
could hold an apple in his hand for an hour and it would look
like it had been out in the sun for a week. He's so hot. Nobody
would touch this man. He hadn't felt a human touch
in years. And the Lord did. He touched
him. Now isn't that the touch of God's grace? You know how
that feels to be a wretch, guilty. Your sins are sending you to
hell and you know you're getting what you deserve. That the disease
of sin has affected every part of you. And your soul is wracked
with sin so that you finally cry for mercy. And to hear the
Savior say, I will. And to touch your heart. You'd
never the same again. And now you bask in His grace. You bask in the warmth of His
presence. Because He did for you what nobody
else would or could do. He touched you. He touched you
and made you whole. Now, anybody who would touch
a leper would become unclean. So what about this, the Savior
touching this leper? Well, it could be that it was
actually his word that healed the leper. When the Lord, there's
this power in his word. He said, I will, I will. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. See, there's power in the word
of God. That's why we preach the Word. We go verse by verse
through the Word of God, because there's power in God's Word to
make sinners see and believe Christ. But the Lord did touch
this man. I think that's a picture of what's
going to happen in a couple of years, probably, from this point
in Matthew chapter 8. When the Savior goes to Calvary,
He's going to be made unclean. He's going to be made guilty
when he takes all of the sin of his people into his body on
the tree. And he's going to put those sins
away through the sacrifice of himself by shedding his precious
blood to wash and cleanse that sin away. And then it's going
to be gone forever. That's how we're healed from
our spiritual leprosy. By his stripes, by his suffering,
by his death, we're healed. Now look at verse four, I want
to show you one more thing. And Jesus saith unto him, see thou
tell no man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest and
offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. The
Lord says this leper to the high priest to fulfill the law concerning
lepers. And we're not going to look at
it for time's sake. If you want, you can read it this afternoon,
Leviticus chapter 14, and you'll see all throughout that ceremony,
a picture of redemption in Christ. What I want us to see here is
the salvation in Christ satisfies God's holy law. It satisfies
all of God's holy character. The day's coming that the law
is going to announce everyone for whom Christ died, not guilty,
is clean. When the Lord sends this man
to the priest, he shows himself to the priest. The law is going
to tell everybody this leper has been cleansed. And that salvation
in Christ is so full and it's so complete, God's holy law says
we're not guilty. But the Lord told this man, see
thou tell no man. And I wonder why he said that.
It would not seem that the Lord meant for this man not to tell
anybody what great things God had done for him. It doesn't
seem like that because a great multitude followed the Lord.
A great multitude saw the Lord heal this man. So it doesn't
seem like that the Lord would mean for him not to tell anybody
at all. It could mean this. It could
mean don't you tell anybody about this. Don't you stop. You go
straight to the priest. Don't you stop and talk to anybody
so that somebody can't say, well, wasn't the Lord who healed you.
It was somebody else. Don't do that. But I think he
likely means this. Tell the story, but don't you
tell it in a way but you get any glory. Don't you tell this
story in such a way that, well, Christ healed you because you
did everything right. You came to Him the right way. You heard
the preaching. Don't tell it that way. You tell
the story, but you tell it right so that Christ gets all the glory.
He's the one in His sovereign will and power who cleansed you. But whatever the Lord meant there,
I do know this. The man told the story. He told
the story. How could he not? How could he
not? Do you imagine that he enjoyed
telling this story, folks, what the Lord had done for him? I
bet you other lepers like to hear the story, don't you? Oh,
they did. I tell you, one more time, I'm
going to tell you, you come to Christ. Right now, where you
sit, you come to Christ. Your disease, your sin, that's
not what's damning you. What's damned, what damns our
souls is our refusal to come to the Savior. It's our insistence
on having our own righteousness and not submitting ourselves
to the righteousness of Christ. It's not submitting ourselves
to his crown rights to do with me as he will. And somebody will
say, well, you know, maybe I'll come to him, but what if he doesn't
will? Well, what if he doesn't? What if he doesn't? He doesn't
have to. But I know this. The Lord himself
promised that all who come to him, he will in no wise cast
out. And brother, I'm coming. I mean,
I'm coming begging for mercy. And I like I said a minute ago,
I'm staying right there. I'm coming to his feet and I'm
begging for mercy and I'm not going anywhere. Lord, if you
will, You can make me clean. This I can promise you. If one
day God enables you to quit hearing a preacher and God speaks to
your heart and he touches your heart, you'll never be the same. And I'm glad for that. I'm real
tired of being me. I am real tired of being like
Adam. I don't want to be that way anymore. I want to be made
clean. I want to be made holy. I want
to be made like Christ. And that's what he does for his
people and his power and his compassion for them. All right.
I hope the Lord bless that too.