I want to take my text this evening
from Matthew chapter 8, if you would like to turn there with
me. I would like to read about this incident that took place
here. As our Lord had been preaching
the Sermon on the Mount, and he came down from the Mount and
this leper came to him. to be healed of it. And that's
where I want to call your attention to this evening. Matthew 8, and
begin in verse 1. When he was come down from the
mountain, great multitudes followed him. And behold, there came a
leper, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand,
and touched him, saying, I will. be thou clean.' And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said 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." Now, I want to call your attention to the way Matthew
begins this account here of the healing of this leper, and when
he was come down from the mountain. When he was come down from the
mountain. Of course, we know who this is. If we just happen to pick this
Bible up and begin to read it, you and I know who this is. But if we go back in the last
chapter, in verse 29, It tells us something about him. He had
finished this message, this great sermon on the mount. And as he
finished it, here's what was said of his preaching. He taught
them as one having authority and not as the scribes. And it's
said of him here in this seventh chapter, and look here in verse
21 and verse 22. He preached this sermon. He taught
them with authority. And as we read these verses,
we find out why he did so. Verse 21, Not every one that
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
Everyone someday will say to him in the day of judgment, Lord,
Lord. This is the Lord, the Lord of
glory. that was preaching this message
with great authority. And then look at something else
that was said of him concerning this message in verse 23 of this
chapter. And then will I profess unto
them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. He tells us something here that
he tells us in other places that he preached. That he controls
and holds the destiny of men in his hands. He says to men,
come ye blessed of my Father. Or he says to men, depart from
me ye cursed. Who is this that holds the very
destiny and will sign every man his long home? Who else could
this be but God? This is Jesus, the Son of Mary. It's Jesus, the Son of Man. It's
Jesus Christ the Lord, the Son of God. It is very God of very
gods. That's who this is. And he says
here in verse 1, He, God, came down from the mountain. Now, I want to stress that because
I want to call your memory to another time, to another place,
where we read about another mountain. And you read this account over
in Exodus chapter 19, the giving of the moral law to the children
of Israel. And you remember what took place
there that day. The Lord instructed Moses to
prepare the children of Israel. He said, I'm going to meet with
you. And I want you to tell the Jews, tell the people to sanctify
themselves. Three days they are to sanctify
themselves. Wash their clothes and not come
near their wives. And build these mounds around
this Mount Sinai. For I am going to come down upon
this mountain and meet with these people. And you remember what
took place. Moses went up into this mountain. God instructed him to get right
back down. He said, go right back down.
Moses said, you instructed me to come up? Now you tell me to
go back down? He says, the people will break
through the mounds and they'll peep, and I'll break through
upon them, and many of them perish. Go down and tell the people,
don't break through those mounds. Don't peep. Moses made haste
and went back down the mound. And while he was going down,
suddenly the mountain began to smoke. And a fire began to rise
on top of that mountain, and the voices of angels could be
heard. And the scripture says that that
mountain, Mount Sinai, was wholly shaken as Moses came down. Now
I've seen some pictures of the mountain that they think, they're
pretty certain, is Mount Sinai. And the mountain that I've seen
is nothing but a humongous, solid rock, is all it is. And yet the
Scripture says that the mountain quaked greatly. And there was
one reason that was given for it doing so. The Lord God came
down upon the top of the mountain. And the Scripture says that Moses
made haste and he ran back down to the mountain, to the bottom
of the mountain, and the people were there. And they were hearing
these voices of these angels and the lightning flashes and
the terrible thunder. And they said to Moses, don't
let this God speak to us or we'll die. Or we'll die. Now what was the difference between
that mountain and the mountain in my text this evening? He came down here from this mountain,
the same God, But when he came down from this mountain, multitudes
flocked to him and they followed him. What's the difference? Well,
here's the difference, brothers and sisters. There is a side
of God that I call His bad side. It's not a bad side in the strictest
sense of the word, but it's bad for you and it's bad for me.
There is a side of God Almighty, an absolute God, that you and
I could never approach into and such a God could never approach
into us. You and I often read in the Scriptures
about the wrath of God, don't we? About the vengeance of God. If I quit my glittering sword
and my hand take hold on judgment, I'll render vengeance to my enemies. I'll repay them to their face
that hates me. If God Almighty, this God that
the Jews so feared upon Mount Sinai, if he merrily looks upon
an individual and judges that individual and pronounces him
guilty, he will execute judgment upon that man, and no angels
or men can deter him from doing it. There is a side of God. justice of God without any mercy. It's that God that's represented
to us as a pure light, that is of two pure eyes to behold iniquity,
cannot look upon sin without punishing it. That's the God
that they saw on Mount Sinai. That's the God that cast the
angels out of heaven and locked them up in chains over one season. That's the God that destroyed
all the unbelieving Jews that he brought out of the land of
Egypt. That's the God that took vengeance upon Sodom and Gomorrah. He's a just God. He's a strict
God. He's an absolute God. And He
cannot approach unto us. And you and I cannot approach
unto Him. What's the difference then? Here's God. This is God
coming down from this mountain. And all of these people ran unto
Him, the Scripture says, multitudes flocked to Him to hear Him and
follow Him. What's the difference? This is
God's good side. This is God's loving side. This
is God's gracious side. This is God and His Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. This is not God coming down to
judge us and to condemn us and destroy us. This is God coming
down to save us. This is God coming down to reconcile
us. Drawing near to a poor, fallen
humanity. And saying to this poor, fallen
humanity, you can draw near to me. You don't have to be full
of dread and torment. Don't you feel like this evening
that you can draw near to God? And your heart's not full of
dread? You're not full of torment about it? You can draw near to
Him, address Him as your Father, being fully assured in your heart
that He is so, a tender Father to you in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the difference. That's
the difference. Mount Sinai was a God that could
never approach unto us. He would devour us. He'd be a
consuming fire to us. But oh, the God that came down
from this mountain, he's our Savior. He's our reconciler. He came to bear our burden and
put away our sin. You often see a phrase in the
Scripture That's associated with the birth of the Lord Jesus. And the word is, the little phrase
is, fear not. That's often associated with
the coming, the incarnation. God taking our humanity to himself. Fear not. Joseph was afraid to take Mary
to him to be his wife. He thought she'd been unfaithful
to him. He was so fearful about it all. And the angel of the
Lord appeared unto him and said, Joseph, fear not, that which
is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. Zechariah, the father
of John the Baptist, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him
and told him about the forerunner of our Lord Jesus. And the first
thing the angel said to him was, fear not, fear not. Mary, Mary
was so fearful when the angel of the Lord appeared unto her.
Hail, thou that are highly favored of women. And she was so afraid.
And the first thing the angel said to her was, Fear not. And
when those shepherds were watching their flocks by night, and the
heavenly host came down, and those shepherds trembled for
fear, and those multitude of angels said, Fear not. I bring
you good tidings and great joy. Oh, brothers and sisters, God
in heaven, the everlasting God, has come in our humanity not
to judge us, not to condemn us, but to save us. How wonderful
that is. He came down from the mountain,
and as he did, these multitudes flocked unto him. I think Mr. Newton said it very well in his
song. Till God in human flesh I see, my thoughts no comfort
find. The holy, just, and sacred three
are terrors to my mind. But if Emmanuel's face appear,
my hope, my joy begins. His name forbids my slavish fear. His grace removes my sin. The law came by Moses. And it
condemns us. It proves our guilt. It stirs
up wrath within us. But grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. Multitudes. Multitudes. And we have here in verse 2 in
our text, look at this. In verse 2. And behold, there
came a leper, and worshipped him. Behold, there came a leopard
to him, Mark tells us. We learn something here from
this. We've often read in the scriptures where there's two
things that's synonymous. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
and coming to Christ, these are the same. These are the same
things. And now we find out here, coming
to Christ and worshipping Christ are the same thing. When we come
to Him truly in our hearts, we worship Him. Here was a leopard,
came to Him, acknowledging his need of Him. Mark says he bowed
down before Him and he worshiped. That's what it means to worship
Christ. Coming to Him is worshiping Him. But Matthew uses this little
word here, Behold, there came a leper to Him. Why does he use
that word? He draws our attention to this
incident that took place here. Behold. Look at this, he said.
Give your attention to this. This is something here that's
somewhat amazing. A leper came to him. And Mark says this man was full
of leprosy. Behold. Look at this. A leper
came to him. Why is that so amazing? Well,
let me tell you one or two things about this. Leprosy was an incurable
disease. It could only be healed by God
himself, divinely healed. When you contracted this disease,
if the Lord didn't heal you, you died with it. It was a death
sentence, awful, awful death to have your body waste away
and rot away and die with an awful fever. When you contracted this disease,
the scripture tells us that the first thing you did when the
priest pronounced you unclean was you had to take your clothes
and rip them. You had to look like you really
was a bagger bomb, what you would soon become, a bagger. And secondly,
you put a cloth over your lip. And then you moved outside of
society. You weren't allowed into the
gates of Israel, Jerusalem. You weren't allowed in the temple.
You had to live outside society. No one was allowed to approach
unto you, and you weren't allowed to approach unto anyone. If you
saw somebody coming near you, you were to raise your hand and
say, unclean, unclean, don't come near me. I'm contaminated. It's against the law for me to
approach unto you, and don't you come near me. So what's the first thing we
find out about this leper? This leper came to Jesus. Well, the first thing we find
out about it here, he came contrary to the law. Did he not? By law, he was not allowed to
approach unto the Lord Jesus. By law, he could be drug away
or even stoned. But this poor man, I would imagine,
knew in his heart, I either go contrary to the law, or I don't
go at all. And if I stay here where I am
now, I'm going to die. So I've got these two choices.
I can stay here and die, or I can approach to this Jesus of Nazareth
contrary to the law. I like that old verse in the
old hymnal. I can but perish if I go. All
they can do is stone me. I am resolved to try. If I stay
away from him, I know I shall forever die. He either died or
he went contrary to the law. Now, what does this teach us?
What does this teach us? Well, the first thing I see in
this is this, brothers and sisters. If you are coming to the Lord
Jesus Christ, You're going to come contrary to the law. Any man who approaches to the
Lord Jesus Christ to be saved by Him, you must come contrary
to the law. What's the law? The law says,
Do and thou shalt live. Is that the way you're going
to Christ? Lord, I've done this and I've
done that. Is that the way you're going? Moses described the righteousness
of the law like this. The man that doeth those things
shall live by them and in them. This is the whole problem with
the whole nation of the children of Israel. They would not turn
away from this law. They went to the temple and they
stood and bragged about it. I'm not like other men. Some
of them, a few of them, finally come to the place to realize
that this law could not save them. That they had a terrible
time turning it loose and coming to Christ alone. Therefore, many
of them said this, I'm putting the law behind my
back. I'm going to the Lord Jesus Christ contrary to the moral
law. Look over here with me and let
Paul explain it to us. He can explain it much better
than I can. Look in Romans chapter 3. Look here in Romans chapter 3
just for a minute with me. The Scriptures teach us there
are two ways There are two ways to come to God. There are two ways. One of them is in an attempt.
That's impossible to come this way. But it's by our own obedience. It's by our own works. That's
the law, by our own holiness. The other way is by Christ alone. And these two ways won't mix.
They won't mix. Look here in Romans chapter 3,
and look here in verse 19. Now we know that what thing soever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before
God. Therefore by the deeds of the
law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight, for by the law
is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of
God, look at this, without the law. without our obedience to
the law. is manifested, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that
believe, for there is no difference. For we have all seen, we have
all broken the law, and we have come short of God's glory, being
justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. How do we come to the Lord Jesus
Christ? As lawbreakers. As lawbreakers. Brothers and
sisters, that's the only way to come. Here's this leper, and he's full
of leprosy. And he's required by the law
to stay outside the camp, and he knows that. And by approaching
unto Jesus Christ, he broke that law. But it was either come in
that way for mercy or die in his leprosy under the law. One of the most difficult things
I ever did in my life was to come to the Lord Jesus Christ,
a guilty, helpless, hell-bound lawbreaker. I tried all through my teenage
years to come, promising Him I'd do this. You forgive me this
time. Tomorrow I'll show you I can
do better. I have made restitutions for
things I didn't even do to try to calm my guilty conscience. And some of the things I made
restitution for, they could have put me in jail. I was serious
about this, but he never would receive me. He never would receive
me. And when finally I threw up my
hands and come as a guilty sinner, a lawbreaker, without promising
anything, His grace, His mercy, His blood to wash me, His garments
to clothe me, then He revealed Himself to me. That's the way
this man came. He came contrary to the law. And look back over here in our
text again in Matthew chapter 8. There came a leper to Jesus. Look here in the last part of
verse 2. And he worshipped him, and this is what he said, Lord,
if thou wilt, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. What did this man do when he
came to the Lord Jesus? To be saved by him. The first
thing he did was surrender himself up to the will of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Did you know that? First thing
that he did. I can't earn salvation. I can't earn my cleansing. That's
what he said. I can't merit it. I'm not worthy
of it. But he left it all in the mere will of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Ain't that amazing? For a man to own before this
Lord of glory, that whether I'm saved or lost, I'm willing to
leave it in your will? This man was full of leprosy.
Now imagine this. He was full of leprosy and he
was ready to die this horrible death. And he was willing where he was
cleansed or sent away filthy, to leave it in the mere will
of this man before whom he stood. That's a searching question I
want to ask you, brothers and sisters. Have you ever been there?
Are you there tonight? You say, well, I'm a believer.
Are you there tonight? Are you willing to leave your
eternal salvation in his will? Lord, if thou will. The issue was not power. That wasn't the issue. You can. I know you can. You're
no mere man. He knew that. He knew this was no mere prophet.
Why, he said, you've got the power to save me. You've got
the power to cleanse me. It wasn't a matter of his power. Free will denies the Lord this. It's not His power they deny.
They sang with us, there's power in the blood of the Lamb. And
we sang with them. There's power, power, wonder-working
power. No free willer will deny God
His power to save. But what is it they deny Him?
His will. That's where the issue is. This
leper came to him and acknowledged both of these, his will and his
power. That is the way we come to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And here is the consolation of
coming this way, you will never be turned away. You will never
be turned away. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. You take any man or any woman
or boy or girl, I don't care who they are, they come to the
Lord Jesus Christ, to God by Him, and confess they are as
stinking and as rotten and as polluted in their hearts, in
their spirits, in their souls, as this man was in his flesh. And they come to him as this
man come. Lord Jesus, the Son of God, if
you will, you can save my soul. I tell you, not a soul that comes
like that will be turned away. If you come to him that way and
he turns you away, you'll be the first one. You'll be the
first one. And I'll tell you what will happen
to you, too. When you get to hell, the devil will have some
kind of chariot there, and he'll haul you all over hell, bragging
and boasting that you truly, in your heart of hearts, came
to the Son of God, and he turned you away. That will never happen,
brothers and sisters. All the Father gives to me, they
come to me. They come as lepers. They come
contrary to the law. They come confessing their guilt
before God. And everyone that comes to me,
I will then know why for no reason whatsoever cast him out. But notice something here this
leper didn't say. And I tell you this is important.
What he didn't say was very, very important. I decided to let you heal me. He didn't say that, did he? I
now receive my healing. I stand here before this multitude
and I make my decision for Jesus and my decision will heal me.
He didn't say that. I confessed my leprosy and received
Jesus to heal me, and someday I might receive him as my Lord. He didn't say that. What if this leper had put his
confidence in such things as this? He went running into town. I made my decision. I received
Jesus. You know what they'd have done?
They'd have dragged him out of the gates of that place and messed
on him. You've made some decisions. You've
looked at yourself in the mirror. You're a leper, man. You're full
of leprosy. Your decision didn't heal you.
You better get out of here. You're going to be stoned. No. Sometimes I'm sorry, brothers
and sisters, and I want to be as kind as I can be. I don't
want to offend anybody, and I hope you don't either. I want to be
kind to people. But sometimes we attribute too
much to people's ignorance. We let people buy with this,
well, he's just a young believer, he's got a lot to learn. Well, he was a young believer
too. And he knew something about who he was and what he was. And
he knew something about the Lord of glory. His cleansing, his
salvation was in his hand. And I don't know of anybody that
comes to the Lord that thinks contrary to that. You may be
ignorant about a bunch of doctrine. There are things in this Word
of God that may confuse you, and you can't get a handle on
it. But I'll tell you this much. You know you're a sinner. I mean
a real sinner. A hell-deserving sinner. And
you know that when you come to the Lord, your salvation was
in His hands. And you felt it too, didn't you?
You felt it. You knew it. Lord, if you will. If you will. If you will, or
if you are here this evening, dear brothers and sisters, and
God has made you to know and believe that you are saved by
his will, you are a happy man. You are a happy man. You stand trembling with your
destiny in nobody's hands but his. That's a fearful thought,
buddy. Now, I make a statement like
that. But when you shut up to that, you stand knowing that
your eternal destiny is in the mere will of God. Buddy, that's tough now. We used
to go to prison, down to jail with Gideon's, Gideon Association. I went down there a few months
with them and I seen they need to be preached to more than the
guys inside the jail. I had this one guy, he always
was saying, he always said, just exercise the power of your will.
Just exercise the power of your will. I got up one day and he
just got me so grieved. I felt about like Paul when that
woman followed him, you know. And I got up and I said, you
know why you fellas are in here? You exercise the power of your
will. That's what you're doing in here. Exercise the power of your will. Lord, if thou will. And you never know whether it's
his will or not until he does it. You see, the will of God
is a mystery, ain't it? It's a hidden thing. And you
can't know it until he reveals it to you. Here comes this leper. And he
comes here and he just falls down at the feet of the Lord
Jesus. And he says, Lord, if you will.
Well, will he? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Lord, will you? And the hush
goes over this crowd. Everybody's quiet. Is it his
will? What's he going to do? The man's
left it up to him. If you will. Nobody knows what
he's going to do. Oh, such a quietness comes over
that whole multitude of people. What is the will of Jesus Christ? Is he going to heal him or send
him away? Nobody knows until he uses this verse here. Look
at this. In verse 3. And Jesus put forth his hand
and touched him, saying, I will. Then he knew it was his will. Oh, we come to the Lord and we're
so guilty and vile. Lord, save me. Lord, save me.
And you don't know if he's going to or not. And then when he does,
and he makes you to know it, he reveals to you the mystery
of his will. Oh, how you rejoice. How you
rejoice. He's a happy man who's saved
by the will of God. Lord, if you will. And the scripture
tells us here in verse 3, and I'll go on. Verse 3. He put forth
his hand and touched him. I thought about that because
I thought first as I read that, I thought he healed him by touching
him. But he didn't. Mark says that
when the Lord Jesus spoke and said, I will, he was healed. So touching him didn't heal him.
He could have healed him that way. But I thought, well, why
would he touch this filthy, stinking man with sores running, flesh
rotted. He was full of leprosy. His nose
was probably gone. There was two holes. A tremendous
fever. Why would the Lord Jesus reach
his holy hands and touch this man? Well, Mark told us why he
did it. He was full of compassion. That's
amazing, brothers and sisters. He wretched his hand being full
of compassion and he touched him. He laid his hands right
upon those rotten sores. Isn't that wonderful? You and
I are living in a cruel world, aren't we? Troubling world. Busy world. And sometimes we get so discouraged. We get so down. I thought as
we were... Brother Greg took us over today
to the ocean. I just love to see the ocean. I don't do anything
when I get there. I just sit and look at it, but
I love to see it. But it was so busy, congestion, and I thought,
I couldn't live here. I live up home where you never
see any cars, hardly go around my street. You know, no traffic
jams. We don't even have a pot machine. We have no industry whatsoever.
Nobody comes out where I live. It's so quiet and peaceful. But
I don't care where you live. And I don't care what you do
for a living. Life can get you down. Raising a family can get
you down. These struggles of our soul that
we go through can get us down. We struggle with sin. We have
trouble praying. We have all these infirmities.
We see all this sin in the world and all this perversion and all
the darkness. And sometimes it gets us down.
We weep. And then we see this sin within
us. Oh, it makes us groan within ourselves. And we just get down. Did you ever just get down discouraged? Oh, it's just awful living in
this body, living in this world. What would you do if you did
not know the Son of God was full of compassion towards you? In your sighing, in your groaning,
in your sorrow, and in your struggles through this world, you have
one in heaven that can be touched with the feelings of your infirmities.
He comes right where you are in your struggles, even in your
sinful struggles, when you struggle with sin and sorrow and disappointment
in your life. And he has a way of letting you
know that he's touched. with what you feel. Isn't that
wonderful? Oh, David said, Lord, I would
have fainted. I would have fainted in my heart if I had not seen
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I tell you
why he reached and touched this filthy man. The same reason he
reaches and touches us almost every day of our life. He loves
us. He's willing to condescend right
where we are and love us right where He finds us. That's amazing
to me. That keeps me going in this old
world, brothers and sisters, of disappointment wherever I'm
at. He reached forth His hand and
touched him. And here in the last part of
verse 3, immediately the leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said
unto him, See thou tell no man. Well, he probably didn't have
to tell anybody. Everybody was there and saw it.
Those who knew him had seen him begging. Everybody saw this man.
And now he was cleansed. But the Lord said something to
him here. And let me enclose and draw your
attention to this. He said, go thy way and show
thyself to the priest. Show yourself to the priest.
Now, when these lepers were cleansed in the Old Testament, they always
had to go to the priest. And the priest would examine
them and pronounce them clean or unclean. Now, he didn't go
to the priest to be cleansed. He simply went to the priest
to be pronounced clean. And I love this because this
has a reverence to the law. And when the Lord Jesus saves
an individual, He saves him in such a way that He can send him
to the law to let him examine him. He saves His people in such a
way that it's perfectly consistent with justice. He doesn't save us by the law, but he doesn't save us in such
a way that it would diminish the authority or the glory or
the power of the law. What he does, he clothes us with
his righteousness and sends us to the law, and the law says,
I find no fault in such a righteousness, and pronounces him clean. Oh, you're not a law keeper.
You know you can't keep the law. You can't keep it. But when it
looks upon you, it sees no fault in you. And he says, the Lord Jesus says
to this man, he said, I am so sure that the law will pronounce
you clean. I'm certain of it, he says. Therefore,
take a gift with you to offer. He had no doubt about it, didn't
he? The Lord Jesus said you better take a gift with you. You better
take a sacrifice. Because when that priest examines
you, he's going to pronounce you clean. So he went and got
him a sacrifice on his way over there. The Lord Jesus saves us, brothers
and sisters, in such a way that God is honored. The law is magnified. And you and I are satisfied. May God bless this work. Thank
you, Brother Greg.