Matthew 8.1-4

What a great few weeks we have spent on studying the best, most controversial sermon in the history of the world. Give yourselves a good pat on the back. There are seminary classes that spend an entire semester studying what you guys studied in five weeks. Choose one thing that you learned from the Sermon on the Mount that you maybe never heard before, challenged you or maybe something that you are still chewing on and post it on the blog or your Facebook status or something like that.

I would love to step back and look at the big picture of the book of Matthew real quick before we dive headfirst into this next section.

Remember, Matthew is a Jew writing to Jews who is trying to show them that Jesus is the son of David, king, reigning a kingdom. And also Matthew is wanting to show that Jesus is the son of Abraham, fulfilling the covenant promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12 to bless the nations.

We stand in the line of both of these as well.

We are part of Jesus' kingdom, and we are to carry out his blessing to the nations.

And so Let's look at where we have been:

Matthew is divided into five discourses, sermons, with events that relate to the sermon that proceed the sermons

1. Matthew 5-7--The sermon on the proclamation of a king, and the upside-down nature of his kingdom. 
1. Matthew 1-4 was all about the presentation of a king, now we see what this king has to say about his kingdom
2. Matthew 10--The sermon on the ministry of the King.
1. Matthew 8-9 is all about the King's ministry which is two fold: 1. healing the sick and 2. discipling the disciples. This is what his message is about in Matthew 10. 
3. Matthew 13--The sermon on the what Kingdom life is like (in parables)
1. Matthew 11-12 is filled with Jesus training the disciples what it means to be the people of God. 
2. The Pharisees and religious leaders of the day had a different idea of what it means to be the people of God, so there is a lot of conflict involved in this section. 
3. Jesus clarifies it all with his sermon in Matthew 13. 
4. Matthew 18--This sermon is all about Jesus teaching his disciples what the life of discipleship is like. 
1. Matthew 14-17, Jesus is focusing on the twelve disciples, training them and trying to get them ready for his death. 
5. Matthew 23-25--This sermon is about how to live in between Jesus' first coming and second coming. 
1. Matthew 19-22 is beginning Jesus' journey to the cross. And because his journey to the cross is filled with conflict, questions, debates, triumphal entries and all kinds of crazy things, Jesus wants to make sure his disciples know to Be ready and to Be faithful and to Be Loving, unlike the Pharisees. 

And then after Matthew 25, the rest of the book is about the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

We are now entering into taking a closer look at what ministry looks like in the Kingdom of God. First we see in chapters 8-9 what the King's ministry looks like, then the King will send his disciples out and teach them to do the same kind of ministry.

His ministry is twofold, 1. healing the sick and 2. discipling the disciples. This is what his message is about in chapter 10, and we will see him doing these two things in the next two chapters. So let's get started:

Matthew 8.1-4:
¹ When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. ² A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
 ³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. ⁴ Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”


The mountainside that Jesus was on goes all the way back to Matthew 5.1-3, "As Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying..." and that is how the sermon on the Mount started. So now at the conclusion of the Sermon, Jesus comes down from the mountain with large crowds following him. 


Then a man came splitting the crowd, falling at Jesus' feet. The people who have gasped when they realized who he was. 


He was a leper. 


He had a disease called "leprosy" which literally meant to "peel off like scales." It was highly contagious, so contagious that when you were found to have leprosy, you were ostracized from the community, and when you came close to someone you would have to scream "Unclean! Unclean" to warn them so they could stay away from you. Some Rabbis would not even purchase an egg in a street where there was a leper, others would throw stones at them to keep them far off. 


But this leper did not yell "unclean", he did not warn anybody. Instead, he came directly to Jesus and said, "Lord if you are willing you can make me clean."


This man was not only sick physically with a disease that just ate away at him till he died, but he was in need of healing emotionally. Ever since he had acquired this disease, he had to leave his family, and probably had not felt the touch of a human in years. To not be touched for so longed will affect the way you feel about yourself. Not only was he sick physically and emotionally, he was sick socially as well. 


He was an outcast, kicked out of society, no friends, no relations, and because he was kicked out of the community, he was kicked out of the nation of Israel, in the minds of the religious leaders. They believed that sickness came upon those who were sinful and unfaithful to God. 


Being a leper meant that you had a disease that was going to kill you, would not be touched by another human, would be kicked out of you family and community and were even considered kicked out of the people of God. 


They were outsiders, and look what Jesus does. 


³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. 


Jesus touched him!!!! This was against the law because if you touched a leper you became unclean. Yet the reverse happens. Jesus touches the man and the man with leprosy becomes clean. Jesus took care of all the needs of this man in this one act. He heals his physical disease, his emotional need to feel touched and loved, and he then fixes his social need by sending him to the priest to be reinstated into the community. 


 ⁴ Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”


Jesus' ministry first consisted of him meeting the needs of people. And this is what we are called to do. We are called to bless the nations by simply meeting the needs of people, the physical, emotional and social needs of people. We are called to undo everything that sin has done to the outcasts and the downtrodden. 


So let me ask you, "are you willing?" Are you willing to meet the needs of people even when it makes you look bad or it is a social stigmata? Are you willing to get your hands dirty and risk even your own life to meet the needs of others?