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April 16, 2021 7:05 am
Imagine what it was like for the sick man to have a chance encounter with Jesus in Matthew chapter 8 the end of Jesus famous sermon on the Mount. He appeared out of nowhere this man was suffering from the ugly and debilitating disease of leprosy today on Insight for living Chuck Swindoll will show us how Jesus handled the spontaneous moment which Jesus volunteered to heal the man what he require anything of the suffering whopper will through this fascinating exchange, let's examine what it means to come to Jesus, no matter our condition sometime I think it's good to just pause and let the wonder I sometimes think the greatest sound we can enjoy a silent prayer can become such a profound moment to meditate, turn it over in our minds let it soak in. We don't need more intelligent people. Today we we we don't need busier people. We don't we don't even need more gifted people. We need deeper deeper people with depth comes Brett and wisdom and a sense of understanding call quiet confidence that God is still in charge. I needed that reminder this week. Didn't you. We are working our way through Matthew's gospel and I had a choice as to whether I would take on three different vignettes are just settle on one and I chose one in the early part of Matthew eight because of for that very reason I think it's good that we pause and ponder a little more slowly. One event rather than hurry through three that are all in the area of a cleansing and healing ministry of Jesus, so will do just the first four verses of Matthew eight, but first I'd like you to hold your place.
There and turn to Matthew chapter 4 will look at the last three verses and then move beyond the sermon on the Mount to the first four verses of chapter 8. So were reading for 23 through 25 and then chapter 8134 Matthew 423 Jesus was going through out all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about him spread throughout all Syria and they brought to him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pain demoniac epileptics paralytic's, and he healed them. Large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan chapter 8 when Jesus came down from the mountain.
Large crowds followed him and the leper came to him and bow down before him and said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
Jesus stretched out his hand touched him, saying, I am willing becoming and immediately his leprosy was Clinton's and Jesus said to him see that you tell no one would go show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them. Living to study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll. Be sure to download his searching the Scriptures study by going to Insight world.org/studies another message from Chuck titled out of the crowd. A leper life doesn't stop to give the preacher time to prepare and then later deliver message it just rolls right on many things don't change. Babies are born kids get sick. Cars break down phones keep bringing people in need on it on the needs may go sometime folks wind up really sick and they are hospitals and on occasion they die, so funerals must be prepared and counseling must take place to comfort the families and their grief and then to minister at that memorial service in a special way. Life doesn't stop even though Sunday is coming. I got a saying that I'd tells a few preacher friends of mine have you noticed Sunday comes every two days is not every seven when you preach for a living. You know how quickly that next Sunday rolls around, or that next time teaching this doesn't take away from the importance of the message itself. On the contrary, it is often in those moments when life is crushing that you really are prepared to deliver what needs to be said. You and I know that there is something exhilarating about a well-crafted sermon. What you may not know is that every well-crafted sermon is always exhausting exhausting which makes me all the more amazed when I come to the sermon on the Mount, which you and I've been spending time in together. Not only is it a masterpiece.
Talk about an exhilarating message but I III into the amazement I enter into the amazement of it when I realize what came before it, and what followed after it being a preacher I would be interested in that. If this overall surrounding context to me makes the sermon all the more significant prior to the sermon versus 2324 25 a chapter 4 there was the crush of the crowds coming from all over and the needs are enormous.
You heard them as I read them. There are various diseases.
There are pain zero people filled with demons. There are folks that have epilepsy. There are people that are paralyzed in all kinds of sores all kinds of headaches all kinds of heartaches and their coming and their coming and it isn't letting up in the coming from all over their coming from all of Syria and all of Galilee and from the 10 cities on the other side their coming from Jerusalem and all Judea, down below from all over you and I can hardly imagine the crowd and then he doesn't take a nap before he is to preach the sail away into the sea, taken afternoon, put his thoughts together. No one escorts him to a place of quiet refuge where he could repair get renewed and spend time with his father and to pray so that he might be ready to preach out of all of the Christ.
He goes up the hill and he preaches there's no break. Like didn't stop so he could deliver his sermon. Look for yourself. Chapter 4 verse 23 Jesus is going throughout all Galilee, don't miss that all Galilee, it's pretty good size region if you traveled is really realizing all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom healing every kind of disease every kind of sickness among the people. Just one verse in the next. The news about him spread throughout all what you would imagine.
I mean when your friend get sick. It is healed. You have a loved one who sick you want that person healed so the news travels that you think where is how can I get to this man and so we read about the group that finds him all Syria check that out on your map and then they brought to him all who were ill and suffering from various diseases. It contains an the affliction judges mentioned law words crowd or here. In fact, listen to Eugene Peterson in the message as I render as as he renders these verses. From there he went all over Galilee.
He used synagogues for meeting places and taught the people the truth of God. He also healed people of their diseases and of the bad effects of their bad lives. Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria, people brought anybody with any ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical.
How easy to read those through three words in the pause and think about it people with mental illnesses, people with emotional anxiety. People with physical afflictions brought to him. Jesus healed them one and all. More and more people came the momentum gathering besides those from Galilee crowds came from the 10 towns which is a translation of Decapolis the 10 towns across the lake.
Others from Jerusalem and Judea.
Still others from across the Jordan unit stands out in my mind from his rendering the momentum gathering the needs intensify the expectations enlarging the crowds increasing until as far as you could see there were heads bobbing in the crowd, people crying out hands raised afflicting generated alarms, little children can hardly stand people screaming from demon possession all kinds of epilepsy in all kinds of pro rata, all pressing in wanting a piece of him and that magnificent power. It was intensifying it was growing.
The momentum is gathering. There was no break.
There was no nap. There is no afternoon sales. There was no relaxation by a stream goes from this amount sits down and delivers a flawless exhilarating message that to this day.
We cannot exhaust what is sermon, especially when you realize what preceded it will surely after he did that to catch his breath. Surely someone said Jesus, we're, we're, let's escape through the streets over there, beyond the bushes I got a boat waiting you and I'll go out. I won't say a word.
You can you can you can just relax right there in the boat. None of it is none of the end of the sermon the very end. Verse 28 verse 29 when Jesus had finished when he had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, Casey Robertson, the great scholar from Southern seminary in Louisville wrote they listens spellbound to the end and were left amazed.
Note the imperfect tense.
He adds a buzz of astonishment, the verb means, literally, they were struck out of themselves would say they were blown out of their minds. Every sermon like this you don't feel chatty. You want to be quiet will of the wonder in you want to sit and soak it up, especially if you're the preacher you want to give God thanks for the help in the delivery and and you want to give you praise that the message connected in the people were moved in fact they had never heard such great teaching in their lives first 20 not the teaching came as one who had authority from one who had authority, and not as described. Verse one. I'm sorry. There's a chapter break. I wish it were verse 30 you get the feeling of it. The sermon is ended, the people are amazed Jesus makes his way down the mountain and look there's the crowd again.
Except now, with larger is very little time it's past and more people together from all around more, he came down from the mountain look closely. Large crowds followed him earlier we read large crowds followed him on the hoi polloi. The Greek says large number of people large crowds more and more sit in the trap of trying a number of years ago was our first journey, but we were sitting on a bus at a particular intersection. We look to the right.
In those days everyone had bicycles and I saw probably 12 to 15 across and as far and not exaggerate as far as my I could see down that road perpendicular to ours. 12 to 15 across as far as I could see there were heads of people sitting on bicycles that just one street that's just one street in the city of Shanghai. That's just one country. It must've been something like that. By the way no other cars as fun used to be able to move around in those bicycles and eggs to say the business to be in over there is the bicycle business. Somebody got now they've all got cards people everywhere and you know the population well over a billion just to give you an idea, but here in Israel. Maybe as far as he could see there were more people and more some way in the back going help me help met came all the way all the way from beyond the Jordan help my son. Now you got life doesn't stop because a preacher prepares and delivers a message, it doesn't even stop after it's over. In fact, one of the most significant things that ever happened happens now out of the crowd.
A leper appears. Chances are very good.
You have never ever seen a leper. I have back in 1958 when I was a in the Marine Corps serving on the audit of Okinawa playing in the third division band are 55 piece band was instructed by our Capt. Birch that tomorrow there would be a very special concert. He said to someone you dressed in your very best. Make sure everything is pressed dress blues spit sign switch on your shoes. Shine your brass buttons as well as epaulets as well as buckles make sure everything is picture-perfect. Your standard inspection then will load up in the vehicles and will drive some distance away, I figured a parade.
Perhaps in the city of Naha perhaps as far as not go up north. Little did I know he had arranged for us to do a concert at a leper's Aryan. The northernmost part of the island of Okinawa as far removed as one can imagine from humanity.
There was at that time there may still be a colony of lepers. I've never seen anything like because you have not been around leprosy. Allow me to describe it. Numbness follows painful areas on the body, and soon the skin loses its color and like the hair turns white and begins to be thick and glossy and scaly skin around the eyes and ears begins to punch with deep furloughs between the swelling so that the pace begins to room to resemble that of a lion to make all this worse. You could smell it for the leper emits an unpleasant odor. If you're near a leper for too long, you begin to detect a peculiar taste in your mouth due to the foul odor. The disease begins to attack the larynx so the leper's voice acquires a grating sound.
The throat becomes increasingly more horse so that others not only can smell the leper. They now hear the rasping voice they were the ultimate outcast unit engineer, a leper, if you were down when you had to be at least 150 feet away and you wonder what that person is doing out in public. That hair was disheveled. The clothing is left in rags, usually barefoot toes missing fingers missing off an entire hands missing lips are gone. The teeth protruding the eyes stare. If a leper so much as put his head into a house. The house totally became unclean all the way to the roof beams. There was never any disease that so isolated an individual as leprosy, nor was there one of those day. One of those times in which there was more dreaded except for the case of death itself. It was an absolutely terrifying disease not unlike a today except in this case, terribly disfiguring, a leper was required to scream when he was in the street playing playing playing so that you would stay away were a cloth flap over his mouth. I don't hold back the breath from breathing on you but to hide ugliness of amount with no lips is dreadful beyond description. I remember when we would finish one piece or another.
I would hear the doll thumping of the nubs of an arm pumping another as they tried to applaud. Absolutely pathetic. No known cure some trauma victim would have it for as much is 20 years before retaking members. We rode away from the concert.
The silence in our vehicle was deafening. Just like right now out of the crowd emerges a leper crowd must backed away the ultimate outcast is in their midst is a picture of depression and humiliation and complete lack of self-worth. You and I cannot imagine the desperation that accompanies leprosy. One cannot describe in the Scriptures. Leprosy is often compared to sin. That's why leprosy is not cured its cleanse.
That's important whenever cured of sin were cleansed of sin when Jesus Christ comes into a life to save that life, he cleanses us from sin doesn't cure us from sinning.
We still have an old nature that sends we wish to be cured that awaits us.
That's an eternity. The hymn writer said that we shall be what we should be then we shall be what we would be things that are not now, nor could be soon shall be our own oil that we could be cured of it, but only cleansed and that's what he asks for. He came down from the mountain. Large crowds followed him and a leper.
Let it land in full force a leper came to him and worship the new American Standard renders this bow down before him.
The Greek is one word worship he worship bowed low and uttered the word Cory's little word what respect you listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. Chuck titled today's message out of the crowd. A leper, and this is insight for living.
To learn more about this ministry. Please visit us online@insightworld.org. Although Jesus sermon on the mount comprises just three chapters in the Gospel of Matthew in many respects. Matthew, five, six and seven represent the core of Jesus ministry to help you grasp the enormity of the sermon, Chuck wrote a book called simple faith and has become a long-standing classic. If you been cynical about religion because of the hypocrisy you've experienced or you become jaded by a lack of authenticity you witnessed in religious circles then you'll appreciate this wakeup call from Jesus. It's the foundation of Chuck's book simple faith to purchase a copy right now. Call us if you listening in the United States dial 1-800-772-8888 or it might be more convenient if you go directly to insight.org/offer and then as God leads you. Please remember the influence of your donation to insight for living our website and email inbox are filled with affirming notes from grateful listeners. People from all walks of life are benefiting from the gifts you send to thank you for your donation Chuck delivers the sermons staff puts together the program is people like you. Your flight insight for the to give a donation right now, it's listening in the US dial 1-800-772-8888 also go online to insight.org then as we enter into the weekend. Remember, you're invited to join us online for the Sunday morning worship service stone briar community church.
In addition to hearing Chuck sermon participate in the congregational singing as well. You'll find all the instructions for streaming. The live worship service@insight.org/Sundance scribes. Jesus can ration right here on insight for living. The preceding message out of the crowd. 11 was copyrighted in 2015 and 2021 and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. all rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited