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[0:00] So, Matthew chapter 8. Just by way of very brief recap, we have been, prior to our little! departure for two sessions, we've been in Matthew's Gospel, we got to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. The first five chapters really of Matthew's Gospel, simply it's Matthew bringing credibility to the ministry and the person of Jesus. Talks about his genealogy, talks about the virgin birth, talks about him going out and finding disciples and healing all sorts of sicknesses and diseases and behaving like Messiah. And then we enter this pattern which goes on for most of the rest of the Gospel, where he preaches something or teaches something and then follows that teaching or preaching with signs and wonders and miracles and other things and then goes on to his next bit of teaching. So, the Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon that has ever been preached and it's the longest recorded sermon of Jesus' ministry and it is full of exhortations to consider the righteousness you have as nowhere near good enough. Even the most devout Jews, he said, if you want to get to heaven you need to be more righteous than the Pharisees and in the eyes of the

[1:29] Jews at that time the Pharisees were the most righteous people. So, in every respect, and I'm not going to restudy 6, 7 and 8 of the chapters that deal with these statements of Jesus that basically says, if you're thinking of getting to heaven and your own strength, forget it. You need to be better than the best. You need to be holier than the holy. You need to be the greatest. You need to have it all.

[2:00] And of course, that puts us all in the same position. Can't do it. Can't do that. So, I need someone to do it for me. Someone to do a transforming work in me and bring about in my life the covenant that we read about in Jeremiah chapter 31 where he takes the word of God off the printed page and prints it on the human heart so that we can live it. And if you remember, we'll refer to it again later, I suspect, but he said when they were asking him about what they could and couldn't eat, he said, it's not what goes into you that defies you. It's what comes out of you that defies you. Your mouth will speak of that which fills your heart. So, what we need is to have our hearts so full of God's word that that's all that is in there to come out. That's the equation we're looking for.

[3:00] And having preached all that, he then comes down off the mountain and we want Matthew 8 and we'll read the first four verses. But I want to start the reading, not the study, but the reading in the two previous verses of chapter 7 which said when Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at his teaching. For he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes. So, they'd already twigged that this man's teaching and preaching and his words were different. He wasn't referring to Rabbi Ben something or other a hundred years ago who said something, which was the typical thing that rabbis did. They actually didn't ever quote anything on their own authorities. They always quoted past authorities and Jesus didn't do that. Jesus quoted on his own authority. He didn't make references to previous authorities other than some disparaging ones from time to time.

[4:07] Reading on. When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And a leper came to him and bowed down before him and said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, I am willing, be cleansed. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, see that you tell no one, but go show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Why do we need to spend a whole session on just those four verses? It's great. Jesus healed a leper. This was one of the most significant miracles that Jesus did in the entire Bible. I would say there are probably two others, maybe three others if you count the raising of Lazarus. All right. So this was up there among the most important miracles. And remember,

[5:09] Matthew is preaching to Jews, and this was certainly the most important one for Jews. And we'll go into why in a moment. I'm going to put the notes up on the screen and I'm going to email them out to you. You must have already twigged that I don't always follow my own notes.

[5:29] So, because I think of things that I need to say or I forget to read something that's on the notes. So, in fact, I think we've just done this page.

[5:46] He comes down from the Mount of Olives. Large crowds follow him. This tells us a couple of things. Sermon on the Mount was delivered to disciples. It doesn't mean the twelve. It means followers.

[6:01] And there was probably a couple of hundred people to whom he was directly speaking when he spoke the Sermon on the Mount. But beyond that was a bigger crowd. And when he came down off the mountain, crowds, not just a crowd, but the Greek is actually very clear. It's the plural, crowds.

[6:22] So it wasn't a crowd. There were loads and loads of people following him. And he's coming down with these people following him. And what he needs to do at this point, if you take yourself away from the Bible for a moment and think, if I was Jesus at that point, what would I need to do? I would need to establish my status as Messiah. He's got three years to achieve something which he can't achieve unless the religious powers that be understand who he is and get the opportunity to accept or reject him.

[7:01] And so he's going to do something to establish his position as their Messiah. So there are several things about this particular miracle that are important for us to understand, just to understand the ministry of Jesus then and the ministry of Jesus to us today.

[7:26] Leprosy, I'm not going to try and follow the pathway of my own notes. The leprosy that they spoke of was not the same leprosy as we look at today. If you look up leprosy today, what you'll get is Hansen's disease. And Hansen's disease is an awful disease. It used to be deadly. I gather they've recently found a way to cure it. But it wasn't the same symptoms as the priests were told to look for regarding this disease. Hansen's disease does not have these rather large spots that seem to come from below the skin, up through the skin, and cause the hairs to go white, for example.

[8:13] The priests were very specifically told, if there are white hairs, it's leprosy. If there aren't, it's probably a boil. And if it's just scaliness, it's probably eczema. And one of the reasons I said, have a look through Leviticus 13 and 14 in my email, is because you realise that the priests are told to be very careful about diagnosis. Now hang on a minute, who goes to a priest for diagnosis?

[8:39] You'd think he'd have gone to a doctor. You know, it's a medical thing, surely. With leprosy, it's the only disease where that is not the case. You can only be diagnosed as leprous, and we'll get away from the word leper in a minute, but you can only be diagnosed as leprous by a priest because it was considered a spiritual condition. If you were a leper, Josephus says, he calls them the walking dead. You were, you know, when they, there's a film somewhere, and I don't watch films very much, so it's a distant memory, and I can't remember the name of the film, but they're walking somebody to the electric chair, and they, sorry?

[9:25] And as they're walking him, they talk, they speak of him as dead man walking, right? And they're on the way to the electric chair. They're calling dead man walking. Now, that is effectively what they considered lepers to be because once you were diagnosed, you had no life.

[9:45] You were outside the kingdom, the camp. You were set outside. You couldn't come in freely. As you came in, you had to warn everybody about your condition. People wouldn't touch you. You wouldn't ever again hold hands with your wife. You wouldn't ever again cuddle your child. You wouldn't ever have physical contact with anyone other than another leper. You might live in a commune of other lepers, but your life was dramatically changed from that moment onwards, and this was all, this was all authorised by the priest who said, yep, you've got leprosy.

[10:30] And what you had to shout was, unclean, unclean, and the leper that came to Jesus didn't say, Lord, you can heal me. He said, you can cleanse me. And he said, I am willing, be cleansed.

[10:45] So, this language that was used meant that this disease was not looked upon like any other disease. It wasn't just a sickness. It meant to any Jew, it meant you were under direct judgment from God.

[11:04] This was a judgment for you because of your sin. That's what it meant to any Jew. That may have been completely unfair. I don't know. But nevertheless, it was the stance that Jews took for reasons that we will explore.

[11:25] Let's get away from this word leprosy because it wasn't leprosy as we know it. And the Jewish, the Hebrew word is tzara'at. I have not a clue if that's the correct pronunciation, but it's thereabouts, tzara'at. And this is a, it's a strange thing because you can contract tzara'at, but so can your house and so can your clothes. And if you read through Leviticus 13 and 14, and it would take me a couple of hours to study those thoroughly, so I'm not going to, I'm just going to pick bits out. And if you read it and do your homework, you can then tell me if I've got any of it wrong. But a lot of the rabbis used to think, and there's no sort of backup evidence for this, but they used to think it always started with the clothing and then it went to the house.

[12:19] And then if you didn't pay attention at that point, it then came on your body. Now that kind of sounds logical, but it's not backed by any evidence. So take it lightly. In any event, you could suffer leprosy, tzara'at, of the house, the clothes, or the body. And if your house was particularly badly stricken with tzara'at, it would be burnt down. So it was severe stuff. And if your clothing was particularly covered in tzara'at, you would make a bonfire and you would burn your clothes.

[12:54] not a great problem for us in this affluent society, but it was not a very affluent society. So you had to go and buy more clothes, which is quite an expense. So when the police, it's a bit like the police, when the priest took such great pains not to misdiagnose this because they followed the ritual that was in Leviticus 13, they took such pains because if they diagnosed it wrongly, that person would still never be allowed in community again. They'd be cast outside the city, outside the camp, whatever it was.

[13:44] And in my head I thought, that's like being cast out of the kingdom because of your sin. You can't enter normal society if you're covered in leprosy. You can't enter the kingdom of heaven if your sin has not been dealt with. When a leper is then cleansed, that, first of all, and again I'm jumping ahead of my own notes, but it seems to flow so I'll keep it going. There were only two recorded occasions in scripture where lepers were cleansed. One was Naaman and the significant thing about Naaman was he wasn't a Jew. And the other was Miriam who had spoken against Moses and God had got angry with her for speaking against Moses. Again, study that in your own time, but his anger against her resulted in her being stricken with Sara'at. She was white all over. And she was subsequently healed as a result of

[15:01] God's interference and a miracle of healing from God. Miriam was pre the law being given. So that didn't happen when the law was in place. So when the law is put in place, and in the law is Leviticus 13 and 14, which says this is how you diagnose it, and this is what you do when a leper is cleansed, the latter part of that, chapter 14, had never been used. So the priests have this thing in the law.

[15:35] When a leper comes to you and says he's been cleansed, this is what you do. And it's been sat there for 1,500 years or so. Not once been used. And this had an effect. The effect that it had, and I do not know whether they were right or wrong to make this assumption, but the Jews always taught, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees always taught, that if anybody turns up and cleanses a leper, that is Messiah. It's a messianic miracle. Only Messiah can cleanse lepers, because they'd never seen it. And yet there was this ritual. What's the point in having a ritual if you don't see it ever?

[16:19] And there's no history of it apart from Miriam, who was before the law was given anyway. You see why they would draw the conclusion that when Messiah turns up, we'll know, because he'll be the only one who's ever cleansed a leper. So coming back to my earlier statement, if he's coming down off the mountain, having said all that he said, and he wants to establish his position as Messiah, the best way to do that is to do a miracle that they've been saying, only Messiah can do this. It also puts them in a very, very awkward position, because you have to, if you're going to reject Messiah, you have to reject someone who's done what you said only Messiah could do. It takes away all their excuses in one miracle. And Jesus did many miracles. You remember in John's Gospel, it says that if all the miracles that Jesus did were described, possibly there wouldn't be enough books in the world to be able to hold all that information. So this disease is seen, this is a judgment from God. First mentioned, let's do a little bit of background. Exodus chapter 4.

[17:37] The first time we see it in Scripture, what was it, the rule of first mentioned things?

[17:52] So the first time we see it is in Ezekiel 4 and verse 6. Sorry, did I say Ezekiel? I so easily misspeak, don't I? And then I have to apologise the following week. Exodus chapter 4 and verse, I better get the right verse now. Six.

[18:16] Just says, the Lord furthermore said to him, so this is the Lord speaking to Moses, now put your hand into your bosom. So he put his hand into his bosom. And when he took it out, behold, the hand was leprous like snow. He said, put your hand into your bosom again. So he put his hand into his bosom again. And when he took it out of his bosom, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. If they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they might believe the witness of the last sign. So from that Scripture, they would deduce that the appearance of leprosy was a sign against them. And they should pay attention and believe that the Lord was behind this.

[19:04] And when they saw lepers being healed, they should also believe that the Lord was behind that and assume that the Lord was in their midst. So you can see where they get their ideas from.

[19:17] And I tend to think they were probably not far adrift. And then it produced this understanding that the person who had tzara'at was unclean, unfit to fellowship, unfit to give service of worship to God. There's a Levitical rule where they're not allowed to touch.

[19:44] The priests who have leprosy can't touch any of the holy gifts or the holy implements. So if you've got this, you're not only not fit to have fellowship with humans, but you're not fit to serve God either.

[19:57] It's quite a... You imagine being a priest that's got that problem. Then there's another little... If we turn to Numbers chapter 12, which is the incident of Miriam, this produced a view that leprosy was a consequence of something they called Lashon Hara.

[20:18] Again, I don't know if that's the right pronunciation, but it'll have to do. Numbers chapter 12 and verse 11.

[20:29] In fact...

[20:39] In fact... Oh, 12, that's 11. I'm looking at the wrong chapter. Then Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned.

[20:59] Do not... Oh, sorry. This is after she's been struck. So let's go back a few verses. Verse 9.

[21:12] Now this is... This comes directly after... So the passage immediately before is where Miriam speaks against Moses and basically says, why have you married this Gentile woman?

[21:23] Verse 9. So the anger of the Lord burned against them and he departed. But when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous as white as snow.

[21:35] As Aaron turned towards Miriam, behold, she was leprous. Then Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned.

[21:47] Do not let her be like one dead whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother's womb. Moses cried out to the Lord saying, O God, heal her, I pray.

[21:58] And she was healed. But because the condition came so spontaneously directly from God at the point where she bad-mouthed Moses, that action in Hebrew is known as lashon hara, which is evil tongue.

[22:16] Right? It means evil tongue. And so evil tongue was the most prominent sin suspected when somebody had leprosy. But over the years, they also attributed other sins to it.

[22:29] So if you were an adulterer, if you were a thief, if you were a liar, there were various sins that were, it was assumed, would provoke leprosy to come upon you as a direct judgment from God.

[22:44] And that's why it wasn't treated as a sickness. It was treated as a spiritual judgment. The reference about not touching the...

[23:05] Well, no. In Deuteronomy 24... Let's turn there. I was trying to save time, but it didn't work. Deuteronomy 24...

[23:18] Verses 8 and 9. So this is under a title in my Bible that says, Sundry Laws.

[23:29] And this particular sundry law says, Be careful against an infection of leprosy, sarahat, that you diligently observe and do according to all the Levitical priests teach you as I have commanded them, so you should be careful to do.

[23:47] Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt. So... The exhortation was, be really careful about this disease and remember what happened to Miriam.

[24:02] In other words, God was saying, treat this really seriously because it's... It's from me. That's what happened to Miriam.

[24:13] It was God that put that on Miriam. So in the Jews' mind, and because of laws like this, they were treating this as if it was a direct infliction from God because of sin.

[24:25] Now by now, I reckon you've probably made the connection that this disease was considered, anybody who could cure this disease was someone who could cure sin.

[24:43] And it's a little bit of a leap, but nevertheless, if you have authority over tzara'at, God's judgment for sin, you have authority over sin.

[24:55] And of course, Messiah in the Jews' mind hasn't arrived yet, and when he comes, he will have authority over sin. Which is why they taught, if someone turns up and starts cleansing lepers, he is the one who has authority over sin.

[25:11] He's Messiah. So what is Jesus saying when he comes down off the mountain? What's he saying, first of all, to the people? He's saying, I'm Messiah.

[25:23] I've told you all these things about holiness and how you need to ditch your sin, and I'm the one who has authority over sin, and to demonstrate that, I'm going to show you that I have authority over leprosy.

[25:35] Reminds you of another occasion, doesn't it, when Jesus said, when he was healing on the Sabbath, and he said, or they said to him, why are you doing this on the Sabbath?

[25:45] And he said to them, what's more difficult? Oh, he said to the man, your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. And they said, only God can forgive sins.

[25:58] And he said, what's the easier thing to do? To tell someone their sins are forgiven or to heal them? Get up and walk. And he did another miracle that the Jews always taught the people to expect when Messiah came.

[26:12] He healed a crippled man. So, he is establishing his position with the people. He is also, when he sends this man to the priest, I've completely lost my way in my notes now, but never mind.

[26:33] When he sends him to see the priest, the priest gets this guy turning up and suddenly he's got a job of work to do that he's never had to do before and neither have any of his predecessors.

[26:48] You've got a chap turning up saying, I was a leper and now I've been cleansed. So, the first thing he's got to do is establish, was he really a leper? And secondly, how did he get cleansed?

[26:59] And who was involved in that? And then he's got to blow the dust off this law that he's never used and revise it because he's probably forgotten what he's supposed to do in the case of a person turning up and saying they've been cleansed.

[27:14] And he's got to go through the ritual that you read about in Leviticus 14, which involves checking that he's been clean, that he's clean of the disease and then making sacrifices of doves and the dove having to be basically baptised in its own blood over running water and all that.

[27:31] A very, I mean, there are something like 120 verses of scripture devoted to how you recognise a leper and then another 60 verses about, so it's about 60 verses on that and then another 60 verses or so on how you cleanse that leper.

[27:50] And it's got lots of belt and braces in it. It's like, you know, when you're diagnosing a leper, you don't just immediately come down with your diagnosis but you put them outside, you, what's the word I'm looking for, isolate them for seven days and then you go back and have another look.

[28:07] And similarly, when you come out of leprosy, there's this period where you, you basically, it's a bit like they did with menstruating women, you had to have this period of time when you would become clean.

[28:23] You had a, I don't know what to call it, a rest period, if you like, an isolating period where you just were humble before the Lord. So, and this was one, this miracle was one of three messianic miracles that the Jews used to speak of.

[28:45] Four if you count raising people from the dead. But, you know, standard miracles. There were three. One was cleansing a leper, the other was the healing of a man born blind.

[28:59] And the third one was the healing or the casting out of a dumb spirit. And those three, and we'll come across those as we progress. I'm not going to study them this morning. But this was one of those three.

[29:16] And the people had all been taught. So this big crowd that have gathered have all been taught if a man turns up and heals a leper, that's Messiah. Messiah. So they're all going to say, whoa, we have Messiah in our midst.

[29:32] Now go and see the priest. And if the priest was honourable, he would immediately say to the people, that's right, you have Messiah in your midst. But what did they do instead?

[29:44] How can we kill this man and get rid of him? Kind of what the government does with people they don't like still, but that's another topic. We won't deal with that this morning. So, my goodness, I've made a mess of this, but never mind.

[30:06] This leper had been pronounced unclean. He's never allowed to go within two metres of anybody else. On a windy day, he can't go with 150 feet of anyone else.

[30:20] He's got to stay well, well, well clear. Now, it's a strange thing because the disease wasn't actually that contagious. It was contagious, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to take the chance, but the fear that was surrounding this disease, I don't know if any of the rest of you had this experience, but it reminded me of what happened to us when we were walking in the countryside when COVID was about.

[30:48] And we were on a footpath, and people were coming the other way, and they'd be like this, trying to go past me, with their back to me, and the hand over their nose and mouth, as if I was a leper.

[31:03] Every single leper would have had that, not just on the odd day like we had it during COVID, but they would have had it every day and for the rest of their lives. So, treated like a complete pariah.

[31:22] Now, the other thing that struck me, and if you look at Luke, Luke's gospel, Luke's account of this, which I think is in chapter five, is it in five or is it seven verse five?

[31:33] Anyway, it's in Luke's gospel. In Luke's gospel it says he was full of leprosy. This just says he was a leper. That account of the same event says he was full of leprosy.

[31:47] This means that he was extremely covered, head to toe, in leprosy, and was probably therefore very near death.

[32:00] Probably. And then we read, let's read it, go back to Matthew. It's only a small part of what we've been reading, but my goodness, it just, when you understand the great fear that's around this, and the social pariah that the man has become, and the social impact on not only the people that have got it, but the people that haven't, because they don't want to go near that.

[32:32] They even passed a rule, I discovered, nothing to do with the Bible, but they passed a rule where you were allowed to throw rocks at lepers to keep them away from you.

[32:44] That was the level of fear and the level of rejection that they had. And what we read in what we have just read is verse 4, sorry, verse 3, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.

[33:04] Nobody touches a leper. I can imagine the crowd going, oh, wow. when a leper turns up and says, if you are willing, you can make me clean, and Jesus, the first thing he does is reach out and touch him, he has no fear of it whatsoever.

[33:22] And I can imagine that whole crowd, sharp intake of breath, he just touched him. Now ordinarily that would mean you couldn't go near Jesus after that, because if somebody's touched a leper, then there would be some other ritual you'd have to go through to be cleansed from that experience.

[33:38] Jesus had no fear of this disease, but had mastery over it. Now given the connection between leprosy and our sin, we can begin to see that as people, as sinful people, we are not fit for heaven.

[34:04] And yet he reaches out and touches us and draws us into heaven having dealt with our sin. the only thing the leper had to do was say, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

[34:22] That's what we need to do. Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And his answer will be, I am willing, be clean, and he'll touch you.

[34:35] And I find that moving, I find that profoundly moving. So that was the effect on the people, the person, these hundreds of people who've been told, if a man turns up and heals lepers, that's Messiah, a man turns up and heals a leper, they're all thinking, this has got to be Messiah.

[34:59] As we progress through Matthew's gospel, we'll come across this again, and you'll see the people going, it's got to be the son of David. And so he turns up for the priest and the priest blows the dust off all the rules and starts to apply them because this leper has been cleansed and now they know that Messiah is in their midst, if they pay attention to their own teaching.

[35:30] What's then interesting, and we'll see this unfold as we go through Matthew's gospel, it'll come again and again as we go through. The Jews had an investigation process they used for any contender for the job of Messiah.

[35:47] Anybody who was a potential Messiah either made messianic claims or did stuff that you could think, oh, that's messianic stuff he's doing. I would imagine John the Baptist had some interest for the same reasons.

[36:00] But they would first observe, and next week when we study the next miracle and we look at what happens when Jesus goes to Capernaum and heals the centurions, well, servant or boy, language is slightly ambiguous, but you will note that the dignitaries, the religious dignitaries, are beginning to follow him around.

[36:28] So they have what's called the observation phase, and they looked at what was going on. Is this a true contender for Messiah? But initially they don't ask any questions, they mutter among themselves, but they don't ask questions, they just watch.

[36:46] And they watch to see whether he does stuff that's messianic. And at the end of that process they make a decision. He's either, yes, this is a proper contender, or actually he's an idiot, you know, like the some young moon, was it, who said he was Jesus.

[37:06] David Koresh also said he was Jesus. And it doesn't take long to work out that they don't fit. They can't live up to the description. So they just don't bother about such people because they understand it will die a natural death.

[37:23] You may recall Gamaliel, saying a similar thing. If this is God, there's no point in challenging it. And if it's not God, it will fizzle out anyway.

[37:35] And that was their attitude to this kind of thing. So this will have made sure that Jesus began to be investigated for his messianic potential.

[37:47] He hadn't made a direct claim to be the messiah yet, messiah but he had done a lot of stuff that only messiah was supposed to do already.

[38:04] I don't know whether it was God's sense of humour or just a serious attempt to help them to change their minds when they rejected him but at a later stage God sent them ten lepers.

[38:19] So they had not had to do this ritual ever and suddenly they have got to do it and when they weren't convinced he sent them ten more.

[38:31] And I just think that is, it appeals to my sense of humour. Whether it was supposed to be humorous I am not sure. And it was Luke chapter 5 by the way for Luke's version of this event.

[38:46] Luke 17 is where he sends them ten lepers to play with. So some applications for us.

[38:59] How am I doing for time? Oh, I'll take my time then. I'll speak slowly. Application for us.

[39:09] The same Lord who said to that leper, I am willing, be cleansed, will also say the same to us when we ask him to cleanse us from our sins. One of my concerns with some of the courses that are out there, one in particular being the Alpha courses, quite a lot of them run, and they never get to the point where somebody recognises their own sin and gets before the Lord and says, Lord, please make me clean.

[39:42] And without recognition of sin, you have no chance. But as soon as you realise you are a leper, spiritually, it enables you to, one, recognise you don't belong where righteous people are.

[39:57] You should be outside the camp and you should be ostracised and you should have no fellowship, which indeed is what you will have for the rest of eternity if you do not turn to Christ. But it also leaves you in a position to recognise that I can turn to Christ, I can ask him to cleanse me from my sin.

[40:15] And I can't speak for you, but that cleansing happened for me somewhere over 40 years ago now. It happened, but it continues to happen. He continues to change me from righteousness, from glory into glory.

[40:30] The pathway is you are instantly saved, but you continue to be saved. It's what they call the present continuous tense in Hebrew and in Greek. so I continue to be saved.

[40:44] But there will be one day when I will no longer fight with sin. In the new heaven and the new earth there is no sin. So as long as I'm there, because I have said to him, if you're willing, you can cleanse me.

[41:06] And he says, I am willing, be cleansed, my position in heaven is secure. And one day I won't have a struggle with sin anymore. I won't have any more road rage.

[41:21] By doing this a miracle, immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, he confirmed his messiahship to the crowd. By choosing this particular miracle, he confirmed his messiahship to the religious leaders of Israel.

[41:38] their response, of course, was to say, kill him. And another application for us, the response of the unbelieving world to our preaching the gospel, in many parts of the world is the same as that.

[41:53] You go to Saudi Arabia and preach the gospel, there will be a group of people that say, kill him. Jesus actually said, they will kill you and think they're doing God a favour.

[42:08] so, he knew that his destiny was to die, and he only escaped all this by supernatural intervention anyway.

[42:22] Like there were times when they were going to throw him off a cliff and he walked through the crowd. You try that sometime. You need supernatural help to do that. I don't mean go and try it, because it's a bit of a waste of flesh, but you and I couldn't do it.

[42:38] He could do it because he was a supernatural being. He can cleanse the leper because he's a supernatural being. He can cleanse us from our sin because he's a supernatural being.

[42:49] and I do hope some of those who are on the fence about their salvation, who listen to this talk, will pay attention to this, because it is, it's where Jesus set his store out.

[43:08] God. So Father, thank you for your salvation. Thank you that you give us this wonderful example, and that you set this up 1,500 years previously.

[43:22] You put that law in place knowing that when you came you would be confronted with this situation, and that you would establish your credibility based on something you'd already set in place 1,500 years previously.

[43:36] You are wonderful. You are glorious in what you do. And how you remove excuses. From this moment onwards, all of the scribes and the Pharisees had no excuse for rejecting you.

[43:54] Just thank you, Lord, that in one way you make it so easy. We don't need an ology to get into heaven. Lord, you, you made it so the simplest of us can say, Lord, if you're willing, please, would you make me clean?

[44:13]  Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.