Healing

Come to Jesus by faith

Good morning. If you're new with us, we're walking through the book of Matthew, and we just finished the Sermon on the Mount last week, so that ended in chapter 7. As we look back, I want to remind us what we had seen. There was a common problem in verse 27. The rains fell, the floods came, the winds blew, and they beat on the house. And this happens to the man who's built a house on the rock and the man who's built the house on the sand. Significant pressure there. The significant focus is how do we handle suffering? How are we ready to endure and persevere through suffering? As we think about that particular passage, we now turn to what Jesus does after the Sermon on the Mount, and he goes and helps people who are suffering. The king who the crowds are astonished by his authority, he now turns and he helps people with his authority. He heals them. As we wrestle with this, it's important we go back and we ask these questions. Are we prepared to endure suffering? Is our faith being built up and strengthened to know the one God, the rock, our savior, so that we know how to approach suffering? Or more importantly, that we know how to approach God in suffering? One of the most terrifying experiences and burdens would be meaningless suffering. Hopeless, meaningless suffering. If a Christian turns to scripture, we see those two categories do not exist for us. God is with us in our suffering. He is for us in our suffering. He is over our suffering. This morning, we're going to look at Christ, the one who is the healer of suffering. We have hope in God who heals us and restores us. the one simple declaration, come to Jesus by faith to ask for healing. Come to Jesus by faith to ask for healing. I want to start in verse 17 this morning because What I believe Matthew's doing is he's capturing everything that he said beforehand in this one statement, he has fulfilled what Isaiah has said. So the first point, if you're taking notes, Jesus has come to restore humanity. Jesus has come to restore humanity. And the question could be, what is this referring to? It at least refers back to verse 16. That evening, many were coming to be healed of all different kinds of problems. They're coming from all different kinds of places. It is significant that we see this whole healing episode that I believe also includes Peter's mother-in-law, the centurion and the leper, or the centurion's servant and the leper. I believe this is referring to all of this. He's capturing what Jesus is doing with this one simple declaration. And if you flip back over to chapter four of Matthew, Remember what preceded the Sermon on the Mount. All kinds of people with all kinds of afflictions and diseases were healed. Matthew's book ended the healing with the great teaching, and so these two things do have to be connected. He is not just the teacher. He's not just the healer. He's prophet, priest, king. He's Almighty God, our Savior. We have to understand who Jesus is as a whole, but this morning we're looking at specifically he is the one who uses his authority to heal us. What he is doing fulfills what God said he would do. We turn now to look at what it means to fulfill. If you've been with us through Matthew, we've seen this come up over and over again. Again, you could flip back to Matthew, you can take these down. The word fulfill is used in chapter one, verse 22, 2.15, 2.17, 2.23, 4.14, and the idea is captured elsewhere, even in the very beginning, the genealogy. Jesus come to be the son of David, the son of Abraham. Christ has come to fulfill what God has already promised. It's a new covenant, there's a new beginning, but it's not brand new. It's what God has been promising all along. Christ has come to fulfill with clarity what God had promised already. You can see a similar idea in chapter two, verse five. It is written, or the very pattern of Christ going into the wilderness to be the new Adam. Christ is the fulfillment of all the good news God has promised. He is the promised Messiah. He is the one who the crowds are astonished because he teaches with such authority. He's a new Moses. Again, we just saw this. So what does it mean that he fulfills what the prophet Isaiah said? He's quoting there from what we read earlier, Isaiah 53 verse four, and we only read part of that particular declaration. That's a servant song of Isaiah. There are four servant songs in Isaiah. They're in chapter 42, 49, and 50. Jesus was just clearly the king in Matthew 5 and 7. All authority to teach us what his kingdom is like. And the next thing he does is he fulfills the servant song. We need to capture just how fantastic and dynamic that is. The king with all authority fulfills the servant songs The servant songs who declare one will come with mercy to pursue justice and declare salvation, but it's one who is lowly. Our great king comes to fulfill the work of a lowly servant of God. The servant song he's quoting is Isaiah 53 and it's the longest and I think the most detailed and really the most overwhelming. Isaiah 52, 53 is probably one of the most repeated Old Testament texts we read regularly on a Sunday morning, because it captures so much. The one who is exalted and lifted up by God is rejected and hated by man. He's the one who comes to suffer for sins he did not commit, but he suffers the transgressions of the people of God. He came to be the blessed by God, approved by God, rejected by man. Isaiah 53 has a unique role in our Christian canon because it speaks so clearly of the suffering substitute atonement of Jesus Christ. It speaks so clearly that someone had to come who was perfect to suffer and die for the sins of someone else. It points to God's justice. He must be just. He must punish every sin. It points to God's mercy. He himself came to provide the solution. God pays our penalty for our sin by punishing someone else in our place. It's the suffering servant, but here it's also our king. This is Gospel Truth and Belief 101. We are sinners who deserve God's judgment for our sin. but God sent his son to die for us in our place. God is both just and justifier. This Koral Testament promises what Matthew is appealing to. The gospel is we are sinners who are in need of a savior, where our sin is great, his mercy is more, and it's all found in Jesus Christ. But what really stands out is how the healing Jesus is also fulfilling this promise of salvation. Isaiah 53 is really focused on that substitutionary atonement of God's justice and his mercy. But Matthew uses this text to point to him being the one who heals, who takes our illnesses, who bears our diseases. Now if you're gonna flip back and forth and see what Isaiah's text says, what Matthew's text says, there's some discrepancy. So here we can look at Matthew uses the words illness and disease, Isaiah uses grief and sorrow. Sometimes these discrepancies are because the New Testament authors are using the Septuagint translation. That's actually not the case here. He is relying, it seems, more on the traditional Hebrew text. We just have to understand how words work. They have a range of meaning. The word illness and grief, the one Hebrew word there, those two concepts are well within the range of meaning. And actually, the word that is translated as grief in Isaiah is more often translated as illness throughout the rest of the Old Testament. What Matthew is doing is translating the Hebrew into Greek for us in a way that gives us the focus. The grief, the illness, he's taking away our sorrow, he's taking away the sickness, he's taking away a significant cause for our pain. You should appreciate how words are sometimes difficult to translate and well this just lets you pray all the more for our interpreters and translators. What is divinely inspired here, God's suffering servant comes to die for your sins and to heal us of all the consequences of the fall. He has come to die for your sins and heal you of all the consequences of sin. Christian, God is not just concerned about your sin and guilt. He loves you and all of you. He cares about your entire person and being. He sees every problem and wants to solve every problem. You see, there's problems that are beyond just sin. We call these fallen conditions. Some sicknesses are caused by sin, we know from Scripture, but most are not. Sickness, disease, cancer, miscarriages, blindness, death, these are all consequences of the fall that aren't tied directly to a consequence of a particular personal sin. We can remember the grand declaration, this world is not the way it's supposed to be. We live in a fallen world and there are numerous regular fallen conditions that many suffer through, that everyone will suffer through, and that Jesus is the ultimate solution to. Christ has come not just to save us from our sin, praise God He has done that, but He's come to heal us of every infirmity, care for us in the midst of our sickness. He's come to renew us in every way. One, this is encouraging because He came to be with us, like us, to suffer so that He can sympathize with us in our suffering. Second, He came to take the penalty for our sin. Third, here he takes away our sickness. Now, I've wrestled with this all week. I don't know if that means he himself took that sickness and suffered it in that moment, or if he is simply the solution to our sickness as the almighty God who heals us. I do know this, though. The final fulfillment of this is him giving us his resurrected life and body. we share in his resurrected life and body. And as we think of the pattern of scripture that he takes what is wrong to give what is true, he takes our sickness and disease in some way to give us his eternal resurrected life. Christian, God created us, soul and body. They both matter to God. This is a great comfort for us in the midst of suffering. Suffering is not meant to be alone. God sees you. God's people called out and he's ready to help. Suffering is never meaningless. God is with you and he blesses us in the midst of that suffering. Suffering is not forever. God heals and perfects. Christian, we do not suffer hopelessly. Christ has come to be our Savior Redeemer, and that means he restores us. As we come to consider who Christ is as the fulfiller of the one who takes our illnesses and diseases, we wanna look at these three specific stories that are telling us what that means. The first is about a leper, and here, the heading, if you're taking notes, trust Jesus always desires our good. Trust Jesus always desires our good. We're in verses one and four. We're going back to the top of the text. He's finished the Sermon on the Mount. They're astonished by his authority. Verse one.

When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him, knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately, his leprosy was cleansed, and Jesus said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone but go, show yourself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.

Now, the crowds who heard him, they're astonished, they follow him, but we see this new significant character. He's come down from the mountain, a new scene, The new character, a leper, this is a skin disease. It caused horrible deformation and disfigurement. It destroyed your ability to feel touch, which is God's given safeguard so that if you feel burn, you move your hand, and if you lose that, you cause more and more injury. God gave us nerves to recognize pain and to avoid it. And as the nerves are broken down and this leprosy attacks, the physical pain is gone. Therefore, the physical deformations and difficulties appear. Leprosy was also considered somewhat superstitiously. Many would say that person must be accursed or judged by God. They saw someone with leprosy as somebody who was unclean in the temple, but also just, they were outcasts. They must be cursed by God. People are afraid of touch to them, because they're afraid they might contract that disease themselves. Also, they couldn't worship at the temple. They were ceremonially unclean. They could not draw near to God in worship. Just imagine as a human being made in God's image, going years most likely without being touched by another human being. We're designed to give and receive affection and love and comfort through physical touch. Parents, it's so healthy for you to hug and hold your children, to touch them and love them in a way that gives them assurance and care, necessary for spouses to communicate love. Physical touch communicates so much, comfort, security. We're designed to do so, and adults, you don't grow out of that need. The leper, he hasn't been able to receive that designed way of communicating for years. It's pretty hard to consider how devastating that must be to be an outcast in society, in physical turmoil, not able to worship and shunned. Notice the leper, he came to Jesus, knelt down and said, Lord. Significance in that he knows something of Jesus. It doesn't make it clear that he was on the mountain. He's maybe heard about all those healings before the mountain, so he decided to try to come and find the one who had healed others. He comes with recognition of his authority. He comes to kneel down before him and he says, Lord. That could be a reference to Yahweh. I believe it's certainly referencing an acknowledgement of Jesus' authority. But what he says is what we really need to focus on here. Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. If you will, You can make me clean. There's two significant declarations here. A question, kind of a conditional can you or would you, and then an absolute assertion. If you're willing, Jesus, do you want to heal me? Jesus, is it your desire to heal me? Would you actually do it? The other assertion is you can make me clean. He seems to have confidence that Jesus has the ability and the power and the authority, but his question is would God want to? Would Jesus be willing to? These two statements represent two truths that we need to make sure we have great clarity on. Satan first attacked in the garden? He first came and did God say you couldn't have any tree? Is God really good? Is God really wanting your good? And then he said, you won't surely die. Well, no, God doesn't have authority to say that. These are the two most basic truths of who God is for us to trust. And I hope that sounds like a broken record because I try to emphasize that every time it comes up in the text and it comes up in the text over and over and over again. Jesus has all authority and he's perfectly good. and he uses all of his authority for our good. If you wanna be armed to resist the temptation of Satan, you need to have confidence and clarity in these two most basic truths. This leper, someone who has most likely not been cared for by others, he comes convinced Jesus can help him. He has the ability, but the conditional question is would he? Would he want to? Maybe he's believed what others have said, that he's accursed, not loved. If you're willing, if you desire to heal me, you can. There's doubt here. If you desire, you can. The leper comes with an incomplete faith, but notice Jesus welcomes him with his incomplete faith. He comes with some doubts. He comes with some questions. How many Psalms can we go to and see someone coming to God with a doubt and ending with an assurance and a thanksgiving? If you can't come to Jesus with doubts, you can't come at all. Doubts are not denials of who God is. Doubts are good questions about who he is and what he's done and what he's said. Oh, friends, if we can make a subtitle for our church, doubters welcome. We love good questions, even good challenges. Good doubts, clarify. Good doubts, learn how to ask the right questions. Interesting, Jesus doesn't answer in such a direct way as if you will. He simply reaches out and touches the man. He stretched out his hand and touched him. His action alone answers it. Now Jesus is supposed to be made unclean and impure by touching someone who's unclean and impure, but Jesus is the perfect God. The man has most likely not been touched for years. He cannot feel physical touch, but yet that's how Jesus decided he was going to reach out and give him what he needed. Jesus cleanses him. It's kind of amazing to think about this man who could not come to temple to worship his creator. His creator just came to him and touched him. Jesus himself calls, Jesus calls himself the temple. The worship has come to him to heal him. And then his words give a absolute affirmation. I desire. I will. I want. This is what I want to do. Be clean. He leaves no suspicion. And notice, and immediately his leprosy was cleansed. What a friend we have in Jesus to take every knee. Not perfect faith, faith with questions, faith with doubts. But what a friend Jesus is to not give us some kind of test to make sure we can pass before he reaches out and helps us. But how rarely we go to him in prayer. Do you take your concerns to Jesus in prayer? Do you let doubts and questions keep you from taking your problems and suffering to him who can actually heal you and answer? We just saw in the Sermon on the Mount.

Ask, and it will be given. Seek, you will find. Knock, and it will be opened.

Two clear truths. He asserts he has the authority and power. He has shown that God is good and he wills it. Let's remember one more thing. He's generous. He's generous. God, who invites you to faith and salvation, is good, able, and generous. The last part there is what we see as a secret Messiah. Jesus will keep saying, it is not yet time, it is not yet time. He is not wanting the crowds to continue to grow because they are going to force what could be the time before it is truly his time to enter Jerusalem that last time and die for sinners. That is not our instruction today. We are to go and tell everyone. The second story continues to show us how Jesus fulfilled what the prophet Isaiah has said, he is the great healer. The heading here, trust Jesus' authority to heal. We have a new scene, we have a new character. When he had left,