And the rest of us, turn to, if you would, to Matthew 7. Matthew 7. I told you last week that we were finishing up the Sermon on the Mount, and we did finish that up. But today, I thought, let's kind of finish off the thought, like, what happened right after the Sermon on the Mount? So that's what we're gonna talk about this morning, just immediately following Matthew 7, what did that look like, and what happened, and what does that tell us about Jesus Christ? So Matthew 7, 28 is where we're going to start if you want to turn in your Bibles there. We'll get to that in a few minutes. So let me just remind you, last week as we concluded the actual Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ended with some really, really heavy truth. he taught some things that were jarring to the people that were there, that were listening that day, and I think they still are, these heavy truths. And he ended his sermon after it's all like, this is how kingdom living looks, and this is how followers of mine should live, and all those truths that were difficult enough for us, but then he ends with, there's only one way to heaven. There's only one narrow road to heaven, and that's himself, that's Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ alone. And then he said, and you have to choose which road you're gonna be on. You're gonna be on the narrow road that leads to heaven, that leads to eternal life, that leads to joy and purpose in this world, or are you gonna be on the broad road that most people aren't on, honestly, Jesus said. that leads to destruction. And he said that if you build your life, if you throw your lot in with anything but him, that's the word he uses. If you look back as he wraps up the sermon, it ends with destruction. It ends with pain. If you build your life, if you stake your life on anything or anybody besides him. And so he drew a line in the sand. And I imagine as we were reading that sermon last week, and we were looking at Jesus teaching last week, I imagine there's this line in the sand, and I don't think he did it physically, at least we don't know if he did, but it's almost like he's like, imploring us, like this is the way to life. Like he's trying to convince maybe, like this is, if you go with anything besides me, it's gonna lead to hurt and destruction. So he's kind of like inviting, he's pleading, he's imploring people to come to him, to accept the free gift of salvation. to build their lives on the rock of him and his word, which is a better life, a more stable life, and for sure in eternity, the preferable life. And so he's saying, this is the way to life. This is the road. This is the narrow road. Most people aren't gonna get it. Most people aren't gonna take it. But this is the way to life. Come to me. I was thinking about that picture and what Jesus is inviting in the Sermon on the Mount, and I thought about a little boy, like if you're a dad, you know, there have been times where you've been in the pool and they're just learning how to get in the water and they probably got their little water wings on, floaties, things, and you're telling them to jump, that you can trust me. Or they're up on a, on the couch or something high and you're ready to catch them and you say, you can trust me, jump, go ahead and jump, I'll catch you. I think that's kind of the picture here, that Jesus is saying, I know this is going to take faith, but you can trust me. I will catch you. Another image that I kind of had in my mind was, I couldn't even think of a real example, but you know like in adventure movies when there's the hero, And he's like, there's the girl, and something's about ready to explode, it's on fire, and he's telling her, jump, I will catch you, you will be okay. Jesus is the hero in this story. And as he's wrapping up the Sermon on the Mount, he's telling us, he's telling people, I will catch you, you can trust me. You know, as a father in the water, in the pool, who's imploring their son or their grandchild or child to jump, that father or grandfather would have to die before he let anything happen bad, right? He's not gonna say, jump, you can trust me. You go, oops, should've wore your water wings today. That's not gonna happen. And that's the point of the gospel. Jesus said, you can trust me to the point where he was willing to die to save us. And the hero with the girl, he's saying, he knows what's gonna happen if she doesn't jump. But he knows that she'll be safe if she does. And so here's the question this morning as we transition into what happened right after the Sermon on the Mount. And I think the Holy Spirit was really intentional about how He laid out the Gospel of Matthew here. Because the question is, how do we know? How do we know that we can place our faith in Jesus? That He will catch us? How do we know? How does the little son or grandson on the edge of the pool know that if I jump in that I'm gonna be okay, this is gonna be okay? How do I know that my dad is strong enough to catch me? Because I've seen him with the shirt off. I'm not sure that if he can catch me. That was just a random, sorry. And so how do we know that's true with Jesus? He's saying 100%, whole kitten caboodle, throw your lot in with me. Stake your life and your eternity on me. How do we know, not only that he will save us, but how do we know that he can save us? Well, the teachings of Jesus in an inspired scripture would have been enough, but God in his grace gives us something more. in the New Testament. God, in his grace, knowing that we're human, knowing that we're afraid to jump sometimes, he gives us Holy Spirit-inspired eyewitness testimonies to the miracles of Jesus Christ. Things that authenticate what Jesus is saying and what Jesus is teaching. So if you think of how Matthew's laid out here, chapters five through seven, we had the Sermon on the Mount, and it was Jesus teaching this truth, this truth, this truth, and at the end, he brings it to a climax and he says, and you gotta choose, you gotta choose. Are you gonna throw your life in with me? Are you gonna trust me? Are you gonna jump? Are you gonna take the narrow road? Are you gonna trust me as Lord and Savior? Are you gonna take the road everybody else is taking? That's five through seven. And that leads up to the end of chapter seven. So there's three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus lays it out, he draws the line. And then the next two chapters, chapters eight and nine, Matthew includes 10, no less than 10 miracles by Jesus. as stamps to authenticate what was just taught, I think. So it's like Jesus saying, okay, this is me, this is who I am, you gotta trust me, you gotta jump in faith, and if you're worried about that, boom, boom, 10 stamps of authenticity about who Jesus is. I think that's so good of God and so cool that God did that for us. Because we're that little kid on the side of the pool, we're that girl in the building, we're afraid to jump. And Jesus says, you don't need to be afraid. Let me tell you who I am. Let me show you who I am in these next chapters. So bam, bam, bam, 10 stamps of authenticity to authenticate the message of Jesus Christ. And so I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but the miracles of Jesus our Jesus resume. If you go to apply for a job, most of the time I think you take a resume or you send it online. A resume is, this is what I'm able to do. This is what I can do. I would be good for this job because my resume shows that I can do these type of things. A resume isn't based on what you promised you will do in the future, it's based on what you have done. And miracles of Jesus are the resume of Jesus. It's not only what he, we know what he can do, but it's what he has done. And it's proof of who he is based on his resume, on the miracles that he was able to do and scripture tells us about. And so the works of Jesus back up the words of Jesus, if you want to think of it that way. There's a story, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, it's in Luke 5, and there's these guys, and I'm gonna use some imaginative license here, but there's a group of guys in Luke 5, and they had a friend who was paralyzed, and that part's true, they had a friend that's paralyzed. So there's this group of guys, we don't know how many there were, they loved their friend, they cared about their friend, and they hear about Jesus. And Jesus has been healing people and delivering the demon-possessed and just all these things that he was doing. And they go, we gotta get our friend to Jesus. These are good friends, by the way. We gotta get our friends to Jesus. So they come up with this plan. They learn that Jesus is gonna be teaching in this house. And so they go, okay, we're gonna call their friend George. That's not in the Bible. But we got to get George to see Jesus, because we know that Jesus can help our friend George, because he's doing all these cool things for people, and he's helping people, he's healing people. Dude, we got to get George to see Jesus. So Jesus is teaching in this house, and because he's now, word has gotten around, and crowds are bigger. So he's in this house, and there's people just lined up, and they can't even get close to Jesus. to get George to Jesus because there's so many people. So they're outside, they're thinking, and probably one of them, the most ambitious one, I got an idea. Let's get George up on the roof, and let's dig a hole in the roof, and we can get George to Jesus by going through the roof. So they're all like, all right, let's do it. And the Bible doesn't tell us how they got a paralyzed man up on a roof who's laying on a mat, but they get him up there, That had to be quite the entertaining thing. So they get George up there, he's laying on his mat, and they start digging through the roof. And roofs back in those days were not like this, shingles. They were like mud and sticks and grass and straw and just kind of like plastered to provide a covering. And so they start digging through this dirt to get to Jesus. And it had to be funny, kind of. Jesus is in the middle of this room, and he's talking, and then the dust and the dirt and the straw starts falling down. And Jesus, of course, knows what's going on, but everybody else is like, what in the world? And pretty soon there's a beam of light coming through, and the hole gets bigger, and it gets bigger and bigger, big enough they can lower George down in front of Jesus in this room. And Luke 5.19 says that when he could not find a way because of the crowd, they went up on the roof, they lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, bright in front of Jesus and Jesus. And this isn't on the screen yet, but some verses here will be in a minute. This is Luke 5.20. And I'd never noticed this before until I was reading it this past week. And this verse, jumped out and it was like one of those poking me in the chest verses. When Jesus saw their faith, the guys, his friends, do you have enough faith to bring your friends to Jesus? Jesus, you know at the end of the story, he heals the guy, but he saw their faith, I think all of them. All of them believed enough that Jesus could save their friend, heal their friend, they brought their friend to Jesus. That word there just jumped out at me. Anyway, when Jesus saw their faith, he said to George, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven. Well, the Pharisees and teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, didn't say anything out loud, who's this fellow who speaks blasphemy? In other words, who does he think he is? Who can forgive sins but God alone? Now verse 22 will be on the screens here. And Jesus knew what they were thinking. He did because he's God. And he asked, why are you thinking these things in your heart? Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralyzed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home. Immediately he stood up in front of them. He took what he had been lying on and he went home praising God. And everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, we've seen remarkable things today. Bam, stamp of authenticity. Jesus works are the resume for his words. It's easy to say, I'm God. It's easy to say, I can forgive. A lot of people have done that throughout history. And God in his grace has given us the marks of authenticity in scripture, but can you do that? Can you raise the dead? Can you heal the lame? Can you cure the blind? Can you do miracles? Can you walk on water? Can you calm a storm? stamps of authenticity about who Jesus is. And it all goes to our original point, can I trust? You know, we all at some point have or will come to that point where, do I want to do this? Do I want to jump? Do I want to throw my life into the hands of Jesus? And Jesus is saying, you can trust me. Look at who I am. Look what I can do. You can trust me to forgive your sins because, and that's his point here, so that you'll know that I have authority to forgive sins, I'm going to do these works so that you can believe me. So back to Matthew 7. That was Luke 5. Back to Matthew 7. Sermon on the Mount's wrapping up. Jesus finished preaching, the service is over, people are leaving, they're probably trying to get out early to get to Pizza Ranch before the other churches get out. And so the crowd's starting to go down the slope there down the hill. But it wasn't like a normal church service where they were getting out and just like talking about plans for the day. They were talking about what Jesus had just taught. there was a buzz in the crowd. That's what chapter seven, verse 28 says. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed. They were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. Well, first of all, what does that mean, as one who had authority? What rabbis would do in those days, the same thing we do today, they would quote other rabbis to lend authority to what they were teaching. So I like quoting Spurgeon. like Swindoll and MacArthur and men like that. Well, Jesus, he spoke on his own authority. He wasn't like the other teachers of law that referenced so-and-so rabbi and so-and-so rabbi from years ago to kind of like add weight to what they were teaching or authority to what they were teaching. He was his own authority. And so what he taught, they had never heard before. And the way he taught, they had never heard before. And most of them, maybe all of them at this point didn't know. One of the reasons was not only was he teaching as a prophet, as a true prophet that just jarred them, that probably alarmed them, but also as their king. As Israel's king, they were hearing their king teach. And so something was clicking and they're saying something is different here. This isn't like a normal rabbi teaching. And he got their attention that day. And by the way, when's the last time you left church amazed at hearing from your King, the Word of God, hearing what Jesus says to you? It's no different, it's no less. When we read Scripture, we teach Scripture, you're hearing from your King, you're hearing from Jesus Christ, the Son of God. When's the last time that you left church and like, man, The grace of God is so amazing. The forgiveness of God is so amazing that he would love me, that he would forgive me. He knows everything about me. Like the teachers of the law, he knows what we're thinking. And he loves us anyway. When's the last time you walked away from a worship service just like amazed at who Christ is? Don't let your heart grow cold to the things of the Lord. Don't, there's a word we used to use back in the youth ministry days called desensitization, where you're exposed to something so often, like sinful music or movie, like the thing was that young people would become desensitized, it wouldn't bother them anymore. You kind of get used to it. And I think the same can be true if we're not careful, if we're not walking with the spirit. That we can just like, oh yeah, oh yeah, Jesus did miracles. Like we can become desensitized to just how amazing God is. And it can be common to us. Ask God to amaze you again. That he loves you and he saved you. I think that's a good takeaway for us. Be amazed at who Jesus is. Well, the huge crowd, they're slowly walking down, they're making their way down the slope together, and this is when something incredible happens. The first post-Sermon on the Mount miracle that Jesus is gonna do. So if you look at chapter eight, verse one, Matthew 8, one, when Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him, And a man with leprosy came and he knelt before him and he said, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. In his parallel account, Dr. Luke says that not only did the man come up to him and had leprosy, but he was covered. Luke's observation as a medical doctor was, he was covered with leprosy. In other words, literally, the leprosy had completely covered him. Leprosy, as you might know, was a well-known and a feared disease back in Bible times in the ancient world. Not only would sores open up and develop, especially the face, they would disfigure the lips and the nose and these sores, and there would be a disfiguring of the face. But the disease would cause nerve damage. And one of the most terrible things about leprosy was the numbness that would develop. And so your fingers and your feet, your extremities would become numb. And so part of the disfiguring would be just by you didn't know if something was hot and you would pick it up and it would burn your hand and your skin would melt. And so there was also that because you couldn't feel it. And then even worse, I think, about the numbness is the books tell us that in that world, vermin and rats were so common that when a leper was sleeping at night, couldn't tell if they were being eaten alive. And so there would be missing parts of their skin that the rats would eat because they couldn't feel it and they would be asleep. And so this man who met Jesus at the foot of the hill that day was suffering most likely for years because leprosy was a long-term disease. It wasn't quick. And so that he was completely covered meant that the disease was advanced in him. And he was disfigured. smelling of rotting flesh. And this is the man who came to meet Jesus that day. The life of a leper in those days was not only terrible physically, but it was lonely. According to the law, Leviticus 19, according to the law, this was in the law because it was such a contagious disease back then that God incorporated these protections for other people when there was somebody who did get the disease of leprosy. So according to the law, If you were a leper, you had to wear torn clothes, and you had to keep your hair unkempt, a mess. It had to be obvious something was wrong with you. because your clothes were torn and your hair's a mess. You had to cover the lower part of your face. The original masks, I think, was going on here. So they had to cover the lower part of your face. And then whenever you were out and about, you're walking around, traveling around, if you saw somebody else, you had to yell, unclean, unclean. So like, if I'm walking through the auditorium and I see Don Aldridge back there, I have to yell, unclean, unclean, so that he knows I'm coming his way and I have leprosy. And maybe the worst thing about the whole thing in the law is that you had to live alone. The wording is, they must live outside the camp. It was a lonely, painful, humiliating life. But in Jesus' day, like the Pharisees were wont to do, they added extra rules that made it even worse. It was illegal, according to the Pharisees' rules, to even greet a leper. You couldn't say hi to him. You couldn't say good morning to him. It was illegal to greet a leper. And then they even got as specific that if the wind was blowing Don Aldridge's direction, when I got what was 50 yards away, I couldn't go any closer than that, if he was downwind of my leprosy. Josephus, a Jewish historian, said, he summed it up this way, lepers were treated as if they were dead men, the original dead men walking. On top of that, the rabbis taught that if a person had leprosy, it was because they had committed some sin, some egregious personal sin. And so it was a terrible life, they were sick, they felt terrible, they were rotting, they were alone, there was no cure, there was no hope. And then they had that crushing inner voice of guilt that I did something myself to cause this. Isn't that a great picture of the human condition of us and our sin? The common disease of sin that we're all born with. One commentary puts it this way. The plight of the leper illustrates the effects of sin. In fact, the leper was the parable of sin, an outward invisible sign of innermost spiritual corruption. The leper is a physical illustration of the heart of every human being. If for a moment we could see the visible incarnation of ourselves apart from the cleansing work of Christ, we would see ourselves as walking dead, dead in our trespasses and sins, trying to cover ourselves with filthy rags. So Jesus meeting this leper at the foot of the hill that day, that was not a chance encounter. That was a divine appointment. To authenticate what he had just taught. He just taught these mind-blowing new things that they had never heard before about kingdom living, and he said, I gotta get this leper in here so that they know that I'm not just teaching something new. that I'm the son of God, that I'm different. And so he wanted to authenticate what he had just proclaimed and why they could trust him, why they could choose that narrow road. But also, I think he also wanted to demonstrate what kingdom living in action looks like, what compassion looks like. And so there's this scene, and it must have been quite the scene, as again, the crowd, they start walking down the hill, they start dispersing, and then there's a buzz, and there's this amazement, and all this. You know, like a typical, when there's a big crowd, and evidently this was a big crowd, you just kind of hear that murmuring, that murmuring, and just people are talking, and just kind of that's happening as they're going down the hill. But then all of a sudden, over the top of all that noise, you hear a, Unclean, unclean. You hear this voice, probably raspy from years of just damage to his vocal cords and his disease. And you hear that it gets a little louder. Unclean, unclean. And this sick and desperate man starts making his way to Jesus. And I imagine, because there's a real fear of leprosy, that the crowd starts splitting like the Red Sea as this man hobbles, however he's moving, and he makes his way up to Jesus. And the crowd splits and you keep hearing this, unclean, unclean. I imagine the crowd was probably a little perturbed, a little angry that this unclean man was messing up their church service, impeding their access to Jesus, until finally this poor, pitiful, hopeless leper is standing face to face with Jesus, the Son of God, the only one who can help him. And then this man falls to his knees and he makes his plea. Verse two, again, a man with leprosy came and he knelt before him and he said, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his hand and he touched the man and he said, I am willing. And I got to believe that was with a smile. And he said, be clean. And immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. And I think this simple, short little story, the first post-Sermon on the Mount story and Jesus doing a miracle is a great template for us as we think about that Jesus is still in the healing business, the spiritual healing business, the disease of sin that we're all born with. If you were alive today, if you're in this room, you were born with the disease of sin. And Jesus pleading his admonition is the rescue, is the cure for that disease of sin that we were born with, because he's the only one in whom there's any hope of healing from our sin. And so looking at this story as a template of coming to Christ and healing spiritually, what he can do for us still, number one in your notes, we need to start off with knowing that we're hopeless on our own. were hopeless on our own. This man knew he was unclean. He'd been reminding everybody else and himself for years, proclaiming the fact that he was unclean. And so falling on his knees, he knew that he was hopeless and at the mercy of the Savior. The point is, Jesus doesn't come, God doesn't save people who are self-sufficient. who think that they're okay on their own, or they can make it on their own, or they're good enough on their own. This is exactly what Jesus was talking about, if you would look back at Matthew 5. The very opening words of the Sermon on the Mount, 5 verses 3 and 4, Jesus began with, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. First words of the Sermon on the Mount. I wonder, as this leper, for sure on the outskirts of the crowd, but close enough to hear Jesus, I wonder if those were the words that got his attention at the very beginning. Maybe he didn't hear another word after Jesus said those words and he thought, that's me. That's me today, I'm poor in spirit and I'm definitely mourning. The only way a person can come to a saving faith in Christ is to own their sin and their hopelessness. to own the truth that they're unclean, unclean. That's what Romans 3.23 teaches, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of us are born unclean. All of us are born in iniquity and sin, and all of us bear that disease in our DNA we got from Adam and Eve that was passed down to us, and we still have that gene of sin in us, that cancer of sin in us. All of sin falls short of the glory of God. And ironically, it's a wonder, if you're born again, if you're saved, ironically, it's a wonderful thing when you finally realize, I'm lost, I can't do this on my own. Isn't that a good moment? It's like if you've been trying to be good enough and trying to live the right kind of life and just trying to be better than everybody else, you know how you play those games and finally you get to the point like, I'm done. I'm lost. I'm a mess on my own. It occurred to me thinking the idea of being lost this last week, we've kind of lost the feeling of being lost. with phones and GPS, like when's the last time you were really lost? Like in life, like lost. I don't know when the last time was I was lost. And because of that, I think maybe we always think we can fix it. We can always figure it out. We can always Google something or look it up or we can always make it work. And I think unless you come to the grips with, I'm lost and I can't fix it. I can't figure this out. I can't save myself. I can't be good enough. I can't do all the things, jump through all the hoops and I can't, we're a mess. We have a disease we can't fix. Only Jesus can. And this poor leper is coming up to Jesus and he realizes how hopeless he is on his own. And to become a Christian, to be saved, you have to get to that point where I can't do it on my own. Maybe you've been trying for years. And maybe finally you're realizing, yeah, I can't do it. We need to know that we're hopeless on our own. And I can give you a warning, your pride and your ego will push against that. Well, yeah, but you're better than them. Well, think about all the other people who are worse than you. And that inner lawyer, Tripp calls it, where we start rationalizing, we start arguing that we're not that bad. Your flesh will try to do that. That's why number two in your notes there, we also need humility. Verse two says, a man of leprosy came and knelt before him. Knelt is kind of the key word there. Knelt means not just, he might've started on his knees, but he didn't finish on his knees. Knelt means to lay prostrate, to kiss the ground in reverence. And it was often used in the New Testament for the word worship. When the Magi first came to find Jesus, they said, where's the king of the Jews that was born? We've come to worship him. That's the word for knelt. We've come to lay on our faces before him. That takes humility. The leopard came falling on his face before the Lord, not because it was an outward manipulation like, hey, what can you do for me? How can you help me today? Or what's gonna be the return on investment? If I worship you, do I get this? He fell down in worship before Christ. He fell on his face before the Lord Jesus Christ, understanding not only who he was as unclean, but who Jesus is. as the Son of God. And likewise, spiritually speaking, healing and salvation, spiritual healing and salvation can't happen if your view of Christ is just some casual acknowledgement like, yeah, he was a good man, he was a good teacher. But there's not worship. I don't think we have to fall on our knees physically to become a Christian, but we definitely have to spiritually. We have to kneel before Christ, acknowledging who he is and who we are before him. And a humble heart says this, Jesus, you're my only hope for salvation. I'm a mess and I'm lost on my own. There's no place for spiritual bravado at the foot of the cross. By the way, this goes to the importance of not only confessing Jesus as Savior, but of Lord, as Lord. You can't have him as your Savior if you're also not naming him as the Lord of your life. In other words, you can't just rely on him for fire insurance to get out of hell, but you're gonna go on and still be the Lord of your own life. It doesn't work that way. And often in the New Testament, 2 Peter 1.11 is just one. Often in the New Testament, that's how he's referred to as Savior and Lord, Savior and Lord. Those things go together. If he's your Savior, he's your Lord. Truly receiving Christ as Savior means that you're simultaneously receiving him as the Lord of your life. You're handing over the keys to your life and saying, Jesus, I want you to save me. I'm a mess, I'm a loss of my own. Here are the keys. I'm gonna live my life now the way you want me to live, because you're my Lord. And that takes humility. Number three, the third lesson that we learn from this man, this leper and the stories, we need to come to him in faith. Verse two again says, knelt before him, he came and knelt before him. And he said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Mark's account of this story, He includes a little detail that Matthew doesn't, but Mark's telling of the story, he includes the detail that the leper begged him on his knees. And the word begged implies that there's a repetition that Matthew doesn't include. So Mark includes that there is Lord, and if you want to, I know you can heal me. Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. Lord, if you're willing, you make me clean. Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean. There's a repetition. This man, no doubt, had heard of Jesus' healing power. Because by now, Jesus... Matthew 4 tells us a little bit of what Jesus had been up to, miracle-wise, up to this point. Matthew 4, 23. Jesus went through Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, who were suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, the paralyzed, and he healed them. So going against social norms of this time, the slepper wades into the crowd, to the healer, capital H, healer. And in faith, please, Lord, Lord, I know, I know if you wanted to, you could heal me. The sad thing is oftentimes people will believe that Jesus is powerful, that he's wonderful, that he's forgiving, he's all these things, but they can't forgive, he can't forgive them after what all they've done, how they've lived their life. In essence, what they're saying is they've out sinned the grace of God. Let me just assure you this morning, you can't. That's an impossibility. You picture Niagara Falls on steroids. That's the grace of God. It just keeps going and going. You can never out sin. You can never run dry on the grace of God. Or people might think also that there's something else, surely there's something else that I have to do. This is what we talked about last week, I think it was, the plus sign. There's surely something else. Jesus is good, thank you for dying on the cross for me. I believe that, but also the plus sign is now, also I have to do something else to earn God's forgiveness. And this man simply says, Lord, if you're willing, I know you can. Faith is just simply believing what God says is true. That's it. And what God says is true is that we're hopeless on our own, that if we humble ourselves and acknowledge our lostness and ask him to save us, that he can and he will heal us of our spiritual disease of sin. He's the hero of the story. And he can and he will save you if you ask him. And then finally, number four. Live in the freedom of Jesus' healing touch. Live in the freedom of Jesus' healing touch. There's a movie, probably my favorite movies are the Lord of the Rings movies. And it saddens me so much when I hear people say, I've never seen those. If you ever get the flu and you're down for like three days, because it takes about that long to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, they're like three hours each. But they're just fantastic. So much scriptural imagery, like there's so much. I won't ruin it for you, but you won't be disappointed, I think. But in one of the movies, it's called The Two Towers, and there's a scene that I really like there. There's a guy named King Theoden. And he's been under this curse. He's got this court aide. I think his name is Wormtongue. So he's the bad guy, you can tell. And so because of Wormtongue's influence on King Theoden, King Theoden's under this curse. He's been under it for a long time. He's just like a shell of himself. He's just like shriveled and he can hardly talk. And Gandalf, he's a good wizard. He comes in to King Theoden's palace. And he delivers King Theoden from this curse. He sets him free from this curse that he's been under for so long. He can't function, and really he's just a puppet for Wormtongue. And so Gandalf comes in and releases the curse and frees him of the curse. And then King Theoden, after he looks at his hands, he understands what he's been freed from. And he asked questions, almost like he was in a fog. And the first thing that Gandalf says to him after he releases him from his curses, he goes, breathe the free air again, my friend. And I love that line. That's a picture of somebody receiving Christ as Savior. Breathe the free air. In verse three, Jesus reached out and his hand, he touches the man. He says, I am willing, be clean. Immediately he was cleansed of the leprosy with two words, be clean. Really, it's just one word in the Greek. With one word in the original language, this man was instantaneously healed. Healers today will say that somebody's healed if they kind of like start getting better. Biblical miraculous healing was, it was this way one second, it's better the next second. It wasn't like, now take a couple weeks and you might start feeling better. That's not healing, biblically. It's like instant. And this man must have felt like he had been freed from this physical prison that he'd lived in probably for decades. And he probably looked at his hands and he looked at his feet. And the joy that comes with that kind of freedom, like all of a sudden he's like, he realized the prison that he was in and what the restraints of that look like. And he realizes the freedom that he has now. And don't miss one little small detail in this story. Jesus reached out his hand and he touched the man. Mark 121 in his account says that Jesus was moved with pity as he healed a man. So this was no obligatory like social, I need to kind of like show that I'm willing to, this was a heart of compassion that Jesus is reaching out and he's touching this leper, which by the way was also against the law. But when Jesus touched him, he was no longer a leper. Jesus never broke the law. and the power of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, what was a leper was no longer. And we don't know, but since leprosy was long lasting, this man was covered in this disease, so it'd been a long time. Again, he might've been suffering for decades. We don't know. Maybe he was married before. Maybe he had kids, and it had been decades since he had been hugged by his wife or his kids. Nobody would even come within yards of him to touch him. First touch that he's had probably in decades. The healing touch of Jesus reaches out and touches him. He said, I'm willing, be clean. And the Greek word for touch there is more than a casual, it wasn't like, It's also used in other places to lay hold of. So we don't know what that was. We don't know if Jesus took him by the shoulders. We don't know if Jesus took him by the hand. We don't know what that was, but Jesus laid hold of him. Jesus touched him and changed his life forever. Which is interesting because Jesus being God didn't have to do that, right? There were other times Jesus healed people from a distance. He just said it. They were somewhere else and he healed them. But Jesus wanted to demonstrate the compassion of kingdom living, I think. We need to be willing to come to people who need Jesus. And they might look unclean, they might look different, and we need to be Christ-like in how we are with other people. willing to go to where they are and accept them as they are. The freedom that healing, spiritual healing brings is hard to overestimate how wonderful, overstate how wonderful that is. and the freedom that we have in Christ. And so in your notes, there's just three quick things, I'm gonna fly through these. The freedoms we have in Christ, we have freedom from the penalty of sin. We no longer have to worry about the sin debt that we owe the judge of the universe, that's God the Father. We don't have to worry about it, we're gonna stand in front of him someday and we'll worry about that because the penalty of our sin has all been paid by Christ. And somebody might say, you know, I've seen you, I've seen your life, and you're not perfect either. And I like the verse in 1 Timothy 1.15, Paul writes this to Timothy, he said, here's a trustworthy thing. I think in our vernacular today, we would say, here's something you can take to the bank. Here's a trustworthy thing, deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the worst. Somebody, I think it was Spurgeon, or Moody, one of those guys, came to him and said, you're not all that much. I've seen your life. And he says, but the good news is Christ came to save sinners. Don't be afraid of acknowledging that you're a sinner in need of salvation. Don't give people the impression that God loves you because you got it all together. God loves you because of Christ Jesus. Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The leprosy of sin and the penalty that our sin deserved no longer hangs over our head like a guillotine. Freedom from the penalty of sin, freedom from the power of sin means that you no longer have to sin. Before you come to Christ, you can't help but sin. You can have good days or you can be on your best, but at the end of the day, you can't help not sin. Because of Christ, one of the freedoms is we no longer have to sin. Romans 6, 6, for we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. The leprosy of our sinfulness no longer defines us. Christ Jesus defines us, and then someday we'll have freedom from the presence of sin. That's still to come. Revelation 21, 27, nothing impure, talk about heaven, nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Someday we'll live in a kingdom where there's no evil, there's no impurity, there's no sin. Because of Jesus, the hero of our story. And friend, let me just, along with Jesus, implore you, beg you, plead with you. If you don't know Christ as Savior this morning, this is what it's all about. This invitation is what it's all about. Jesus is saying, this is it. It's a narrow road, and I know it's not as popular. I know most people are not gonna take it, but you can trust me. You can trust me. And this morning, my invitation is the same. He alone is able to save. And he's saying to you this morning, if you don't know him as Savior, he's saying to you this morning, I am willing. Jesus, I'm a mess, I'm lost, I've tried, and I can't do it. And Jesus says, I'm willing to you this morning. And so can you say this morning, Jesus, I trust you. So we're going to finish this morning a little different. And I apologize in advance for going a little bit longer today. It's okay. We're gonna finish a little different. We're gonna finish with two songs. The first song, I'm gonna have the tech team play. And I want you to stay in your seats. I want you to stay seated. If you want to, kneel by your seat. Whatever you wanna do, this is you and Jesus time. We're gonna play the song, "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus." And if you don't know Christ as Savior, If you've come to realize that today or in the past weeks, talk to Jesus. Say, I'm lost. I'm lost, and if I were to die today, I know that I'm in trouble. I know I'm not going to heaven. and talk to Jesus and ask Him to save you. Ask Him to be not only your Savior, but the Lord of your life and say, here's the keys. You're driving from now on. And if you do know Christ as Savior, let me encourage you as we listen to this song together. Be the friend in Luke 5. Start praying now for a friend that you know doesn't know Christ as Savior. Start praying now for the unsaved friend that you're friends with, you love them, you're close to them. Be that friend who's willing to bring your friend to Christ. Start praying for them right now. Maybe it's somebody in the room. that you know is not saved and pray that God would save them this morning. So stay seated, take whatever position you wanna take and just do business with God, do business with Jesus. And then when this song is over, I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna stand and sing a closing song together. So a couple of songs as we end this morning, but let's just sit and listen and pray as we listen to this first song.