Your Testimony to Them

How we doing today? Hey, we call this group the frozen chosen. The ones who didn't stay up so late that they didn't come at 9:00 in the morning. You're not frozen.

You, you are chosen.

You know, those he forknew, he also chose to be conformed to the image of his son. So, you are chosen. But you, you didn't, you didn't stay up so late that you couldn't get here at 9:00 a. m.

I love it for you. That is awesome.

I bet second service is about to be like, "It's for all those people came. " You know what I'm saying? Y'all should stay actually so you can minister to those people who, who stayed up a little bit late last night. I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding. I am really excited today to start our new series.

It's called Miracle Worker. I got one, I got one person who appreciates. I appreciate you, Tracy. I like it.

The rest of you, you don't want to see God do miracles in your life?

I see we're really working. We decided last week we're going to work on that first service. Second service was so hype and loud that first service, y'all got me wondering. I know you're here and I appreciate that you're here.

Here's what we're going to do today.

We're going to expect something from God. How's that sound? Yeah, there we go. That's what I just needed, a little bit.

I don't need too much.

I can preach when people are quiet. I can preach when babies are crying, but sometimes I just got to lead you a little bit. If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, because we're going to be in two chapters for the remaining remainder of this series. We're going to have a little deviation from that.

We're going to be in the book of John and the book of Matthew over the next few weeks.

It's going to be about a month long. And we're going to talk about Jesus as the one who can perform miracles. And the heart of this series isn't that we just go conjure up miracles like rubbing a bottle that a genie's in. The idea of this series is that we understand what a miracle is, when God performs them, and how can we put ourselves in a position and condition our lives around the reality that God might work on our behalf to do the miraculous.

That's what this is about.

And today we'll be in Matthew chapter 8. I'm going to start with a very simple passage. And since it's simple and it's short, I'm gonna ask that you stand for the reading of God's word. Is that okay?

I don't care if it's okay.

You should. If you're capable, stand for the reading of God's word. Jesus be making paralytics stand up, so you can stand up for a second. I'll read through the first four verses.

Now, I'm in the New International Version.

If you got a different translation, I'm not cheating or lying or trying to dupe you. Just the NIV. Here it is. "When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.

A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, 'Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. ' Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

'I am willing, ' he said. 'Be clean. ' Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, 'See that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priests and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.

'"

And all God's people said, at the reading of God's word. You can officially be seated. I won't make you stand up again unless the spirit comes over you and you're just like, "I got to, I got to. " We say, I don't say it enough, I'm going to say it to you today, we say, "Don't be lazy, don't get too crazy.

" Holy Spirit's not going to lead you through a wall.

He's also not going to have you sitting there being boring somewhere. It's a fine line. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. In fact, there's a lot of things in the word that are really hard to hold in balance.

And I have learned over the years, when something mysterious occurs, just try to trust the Lord a little bit.

There's something he's working behind the scenes that you don't fully understand. If your miracle hasn't come yet, God's doing something, you just don't see it. But I'm not going to preach on that because I preached on that last weekend. Hannah, you remember that?

Got a little bit crazy.

Talked a little bit too much about southern old ladies. Surprised I didn't get an email. It's, it's interesting because this passage is a very common passage. Like, just if I were to get a show of hands, how many of you have heard about the cleansing of the leper?

Right.

Yeah, we've all heard of this passage. You got a man who's a leper. He's considered unclean, in Judaism at the time, and he comes to Jesus very boldly and says, "If you're willing, make me clean. " Jesus cleans him, or cleanses him.

He touches him and the leprosy goes away, and he tells him, "Go show yourself to the priest, " which is the command of Moses from Leviticus, that you got to go, you got to go do this. And then the story stops.

We see this in Mark as well. There's a little bit different telling. And one thing I want you to know about the gospels, the gospels being Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is they arranged their good news, or Gospel, in a different way than one another. And that's actually an amazing aspect of the gospels that I think improves, well, it helps us understand at a deeper level the historicity of these gospels.

If they all said the same thing, exact same thing, they might have copied each other.

But since they say something different, you have Matthew, you have Mark, you have Luke arranging the gospels differently. And so Matthew comes in and he arranges it very specifically, and I'm going to break that down a little bit for you today. But when I was reading this story as a younger person, I say younger person because I'm old now. I'm 38 years old.

I know some of you think that, but others of you act like I'm an old fart.

It's, you young people make me feel bad. They're all in the second service, so that's why you're giggling with me. But when you're 38 and you're older than everybody in the room and you try to be hip, hip, oh man. Side note, have you ever noticed that when you turn 38 or 40 or 50, you don't feel 38, 40, or 50 up here?

Yeah.

And so then you go interact with people and you think you're just talking to them, like you're talking to somebody, and then all of a sudden you realize, "Man, how did I look at that person when I was 20-something and they were 38? " And you realize you're not cool anymore. Anyways, I didn't understand this passage, but when 2020 came around, I understood it at a different level. Y'all remember 2020?

Anything that happened in 2020? Y'all might want to remember.

Thanks, Mom. You remember? I know my mom's voice. She used to yell at me when I was a kid.

So, in 2020, I want, I want to give you the details of it because they're relevant to this conversation.

If you remember, in 2019 is when we first heard of COVID, like near the end of 2019, and we were like, "Oh, it's over there in China and other places, but it's not here yet. " It was around January through February, even a little further, of 2020 that it started. People on cruise ships were bringing that stuff back, which is why going on a cruise is a really, like, iffy thing to do. People on cruises were bringing them back and people were just traveling back in, and it became widespread, I think, is the term that they utilized.

And I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time, in Mecklenburg County. Well, actually, I lived in York County, which was just across the border into South Carolina.

And I remember the first and second week in March, it started to spread all over the country. And it was the first weekend that we closed the church because they told us we're not supposed to meet together. You can have your thoughts on how that all went down. Hindsight's 2020.

Churches were trying to figure out what to do when the government's telling them no, and other people like, "You shouldn't close. " But then it's like, "We don't know if COVID is going to kill us. " So it was just a really confusing season.

And so what our church did at the time is they did a live recording on a Friday or a Saturday, I can't remember. So we did a live recording at our main location, and I went to that live recording. I woke up Sunday morning, I remember how it felt, I felt perfectly fine. I saw pollen on my hood.

And then we did church online, but we did it in the office.

And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we were helping organizations and schools all across the city. We were blessing teachers. We were doing a ton of different things. And so we continued to go to work.

Well, Tuesday, I started to feel a little tickle in my throat.

And then I, like, self-quarantined. Is that what we called it? I self-quarantined. I was trying to be responsible.

And, I woke up the next morning, I did not feel good at all.

Now, I had self-quarantined, but I felt like I had the flu. Felt like the flu. Hannah, you remember that? I haven't quarantined for my kids, it was great.

They were, six years younger, you know, like it was, poor her.

I was just watching movies up in the upstairs bedroom. And then I felt really sick on a Thursday night, and that Friday morning I got up and I went to the urgent care and they gave me a flu test. It came back negative. And then the lady who had come in perfectly normal to give me the flu test, when I told her to give me the COVID test, she's like, "It's not widespread.

" I said, "I think it's widespread. " It's a little short old lady from the south, sorry, it's them again. And after she came back with a negative flu test, I said, "Give me a COVID test. " She gave me a COVID test.

Then she walked out frustrated. She read the instructions, it says, "It says shove it deeper than the flu test. " And I'm like, "You're reading instructions on this today? " Okay.

So, she scrambled my brain a little bit. And then she walked out and came back in decked out, in a mask, pretty much a suit, and nobody was wearing them when I walked in. It gave me the news that I was positive for COVID.

The second person in our county, and I walked out and everybody's looking at me like. But people at the front desk were like, "You can sign this over here. ", it's like, "Okay, can I get that? " It's like, "No, we'll bring it to you.

" It was this whole moment and I was like, "I've never felt this way before. "

Then I get home, I call my boss and I let him know, and they're trying to figure out what to do. I was like, "Man, what do we do? " I gave him the, the back date, and it was not the live recording, but I guess they didn't hear me properly. And so they told everybody that I had gotten symptoms as early as the live recording, and there were 400 people at that live recording.

And an email went out that said that to all of our staff and their spouses.

And I was at a bigger church, and there were 400 staff. So you got 6 to 800 people seeing this email that said that I had COVID and I was at the live recording and I had symptoms during the live recording, which wasn't true, but too late. And I need you to know, nobody called me initially. In fact, the first thing we heard from half the people was somebody who sat near me at the live recording texting the staff wives thread, "I was sitting next to the affected individual.

" And I'm sitting here, how old was Micah? Two months.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad for me, I'm trying to help you identify with this text. And then none of my closer staff had called me. And so I called one of them because I thought, " oh, they're probably mad, " and didn't answer the phone. Text me back, said, "I just need a little time.

" Now, a lot of the Lord's people, like, God's people stepped up at the church, and they dropped stuff off at our house. There was so much kindness throughout that entire season.

But then I had to call the daycare, let them know. Then I had to call my gym and let them know. And on one side, doctor called me every day. When do you get that type of treatment?

Like, they thought I was going to die or something.

So it's like, never, I haven't even talked to a doctor since then. It's just all been nurse practitioners. I don't know. That was awesome.

The movies were awesome.

I watched 1917 like three times. It was so cool. But I felt this unclean, and I felt it at a physical level, but just like anything that's physical, when it starts to have an impact on your community and your connection with other people, it feels not just physical, but personal. And they didn't mean anything negative by it.

It was just people, all in that season, responding, maybe in the flesh, maybe in fear.

But I felt, for the first time in my life, as close as I think possible, A leper. What is leprosy in the first place? It's some sort of skin, skin ailment. But for for most people, they would just broadly call something leprosy if they didn't fully know what it was, and it was a significant issue that made a person look, seem, and become unclean.

So this person would have to encamp outside of the city or the village.

Whenever they were walking, they would have to say unclean, unclean, unclean. They would have to keep distance, and when they had to walk somewhere, they would have to shout and let people know that they're coming through. They weren't allowed to participate in the synagogue worship. They definitely weren't allowed to go even into the outer court of the temple.

They were considered completely unclean.

Now, something physically that made you unclean, that became a personal attribute, was also spiritual. Because if you can't go to the temple, if you can't go into synagogue, if you can't be with God's people, then you're an outsider. Not to mention, when people looked at you, they're like, "Yuck. " Y'all get it a little bit.

You walked around with masks. You know what it feels like?

Or you walked around without a mask when everybody wanted you to wear a mask. Kind of felt a little bit like a leper there. I had someone tell me, in the middle of all of that, they were telling me that their their grandfather died, and this is their follow-up statement. They said, "They died because my cousin wouldn't wear a mask.

" And I'm like, "Wow. " But this is the view in Judaism at the time. They thought, "This person's parents must have sinned, left him with this skin ailment that we're going to call leprosy.

They're going to be considered unclean, and we're going to leave them out of everything."

So, if you are this person, there is a way that that makes you feel and operate. Half of us are operating because someone said something negative to us back when we were younger, maybe one time, and now our entire life has been constructed based on what this one person said, whether you're aware of it or not. So if your entire life was literally living an experience where people were calling you unclean, and you called yourself unclean, then you felt like there was no hope for you. That's where this man was.

But God wanted to perform a miracle.

There was a reason for it. Now, I don't want to equate leprosy with sin in your life, but I want you to know this: that in the ancient world, they would have considered his leprosy as a result of somebody's sin. So what I can say confidently is that many of you in this room, because of something you did, because of something that was done to you, because of the mindset you were raised in where somebody said, "You're bad if you do this, you're unclean if you do this, you're terrible if you do this, " you're walking around now. Even if no one says anything, with this visible sign, whether it's visible or verbal, it is a sign that says unclean.

I can't tell you how many times I've had someone come in and say, "You don't know how much I've done, " or, "I'm not worthy to be considered a disciple. " It's this mindset that now projects into the world.

And even if no one says anything about you being unclean or terrible or stained or used, you say it. And so you're putting out into the world this mentality. This leper would have experienced that at a high level. But again, God can do anything.

Luke tells us this — I know I'm in Matthew, but Luke tells us this — there's nothing that is impossible with God.

Absolutely nothing. And Jesus just came down from the mountain when he preached his best sermon ever. Even my best sermons could not hold a candle to Matthew 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mountain. Now, Matthew arranges this differently than Mark.

Mark puts it really early in his Gospel.

I believe it's in the later part of Matthew, or Mark chapter 1. But Matthew waits for a particular time. So before I jump in, and I talk to you about this context and the rest of this passage, and I think it'll be really helpful, I want to give you my big idea: that God wants to perform a miracle in your life, and it will bless you. But that miracle is not just for you, because he could have healed any leper.

He healed this leper for a specific reason.

And if God healed you and he brought you out of something, he did it for a reason. So when God performs a miracle, you got to know before you even walk into this passage, he's not just doing it for some random leper that he likes better than another leper. He's doing it because he's got a purpose behind it. And Matthew hones into this super well.

So when God performs a miracle, it's not just for you, though it benefits you greatly.

In fact, it's not just miracles, Hannah — I think it's everything in our Christian walk that God brings you through something miraculously, his doing, not yours, so that someone else can be blessed. In fact, I'm trying to think of any miracle where it just blessed the person, and there wasn't a greater purpose behind that miracle. I would, I would encourage you to go find one, and if you can find one, bring it to me. I promise you an argument against it.

God performs miracles for a reason.

Matthew understood this. Mark understood this. John understood this. Luke understood this.

This is why Matthew is very explicit with how he does this miracle.

And it's right after this authoritative feed. So I'll give you five quick points. Are the points coming up behind me? Because I'm not seeing them back there.

Five quick points.

The first one: when it comes to the miracle that God's going to perform, that's for somebody else, but it benefits you greatly — the timing matters. The timing matters. You might, you might ponder for a second the work that God put into your life, or did in your life. In fact, if you guys have that that slide with the QR code on it — I've got them thinking about the timing of a miracle — so, I'd love for you to put that slide with the QR code on it.

And that QR code is going to take you to a form where you can actually tell us a story about what God did in your life.

It could be the thing that he did to bring you from death to life. It could be something that happened this last week that you were like, "No, this was 100% God. " I got a couple things that happened this week that I'm not going to share with you right now, because some of them still in the works. But I'm excited to be able to share it with you down the road.

But if you could go to that QR code and tell us what God did in your life, it'll encourage us, because the miracle wasn't just for you. It was for others other than you.

And when you share your miracle with somebody else, you don't even know how it's impacting them. I told someone about Sweet Baby Ray's one time that I put on my brisket, and they got saved the next day. I don't know how this works. Somebody made Sweet Baby Ray's one day.

It was a miracle 'cause that stuff is good.

It's better than that stuff you guys be putting on your burgers and barbecue, and then I just talked about it one day. It was a miracle. Just kidding. But the timing matters.

How many of you have ever felt like you want God to do a miracle in your life?

Real quick. Come on. Come on. Yeah, we all do.

If you didn't raise your hand, probably lying to yourself.

I'm going to be honest with you, 'cause if you're married right now, there was one point where you were sitting there single like, "God, please send me somebody. " I was hoping for an amen. I'm going to look at you. Amen.

I prayed and I received. Praise God for the miracle he's performed in my life — the person I was looking for.

I mean, the girls I was trying to date were probably going to cheat on me like 10 times over, but you — not a chance. You've encouraged me and exhorted me to greater faithfulness in Christ Jesus. You've been praying for a miracle at some point. Maybe you prayed to make that shot during your high school basketball game.

Maybe you prayed for a spouse.

You prayed for kids. You prayed for a job. You prayed for something. And if God was going to do it, it was miraculous.

But sometimes we get frustrated with God's timing.

But the timing matters. Many of you are wise enough to know that if you got what you wanted when you wanted it, would not have worked out. I was in love with the girl I was dating in high school. Praise God that his timing was different than mine.

And you can think back on that when you look in Matthew right here.

Like I told you, he puts it a little bit later than Mark puts this story. For Matthew, it was actually more important to put the authoritative word into his Scripture before his authoritative works. See, because if he's just performing things, he's a magician. But if he does it in concert with the authoritative word of God, like preaching the Sermon on the Mount, it makes a significant difference.

Let me tell you something very true.

It is true. I don't care if you agree with me or not. God is already working miracles in your life. He's been working them since you were born.

He's been working them when he put every hair on your head.

He was working them before you ever thought of a speckle in your dad's eye — I don't even know if that's a phrase, but he was, he was working those miracles. The problem is timing matters. And the miracles God worked in your life before you knew God are borderline irrelevant to you because you don't see them. But when you understand how God's word operates, and you've allowed God's word to have like a place within your soul and spirit, then when God works a miracle, the eyes of your heart are opened, and you're much more likely to see it.

This was Jesus's problem throughout his entire ministry.

He said, "You got ears, but you're not hearing. You got eyes, but you're not seeing. " He was there doing it the entire time. He was preaching parables — there's prophecy about kind of stuff like that.

He was performing miracles — there's prophecy about stuff like that. He taught an authoritative word that was unique in Judaism at the time.

The Scriptures talked about that. He was born in a particular way. The timing was like all in front of everybody, but they didn't see it. And so what Matthew's trying to do, about 40 years after Jesus's death — when a lot of scholars think this was finally compiled and written for people to read — Matthew's like, "No, I got to help them understand what Jesus thinks about things.

" Because when they know how he thinks, then they see how he operates. Many of you don't see the miraculous of God because you've never opened this, and you don't know how he works.

You're praying to God for a miracle he's never going to perform in your life, 'cause he loves you. But without the Lord's authoritative word in our life, we're like those kids going into Toys "R" Us, which is a horrible place to buy anything. I just go buy that cheap Chinese stuff on Amazon these days. It's great.

It's beautiful.

But then then I'm in the mall walking around — maybe not a mall, that's not accurate, that's like I'm aging myself by 20 years at this point — but maybe you're walking around that little shopping center over there, or maybe you're in downtown somewhere, or maybe you're on that trip, or you're at the water park or Six Flags or wherever you might find yourself, and then you see something you get on Amazon for three bucks, and you see that, and it's like 30, and your kids see it, and you're telling them, "No, I'm going to get you a better one from China on Amazon, " but they want it now. And then they're screaming and crying, and you just said, "I don't have the ability to understand what you're trying to tell them."

Don't be like that. Be someone who takes the authoritative word of God, reads it, and says, "Before I judge God on the lack of miraculous performances in my life, I'm going to open his word and allow it to do what it says it will do. " And then I'm going to see the mira— I saw something this week. It was so nuanced and mundane that if I told you about it, you guys would be like, "This dude's an idiot.

He's overthinking miraculous.

He's giving God too much credit here. " And I'm telling you, I saw it as a miracle. You're missing miracles because you haven't taken in his word. Timing matters.

If you get his word in you, you'll see him. If his word's not in you, you'll never see it.

You'll have ears and eyes, but you won't hear or see. Timing matters. We see when he came down the mountainside, large crowds followed him. Verse two, it says, "A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, 'Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

'"

Second point: posture matters. Posture matters.

A lot of you come in here, you're like — I'm going to tell you, posture matters. You come in here and you're like, "I'm going to engage. " It makes a difference. Some of you — posture matters, the way that you set yourself up the night before makes a huge difference.

And then you wake up, and I mean, I don't need to give you tons of examples of how posture matters. But this man, who was a leper, who had been unclean, who could have had this mindset about him that would have kept him out in the outskirts of town, never would have— Even dreamed of approaching Jesus, he boldly comes up and he, he has the right posture.

I think he's got a good fine line posture. He's not too cocky about it, but he's, he's like bold about it. And he's also not too presumptuous or, or insecure about it as well. He comes up to Jesus and he says a couple different things.

It says a man with leprosy, he came.

Many men with leprosy wouldn't have come. They would have stayed outside. Says he knelt. You don't kneel unless you have an understanding of the authoritative word of Jesus.

Maybe he was, I have to imagine he was at the Sermon on the Mount.

He's like, "This, this is this guy. I like this guy. I mean, he's, he's Lord. He's Messiah.

I'm going to, I'm going to go kneel because he has the capacity to heal me. " He goes up to him.

He doesn't presume, "Hey, since you're the miracle worker, heal me. " He comes, "If you're willing, make me clean. " He kneels and he says, "If you were willing. " I'm not negating the man's faith.

I think a lot of times, I grew up a little bit in the Baptist circles, and Baptist is like, "If it's your will, Lord. " I'm like, "Hold up. Sometimes you don't have to ask that question. " Sometimes, based on the Scriptures and the way that God works, based on his authoritative word, I know he wants to do this in somebody else's life.

It, it didn't take me, "If you're willing, " for this person to come out of their sin. Now, sometimes I can just look at you and say, "Stop sleeping around.

Stop doing this. Stop doing this. " Sometimes I can be bold and approach you, or approach God. Hebrews tells us we can approach God's throne boldly.

But when we approach his throne, we still got to recognize it's a throne. And too many people treat Jesus like their homeboy, and I'm tired of that.

That's not cool for me. You need to approach his throne. It's like, "Lord, there's so many things I don't comprehend. So many things I don't understand.

And to be honest, I'm really frustrated about this situation I'm in right now, and it would be really nice if you would bring me out of it.

So if you're willing, would bring me out of it. If you're willing, make me clean. " That is the posture with which you need to approach God. I think sometimes we get it wrong on both sides.

I want you to get it wrong. I don't want you to be too timid.

Timidity, when you can approach God's throne boldly, is just you staying in the outskirts when you're called to come into the inner circle. But, but do it with a little bit of, I want to be careful with this because I, I, I, I want more charismatic people in the room. I want, I want more charismatic people in the room. I believe that the gifts have continued.

I'm not one of those who believes they've ceased completely.

God can do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it, however he wants to do it, at any time. Like, he can, he can do whatever he wants to. So for me to boldly say that the gifts have ceased is pretty, that's a pretty, it's a pretty big statement. So, I believe God can do what he wants to.

But I think sometimes we're like, we take that verse that says, "Whatever you have bound on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

Whatever you've loosed on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. " Well, I got the authority that Jesus has given me. We've been singing songs about it. And I, I just want to be careful with my assumption of God's authority in this world.

And so, I'm, I'm not going to be the guy that walks up to you and says, "Be healed, " unless, unless God has made it super abundantly clear. And there have been very few times in my life where God, I think, just spoke something into me, and I felt so confident and bold that he, he called me to go to that person and say, "You're going to be healed. " But I got to approach that boldly, but, but, but humbly.

Your posture matters. If you come in here with the wrong attitude every single week, thinking God can't do anything, you're going to miss it. If you come in here every week jumping around and doing all this other stuff because you're investing yourself rather than actually looking for God, peering into his word to see what he might do, you're just going to be running around hitting walls. But Jesus walls up our paths.

I want it to be both, cuz dude, posture matters.

I don't want to grieve the Spirit of God because I'm going crazy, and I don't want the Spirit of God to be quenched because I told it to stop. My posture is like, "God, what do, what are you willing to do in this situation? " This man comes up and he, he has this posture that I think is near perfect for how we should approach God. And it's also interesting because I think your faith matters.

Your faith matters. I, I, if you approach God without any type of belief, you're in trouble, too.

How many times, you don't have to say this out loud, but how many times have you prayed for God to do something, whether it's to make you clean, to rid you of an addiction, to bring somebody into your life, to help you find the right church, the right job, all that other stuff? How many times have you prayed that and then you're kind of like, "Well, I prayed it, but I don't really, I don't really think anything's going to happen"? If you're honest with yourself, we do it all the time. We pray, and it's just words because we've never sought Jesus.

We're just praying.

We're not praying like those old school southern ladies, prayer warriors. We're praying like bored people who are like, "This is what I'm supposed to do, so I guess I'll do it. " You got to get out of that. You got to approach his throne boldly with faith.

This man who's a leper, again, in Matthew, we're not, we're not seeing a whole lot of miracles at this point. We've seen the authoritative word.

So, this man hears the word, and when Jesus comes down the mountain, he approaches him boldly with the right posture, but with a ton of faith. He said, "If you're willing, you can make me clean. " It wasn't a question of Jesus's capacity. It was a question of his willingness.

How many of you, do you approach God with this belief that he has the capacity to do the exact thing, and the only thing you're having a conversation with God about is whether it's the right time and he's willing in the present moment? That's a way better conversation for you to have.

But many of us question his capacity, so we jump in, cuz by default we think our capacity is enough. But this man couldn't make himself clean any more than I can make myself not have COVID. He couldn't shift perception without becoming clean. And in a lot of ways, y'all have known in your own lives how hard it is to shift perception.

So when he approaches Jesus, he approaches so with this humility that says, "I know I can't do it, but I fully believe in his capacity to do it. " But the question is, is now the time for him to do it?

That's why we approach God's throne with that type of humility and boldness. But as we continue, we see that Jesus has a posture toward him, and I believe toward us, that is so valuable. It says this: Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing, " he said.

"Be clean. " Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.

Let me give you my next point. Context matters. Context matters. I know you all know that Jesus healed the man.

That's pretty, pretty obvious.

It's stated right there for you all to see. Need not preach on that. He was healed, by the way. He was clean.

This is, this is what Jesus did.

You can read that for yourself if you read English at all. If you got a different language, you can read that in your Bible with that language. It is so clear. I need not preach on the reality of what happened.

But the context does matter.

The context behind what happens in this verse is so significant. And one of the scholars I was reading, John Barclay, he actually says there would have been no greater message to a Jew at the time than to hear this read aloud, that Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. Because in the context, people believed that someone that was unclean had a communicable disease. They didn't know anything about the leprosy, but they knew unclean can be transferred.

That's why the cleanliness rituals were so crazy.

I just got back from Israel in February, and you see all of the pools and what people would do. They wash their hands. They wash their feet. They wash their bodies.

They would do it when they're walking into somewhere, when they're walking out of somewhere.

There were pools everywhere because they were concerned about cleanliness. Now, some of that makes sense. They didn't have showers and running water like we do, so they needed to clean up a little bit. They didn't get to take a shower every day.

I look at people like they're unclean when they didn't take a shower today.

You know what I'm saying? Like, but back in the day, they had these pools, and it, it mattered for general hygiene in the ancient world. But for Jews at the time, it was spiritual, and they thought this man with leprosy, if he got near them, it was communicable. And so, if he touched somebody or got near somebody, they would get the disease, and that disease would spread through their body, and that would be transferred to another person.

But what happens in this passage is that Jesus kind of reverses the flow of culture at the time.

It is crazy, in that day and age, for Jesus, a holy man, to touch this person. He didn't even need to. In the next passage that we'll talk about next week, he spoke it from afar, and somebody was healed. He didn't need to touch him.

So while it wasn't physically important, it was theologically significant.

When Jesus touched this man, what is he saying? It's not even about the miracle. It's about the theology. He's saying that, "I am one who has the capacity to reverse the normal flow of this world.

" So if you feel unclean, all I got to do is touch you. All I got to do is get close.

All you have to do is boldly approach, humbly. And when you do that, you get close enough to me, I will touch you, and everything about you will be different. Those of us who have followed Jesus, confessed with our mouths and believed in our hearts that Jesus rose from the grave, we recognize that one touch from the Lord, that we've tasted and seen how good he is, that if I open his authoritative word and I allow him, we got to allow him to work in our lives, then it reverses the entire flow that sin caused in my life. It takes me away from all of my addictions and frustrations.

And guys, believe it or not, I had some addictions.

Still got some. I watch too much TV sometimes. I eat too much sugar, all that other stuff. But I had some addictions.

And the Lord, it was, he was so kind to me that when I heard his word and it started to overflow into my life, God started to work in me and around me to the point where I stopped cussing like I used to.

I stopped doing the other stuff that I used to do. He radically shifted my posture. Not everything shifted at once, but over time, as I got closer to him, as I continued to approach his throne boldly, it was like this power went out from him into me. And I don't perform miracles like he performs.

In fact, that is something only he can do.

But I do know this, that my trajectory was that direction, and now I'm going in that direction. And it was because he had the willingness to touch me. He didn't have to come down from heaven to earth to save you, but he did. That's his posture toward you.

In fact, we approach him boldly and humbly because of his approach toward us.

He didn't consider it robbery to be considered equal with God, but he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, for you and for me. And he, and he, he comes close, and he reverses the flow that sin has on your life. Man, I love what Jesus did there, because to the Pharisees and Sadducees, he just did something completely and utterly disgusting. But to the man who was cleaned, he's like, "This is different.

" That's an understatement of the week. This is different.

He's, he's cleaned. And I love how the man didn't just come up and say, "Hey, can you get rid of my skin disease? " He said, "If you're willing, you can make me clean. " Fundamentally, this man wasn't asking a physical question.

I don't know if the guy understood fully what he was asking, but I know he was asking a spiritual question, whether he knew it or not. And many of us, we go to God and we ask him for the superficial needs. But I want you to go to God and say, "Whatever you're willing to do in my life, I'm going to come close to you.

I'll draw near to God so that you can do something in my life. " I recognize that it's proximity to Christ that enables my trajectory to radically shift. That's the context of the passage. We only see one verse.

And then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Mo Happened. You've heard me extrapolate on what happened.

This man was cleansed of his leprosy. And according to Mosaic law, he was supposed to go — I think it was an 8-day process — and he was supposed to go to the high priest, or the Pharisees at the time, and he was supposed to show them, and they would notate that this man was a leper. It would have been in their books. And now this person is not a leper.

This is your public official statement that says, "This man once was unclean.

Now he is clean. " And this is what Jesus told him to do. Now, in Mark, we find out the man didn't really go do that. But Matthew didn't tell us that because he's got more important things to talk about.

And it's our response. He leaves it open-ended, I believe, so that you guys can ponder: what does it mean when Jesus cleansed me from the inside and is now having outward — — has outward consequences and benefits?

He performed a miracle in your life and my life spiritually, not just for me but so that others would hear and see. In fact, you are the living proof that God works and operates. And if he performs a miracle in your life, and your response is to keep it to yourself, we're just like this man who — in Mark — went and told a bunch of people, but he didn't go do exactly what Jesus told him to do and go put it on the public record. This is why I'm big on baptism.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

This is why I'm big on baptism. It's like: you trusted in Jesus, he performed a miracle in your life — let's put it on the record. Let's publicly profess that Jesus is Lord and show all of our family members and friends what he is capable of doing when we hand our lives to him. Because all I have to do is get close, and he can shift everything.

What is your response going to be?

In fact, God does this with miracles. He does this with trials. He does this with the suffering. He does this with mundane, normal things.

Because, you know, I don't look back and think that me getting healed from COVID was a miraculous thing.

I don't think I just went through the thing and I just got better. And so I look back on that season, and I don't think that the healing was a physical thing. But from that moment, he opened my eyes to his authoritative word in such a unique way that I'd never experienced before, that I felt like I could connect with the one that thought they were unclean. And it shifted the way that I approached Jesus myself.

And then, physically, COVID was a crazy thing that many people don't consider a miracle, but it shifted my trajectory.

And God worked it in such a way that I would be in a position when he called me to come out here and do exactly what I'm doing now. So while I look at some of these things as mundane, normal life, I look at some of them and say God was working to make something spiritual happen. And the reason I got COVID wasn't so that I could get my feelings hurt. It wasn't so that he could miraculously heal me.

It was so that, later on, I would have shared the experience in some semblance of the leper for a short season, and now be able to deliver what it means to approach Jesus to others.

If you think about what God did in your life, it already benefited you. But it has the capacity — if you grow close to Jesus, listen to his words, and allow that miracle to be more than just your miracle — it has a capacity to see others radically shifted. Do you realize how many people who felt unclean now read this passage and have a change of mindset? It's because that miracle wasn't just for the leper.

It was for you.

And so, as we approach this series, I want you to know: if you're searching for a miracle, praise the Lord. I believe when you search for Jesus, you're going to find it. And his timing may be a little different. You might have a different context than another person who has that exact thing that you're looking for.

But I need you to understand that as you seek Jesus, you will see the miraculous occur.

And once you keep doing it, it'll be so frequent — with small and big things — that you will actually turn and respond in such a way that gives gratitude to God and says, "All right, now what do I do with this?"

In fact, this church was started because of a group of people who said, "I've received the miracle, but now what do I do with it? " We share it. We respond with such gratitude that we put it on public record. "I don't care what you think — Jesus raised me from death to life.

I don't care what you think — Jesus performed a miracle in my marriage. I don't care what you think — my kid was this way.

I saw it with my own eyes. And because of what Jesus did, everything is different for him. I don't care what you think — God performed miracle after miracle in my life. "

And the one miracle we can all share right now is the miracle that was performed when he came from heaven to earth and died on the cross for your sins. The miracle is that the blood that covers your door saves you from your sin, offers you forgiveness and life eternally with God in heaven. It's a miracle that somehow blood can cleanse me.

But that's what the authoritative word tells me. It says, "That's how I'm living my life. " You can tell me all you want, but I've seen it, and I want you to experience it the same way. Father God, thank you for today.

Thank you for cleansing us from the inside out. And I pray right now, as we worship one final time, that you would reveal yourself to the people in this room who don't know you.

And God, I pray you would give them the boldness to approach you daily now with a posture of humility that gives you the opportunity to determine your willingness. But a posture of boldness that says, regardless of when he's willing, I'm going every day to my creator. God, be with everyone right now as we approach your throne boldly. Thank you for what you've done.

It's in Jesus's name that we pray.

And God's people said. Amen.