I just want to add a couple little things to what's been shared already.
And just as ways of reminder, on the 14th Valentine's Day morning at 7:00,
you men are invited to a breakfast here in this place.
We'll have some time just to hang out together, eat some good food.
A time of competition to win a really big gift card.
So you can take your Valentine out to dinner that night
if you're skilled enough in winning it.
And then a little training on on about what real love is and how to love.
Well.
And so men, we need you to I, I'm asking you make sure
that we know that you're coming, so that we can get the food ready.
Do you understand?
You understand?
And so, ladies, if you're here with your man,
And he doesn't sign up to come,
he doesn't care about you enough to fight for a gift card.
So just think twice about him.
Okay? So make sure that you do that.
And then the day after that, on Sunday the 15th, I'm going to teach you,
the six ways in the scripture,
how Jesus and the disciples shared their faith.
There's six ways in Scripture that we have to do that.
One of those six ways fits you perfectly.
You probably just don't know what it is, but it fits you.
You do it well.
You can do it well if you learn how to do it.
But it but it's not weird for you.
And I want to teach you what yours is, your style of evangelism,
and help you to learn to do it so that's on the 50.
You don't have to sign up for that. Just got to show up.
But you men have got to sign up for the breakfast.
Is that clear? Yes. Yeah.
I'm gonna ask you to
open your Bibles to chapter eight of Matthew.
If you don't have a Bible, look on someone next to you.
If you need a Bible, stop by the welcome Center.
We've got some for you.
Matthew, chapter eight comes right after Matthew chapter
seven and Matthew chapter seven as part of Matthew five six and seven,
which is known as the sermon on the Mount.
It's the longest continuous message
that we have, recorded of Jesus.
It's a profound passage of Scripture.
We spent weeks and weeks going through those three chapters.
Incredible implications and incredible insight
from Jesus as the authority of the Word of God.
About what?
Being a part of his kingdom means.
And now we get to a whole nother section
in the book of Matthew in chapter eight.
Matthew is not recorded for us chronologically.
Some books of the Bible are.
Matthew is more recorded.
He records Jesus's life and ministry, according to topics.
And so he's going to get into a whole new topic
in chapter eight that will address in just a moment.
But to set up chapter eight, I want to I want to,
I want to to help us understand the reality
of what has been going on since creation.
And the fall, what was explicitly seen in the time of Jesus,
what is still going on in our time in our world, though we don't see it much.
So we're not aware of it, and we don't give it much credence.
But I want to share with you truly what's going on.
What we see in Matthew eight is the physical
manifestation of what's happening behind the scenes.
And we
know from Scripture that this is the reality,
our struggle.
We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.
Our struggle, our main struggle and fight
is not against that which is seen and physical,
but we wrestle against rulers and against authorities
and against cosmic powers over this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
The reality.
Is that behind what is seen
is a more real and more eternal
force and power.
That's work.
The Bible says here Paul says rulers and authorities
and cosmic powers over this present darkness.
There's a spiritual reality that's going on right now.
It's been there since creation.
It's seen explicitly in the pages of Scripture.
We'll see it in Matthew eight.
It's still going on right now in our world, in our time, and
right now in this place.
We don't recognize it.
We don't know.
We don't see it.
So we don't give it much credence.
In Matthew eight, the the, the
the topic that the the theme that Matthew is moving into from the sermon
on the Mount, life in the Kingdom is now the authority of Jesus.
Matthew five six and seven.
This is the life and the kingdom.
Now Matthew is going to deal with the authority of Jesus
over everything in the physical world and in the spiritual world,
in the natural and the supernatural.
He's going to say Jesus has authority over it all
because they're both real.
They both exist, and Jesus has authority over all. Now.
Chapter eight.
We'll see it in the beginning.
We're only going to get through part of chapter eight this week.
We'll do with the other part next week has to do with the rule
and reign of Jesus over the natural supernatural.
I just got this email from O'Neill, who is the head of our church
planning movement in Cuba.
I've been working with
O'Neill for two decades now.
And he was one of the first ones that went through
the Discovery Center that we did in Cuba to start planning churches there.
He's my right hand guy in Cuba, and he's just sent this email.
And I want to share this with you
because it ties into this very thing I'm talking about.
Hello, my beloved brothers and sisters.
I hope and trust in God that you and your families are well.
We, thank God, are well.
The situation in Cuba is becoming more uncertain every day.
Thanks be to God first and foremost and to you for being his instruments.
We have enough money to buy nonperishable food
and to store some for later, either for our own use as a family
or for brothers and sisters in the faith who may need it.
Things are going to start getting real bad in Cuba real quick.
Here's what I wanted to communicate to you, though.
While we continue
to extend the Kingdom of God fulfilling the Great Commission.
Last week, a married couple, surrendered to Christ.
They practiced witchcraft
and had many packs and a large number of idols in their home,
but they surrender them all to be destroyed.
Demonic spirits manifested themselves in their home at night.
The sofas were moving on their own, and the children
saw an old ugly woman walking around their house.
We know that the power of Christ had freed them from this darkness,
and we have a good team of people to go into those places
filled with fasting and prayer and helping them.
Please pray for this couple and for us.
Thank you for all your support.
We love you.
We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers and authorities
and the cosmic powers over this present darkness.
It's real. We don't see it
like they did in Scripture.
We don't see it like they do in other places.
The world.
But it's very real.
It's very present, is very active.
And so I'm going to unpack some of it
this morning in Matthew chapter eight.
But before we do, O'Neill
has asked us to pray for this couple and for them.
So, church, join me in prayer.
Jesus, I thank you
that you have dethroned the evil one
and that you've paraded him around the heavenly beings and
has it conquered one?
Father, I thank you for your authority.
I thank you
that Jesus, your name, is the name before whom everything
that has a name must bow in heaven and earth, and under the earth.
We confess that we believe that.
And I praise you because of it.
In the name of Jesus, by the presence of the Holy Spirit,
I pray your watch for protection over this couple.
Thank you for dethroning
the evil one that they used to give their lives to.
Thank you for setting them free for your redemption.
Thank you for your mercy and your grace that didn't allow them to be destroyed.
Thank you for O'Neal and his church and his people who fast and pray
and do spiritual battle right alongside them.
I pray your protection over them.
I pray that they are lights and examples of
both your mercy and grace, and your power and authority in this world.
We love you. We trust you.
Open our eyes to help us see the reality of what's going on.
That we will love you and trust you more.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
Here's the big idea
in chapter eight, and we'll see all three of these
graces.
Free authority is real, and following Jesus is costly.
That's the big idea in chapter eight that we'll see.
Grace is free.
And will I say grace is free.
We have to understand grace isn't cheap.
And so following Jesus is costly.
And we're going to see that in these three instances
in Matthew chapter eight and the first 22 verses,
we're going to see Jesus heal three different people.
And so let's just get in us.
I'm going to read you the scripture and then we'll talk about it.
It's not going to be on the screen.
I want, I want, I want to train us to bring our Bibles with us.
And so like I said, open Matthew chapter eight, the first gospel,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John
chapter eight.
If you don't have a Bible, let us know.
Welcome, center.
We'll get you one. But here we go.
When he came down from the mountain.
Okay, that's our first clue.
This is after the sermon on the Mount.
He's coming down from the mountain.
Great crowds followed him talking about Jesus.
And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, Lord,
if you will, you can make me clean.
Let me just tell you about leprosy.
Leprosy still exists in some third world countries.
In this world, we've pretty much eradicated it from the
industrialized world, from first world countries.
But in the third world, it still exists.
And in certain places, leprosy is horrible.
It starts with nerve damage, especially in the extremities.
And as the nerves decay and are destroyed.
Numbness, numbness, obviously sets in.
And with the numbness comes paralysis and deformation of the hands and the feet.
And what ends up happening with
leprosy is the skin develops these horrible ulcers
that just start spreading throughout the body, eating the flesh,
which result in great infection throughout the body.
Eventually it became the entire body and resulting in death.
There's no cure for leprosy
when someone is in in new chapter lives was diagnosed with leprosy,
they were forced to wear old, ratty, tattered clothes.
They were forced to let their hair grow long.
They had to make it apparent that this was someone,
who was not to be,
who was to be shunned.
They had to cover their face for a couple reasons.
One, because as the leprosy spread on their face, their lips would fall off,
their nose would there, too?
Their mouth would, And so it was it's just it was just a nasty look.
And it was also to prevent
the idea of
leprosy spreading through respiration.
So they had to wear face coverings,
and they had to shout out unclean, unclean, unclean.
And they were forced, once they were diagnosed with leprosy, to move
outside of the city, outside of the community and a leper colony.
Once that happened, they were banned from all human contact.
No friends, no family, no loved ones.
They would never feel the touch of a human again.
They were forced to beg for their food.
They lost not only their health, they lost all people.
It was often seen when someone had leprosy
as a judgment of God because of some sin in their life.
Now, that's not why people got leprosy.
I want to be very clear
that all people who had leprosy is not because God judged them.
Though there are three instances in Scripture
where because of someone's sin, God did inflict with leprosy.
So that did happen.
But that's not necessarily the case.
But as a leper,
they suffered physical suffering,
social rejection, religious exclusion, and moral suspicion.
Can you imagine?
Because they were sick,
the law was they had to stay 150ft away from everybody.
They couldn't breathe, breathe the same air.
It reminds me of a hyper,
extreme Covid panic.
The rabbis, the religious people at the time
to make sure that they didn't get close to a leper who would have rocks
and would throw them at the lepers to make sure that they stayed
150ft away.
Leprosy was called a slow motion funeral.
It was horrible.
And I was thinking, as I was thinking about leprosy this week,
it reminded me, and if you were around church back in the 90s,
it reminds me very much of the religious people
in the churches response to the Aids epidemic.
Because in the early days
of the days of the Aids epidemic, it was absent by the church.
It was absolutely seen as God's judgment on those sinful people.
And in great fear,
people lived with great distance from anybody who was infected with Aids.
And it was a death sentence.
And it oftentimes meant that those people
were ostracized from their community, from their family,
and from any institution of faith.
If you're old enough in your own church in those days,
you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I was a youth pastor during those days,
and I felt really convicted at the state of the church
in response to people who had Aids, regardless of how they got it.
And so I
decided that I would go there was a hospital,
a local hospital that was doing training on how to respond
and how to care for people with Aids and the families associated with them.
And as a young youth pastor, I said, I need to be a part of that.
I need to know.
And there was one other lady in our church, her name was Andy,
and she went with me, and it was a multi-week thing.
I was Andy and I were the only people from any church that were represented in it.
In this, and it was not well received from my church.
Why? Because they were lepers.
That's this.
That's this stigma is the stigma that associated these lepers.
That's what we're dealing with here.
And I want you to notice what the leper did.
The leper came to Jesus and knelt before him.
This was an act of worship.
So he's not coming to Jesus, acting as if everything's okay.
He knows something's bad in his life.
He knows there's contamination.
Do you understand?
And he knows that he has to submit like he's
he comes in as an act of worship and look at what he has.
He says, Lord, what do you say?
What do you say?
If you're he says, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.
I want you to understand something.
His question is not, Lord, do you have the power?
His question is not if you can
question is if you're willing.
See for the leper, the first of the healing here.
The power wasn't the question. Love was.
He didn't question.
If God had the power to him.
He question if he was worthy enough to be healed by God.
His question was a question of love.
God, am I so far outside of your care that you're unwilling to heal me?
That's what he's saying.
Why? Because everybody in his world, everybody is life
and said, you are no longer worthy,
right?
Apparently your family didn't love you anymore.
Your friends all love anymore.
Your faith can be don't love anymore.
You are so contaminated that you're outside
the scope of human love.
So his question is not about the power of God.
His question is about the love of God.
There been there.
In verse three and four, Jesus stretched out his hand.
And what do you do?
He touched him.
He says, I am all right.
I will be clean.
And immediately the leprosy was cleansed.
And you said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone
but go show yourself to the priest and offer
the gift of Moses that Moses commanded for the fruit to them.
Here's what's happening.
This this person
who had been devoid of any of any human contact.
It was religiously a defilement for to touch a leper.
And it was also physically incredibly risky.
This is how leprosy is transferred.
And Jesus, because he has authority,
reaches out and touches the first time
this person has felt a human touch and who knows how many years
and just says, I have authority over what contaminate you and I will touch you.
And the moment he was touched by Jesus, what happened?
His cleansing healed.
Now we have to understand, other than what's going on in the physical world,
leprosy is a symbol of sin.
Sin and leprosy are the exact same in this.
It infects a person
and it spreads and it starts to deform.
It starts to decay.
It starts to defile that person and eventually lead to death.
It's sin.
And when someone acknowledges
how much I have, how much we've been contaminated by sin,
and when he gets bad enough, every one of us questions.
God, do you still love me?
You know what I've done.
I know what I've done.
And I've gone so far outside of your community, of your will, of your plan.
How can you love me anymore?
And even if we understand that
Jesus died on the cross, his power, the question remains
because of who I am,
can you love me
to understand?
And what did Jesus do?
He validated him and he said, do you still matter to me?
You're still important to me.
You are never too far gone for me.
And he stretched out and touched him, and the moment he touched him,
he was cleansed.
The leper did nothing for his own cleansing.
The leper did nothing to affect his own healing.
It was simply by the touch of Jesus and my friends,
this is exactly what happens in the spiritual world with our sin.
We are so contaminated by sin and with sin
that left to itself, it will continue to spread and infect
and alter and eventually lead to our own death.
But if we approach the healer and say,
do you love me enough and get a resounding yes, I do,
and allow him to touch us immediately that contamination is cleansed.
Not because we've been good, not because we've been religious,
not because we've done right, but because he has authority over it
to understand.
Here's what we got to understand
that grace is greater than our contamination.
It's by the grace of God
that Jesus healed this man, though he was
deathly contaminated.
I'm so thankful for his grace.
But the key
the leper had to want to be healed.
And then he had to approach
Jesus and ask for it.
There are times in Scripture when someone who was sick
or ill or dying or whatever, Jesus will say, do you want to get better?
There has to be an argument that I'm not good right now.
I am contaminated.
And I want you to make me better.
I want you to heal me.
You get it?
You get it.
Like I'm not afraid to start over.
It's not Super Bowl Sunday yet.
So that's the first healing.
Let's look at the second one I'm going to read.
I'm going to read verses five through nine when he had entered Capernaum.
Oh no wait. I'm gonna go back to verse four.
Jesus said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone,
but go show yourself to the priest and offer
the gift that Moses commanded for the proof of that.
I love that just like, don't tell anybody what
what what
he said.
Don't, don't, don't like, don't be spread.
Now, can you imagine if this happened today?
Some pastor
like, has this big he'll.
You know what he would do.
Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute.
Right.
Like take a selfie on my post is like, my followers are going to go
through the roof. I'm gonna start a podcast.
Everybody's going to listen to me.
You know, it just is stupid.
And Jesus was like, look, I, I don't need fandom.
I want followers,
I'm not building a brand.
I wonder what Jesus would say today
to all the hype.
These skinny jeans.
What?
I'm. Yeah, I'm whatever I
it's like, look.
I'm not sending this to the PR department.
I'm not doing selfish about this.
I'm not built.
What does he say?
He says, I want you to leave here now, after what I've done, and be obedient
to all I want.
That's why I said, go to the priest.
Show him the law of Moses.
Obedience to Scripture, offer what you got to offer,
and be obedient to the scripture that's already there.
That's what he says.
When Jesus steps in and does something,
his expectation of those for whom he did it is their obedience in response.
Do you understand?
So let me get to the second one.
Now, verse five.
But when he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing
to him, Lord, my servant is laying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.
And he said to him, I will come and heal him.
But the centurion replied, Lord, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof,
but only say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I
too am a man under authority, and with soldiers under me.
And I say to one, go! And he goes on, come.
And he comes into my servant, do this, and he does it.
The centurion, this is a Roman soldier.
He's a man in charge of 100.
That's why it's sent the centurion.
So he's got 100 men under him.
And he has the servant who's paralyzed.
Something's wrong with him.
Under Roman law, the centurion has the right by law
to have that servant executed because he's no longer of service.
That's what usually happened.
So what we see in the centurion is this.
This man who was outside the community of faith.
But he has such love for another,
such concern for another, that rather than execute him,
which is his right by law, he seeks his healing.
And he goes to Jesus and he asks on behalf of another,
Will you do this?
He understands the value of another person
and he understands authority.
And so he approaches
Jesus on the basis of his authority.
Now, I want you to understand the difference between the leper
and the centurion.
The leper came to Jesus and said,
if you're willing.
The centurion said, just say the word.
The leper appeals to Jesus.
His compassion.
The centurion
comes to Jesus, submitted to his authority.
The leper knows Jesus can.
The centurion knows that
Jesus rules and reigns
vastly different.
One asks for mercy.
The other submits to his authority.
Vastly different.
Both will receive grace,
but they come approaching Jesus from vastly different perspectives.
Now what I want to share with you why that's important.
Verse ten.
When Jesus heard this, he marveled.
He was amazed literally and said to those who follow him, truly
I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
The faith of this non Jew
amazed Jesus when I was studying.
So I'm like, what was so amazing about this?
He wasn't the one sick.
He didn't have to believe all he did was go ask Jesus on behalf of somebody else.
This leper was dying.
He knew there was no cure.
He comes and ask on his own self and has faith to ask you
what was so amazing about the insurance faith
that was more amazing than the lepers faith?
Jesus wasn't amazed at the lepers faith.
He was amazed at the centurion's faith.
And he said, this guy who isn't even a part of the click
has more faith than anybody who is a part of the click.
It's amazing to me, he says.
What was so amazing?
Here's why.
Because the centurion believed that Jesus rained,
not just responded.
He believed and submitted to the authority of Jesus.
He wasn't just looking for Jesus.
His hand.
This insurance just didn't
believe that Jesus had the power.
He believed Jesus had absolute authority over,
and he put himself under the authority of God,
who has authority over all the rulers
and authorities and principalities.
See, the leper saw Jesus as the healer.
The centurion saw Jesus as the king.
The leper wondered if he was worthy.
The centurion admitted he was not.
And relied on grace alone.
There's only two times in the Bible where Jesus was ever amazed,
this time at the faith as a centurion who understood the authority
of Jesus and submitted himself to it.
The all the other time where Jesus was amazed is a record
of for us in Mark six six and a mark six six it says he, Jesus
marveled, was amazed because of their unbelief,
won at the faith and belief of the submission of the centurion,
and one of the unbelief of those who said that they knew him.
And he was amazed
that people could be so close to him and have so little faith in him.
So, my dear friends, there's
two ways to amaze Jesus.
To understand and submit to the authority of Jesus
as the authority over all things physical and and spiritual.
Or to think to
to be close to him and have no faith in him.
He says, I tell you in verse 11, I tell you, many will come from the east
and the west, and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
in the kingdom of heaven, while
the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.
In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And this end to the centurion
Jesus said, go, let it be done to you as you have believed.
And the servant was healed at that very moment.
This whole idea
Jesus says, listen, I'm going to blow this whole thing down to faith.
You came in faith and you received in faith.
He said, I'm going to tell you at the end of time
at this great banquet with all of God's people,
there will be people who think they get into that because of who they are
and what they've done, apart from faith, and they're cast out and
weeping and gnashing of teeth and outer darkness.
Those who are going to sit at that table are going to come
just like you came by faith, by faith were saved.
You understand by the grace of God through faith, it's a gift.
That's what Jesus is saying.
At that moment, he was healed.
Those are to him.
Now look at this third one, verse 14.
Now when Jesus entered Peter's house, Peter, the disciple,
he saw his mother in law lying sick with a fever.
He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him.
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons.
And he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick.
This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.
He took our illnesses and our diseases.
When I was when I was reading this, I gotta be honest, I gotta tell you,
like kind of where my mind goes sometimes.
I'm. I'm saved.
I'm a Christian,
I love Jesus, and I love my mother in law, but I gotta I gotta tell you,
I'm reading this and look at how this reads.
Jesus goes to Peter's house.
Peter's mom in law is fever.
She's she's bedridden.
Jesus walks over and heals her.
In my mind, I think it feels like.
I didn't ask for that.
You don't say it like.
I don't.
Yeah, it's funny, I just I don't think it happened that way.
I think Peter is very, you know, but but I just like, you know, guys,
anybody is bunch of cowards.
Yeah.
Look, don't look at what happened.
There's no time healing.
Just just understand.
This is the third healing one requested healing for himself.
One requested healing for others.
One. There was no request made at all.
What's the pattern?
Watch one.
Jesus touched one.
He spoke a command from a distance.
One he touched and nothing was spoken.
What's the pattern for healing?
Listen.
Yeah, yeah. You're right. Exactly.
Jesus decides if and who and how he will heal.
There's no system that directs his decision.
There's no special way to do it.
It's by the grace of God.
And please understand.
Every physical healing will still end in death.
It's just it's just push back a little bit.
Do you understand? Yes.
And I want you to notice the response,
the response of the leper.
Be obedient.
Now, you may not have been before.
Now you start the response of the mother in law.
Serve.
Please understand
the proper response when Jesus moves in
life is obedience and service.
I know what I've been saved from.
I know God's grace and I will gladly serve in response.
I'm gonna tell you this you need to know this.
If you ever asked me to pray for you,
like in a healing way, especially,
this is this is how my prayer goes.
And there's been a lot of there's a lot of people on my prayer list.
I pray for healing every single day.
But but here's my prayer, father,
as they serve you and your kingdom, heal them
so that they will continue serving you
and your kingdom.
I don't expect healing for anybody
if they're just going to continue a life of sin or ignoring the kingdom,
or a life of materialism to spend the remaining of their days on themselves.
Now God may,
because he is gracious and merciful.
But my prayer for people as they serve you and your kingdom, heal
so they can continue serving your kingdom if they're not going to serve you in
the kingdom,
reach them in a way that they will.
And honestly, this is somewhat biblical.
Jesus, when he would peel, people oftentimes said, you've been healed.
Now go sin no more.
Do you understand?
My kingdom.
First,
let me say this.
I think there's some of you today that could be healed.
Today?
Why? Because Jesus has authority.
Jesus taught a lot on prayer.
In his sermon he preached and shows us the value of it.
In Matthew eight,
requesting of Jesus his prayer.
That's what these people are doing.
All three of these healings show Jesus
power and authority in the real world to heal
through prayer.
So why do we act as if prayer is optional?
And why do we act as if
someone else?
Always must do it for us.
For none of these people was the request
of Jesus in their own mind, in their own heart.
It was a crying out of their
need and request for healing.
I'm. I'm telling you, there are people in this church with little prayer lanyard.
They would love to pray with you and for you or for your loved ones with you.
Why would you resist that?
It makes no sense to me.
Let me let me wrap up with this.
In the Bible.
Good.
In the Bible, good.
Like, there's so much here
I wish we could talk about this for, like, the next six hours or so much here, but,
I won't do that, obviously.
Let me let. Okay. Verse 18.
Well, look at what Jesus says now.
Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other
side.
I love how Jesus always walked away from the crowd
is it's so different than today,
Charlie.
Verse 19 and a scribe, a religious press came into him
and said, teacher, I'll follow you wherever you go.
I mean, he sees the hype. He sees what Jesus do.
And he's like, wow, this is a groundswell.
This is going to be awesome.
And Jesus said him, foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Well, that's not very encouraging.
Another of his disciples came to him
and said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.
And you said to him,
I tell you what, you follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead. Oh,
does that sound brutal?
Yeah.
You sound just so rough.
He's so harsh.
Listen. What?
Jesus.
Right now he's talking about the requirements
for a disciple, not for the requirements of salvation.
We have to understand this about the Gospels.
You have to understand this about Jesus.
Salvation is free.
It's the gift of God by God's grace through faith.
Then after receiving the free gift by faith,
then comes self-sacrifice and a change of lifestyle.
So he what he's talking about here is you want to be my disciple.
You become my disciple by grace through faith.
It's a free gift.
You can't earn it just like these who were healed.
They didn't earn it. Okay, but now.
Now you want to live like a disciple.
Here's the standard.
And he doesn't talk either of these guys out of following him.
He just says, I want to be clear about the standard.
You're going to be my disciple. Listen, I'm.
I got no place to lay my head.
What he's saying is this.
You want to be my disciple, that's great.
But you have to understand that you're not going to get rich from following me.
Just because you follow me doesn't mean that your life
is going to get more comfortable.
A disciple means that your life is not about your comfort
and building your assets.
I don't even have a place to lay my head.
What makes you think you're going to get to stand?
So he's not saying, don't follow me, he said, I want you to understand
the standard not of salvation, but as a disciple. Now
and then he says, let the dead bury the dead.
That sounds really rough.
Here's the implication that this guy's dead.
Wasn't dead yet.
What what's behind the statement is, listen, when stuff slows down
and don't have any more responsibilities, then I'll follow you.
But right now, man, I got a family, I got a mortgage, I got a pay.
I got a job that, you know, has most of my time.
I got these family are big. I got these kids.
I got to take care of.
Got travel ball.
They I just get all this stuff.
I just don't have margin right now.
And Jesus like, oh, I mean, if that's where you want to live, that's fine.
Just let the dead bury the dead.
Yeah, because we all know what happens.
I mean, right now, God are like, my my plate is really full.
And when I get stuff off my plate, when the kids get where
we're not going to travel, we're not doing the job, you know that.
Then I will.
But we all know what happens by the time that comes.
Now we're looking at retirement and all we want to do is sit back
and enjoy the good life and travel.
We have to understand.
Seek is primary the kingdom of God.
And what that means is that the Kingdom of God is too big
to fit in our left over spaces.
So just says, look, I'm not going to talk you out of follow me.
I just want you to know the standard. If you are
in my king, the standard of
my kingdom is not the leftover of your life.
You got to carve some stuff out of your life right now.
So my kingdom, that's what he's saying.
And it comes with cautious horse.
It's not horse.
It reminds me of Nick Saban Alabama football.
He was he was he was asked all the time why are you so hard on horse
on your players.
He said I'm not a horse.
We just have a really high standard.
It's not about being harsh about having a high standard.
Jesus says, listen.
If you want to be my disciple.
There's a standard.
Let those who don't want to live by my standard do their thing.
Discipleship means my son and Jesus is going
to say this exact same later in a few chapters.
Matthew 12,
whoever is not with me is against me, whoever it is, and gather these scatters.
There's a high standard.
Listen, it's not that God wants to ruin our life.
He just will ruin everything that's ruining our life.
That's the standard.
We don't sacrifice to get Jesus,
but because we got Jesus who sacrificed everything for him.
The standard of discipleship is the response to grace.
Not so.
That will get grace.
So please understand this is not about salvation.
This is about discipleship.
Salvation is free because of God's grace through what Jesus did by faith.
But once we claim that this is the standard of disciples,
these two missed the invitation.
Apparently they miss invitation.
They'd rather be the guys on the team
who don't want to work and just stand on the back of the sidelines
and hope they get a ring, because they're a part of the team,
which is just fine.
But they're content on the sidelines in the back, hoping that
everything works out.
Which I get it, I get it.
They're on the team.
They got the jersey on that salvation and it's by grace.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter good or bad.
Like it's by grace.
And I'm really thankful
that God doesn't do cuts
like he does here. You're not good enough.
You're off the team.
I'm so thankful he let some of us stand in the back on the sidelines.
I'm really grateful.
I mean, is the grace and the Kingdom is a lot like last football.
Like, we don't do it.
Anybody can come out. It's all good. Like we don't do cuts.
And you know, y'all get we all get the jersey.
We all get the you know celebration.
And that's fantastic.
But for
me I don't want to be just a jersey where
that's not enough for me.
And a pray it's not enough for you.
Though these guys missed it.
Listen, as long as there's breath in your lungs,
there's an invitation.
Peter missed it at first.
Thomas missed it.
At first, all the disciples missed it.
At first.
But Jesus restored them in order to reengage them.
That's grace.
Jesus doesn't cut
any of us from his team because we don't play well.
He calls us off the bench and into the game.
And so we end where we began.
Grace is free but isn't cheap.
The authority is real,
and following Jesus is costly.
Matthew eight is about the King
who touches the unclean,
the king who commands the unseen,
the king who heals, and the king who says,
Will you follow me with your whole life?
And so
it leaves us with the question.
You in?
You in.
I want you to pray with me.
Two groups of people this passage relates to.
One is those
who are contaminated by sin,
who have not asked Jesus to cleanse them.
And if that's you and you realize that
I invite you in this moment right now.
Through prayer, by faith.
To admit before God.
God, I admit that I am contaminated by sin.
And I know it's going to destroy me,
and I cannot heal myself of it.
Jesus, I accept what you did on the cross
to become my healing,
and I receive that today.
I accept you as the leader of my life.
Thank you for healing me. Now lead me.
Others of us in this place.
We got the jersey on.
We're part of the team.
By God's grace, through faith, not anything that we've done.
We've just been accepted onto the team.
And yet we've lived as those content
to stand in the back of the sidelines.
There's a cost to discipleship.
And I would invite us to say, father,
no longer is your kingdom
secondary in my life.
Your kingdom first,
I submit myself
to your authority over my life,
and I ask that you show me your power
and authority in my life.
Thank you for your mercy.
Thank you for your grace.
Help me to walk with you in a way
worthy of your name that I claim.
In your name I pray. Amen.
Listen, I'm proud of you.
I'm proud of you.
Studying the Bible is good,
and it is revealing and refreshing
and liberating if we let it do what it does.
I want you this week to read chapter
eight in its totality, because we'll wrap it up next week.
But before we close, I just want to reiterate
some of you need to approach Jesus personally
in prayer and by prayer.
And there are people on this campus who have that prayer lanyard.
Don't be afraid and don't resist it.
Go before the throne of God.
You'll find mercy and grace to help you in your time of need,
and do it with someone who can pray with you and over you.
Just like the leper.
Just like the centurion.
Just like the mother in law received.
Friends, please don't resist it.
I know I'm way over. Jeff. Let's sing.