Out of the Crowd . . . a Leper!, Part 1

Imagine what it was like for the sick man to have a chance encounter with Jesus.

In Matthew 8, near the end of Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, he appeared out of nowhere. This man was suffering from the ugly and debilitating disease of leprosy. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll will show us how Jesus handled this spontaneous moment. Would Jesus volunteer to heal the man?

Would he require anything of this suffering leper? Well, through this fascinating exchange, let's examine what it means to come to Jesus, no matter our condition. Sometimes I think it's good to just pause and let the wonder in, you know. I sometimes think the greatest sound we can enjoy is silence. It's rare, can become such a profound moment to meditate, turn it over in our minds, let it soak in.

We don't need more intelligent people today, we don't need busier people, we don't even need more gifted people, we need deeper, deeper people. With depth comes breadth and wisdom and a sense of understanding, a calm, quiet confidence that God is still in charge. I needed that reminder this week, didn't you?

Yeah. We're working our way through Matthew's Gospel and I had a choice as to whether I would take on three different vignettes or just settle on one, and I chose one in the early part of Matthew 8, because for that very reason, I think it's good that we pause and ponder a little more slowly one event rather than hurry through three that are all in the area of a cleansing, a healing ministry of Jesus. So we'll do just the first four verses of Matthew 8, but first I'd like you to hold your place there and turn to Matthew chapter 4. We'll look at the last three verses and then move beyond the Sermon of the Mount to the first four verses of chapter 8.

So we're reading 4, 23 through 25 and then chapter 8, 1 through 4. Matthew 4, 23, Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about him spread throughout all Syria and they brought to him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them.

Large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. Chapter 8, when Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him and a leper came to him and bowed down before him and said, Lord, if you were willing, you can make me clean. Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, saying, I am willing, be cleansed. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed and Jesus said to him, see that you tell no one, but go. Show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded as a testimony to them. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled, Out of the Crowd, a Leper. Life doesn't stop to give the preacher time to prepare and then later deliver a message.

It just rolls right on. Many things don't change. Babies are born, kids get sick, cars break down, phones keep ringing, people in need.

On and on the needs may go. Sometimes folks wind up really sick and they are in hospitals and on occasion they die. So funerals must be prepared and counseling must take place to comfort the families in their grief and then to minister at that memorial service in a special way. Life doesn't stop even though Sunday is coming. I've got a saying that I tell a few preacher friends of mine, have you noticed Sunday comes every two days.

It's not every seven. When you preach for a living you know how quickly that next Sunday rolls around or that next time of teaching. Now this doesn't take away from the importance of the message itself. On the contrary, it is often in those moments when life is crushing that you really are prepared to deliver what needs to be said. You and I know that there is something exhilarating about a well-crafted sermon. What you may not know is that every well-crafted sermon is always exhausting.

Exhausting. Which makes me all the more amazed when I come to this Sermon on the Mount which you and I have been spending time in together. Not only is it a masterpiece, talk about an exhilarating message, but I enter into the amazement of it when I realize what came before it and what followed after it.

Being a preacher I would be interested in that. It's this overall surrounding context that to me makes the sermon all the more significant. Prior to the sermon verses 23, 24, and 25 of chapter 4 there is the crush of the crowds. They're coming from all over and the needs are enormous.

You heard them as I read them. There are various diseases, there are pains, there are people filled with demons, there are folks that have epilepsy, there are people that are paralyzed and all kinds of sores, all kinds of headaches, all kinds of heartaches, and they're coming and they're coming and it isn't letting up and they're coming from all over. They're coming from all of Syria and all of Galilee and from the ten cities on the other side. They're coming from Jerusalem and all of Judea down below.

They're from all over. You and I can hardly imagine the crowd and then he doesn't take a nap before he has to preach. He doesn't sail away into the sea and take an afternoon to put its thoughts together. No one escorts him to a place of quiet refuge where he can repair and get renewed and spend time with his father and to pray so that he might be ready to preach. Out of all of the crush, he goes up the hill and he preaches.

There's no break. Life didn't stop so he could deliver his sermon. Look for yourself, chapter 4 verse 23. Jesus is going throughout all Galilee.

Don't miss that. All Galilee. That's a pretty good-sized region if you travel to Israel you realize it. All of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing every kind of disease, every kind of sickness among the people. That's just one verse.

Look at the next one. The news about him spread throughout all. Well, you would imagine. I mean when your friend gets sick and is healed, you have a loved one who's sick. You want that person healed. So the news travels and you think, where is he?

How can I get to this man? And so we read about the group that finds him. All of Syria.

Check that out on your map. And then they brought to him all who were ill and suffering from various diseases and pains and the afflictions I just mentioned. Large crowds are here. In fact, listen to Eugene Peterson in The Message as he renders these verses. From there he went all over Galilee. He used synagogues for meeting places and taught the people the truth of God. He also healed people of their diseases and of the bad effects of their bad lives. Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria. People brought anybody with any ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical.

How easy to read those through three words and not pause and think about it. People with mental illnesses, people with emotional anxiety, people with physical afflictions brought to him. Jesus healed them one and all. More and more people came. The momentum gathering besides those from Galilee crowds came from the ten towns, which is a translation of Decapolis, the ten towns across the lake. Others from Jerusalem and Judea. Still others from across the Jordan.

You know what stands out in my mind from his rendering? The momentum gathering. The needs intensifying.

The expectations enlarging. The crowds increasing until as far as you could see there were heads bobbing in the crowd. People crying out.

Hands raised. Afflicted, carried in arms. Little children could hardly stand. People screaming from demon possessions.

All kinds of epilepsy and all kinds of paralysis. All pressing in, wanting a piece of him and that magnificent power. It was intensifying.

It was growing. The momentum is gathering. There is no break. There is no nap. There is no afternoon sail.

There is no relaxation by a stream. He goes from this up the mount, sits down and delivers a flawless, exhilarating message that to this day we cannot exhaust. What a sermon, especially when you realize what preceded it.

Well surely after he did that, to catch his breath, surely someone said, Jesus, come over here. Come over here. Let's escape through these trees. Let's go over there beyond the bushes. I've got a boat waiting. You and I'll go out. I won't say a word.

You can just relax right there in the boat. None of that. There's none of that. Look at the end of the sermon. The very end, verse 28, verse 29. When Jesus had finished, when he had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at his teaching. A.T. Robertson, the great scholar from the Southern Seminary in Louisville, wrote, they listened spellbound to the end and were left amazed. Note the imperfect tense, he adds, a buzz of astonishment. The verb means literally they were struck out of themselves.

We would say they were blown out of their minds. After a sermon like this, you don't feel chatty. You want to be quiet. You want to let the wonder in. You want to sit and soak it up, especially if you're the preacher. You want to give God thanks for the help and the delivery, and you want to give him praise that the message connected and the people were moved.

In fact, they had never heard such great teaching in their lives. Verse 29, the teaching came as one who had authority from one who had authority and not as the scribes. Verse 1, I'm sorry, there's a chapter break.

I wish it were verse 30. You get the feeling of it. The sermon has ended. The people are amazed. Jesus makes his way down the mount and look, look, there's the crowd again, except now it's larger. There's been a little time that's passed and more people have gathered. From all around, more have come. He came down from the mountain.

Look closely. Large crowds followed him. Earlier we read large crowds followed him.

The Greek says large number of people, large crowds, more and more. Since then, I traveled to China a number of years ago. It was our first journey. While we were sitting on a bus at a particular intersection, we looked to the right. In those days, everyone had bicycles and I saw probably 12 to 15 across and as far as my eye could see down that road perpendicular to ours, 12 to 15 across, as far as I could see, there were heads of people sitting on bicycles. That's just one street. That's just one little street in the city of Shanghai.

That's just one country. It must have been something like that, and by the way, now they're cars. That's fun. Used to be able to move around in those bicycles and I used to say the business to be in over there is the bicycle business. Everybody's got one. Now they've all got cars. People everywhere, and you know the population, well over a billion.

Just to give you an idea, but here in Israel, maybe as far as he could see, there were more people and more. Some way in the back going, help me. Help me. I came all the way, all the way from beyond the Jordan.

Help my son. Now you've got it. Life doesn't stop because the preacher prepares and delivers a message.

It doesn't even stop after it's over. In fact, one of the most significant things that ever happened happens now. Out of the crowd, a leper appears.

Chances are very good you have never ever seen a leper. I have. Back in 1958 when I was in the Marine Corps serving on the island of Okinawa, playing in the third division band, our 55 piece band was instructed by our captain, Captain Birch, that tomorrow there would be a very special concert. He said to us, I want you dressed in your very best.

Make sure everything is pressed. Dress blues, spit shine your shoes, shine your breasts, buttons as well as epaulettes as well as buckles. Make sure everything is picture-perfect, you'll stand inspection, then we'll load up in the vehicles and we'll drive some distance away. I figured a parade, perhaps in the city of Naha, perhaps as far as Nago up north, little did I know he had arranged for us to do a concert at a leprosarium. In the northern most part of the island of Okinawa, as far removed as one can imagine from humanity, there was at that time there may still be a colony of lepers. I've never seen anything like it. Because you have not been around leprosy, allow me to describe it. Numbness follows painful areas on the body and soon the skin loses its color and like the hair it turns white and begins to be thick and glossy and scaly.

Skin around the eyes and ears begins to bunch with deep furrows between the swellings so that the face begins to resemble that of a lion. To make all this worse you could smell it, for the leper emits an unpleasant odor. If you're near a leper for too long you begin to detect a peculiar taste in your mouth due to the foul odor. The disease begins to attack the larynx so the lepers voice acquires a grating sound. The throat becomes increasingly more hoarse so that others not only can smell the leper they now hear the rasping voice. They were the ultimate outcast. You didn't get near a leper.

If you were downwind you had to be at least 150 feet away and you wonder what that person is doing out in public. The hair is disheveled, the clothing is left in rags, usually barefoot, toes missing, fingers missing, often entire hands missing, lips are gone, the teeth protrude, the eyes stare. If a leper so much as put his head into a house the house totally became unclean all the way to the roof beams. There was never any disease that so isolated an individual as leprosy nor was there one of those times in which there was more dreaded except for the case of death itself. It was an absolutely terrifying disease not unlike AIDS today except in this case terribly disfiguring. A leper was required to scream when he was in the streets unclean unclean unclean so that you would stay away would wear a cloth flap over his mouth not only hold back the breath from breathing on you but to hide the ugliness of a mouth with no lips. It is dreadful beyond description. I remember when we would finish one piece or another I would hear the dull thumping of the nubs of an arm bumping another as they tried to applaud. Absolutely pathetic. No known cure.

Sometime a victim would have it for as much as 20 years before it would take him. I remember as we rode away from the concert the silence in our vehicle was deafening. Just like right now. Out of the crowd emerges a leper.

Crowd must have backed away. The ultimate outcast is in their midst. He's a picture of depression and humiliation and complete lack of self-worth. You and I cannot imagine the desperation that accompanies leprosy one cannot describe. In the scriptures leprosy is often compared to sin. That's why leprosy is not cured. It's cleansed.

That's important. We're never cured of sin we're cleansed of sin. When Jesus Christ comes into a life to save that life he cleanses us from sin. He doesn't cure us from sinning. We still have an old nature that sins. We wish to be cured. That awaits us. That's in eternity. The hymn writer said then we shall be what we should be then we shall be what we would be.

Things that are not now nor could be soon shall be our own. Oh that we could be cured of it but only cleansed and that's what he asks for. He came down from the mountain large crowds followed him and a leper let it land in full force. A leper came to him and worshiped. The new American Standard renders this bowed down before him the Greek has one word worshiped. He worshiped. Bowed low and uttered the word kurios Lord.

What respect. You're listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. Chuck titled today's message Out of the Crowd a Leper and this is Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry please visit us online at insightworld.org.

Although Jesus' Sermon on the Mount comprises just three chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, in many respects Matthew 5, 6, and 7 represent the core of Jesus' ministry. To help you grasp the enormity of this sermon Chuck wrote a book called Simple Faith and it's become a long-standing classic. If you've been cynical about religion because of the hypocrisy you've experienced or you've become jaded by a lack of authenticity you've witnessed in religious circles then you'll appreciate this wake-up call from Jesus. It's the foundation of Chuck's book Simple Faith.

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You can also go online to insight.org. And then as we enter into the weekend remember you're invited to join us online for the Sunday morning worship service at Stonebriar Community Church. In addition to hearing Chuck's sermon you can participate in the congregational singing as well. You'll find all the instructions for streaming the live worship service at insight.org slash Sundays. Join us again Monday when Chuck Squendall describes Jesus' compassion for the leper who suffered. That's right here on Insight for Living.