[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: How do you know that you are at a place in life where you're only trying to fix and solve your own problems? How do you know that you're at a place in life where you keep noticing that you keep relying on your own strength, your own abilities and your own willpower to try to get you out of whatever it is that you're in?
There's an old story about this man that had this, like, acre of woods that had a bunch of trees on it. He wanted to knock a bunch of them down, but all he had was a hand saw.
And so, of course, as you can imagine, using just a handsaw for a whole acre of woods would be quite tiresome. And it was.
And so he had done that for so long, and he just kept getting tired and frustrated and tired and frustrated by getting, you know, having to use all of his willpower to try to knock down all of these trees, that he finally said, you know what? I'm gonna go to the hardware store. Went to the hardware store, met the manager, and the manager said, yes, I got exactly what you need. In fact, not only is this gonna cut your time in half, but you're gonna save a tenth of the time you did before. In fact, I want you to get this one chainsaw. It's the best one that we sell.
And so he bought that chainsaw and he was so excited to save himself this energy and effort. And. And so he gets there, he puts that chainsaw to the tree, and he saws and saws, and it doesn't hardly make a dent at all. And he gets tired and frustrated. He thinks, man, this was supposed to save me work. Now it's causing me more work than even the hand saw did. He tried another direction on the other side, and it still didn't work good. And he was tired and frustrated because he spent all this money and this effort on this chainsaw so he decided to go back to the store. He's like, I want to talk to the manager. And. And he said, hey, man, this saw is not cutting it.
And so what he did is he took the saw there, and when he did, the man said, no, no, let me look at it for just a second. Went to the back of the shop, and when he went to the back of the shop, there was this piece of wood there. And he's like, well, let me test it out, because these things always work. So he primed the thing. Then after he primed it, he pulled the cord and it started cranking, and he cut through that piece of wood like butter.
He's like, man, I don't know why it didn't work for you. He said, oh, I know why it didn't work for me. I didn't know you were supposed to pull the cord.
I know. Cheesy preacher story, but it helps tell the story of our text today.
There are different people, in fact, six different groups of people that are at a place where they're trying to fix their situation.
And all six of them are also emblematic of us because every person in this room has a need, and all six of these people have different needs. Some of them are social needs, some of them are relational needs. Some of them are spiritual needs. There's people facing storms, and there's people that are at a place in life where they want something desperately to change.
There's six different needs with six different groups of people, but yet there's one supreme king that has the ability to fix it.
And so maybe you're here today and you've been trying to fix things on your own, and you're kind of like that man with the handsaw.
That the reason why you know, that you're kind of just relying on your own power is you're sick, you're tired, you're frustrated, you're worn out.
And so whatever need it is that you have today, my encouragement to you is this, to give that need to Jesus. Now, if you're like me, I grew up hearing kind of a similar phrase like that. Well, just give it to Jesus. Hand it over to Jesus. Well, yeah, that's one thing to hear, but it's a whole nother thing to do.
And as we do that today, I kinda wanna give you this example. And I don't know if y' all have seen or heard of this poem before, but it's literally called It All Depends on Whose Hands It's In. And in the poem, it basically Goes like this. And I kind of decided to rework it to make it a little bit more modern.
A basketball in my hands is worth about 20, 30 bucks.
But you put that same basketball in LeBron James hand, it's worth, by the way, I found out this week he's worth $1.1 billion, right? It just depends on whose hands it's in.
You get a baseball and you put it in my hands, it's worth about eight or nine bucks. But you put a baseball in Shohei Ohtani from the Dodgers hands, and that baseball, by the way, its contract for him was worth $700 million.
It just depends, right, on whose hands it's in. You put like a rod or a staff in my hand, it might keep away like a very small animal, but you put that in God's hands through Moses.
It's called part of Red Sea. Again, it just depends on whose hands it's in. You take some fish and some bread and you put it in my hands, I might can make a decent fish sandwich.
But you put it in God's hands through Jesus, and it turns into a meal for thousands of people. You put some nails in my hand, and I can build a very, very subpar birdhouse. But you put those nails in Jesus hands, and it provides salvation for an entire world.
Again, it depends on whose hands it's in.
So what we're going to see in Matthew chapter eight is each and every one of these six different groups of people have a choice that you and I have to make, too.
Are we going to rely and keep relying on our own strength, our own abilities?
Or maybe for some of us, what it is, is we know we need to give things over to Jesus. But here's where we stop it.
We stop it with intentions, or we stop it with procrastination.
I'll just do it later.
And so, as we think about that, I want us to turn our bibles to Matthew 8.
And as you turn with me into this text again, I want to ask you this question right now. In your life, whose hands would you say you're putting your situation in your life in?
And so in Matthew chapter seven, it's kind of what sets up this whole thing. If you were here last week, Jason did an awesome job of going through Matthew 7. And this is where Jason ended. He ended with this statement when Jesus finished saying these things. Well, saying what things? Well, Jesus just got done preaching the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.
And I find it kind of interesting that one of the commentaries pointed this Out. And I think some of you that like context clues and context things that you'll really like this, that Matthew was a what?
He was a Jew. And so being a Jew, one of the things Matthew would have been very familiar with is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In fact, to them, you know what they called them, the five.
And so one thing that we know about this group of people that was Matthew's audience, you know what they really loved?
They loved the law.
You know what else they also loved? They loved Moses.
And so most commentaries and scholars agree that when Jesus said, when it says he finished these things, and the reason why there's five of these moments in the Gospel of Matthew, that Matthew, being a Jew, was trying to help them understand that all these laws that you hold dear, oh, Jesus, is the fulfillment of all of those things. What you take as authority, which is those five books of the law. What I want you to know is that Jesus is the better Moses. He came to fulfill the law. You thought the law was good and all. But what I'm letting you know is that I'm bringing something that's far better than the law. I'm not just fulfilling it. I'm bringing something with it that's called love.
And here's what's interesting. If you notice in the text right after verse 28, it says that when he had finished saying these things, he spoke as one that had authority.
So he's speaking with authority. But here's what I love about Jesus. He doesn't just leave it at speaking.
He's going to let you know that he has the power to do something about it.
Now think about this for just a second as we get into this text, that Jesus had just got done preaching the greatest sermon ever preached.
And of all things and of all places and groups of people he decides to go to next.
It wasn't the scribes, it wasn't the Pharisees, it wasn't the religious or the religious elite.
You'll notice in this text that Jesus first goes to a group of outsiders, three of them.
And the first one that he goes to this morning, you'll notice is a leper. Now notice this. It says that when he came down off the mountain, so he just got done teaching. Now he's going to say, listen, I have the power and authority not just to share this news with you, but to do something about it. And so notice what happens in verse one. It says when he came down from the mountain, there were great crowds that were following him. And behold, a leper came to him. The leper knelt, excuse me, before him, saying, lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
Jesus stretched out his hand and he touched the leper.
I will be clean.
And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.
You know, this whole series is about being kingdom minded.
And if we want to answer the question, what. What is the type of kingdom Jesus came to establish?
We can tell everything from this, right? He just preached it.
Now he goes to all people.
A man with leprosy.
Now, here's why this means a lot is to the Hebrew people, whenever they heard of somebody having leprosy, it meant a lot of different things. One of those things to them is that leprosy was really a symbol of sin.
What I mean by that is a lot of times people thought, well, if that guy's got leprosy, maybe his mom or dad or him, maybe he did something to deserve it, right?
And so the idea of leprosy to them was symptomatic and emblematic of sin in a lot of ways. But also it was kind of viewed as something very loathsome. Like, can you believe that?
It's kind of like today that maybe you feel partly like an outsider because of what you've done, because maybe even what people know about you. And so because of that, they're like, can you believe what he did?
Can you believe what she did? Very loathsome. But the other part of it was this disease really spread.
And we understand that's how sin works, right? That sin has its impacts when it's not dealt with.
You've seen it in your life, you've seen it in your family's life. When there is a unrepented or unconfessed sin that is allowed to stay there and fester, it doesn't just hurt you, but it hurts everybody involved.
But we also understand that the way that they viewed sin, right, you would put it into that sheep on the day of atonement, and you go back again. And by the way, aren't y' all glad, by the way, we don't live then? We'd be killing a lot of sheep.
I'm so glad we don't live then. So that was the way they viewed leprosy. So from a spiritual perspective, they're like, what's wrong with that guy?
But here's the other thing. Can you imagine for just a second being that guy, and everywhere you went, you had to yell out, I'm unclean.
I'm unclean.
I mean, I think about when I was growing up, if you were a kid and you had something off with you, if you looked odd, or if you were like me and had the double whammy of the bowl cut and buck teeth. Like, you got all the things.
I don't have to walk around and be like, I got a bowl cut, buck teeth. People pointed it out, okay? And so for this guy, can you imagine, it's already seen, his issues are all over him, yet he's having to announce it. And on top of that, and he can't go to the synagogue, he can't worship with everybody else. So can you imagine how relationally difficult this would have been for this guy?
Nobody wanted to be around him yet. Jesus giving us a picture of what kingdom looks like goes to that guy.
But here's what's amazing.
Remember that this was the fulfillment of the law.
Well, you know what was part of the law?
That a guy like Jesus couldn't get near a guy like that and a guy like that couldn't get near a guy like that.
But isn't it interesting that both of them break the law?
The leper breaks the law by getting near Jesus. And Jesus breaks the law, by the way. Notice this. He doesn't just tell the guy, hey, you will be clean. It says he touched him.
Now we understand what Jesus has done, right? Remember when Lazarus was dead, he just spoke and Lazarus rose, right? And so in this situation, Jesus could have spoke, but he decided to touch. Because I think part of it is, how much do you think this man was starved of human affection and attention?
And by the way, you never know. I know not everybody in here is a hugger. And you don't have to be, by the way, but if you are, you never know how much like that hug or even just that love, that attention you give to somebody that. That has been starving for it for so long. Jesus touched the guy when he could have just given a spoken word.
Then you get to the next group, and here's what's interesting about this guy that Jesus meets. And again, what does this tell you about this kingdom? He first goes to a leper, now he's going to the enemy, a Roman centurion. This is what it says in verse five.
When he had come to Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, lord, my Servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering terribly. And he said, I will come and I will heal him.
But the centurion replied, lord, I'm not worthy.
I'm not even worthy to have you come under my roof. But you just say a word and my servant will be healed.
You know, I was thinking about this morning. I don't know the last time that I prayed in such faith.
Y' all kind of find yourselves like me sometimes where you pray like, dear God, you know, if you could, or would you. He's like, lord, I believe you can do this. Like, to really believe it.
He says, I have people under my authority, soldiers under me. And I sell this one soldier to go. And he goes, and to this servant, come here. And he does that.
When Jesus heard this, he marveled. Isn't that amazing? That of all the things that make Jesus marvel is that kind of faith.
He said, truly, I tell you, there's no one in Israel where I have found such faith. I tell you, many will come from the east and the west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. In that place, there's going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And to the centurion, Jesus said, go, let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment.
There's so much to unpack here that is very, to me, powerful, but also a little bit humbling. Number one, that this guy would come to Jesus in the first place.
I can't overstate enough how big of a deal it was. This was, like the head of the armies, okay? He was the one that had hundred people under him.
If you were looking for, like, the manliest manly guy, it's this guy.
Yet he has the humility as a man to say, I need help.
Now, the reason why, to me that's so important is if you remember when we did our men's study, that was called the Men We Need. We worked through a book by.
I can't remember his name. But anyway, it's a book called the Men We Need. And I actually referred to this in my class with the youth group guys that in the book, he talked about that the greatest need for men, Christian men today is this to stop being so passive and to stop being apathetic. He said the two greatest needs right now are issues are apathy and passivity, which is really, hey, I need to fix something. I gotta change something. I gotta do something different. But yet we decide not to.
What I love so much about this guy, he's like, listen, I have all these people over me, but you know what I need? I need Jesus. Like, that's incredible to me. But the other part, if you think it's pretty amazing that he would vouch for a servant. If you look in the Greek, it's actually worded young servant or young man.
So that's a double whammy. Because during this day, they didn't, like, view younger people as super valuable and then especially servants.
So he's really, like, having a soft spot in his heart for this guy that's overlooked.
And the reason why I point that out is I don't think just the fact that he knew about Jesus being here was what prompted this. I think there was a little bit of a soft spot in his heart where he already made room for somebody else.
That I really believe that the way that he had already seen the servant and saw other people helped him to better receive Jesus. Because you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago, that when we see ourselves in the crowd, guess who we start to see?
We see Jesus.
But the other thing is this, that he was willing to go to this centurion's home, y', all, he's the double enemy. Like, Jesus is a Jew. This guy's a Gentile. And then on top of that, he's a double enemy from the standpoint that he's not supposed to go to the guy that's gonna actually have to do with his killing later.
But notice the attitude of the guy.
Notice in the text, and if you like to underline, I encourage you to underline this.
He called him Lord twice.
Centurions dare not call anybody Lord. Except for who? Caesar.
This man calls him Lord. But then notice what Jesus does.
He takes this whole scene and he makes a table, and he pictures people from the east and the west at this table.
What he's saying is, this is a picture of what the kingdom looks like. You know, in just a few weeks, we're going to have Thanksgiving.
And I want you to think about what your table looks like.
As I was thinking about that, I think about, you know, you got family coming from all these different areas and coming together around one table. Those invited and uninvited but still showing up, you know? But the thing about that table that always makes me think of this is there's a family in Montgomery that every year around Thanksgiving, their kids would always say to me, you know, it's interesting. I never knew who would show up at our Thanksgiving table.
See, what they would do is they would ask Faulkner, who were the students that didn't have a place to go for Thanksgiving.
Sometimes they would have 10 to 15 people, sometimes people that were foreigners, people that were from another part of the country that couldn't go back home.
They said it was always so neat because I never knew who was gonna show up at our table. And I think about that like, this is a picture of the kingdom and this is a picture of the table that we're gonna experience as Revelation talks about one day, all these people coming together. It's like you're there and they're there. Like, it's gonna be amazing to have all of these people together.
And then we get the third outsider.
And we go from a leper to a centurion now to Peter's mother in law.
Now, keep going with me in Matthew, chapter 8. And let's look in verse 14.
And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother in law. She was lying there, sick with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her. She rose and began to serve.
That evening, they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons. And he cast out the spirits with just a word and healed all who were sick.
This was to fill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and he bore our diseases. Now, one thing I heard, I don't know if this is true or not, but one person told me that part of the reason why they think Peter denied Jesus is because Jesus healed Peter's mother in law.
I don't know if that's true or not. Anyway, I'll give you a little thing on that one. Anyway.
But here's what's amazing about this whole scene.
He heals a man of leprosy. He heals the servant of a centurion.
And now he's healing Peter's mother in law. Three massively big different groups of people.
And the whole reason he does this is not to show off that he's this power, powerful, excuse me, but to show that power for their sake and to show that power for our sake, I want us to make it personal for a second that when Jesus. And we speak about his power and we speak about his authority, it's not just to speak about it. It's to help us understand. It's for our sake that he came to redeem us, to cleanse us and to restore us. And if you're here today and you need cleansing, it's Jesus. If you need restoring It's Jesus if you need to be redeemed, Jesus.
And so I want you to think about for just a second, what is the picture that you're given so far of the kingdom? What's a leper?
It's a centurion and it's a mother in law.
But what if you're going through a difficult time? Well, he's given us a picture of that too.
I know right now we have, as Ronnie mentioned in his prayer, we have a lot of families that are going through storms right now.
I know there's some of you right now that you know that paycheck's coming, but you're also a little nervous because you've got that reserve and you're wondering, well, how long is this reserve going to last?
And I know there's other people going through difficult storms that are different than that.
But there's so much symbolism in this storm that Jesus shows us through his power and authority. It says this in verse 23, when Jesus got into the boat, his disciples followed him.
And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea. So the boat was being swamped with waters, but Jesus was asleep and they went and woke him up, saying, save us, Lord, we're perishing. He said to them, why are you afraid, O you of little faith?
So he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea. And there was a great calm.
And the men marveled, saying, what sort of man is this that even the winds obey him?
One of the reasons why I love this text so much is that it's important for us to see who Jesus is in the storm. And the reason why it's important is if we don't understand that it will challenge and test your faith like no other.
Because I know there's a lot of people in this room that really believe you have a lot of faith, yet you still look around and things seem to be the same.
So that's why it's important to know this, that Jesus is not security against life's storms. He's security in the storms. He's in the boat.
But the other thing I want you to notice here is that what God does through that storm and what he produces. Notice what it said at the very end about the disciples.
They're like, wow, okay, so even the wind and the sea obeys him. Like we can tell that he's, you know, handling the leper and the mother in law and the centurion. Oh, he can even handle this. See, do you know what's happening here? They're Growing, their faith is growing. And that's kind of what faith does with pain. Like in the middle of faith and pain, there's this place that it grows. And it's not by just avoiding the pain, avoiding the storm altogether, because you can't, but it's inviting God into the boat. It's inviting God into that situation.
And so I want to ask you kind of what I asked you at the very beginning.
Are you tired? Are you frustrated?
Maybe it's because you're trusting in your own power to fix the hurt, the storm, or in this next situation, the sin.
Maybe some of you are guilty of trying to make the greatest cover up job in the whole world by covering up the sin. Maybe you're trying to hide it, maybe trying to dismiss it.
What you see next in this very bizarre account in verse 28 is that Jesus shows his power and authority over sin and the demons. It says this in verse 28, when he came to the other side of the country of the Gadarians, two demon possessed men met him. They came out of the tomb so fierce that no one would even pass that way.
And behold, they cried out, what have you done with us, son of God? Have you come here to torment us? Before the time Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance and the demons begged him, saying, if you cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.
And he said, go.
So they came out and went to the pigs. And behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and the pigs drowned in the waters.
By the way, I know for Trunk or Treat this year, a lot of people were going to do a lot of different Bible themes.
This one I think would be a really interesting one for like a fam group. Pigs going up a cliff. Okay. Anyway, the herdsmen fled and going into the city, they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men. Do you see what's happening here? Why they can't not talk about this?
Do you see the inconvenience these demon possessed men were? It says they had to go around.
So these were guys that they had seen. Y' all know that like Bob and Joe over there, like they are messed up. We gotta go walk around Bob and Joe just to get to where we're going. Now Bob and Joe are just Bob and Joe. They're not the demon possessed men anymore. And it's that picture of, hey, this guy used to be this. Now he's not this. So guess what it has the town doing? The town's talking about it.
And so then we get to this part and I purposely put this at the end, you get to verse 18.
So so far we've had a leper, we've had a centurion, we've had a mother in law and some people that are possessed by demons.
Now some of us look at that text and like, well, I don't have a sick mother in law, I'm not a centurion, and I don't really have leprosy right now. But here's where I think a lot of us are, is with one of these two guys that you want things to change, want things to be a little bit different.
But unfortunately he just stops that desire. Look what it says. When Jesus saw a crowd, he gave orders to go over to the other side.
So notice who came up to him. It was a scribe.
And he said to him, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.
And Jesus said to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
So then the second guy comes up to him, he says, lord, let me follow you where you go, but first let me bury my own father. And Jesus says, okay, well, follow me. And then you leave the dead to bury their own dead. You see what's happening here? You have two different people. One of them has the best of intentions and then the other one is what we'll call a procrastinator. One has spiritual intentions while the other is what we'll call a spiritual procrastinator.
God is never moved by our intentions.
He's never moved by what we will choose to do later.
He's moved by responses of obedience, of faith. You know why? We just read 3 Centurion, a leper and a mother in law.
And so I think it's important for us to understand what God operates in. He operates in faith, not intention.
Maybe you're here today and you've seen where intentions have gotten you.
So I want to ask you the question that I asked you at the very beginning.
What are you going to do with your need?
We have all these different needs, but we have one supreme king. Are you going to keep leaving it in your own hands or are you going to leave it in Jesus?
Maybe you're here today and you've possibly been even visiting here or somewhere for a while. Or maybe you've just been studying God's word and you've kind of felt that need to do something, that there's an intention there, but you keep putting it off.
I hope something that God said to you today will move you to act on it.
Because here's the good news. Jesus has the power and the authority to. To do something about your need. Maybe there's some of you that have never made the decision to put on Christ in baptism.
You know, you need to and want to and should do that.
And like I told the early crowd, one of the things that I'm so grateful about is that we don't have, like, a special baptism day. Because every moment is special.
There's an opportunity right now. The water is ready. We're ready. We want to celebrate with you the very thing that we've celebrated in our own life, that we went from dead to. To now we are alive.
Every single one of us in this room, we have a need. And the only answer to that need is King Jesus.
So if you are here today and you have a need, please, please either come forward up here, you can request prayers up here, or go to one of the back doors to meet one of our shepherds and let them pray with you in private.
Or maybe for some of you, what it is, is that you want to make that decision, to give your life to Christ. You're tired of just intentions and you're tired of procrastinating. Whatever it is that you have in need of, please come while we stand and we sing this song.
