The Sovereign Healer

Call to Worship: Isaiah 42:10-12 // Prayer

Adoration: Great I AM; you whose self-existent life is eternally blessed, whose sovereign power governs all things with perfect wisdom: we praise you! You govern the growth of every blade of grass, and the decision of every President and Prim Minister; you direct the course of every war, and the feeding of hatchling birds. The praise and honor of your name spreads through all the earth. The gospel of your love, poured out beyond human imagination through your Son Jesus, given to us through the superabundant overflow of your limitless love at Jesus’s death—this is the theme of our praises.

Confession: And knowing this love, we come to you: trembling because of the darkness of our sin, yet confident because of the blood of Jesus given for us. And so we confess to you: we have feared the opinions of men and we have loved idols, instead of fearing you; we have obeyed our sinful desires and the dictates of our idols instead of your commands. Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned against you.

Thanksgiving: Guilty, vile, and helpless we; spotless lamb of God was he. Full atonement can it be? Hallelujah, what a savior! Knowing your grace to forgive, and remembering that you have removed our condemnation forever, we give thanks to you, Father.

Supp: And we ask—even as we have seen you begin to answer this prayer—that you would give us boldness and opportunities to share the gospel. Please give us hearts—when someone walks into our building—to desire one thing only: that they know you, and Jesus Christ whom you sent; please forgive us for trying to build the kingdom of Scholls—let us instead be about the business of your kingdom. Give us words and actions and wisdom centered around your gospel, we pray. And not just folks walking in, but give us divine appointments to share your gospel everywhere, and please supply us with boldness to do it, for we are weak // and we lift up to you the beloved saints of Lauralwood Baptist—we ask that you might give them this same boldness and humility, to share your gospel; and we ask that you would empower their elders to shepherd the flock well for the glory of your name // and we bring before you all those across the world who are refugees—some who’ve come to our own city; we ask for your sovereign mercy to protect them; to provide places for them, and mercy in the process of integrating into a new place; to end the wars and violence which are driving them from their homes—and to provide Christian witnesses in their lives, that those who don’t know you yet might hear the gospel and believe // and we bring these things before you, O Sovereign God who delights to hear our prayers; and we ask that you would help us now as we turn to hear your Word and be shaped by it…

Family Matters

Small Groups:

Will be starting up again, first week of September,

Studying the book of Philippians—curriculum available on the back table!

West-of-Scholls Group: Wed. 6:30 to 7:30 pm, about 20 min. west of here at the Rahn’s house

Hillsboro Group: Thur. 6:30 to 7:30 pm, 15 min. north at the Dunn’s house—all these details can be found in the bulletin + email will come out this week...

A brief reminder: these small groups are not meant to be fellowship cul-de-sacs, but on-ramps supporting fellowship within the whole congregation. For that reason, we’re asking that, for all who were involved last spring, please consider switching groups if you can to mix it up. Please let me know if you’d be willing to do that, so that we can coordinate both groups remaining at a helpful size.

Benediction

Peace be to the brothers and love with faith, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ until the day dawns and the shadows flee away. Amen. Eph 6:23 + Songs 2:17

Sermon

Intro

Are you in need of healing?

The answer is, yes. For everyone.

You know, as a man in my 30s, I don’t think much about healing. Every once in a while I do, like on our first night of vacation in Colorado this summer. I got the stomach bug. And when that happens to you, you’re helpless—your whole body is at the mercy of this disease, and there’s nothing you can do. You catch a glimpse of how fragile you really are—a peak into your own mortality.

But mostly, I walk around in good health. Mostly, I don’t think about my need for healing.

If you’re young, so often this is the case: your days are full of youth and life and things to do, and maybe you’re in excellent health. Zoom out, and you’ve only got a handful of decades left until your body wears out. But that’s not something you think much about.

But others of you are much more aware of all this: you’ve seen the ravages of disease and chance too many times—it’s taken people you love. Or you have chronic health struggles. Or you can feel your age, and you’ve come face-to-face with the fact that you don’t have a handful of decades left. Or you’ve been through times and places where you’ve seen the ravages of war or corruption on helpless people.

What are you seeing when you see those things? The need of all humanity for healing.

But this isn’t just a question of physical health.

How about the spiritual disease that rots away our souls? Or festers with pride or bitterness or lust in our hearts?

And there’s the looming conclusion of those diseases: they rot away the heart until the day comes when God will pronounce, “guilty”—and that’s when the disease of sin metastasizes into spiritual death and eternal judgement.

When you see that spiritual reality, what are you seeing? That without exception, every human heart is infected with a deadly disease—desperately in need of a healer.

And so, that’s your double problem: physical sickness and death, on the one hand, and spiritual sickness and judgement, on the other—you and I and everyone else have an extreme need of help because of this!

Now—a lot of you can already tell where I’m going with this. Jesus, of course, is the answer. But how? And do we really believe that?

Think about what’s stacked against us. We’re not talking about putting a band-aid on a scratch—we’re talking a power of healing so great that it would not just turn back death, but even heal our sin-sick souls.

The prophets had long predicted that someone with the sovereign power to do this would come, and bring divine healing to the whole world. But should we really believe that Jesus is that promised divine healer? A Jewish peasant carpenter from a backwater town turned into a homeless rabbi?

Matthew thought so. And so did the outcast leper and the gentile centurion we’ll meet today. They saw Jesus saw the long-expected sovereign healer! Let’s see what happened:

The Sovereign Cleanser

[The Leper’s Cleansing] Jesus had just finished preaching the Sermon on the Mount. And crowds were following him after he came down from the mountain, and that’s when a man with Leprosy approached him.

Now, this man’s problem was more than just sickness. He had a serious skin disease, yes. Probably very painful. But there was a much greater darkness that came along with this disease: it made him ritually—ceremonially—unclean. Why? Because at that time, Israel was governed by the Law of Moses from the Old Covenant, and under the Law of Moses, any person with leprosy would be examined and declared unclean by a priest.

And if you were declared unclean by the law, it meant that you were excluded from the life of God’s people, and excluded from worshiping the Lord at the temple. Leviticus 13 records this part of Moses’ Law, and verses 45-46 especially give us a window into what this man would have suffered. It says:

Leviticus 13:45–46 ESV

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

And what was the purpose of this law? It taught the people about the holiness of God. These laws about physical cleanness and uncleanness—where the unclean person was cut off from temple worship and fellowship with God’s people—these laws ultimately these pointed to the problem of spiritual uncleanness: that no unclean heart can stand in the presence of God. His purity is absolute, and beautiful; our sin is horribly impure, and ugly.

But what does this leper do?

Matthew 8:2 ESV

And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

So what does this leper believe? “Lord, if you will for it to happen, then, I will be clean.” He desperately desires to be clean. And believes that Jesus simply has to ‘will’ his healing—to decide that it will happen—it will certainly come to pass. That’s astonishing.

There were many miracles done by the prophets before Jesus came, and many done by the apostles after him. But none of them are framed like this: “If YOU will, you can make me clean.” The Leper didn’t just think that Jesus was powerful—that he had a lot of healing power, maybe that God had given him. He thought that JESUS HIMSELF was sovereign over all disease, so that he could simply decide to heal, and it was as good as done.

And not just that, be he believed that Jesus was sovereign over uncleanness—that Jesus merely had to decide, and the leper’s cleansing was as good as done. He was as good as clean. He knew that Jesus was more than just a prophet. It seems that he believed that Jesus was the long-promised divine healer, sovereign over all sickness and uncleanness!

And how did the Leper’s faith go? Did he remain in his pain and isolation? Verse 3:

Matthew 8:3 ESV

And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Maybe the best phrase to describe is, “Sovereign Love.” Here was a man whom, by the Law of Moses, no one had the authority to touch. Except Jesus. He reached out and touched this untouchable man. And so, the man was instantly cleansed. Healed.

But what’s going on here?

Is Jesus, by his actions, overthrowing Moses’ Law? Or declaring Moses’ Law to be defective? Not quite. You’ll remember from earlier, when we were in the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus said this:

Matthew 5:17 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

So he didn’t come to throw out Moses’ Law—but he did come to fulfill it. With that in mind, think about what the Leper did. He came up to Jesus while Jesus was surrounded by a massive crowd of people. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to do that. He was supposed to live alone and stay away from people, according to the Law of Moses.

Now, think about what Jesus did. He fully knew that the man in front of him was a Leper—ceremonially unclean. And he purposefully, in a way that was totally unnecessary, reached out his hand and touched the unclean man. Technically, according to Moses’ law, that would have made Jesus unclean. But that’s now how he considers it.

But then, in vs. 4, Jesus tells the Leper:

Matthew 8:4 ESV

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.”

So here Jesus tells the cleansed man to abide by Moses’ law. So what’s going on here?

Well, Jesus’ ministry was a time of transition. The Law of Moses was in the process of being fulfilled by Jesus—which means that some parts of the law were being fulfilled in a way that brought them to an end. And that’s the case with the ceremonial laws, like the ones about leprosy.

And so how did Jesus fulfill the those laws? Those laws taught, as an illustration, the deadliness of the spread of spiritual uncleanness. Touch it, and you become contaminated. But now, somehow, in Jesus this has been reversed: that when he touches you, it’s his cleanness that is contageous—he doesn’t become unclean, but you become clean by his cleanness.

The Sign Value of the Cleansing

And so it was a literal healing, which demonstrated the divine, sovereign power of Jesus over sickness. But it was also a sign of his power to remove spiritual uncleanness from sinners like us. Jesus had come to remove the uncleanness of his people. As the prophet Zechariah had predicted long before:

Zechariah 13:1 ESV

“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

And so, the question for each person is this: has Jesus has removed your uncleanness? Has he cleansed you from the guilt of your sin?

=> “Well how does that happen?”

=> You come to him in faith, confessing your sin and asking him to cleanse you. “Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean.”

And if you’ve already done this—fellow believers, what has Jesus done for you? By his gracious holiness, he has cleansed you and declared you clean by his own cleanness, and so he’s made you fit for God’s presence, and brought you to worship God and to fellowship with God’s people.

Jesus is the sovereign cleanser of Israel.

The Sovereign Healer of the Nations

And this picture of Jesus’ authority only expands for us in the next section, where a Roman Centurion comes to him with a request for healing.

The centurion’s problem isn’t a personal sickness, but that a beloved servant of his has become paralyzed, and is in terrible physical agony.

And in some sense, the centurion has a second problem: he knows that he is unworthy for Jesus to enter his house to even do the miracle he’s asking for. And he doesn’t say why he’s unworthy. Maybe part of it is that he’s not Jewish. He’s a spiritual outsider—not a member of God’s covenant community. Certainly not worthy to receive the Son of God into his own house.

And yet, ultimately, no Israelite was worthy of Jesus, either. Once, when Peter, the Jewish fisherman, caught a glimpse of Jesus’ divine authority, he said to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” And so, the ground is level at Jesus’ feet: no one is worthy, Jew or Gentile.

Yet how did Jesus respond? Look in vs. 6 and 7. The centurion appeals to Jesus:

Matthew 8:6–7 ESV

“Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

So just as Jesus did not shrink back from touching the Leper, so also he does not shrink back from going into the house of a gentile. Jesus does not shrink back from anyone who comes to him in faith!

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

“God so loved THE WORLD”—not just Jews, but every kind of person—those who were near through the Old Covenant, and those who were far off, like the centurion.

But then we have a twist: in verses 8 and 9 the centurion basically says, “Look, I’m not worthy for you to come into my house, and you don’t need to anyway. Just like my soldiers do what I say, so I know that the whole natural world does what you say.” This Centurion doesn’t just think that Jesus is some kind of healing guru. Like the Leper, he recognizes Jesus’ divine, sovereign authority over sickness and death and pain. It’s a beautiful faith.

And down in verse 13, we see again the Sovereign Love of our Lord: he says the word, and immediate the servant is healed.

But in between verses 9 and 13, Jesus explains the significance of this miracle.

Was a suffering man healed miraculously? Yes.

But there’s more: Jesus marvels at the Centurion’s faith. That’s a strong word—marvels. Jesus stops everything at that moment to point out the centurion’s faith to his followers. Look at vs. 10

Matthew 8:10 ESV

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.

Think about that. The King of the Jews turned to his Jewish followers and said: uh, guys, this one’s faith is greater than any Jewish faith I’ve seen so far. And then he goes on to explain why this matters. In vs. 11-12, he says:

Matthew 8:11–12 ESV

I tell you, many will come from east and 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.”

What is he saying? That many Gentiles will come from all over the world and join with the fathers of the Jewish people: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That any Gentile who places faith in Jesus will enter the kingdom of heaven. And also, that many of the ‘natural sons’ of the kingdom—that is, Jewish folks—would be removed from the kingdom for rejecting Jesus instead of trusting in him.

Now, I want to stop and ask a question here: Is this passage antisemitic? Is this anti-Jewish? Now many of you will quickly and rightly answer, “No. Of course not.” You instinctively know that antisemitism is sin, and so you quickly reject it.

But here’s the problem: antisemitism is on the rise in our society. And there are some dark corners where it has infiltrated into the church. I have personally heard some very disturbing words spoken by professing Christians about Jewish folks.

So we need to be ready with an answer. Is this passage anti-Jewish, when it says that the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out? No. And here’s why:

When Jesus says that ‘sons of the kingdom’ will be thrown out, he doesn’t mean all Jewish people. He only means, unbelieving Jewish people. And where are they removed to? The outer darkness—the same place where unbelieving NON JEWISH people will go.

In the same way, Jesus taught that many non-Jews would join Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But who else do we know will be there? Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, the Leper—a host of Jewish people who believed!

So actually, what Jesus does in this passage is break down any spiritual distinction between Jews and non-Jews. As Paul explains later in the book of Romans: all are equally condemned by sin, all are in utter need of God’s grace, and all my find that grace in Jesus, and be saved. Jew and Gentile alike.

So the inclusion of Gentiles into the Kingdom of God is startling in this passage—but it’s an action of divine grace which shows that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. There’s no room for racism of any kind—certainly not antisemitism.

People from every tribe and tongue and nation will be gathered together into one people—the people of God—Jews included. And they will will join together at the table—which is elsewhere called, “The Wedding Supper of the Lamb.” And the glory of that feast cannot be described in human language.

But likewise we need to see: there is another eternal destiny. The sin-sickness of our hearts is a spiritual disease that makes us fit for one place only: outer darkness. And Jesus describes it as a place where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is commonly referred to as, “hell.” And the word “weeping” tells us that it is a place of agony. And the phrase “gnashing of teeth” tells us that it is a place of anger and despair.

And so what this passage urges you to do, if you have not yet turned to Jesus for salvation, is to imitate the centurion: to understand your unworthiness, and yet also the sovereign love of Christ for sinners. To kneel before him like the leper saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

He is Jesus, the Sovereign Healer of the Nations.

The Long-Expected Sovereign Healer, Fulfillment of Prophetic Desire

Well, after the Centurion, there are many more healings: first, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law in vs. 14 and 15, and then he heals many more folks that evening, and also casts out demons in vs. 16. So, now, Jesus has performed all of these healing miracles. He’s shown that he is the Sovereign cleanser of Israel and healer of the nations.

But how? How is Jesus able to do these things? You might answer, “Because he is God in human flesh,” and you’d be right. But there’s a second answer which is just as vital for understanding the point of these miracles, and Matthew gives it to us in verse 17. He says:

Matthew 8:17 ESV

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

So that’s what these healings are all about: “Jesus took our illnesses, and carried our diseases.” That’s a quote from Isaiah, written six or seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth. But what does it mean to say Jesus carried our diseases?

Well, when Isaiah talked about sickness of ancient Israel, he was describing their sin and God’s judgement against them for it. Here’s how it sounded in Isaiah 1:5-6, as he addressed the whole nation:

Isaiah 1:5–6 ESV

Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.

So Isaiah described sinful Israel as a body in desperate need of spiritual healing, right at the beginning of his book. Then, later in the book, he describes how the healing will come. Prophesying about Jesus, he said:

Isaiah 53:4–6 ESV

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

So Isaiah’s point was this: the Messiah would come and take away the spiritual sickness of God’s people by bearing it in our place. He would take our guilt, and the punishment of God against us—he would become unclean in our place, so that we might be forgiven and declared clean—healed, and saved from the spiritual death caused by sin. “He took our illnesses, and bore our diseases.”

But to understand why Matthew would quote this verse to talk about literal diseases when it’s plain meaning in Isaiah is about the spiritual disease of sin, we need to remember something: every kind of illness known to man is part of the curse that God placed on the world in response to human sin. Sin and physical disease are connected to each other in that way: disease it part of the curse against sin. And so, when Jesus took on the curse in our place, he really did take on our physical illnesses and carry our diseases. He carried all of it for us.

And so Matthew is saying: it’s on that basis that Jesus healed—because he would then go to the cross and taste all that suffering, exclusion, and anguish on behalf of his people, that he might then give them everlasting life free from sickness. Jesus is the Sovereign healer for us because he suffered for us. Jesus is the sovereign healer long foretold by the prophets, able cure both sin and physical sickness.

Healings Today?

But wait just a minute—if that’s true, wouldn’t that mean that none of us should be sick right now, or ever? Shouldn’t this kind of healing still be for the church today?

If Jesus purchased freedom from sickness when he died on the cross… have we missed something? That’s what some folks have concluded. Some have said that if we are truly Spirit-filled Christians, we’ll see healings all the time. Is that right? Have we missed something?

Well, spoiler alert: No. We haven’t missed something.

It’s true that as Christians, we should embrace the supernatural. It’s part of our worldview. We shouldn’t object to the idea of supernatural miracles happening in the lives of God’s people.

But the real question is this: should we expect miraculous healing to be normal in our lives? Is something wrong with our congregation if we don’t see miraculous healing very often?

I’m going to say, plainly, No.

Here our Pentecostal brothers and sisters might object: They might say, “You’re ignoring what this text plainly says. If Jesus purchased your physical healing, then you should be experiencing it. Period.”

My answer is: “No.” Think about it: This text could imply that miracles like this are for the church today; or, it could imply that miracles like this were unique to Jesus’ ministry and not for the church today; or anything in between. It doesn’t specify! And so we have to look at the whole context in order to figure out how directly this applies to us:

Immediate context in Matthew is this: there is no mention of healing as part of the blessed life of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Sermon on Mount which comes right before these stories of healing—but enough talk about suffering in the Christian life; Then, in the story which comes right after these healings, the theme is the difficult path of discipleship—not the ease of having everything healed.

So did Jesus die to heal you? Yes! But that is only truly fulfilled in the New Creation—not in this life. Those miracles he performed where glimpses into the New Creation that is yet to come!

And in the wider context of Matthew, the gospel ends with the Great Commission, which says to make disciples in all the world, but has no command to perform miracles attached to that; on top of this, the witness of church history is that after the first couple of centuries, miracles greatly died down in frequency—they went from being the rule in church life to being the exception, even while the church remained faithful, pursuing the great commission.

And in the wider context of Scripture, we find statements like these:

John 16:33 “In the world you will have tribulation.”

2 Corinthians 4:16 “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

So, our current lives are defined by tribulation—that is, suffering. Our current bodies are defined by “wasting away”—that is, by aging and death. Our inner selves are being renewed—you could say, healed—day by day. But not so our bodies. Not yet. Not until the New Creation.

If you experience miraculous healing in your life, Praise the Lord. But even after that healing, your body will still waist away.

These healings that we saw today were glimpses of the coming New Creation—but not the reality of it. And so, Jesus has purchased your full physical healing by his blood—but he will not bring that to pass until the day when he makes all things new.

On that day, he will wipe away ever tear from our eyes, and death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for those things will all pass away. For Jesus, the sovereign healer of the whole world, will do it. He has purchased it by his blood and he will do it.

Conclusion: Jesus is the Long Expected Sovereign Healer

So then, what have we seen in these miracles? The Sovereign Power of Jesus to make all things new. Each miracle is like a little glimpse into the glory of the New Creation that is to come, in which sickness and pain are no more.

But ever greater than that, we see the Healing Love of Jesus for sinners: that by his wounds, all who come to him in faith are healed. That he receives us, the spiritually unclean, covered in the filthiness of our sins, and he comes near to us in the sovereign power of his love, and makes us utterly clean. That he heals and cleanses us, and so makes us into his people, and brings us into the very presence of God.

Let us worship this Jesus, our Long-Expected Sovereign Healer!