Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Every one of us in here knows what it’s like to be sick.

Many of us also know what it’s like to live with the permanent presence of a disease or a disability.

In her book of prayer Kari Kristina Reeves wisely writes,

Broken hearts are part of this life.

Pain, injury, loss, and death are components of any earthly existence, regardless of a person’s spiritual orientation, financial status, nationality, or social influence.

Every human being is vulnerable to heartache.

When encounter the vulnerability of sickness, disease, and disability, we want to get better.

We want to be healed.

Yet, healing is inherently mysterious.

A few years ago, I was privileged to sit and hear a phenomenal sermon.

It wasn’t because it was the most exegetically sound message I’ve ever heard.

Even though it was exegetically sound.

It wasn’t because the preacher was animated and dynamic.

He wasn’t that.

He actually couldn’t be that way.

The reason the sermon was phenomenal is because it was a sermon that I both heard and saw.

The preacher was a living witness to the message he was preaching.

I was watching and listening to a man who was enduring duress, but was at peace with death.

Who believed what the psalmist says in , “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.”

This brother preached to us out of .

Jesus’ words,

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

This pastor had not been able to make our presbytery meetings for the two years because of how cancer was wrecking his body.

When he was diagnosed, the doctor told him, in cases like yours we don’t talk about remission, we only talk expectancy.

18-24 months was the life expectancy, with the most outlying cases being 4-5 years.

At that point, he was in year 4. His diagnosis came at a time of excitement and expectation at the church he served.

They had just renewed their vision, and had a plan to move forward in ministry that had people excited.

And in an instant it was gone.

He had a terminal disease.

There were elders and members who left the church and it became a shell of what it was.

He said this to us that day,

What sanctification looks like is the loss, difficulty, betrayal, the constant thwarting of your plans, desires, the loss of what you think life looks like and should be.

It is the taking away of dreams, visions, strategic plans, and realizing that God has not abandoned you; realizing in all of that loss that Jesus didn’t lie.”

He said,

The reason that Christianity doesn’t work for many is because that’s not what they signed up for.

They signed up for a triumphant Christianity.

This is a message and a passage about healing.

What are we to make of that pastor’s words and experience in light of what we see Jesus doing here in ?

Isn’t Matthew setting us up to expect the triumphant life of faith in Jesus means healing of our diseases?

No.

The pastor was right about what it means to give up everything to follow Jesus, and at the same time Jesus is still a healer.

Let me tell you what’s going on.

We have come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew says in v. 1, after Jesus came down from the mountain great crowds followed him.

Chapters 5-7 was a mind-blowing experience for the crowds.

The concluding word of the Sermon on the Mount was

“And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

( ESV)

“And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

( ESV)

He has been preaching the good news of the kingdom of heaven with authority.

The kingdom has invaded the world.

Now his authority over creation is going to be put on display.

This display is going to be full of compassion, grace, and mercy as he heals diseases, casts out demons, and makes people whole.

This section starts with three wonderful healings.

We’re going to see healing and hope for The Outcast, The Oppressor, and The Ordinary.

The Outcast

Jesus comes down the mountain and we get a repeat of what happened before he went up the mountain at the end of ch. 4. Jesus went throughout all Galilee, Matthew says in 4:23, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

Jesus’ fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them.

And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

When he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him.

Now, he comes back down the mountain and we get a similar description to what we saw in ch. 4, except in reverse order.

Great crowds are following him again.

Jesus is only growing in fame and popularity.

He’s healing again, but this time Matthew gives us detailed accounts of particular people and situations.

There is shock value to what we find in v. 2. The crowds are following him, and Matthew says, “Behold, a leper came to him, bowed before him, saying, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.”

This man was an outcast.

Leprosy was a contagious skin disease.

Certain forms of it had no known cure, and it could take you out.

Lepers, by law among the people of Israel were unclean.

The law on leprosy is detailed in .

says,

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 along.

His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

So, if you had this disease you had to make it publicly known by the way you dressed, by the carried yourself physically, and by what you said.

Everything about you had to indicate your shameful condition.

You even had to live by yourself.

Others wouldn’t dare be around you.

You were an outcast.

That might be your condition for the rest of your life.

A loss of dignity, a loss of community, a loss of hope.

His identity is wrapped up in his disease.

He’s not a man.

He’s something less than that.

The person healed in vv.

5-13 is a beloved servant.

The person healed in vv.

14-15 is a mother-in-law.

This guy’s title is “leper.”

We always identify people by the thing that excludes them from community.

The poor.

The homeless.

We dehumanize people by making their condition their definition.