Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Illustration
Imagine You’re at the Doctor Receiving a Covid Test
And the Doctor Comes Back in and Says…
“I Don’t Really Know How to Tell You This, But…”
“The Tests Show You Have an Extremely Rare Case of Covid”
“There’s Only a Handful of People in the World Who Have it”
“It’s Called Chronic-Covid-19”
“It’s an Extremely Dangerous and Extremely Contagious Strain of Covid that Will Never Go Away”
You Ask What You Should Do and He Tells You the Government Mandate
For the Rest of Your Life:
You Must Live Alone in a Rural, Secluded Area
You Aren’t Allowed to Go to Any Populated Areas
If Anyone Happens to Come Near You, You Have to Put a Mask On Your Face, Cover Your Mouth with Your Hand and Yell, “I Have Chronic-Covid, I Have Chronic-Covid!”
You Can’t Be Around Your Family or Friends
And Even if You Ignored the Mandate and Went Around People…
They Would Run From You, Even Family and Friends
Out of Fear of Contracting the Chronic-Covid and Then Having to Live a Life of Seclusion as Well
But Also Because it is Against the Law to Be Near a Person Who Has Chronic-Covid
You Can’t Play Sports, Go to Work, Go to Church, Go Grocery Shopping, Etc.
You Have to Be Alone For the Rest of Your Life
How Would That Make You Feel?
Your Life, as You Know it, Has Just Ended!
Don’t Worry, the Chronic-Covid-19 I Just Talked About is Not Real
But in Bible Times, Some People Were Forced to Live a Life Like I’ve Just Described
Why Did Some People Have to Live a Life Like That?
Because They Had Some Sort of Skin Disease
In Hebrew, They Called it ṣā·rǎʹ·ʿǎṯ
In Greek, They Called it lepra
When We Read About it in Our English Translations, We Read “Leprosy”
Leviticus 13:45–46 (NASB)
“As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean!
Unclean!’
He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean.
He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Leprosy to the Israelite People Was Not One Specific Skin Condition
Typically, When We Think of Leprosy, We Think of What’s Now Called “Hansen’s Disease”
It’s an Infection Caused By a Certain Slow-Growing Bacteria
If Left Untreated, the Nerve Damage it Causes Can Lead to:
Crippling of the Hands and Feet
Paralysis
And Blindness
That’s What We Think of When We Think of Leprosy Today
But to the Israelite People, a Host of Skin Conditions Were Considered Leprosy
Many of These Skin Conditions Were Believed to Be Highly Contagious
Leviticus 13-14 are 2 Long Chapters Dealing With Leprosy
Chapter 13 Deals With the Specific Skin Conditions that a Person May Have…
And What the Priest is to Tell that Person to Do About it
Chapter 14 Gives the Prescribed Purification Rituals for a Person Who Has Been Healed of Leprosy
Leprosy Was So Dreaded By the Israelite People Because…
It Wasn’t Just a Potentially Harmful or Even Deadly Skin Disease
But It Would Make a Person Unclean
When a Person Was Considered Unclean, They Were Excluded From Society
They Couldn’t Live a Normal Life
There Were Other Ways to Be Made Unclean, Such as:
Touching a Dead Body, Coming in Contact With Certain Bodily Fluids, Etc.
But Leprosy Was Different
The Other Forms of Uncleanness Could Be Dealt With Within a Week’s Time
You Wash Yourself and Complete the Right Ritualistic Practices and You’re Clean Again
But Many Times Leprosy Was Permanent
A Person Would Be Considered Unclean for the Rest of Their Life
No Other Disease Was Looked at With Such Horror as Leprosy
But if a Person’s Leprosy Did Somehow Go Away…
They Were to Go to a Priest and Have it Inspected
If the Priest Finds the Person Healed…
Then the Priest Will Give the Person Orders to Make the Appropriate Sacrificial Offerings and Cleansing Rituals
After They Do That, They Will Then Be Allowed to Re-Enter Society and a Life of Normalcy
But the Only Problem With All of That is:
They Knew of No Cure For Leprosy
We Can Read of a Few Special Cases Where God Would Cure a Leper
But Most People Were Forced to Live With the Horrible Physical and Societal Effects of the Disease
I Say All of That to Lead Us to Our Text This Morning
Matthew 8:1-4
I’ve Mentioned Before That Matthew Structures His Account of Jesus’ Life Around 5 Major Teaching Discourses of Jesus
And We Have Finished the 1st of Those 5 (Sermon on the Mount)
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Taught a Crowd of People How Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are to Live
And Now Jesus is Going to Prove to Them that the Kingdom of Heaven (Reign and Rule of God) Has Finally Come
And He Will Do That Through Working All Kinds of Miracles
Because When God Reigns, People are Healed, Demons are Cast Out, and the Needy are Helped
I’m Going to Get a Little Nerdy For Just a Minute
I Think This Stuff is Interesting So Maybe Some of You Will Too
Matthew 8-9:35 is the Divider Between Matthew’s 1st and 2nd Discourse
Matthew Will Share 9 Miracle Stories With Us, But He Arranges Them Into 3 Groups of 3 Stories Each
In Between the 3 Triads of Stories are 2 Passages that Deal with Discipleship
Matthew 8:1-17 = 1st Group of 3 Miracles Stories
Matthew 8:18-22 = Discipleship Passage
Matthew 8:23-9:8 = 2nd Group of 3 Miracles Stories
Matthew 9:9-17 = Discipleship Passage
Matthew 9:18-35 = 3rd Group of 3 Miracles
We are Going to Look at the First Miracle of the 1st Group of 3 Miracles
What’s Interesting About This 1st Group of Miracles is:
They are Each Performed for People Who Would Have Been Considered Outcasts or 2nd-Class Citizens
The 1st Miracle Performed On a Leper
The 2nd Miracle is Performed For a Gentile
The 3rd Miracle is Performed On a Woman
In Each Case, Jesus Ignores the Cultural Taboos of His Day…
And Shows Amazing Compassion to the Ostracized and Neglected
If That’s Not a King Worth Serving, Then I Don’t Know Who is!
Matthew 8:1 (NASB)
When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him.
At the End of Chapter 4, We Saw Large Crowds of People Following Jesus
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