Tonight, we turn to the book of Matthew, chapter 8, verses 1 through 4. Matthew, chapter 8, four verses. Hear God's word. When he, that is Jesus, came down from the mountain, Great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, 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. A while back, my wife asked me, and I think I've mentioned this before, why I don't preach from the New Testament. And I said I would when I was done with the Old Testament. Well, I'm not done with the Old Testament. But this fit very well as I wanted to think about purity, the purity laws. And it is helpful to look at how Jesus interacts with them and also the interpretation of them in his day, how he interacts with both of those, the laws themselves and how they were interpreted. And as you'll see as we go along, even though this is a New Testament sermon, and it has a lot of Old Testament in it. But in the book of Matthew here in chapter 8, it's helpful to say a little bit where we are. If we looked right before this, we have the Sermon on the Mount. We have the Sermon on the Mount that started way back in chapter 5. So chapters 5 through 7 are the Sermon on the Mount. And so this comes right after that. That's where Jesus is coming from. Came down from the mountain. He was up on the mountain for the Sermon on the Mount. And he came down. And this healing of the leper is the first in a series of miracles that we find in chapters 8 and 9. A number of miracles. Many find ten miracles there. And together, we could say they both show us about Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount showed us a lot about who Jesus was. The crowds right at the end of it, at the end of chapter 7, they say, and when Jesus finished these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. And then the miracles also show a lot about Jesus. As the disciples even ask, who is this one who can do this? But in both places, there's also conflict. Especially more so with the miracles. We find groups that are opposing Jesus, especially the Pharisees. And so as we look at this text tonight, we're going to keep these two things in mind. What is Jesus revealing about himself and how that fits with his teaching and other miracles? And then also, how does this fit with his conflict with the religious leaders, especially those Pharisees? And in the background, we can think a little bit at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, or near the beginning of it. Jesus, in chapter 5, 17, says, 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. Jesus is talking about his relationship with the law there. And then, jumping to 20, he talks about the Pharisees. He says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus speaks of this fulfilling of the laws and this need for more righteousness than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And so those will be things that we'll dwell on as we think on this healing of the leper. And we'll have three points. First, the leper and purity, or the leper and the purity laws. We'll go back and we'll look at the Old Testament background to that. Then the second point is Jewish distortions of the purity law. What was Jesus confronting in his ministry? and then Jesus, the fulfiller of the purity laws. So first looking at the leper, and then these Jewish distortions, and finally Jesus, the fulfiller of the purity laws. And so the leper and the purity laws. This morning we looked at purity laws, especially that of the new mother, And we talked about how they operated, what they taught, how they made Israel constantly aware of the tabernacle. In all their everyday activities, they had to remember their status as it regarded the tabernacle. Were they clean or unclean? Could they approach or not? And that that law also taught about God's holiness, that Israel had to be careful. They had to come and do what was required. They had to approach as God commanded. And we also, lastly, said it operated as this analogy for sin, the separation that's caused by sin in God's provision of a way, a way for reconciliation. Well, in Israel, leprosy was the worst form of impurity. And so it highlights these points, but in a little different way. Leprosy was one of three bodily ailments, sicknesses, diseases, we could say, that made you impure or unclean. Other sicknesses did not. The other two you can read about in Leviticus 15, men and women who had irregular genital discharges. But all three of these, they're unique because there's no set end point. When we read about the new mother, we talked about, well, if it's a boy, one week, major impurity, 33 days, or minor impurities, we have 40 days. Or if it's a girl, it's 80 days. There's a set time. And then she could go through the procedure and become clean. Well, if you had leprosy, or if you had these other ailments, there was no end point set. You were unclean until you were healed, if you were ever healed. And we'll come back to that point later. But leprosy was even worse than these other two. If you started to get these various sores on your body, Leviticus 13 says you go to the priest, the priest inspects you, looks at you. There could be these times of quarantine and other things. But if they look like leprosy, if he decides that it's leprosy, he declares you unclean, and at that moment your life changes drastically. This morning we talked about the new mother, her levels of impurity, the major and the minor. Well, leprosy was even worse. We could call it a super major impurity. You not only made other people unclean by touch, but also through the air. If you were in the same tent as somebody, then everybody there would be unclean. In fact, the only thing that made other people unclean in the same way was a dead body. In very many ways, a leper was like the walking dead. And thus, a leper was banished from the camp. In Leviticus 13, 45-46, we read of this. The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, many things associated with mourning and death, 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. He was not allowed to be inside the camp. Thus, leprosy separated not only people from the tabernacle, as all impurities, but it really separated them from other Israelites. And as we think of the reasons why, I think it's helpful to note that what the Bible here calls leprosy isn't equated with the modern disease that we would identify as leprosy. It's instead this broader range of skin diseases, especially since you can even have it in a house or in your clothing. And so it's some other disease that isn't identified with modern leprosy. And that's important because modern leprosy is very contagious. And so we could say, well, yeah, it makes sense to banish them. But that's not the thinking here. It's not that they're contagious medically, that it's worried about germs spreading the sickness. No, the concern here is the impurity. They have such a super impurity that they It can't be not only near the temple or entering into the tabernacle temple, but even where the temple or tabernacle resides in the camp. And so Numbers is another place that mentions that. Numbers chapter 5, 1 through 4. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge in everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp in the midst of which I dwell. Thus, to be a leper was a rather lonely prospect. You were in a lonely situation. You were cut off from God's presence, but also banished from your family, your friends. and there was no end point set. But you had to endure this for such and such a time. As we said, you were there, you were stuck in this state until you were healed. And we should add one more thing on leprosy in the Old Testament. We don't want to press this too far, but unlike that of birth with the new mother, Leprosy was in some ways associated with punishment for sin. We see it in a number of places as God's punishment for sin. When Aaron and Miriam spoke against Moses in rebellion, God struck Miriam with leprosy. We read of that in Numbers 12, 10 through 15. And when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother's womb. We also have Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, who is given leprosy as he wants in greed and gets through deceit. the gifts that Naaman brought. And we have Uzziah the king, who tried to go in and take away the duties of the priest, tried to offer incense in the temple, and was struck with leprosy. And so we have these examples of it being a punishment for sin. We shouldn't press that too far, because at the end of the cleansing of a leprosy, And just like the cleansing of the new mother, it is the declaration of clean, not forgiven. And yet it still had that association. So as we think of this leper, we need to see how Jesus interacts with him. And that will bring us to this second point, these Jewish distortions of the purity law. Jesus comes down, and what happens? Well, this leper, instead of doing what he's supposed to in many ways, crying out, unclean, unclean, he approaches Jesus, bows down, pleads with him. You see in verse 2, Behold, the leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. He's looking to Jesus. And what does Jesus do? Well, verse 3, And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. This is where we all gasp. He touched a leper. He touched a leper. Now, we might not gasp in shock, but many Jews of Jesus' day would have. They would have been surprised by that, scandalized even. What was Jesus do? Jesus was defiling himself. This leper who had this impurity touching him did what? It made the one who touched unclean. Now, hopefully you remember from this morning that we said, There actually wasn't a law against defiling yourself. Being unclean wasn't something you had to avoid. In fact, you couldn't avoid it. It was there in everyday activities. It was something you instead needed to be aware of. So why at this time would many of the Jews be surprised or shocked or scandalized at Jesus' action? Well, in that day, various groups had changed the practice of the purity laws. They had made defilement or uncleanness something to try as hard as you can to avoid. They even raised the level of what you were supposed to do. Don't just try to be what a normal Israelite was. Try to keep the purity of the priests. We find this with various groups. And in the Gospels, we find this most commonly with the Pharisees. And they did this in various ways. They added to the law. We often call this this fencing of the law. They added things that were traditions so that they never even came close to breaking the real law. And one of those is washing of hands. Now, we do that before meals. We do it for hygiene. But at that time, they had this washing of the hands because they wanted to always eat with clean hands. And there were rituals for the priests or for others for washing of hands that would then make their hands clean. And so they had this tradition of making your hands clean before the meal in a purity way. And they get on Jesus, and they get against the disciples for not doing that. But they also tried to avoid anybody who would make them unclean. And so we find at that time that menstruating women were often put off, segregated to some room or separate quarters so that it would not be something that they would become unclean by. They had brought it out with who they could be with. We find them avoiding tax collectors and sinners lest they become unclean by them, and certainly lepers. Well, Jesus was different. As we read the Gospels, we see him confronting these ideas. Who does he eat with? Pax collectors and sinners. Does he keep their extra law? No, he confronts them on it. Does he avoid impurity? Well, that's where we see here, him touching this leper. If we read a little bit later, he touches a dead body as he raises the daughter of the synagogue ruler. Now, as we think about that, there is some debate. Could Jesus become impure? some are uncomfortable with that notion would Jesus in touching this leper become unclean well as we talked uncleanness isn't equal to sin that it's not brought about by a sinful action and so I see no reason why not We know that his mother, we talked about that, she kept the law of purity for a new mother. Wouldn't it be natural to assume that Jesus also was the one who was keeping and following these purity laws? But more importantly, as Jesus confronts the Pharisees and these other groups, what was their motivation? Why were they trying to raise the standard on these purity laws? We find a good reason. They wanted to be like the priests. Is that a bad thing to go after? Well, we find at least one reason they did it, or at least a consequence of it, is they focused on the external instead of the internal. They took these purity laws and they made them of the highest importance and thereby lessened much of God's law. They worried about the outside instead of the inside. They were concerned about the ceremonial law, we could say, but they neglected God's moral law. And the parable of the Good Samaritan is a great illustration of that. There you have a Jew go down, he gets beat up, he's almost dead. And who passes by? You have a priest and a Levite. And what are they worried about? Ceremonial purity. They don't want to touch a dead body, for they will be unclean. And so here is a fellow Jew in need of their help, and they go as far away as they can. They have avoided love your neighbor as yourself in order to keep their ideas on the purity system. And so Jesus goes after the Pharisees, the scribes, and the Pharisees for that. In Matthew, we find it in chapter 23. In 23 through 28, it says, You blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you are outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy. and lawlessness. So we see their misplacement in that. And I would say we could add to it that as they've distorted the purity laws here, they also missed one of its clear teachings. We said that it's taught by analogy The state of sin and the separation from God because of that. That we can really see we can't avoid. We are stained with sin. And yet by seeking in their own abilities, in their own strivings, to reach this level of purity that they set for themselves, it's very much a works righteousness. And that's why Matthew records Jesus saying, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. It must be greater than that external, and nothing that you ultimately can do can bring it about. And so in contrast to that, we have Jesus in compassion reaching out, Touching the leper, disregarding their additions and distortions to the law, making himself unclean to make this leper clean. Now, as we move to this last point, Jesus the fulfiller of the purity laws, we should remember what we said this morning, that the purity laws taught by analogy this separation caused by sin, and that God had provided a way. And we won't read it, because it's rather long and a little complicated, but there was this cleansing ritual for a leper. It had a number of stages. First, the priest would have to go out and inspect. And then there was a ritual with a couple birds, some hyssop, cedarwood, and the scarlet cord. And then at that point, he could come into the camp, but he couldn't go into a tent yet. And he had to wait there for another seven days. And then finally on the eighth day, then he could bring his sacrifices. A burnt offering, a sin offering, and a guilt offering. And then he would be clean. And in our text, we can see Jesus upholding this law. Jesus tells the leper in verse 4, Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them. Jesus came as this one who was under the law. He came, as it says in Matthew 5.17, not to abolish the law of the prophets, but to fulfill them. And so he does. He has the leper go, as he's supposed to, to the priest and offer the sacrifices he's supposed to. But we can see Jesus as this fulfiller of the law in another way here also. We said earlier that the uncleanness of leprosy, it didn't have a set limit. It lasted until they were healed. Thus, before the law could be used to cleanse, there had to be a healing. The law itself couldn't cleanse the leper. It was powerless, we could say, by itself, to bring about this cleansing of the leper. There was nothing the leper could do to move it forward, to bring it about. He couldn't heal himself. Healing had to come first. There was nothing for the leper to do but to wait upon God. And that is why the leper comes to Jesus. We're not told exactly what he believed about him, but he did believe that he could heal him. That leper wanted to be clean, to be restored to his family, friends, to enter into God's presence again in the temple. And he knew Jesus could do that because Jesus could heal. Jesus had that power. Jesus could do what the law couldn't do on its own. And so here we have Jesus coming and demonstrating who he is. He says much as he heals this leper. He heals him, be clean, and then he uses him as a witness of who he is, what he's done. Notice in verse 4, after he's cleansed, then 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 we have here what we see many other places. When Jesus heals somebody, he tells them not to spread the news. Jesus didn't want to be just a wonder worker, just a healer. And often the spreading of the news to the crowds led to that. But he does want this leper to go show himself to somebody. Show yourself to the priest, as we said, to fulfill that law. But then he adds at the end, for a proof to them or for a testimony to them. Well, who's the them? Well, very likely it's the priest there. And so what was Jesus doing? Well, he had just healed this leper. And now he was sending him as this exhibit A, if you will, to the priest. And what were the priests to do? They were to verify what he had done, and by that, who he was. They were to know of the power of the one who had sent this leper to him. And thus, they should also have come and bowed down before Jesus. Jesus was this Christ, this one they were waiting for. And healing of lepers was one of those signs. Later on in Matthew chapter 11, John the Baptist, as he's looking and seeing what Jesus does, he doubts. And so in chapter 11, he sends his disciples to Jesus. And so starting in verse 2, it says, Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? And Jesus says, Look at what I've done. He says, he answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf fear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Jesus is the Christ. He's this one who's come who's greater than Moses. The one who can speak of the law saying, you have heard it as written, but I say to you. He is this one come to fulfill the law of God. And he can even do what the law was powerless to do, bring about the healing. And so if these purity laws teach us about our alienation from God because of sin, Christ, as he heals this leper, he shows the willingness of God to restore those who come to him in faith. Those who don't come to him with their own righteousness. Those who don't come to him saying, look at the purity that I have kept, what I've kept myself, like those Pharisees. But they come as a leper, knowing their impurity, but believing God is powerful to do it. and Jesus shows that he's willing to do it. That is the only way that we can have this righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a righteousness that comes from Christ as we approach him in humility, confessing our sins, pleading for mercy. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you show us so clearly in your scriptures, again and again, your love for the lost, those who in contrition and in brokenness of spirit appeal to your mercy and your grace. And may we do that. May we not look to our own works, but instead the accomplished work of Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.