Matthew 2024

Matthew chapter 8, we're actually going to read, the first 17 verses.

So only the last 3, I'm afraid we'll come up on the screen. And so you'll need to turn to page 972. If you're using 1 of the church bibles beginning, at verse 1. When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said. Be clean. Immediately, he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gifts Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

When Jesus had entered Capernum, a centurion came to him asking for help. Lord, he said, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly. Jesus said to him, shall I come and heal him? The centurion replied, lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority with soldiers under me, I tell this 1 go and he goes and that 1 come and he comes.

I say to my servant, do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. And he said to those following him, Truly, I tell you. I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then Jesus said to the centurion, go. Let it be done just as you believed it would, and his servant was healed at that moment. When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.

When evening came, many who were demon possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word. And healed all who were ill. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took up our infirmities, and he bore our diseases. This is god's word to us this evening, and Pete's gonna come and preach it to us now.

Well, good evening. Thanks, Tom. As Tom said, my name is Pete Woodcock. I'm 1 of the pastors of the church. If you're new or visiting, it's really great to have you with us.

Let me pray. Father help us now, this little tiny passage healing of of Peter's mother-in-law, help us to see treasures, new and old and fresh, by your spirit, would you move our hearts that we would be worshiping people, truly worshiping people in Jesus' name, amen. Hunchback of Notredam. Anybody read this book? Who's read this?

Anne and me, and not even the French person. Have you read the Hunchback of notre dame? That the unabridged. Yeah. 500 page.

Have you of you you read it? Unabridged. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Hunchback of notre dame. Yep, great, a great classic. Hunchback of notre dame, you probably have seen the who's seen the Disney film? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I can't I can't remember how what what that's like. I will watch it probably next week or something to see what it's like.

But, you've got this this man. He's called quasimodo. That's his name, the Hunchback of notre dame. Quasimodo, he's born, ugly, very deformed. His mother doesn't want him.

His mother dumps him at the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in France in 14 82. It's it's not a real story. It's a novel. He's crying at the at these, you know, in this little bundle that he's left, that she's left at the, over the bottom of notre dame steps. And, many women go past and think maybe they adopt this child, but when they look at him, they're actually offended by his deformities.

And they say things like he's a demon. Or he's the son of a devil, or at best he's cursed by god. So no 1 wants him. Except a priest then takes him in, who works in, notre dame cathedral, and calls him Kosimodo because of the day that, he found him. He grows up and he lives in in, Notre Dame, and he becomes the bell ringer of Notre Dame.

He's got an overlarge and distorted head. He has no neck. He has only 1 eye and it's sort of down on his face. He has a large hump on his back. He has bowed legs.

And because he's lived amongst the Bells of Notre Dame, he's deaf. So he's not got much going for him. And the people of Paris, they either if they ever see him point at him and laugh or they turn their faces from him, but all of them hate him. He's either a demon, as I say, the son of a devil, or he's cursed by god. Now there are 2 significant occasions that Cuasimodo's outside of Notre Dame cathedral.

He doesn't normally go outside much because he because of what happens. 1 is when, Paris is looking for the ugliest person to make a fool's pope and, or the king of fools. He's the fool's Pope and the king of fools, and they're looking for the ugliest person. They have 1 of those things where you you put your face through and you make a face and it's a big joke. But someone sees quasimodo, the hunchback of notre dame, and they grab him and they push his face through, you know, that that the little thing whole and he has the ugliest face and they make him the fool's pope for the day, the king of fools, and they parade him around Paris, and everybody's pointing and laughing.

He's deaf. He can't hear what's going on, but they're pointing and laughing. He thinks they're friendly at that moment. That's the first 1. The second time is the next day.

And for all kinds of reasons, which I'm not gonna go into, The next day, he strapped to a whipping post. They pull off his clothes. They mock him. They strap him and tie him, and they whip his hump on his back. So badly that it's a bloody mess, and they just mock him.

There's no sympathy for him from the crowd. They do it for 2 hours. And after 2 hours, he's so thirsty he speaks in his sort of, deaf, dumb sort of way and cries out for water. He pleads for water, and all he gets is laughter And the more he cries for water, the more the crowd say hang him then. Hang him if he wants water.

Hang him. This is the French people for you. You know, this is what, you know, dearie me. Until after 2 hours, 1 young girl, Esmeralda, if you read it, it's it's gotta be Safron. Esmeralda comes out, she dances, got long black hair, curly hair like Safron, and dances.

And gives him a cup of water, cup of cold water. And he remembers that. Now I'm not telling you everything about the story. It's a big, big story, and there's lots of characters. But Cuasimodo, in many ways, is a hero if you could say that.

It's not quite done in those ways. And in the end, he saves Esmeralda. So the French seem to think in those days if you're ugly, you're a demon possessed, but if you're too good looking, you're a witch. So, you know, it's 1 of those 2 things. And there's Marilda is a gypsy dancer, and she's good looking.

So she's a witch, and they're going to hang her. But Kosimodo comes down and grabs her before they take her to the gallows and takes her in to Notre Dame, the cathedral shouting sanctuary sanctuary sanctuary. And that meant that if she's in this sacred place, this cathedral, then she won't be hanged as long as she stays in there. Now that's not the end of the story, and I've not told you everything. But when you read this story, The hunchback of notre dame, quasimodo, the ugly 1, ugly on the outside, is really the beautiful 1.

And he really is the lover. He's consistently loving. And he carries the burden of love for Esmeralda, at least, and, he saves her life at least at least once. At least at the period when he grabs her and takes her into into Notre Dame. And he's the beautiful 1.

And yet he's despised, and he's rejected, and he's hated even by his Mar elder, actually. Everybody hates him. Now why am I telling you this story? Well, I've gotta do something on a Sunday night, and, I've just read it and I quite enjoyed it. That's 1 reason, and we could sit down.

But actually, When I came to this passage on Monday in Matthew 8, 14 to 17, this little passage about Peter's, mother-in-law and these demon possessed people, It reminded me, and I'm sure you can see it immediately of Cortimoto, and the Hunchback of notre dame. The whole story is sort of based around him. Do you see that? Maybe you don't. I'll try and prove it to you if I can.

But first of all, and we'll come back to that, and I hope it fits in. First of all, I want you to see the healer in this passage. We're looking at verses 14 to 17. Now, obviously, the healer is Jesus, but I want to show you just how different a healer he is than we might actually think. So we'll come back to quasimodo and you're I hope it works.

Okay? Here's my first point though. I want you to see from this passage. The healer who contracts all the diseases he heals. That's my first point.

The healer who contracts all the diseases that he heals. You see, the picture here in these few verses is not just of a doctor who comes to an area where people need healing and gives out medicine, maybe at great cost to himself. It's not just a doctor that gives out medicine or even does surgery on someone. The picture is not even. Actually, if you look at this, of a miracle worker that somehow lays his hands on the ill people, and the divine power comes through him, and he casts the the disease away.

That's not the picture. The picture is so much more personal. And it's so much more dangerous for the healer. The picture is much more of a burden being carried, not just hard work, but substitutionary. The picture is someone who takes the illness and the sickness and the disease away by taking it himself.

That's what he does. And when Matthew sees all these healings in this few verses, he thinks about the prophet Isaiah. Look at verse 17 of chapter 8. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.

Do you see that? When Matthew sees this healer, he's he think he thinks of a passage in Isaiah, but look what it's he thinks of. He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases. He didn't just heal. He didn't just say go away.

He took them upon himself. He bore them. Now with that in mind, just think about that for a moment from a personal level. Just allow yourself to think about this. I know there are all kinds of issues, and we'll deal with them at the end, but allow yourself to think about this.

Think about someone taking all your illnesses upon themselves. Just just yours. Just think about that. Just think personally. All your sicknesses.

All the health issues that you've ever had, just think about someone, taking them and having them, not just healing them, but taking them and having them as a burden to himself. Just think all the codes I had a cold this week. It's really horrible. All the flus, all the Covids. Just think of that.

1 person taking all of that. Just you. The whooping coughs, the measles, the mumps, the chicken pox, the scabies, the vomiting, the diarrhea, the broken bones, the cancer, the arthritic pains, or the mental health issues, your fears, your anxieties, not not just someone who simply heals them and brushes them away. Someone that actually has the power to to push them away, but someone who takes them. All the colds that you've ever had up to this point, all the flus, all the diarrhea all of vomiting, all of this bloke takes them all right now.

And then now think not just you, but millions upon millions of people. What is that bloke gonna look like? Matthew quotes a part of, of Isaiah. And what is often the case in the new testament? When the new testament quotes a a very brief passage in the old testament, it it normally in it's normally sort of referring to the whole passage.

It's a sort of shorthand to take you back. So what you meant to do when you read a quote in the new testament is to go back, to the old testament and see, you know, where that quote sort of fits in. And he's definitely doing that. And we were in a passage where Isaiah, the prophet in the old testament, has been lifted to the very sort of mountain top of prophetic vision, if you like. He he's standing really prophetically on on the mount where Jesus is crucified.

And he's seeing this suffering servant, this substitutionary suffering Messiah This king of god suffering as if it's already happened. And so Isaiah is looking forward, and it's like he's on his mountain, and he and he's taken in his to to to the mountaintop where Jesus is. And the quote from Isaiah is from a description where where we have this promised Messiah who's the true servant, and he's the 1 who will suffer He will be rejected. He will be looked down upon. He will pour out his very life, his very soul, for the needs of others.

He won't enjoy the privileges of comfort and a sheltered life. He's gonna be a man of sorrows. He's going to be acquainted with grief, familiar with grief. He'll bear the burdens of other people. He'll care for the needs of other people.

He'll take the diseases and the sorrows, and yet he won't get any respect and honor for it. He, will won't assert his own rights. He'll put away his own rights. For the rights and the comforts of other people. That's that's the bit of Isaiah that that Matthew is quoting.

And in the end, he'll receive the punishment for the sins of the people he'll save. The life of utter commitment to others, and the greatest service of always giving his life laying it down for others. And Isaiah then says What is a person gonna look like? Who's a servant like that? Who's not only serves like that, but is a healer, but not only heals in the sense of pushing the diseases and sins away, but actually takes them on himself.

What are you gonna look like? If you had all my diseases over my 66 years of life, if someone took them on themselves, what are they gonna look like? Well, he tells us. To get get your Bible now. I I didn't wanna put this up because I want you to see it in the Bible.

So Isaiah 52, it's on page 741 of the of the church bibles. Aziah 52 and verse 14. What's he gonna look like if he carries all of the diseases and burdens, if he bears them and takes them up, verse 14, page a hundred and 41, Isaiah 52, verse 14, just as there were many who were appalled at him. His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being, even quasimodo. And his form marred beyond human likeness.

Of course it was. He's bearing the diseases of everyone. Look at, Isaiah 53. It's on the same page, verse 3. He was despised and rejected by mankind, man of suffering and familiar with pain, like 1 from whom people hide their faces.

He was despised. And we held him in lower steam. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by god, stricken by him afflicted. He's an ugly monster.

He's an ugly monster. Look at him writhing around. He's an ugly monster. He must be cursed by god. Or a demon or something?

Look at that hunchback. Look at that 1 that's been taken out and his back has been whipped up. Look at the twisting agony of Jesus. Is he human? Is that a human back?

Look at him twisting on a cross. In agony, twisting out of shape, the inner anguish in his soul. He's less than human, isn't he? He's a monster. Why?

Because he bore and he took up You see? But there's more. Here's my second point. The healer that contracts not only the diseases, the healer that contracts all the root causes of the diseases. Sin, Isaiah, 53 versus 4 to 7.

Let me just read it. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by god stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him.

And by his wounds, we are healed, we all like sheep are gonna stray each of us to turn to our own way, and the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and a sheep before his shearer is silent. So he did not open up his mouth. You see see the stuff there?

You've got our pain, our suffering, our transgression, our iniquities. And each time, it's he took. He bore. He was pierced. He was crushed.

He didn't just send them away. It wasn't just a transaction that he paid so that they wouldn't affect us. He didn't just pay the price for our sin. He took them. He bore them.

He was pierced. He was crushed. Think of the words that describe us there. Transgression. What does that mean?

It means rebellion. It means rebellion. Rebelling against God. Now that may be done viciously and angrily and with our fists in the air, or it may be that we just don't even think about who god is in our life. Just do our own thing.

That's rebellion. God is god, and you're a creature. Look at the word iniquities. That means guilt. It means guilt and the just punishment for guilt.

That's what the word means. Think of the guilt, the guilt in your life. So we we are press guilt. That's 1 1 of the reasons why people have so many mental health issues because we are to suppress we're suppressing guilt. And when you suppress When you suppress stuff, it it pushes out in funny ways.

When you're holding something down, it will squirt out some in some way. Because we're told we mustn't talk about sin today. We mustn't we that's an awful thing. You know, people aren't sinners. They're victims.

But if you just suppress the fact that you're a sinner, then you're gonna have all these issues, and they'll pop out. We're guilty. Before god, Then turn to our own way. That's obvious what that is. Like a sheep turn to its own way, doing its own thing, and then again, iniquity, there, the guilt again.

And we could use the word sin, if you like. It's the word that we we tend to use that sums up all of those words. Sin, the breaking of both law and love. It's not just breaking law. It's breaking the law of love and it's breaking love.

Breaking away from the love of god's sin is abnormal to how we were made. It's a sort of cancerous growth which distorts us and and it shouldn't be growing in us, but it is. Sin is at is disturbing to our our humanness. It deforms us. It takes the crown away From god's creation of us, it defaces, and it graffiti is the very image of god that we were made in.

It takes the light from our minds. It takes the joy from our hearts. And that is why picturing sin as a disease and an illness and a sickness and infirmities and leprosy or a cancer is very, very helpful for us to understand because Those images show us the decay that sin does to us, the destruction of the human nature, of your nature. Sin weakens our moral ability. It breaks our consciences.

It wounds our understanding. It makes our wills lame. It's a fatal disease, the soul that sins will die, says the Bible. Sin when it's fully grown leads to death. But look again at the healer.

Our pain, our suffering, our transgressions, our iniquities, what what did he do with them? He took them. He bore them. He was pierced for them. He was crushed for them.

You could sum it up in 1 verse, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 24. Just have a listen to it. Talking about Jesus, He himself bore our sins in his body. Peter emphasizes that in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. Okay.

That's my second point. Back to Matthew 8, because we seem to have drifted. Back to Matthew 8, this is what Matthew sees. And he sees it in my third point, which is a day in the life of a healer. I just wanna get you how magnificent Jesus is as a healer.

A day in the life of Jesus, the healer. 24 hours. Look at verse 16. It says when the evening came, now you gotta get that. That's that's a little hint there when evening came.

This was the evening of a very, very long day. If you go back, you'll see that the day starts with Jesus preaching the sermon on the Mount. And you have a summary of the sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 to 7. Now the energy and the emotion and the physical and spiritual draining to preach that just to keep his voice up on the mount is is amazing. I mean, how many can do that?

So so Rory is taking a week to do it. 5 sessions in the sermon on the Mount, and if you look at it, it probably is about 5 sermons, but this was done in the morning, mate. You know, you could just get it done Monday morning and then come home. Yeah. I read something, some time ago.

I don't know how you work this stuff out, but I I read it. And, someone who researched sort of preachers, someone who does a 45 minute sermon that's emotionally engaging. And and they worked out it was the quid the equivalent of an 8 hour day to preach a 45 minute sermon. The the the energy and the mental effort and the physical stuff that goes into it. And you may think always, it is quite easy just standing up here, but you, you know, when you get to a certain age, after you've preached, your body's a wreck.

Aches like anything. It's unbelievable. Well, he preached 4 or 5 sermons in in in the when you read the sermon on the Mount, that's just not ones that's that's a lot of stuff because it's a summary. Then what did he do? He had to walk down the mountain, to Capernium, and then his morning wasn't over.

You know, he met someone who had leprosy, and he had to cure them. Then he met the centurion and had to cure the centurion servant, Then finally, when he's thinking perhaps I'll get, you know, get some break in Peter's house, his mother in Peter's mother-in-law's heal, and he has to heal her. And then when he's finished that, She's just about serving him. It's evening, an old crowd of people come out, and he heals them. Now we know that Jesus' healings weren't it wasn't a Harry Potter wand.

We've just seen that. It's not like he takes a wand, although silly American evangelists, but claim to heal people and they wave their arm and the whole thing falls over, which seems to be the opposite to healing. You think they'd stand up. But they wave their arm and they all fall over as if the blokes got this sort of power that sweeps through a congregate. Jesus didn't do it like that.

The the gospel writers, when they say, like, in verse 16, when evening came many who were demon possessed were brought to him. When it says the many, he didn't just wave his arm to a big crowd. They slowed down to show us like Peter's mother-in-law that individually, he spoke to each 1 that he healed. He invested. He bore.

He took all the energy of individual people, but many individual people. So when Matthew sees his workload of 24 hours, he says, wow. Wow. And what was the effect physically on Jesus at that point? But then in that busy program, he cares for Peter's mother-in-law.

That's the beauty, isn't it? Of it. It's not just many. There's an individual. Look at verse 14.

When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her. Yeah. Where did it go? And he and she got up and began to wait on him.

It's a lovely story. The really lovely story. If you put all of the accounts together, it's in 3 it's in Matthew Mark, Luke and John, this story. So it's it's interesting they would pick on this sort of, you know, rather sort of insignificant event in 1 sense, but no, because it's personal. It's so personal.

If you put it all together, this is Peter's house, he lives there with his wife, obviously lives there with his mother-in-law, but it's a shared house with his brother, Andrew. So it's Peter and Andrew's house, with Peter's wife, and, his mother-in-law, and they were obviously doing something like, you know, guess who's coming to to dinner. Because, they had invited, James and John, and Jesus, at least. So there's a guest who's coming to dinner, and Jesus who's exhausted is coming to dinner. Remember what he's done?

And then Jesus saw see? He didn't he didn't have his eyes closed and lie down. He didn't say, god, give us a bed for goodness sake. I just don't know. I just done the sermon on the mouth for goodness sake.

Then I have to do him. Then I have to do him then, you know, poof. He saw he saw the needy. Lying in bed with a fever. That word lying in bed means thrown on the bed.

She's thrown on the bed. Luke, in his version, he's a physician. He's a doctor, and he he he says that she has a severe. She has a higher attack of fever. This is a very serious fever.

And what does Jesus do? He touches her? He touches her. Like he touched the leper at the beginning of the chapter. I'm willing to be clean.

And when you cha touch a leper, you become unclean. And when you touch the fever, you take it on yourself. In the healing of the centurion, Jesus spoke a word from from a distance. He healed him from a distance, a word from a distance, and that was to show us the power and authority of the word of god. But here, as with the leper, it shows us why Jesus came in the flesh.

It's the very principle of the incarnation. It shows us why god became a man, so he could touch, so he could bear, so he could take up This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took our in up our infirmities and bore our diseases, and then immediately she's healed and off she is serving the lord, you know, the servant king serves us, and we wanna get up and serve him. That's really how it works, isn't it? We wanna serve him out of love for him serving us.

That's how it works. Well, we know we're loved by him. We love him. That's how it works. But the day hasn't ended.

I'm nor have I. There's there's a world of sickness and sin out there. Verse 16. When evening came, many who were demon possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all who were ill. When evening came, remember it's the evening of the same day.

But when evening came, it's it's like weird because evening approaches and all of the demons are coming out. This is like a zombie film, isn't it? It's like 1 of those vampire films. You know, the, you know, the it's alright until evening comes and then there's funny noises going on. And he's exhausted.

He's healed the mother-in-law. She served him. First time anyone's ever served him, he's being served and suddenly there's all these funny noises coming up, and there's team and possessed people coming from all over the place. It's like a zombie field. They're all marching towards him.

And what does he do? He spends the night bringing the kingdom of god into people's lives? Healing them. They're sick. They've got diseases.

They've got problems and mental health issues, and there's not 1 disease Jesus can't heal, and they all come to him and he heals them all 1 by 1. Look at the world that we live in. So many sicknesses and so many illnesses, and every week there's a new illness named, isn't there? You know, there are names for illnesses I never heard of when I was, you know, younger. You know, everybody's got a new thing.

Oh, have you heard of the new disease? I'm claiming that 1 or I'm claiming this. It's I always find it amazing that people even give their names to diseases, don't they? What a funny thing to do? I'm gonna call this the Woodcock sort of murderous disease, you know.

Have you got the Woodcock disease? Yeah. Yeah. Well, why would I give my name to that? I'd give it to a star.

You know, there's a star there, but a disease. There are more and more diseases, but there's not 1 single disease. No new discovery that Jesus cannot heal. And the parallel is with sin as well. He can forgive all sins, and that leads me to my fourth point, which has many points, which how do we apply this?

How do we apply it? It's a wonderful story, and there's a number of things I wanted to show you. But first of all, Jesus said, and I want to say to you, come to me all you who who are weary. And and and heavy ladened. And I will give you rest.

Come to you, to me, all who are weary, and carrying a heavy burden and I will give you rest. That's the healer Jesus. Don't matter what you got. Allow him to touch you, like the mother-in-law did. Personally touch you, allowing to do that.

You're thrown down. Yeah. Of course you are. You're thrown down. Like Peter's mother-in-law, you can't you can't get up.

You've got a heavy disease. You've got a heavy fever. But the touch of Jesus can lift you up. And in all the millions of people in the world, he loves to come to your house and to come to you personally and to touch you. That's the healer.

He does that. Yeah. That's the 1. When Matthew saw it, he said that's the 1. That's the 1 who does this for anyone.

The heart of the healer is to become cursed for you. He wants to take that. He wants to take your sin. He wants to take your infirmities. He wants to do that.

That's what he wants to do. That's what he's come for. That's why he was incarnated. That's why god came to this world, for you. This is extraordinary, isn't it?

And then, of course, the mother-in-law's response is wonderful, isn't it? And that really is a Christian response, isn't it? Well, you know you're you're healed by Jesus, and you wanna serve him. Is it that you have a be dragged into serving. You don't have to say, we'll get on this list and you don't have people standing up.

So there's another list, and we'd like you to join it. You don't. This isn't all that sort of nonsense. You serve him. You serve him.

You well, how how how can I serve him? How can I serve him? She's Spurgeon's got a good 1 on this. He he said about a woman in his church that, was saved. I think through preaching this sermon.

And she came to she's a talkative woman, spurgeon said, a very talkative woman. Yeah. And spurgeon's said the woman came to him and said, oh, mister spurgeon, Christ has changed my life, and he shall never hear the end of it. Yeah. I mean, that's the way to do it, isn't it?

Christ will never hear the end of it. Yeah. And he won't be sick of of of our praise. That's the first thing. Come to him.

Let him touch you. What what wherever you are. He he really was lovely hearing your your story. Marcus on Monday for the men, really lovely. It was really lovely.

Well, the men that were there, wasn't it lovely to hear that story? Well, it's a touch of Jesus, wasn't it? Yeah. Touch of Jesus. And half the problem with with Marcus and half the problem with all of us is we don't really believe that Jesus really does want to touch us and heal us and rise us up, raise us up.

That's half the problem, We fear that he'll cast us away. He's come to bring us in. That's the first thing. Second thing. In this talk, particularly, I really want you to understand the bigness of what Jesus did on the cross.

I I can't emphasize it. We we we mustn't limit what Christ had done on the cross. It was so amazing. Surely, this means that Jesus on the cross has absorbed all the illnesses, all the cancers, all the sicknesses, all the mental health, all the dementia, all the wounded heart, all the heart attacks, all the, you know, arthritic limbs, all the sins, all the acts of selfishness, all the guilt and rebellion all of the stupid lies that we've fallen for, he came and bore them for you so that there will be a new kingdom without any of those diseases. In this life, we'll have them.

But in the next we won't. Why? Because it's a next life. No. Because he bore them.

Every single disease. Will not be in the new creation. Why? Because he bore them. He bore them.

That's why. In this life, we're waiting. We're saved and we're still waiting for our bodies to be resurrected. And it will be. He will resurrect them.

Believe me, he'll resurrect them. And that leads me to my third point, the sufferings that we suffer now, and the pains and their birth pains now. Jesus has the power to change the pains and the problems. He's taken the sting out of suffering, the sting out of death itself. Jesus has has made it possible that even the problems and the difficulties and the and the the pains and the sufferings and the diseases that we have show us that we'll be made into the lord Jesus Christ 1 day.

We're waiting for the new place that he has made for us. And he's taken away everything. When when we die and go to the new creation, there's no pain. There's no funeral. There's no death.

There's no suffering. There's no crying. All that's gone. Why? Because on the cross, he's taken it.

And now as we suffer, we know that we're being made like Jesus, we're told. The son of god, Romans 8 deals with all of that. And then perhaps a fourth application is. We often want to dress up the Christian message and make it attractive. We should make it more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Right. We have to have good looking people as passes like me. We need people that look like the Hunchback and notre dame as our pastor. That's why we got Tom coming up. It's amazing, isn't it?

How we fall for attractive men and women? How we fall for the good looking? So so amazing. We're no no no better than the French in the fifteenth century. That see anyone that's sort of ugly as satanic.

No. No. No. We must not preach just nice things. We need to preach the 1 who was on the cross so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness.

That's the Jesus that we need to preach. But men and women will see water healer. Well, let's stop there. I will have a few minutes on tables to think about, some of the things that we've said, and then any questions and then we'll have a time of we've got a song or with a time of prayer or something. Yep.

So on your tables, chat over things that struck you, or if you haven't become a follower of Jesus, say that. Okay. Any, questions or thoughts? Or yes. So the question is about the wounds of Jesus.

Jesus still does bear the wounds for forever. Seems to me. That is because, I think, to show us that the forever, the new creation, the whole thing in all its beauty without sin or without pain or without death, is only there because of the power of the death of the lord Jesus Christ. So everything we see, we're we're reminded all the time that, oh, yeah, no, we're here because of this, and there is no pain because of this, and there is this new life because of this. And it's only because of that.

And so Jesus does still bear them, even though he has a new glorified body. Yeah. The Roy is saying maybe that's why they didn't recognize him because he's changed. He's got the wounds. And they need to see that to see that that is the same Jesus, but something glorified about him because he's not, he's born he's already born the sins, and he's got the new work new body.

Yep. Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. So the question is, that people take from this passage, particularly, that because he's born our iniquities that we should all be healed, so every Christian should be healed.

Well, we will be. So every Christian is gonna be completely and utterly healed. And in the new creation, it's gonna be healed. We have to wait for that. So it's it's called theologically over realized eschatology.

In other words, the end, the we've we've we've we've we've we've we've brought the end forward too too too much into this life. And we know that, Christians suffer the same pains, the same diseases, the same, you know, death because, you know, Paul who wrote Romans isn't he's dead. Well, he's alive, but he, you know, he's he's not here. And you can go through if you go through the new testament, you'll find that, you know, Paul was afflicted by by, infirmities, whatever that was. You have dorcas, she dies.

You have Timothy. That's ill. You've got, you know, Paul's got the fort thorn in his flesh. You know, I I could it wouldn't take long to, you know, give you a whole list of Christians that have died or suffered, a pain and a flick So it can't mean that in this world, we're going to be completely healed. And I was worried about giving this sermon because you're always worried about that, but I didn't wanna take away from the absolute.

He's born it. On the cross and the power of the cross. I mean, Romans 8 is the is the most helpful thing for your question, obviously. Because in Romans 8, Paul says I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. So Jesus has bought that glory.

We're not there yet. He says we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in, pains of childbirth right up to this present time. So that our sufferings Now this is what I was trying to say and didn't do it very well. Now our sufferings are childbirth pains. So you've got lovely wife, she's not here, but she's gonna go through some pains.

Yeah. And, it's not very nice, you know. I mean, why women do it? I don't know. What's up with them?

And they go through this this horrific pain to but at the end, the baby's born, and then these women forget it. They forget the pain, and it's amazing. Then I have another 1. He's like, what's up with them? Are they sadist or something?

But but but the baby, the joy of the baby, takes the pain away. And so what Christ has done on the cross for us now, which I think is different for non Christians, is that we know that the pain we suffer is childbirth pain. This pain is gonna go and turn us into glory because of what Jesus did on the cross. I think that's a really important, really important thing to get. But people that say that we're completely healed now, I I mean, I went around, a Christian what was it called?

It's something where loads of Christians have their displays and resources stuff. And I decided to go around all the healing groups. And I lit I did. I literally went around every healing group, and I noticed that All the workers on all the healing tables were wearing glasses. Not just some, but everyone who worked on a healing table had glasses.

Now, I don't have glasses and I'm 66. Yeah. So I thought I'd go around and say, have you ever asked for your eyes to be healed? You know? And oh, no.

I never thought about that. But what what what you only ever think of a leg. It's always the leg. You know? And so, you know, well, you ought to do that because you're not a very good advert because I come to you and you say you heal everything, and you're all wearing glasses.

It's rubbish, you know. And then a woman said, yeah, but I put I I I wear contact lenses sometimes. You have to think about that. Yeah. So we're not gonna be healed in this where we're gonna have the same afflictions and even more because we'll be persecuted, but all of them are childbirth pains because of the cross.

Not not because of the cross. That's what I really want us to get. Yep. Anything else? Any other questions?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. People the apostles did healings, but they were they were that was to show that they were apostles.

They were the sent ones from god that were laying the foundation of who the great healer is. Yeah. He they did they they did them. Yeah. I'm not saying we there aren't sorry.

Let me just now say the other. Doesn't mean to say we don't pray to the lord Jesus and to god the father for people to be healed. We've done that. We do that. That's a natural thing.

We we we we we obviously pray when people are ill and and suffering for them to be healed, and millions and millions of times, that people are healed. Millions and millions. I don't know how many miracles that we've seen in this church. Millions. Absolutely millions.

If you want my own thinking on this, which may be bizarre, It doesn't make me a heretic, I don't think, but it may I I think that every healing through a pill, through a doctor, through, you know, cream that you rub on. Every single healing through the cup where you're every healing is Jesus, and That only happens because of the cross, and common grace from the cross, even to unbelievers. There's a healing in this world only because of of the cross. And somehow Christ took the pain in some area of that healing. Loads of people think I'm a loony for believing that, but that's okay.

I don't mind. Yep. Okay. Why don't we have a couple of people giving thanks to the lord for what he bore? And then over to Tom.

Raise your voice. Give thanks. Come on. Let's do it. There'll be a lot a lot of people should be praising him.