Episode 330: If You Are Willing | Tim Henderson

Introduction

Good morning, everybody. I hope you're doing alright. Right as Brian got up to stand, my throat went dry and sweet Barbara ran off. Oh, you're gonna make me look stupid in front of everybody. She's scary sometimes. You guys, we're gonna continue our march through the gospel of Matthew today. I don't know if you've even noticed. We're kinda subtle about it, but we've been looking at a different chapter of Matthew every week for the last, I don't know, couple months. We're gonna be in Matthew chapter eight this week. So if you got a Bible you wanna open there, feel free. I'll have a lot of the relevant text on screen, but it's just kinda nice to see it in your own Bible.

When I was initially studying Matthew eight to see which, you know, what I wanted to look at, initially I thought I was gonna look at the first 18 verses. If you read Matthew 18, the first 18 are what we call a pericope, if you wanna be fancy about it, it's a whole unit. And in it, Matthew shows Jesus being really kind and moving towards healing and mercy towards a leper, a Gentile, and a woman. And I think what Matthew was doing, kind of grouping these together, he's just trying to give us this snapshot of the ridiculous breadth of the love of Christ. That all these different people, if you're in Israel at the time, lepers and women and Gentiles are not exactly like center stage for the Christian life, and Jesus is intentionally going out to people on the margins.

And as I was reading through it and thinking about it and thinking about what I wanted to talk to you, it's just so obvious that Jesus loves all sorts of people. And I know that some of us wonder, like, am I the kind of person that Jesus would be into? Like, would he wanna spend time with me? And I think what Matthew is showing us in chapter eight is the answer is yes. He is the kindest and the most welcoming man who has ever lived. He's just he's just extraordinary.

But as I was prepping that and preparing that and getting ready to talk about that, I just got arrested by this first story. I was so struck by the first guy, this leper, that I just couldn't push past it. And so rather than exploring the breadth of his love for everyone, I just feel compelled to pause and to look at the depth of his love for just this one because there's just so much good stuff in these first four verses that I wanted to look at with you. So we'll take it one verse at a time. We'll see what Matthew wants to show us about how remarkable Jesus is.

The Faith of the Leper

This is Matthew 8, verse 1. He says, when Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. Now, it might be obvious, it might not be obvious to you what he's talking about, but this is Matthew 8. What are Matthew 5, 6, and 7 about? Do you remember what that was? That's the Sermon on the Mount. So when he says he came down from the mountain, what he's saying is after that long sermon, he comes down. Now sermons are words, they're ideas, they're kind of lofty and heady things, and for the last several chapters, Jesus has been in the world of notions, but then as soon as he comes down from the mountain, we leave kind of notions behind and it gets really practical and active.

Alright? And as he comes down, he watch I want you to watch what happens when he gets to work. And bear in mind, based on verse one, look at verse one again, it says large crowds followed him. Remember that when we read verse two. It says, a man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

The Leper's Approach and Jesus' Response

Alright. First off, leprosy. Everybody knows leprosy is miserable. Right? It's basically a a progressive bacterial infection that does all sorts of hideous things. Right? It attacks not our nerves, fortunately not my nerves, it attacks people's nerves. It affects the extremities in particular. You'll often see, in fact, think we have an image of some pictures of this. Like, oftentimes, if you see pictures of lepers, if you've ever met someone with leprosy, like, it just mangles their hands, their extremities get wrecked. It produces lesions and sores and wounds. It actually affects the upper respiratory tract, nasal passages, causes muscle weakness. It's just a miserable thing.

And in Jesus' day, there was just no treatment. And the thing led just to severe disfigurement. But because it's contagious, it also led to what we probably think of most of all for leprosy is ostracism and isolation and banishment. And in light of that, I want you to watch the leper's approach. Okay? Take a look at what happens here in verse two. Despite the forced banishment that was inflicted upon him and despite the crowd that Jesus is with, the leper walks right up to him. That is audaciously bold. He's supposed to be out in the wilderness. Stay away. You know, get away from all the healthy people and stay away. But he braves the crowd and he walks right up to Jesus. And then when he gets to Jesus, what does he do? He kneels before him. Right? Those two things that he's manifesting right there, the audacity to come and then the humility when he comes, is such a model for us.

This is how we're supposed to approach Jesus. We come to him with audacity, with boldness, but we come to him with humility and loneliness because he's the king. Hebrews four, some of you may have memorized this passage. Hebrews four, it kinda invokes this idea, and it tells us to come boldly before the throne of grace. Right? We're to come before his throne. He gives us access. He gives us welcome. And so we march into the room. He's approachable. But as we come boldly, we remember we are approaching a throne upon which is seated a king. He's high and lifted up. And so we kneel before his supremacy. And then watch this. Watch what the leper says here still. It says, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

The Willingness of Jesus

If I'm being honest with you guys, that line is why that's what was so arresting to me, and that's why we're staying here just in these few verses. This line, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Now I should tell you, a little bit of insider knowledge here. When we designed the series of Matthew, the way we just portioned it up, and, you know, Quig gets this chapter, Tim gets this chapter, Sloop gets this. We're just kinda marching through. And we get a chapter, but you can do whatever you want, and there's a lot of stuff in every chapter.

I have been gone some of you may have noticed, haven't gone the last couple of weeks. I got back last night for my third weekend away in a row. I'm speaking to hundreds of college students at these retreats. It's been wonderful and fun, a little bit exhausting, but it has also caused me to miss the things that are going on here. So I haven't been here when we made the announcement that Dave is gonna be the new senior pastor of Holy Spirit. I mean, all that work is I missed all the fun and all the joy of being here for that discovery, but we've been I've I've been involved in this whole process, and we're so thrilled. Sloop, we just love you. I love you. Dave and I are super close friends, and we're so excited about what the Lord is doing, so optimistic and hopeful. We feel like the wind is at our back and that there are some really exciting things coming before us.

But one particular little detail in it that I want you to know, Dave preached last week, but I wasn't here, and I didn't hear what he said. I was off talking to students. I don't even remember where I was. West Virginia, I think. And then I come home, and then I sit down, and I'm working on what I wanna look at for Matthew eight, and I wanna do the whole thing, and then I narrow down. I want to focus in on this idea. And I told Sloop what I was going to be teaching on. He's like, well, that's funny. Did you hear what I taught on last week? And I'm like, well, no. And as we process through where the Lord was leading him in Matthew seven, right, and where I feel like we need to go here in Matthew eight, it just seemed so obvious to us that though we are not coordinating anything, the Lord is coordinating things.

What I'm gonna talk about today dovetails so well with what Dave talked about last week. And that sort of thing, we just Dave and I have had so many conversations. This just keeps happening over and over that we feel like, well, God the God is in this. He's doing things, we're working things out to some good situation. And I think that you might see that as we unpack this, I hope that you'll see, like, man, there's something we didn't coordinate it, but it was coordinated, and it was prayerfully part of God's plan.

Jesus' Power and Willingness to Heal

So anyway, take a look. First thing, the leper knows that Jesus can heal him. He says, if you're willing, you can make me clean. He doesn't tell us how he knows. We're not sure exactly what's the basis for his confidence in Jesus' ability. If I had to guess, I would think that he's just simply been paying attention.

Four chapters ago in Matthew chapter four, Matthew wrote this:
Matthew 4:23
Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, perhaps including to this man. And people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, the paralyzed, and he healed them.

This guy probably heard the reports, he reasoned, well, if Jesus can do that for them, then he could do this for me. Right? Good enough. But what really gets me is the way that he phrases it. Because the leper says, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And I don't know. Have you ever wondered what is Jesus willing to do for you? I have. I know he can do all things. I've read all about it, and I've even seen some of it, like, direct and firsthand. But that is not the same as having confidence that he will do it.

I am honestly often far from certain of what he's willing to do, and I suspect that a lot of us live in that same space. I know Jesus can do all sorts of good things. But what good is it if it doesn't do it for me? Last week, Dave said that we question his—how do you say, bro? We quest—we don't question his power, but we question his heart. Right? Does that resonate with you? We wonder, is he willing to fix my marriage, save my kids, heal me, provide the job, restore the relationship? Maybe.

The last three weekends, as I said, I've been away, and I've been talking to students, and it's been super fun. And the series that I've done has been based on Second Peter chapter one. And this is a passage where Peter says that his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Now, if you're me, you like that, because I love knowing stuff. And when Peter says, hey, know, it's your knowledge of him, that's really where the power lies. And, like, in the little tiny kingdom of Tim Henderson, knowledge is the coin of the realm. I love the knowledge stuff.

Problem is, he doesn't stop there. And his next line is just a giant rebuke to me. The next thing that Peter says, he says, give us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him, called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, through his glory and goodness, he's given us his very great and precious do you know the next word? Promises.

And when I get to that, I'm like, oh, I'm not as good at the promises. I know what they are, but that's not the same as believing them. It's not the same as resting in them. His promises are not my strong suit. And there are a lot of areas in my life where I am more inclined to fear than faith, to dread than expectancy, and the biggest area by far is the well-being of my children. John says, we have no greater joy than to know that our children are walking in the truth. And when they aren't, boy, oh, boy, it's just excruciating.

Some of you, I imagine, I'm certain, know someone, love someone that's not currently living in the grace and safety of Jesus Christ. You know what he's purchased, and you know exactly what I mean. You might say, you might have said, Lord, if you're willing, you can draw him to faith. But I don't know if you're gonna, and I'm terrified that you might not. Or maybe it's not that. Maybe it's something else. There's no shortage of things about which we might be anxious.

Is there some topic for you where the cry of your heart is, Lord, if you're willing, you can fill in the blank. Do you know this space, this thing? Well, more on that in a minute. Take a look at verse three.

Jesus reached out his hand and he touched the man. He said, I am willing, be clean. And immediately he was cured of his leprosy.

Now, Jesus touched the guy, right? You all know this, you don't touch lepers. Right? Teach your children, don't touch people with leprosy, okay? Nobody can touch this guy. And what that means is this poor guy, he has had to live in isolation. He has got to be absolutely starved for human touch. Do any of you guys remember in high school reading about the Harry Harlow monkey experiments? Is this familiar to you? If you don't recognize the name, you might remember the phenomenon. I got pictures of it happening up here.

This was controversial, pretty unethical, honestly, by today's standards, but it was a fascinating series of experiments on bonding. What this guy did is he would take these monkeys, and as soon as they were born, he would remove them from their mothers, so they had no monkey contact. And he put them in a cage with two surrogate mothers. There's this wire, this hard wire thing, that's a surrogate mom on the left, and he would put a milk bottle on it. They could go to that thing for sustenance, the things they would need to keep them alive, but then there was this other surrogate mom that was the same kind of deal, but it was wrapped in a terry cloth towel. So there was one that had milk, but was not very soft or cuddly, and the one that was. You wanna guess which ones the monkeys liked better? Yeah. Right? They were drawn to the touch.

He would do other experiments where he would, after they were separated out, see how what would happen if monkeys were raised with all the nourishment, all the nutrients they needed, but none of the touch, none of the softness, none of the warmth. What he found is that it completely wrecked them. That when a monkey was with even just with a terry cloth mom, they would explore, they would check out their environment, and then when they'd get frightened, they'd run back to this terry cloth monkey for comfort. But the monkeys that were in a cage where there was nothing soft, just this hard wire, literally, the monkeys would curl up on the floor and suck their thumbs and be paralyzed with fear.

Now, you could look at that and say, okay, first of all, that's brutal and cruel. Yes, it was. You could also look at it and say, well, are monkeys—those aren't human beings. Maybe we're smarter than they are. Does anybody think that we would be any different? Right? We long—we're desperate for human interaction. And so Jesus sees this guy in his pain, and he moves toward him, and he touches him. Right? We're made for relationship and touch. So he touches the guy. And then after he touches the leper, he says these words that we long to hear. He says, I am willing. Be clean.

Jesus' Willing Love and Our Response

It is, for me, personally, in the hopes of hearing Jesus say, I am willing, that I regularly pray for my kids, one in particular who's not walking with Jesus. And I have this very short list of friends whose children are also not walking with Jesus. And I made a decision, it was about a year ago, that I would set aside one day a week, and I would fast, and I would pray for my kids, that I would seek the Lord, I would go before his face. And you guys, I fast and I pray not because it makes sense, but because it specifically does not make any sense. I have no idea why Jesus would care that I'm hungry when I'm praying to him. It seems rather absurd if you wanna know the truth. But in this sort of a situation, I know, I know that I have no power. You cannot compel someone to believe something.

I have no capacity to change this at all. But I am not a passive person. I can't stand sitting still. I live to solve problems. Every day I get up early and I wanna go do something and fix something and make something better, and I can't. And it completely drives me out of my mind. And so in this space where I can't do nothing and I can't do anything, what the heck do I do? And so what the heck I have chosen to do is I'm gonna set aside a day a week, and I'm gonna fast, and I think it's weird. I don't get it, but it doesn't matter. I don't need to understand to obey. And I go before the Lord, and I say, Lord, let's intervene. And I seek his name, seek his face, and I cry out for mercy.

Started actually because of a conversation I had with Mike Massey about a year ago about this very thing as we were just working out our own angst. And I just realized, I'm like, okay, I'm like fifty-three, maybe I get, I don't know, twenty years, a thousand weeks. And if I can take a thousand Tuesdays and seek his face and humble myself before him, and if that pleases him in some way, game on. Right? And we'll see what the Lord chooses to do.

I want to be like the leper who is bold and audacious and humble. I want to be like the woman, the widow in Luke 18, who Jesus commends for her audacity that she just comes and she keeps on coming. I wanna be like that. But here's the thing. Here's the confession. The last few weeks, as I've been preparing that series from Second Peter and the language about promises, we know him because we know his promises. I've come to realize and I've had to admit that I approach God like a man set out to persuade him to do what he does not want to do. Does this make sense? Do you live in this space?

It has been my tacit assumption, or maybe better to say, it's been my fear that he's not willing, but maybe I can change his mind. Some of you, that might make sense. I have had to repent. I'm in the process of repenting and looking at Gideon's promises because the Old Testament's favorite Bible verse is Exodus 34:6. Do you know it? It's the one that says,

The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness and rebellion and sin.

And I have had to sit in that and be like, Lord, you are gracious and compassionate. You are abounding in love and faithfulness. And I love the part about the multi-generations because that is exactly the point of my fear. And I'm trying to move my heart from a place of, like, dread, dreadful begging to expectant hope. And that, honestly, some of you might know, is a little bit frightening. And there is a motive to be self-protective. You don't wanna really hope because that just sets you up for disappointment.

And I wonder, are you willing to hope, to believe the promises, to step out, take a step of faith, and begin to allow yourself to daydream that he is willing and that he loves to move towards the people that he loves. Here's what perhaps might increase that hope.

Take a look at verse four. This has been helpful to me as I intentionally am trying to, like, talk to myself more than I listen to myself, if that makes any sense.

Jesus said to him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

This don't tell—that don't tell anyone—is a feature of Jesus' healings. He often will heal somebody. He's like, shh. Keep it on the down low. Right? And it might be like, why does he do that? Why doesn't he, like, you know, advertise it? You can get you can kinda get a clue about this, some hints.

It shows up frequently in Matthew nine. He heals this blind guy, a couple blind guys, like, don't tell anybody. In Matthew 12, he heals the guy with a shriveled hand. Do you remember this one? Here it is. Here's what happens. Put it on screen.

He says to this guy with a shriveled hand, Stretch out your hand. So he stretched it out, and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But, verse 14, the Pharisees went out, and they plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Jesus knows every time he does a miracle, he's taking himself one step closer to his own crucifixion. His healings are inciting his enemies against him, and he knows that he wants to heal, he wants to do, he's trying to train the disciples, maybe even, I don't think this is heresy, he's a human being. There's something fearsome about the cross that he's awaiting. He's like, don't tell anybody, not yet. And everybody goes, and I tell people all the time. Right?

And he knows that in order for this leper's skin to be healed and closed, his own skin is gonna be torn by nails and spear. But he does it anyway. He still does it, okay? He tells the guy, don't tell anybody. He's like, ah, you can tell the priests, right? And there's a couple reasons for that. Number one is to fulfill all righteousness. You gotta tell the priests. It's like part of the rules. If you stop, if you're cleansed of your leprosy, you gotta go get it cleared up with the priests. And number two, it's only the priests that can restore him into society. They're the ones that kinda give him the certificate of cleansing.

And so Jesus gives him a complete healing, physically and socially, and he welcomes him back in so that this guy doesn't need to be the lonely monkey anymore. He can come back into society. But check this out, there's a parallel here. We're in Matthew 8. The parallel to this is in Mark 1. Mark tells the same story, but he includes a different detail that Matthew doesn't. So we'll flip back over to Mark 1 and see this. Watch what happens.

Same story, filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and he touched the man. He said, I am willing, he says, be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. And Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning,

See to it that you don't tell this to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priests and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them. And watch this. Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. And as a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places.

Do you see the irony here? Like, the leper no longer has to stay outside in the lonely places, he's walking back into society. But Jesus, out to the wilderness with you. And this is just the essence of his work. He takes on our sin and our suffering, and he bears it in our place. And you guys, he does it because he is willing.

Romans 8:32
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things?

This. And so I think, you guys, it's just who he is. It's just what he's like. It's just what he does. The cross is a demonstration of his willingness and his love toward you. And I think this gives us good reason to be hopeful that in the particulars of our pain, Jesus is willing. It's the thing that enables us to move towards him, yes, boldly, and yes, humbly, but also expectantly, even if that feels scary. Does it make sense?

Application

So this is what I'm trying to repent of and trying to do. Many of you perhaps have some issue where you just wonder, Lord, are you willing? Some of you in particular might share my concern for a child who has gone astray. If so, if either of those categories fits you, then I'd like to invite you to something. I've been thinking about this for a year, and I'm finally—I don't know why now—finally want to invite you to it. I wonder if any of you would like to join me in setting aside a day, a week, to fast, to take a risk, and to go out there and say, Lord, if you are willing, you can do this.

What I do is honestly pretty sissy as far as fasts go. I do a twenty-four-hour fast. So I'll have dinner on Monday night, and then I don't eat again throughout Monday night, and Tuesday morning, and Tuesday lunch, I don't eat. So it's twenty-four hours, and I break the fast Tuesday night. We have the fellows over for dinner every Tuesday, and I break the fast with them.

And throughout that day, I'm just praying, you know, throughout—I mean, truth is, I'm praying all the time about this, like, all the time. But Tuesdays in particular, I set aside thirty minutes. I go outside. I'm usually at the church. I just walk around the church building, and I just pray and I just cry out to the Lord and just ask him. And, again, I figure, you know, twenty years, I might get to do it a thousand times—to intercede and to ask in faith that God would bring life and salvation to a very short list of dear people that don't know his grace.

And if you would like to join me, you can. In fact, if you don't mind, throw my email address up there. Thank you. If you'd like to join me, you can. That could look like a couple of different things. One, you might physically join me and show up, and we can walk around the church together, and we can pray for the things that I'm begging the Lord for, believing him for, and you can too. Or maybe you can't do that, and that's fine. Maybe it's Tuesday for you. Maybe it's gotta be Wednesday. I don't know your schedule.

But what if—I mean, I don't know. I've just been daydreaming about this for a while. But what if God chooses that he's pleased to create a movement in our community? Right? Some of the stuff that Sloop and I have been talking about. What would he do? What would this look like? What could it be? Right?

As a staff team, and we have been thinking about the future, what if all this work, Brian and Barb are so strong in prayer and so interested in seeing us be a community that really seeks his face? What if we're a community that prays and fasts? You could just pick a day. What is the thing you're crying out for? And what if one of us, two of us, 12 of us, 50 of us, 500 of us are seeking his face through prayer and fasting—a day a week? We're coming boldly. We're coming humbly, but we're doing it expectantly, believing his promises.

Right now, if the same thing just keeps coming through your head that this is the thing I don't know what he's willing to do, then you could, if you'd like to, come down front. We have time set aside every morning. I'd love there to be streams of you coming that we kneel before the Lord and say, Lord, if you're willing, you can do this. We love to see it happen.

And if God is pleased that nothing happens from that, that's fine. I'm going to keep doing it. But if he is pleased to invite others to come in and begin a movement, that we begin to really, at a different manner, seek his face, fast, and pray, and then wait together expecting him to fulfill the promises, then I think that would be magnificently fun.

Conclusion

And so I'm gonna pray for you that God will give you the courage to ask, but also the courage to hope that he really just is willing. Lord Jesus, what are we without you? What hope do we have apart from you? I know some of the stories in this room right now and some of the fears that are carried, some of the hopes and the hopelessness. Lord, if you would be pleased to jiggle the lock and make the key turn in our hearts that we would believe that you are the Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, faithful to a thousand generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, that we can go before you. The Old Testament's favorite verse would become our favorite verse, and we would believe that it's all true. Would you be pleased, Lord, to give us the courage to hope and to wait on you.

Lord, we love you, and we thank you that you love us. Amen.