Text: Matthew 8:1–4
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé

Resurrection & The Leper’s Living Death

We’ve been working through Jesus’ sermon on the mount—where the Lord of the Kingdom of God ascends his mountain to give his Law, a better Moses; where he sits like a King to instruct his people in th e good news of his Kingdom.

And from that mountain, he unfolded a glorious vision for a world-inheriting people—with a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. A people who are like a city on a hill, their righteousness shining like the noontide sun. This Kingdom of his would be marked with a glad humility, with a courageous meekness, with a people who use a generous measure, who do unto others what they would have done to them.

So this morning, we follow the Lord down from his mountain, and see him put that Kingdom in bright neon, put it on display, and see the glory of this King who comes down to bring healing to his people. 

Look with me, if you would, at Matthew 8:1. This is the Word of the Living God:

“When he 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.’”

-Matthew 8:1–4

Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith.

10 Signs

I’d like you to remember one of Matthew’s abiding aims in his account of Jesus’ life and ministry. Remember, he labors to show us how the ministry of Jesus recapitulates the story of Israel—fulfilling all of the shadows and types and signs that the Lord wrote into their history and story.

So Jesus’ coming is the coming of the true Israel, and of Israel’s God. One way we see this is in the way that Jesus systematically embodies episodes and characters from the story of Israel. We’ve just seen that over the previous three chapters, as Jesus stands on a mountain to give his Law—a better Moses. 

He will arguably continue to underscore the connection to Moses in the next three chapters as well, Matthew 8–10. In these chapters, we will follow as Jesus performs 10 miraculous signs—a significant number. These 10 signs are like miraculous reversals of the 10 plagues of judgment on Egypt, brought through Moses. Those were miracles of destruction; Jesus will perform miracles of renewal and resurrection. 

And after those 10 plagues, which led to Israel’s freedom from slavery in Egypt, Numbers 14:22 tells us that Israel rebelled against God in their wilderness journey 10 times. And so Jesus gives 10 miraculous signs, one for each rebellion.

The Leper’s Living Death

This first of these signs, here in Matthew 8:1–4, is significant. I hope to show you that this sign is nothing less than a resurrection—life brought forth from living death. To see this, there are at least four things you need to know about leprosy and the scene before us:

1. Leprosy was typically permanent, sometimes fatal, and generally untreatable.

There are a variety of skin diseases and other afflictions that would have been captured under the broad umbrella we think about as leprosy. For them to result in removal from the camp and essentially permanent uncleanness, they were basically incurable and chronic conditions. The worst of them were fatal and contagious.

2. Leprosy ranged from merely incapacitating to horrific—a numbing rot.

The worst of these conditions, what we call “Hansen’s Disease” today, was certainly fatal. It was a disease that involved a slow, creeping attack on the nervous system and other issues, leading to numbness, nerve damage, blindness, weakness in the extremities, disability, and ultimately a horrible death. Skin lesions would lead parts of you essentially rotting. We don’t know which condition this man had, but that is the range—essentially permanent conditions that ranged from chronic misery to certain death.

3. Leprosy was utterly isolating—a total removal from society.

The Levitical Law required quarantine for those with symptoms of leprosy. If they did not heal after a multi-part examination by the priests, the leprous person would be pronounced unclean and removed from society. 

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.” 

-Leviticus 13:45–46

Near total social isolation. Nearly impossible to work normally, have a family, raise children, or participate in any part of normal society. And worse, when you understand the words “outside the camp,” you understand that, number four:

4. Leprosy was a kind of functional excommunication. 

Not only was an unclean person removed from their family and workplace and normal society, they were also unable then to participate in the covenant rhythms. They couldn’t feast with the people at the appointed times. They couldn’t go to the Temple. They couldn’t join in the worship of Yahweh in the normal way.

So here’s the bottom line: Leprosy—whether of the fatal kind or otherwise—was a living death.

Glory from Horror

So that is the situation this man finds himself in. He is suffering immensely—emotionally, spiritually, physically, socially; pretty much in every way. And he is virtually without hope for any of this to be changed. 

I mean, just think about that. This man was destitute in every way. Think about it. Put yourself there. Think about what it would be like to be this man. 

And somehow, word has gotten to the leper colony outside the communities. And you’ve got to think, this guy is desperate, and so he hears that there is a healer, a man of God with miraculous power, seemingly from God. And maybe he—as others certainly were already—had begun to connect the dots and think, “Maybe this is Messiah. Maybe this is the one the prophets promised would come and set things aright, and bear our suffering.”

So he comes, and he kneels. And this word can mean everything from the kind of honor you would normally give a great ruler or leader, all the way up to worship. 

It could be any of that. So at the very least, he recognizes that Jesus is a great man, worthy of honor, and at the most, that he is one to be reverenced and worshiped. Again, we don’t know.

If you will, you can make me clean.

And what does he say? “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” There is a glory in what he says to Jesus that I want you to see. “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

That is a glorious sentence. He did not say, “Lord, if you can, make me clean.” He said, “if you will, you can make me clean.” He was saying, essentially, “I know you can heal me. I know it. The question is whether or not it is your will to do it, not whether you are able.” 

This is a truth—this truth the leper believed—beyond price. It is one of those truths that we need to get down deep in our bones, so that when suffering comes, we are ready to glorify God, whether in life or death. It’s the kind of truth that the Lord teaches us to pray in the model prayer we looked at some weeks ago, where we are taught to pray, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

It is a glory when God’s people bend the knee to the sovereignty of the King. He can heal or he can refrain from healing. He can give and he can take. He can build up and he can destroy. He can plant and he can uproot. And in all, we learn to say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD.” 

Why? Why bless the Lord when he doesn’t heal? Because of his promises. He says to us, his people, that he is working all things together for our good. What that means is that when we face suffering—even tremendous suffering; the fatal illness of a child, the loss of our job, a life-threatening illness, the loss of a spouse—we can look into the eye of that suffering and say, “The Lord is wise, and he is working even this for my good and his glory. He gives and takes away—but even his taking away is a gift.”

I will; be clean.

This leper doesn’t question Jesus’ ability, only his will. And so we read, that “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 

Just like that, this man’s whole world is reoriented. He is, for all intents and purposes, raised from the dead. The Lord Jesus strides into his social death, ecclesiastical death, vocational death, and dying body, and brings resurrection. He brings healing and cleansing.

Normally, it was unlawful to touch a leprous man on the basis of Leviticus 5:3, because it would make you unclean. However, Jesus touched this man. Why? How? We know that he came to fulfill every jot and tittle of the Law of Moses—so in this act, we know that the Lord did not violate the Law.

Why not? Because of who he is. Because Jesus did not touch an unclean man. When the Messiah touches the unclean, he does not become unclean—they become clean. He touched a cleansed man. He touched a healed man. His touch is a healing touch.

Why the order of silence?

After cleansing this man, Jesus says something that may strike you as peculiar. He said, “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.”

What is that about? Matthew doesn’t tell us, but one likely reason may be that the Lord did not come primarily to conduct a healing ministry, but to preach the gospel of the Kingdom, and did want his hearers to miss the point of his ministry altogether. 

So Jesus instructs the man to silence, and to go and show himself to the priest in order to obey the Law of Moses, specifically, the Levitical laws concerning a priestly examination to declare him clean and allow him to reenter the society of his family and of the worship of God in the Temple.

Glories in a Leper

Before we move on, I’d like to simply point at some of the glories that are on display in these 4 verses, lest we fail to worship.

See the glory of a King who stoops low.

We have seen over the last few weeks how the Lord Jesus, teaching on his mountain, is like Moses on Sinai, law in hand. But he is more than Moses—he is no mere intermediary. He is the King. He has come with a Kingdom. His message is the good news of this Kingdom. 

But look how low this King stoops! He doesn’t stay on the mountain. He comes down, and the first thing we see him do? Reach to the dregs of society. Touches the unclean. The Lord is like that. He humbled himself as no other has ever humbled himself. He left heaven to ransom us from the slums of our sin. There is no ditch he can’t find you in. There is no distance over which he cannot save. His arm is not short, because this King—who has a name above all names—stoops low. 

See the glory of Jesus resurrecting, curse-overthrowing power.

Yes, sin has corrupted everything. The world full of death and evil and darkness. But see in these four verses just a tiny, microcosmic gleam of the glory of what the Lord came to do.

This healing is just a taste. It’s just a glimmer. It’s still a glimmer of what he will do. As we sing in the best verse of Joy to the World, a verse too many tragically leave off, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the Curse is found.” 

That’s it. He came, not just to defeat sin, but to overthrow the Curse of sin. Think of everywhere in your life that thee Curse of sin has touched, has brought corruption. And make no mistake—a whole lot of it was through our own sin. 

Think of every illness, every tear, every wrecked friendship, every bitter thought, every divided church, every dead friend or family member, every car wreck—all of it. He came to overthrow it. He came to bring resurrection and glory where death and corruption reigned.

See the glory of this living parable.

The last glory I would have us see together in this story is the glory of the parable that unfolds in what we read in Mathew 8:–4. 

You all know by now, particularly if you have been with us for any length of time, that many things in the Bible function as signs—meaning they point at something. 

So a sacrificial lamb points to Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

So the flood in Noah’s time, the salvation of baby Moses in a basket on the Nile, and the crossing of the Red Sea all point to baptism—where we pass through the waters of judgment in safety by God’s mercy.

So the beheading of Goliath with his own weapon—clothed in scales like a serpent—points to the cross, where Christ crushed the head of the serpent with his own sword: Death.

We could go on. Leprosy is one of these things. It’s not just an illness; it’s a sign. It signifies. It points. It is a real thing that is a pattern for something even bigger than itself.

Leprosy, we could say, is something of a parable. At its worst, it brings corruption to the flesh even as it numbs the nerve endings, making them unfeeling. It rots you as you walk. And even the milder conditions were a living death—cut off from the people and from worship.

Sin is precisely like leprosy. 

Like leprosy, it is fatal and untreatable by merely human effort. You can’t wash it off. You can’t fix it yourself. You can’t medicate sin away with a different diet, a few pills. It’s beyond you. And it will not stop until you are dead.

Like leprosy, sin is a horrific, living death—a numbing rot. The more you sin, the more numb you get. We call this lots of things: hardness of heart, callousness, searing of the conscience, etc. Whatever you call it, it is real: The more you sin, the less you care about that sin, the less you feel when you sin, the easier it becomes to sin more. 

The first lie is sometimes hard. The ten-thousandth is not only easy, you don’t even notice it anymore. Lie enough, and you’ll forget that you are a liar. 

Like leprosy, sin will increasingly isolate you from God and men. Your sin can make you an outcast in your own home. It can destroy any human relationship. Even more than that, sin has cut humanity off from the living Branch of Christ. If sin can break fellowship with other unrighteous men, how much more will it cut you off from a perfectly, blindingly holy God? He cannot abide sin. He cannot dwell with it. He cannot let it in his holy place.

Pause with me here for a moment and let that rest on your mind. The thing about a truth like this is that the person it would help the most in the room is often the least likely to even see that he needs to hear it. Have you become numbed by your sin? Are you calloused to it? Are you a slave and don’t even know it? 

Really think about that. Can you look at pornography for the ten-thousandth time, then go and kiss your wife and not even feel a twinge of conscience? Can you lie to a coworker and not even blink? Can you snap a sarcastic quip at your husband for the fifth time in a day and not even feel like you’ve done something wrong? 

Don’t be lulled by the deceitfulness of sin. It is a deceitful thing. It is spiritual leprosy. You can have limbs ready to fall off and hardly notice. It will cut you off from fall that is good, and it will kill you even as it kills you.

Where is the glory?

So where is the glory in that? That sounds ghastly, not glorious. The glory is that the Lord Jesus came to do for our spiritual leprosy what he did for this man’s physical leprosy. He came to heal, to renew, to reverse the curse and bring in soundness.