It's so good to have all of here today..
Today were going to be talking a bit about something we all have in common...
LIFE...
Life has a myriad of definitions.
Depending on who you talk to and where you are, you will get varied understandings of what a good life is.
If you ask someone here in America they would say, “Oh, if I could just live on a tropical island, somewhere in the Caribbean, now that would be the life.”
But then if you were to ask a native of the Caribbean and they would say, “Oh, to live in America!”
Someone who is very poor would cry “Oh, to be rich!”
While the rich often say, “Oh, I just want to have a simple and healthy life!”
The childless woman would say, “Oh just to have children, that would be the life!”
While the mother with children says, “I never have moments of peace, someone is always calling for me to do something for them!"
Life: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
To a medical clinician, life is simply something that is breathing.
To a human, life is simply the day to day then death.
But to Jesus, life is His breath breathed into humanity not only at your physical birth but also for your spirit being!
Jesus is not interested in you simply living or existing but living in abundance!
So how do you live with abundant life?
And what is that anyway?
"I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep."
John 10:9-11
It’s when you have the weight of this life, the sin you were born with, but not designed for or equipped to handle, have been removed from your life.
Life more abundantly is when you live in the purpose you were created for.
That purpose of God that is tailor made to fit your life!
Life is more than work, sleep, eat, and procreation!
Life is meant to be more than punching a clock day after day and time ticking by until the ticker stops
ticking...
Life is about a purpose!
God's purpose!
And we choose to live a life outside of God's purpose.. our lives become filled with anxiety and stress.
One of my favorite quotes, is by Robert J. Shores,
“Our hope for eternal life in the hereafter does not spring from a longing for a spiritual existence, but grows out of our love for life upon this earth, which we have tried and found good.”
I've read this quote many times, but in preparation for this message, it hit me in a new, powerful way!
If you hate this life then why would you pursue eternal life?
The root word abundant is repeated over 70 times throughout the scriptures.
God wanted His people in the Old Testament, to live in a land flowing with milk and honey.
In the New Testament, He wanted us not only to have life, but that more abundantly!
"When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed."
Matthew 8:1-3
Leprosy is a peculiar disease and even with all of today’s medical science, there is still no cure.
How many of you know that there are still leper colonies in existence today?
There is one in LA and one in HI.
Leprosy in the Bible is much like cancer is today.
How many of you here have ever been affected by cancer yourself or someone you know or someone in your own family who has been affected?
I, myself have been affected by cancer, my mother, my father, my grandmother have all been affected by cancer. I have had many close friends affected by cancer, I have also lost many friends because of cancer!
Leprosy is a bacterium that affects the skin and nerves. Leprosy causes blindness, dead limbs, crippling, & amputation.
One of the greatest symptoms are loneliness and shamefulness!
For a surgeon, the most common symptom patients present to them with is pain. Pain causes a great deal of discomfort, suffering and despair. Most people will do anything for a pain free life and thus help fund a multi-billion dollar drug industry devoted exclusively to suppressing pain.
Pain however is a necessary part of life and the problem associated with loss of the sensation of pain needs to be experienced or witnessed in order to understand it’s importance.
Pain in the physical and spiritual is very important and something we cannot live without, therefore the importance and relevance of pain. Pain of course is perceived as a problem and not as the protective symptom that it is. Pain causes a protective response. Other parts of the body rush to favor and take on the burdens of the hurting part. The heel takes on the burden of the forefoot; the forefoot takes on the burden of the heel. The hand rushes to comfort the hurting part by holding and massaging.
If this does not occur and pain is ignored, or if the pain is absent, deterioration, and ultimately destructive results occur and a part of the body may be lost.
In the spiritual sense of leprosy when a saint of God is affected by sin we as the body of Christ must rush to the hurting part of the body or individual and begin to hold their hand in prayer and fasting for restoration.
Sin is much like leprosy, it starts out small and we may try and wrap the wound or run to the altar and repent. For some the leprosy is healed but for others they don’t pray enough to heal. Some time may go by and everything seems to be okay but all the time the leprosy continues to grow and spread.
We are standing on our own now without God and don’t even notice it. Our legs have lost all feeling and we don't even realize that we are damaging ourselves.
Then our eyesight becomes dim and we can’t see our way anymore and we begin to bump in to harmful things that cut us and bruise us and we can’t even feel it.
God comes by and try’s to touch us but our feeling is gone and we can no longer feel His hand of love, mercy and healing..
Sin begins to separate the infected and they become ostracized both by the community of believers and very often by their close family members. Not because the church or the family wants to, but generally because the diseased feels ashamed and hopeless.
You cut yourself off from the clean and join the unclean.
In our text today we find that this leper is the first man to call Jesus, Lord.
He was not a prophet, not a Pharisee, not even a disciple, but merely a leper!
The Book of Matthew was written for the Jews to show them that Jesus was their King.
Matthew is the only Gospel of the four that starts out with the leper. I believe that God wanted Matthew to convey to God’s people that He was not some God who was millions of miles away.
Or who would be a ruler and who would only talk to His subjects when they were bad.
But God wanted Matthew to show His people that He loves them so much that He would step out of the vastness of Heaven, not as a royal king with vast armies and generals to set up an earthly palace and kingdom but that He would robe Himself in flesh and walk among them and touch them, and healing them.
This is an interesting story Matthew gives us.
In verse one, talks about the multitude but out of the multitude comes one man. Sometimes a crowd hinders us. The woman with the issue of blood. Everyone else was standing and looking around but when she touched Him a miracle came forth.
Here is my point...
The lepers could never dwell with the clean again. They ate, slept, worked, and married their own kind and like some kind of lost tribe they lived together.
The Bible says the leper worshiped Him. Not asked for forgiveness, not asked for a healing, not for financial gain but he came forward and said Jesus I know who you are, and worshiped Him.
In that day, to touch a leper was a violation of the law!
Matthew again shows Jesus as the King by saying the leper worshiped Him.
Mark shows this leper as a servant kneeling down.
Luke shows him falling down before Him.
The leper worshiped, knelt, and fell before Jesus.
Some ask why we raise our hands and why we worship the way we do. We have come to worship, kneel, and fall on our face and declare that He is God!
The next miracle in our text today tells us the story of the Centurion’s servant. It is the first story in the other Gospels. Jesus healed the centurion’s servant without ever touching him.
Later, 10 lepers come to Jesus, but only one runs back and thanked Him.
It was this man that fell and worshiped Him. The same God who said don’t touch a leper or you will die, the same God that said leprosy is a type of sin and to stay away, is the same God that stepped out of Heaven in the form of Jesus Christ and said I am going to bring you something new called love and mercy and I am going to personally touch you.
He could have stopped some 12 ft. or 300 ft. away and said be healed like the priest.
But He wanted Matthew to write that I am not a God who sits somewhere a million miles away and is just waiting to kill you with a sword when you make a mistake but I want to show you love and mercy and salvation and forgiveness!
Today, I am preaching on Jesus, the life you have been searching for!
Allow me, if you will just a few more moments this morning.
I want to draw your attention to one final story in John 4:9-19
"Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet."
Jesus leaves Judea and heads towards Galilee but the Bible says He had to go to Samaria.
Many times when a person makes up in their mind: “I need a change, I just can’t live like this anymore!"
God has a way of finding you.
say that with me..
GOD HAS A WAY OF FINDING YOU!
AMEN!
Maybe your well experience was a knock on your door with an invite to my social media to hear my teaching. Maybe you stumbled across our ministry website..
Maybe you were searching for something else, and came across one of my teachings that drew your attention..
For this woman, it was another horrible typical day, who no doubt as a child dreamed of becoming a princess to a prince. A queen to a tall dark strong handsome king in a palace set on a hill somewhere.
Or maybe her dream was much simpler. A nice house with a porch and white picket fence with children playing in the yard and a husband who would love her, provide for her and protect her all of the days of her life..
We can assume there were several reasons why this woman would go to the well at noon. I don’t believe the other village women went this late in the day due to the heat and the fact that most of the house work would start early because of the heat.
She was a shameful woman and an outcast in her town. Nobody wanted to be seen talking to her.
I see her darting around corners and in alleys on her way to the well. She is ashamed and at a loss of how to get out of the web she is in. Her life is miserable and maybe she wonders if it would be better to just end her life.
The pills, drugs, and the alcohol only numb her for a short time.
She sees a man at the well, oh great I can’t stand the sight of men and now I have to draw water with him here. I wonder if he knows who I am. I wonder if he is going to proposition me like all the rest.
But before she can tell him what she thinks he asked her for a drink of water. I can see her thinking wow that is an original pick up line!
You know what I like about God?
He is a God who says if you will just worship me I will touch you. And when I touch you I will put back all the broken pieces of your marriage, home, your loneliness, hopelessness, and unhappiness. I will heal your sicknesses and diseases... I'll make you whole.
I will give you life and that more abundantly!
There’s no telling how many times that woman went to that well alone. All she had was... Her shame. Her fear. Her loneliness.
But Jesus knew what she needed.
He knew He had what she had been looking for.
He is offering you today, the same thing he offered her the same thing that day long ago...
A relationship with Him.
His love instead of all the problems your life has burdened you with.
He is just waiting and wanting to touch someone here today....
Will it be YOU?
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever in Jesus' name
Amen
A relationship with Him.
His love instead of all the problems your life has burdened you with.
He is just waiting and wanting to touch someone here today....
Will it be YOU?
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries