“The Authority to Cleanse our Sin” – Matthew 8:1–17

Sermons – Harvest Community Church (PCA)

Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter eight, verses one through 17. "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. When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And he said to him, I will come and heal him. But the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me. And I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he does it, or and he comes, and my. To my servant do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west, and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. While the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the centurion Jesus said, go. Let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment. And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother in law lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him. That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons. And he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases." The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Uh, one of the most interesting books that I have read in the last decade was a book published in 2012 called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Uh, you spell his name h a I t. Now, Jonathan Haidt is not a Christian, so far as I know. Uh, he is rather a sociologist whose research attempted to give some kind of explanation for why our society is so divided on questions of morality. Why can two different groups of people look at the same thing? And one group says that is absolutely morally right, and the other group says that is absolutely morally wrong, and he's trying to get in the mindset of different people and to understand how people make these judgments and discernments about what is right and wrong. Now, one of the interesting things, and this is what was a really helpful thing for me as I was reading this book, is his discussion on the way that cultural narratives influence each and every one of us to discern what is right and wrong. It helps us to to look at according to the world and evaluate everything according to right and wrong, according to what he calls different paradigms, um, different ways of judging tests to apply to the things that we see around us. You might call this a worldview. He calls this a cultural narrative. And what he says is that sometimes in different peoples, different societies, different groups, within those societies, there are narratives, cultural narratives, worldviews that sometimes really focus in on 1 or 2 of these paradigms about how to judge what is right and what is wrong. And they do a pretty good job when it's a clear cut case where that is the right tool to apply to that situation, to judge between right and wrong. But if the narrative, if the worldview doesn't account for really the whole spectrum of morality, the narrative they have can blind them from other ways of looking at things that are in this world to judge what is right and what's wrong. And what he says is that in the Western world, we have really focused in, we've really thinned morality in a lot of ways to what he calls a care harm paradigm. So if you think about all of the discussions of the world is having in our corner of the world in the West about what is right and what's wrong, it doesn't take too long before this question of morality boils down to, does this help someone or does this hurt someone? And we really don't think about too many other factors of this. And one of the especially helpful things that Hite talks about in his book relates to sexual morality. And he says that in our society, very often the conversation goes that as long as no one is very clearly hurt by this, then anything can go. Whereas other cultures, he looks at a lot of non-Western cultures and recognizes there's a much stronger sense of of another paradigm of, for example, purity and pollution. What makes us pure and what actually pollutes us, defiles us, makes us unclean. And so he says, this is a paradigm that when we focus only on what cares for people or what harms for people, it can blind us from seeing other aspects of of how to think about morality in the world. Now in the West, we just don't think often at all in any circumstance about this idea of purity and pollution, except perhaps when it comes to questions about the environment. Or some people really think about the purity and the pollution of the food that they eat. But in most cases, we just don't think too much about this. And the reason I think this is important for this passage is that I think it goes a long way in explaining why we are not terribly impressed by Jesus's healing miracles. We look at these and we say, oh, that's good, I guess. But our scientists, our doctors can heal this kind of a thing today. They can heal the sick, they can cleanse leprosy, they can heal leprosy. What is the big deal about Jesus doing it here? But again, it's because we have this worldview, this cultural narrative that really only sees morality, only sees spiritual matters in this care harm paradigm. And it blinds us to questions of purity and pollution, of cleanness and uncleanness. But what if we were missing because of our cultural narratives? What Jesus is really doing here? What if what Jesus is really doing here is not just to perform a medical miracle, but rather to cleanse the unclean, to purify the polluted? Well, I want to argue that's exactly what Jesus is doing here. And more than that, I want to argue that that's extremely important for us in the West, who are largely blind to questions of purity and pollution in our world. So our big idea as we study these three stories of healings is this that Jesus has authority to cleanse us from sin. Jesus has authority to cleanse us from sin. So three parts to the sermon today as we look at these three different stories. First of all, we have Jesus as a priest who cleanses unclean Jews, A priest who cleanses unclean Jews (Matt. 8:1-4) A temple who comes to unclean Gentiles (Matt. 8:5-13) A sacrifice who carries away our unclean sin (Matt. 8:14-17) A priest who cleanses unclean Jews So let's start in verses one through four. A priest who cleanses unclean Jews in verses one through four. Now we should remember what just finished last week, Andrew preached, but the week before we had our last week in the sermon on the Mount. Now, the sermon on the Mount stretched from Matthew five, chapters five all the way through. Seven and at the end of that, what we looked at two weeks ago was the at the concluding word that Jesus offered. The crowds recognized his authority as a teacher. Look at verses 28 and 29 of chapter seven. When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. Well, the authority of scribes, they don't really have their own authority. Their only authority is that they are copyists, and they are people who pass on the teachings of the authority of other people. But Jesus spoke as one who had real authority. He taught of his own authority. Well, that question of authority is going to carry into our passage, but we're going to look at different aspects, different parts of what it means for Jesus to have authority. And we are going to see that Jesus is is for the moment, pausing from teaching to then focus on the authority not of His Word, but the authority of his deeds. And his deeds are going to reinforce the authority that he displayed in his teaching. So the first test to Jesus is authority. What can he do? What deeds can he do? Comes in the form of an unclean Jewish leper. Now, leprosy was not merely a medical condition. Leprosy certainly is a medical condition, but it was not merely a medical condition. The Bible is full of ways in which it casts leprosy as a symptom of spiritual uncleanness, because of the sin of the world. Now, not necessarily that this particular leper had personally sinned in some particular way where he was guilty of some harm that caused him to then gain this leprosy by which he was counted unclean. We're just talking about the general sin that is in the world and a symbol of that. The symbol of this pollution is very often in the Bible described by leprosy. Sometimes personal sin does lead God to strike certain people with leprosy, but not very often. Generally, this is sort of a general story of a symbol of sin in the world. So this is not a medical story. Don't read this just in terms of a scientific. We need to sort of have the right scientists and doctors prescribe the right medicine to him. This isn't a medical story, but this is not simply a story about social outcasts in the world. Jesus did not come to challenge private prejudices against lepers, as though the Old Testament had said the wrong thing. When the Old Testament prescribed that lepers should be counted as unclean, Jesus came not to confront prejudice. Jesus came to cleanse these lepers. It's a far deeper, greater solution. So what does the Old Testament say about leprosy? Well, we have to look at Leviticus 13 and 14 to really see this. Uh, in Leviticus 13, we read about extensive regulations in the Jewish law, the law of Moses, where priests were recommended or priests were commanded to be the ones who would diagnose leprosy. Now they weren't considered doctors. Again, this isn't a medical question. They were to recognize that a spiritual blight had fallen upon these people. They didn't pronounce them sick. They pronounced them unclean in Leviticus 13. That's what lepers did, or that's what priests did. When they found a leprous person. They diagnosed not the physical condition, but the spiritual uncleanness because of this leprosy. And so in Leviticus 13, verses 45 through 46, we read, this is the commandment that God gave to his people to separate the clean from the unclean. The leprous person 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. So this is the law that God gave to separate the clean from the unclean. But then in Leviticus 14 there was another set of regulations also dealing with leprosy. But this time it had to do with the way in which priests would identify that the leprosy had departed from the individual. And when that was the case, the leper who had previously been pronounced unclean, the priest would then pronounce as clean. If the leprosy was gone, that person was pronounced clean. But if you think about the gap between Leviticus 13 and 14 is a giant one. How do lepers become cleansed? The priests don't have that power. They don't have that authority. The priest cannot cleanse the lepers. They can only verify that there is leprosy, and then later that there is no longer leprosy. The priest had no authority to cleanse people. And that's why what this leopard does is extraordinary. It's remarkable. This leopard comes to Jesus and addresses him as Lord. Now, that's not on itself terribly remarkable. This word for Lord was often used as a form of address, like. Sir, sir, could you help me with this? But look at what he says in verse two, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. This was an authority that was far greater than the authority of the Levitical priests, who could only pronounce that someone was clean or not clean. This was a confession of faith that Jesus had the power not just to heal him medically, but to cleanse him. Look what he says. Not just that you can heal me. You can make me clean. You can address this issue of pollution in my life because of this leprosy. And so look at what Jesus does in verse three. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. Now this is scandalous, absolutely scandalous, because anyone who touched someone who was unclean also said in Leviticus chapter five that that would be that person's guilt. And if you touched someone who was unclean for whatever reason, you would have guilt, spiritual guilt that you would have to bring a sin offering in order to atone for that guilt, in order to purge that pollution, that impurity from your life. So why then, does Jesus touch this leper? Well, John Calvin gets it exactly right when he says, As Christ possesses such purity as to repel all filth and defilement. He does not, by touching either pollute himself with leprosy or become a transgressor of the law. You see, the purity and the holiness of Jesus is not something that was weak or passive or static, something that could be affected and polluted and defiled by someone else's uncleanness. Rather, the purity and the holiness of Jesus was active. Active to cleanse the pollution of leprosy. I will is the next thing he says. Be clean. Jesus then has an authority that the priest did not. The priest could simply declare what was, you are clean, you are unclean. But Jesus makes the unclean clean. He has a superiority, a superior purity, and a superior authority than even the priest said. Now again, at the end of chapter seven, we saw that Jesus taught as one who had authority and not as their scribes. Here we are seeing that Jesus has authority and not as their priests. And so it's interesting. There's sort of a subtle hint at this in verse four when he says, show yourself to the priest. I've sort of stood between this Leviticus 13 and Leviticus 14. I have made you who are unclean, to be clean. Now go and fulfill the rest of the law. Go to the priest, show yourself, and he will declare what I have done for you. They'll offer a gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them that I have indeed cleansed you. Jesus has this greater authority than the priests. He is the priest who cleanses unclean Jews. Uh, many of you know David Kessler in our congregation. Uh, he was a missionary to western Africa, to Niger. And, um, he mentioned something to me, uh, a few weeks ago after in our Westminster Standards class, we were talking about sin and we talked about different aspects of sin. And one really deals with the guilt aspect of sin, care and harm kind of thing, righteousness and unrighteousness. And then he was also we were also talking about this purity and impurity kind of aspect. Um, and what he says is it's really interesting in his context, growing up in Niger, Western missionaries would often come and they would preach a gospel about the forgiveness from personal guilt from sin. Now that's true. That's a good message. The reason we in the West are so obsessed with guilt and innocence, righteousness and unrighteousness comes from the categories of the Bible gives to us. But it's not all the categories that the Bible gives to us to talk about sin. And in that culture, they see in their narrative a different part of what makes sin sin. That's much more along the idea of pollution and impurity. And in that context, a gospel that focused only on forgiveness from personal guilt fell flat. And that was a shame and honor culture where a sense they were saying, well, that's wonderful. I guess if I can be forgiven from the guilt of individual sin, the harms that I commit against other people, but how does that help me if I'm still the wrong kind of person? How does that help me if I'm still polluted and defiled? And when we think about the gospel, we must preach that sins are forgiven and remitted and taken away by Jesus's blood. But what we are seeing here is another aspect of this, another part to this. We're seeing the fullness of the gospel. We can't have our narrative blind us to the rest of the good news that Jesus came to accomplish, namely, that we can be cleansed, that we who are polluted and defiled can be made clean and pure. We need both. And Jesus came to do both. Because Jesus is a priest with real authority. He has the power not just to heal medical problems, but to cleanse unclean Jews. But Jesus didn't come only to save Jews. He came to bring salvation and purity to Gentiles as well. Now the Gentiles were considered to be unclean, but not quite in the same way as the Jewish lepers were considered to be unclean. The particular place where you saw the uncleanness of the Gentiles was in the radical separation that was made between Jews and Gentiles in the temple. When you came to the temple. What we read about in in Ephesians two verse 14 is there was a dividing wall, a dividing wall where the Jews were able to come into the courtyard of the temple, even if not into the temple itself, but they were to come into the courtyard. But the Gentiles were kept out by a dividing wall of hostility, because the Gentiles were unclean. A temple who comes to unclean Gentiles (Matt. 8:5-13) What this next section without necessarily talking about the language of temple. What we are seeing here is a temple who is greater than the authority of the temple in the Old covenant, this is a temple Jesus Christ who comes to unclean Gentiles. That's what's happening here. I want to argue in verses five through 13. Now look what's happening in this next story of healing. Again, we've moved on from the Jews now to a Gentile. And we have not just a Gentile, but a centurion. This was a military leader of the oppressive Roman forces who were holding the Jews in subjugation. But the centurion came to Jesus and asked him to help his servant, who was lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And in verse seven, Jesus responds and says, I will come and heal him. Now look at that verse. It smooths out the awkwardness of what Jesus says here. Very literally, Jesus says, I coming will heal him. I coming will heal him. That sounds weird in English. It sounds weird in Greek. What the reason for, for this awkward language here is to draw special attention to the scandal that this Jew Jesus, was promising, offering to come to the home of an unclean Gentile. Jews don't do this. Why? Because the impurity, the pollution, the defilement of the Gentiles who were separated as unclean from Israel. This was something that would defile the purity of the Jews. They couldn't do this. Now the centurion seems to know this. He seems to observe that what Jesus is doing is a scandal, that it cuts across what God's had said to separate the Jews from the Gentiles. And so he scrambles to stop Jesus by acknowledging Jesus's authority. And he says, Jesus in verses eight and nine, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I too am a man under authority. There's that word, authority, the same word that showed up at the end of chapter seven. So he's dealing with authority questions with soldiers under me. And I say to one, go and he goes and to another come. And he comes into my servant, do this, and he does it. And when Jesus heard this in verse ten, we read that he marveled. This word. Marvel shows up several times through the Gospel of Matthew, but this is the only time that it shows up to describe Jesus marveling at someone. Usually this word is about people marveling at Jesus. So what are they? What is Jesus marveling at? He's marveling at the faith of this Gentile. He says, truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. And then he talks about in verse 11 and 12, he says, I tell you, many will come from East and West. He's talking about Gentiles, and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. He's saying, these Gentiles are going to come in and they're going to come all the way in to sit next to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But then in verse 12 he says something remarkable, while at the same time the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. The Jews will be cast out while believing Gentiles will be brought in. Now, if you think about the place where God dwelt with his people in those days, where was that? Where was the kingdom of heaven on earth? And it was the temple. The temple was God's footstool on earth. It was the place where God dwelt in the midst of his people. It was the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's symbolized by what Jesus said will eventually happen when we come to dine at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And again, the Gentiles were excluded from that. They were separated from that. Why was that? Why did God set up those rules? Well, the purpose of the purity laws, the laws about separating the clean from the unclean. The real purpose of this is given in Leviticus chapter 15. Now remember we talked about Leviticus 13 and 14 in in context of leprosy in Leviticus 1531. We read thus by all of these purity laws. Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst. See all of this purity, all this pollution, all this uncleanness would defile the tabernacle. But here Jesus says that not only is he not worried about this Gentile defiling him, but in fact he is going to go into this place, to the tabernacle. He is going to bring the Gentiles into his house one day as the New Covenant temple, where God tabernacles among us. Again, Jesus is holiness is authoritative. Jesus doesn't keep his distance. They they had to keep all of the unclean things away from the tabernacle and the temple in the old covenant. But Jesus doesn't keep his distance. He wants to come to this Gentile house. He wants to bring Gentiles into his own house in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is showing us that he is the temple who comes to unclean Gentiles. Well after these first two healing narratives where Jesus cleanses unclean Jews and Jesus comes to unclean Gentiles, there are kind of two important questions that remain. First of all, why is Jesus's authority so much greater than the authority of the Old Testament priests and the Old Covenant temple? And the second is that if Jesus isn't here today to touch us, to come to us like we are seeing in these stories, what relevance does this have in our lives? Well, the third section, verses 14 through 17, is critical to answer those two questions where we see the final characterization of Jesus as a sacrifice who carries away our unclean sin. A sacrifice who carries away our unclean sin In this third section, Jesus or Jesus? Matthew gives us a story about Jesus that's very specific, very specific healing, about healing. Peter's mother in law, who was sick in a certain way with a fever. Again, Jesus touched her hand in verse 15, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve them. And then verse 16, we have sort of a general overview, where that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, those unclean spirits. And he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. Now this is all important, but the critical verse in this section, really the critical verse that helps us to understand this whole passage is in verse 17, where we have a fulfillment verse. In verse 17 we are showed. All of this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. This is Isaiah 53 verse four. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Now how do we understand why Matthew thinks this particular verse fulfills is fulfilled in what Jesus is doing here? Well, a couple of things to sort of help us understand. First of all, R.T. France and his commentary, I think, draws out the important point that neither in the Hebrew of Isaiah 53, verse four, nor in the Greek that Matthew Matthew writes here in neither case is, is Jesus taking our illnesses and bearing our diseases? In neither case does this mean that Jesus had to become sick in order to heal us. It's not that kind of taking or that kind of bearing. It's the idea he took away. And he bore away our illnesses and our diseases. He carried these things away. But the second thing is, there's a really broad consensus among commentators that when Matthew is quoting an individual verse, it's not just that verse that he has in view, it's the whole section of what he ever he is quoting that's in view. And in this case, this is the suffering servant song from Isaiah 52. Verse 13 through Isaiah 53, verse 12. This is a story that talks about Jesus as the one who was pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And Matthew is saying that all of this is fulfilled in part at least, by the way, that Jesus was healing these people at this time. Here's the larger context, a little bit larger context. In Isaiah 53 verses four through five, Isaiah writes this surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed, healed. These healings are targeting something they're targeting, particularly the uncleanness of Jews and of Gentiles, the uncleanness that's come into the world as a result of sin. Because if sin had never come into the world, there would be no leprosy, there would be no illness at all. There would be no separating out of the Gentiles. The law then, that made this distinction between the clean and the unclean had a kind of authority. The law could diagnose the problem. The law could inform the Jewish cultural and narrative for them to see clearly the problem of pollution. But the law was ultimately weak. The law could not cleanse what was unclean, could not purify what was polluted. It could not fix the problem that it diagnosed. But Jesus comes demonstrating his great authority, the authority of one who comes not as their priest, the Levitical priests, not as their old covenant temple, not as their sacrifices. Jesus heals here because he is showing us what he came to do, to die on the cross as our great Physician, to secure for us the medicine that we need not from medical problems, but for a spiritual problem. What all of this announces is that Jesus has authority to cleanse us from sin. Now in Leviticus chapter 16. And remember, we've talked about Leviticus 13 and 14 in regard to leprosy and Leviticus 15, in terms of the danger of defiling the Old Covenant Tabernacle or the temple. Well, now we're coming to Leviticus 16. And in Leviticus 16, the Bible tells us about one of the strangest and the most profoundly important days in the annual cycle of Israel's worship. It tells us what they were to do on the Day of Atonement. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would offer two different kinds of sacrifices. The first of all, he would bring a goat, and this goat would be slaughtered as a sin. Offering the blood of this goat would be brought all the way into the Holy of Holies. This was the only day of the year that anyone could go into the Holy of Holies, and only the High Priest on that day could go into the Holy of Holies. And the reason the high Priest had to go into there with that blood was to cleanse the tabernacle over the course of the year, all of the pollutions and defilements, because God dwelt in the neighbourhood of his people, all of those would creep up and corrupt and pollute and defile the tabernacle. And so once a year they had to make a cleansing that came by the blood of this goat sin offering. But there was another goat on that day, a goat that did not die. And the high priest would lay his hands on the live goat and confess all of Israel's iniquities. That is, the sins that dealt with their defilements and their pollutions, all of their transgressions, all the ways that they had transgressed God's law and all of their sins, all the ways they had missed the mark. And then someone would lead that goat out into the wilderness and that goat would never again return. In Leviticus 16, verse 22, it says this the live goat shall bear. That's the same word as Jesus, bearing our diseases, taking our illnesses, and bearing our diseases. That goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area. And he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. Jesus came to shed his own blood as a sacrificial substitute, that is, to take away our guilt. But he also came to bear away our iniquities, to carry them away, never to return. Jesus is the sacrifice who once for all has carried away our unclean sin. So those of us in the West, why should we care about this? Why should we care about purity and pollution and defilements? Well, this morning I want to ask you directly. This morning. Are you burdened by shame in your conscience because of your uncleannesses? We may not often think about these things, but spiritually we feel the weight of them in our conscience. Do you feel like an outcast because of your failures in life, where you might as well stand outside town and yell, unclean, unclean? Is your conscience burdening you because of some sin, past or present? Does Satan whisper in your ear that God could never forgive someone so filthy as you? Now, while these questions touch a whole host of issues in our lives. They have especially touch on the issue of sexual immorality, sins that we are awash in our culture because as the logic goes, well, who does it harm? Well, that's not the only paradigm. We also have to think about pollution and impurity. So I want to ask directly about that. Indeed, the old theologians often describe sexual immorality as uncleanness. That's just the word they use to talk about this as uncleanness, because the shame of sexual immorality is something that the Bible says clings to our bodies and our souls like leprosy, lust, pornography, fornication, a host of kinds of sexual immorality. The world's solution is simply to deny that there is the problem, that there is a problem at all. What's the harm the world says. They say simply suppress your conscience. But denial doesn't help. It's like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. You can do it for a short amount of time, but eventually that beach ball has to come up above the water. The better solution. God's solution is that you need Jesus to cleanse you. You need to pray to him, Lord, if you will. You can make me clean. Not just to heal a medical issue. You can cleanse me. You need his priestly ministry to blot out the vile pollutions of your iniquity, as he sprinkles his own blood upon you by the healing hyssop of the gospel. You need to hide your sinful soul in the temple of his righteousness and holiness. If you were to have any protection against the blazing, consuming fire of God's holiness in the kingdom of heaven. And you need the willing sacrifice of God's wise servant. As we read about in Isaiah 52 verse 53, who was a willing lamb led to the slaughter, who did not open his mouth in silence as he was condemned, mocked, beaten, bruised, and bloodied, whose marred appearance caused the world to marvel to be astonished at him, since he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. The man who was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, who was acquainted with grief, who bore your griefs and carried your sorrows, who was truly stricken, smitten, and afflicted by Almighty God, who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. So that upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. You need Jesus going to the cross according to the eternal counsel of peace, planned and plotted in eternity past by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, so that in the fullness of time it was the will of the Lord to crush the Lord's son. The Lord did put our Lord to grief, and it pleased him to do so, because by his sacrifice, Jesus's soul has now made an offering for our guilt. But out of the anguish of Jesus's soul. The promise is that he shall see and be satisfied. For by the knowledge of him shall the righteous one, the Lord's servant Jesus Christ, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities, their pollutions, their defilements. He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. You need. Jesus. You need the authority of his word and the authority of his works. You need Jesus. For Jesus has authority to cleanse us. Heavenly father, we pray. That you would cleanse us. Father. We are a people of unclean lips, dwelling among another people of unclean lips. We need to be cleansed. Purified. And this will only come through the blood of Jesus. The one who was sacrificed for us. The one who bore away once for all by going outside the camp for us. The shame. And the filthiness and the defilements and the impurities of this world and the corruptions of our flesh. Oh, father, forgive us for all of the harms, the wrongs that we have done that has incurred guilt. And father, we pray, pray, blot out our pollutions. Through Jesus Christ. Our great priest, our great temple, our great and once for all sacrifice for sin. I pray that you would do this in Jesus name and for his glory. Amen.