Text:
Matthew 8:14
Topic:
What a godly touch can do
Introduction
-
Our hands are suited
for expression.
-
Illustration:
Imagine a documentary
showed your hands at work through your lifetime.
Illustration:
Once
when Lucado was visiting an elderly woman's home in
order to help plan her husband's funeral, he saw upon the wall several notes
that he had written to the woman's late husband. The notes had touched him
deeply, unbeknownst to Lucado.
-
The kind hand of Christ
changes lives, as in the story of the leper in Matthew 8.
For
five years, no one touched me.
-
Illustration:
Lucado imagines what
the leper in Matthew 8 may have experienced.
-
Throughout Scripture,
the leper is representative of the ultimate outcast, banished to a leper
colony.
-
Illustration:
Lucado imagines how the
leper's friends and community retreated from him in horror when they
learned he was diseased.
-
Illustration:
Lucado relates how one
Sunday basketball player David Robinson showed up at the church and the
congregation flocked him, seeking his autograph. By contrast, in the next
service a homeless man sat in the front of the sanctuary, and no line
formed to greet him.
Then Jesus drew
near and touched me.
-
Illustration:
The leper walked to his
village and spied his daughter lingering as the other children fled at the
sight of him, which gave him the courage to approach Jesus.
-
When the leper
approached Jesus to heal him, once again the others scattered, but Jesus
lovingly touched the man and verbally healed him.
Illustration:
When St. Francis of Assisi left his city and worldly wealth behind,
he embraced a leper on the side of the road, whom he later concluded was really
Jesus in disguise. As Jesus said, "For whatever you've done for the least of
these you've done also for me."
Conclusion
-
A godly touch is
powerful.
Illustration:
One day Lucado saw his three daughters playing together, a rarity because of
their age differences, and his heart jumped. He thought that God must feel the
same way when he sees his children reaching out to each other.
Illustration: When Lucado was 19 and a alcoholic, he felt
God's touch one night on his shoulder and knew he was being forever changed.
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