Steve Wohlberg explains Matthew 8:1-4, offers hope to us all, and reveals personal details about how God has recently rescued him from one of the most horrible trials of his life.

<p>Steve Wohlberg explains Matthew 8:1-4, offers hope to us all, and reveals personal details about how God has recently rescued him from one of the most horrible trials of his life.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

White Horse Media

Steve Wohlberg

Jesus, the Leper, and YOU!

I'd like to read a text before I get into my topic.

From Psalm 50, verse 15, it's a verse that Junie texted me some time ago.

The Bible says, God says, call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.

Before I get into my talk, I just want to thank my church.

And I could start mentioning names, Junie and Vince, Rhonda, Angelica, Ann, Craig Meisner, the elders, my family, my wife, my children, Duane, and I'm sure there are many others.

I know I'm missing names of people that have been praying for me for the last, since I was anointed about 3 months ago by the elders.

I've had a rotten 5 months and rotten doesn't really, that does not describe.

1 of the trials that I have been through, somewhat similar to a couple years ago, where I lost my ability to go to sleep, had all kinds of struggles, went on medication, and just felt like my life was coming to an end.

And when Lou asked me to schedule this date to speak back in Newport for November 30th, honestly, You know, I was just putting it on the calendar by faith because I didn't know if I'd be able to be here, if I'd be able to stand up again before my church family and White Horse Media, my friends out there that are gonna be watching this as we're filming this today and I just want to say praise the Lord.

Praise God in heaven who has been so good to me and I know that, you know, people say, well Steve it's all in your head.

But you know the greatest battles go on inside the mind.

And then things that happen inside our heads, you know, they do affect our bodies.

And I'm just very grateful, Very thankful for the Lord's goodness and grace and mercy and compassion.

And you know, when people go through trials, Matthew chapter 8, when people go through trials, hopefully Their thick heads learn lessons that can be a blessing to others.

Isn't that why God brings us through trials?

God brings us through trials to work on us, work on our characters, help us to learn things that we can't learn any other way, unfortunately, and he wants to teach us lessons that he can then use us in a deeper way to help other people who may be going through the same thing.

So that's what life is all about, helping people and learning the lessons and becoming what God wants us to be.

So let's pray a prayer, and then we'll take a look.

My talk today is called Jesus, the Leper, and You.

Dear God in heaven, thank you so much that I am here and that everybody that is in this church is here.

Every breath we take, every impulse of joy that flows through our bodies at any time, the ability to see and to talk and to hear and to feel and to love and to get a good night's sleep.

And Lord, I pray that you will bless this message, that you will use it and speak to our hearts and speak to those who will be watching in the days ahead.

The Lord just has been speaking to me, speaking to my heart.

And so I want to give this message to you.

This morning I read, there's a verse in, I think it's in John 17 when we were studying our Bibles for Sabbath school this morning and Jesus was praying and he said, I have given, he was praying to his father and he said, I have given to them, which is the disciples, the words that you have given me.

And I circled that in my Bible this morning and I thought that's what I wanna do.

I wanna just give you the words that he's given me that are in the book.

So let's start out with verse 1 in Matthew chapter 8.

Verse 1 says when he was come, and what's that next word?

Now that wasn't just a mountain, but that was the mountain.

He was up on top of the mountain, and now he was coming down.

And you can find out what that mountain was by just backing up.

If you back up in your Bible just to chapter 5, verse 151 says, seeing the multitudes, he went up.

He went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came to him, he opened his mouth, and he taught them.

So in Matthew 5, Jesus went up onto a certain mountain which we believe was somewhere north of the Sea of Galilee in the area of Capernaum, and a great multitude of people were following him and he went up on this mountain and he sat down and he spoke Matthew 5, Matthew 6, and Matthew 7.

We call that the Sermon on the Mount, right?

And most of us have read Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

They're beautiful chapters teaching where Jesus is teaching the very high principles of the kingdom of heaven, the principles that are up.

Like it says, he went up on the mountain.

And isn't God's plan for us to get up and to go higher and higher and higher in our Christian life?

He didn't make us just to live little, measly, you know, nobody, nothing lives.

He's put a lot of time into us, a lot of energy into each 1 of us.

He loves us more than we'll know, and his plan for you and for me is up, up, up, higher and higher and higher to live a life that is amazing through his grace and through his providence and his power and his mercy.

You know, sometimes when we read Matthew 5, 6, and 7 and read about all these wonderful principles and teachings, sometimes we, at least some people, have a tendency to get discouraged.

Think, well, you know, I don't know if I can get up higher and higher and higher because I'm stuck.

And so to me, it's very significant that after Jesus went up and gave all those principles and those beautiful teachings in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, In Matthew 8, then it says, he came down.

And you wonder, you know, Lord, are you able to come down to where I am?

I don't know if I can get up where you are.

And sometimes we go down, down, down, and we get pretty low.

And to me, it's just wonderful that the Holy Spirit has orchestrated the Bible so that Jesus went up and taught these wonderful truths and then he came down to minister to a man at the bottom, at the bottom, so that we could learn lessons, lessons that will help us when we're at the bottom.

When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.

Now They followed him up, they liked what he taught, and they followed him down.

Now why do you think great multitudes would follow this man?

Well The reason is because they saw for the first time, they saw something in this man, this man who is Jesus.

They saw something in his character that they had never seen before.

They saw a compassion that they never saw in the Pharisees.

They saw a love, a mercy, a kindness, and an interest in people, in all the people, all the multitudes, whoever they were, however old they were, young they were, sick they were, well they were, rich they were, poor they were, whoever they were, They saw that this man loved everyone.

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Jesus, the Leper, and YOU!

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