Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Jesus Really Willing to Help You? | The Gospels | Matthew 8:1–17

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Do you believe Jesus can help you, but wonder if he wants to? What would change if you knew his answer was yes? And what does his response to the leper show us about his heart? In today’s episode, Keith walks through Matthew 8:1–17 and shows us how Jesus doesn’t pull away from our need, but moves toward us with compassion. Want to become a more consistent Bible reader? Download our free Ten Minute Bible Guide and start building a simple, sustainable habit of meeting with God through his word. Grab your guide here. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Matthew 8:1–17

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. There's a big difference between believing that someone can help you and believing that they want to help you. Maybe you're getting ready to move, and you're wondering if you should ask your friend who owns a truck if he'd help. You know he can help you, but does he want to? Is he willing to give up his day off? Or maybe you're applying to graduate programs, and you're wondering if you should ask a professor to help you with your application, and maybe even write a reference for you.

You know that if she really wanted to help you, she could make a big difference. But is she willing to give you that much of her time? Or maybe your parents of a young kid. You need a night out with your spouse. You know your parents can have your child over for the evening and give you a break, but you've asked a lot from them lately.

Is this asking for too much? Do they want to watch your child another night? In each case, we're probably not going to ask. Not because the friend or the professor or the parent can't help, but because we don't think they want to help. I think a lot of Christians feel the same way about God. We know he can help us, but we don't know if he wants to. Most of us are convinced that God has the power to help us.

I mean, after all, he spoke the world into creation. He raised Jesus from the dead. Nothing is impossible for him. What we doubt is whether he wants to help us. I want to show you a man in Matthew's Gospel who asked that exact question, and I want you to hear how Jesus answered him. Here's Matthew chapter 8 starting in verse 1. When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.

A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, Jesus, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said. Be clean. Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, see that you don't tell anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Look at what the man says because he's very precise. He said, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Notice he doesn't say if you are able. He's certain God can help him. The whole weight of that sentence sits on one word and that word is willing. If you are willing. Where do we learn to doubt God's desire to help us? The laws given to Israel said that a person with a defiling skin disease must wear torn clothes. He must keep his hair unkempt. He must cover the lower part of his face, and he must cry out, unclean, unclean.

And then it says this, as long as they have the disease, they remain unclean. They must live alone. They must live outside the camp. This is not simply a man who is sick. This is a man who is under a legally enforced exile. And part of that sentence is that he has to announce himself wherever he goes. He has to warn people that he's not clean. Every time another person comes near enough to him,

to be in danger, the law requires for him to announce his presence. Do that yourself for a day. Do it for a year, do it for five years, do it for however long this man had been doing it. And I'll tell you what you learn. You do not learn to doubt God's power. I mean, the God who wrote that law is obviously powerful. You learn something about how you expect to be received, how you expect to be treated. You learn to watch other people's faces. You learn the way people avoid you. You learn to be the thing that other people are protected from. And then one day the crowds are coming down off the mountainside with a teacher in the middle of them.

This man with leprosy does something he's not permitted to do, which has come near the teacher. And he kneels down and out of his mouth that has been trained for years of practice to announce his own contamination. Instead, he says to Jesus, if you are willing, you can make me clean. See, this man with leprosy,

he's not confused about the power. He is bracing for the rejection. But watch what Jesus does and notice the order in which Matthew writes it. Verse three, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. The touch comes first. It comes before the healing. Matthew could have done it the other way. Jesus could have said be clean and the man was made clean and then Jesus took him by the hand.

But that's not what happened. Matthew wrote that the hand went out first. First, Jesus touched him. He touched the unclean man. Jesus didn't have to do that. No, he didn't have to do that because of what happens in the next paragraph. In verse 5, a centurion comes and says, in effect, look, don't trouble yourself to come to my house. Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.

Jesus says the word, the servant is healed at a distance without Jesus ever setting foot in the building. So Matthew has arranged these two accounts, the healing of the leprosy and the healing of this man's servant. He's put them back to back to make a point. Jesus is entirely capable of healing from across town. So when he reaches out his hand toward this man with the skin disease, that's not what the healing required. That was a choice Jesus made. Think about what that hand meant to a man who'd not been touched in years.

He'd not been hugged. He'd not been embraced. He'd not shaken hands with anyone. He'd not even bumped into anyone at the market. I mean, absolutely no contact. And the first hand to reach out for him and all that time, belongs to Jesus, and it arrives before the cure does. Now, something's happening here that runs backward against everything this man expected.

In the purity system he had lived under, the flow always ran one direction, and that is that the unclean thing contaminated whatever it contacted. That's the whole logic of putting him outside the camp, right? But Matthew does not tell us that Jesus became unclean when he touched this man. No, Matthew tells us that the man became clean. clean. The current or the flow reverses. The holiness of Christ turns out to be more contagious, more powerful than sin and disease. Don't think that Jesus is breaking the law. In verse four, it says that the next thing Jesus says after he heals the man is go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift

Moses commanded. So he sent this man straight into the process that Leviticus lays out. He's not waving away the law as though it were wrong or small minded or an unfortunate rule. No, what he's saying is that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets and this is what fulfillment looks like. Now, I don't think the application for us is go be like Jesus. Touch the untouchable people in your life. I mean, there is something true to that that we should have compassion on people in need. But I think the first thing this text is telling you is not what you should be like. It's what he is like, what he is like toward you. didn't heal you from across the road. This man said to Jesus, if you are willing, and Jesus looks right

at him and says, I am willing. He doesn't answer some other question. He doesn't say, you should know better than to doubt me. Jesus doesn't open with the correction, like saying, okay, now the real issue here is that you don't understand my character. He doesn't require the man to have better theology before he receives a better answer. No, Jesus takes his one trembling request, the request that he had put his entire hope on, and he says, yes, that's how Jesus deals with you. He meets the doubts that you have. Not the doubt you think you should have outgrown by now. Not the sanitized version you'd be willing to say or share in a small group. No, the real doubt, the one underneath the doubts you're willing to express, the doubts that you've had for years. The doubt that you've had for years. The doubt

you're a little embarrassed about. Jesus loves you. And you can trust him because he knows what's best for you. And he has the power to do what's best for you. Okay, two more things. And it's back in verse four. He cleansed the man and then he sent him to the priest. It's not the other way around.

The man isn't told, go get yourself certified by the teachers of the law and then come back to me when you're presentable. The priest's inspection confirms what grace already accomplished. The priest doesn't accomplish anything. thing, that's all been done by God. The priest just verifies that God has worked. God has healed this man. Whatever it is that you think has to be cleaned up in your life before you can come to Jesus. Well, no, that's not true. There are no entrance requirements other than to bring your need.

The second thing I want you to see is where this story is headed. Look ahead a few verses. And Matthew tells us what this has all been about. He quotes Isaiah who says, He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases. Jesus took up our infirmities and he bore our diseases. And that's exactly what happens at the cross. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

That is the same exchange we just watched between Jesus and this leper. The uncleanness goes to Christ. The cleanness comes to us. In Hebrews 13, it says that Jesus went outside the city. He went outside the camp to bear our sin. He did that so that people outside the camp like this leper, like you, like me, like all sinners. He went outside the camp so that us, the people outside the camp, could come inside to be with God. So if you're asking Jesus, are you willing to heal?

Are you willing to forgive me? Are you willing to be my Savior? The answer is, yes, I am willing. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would open our eyes so that we could see and feel the heart of God toward us. That you love us, that you want the best for us. Sometimes that's just hard for us to believe. We know you love people, but we're not sure you love us.

Lord, I pray you would take this passage and push it down deep into our heart. that we would believe that you are good and that your love for us is genuine. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.