01.04 - Section 04. Mat_8:1-34; Mat_9:1-38.
Section 04. Matthew 8:1-34; Matthew 9:1-38. The Dignity of the King and the Characteristics of His Mission The Gospel takes up a lost sinner in order to make him like Christ. It gives him: — A place in His favour. A prospect of His glory, and A power to bring him there.
It finds him guilty and brings him pardon.
It finds him lost and brings him salvation.
It finds him helpless and brings him power.
We shall find this illustrated in the very beautiful section of our Gospel we are now entering upon, for it shows us all the activities of the power and grace of Christ meeting and defeating all the malignant power of Satan — meeting and supplying all the deep, deep need of sinners. It is really the gospel of the Kingdom introduced with a manifestation of the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 2:5). We must not confound it with the present gospel of the grace of God. The gospel of grace might come to a poor sufferer on a sick-bed with saving power for the soul, but the body is not necessarily benefited thereby. On the other hand, we find every individual brought in contact with the Lord on earth, blessed both in soul and body. It was a proof that He was there, acting in the power of the coming Kingdom, out of which, in a coming day, when it is set up upon the earth, every trace of Satan’s power, and all the effects of sin, will be cast for ever.
To-day it is the Kingdom and patience of Christ we are to manifest, till He comes again. We can imagine Peter had before him these various scenes detailed in Matthew 8:1-34; Matthew 9:1-38, when, in Cornelius’ house, he declared how "God had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil: for God was with him" (Acts 10:38). He was indeed the "Man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him" (Acts 2:22). The Spirit of God, then, in these two chapters particularly, sets the Lord before us as the One who had come to destroy the works of the devil. In Matthew 5:1-48 He went up into a mountain, and we are instructed as to what men ought to be. In Matthew 8:1-34 He came down from the mountain, and we find out what men are. But in the midst of it all we see the Lord moving in the calm dignity of grace and power, dispensing healing and blessing to all who were brought to Him. And it is interesting to notice here that out of all the cases of individual blessing recorded in our Lord’s ministry, nearly all were brought to Him by others. Only of some six or seven is it said, "they came." Surely here is another incentive to those who know the Lord to seek to bring others to Him. "Andrew first findeth his own brother Peter." "Philip findeth Nathanael" (John 1:41-45). The various miracles in this section are evidently grouped together for a special reason. By referring to Mark we find that Peter’s wife’s mother was healed long before the leper. May the reason for this not be that these striking miracles are placed before us here in a moral order, and designed to show the power and grace of the King in the face of the strongest opposition Satan could bring against Him; designed also to show us the results of sin, which works havoc both in soul and body. In Matthew 8:1-34, then, we have: —
1 Grace forginging sins.
2 Grace calling sinners.
3 Grace bringing joy.
4 Grace raising the dead.
5 Grace restoring the diseased.
6 Grace opening blind eyes.
7 Grace unloosing the tongue of the dumb.
Seven notable proofs of Jehovah’s presence among His people in power and blessing. The first miracle in Matthew 8:1-34 is that of the leper. "There came a leper." He came, confessed the power of the Lord, and was cleansed. Then he was instructed to go to the priest. The priest had before pronounced the man unclean. Now he is called upon to pronounce him clean, and in doing so to proclaim the fact that there was One in their midst who was more than man. The King of Israel (2 Kings 5:1-27) had to say, when appealed to in Naaman’s case, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive?" Leprosy was known as a disease beyond the power of man. Only God could heal the leper. Here, then, was a leper healed, and the priest was bound to announce it, and offer the prescribed offering for the occasion (Leviticus 14:1-57). It was a positive proof of Messiah’s power. But in the second miracle it was a Gentile who got the blessing, and there was no question at all in the mind of the centurion of either the grace or power of Christ. His faith counted upon both, and thereby the Gentile, outside the scope of promise, honoured the Lord, and was rewarded. In commenting upon this faith, the Lord points out, in marked contrast, the unbelief of Israel, and foreshadows the rejection of the nation till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
Next we find the Lord in Peter’s house; and, taking the fever patient by the hand, he lifted her up (Mark 1:1-45). Surely she might well remember that hand-clasp. And the hand of weakness grasped by the hand of power, might well become a ministering hand henceforth.
Referring again to Mark, we learn that this miracle was wrought upon the Sabbath day, and then "when the evening was come" — that is, when the Sabbath day was past — "they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons, and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick." Man’s day was setting in darkness and sorrow. Earth’s sinking sun saw only suffering humanity, but the Lord brings grace for the guilty, salvation for the lost, and deliverance for the captives of sin and Satan.
"Oh I with what various ills they met, Oh with what joy they went away." The Lord then sets out to cross the Sea of Galilee to the land of Gadara, originally inhabited by the tribe of Gad. And this long and, as it proved, dangerous journey is undertaken with the object of bringing deliverance to two men possessed with demons; but the occasion of the crossing became also the occasion of testing two would-be disciples. The Lord’s answer to the first is very striking. "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have their nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." There was room and a home on earth for that which men think of little value. There was a place for that which men count even injurious, but the King of Glory was a homeless Stranger. Peter’s fisher coat might afford Him a rough pillow while crossing the lake; but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. And here for the first time we get this new title He applies to Himself. It spoke volumes to Israel, could Israel have understood, for He did not become the "Son of Man" until He had first become the "rejected Messiah."
If the first follower was hindered by worldly position, the second was hindered by worldly ties, and neither can be allowed before the claims of Christ. The beginning of all discipleship is unquestioning obedience produced in the heart by love in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord might have prevented the storm; He allowed it, and that for two reasons. The disciples had to learn what manner of MAN this was who was with them, and the second was that HE was the One to whom to turn in every difficulty. Doubtless their seamanship had often been tested in days gone by on that same lake, but here was evidently something out of the common. They saw nothing before them but disaster, and although the Lord was with them, and though they had witnessed His power so often before, yet they "were afraid." They had not yet learned to trust Him wholly. The Lord first reproves them for their fears, and then delivers them from their dangers. One has said, "He did not chide them for disturbing Him with their prayers, but for disturbing themselves with their fears."
What comes out in the closing half of our chapter is the power of Satan, seen in three ways: (a) Over the elements, in his attempt to raise a storm that would destroy the Christ of God Himself; (b) over two men so under his power as to be worse than the wild beasts of the earth; (c) lastly, over a people so blinded by sin that when One was present in grace and power to bless, they "besought him to depart out of their coasts." And the Lord does so.
Matthew 9:1-38 shows some of the characteristics of the wonderful mission that brought the Son of God to earth. It was not only a question of delivering from the effects of Satan’s power, but removing the cause which gave him that power over men. And so when the Lord saw the faith of the friends of the palsied man, doubtless reflected in the heart of the man himself, He responds in the first place, not by healing the man’s bodily disease, but by touching what was deeper, the disease of the soul — He forgave his sins. Which brings out this, that here in His own city — Capernaum — where many of His mighty works had been done, the Scribes saw in Him only a man, and dared to say that He was a blasphemer. At Matthew 8:34, His works were rejected: here His divine person and heavenly origin is despised, and later in our chapter the leaders of the people commit the unpardonable sin by ascribing His acts of power to Beelzebub. Such is man by nature, even at his best. Everything was leading up to His rejection by the nation, and the nation’s rejection by Him. But not only is He the Forgiver of Sins. Grace brings sinners into His own presence — yea, even to the table with Him; just what the same grace is doing to-day to all who own their guilt and accept His mercy. The call of Matthew is an occasion where we see the activity of grace in the heart of one who has become a recipient of it. From Mark’s Gospel we learn that Matthew was so enraptured with the grace that had deigned to call a poor publican like himself, that he made a great feast in his own house; and a great company of publicans and sinners were gathered together to meet with Jesus. And there was great joy in that house, for the blessed ones were in the presence of the Blesser, and in the realisation of what the Psalmist experienced when he said, "In thy presence is fulness of joy: at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psalms 16:11). The Pharisees raise the question of fasting, but the One who alone was the source of all true joy was in their midst: how unseemly, then, to be occupied with that which was an expression of sorrow. The Lord next develops the principle of this new thing in the two short parables which follow. The "new cloth" and the "new wine" are the principles of sovereign grace, as opposed to the old covenant of legal righteousness.
Israel of old was under a covenant of works, but, when Christ came, the end of that economy came with Him. Henceforth God was dealing with men in pure unmixed grace. The publican and the sinner were nearer the Kingdom of God than the ceremonially perfect Pharisee, who boasted in his own righteousness and despised others — nearer because they owned their badness, instead of boasting in their fancied goodness. Neither would it do to mingle these two things. Law and grace cannot be blended. The Galatians tried to mix them, and were soundly rebuked by the inspired Apostle. Christendom is doing it to-day, and the result is that the terror is taken from the law by the effort to pare it down to meet men’s failures, and all the sweetness is taken from the grace of God by a system of works which tries to earn His favour.
Rightly understood the holy law of God must ever be a source of terror to unholy man, for under it there is no hope for him at all. It demands righteousness from man, without giving him power to produce it. It exposes and condemns his sins, without providing any way to remove them.
Grace, on the other hand, is the sweetest sound that ever reached the sinner’s ears, for it deals not at all with what he is, but with what God is: God, who gave up His Son unto death, and that for the ungodly, Christ who redeemed him from the curse of law by being made a curse, and now the Holy Spirit of God come down to make good in his heart these precious truths and lead him into the enjoyment of all the boundless privileges grace has heaped upon him. There can neither be deliverance nor worship until grace is known and enjoyed.
Next in order we have the case of one who was dead, of one with an incurable disease, of two who were blind, and of one who was dumb. Could any addition be made to this sum of human misery? Could the works of the devil be more manifestly displayed? And all this in the midst of the Lord’s own nation of Israel. And, figuratively, it is a picture of Israel; and the mighty works the Lord did in their midst, for individuals, form a type of what He will yet do for the nation, when He sets His hand, in a coming day, to recover and restore His ancient people. But what we have specially to notice at the close of our chapter is this, that the Pharisees and rulers of the people, after all that they had seen of His works of power, and after all that they had heard of His words of grace, gave it as their considered opinion, "He casteth out devils through the prince of devils" (verse 34). The King was definitely rejected. The blind men (verse 37) acknowledge Him as "Son of David," and by David’s greater Son they are healed: but it was done "in the house" apart from the multitude; and when healed they were charged no longer to proclaim Him as such. His relationship was now no longer that of "Son of David" to the nation, but the wider one of "Son of Man" to the multitudes who were "scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd." From this standpoint the Lord begins another circuit of Galilee, and in patient grace we find Him going about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. We have before noticed that the expression "Kingdom of Heaven" is found only in Matthew; and only in Matthew do we get "Gospel of the Kingdom," and that thrice repeated (Matthew 4:1-25; Matthew 9:1-38; Matthew 24:1-51). Here was the cure for all the ills that afflicted Jehovah’s land; but, alas! Israel refused the Gospel of the Kingdom then, as sinners to-day refuse the Gospel of Grace. And there never was grace like the grace of Christ. He was moved to compassion by the sight of the fainting multitudes, and He would have His disciples to share the same compassion for the lost as moved His own heart. With this motive they would pray with a sense of the urgency of the need, and this need is as great to-day. The three short commands, "Pray ye," "Look ye," "Go ye," are intimately connected. Can we truly obey one without obeying all?