Matthew 8: More Than Words

Matthew • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago

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Introduction

Now that the Lord Jesus has finished his sermon on the mount, he’s now going to back up his words with actions, or miracles. From Matthew’s perspective, the string of events that take place over the next two chapters serve as a way to show that Jesus is the Messiah through increasingly more powerful miracles. This follows a theme throughout Matthew’s Gospel: Jesus teaches, performs miracles, teaches, performs miracles. The emphasis isn’t just on the miracles themselves and what they tell us about Jesus, but also the people whom Jesus healed and interacted with, as well as the response to the miracles.

8:1-4: Cleansing a Leper

The sermon on the mount was the first time that a great multitude really got to hear the message that Jesus had been preaching. At the end, Matthew tells us that they were astonished by his message because he spoke with authority. It is no surprise that they wanted more.

It has always struck me that great crowds followed Jesus after the sermon. And I think that is Matthew’s point: this wasn’t another scribe, teacher, or pharisee. This was someone different and the people knew it.

Out of the crowds comes a leper. Lepers were unclean and could not be part of the community. They were sick, and they were social outcasts. For this man to make his way to Jesus would have been scandelous.

His actions displayed his faith. He trusted that Jesus could heal him. And he was willing to bet that Jesus would heal him.

His action, kneeling, shows reverence for who Jesus is. Calling him Lord is also important. But it’s the request that really sticks out. “If you will, you can make me clean.” I think it is more about what the leper doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say, “If you pray for me, God will heal me.” or something similar. No, he says if Jesus wills it, Jesus can make the leper clean! That tells us that this man truly believed Jesus was someone great (and I also think it’s Matthew’s subtle way of telling us that Jesus is God!)

The Lord confirms the man’s assumption by declaring, “I will; be clean.” No wonder the people thought that Jesus spoke with authority!

The disease was healed immediately which must have left the crowds in complete shock. Whoever this man was, even diseases obeyed Him.

But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus tells him to not tell anyone, but instead go and show himself to the priest and give the required offering. Why would Jesus say this?

First, it shows Christ’s humility. Throughout the early parts of the Gospels we see that Jesus was never trying to make a name for himself. There are times when the crowds even want to make him king by force, and he alludes them. He regularly told the recipients of his miracles to not tell anyone (and they regularly disobeyed).

This is also in line with the type of Messiah that Matthew (and the other Gospels) is trying to portray. Contrary to what the people were expecting, the real Messiah was not about making a name for himself.

Second, it shows that Jesus was not at odds with Moses. Remember, he had just told the people that he was not going to replace the Law. He basically proves this by telling the man to follow the Law when it comes to cleansing leprosy.

The offering that Jesus is referring to is found in Leviticus 14:2–7 ““This shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall look. Then, if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop. And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water. He shall take the live bird with the cedarwood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go into the open field.”

I think there is a lot of symbolism in this particular law that points to Christ, here are just a few.

One bird must be killed in order for cleansing to take place - Christ had to be killed for our cleansing.

The other bird must be dipped in the blood of the sacrifice - we, too must be dipped in Christ’s blood.

All of this takes place over fresh, running water - our cleansing from sin takes place through baptism.

The live bird is set free - we are set free from our sins and from this world.

Again, I think that by telling us about this particular story of the leper being cleansed, Matthew wants to subtly show us how the Law pointed to Christ.

Practically speaking, I have to wonder when the last time the priests had had someone come in and make this offering! I think it would have been a testimony to them that there was someone truly great out there healing even lepers!

8:5-13: Faith of a Centurion

After an unclean leper is healed, Jesus returns to his home base of Capernaum and encounters a centurion. This also would have been eye-opening to Matthew’s Jewish audience because the centurion was a Gentile!

Notice Christ’s first reponse to the Centurion’s predicament: offering to come to his home. Jesus did this quite often. But the centurion doesn’t care about the clout of having this teacher in his home.

I’ve always liked the Lord’s interactions with Gentiles. They are typically more honest and raw. There isn’t a bunch of religious redtape. Here the centurion is blunt: “I know how this works. Just give teh command and it’ll happen.”

Just like the leper, the Centurion’s assumption of Christ’s power is a testimony to Christ’s identity.

What is Jesus’s response to this mans faith? He marveled at it! Imagine having faith that shocks God!

What Jesus says next had to have been quite startling to the (Jewish) crowd following him. He said that he hadn’t found that level of faith in Israel. What an indictment on the so called “people of God”!

The Israelites were the ones who should have believed in Jesus, and yet they didn’t. And to this day they still don’t. And so Jesus declared that “many will come from east and west” and recline in the kingdom with the Patriarchs.

And this happened. Just like the centurion, Gentiles came from east and west and entered the kingdom. Even to this day, the Church is by far composed of Gentiles.

But the second part of Christ’s declaration is also true, as the Jewish people were (and continue to be) tragically cast out of the kingdom because of their lack of faith in Jesus.

For the centurion’s part, his servant was healed immediately because his faith paid off. He didn’t welcome Jesus into his house, he welcomed Jesus into his heart. Contrast that with some of the pharisees who had Jesus in their homes while refusing to allow Him into their hearts.

8:14-17

These two great miracles were the leadoff for a host of other miracles that Matthew tells us Jesus performed, starting with Peter’s own mother-in-law (Mark 1:29 tells us that this actually happened on a Sabbath, which would have caused more controversy)

It’s interesting that they brought people to Jesus at night. Were they embarassed? Scared of what people might think? Or maybe they were just waiting until the Sabbath was over (it ended at sunset). Whatever the case, Jesus healed them anyway.

Matthew notes that in addition to diseases, Jesus also cast out demons further demonstrating the Lord’s power. But for Matthew, all of these healings was yet another demonstration of Christ fulfilling prophecy.

In this case, it is Isaiah 53:4 “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

Now Isaiah 53 as a whole is depicting the Suffering Servant of God, but in this case Matthew simply wants to draw attention to the portion of that deals with the Messiah taking our suffering upon himself. In this case it is the healing of physical infirmities.

Matthew draws our attention to this prophecy fulfilment after 3 unique cases where Jesus himself could basically have been ‘defiled’ (touching a leper, a gentile, and other unclean people). Even though he wasn’t actually defiled, Matthew is wants us to see that, in accordance to the Isaiah prophecy, Jesus was willing to “take on” our uncleanness.

This all leads to the most important part: Christ taking away physical infirmities was to lead to the more important taking away of spiritual infirmities. Jesus may or may not heal us physically, but He will always heal us spiritually.

8:18-22: The Cost of Following Jesus

All of these miracles obviously continued to draw crowds. Always humble, Jesus did not indulge them and whatever desires they might have had about him and instead decided to cross the lake with his disciples.

On his way out though, Jesus encounters two prospective disciples.

The first is a scribe who was a little too prideful. He arrogantly declares, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus humbles him by basically saying, “Even foxes and birds have better beds than I do. If you’re willing to give up the comforts of life, let’s go.”

This is still true. Being a disciple of Jesus often means having to give up what is “comfortable”!

Also if this man’s declaration sounds familiar, that’s because Peter said similar things! He told Jesus he would never abandon Him and would even die for Him. We all know how that turned out.

The second person Jesus encounters is actually described as a disciple. He asks Jesus if he can first go and bury his father.

This seems like a reasonable and innocuous request right?

The problem is is that it shows a lack of priority. Honoring one’s parents is a very high priority. But even higher than that is honoring God by serving Him.

The truth is, by getting in that boat this disciple didn’t know when he would be back. And there was no time to wait. If Jesus is going, his disciples have to go, too. Practically speaking, someone else could have buried his father, too.

Jesus himself was also willing to put his own family on the backburner for the kingdom - think about when his mother and siblings came to see Him and he turned them away.

The cost of following Jesus is high. He outranks even our highest priorities.

8:23-27: Calming a storm

The crew gets in the boat and Jesus decides to take a nap. The Messiah is human! Like us midwesterners, he ignored the sirens and slept right through the storm.

The disciples however, did not. Most of them were fishermen, too. They were pretty good on water. But this storm truly scared them. And so they woke up God.

In hindsight, this event was probably embarassing for the disciples. The Lord clearly wasn’t happy (are any of us happy when we’re suddenly woken up?) and he has some pretty stern words for them!

The fact that he calls them, “you of little faith” just reiterates what he had said when the Centurion came to him earlier: he hadn’t found faith like that in Israel, not even among his own disciples!

What happened next though was nothing short of amazing. Jesus rebuked the storm and it dissipated! The disciples were stunned.

Matthew says they “marveled”. That’s the same (Greek) word describing Christ’s reaction to the Centurion’s faith! I think that puts in perspective just how “wowed” Jesus was at his faith - it was the same level the disciples had at Jesus calming the storm. That’s faith!

For Matthew, this is an important milestone in Christ’s identity. The Old Testament is filled with countless stories of God showing up and nature responding. Here, Jesus shows up and nature responds. Matthew will draw attention to this happening again later in his gospel, too.

The disciple’s response shows that their faith (and understanding) of Jesus was also still developing. They said, “What sort of man is this” showing that they still believed Jesus was just a man…but that was starting to change.

Many people (preachers) love to take this story and talk about how Jesus calms the “storms” in our lives. I guess that is true, but I don’t think it should be our main takeaway from this story. The story isn’t about us.

This story testifies to the Lord Jesus’ identity as the God of creation and his power over it!

8:28-34: Power over demons

These events culminate with Jesus and crew landing on the other side of the Sea of Galilee where they encounter some demon-possessed men.

Now Matthew has already mentioned, briefly, that Jesus had the power to cast out demons. Now he tells us a very specific story related to this.

This particular encounter was very impactful because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us about this story. Mark and Luke narrow the story to one of these men and give us slightly more details.

Matthew simply says the men were so fierce that nobody could pass by.

Mark adds in Mark 5:3–6 “He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him.”

Mark and Luke also tell us that the demons called themselves “Legion” because of their number.

The demons immediately recognized Jesus as the Son of God. Have you ever known you were in trouble and when your parent shows up you blurt out your guilt out of nervousness? I feel like this is kind of what happened!

The Lord’s divine presence struck immediate fear in them and the only thing they want to do is get as far away as possible! So Jesus commands them to enter a group of pigs that then go off and drown.

I think there is some irony here in that pigs were considered unclean. Matthew’s Jewish audience probably would have read that and thought, “How fitting.”

This exorcism caused quite the stir.

The herdsmen went back and told everyone what they had seen. Can you imagine trying to explain this story! From the pigs, demon-possessed men being free. The whole thing was just crazy.

Naturally, everyone wanted to come see! Luke tells us that at least one of these men was fully dressed and sitting at the feet of Jesus “in his right mind”.

…and it terrified them! Would we have reacted any different? They had known how powerful those men had been. Just like Jesus himself said, “If someone wants to enter a strongman’s house, he must first tie him up.” Well, Jesus had tied up the strongman which told them (and us) that Jesus himself was even more powerful.

Their response wasn’t celebration. It was actually, “Please leave.”

Jesus is the perfect gentleman and will always give us what we want: if we want Him, he will be with us. But if we don’t want Him, he won’t force himself on us. And so Jesus left them.

Now this story may seem like it ends on a sad note. But thankfully Luke tells us how the story ended.

Luke 8:38–39 “The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.”

The people didn’t want Jesus around, but the man who had experienced the freedom of Christ did!

I love that Jesus told him to go back and declare how much “God has done for you.” and the man went back proclaming what “Jesus had done for him.” showing that this man believed Jesus was God.

This man became one of the first evangelists and missionaries. Living in a country that had rejected Jesus, He testified to who Jesus was, and what He had done.

Is it any surprise that this particular story, out of all the healings and exorcisms Jesus performed, is the one that the three Gospels tell us about? I imagine everybody had heard this story, because this man never stopped telling it.

May we never stop telling people the story of how Jesus has redeemed us!

Conclusion

These series of stories have all been Matthew’s way of continuing to show us that Jesus of Nazereth really is the Messiah. Christ’s identity has been revealed through his power, his fulfilment of prophecy, and ultimately the testimony and witness of the countless people He interacted with. And His identity is still testified to this day by the countless disciples (like you and me) who can testify to the Lord’s great power in our own lives!

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