October 8, 2023
Matthew 8:1-17 (Read As We Go)

The title of the sermon is “Healing: The Will Of God & The Faith Of Man.”

Outline:
The Will That Heals
The Faith That Heals
The God That Heals

Before we start this morning, I wanted to give a reminder that Matthew account of the gospel is arranged thematically.¹ (Carson, Matthew, 196 f; et al.) He often grouped like things together, "so that three, five, six, or seven events, miracles, sayings, or parables appear together.[62]³ An example we will see this morning, In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew took great care in leaving the Church with many of Jesus’ teachings, and now, in Matthew 8, he begins to give us an account of Jesus’ deeds. The Sermon has shown us “the divine wisdom in speech; Matthew 8 … shows us the divine love in action.” (Barclay)

The Will That Heals

Verse 8:1 When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. 2 And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” 3 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4 And Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

• Moses was a type of Christ when he came down from the mount with the Law, the Old Covenant. Jesus comes down from the mount after preaching the New Covenant.
  • Both came down their mountains and continued to doing their ministries.
• There are few preachers indeed who have had crowds follow him after the sermon was over, but this crowd was hungry for more of the Lord. They were already hungering for righteousness and searching for the kingdom. They knew were they could find these things, from the One who taught with authority.
• One person who came to meet and ask something of Jesus was a leper. Perhaps he had just hear the Sermon.
  • Really, can one imagine having this leprosy and the cost associated with it?
  • “It might bean with little nodules which go on to ulcerate. … [T]he eyebrows fall out; the eyes become staring … The hands and feet … [usually waste away]. The average course of that kind of leprosy is nine years, and it ends in mental decay, coma and ultimately death.” (Barclay)
  • “In the ancient world leprosy was the most terrible of all diseases. E. W. G. Masterman writes: ‘No other disease reduces a human being for so many years to so hideous a wreck.’” (Barclay)
  • "In Palestine in the time of Jesus the leper was barred from Jerusalem and from all walled towns. In the synagogue there was provided for him a little isolated chamber, ten feet high and six feet wide… >> (Barclay)
  • The leper was a complete outcast as he must be. The condition is pretty contagious. And “to touch him, and even to approach him, was to break the [Jewish] Law.” (Barclay)
  • “The Law enumerated sixty-one different contacts which could defile, and the defilement involved in contact with a leper was second only to the defilement involved in contact with a dead body.” (Barclay)
• The leper started the ask in humbleness and understanding: Lord, if you will …
  • Apart from the Lord’s will, it ain’t getting done.
  • The leper knew this.
  • He was humble know this important truth.
• The Lord was willing here.
  • Jesus, by even touching the leper would have defiled Himself according to the Mosic Law, so to “a Jew there would be no more amazing sentence in the New Testament than the simple statement: 'And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper.” (Barclay)
  • Carson wisely wrote, “Nothing Jesus touches remains defiled.” (“Matthew,” 189)
  • “Here we see Jesus touching the untouchable.” (Barclay)

But Jesus commanded the leper here in 4b “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

• Say nothing. Why? It seems from other parts of Scripture that Jesus wanted to launch His public ministry at a prescribed time.² (Cf. John 2:4)
• While we know this is true we are not sure as to why.
  • One said, to not arouse political suspicions too early. (Barclay)
  • Another wrote, “Jesus did not want the news of this cleansing broadcast widely because it would have attracted multitudes whose sole interest would have been to obtain physical healing.” >>> [754, Tasker, p. 87]
  • But these seem more like conjecture.
  • Carson wrote it best, “Jesus was not hoping to be the most popular teacher, miracle worker, or usurper of Rome. Jesus was always concerned with the Father’s timing. People that disobeyed Jesus towards secrecy only made His ministry harder.” (Carson, “Matthew”, 199)
• Jesus’ second command was for the man to go through the lengthy, formal process of being declared clean by those with Jewish authority as described in Leviticus 14.
  • Proof to them them meant restoration to the religious and social communities. COMMENT

APPLICATION

• God’ will is paramount in the process of anything, physical healing included.
  • One must correlate verses on asking God for things, and …
  • in 1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”
  • Jesus proved that He had authority of the worst kinds of sickness and disease. To see a man’s leprosy disappear right before one’s eyes must have been an astonishing thing to watch. But performing many miracles was the part of His ministry that validated His more important message of the kingdom.
• These healing recorded in the NT happened. They were not imagined or made up. All the writers that we know of were martyred for these words (save one, John).
  • One would be wise to believe and teach that these things happened as the witnesses testified to.

TRANSITION : The Will That Heals

The Faith That Heals

5 When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, 6 “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

• A few background points here as we continue the study of Jesus’ earthy ministry as recorded in Matthew.
  • “When He entered Capernaum.” This town is located almost due north on Galilee Lake. And it would be the base of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Peter lived there and one could see the ruins of his home even today.
  • Capernaum is located in the region of Galilee where most of the national trade / travel routes came together. Because of this and its past with rebellious uprisings and tendencies, there was an auxiliary of Roman troops there. >>(Carson, “Matthew,” 200)
  • Auxiliaries were mostly made up of non-Roman citizen troops at the time,⁴ and these auxiliaries "became the ‘eyes and ears’ of the army."⁵ If an auxiliary could not handle the local trouble, the area got the Roman legion, the Roman-citizen troops.
  • A centurion usually lead, as one might guess from the title, 100 men.⁶ He would have averaged the rank of captain in the US Army today.⁷
  • During the Roman dominance of the near east, slaves had no legal rights whatsoever (as most often the case); his master was free to treat him well or to mistreat him and even kill him without recourse. (Barclay)
  • Some masters were kind to their slaves and many were not, as has always been the case.
• We see an unnamed centurion in our passage. He had a paralyzed slave, perhaps from a fall or other accident.
  • The centurion "… wished for Jesus’ power to help and to heal his servant, but there was one problem. He was a Gentile and Jesus was a Jew, and, according to the Jewish law, a Jew could not enter the house of a Gentile for all Gentile dwelling-places were unclean. The Mishnah lays it down: “The dwelling-places of Gentiles are unclean.” It is to that Jesus refers when he puts the question: “Am I to come and heal him?” (Barclay)
  • And a centurion, he would have known full well the idea of orders.
  • The centurion was familiar with the power of a word. The centurion was asking for Jesus to do the miraculous. So in essence the centurion knew that an order in word would heal his slave.

10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.

• “It is interesting to note that every centurion mentioned in the New Testament is mentioned with honour."⁸ (Barclay; spelling retained)
• This centurion, although he is not mentioned by name “is one of the most attractive characters in the gospels.” (Barclay)
• The only time Jesus is said to have ever marveled in the Bible is regarding faith. Much faith or a lack of it.⁹ >> (I.e., also Mark 6:6, Luke 7:9)
• This centurion’s faith impressed Jesus and his request was granted.

APPLICATION

• Jesus lived His whole life surrounded by “religious people,” but not people of such great faith.
• It was a centurion who possessed the second greatest faith virtue of faith as did Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Elijah, and Daniel.
• Luke 18:8, I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

• What was the centurion’s spiritual situation? He was a man of faith. He is among the elect of God in heaven.
• This centurion is a saved person —pre-cross of Christ.
• What many in the nation of Israel missed was that the Law never saved and that was not its purpose. They missed they too were only saved by faith for the 1 ^1/2 millennia before Jesus’ birth. Many not only missed the righteousness by faith in the OT, but the missed Messiah when He came who gives the gift of eternal life to all who believe.
  • We see these admitted mistakes articulated thoroughly in Romans by Paul.¹⁰
  • Jesus warned the other listeners indirectly when He mentioned the teeth gnashers.
  • The Jews had always looked forward “with all their hearts to this Messianic banquet;” but it mostly never crossed their minds that Gentiles would be in attendance. (Barclay)
  • Jesus keys in on this national miss when He mentioned the many that will come from outside of Israel’s borders to participate in the celebration supper that all people of faith will eat with the Lord.
  • From Adam to this moment, there has been only one thing that saves a person, faith in God. We now look back and see more clearly the good news —the gospel of God and what the righteous law of God demanded from His Son, but every person is still saved by faith.
  • And all people of faith are coming to the meal. People from Israel’s East and West, people of faith.
• Notice too that Jesus places the limit or lack of it correlating to the centurion’s faith; “let it be done for you” —see it in verse 13— "as you have believed.” (Emphasis mine.)
  • Much of Jesus’ work in our life depends on our participation in faith. >>
  • Faith along with love is necessary for any work to be judged good by God.
  • Result: the slave was healed at that very moment.
  • Remember too that another person was healed by the faith of another.

APPLICATION

• We will one day be with our Savior Jesus and eat with Him if you are a believer.
  • Let’s check out the scene Jesus was speaking of in the OT: turn to Isaiah 25:6-9.
  • The centurion will be there.
• We out to reach out to all people.
  • Many teachers (rabbis) of Jesus’ day would not have considered interacting with a Gentile centurion. >>
  • Jesus reached out to a leader in an occupational force. “The centurion was a Gentile, and therefore the strict orthodox Jew would have said that he was merely fuel for the fires of hell; he was the servant of a foreign government and of an occupying power …” (Barclay)
  • For God so loved the cosmos that He gave is one and only Son. That whosoever believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
• Faith matters!
  • Without faith it is impossible to please God.
  • What are you having faith for God to do in your life right now?
  • Things to check for: double-mindedness and doubt.
  • Believe.

TRANSITION : The Faith That Heals

The God That Heals

• So let’s shift gears.
• Sickness comes from the fall and may come from sin as well.
• So are we to pray for healing now?
• Ceasesationists vs continuationists
  • While I don’t want to spend time talking about the error of the ceasesationists, I will tell you that they usually get their primary argument from what I must consider and big error in interpreting 1 Cor. 13:8-13.
• Does Jesus still physically heal people? Yes. There must be millions of people who would testified that they have been miraculously healed. I am one of them.
• The RX in James: James 5:14-15 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
  • God has told me no more than once. But he has told me yes several times!
  • Ask! Most people will not follow God’s word here.
• God reserves His right to say no.
  • It may be God’s will for us to suffer in some way physically.
  • Almost all will eventually suffer physically as we approach the door to heaven. There in no getting out of this for most of us. The body must fail and it will. With that failure come ailments and pain.
• The rapture being the only exception for some.
  • Ultimately, we all shall be healed from what ails us.

Malachi 4:1-3 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

Notes

^{Notes from above may not be in numerical order.}

¹ Also Mark Bailey lecture (date unknown), DTS; Constable’s intro, Bob Utley’s intro; Carson in “Matthew” also cited Gatzweiler; et al.
The word “charismatics” from David Hill’s Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings: Studies in the Semantics of Soteriological Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 1976, 327-48) p. 57. As quoted in footnote 12 in France, The Gospel of …, p. 286. Davies and Allison disagree. They see the descriptions as one group. (see 693)

² Barclay wrote of a plausible reason: “Palestine was an occupied country, and the Jews were a proud race. They never forgot that they were God’s chosen people. They dreamed of the day when their divine deliverer would come. But for the most part they dreamed of that day in terms of military conquest and political power. For that reason Palestine was the most inflammable country in the world. It lived amidst revolutions. Leader after leader arose, had his moment of glory and was then eliminated by the might of Rome. Now, if this leper had gone out and published abroad what Jesus had done for him, there would nave been a rush to install a man with powers such as Jesus possessed as a political leader and a military commander.”

³ Constable referenced, Allen, p. lxv; Alfred Plummer, An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Matthew, pp. xix-xxiii.

⁴ “List of Roman auxiliary regiments.” en.wikipedia.org, last edited on October 4, 2023, accessed on Oct. 6, 2023. See also, Donald L. Wasson. “Roman Auxiliary Cavalry.” worldhistory.org, March 2022, accessed on Oct. 6, 2023.

⁵ Wasson, Donald L… “Roman Auxiliary Cavalry.” World History Encyclopedia, 25 Mar 2022, web. 06 Oct 2023.

⁶ Cf. Cartwright, Mark. “Centurion.” World History Encyclopedia, 04 Jul 2014, web. 06 Oct 2023. Cf. Barclay.

⁷ U.S. Dept. of Defense. “Military Units: Army.” Defense.gov. Web. 06 Oct 2023.

⁸ "There was the centurion who recognized Jesus on the Cross as the Son of God; there was Cornelius, the first Gentile convert to the Christian Church; there was the centurion who suddenly discovered that Paul was a Roman citizen, and who rescued him from the fury of the rioting mob; there was the centurion who was informed that the Jews had planned to murder Paul between Jerusalem and Caesarea, and who took steps to foil their plans; there was the centurion whom Felix ordered to look after Paul; there was the centurion accompanying Paul on his last journey to Rome, who treated him with every courtesy, and accepted him as leader when the storm struck the ship ( Matthew 27:54; Acts 10:22; Acts 23:17; Acts 23:23; Acts 24:23; Acts 27:43).” (Barclay)

⁹ Blue Letter Bible Lexicon. “θαυμάζω.” Blueletterbible.org, web. 06 Oct 2023.

¹⁰ One of Paul’s biggest gaps in his pre-conversion theology was that God has always saved all people by faith. When he was Saul and not Paul, he had diminished or missed the fact that there was 2 ^1/2 millennia where God saved by faith before the Law was even given to specifically the Jews. He missed the key verse which he latter wrote in Romans 4:3, For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Works Cited

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Click here to access the works cited web-page for this document, save those marked as “Notes” or “Other Works Cited”–if any. Most of these cited works correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of general background information and references, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with. ¶ Furthermore, there may be numbered notes that are URL linked; these are usually retained numbered notes from Thomas Constable’s, “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” These links are preserved “as is” at the time of this work’s formation and I usually include other citation information from Constable as well (e.g. authors’ names).

Other Works Cited

Note: All of the resources below were cited in at least one of the sermons in the Book of Matthew but not necessarily this one.

Augsburger, David. Dissident Discipleship. Brazos Press, 2006.

Barclay, William. Barclay’s Daily Study Bible. Westminster Press, 1955-1960. Sourced digitally from studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dsb.html.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, vol. 22, ed. David S. Dockery, et al., Broadman Press, 1992. May be sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/matthew0000blom

________. Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation. Baker Academic, 2004. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/preachingparable0000blom/page/82/mode/1up)

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. Ed., A.C. Armstrong and Son, reprint 1984, Kregel Publications, 1971 edition.

Carson, D. A. “Matthew.” The Expositors Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein, Ed. et al., Zondervan, 1984.

_______. The Sermon on the Mount : an Evangelical of Matthew 5-7 Exposition. 1978, Baker Book House, fifth printing, 1989. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/sermononmounteva0000cars/page/54/mode/1up

_______. When Jesus confronts the world : an exposition of Matthew 8-10. Originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in 1988, Paternoster, 1995. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/whenjesusconfron0000cars/page/n3/mode/1up

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Our Daily Bread Publishing, web ver.

Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. T. & T. Clark, 1988. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/criticalexegetic0001davi/page/n7/mode/1up

Evans, Craig A. The Bible Knowledge Background Commentary: Matthew-Luke. Victor, 2003. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/bibleknowledgeba00crai/mode/1up

France, R. T. The Gospel According to Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1985.

_______. The Gospel of Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000fran/page/n6/mode/1up

Harrington, Daniel J . The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 1, A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press (publ.), 1991. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000harr/mode/1up

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke. Baker Book House, 1984.

Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospels: John. Loizeaux Brothers, 1988.

Plumptre, E. H. “Matthew.” Commentary for English Readers, Charles John Ellicott, Compiler/Editor, Lord Bishop of Gloucester Cassell and Company, Limited, 1905. Sourced from BiblePortal.com. Click here for a list of the authors of the CER.

Robinson, Monte. The Way of Discipleship. Independently published, 2021. Web, aimdiscipleship.org/book.html, accessed Oct 2023.

Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan, 1995.

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