Power over Disease – 2
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 10 June 2012
It's so refreshing and so exciting to see Jesus walking through the world, touching human need and human life. It's not like the theological treatises of the Apostle Paul. It's not like the historical approach of the writer of Hebrews. There's just something fresh, practical and touching about seeing Jesus walk through the world, and that's what we have the privilege of doing, beginning in this 8th chapter.
Now, particularly in the 8th chapter, we noted to you last time that our Lord expresses His authority. He faced the question, "What gives You the right to speak like that? What is Your authority?" In effect, chapter 8 and 9 are the answer, "I'm God, I came from heaven, and I was given all authority." Jesus demonstrates His deity.
You have to understand how really dramatic the whole scene was. In the day of Jesus Christ, the world was filled with disease and, medical science was almost nonexistent. So there was a tremendous fear of disease. There was the pain and suffering and the anguish and there were no drugs to alleviate that. People died quickly.
And along came Jesus and He touched human life at the point of its greatest pain and disease. Jesus literally wiped out disease in Palestine; and the monumental nature of such an expression is beyond description. Jesus swept through with His healing power and healed thousands upon thousands of people. He repeatedly said, "Believe Me for the very works' sake." How can anyone deny this?
First of all, He healed with a word or a touch. Secondly, He healed instantaneously. That very hour, the woman with the bleeding problem in Mark was healed immediately; and the ten lepers were healed instantaneously. And in Luke 5, immediately, the leprosy departed from him. And the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:9 immediately became well. And the blind man, when he washed his eyes saw instantly.
Thirdly, He healed totally. There was never a recuperation period. Can you imagine being 35 years and never have taken a step, and Jesus made your legs whole and told you to get up and walk? Why, even if your legs were whole, you couldn't walk. There would be some rehabilitation time needed. There is never rehabilitation in any miracle Jesus ever performed. It was total and immediate.
Fourthly, Jesus healed everybody. He didn't have to screen out the tough cases. He didn't send away long lines of disappointed people like the so-called healers of today. Luke 4:40 says, "And while the sun was setting, all who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Him and laying His hands on every one of them, He was healing them.”
Fifthly, Jesus healed organic diseases: disformed legs, withered hands, blind eyes and paralysis. The kind of healings that would show a miracle beyond doubt. And sixthly, and this is where Jesus really departs from everybody else, Jesus raised the dead. This has never happened in the history of the world; and what the Jewish people are seeing with this miraculous work of Christ is something for which there is only possible a divine explanation.
And that's what makes the Pharisees' unbelief so incredible; and it shows the depth of the sin in their hearts. They would not believe in the face of incredible evidence. Nonetheless, Matthew accuses them again in this section by pointing up the credentials of Jesus; and out of the thousands of miracles, he picks three for this chapter.
Now, last week, we saw the first one healing a leper in verses 1 to 4. Now, this would have been an incredible statement for the Pharisees, an amazing miracle for them to see, because they couldn't imagine why anybody would bother with a leper. There must have been a lot of Pharisees who themselves were sick and could have used healing.
We move from that leper to our story for today. Here we find a man who also would be by the Jews considered an outcast, because he is a Gentile. Worse than that, he is a Roman soldier, a member of the occupation army that had conquered and now ruled their land. What the Lord is saying is this that the Kingdom is for the down and out, for the outcast and the Gentile.
Let's look at verse 5, "A centurion came forward to him, appealing to him.” Now, Matthew goes right for the facts of the interaction between the centurion and Jesus, because of Matthew's purpose. But the facts are explained further in Luke, because Luke has a comparative passage in the 7th chapter. I'll just kind of fill in some details from Luke.
Luke tells us that the centurion didn't actually go to Jesus, but he sent some elders of the Jews with this message. So Jesus does interact with the centurion, but through these Jewish people who have come to Him. The centurion did not come himself because he felt unworthy to be in the presence of Christ and to have Christ in his home; so he asked these Jews to speak to Jesus for him.
So here you have a Gentile. And he's the worst kind of Gentile, a Samaritan. And he's the worst kind of Samaritan because he is a member of the occupation forces of the Roman army who are oppressing Israel. But he comes in the presence of Jesus through these mediating Jews that Luke tells us about.
Verse 6, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” Now, there's something beautiful about this. First of all, he cared about his servant, and that sets him apart from everybody else in the Roman world. In fact, in the Roman Empire, slaves didn't matter. If they suffered, it didn't matter. They had no rights.
Now listen what these Jews say in Luke 7:4, "And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him.” Their message was, “You should do this. He's worthy." How can a Gentile soldier be worthy?
The reason is in Luke 7:5, "He loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue." He's a God-fearing Gentile. He realizes that he's dealing with a people who are the covenant people of the living God, and he makes an investment in them. And so the elders came and said, "Please, You ought to do this for him."
What interests me is that they knew Jesus could do it. Everybody knew He could heal; but the hardness of their heart didn't allow them to take one step further and accept Him as their Savior. So here is a good Gentile who loved Israel, and we too should love Israel. They are God's chosen people. I study them more than I do Gentiles in the study of God’s Word.
He loved his slave and he was humble. Do you know, he didn't want Jesus in his house, because he knew enough about Jewish teachings that a Jew was never to go in the house of a Gentile? The Jews believed that Gentile utensils were unclean. They believed all kinds of strange things that the rabbis had invented to keep them apart from the Gentiles.
He is loving and he is sincere. And when he says, "Lord," in verse 6, it's the Lord in the fullness of what it means. Look at Matthew 8:10, Jesus said in the middle of the verse, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.” Faith is believing who Christ was, he believed Jesus was God.
And it isn't on behalf of his own need. He says in verse 6, “my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly." And you know what is so beautiful? There's no request in it, he just gives information through these elders. His prayer is a prayer of information. "Lord, here is the need. I accept Your sovereignty and Your choice."
Then comes our Lord's response in verse 7, "And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” In fact, Luke says they all start heading for the house, and the centurion sees them coming, and he panics, because he doesn't feel worthy to be in the presence of Christ.
And so he sends a messenger real fast in Matthew 8:8, “But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.” You didn't become a centurion easily. You became a centurion by working your way up through the ranks. This was a guy who was tough. He was leading a hundred men. He was a combat-oriented soldier; but with a gentle, humble, sensitive and loving spirit; and all this for a sick slave.
And now his faith becomes evident at the end of verse 8 saying, "You don't need to come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” Wow, "Where did he get that information?" Listen, he knew what Jesus had been doing. He said, "I know Your authority. Just speak the word." He knew that Jesus was God.
And then in verse 9, he gives this little explanation, “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.”
He's saying is, "Hey, I understand Your authority. Some of you might wonder, 'Where did He get this authority? Who does He think he is?’ But I know a man with authority when I see one. I've seen the power of His Words. I understand authority."
Now watch the reasoning from the lesser to the greater of verse 9. He says, "I am a man who is under authority, and I exercise authority. How much more authority must You have since You are the supreme authority of the universe." Then he says, "I can command things to happen. But You are above all authorities. How much more can You by speaking the Word make things happen?" Wow, this is great faith, isn't it?
Now the next verse, verse 10 is really interesting. "When Jesus heard this, He marveled." Now you have to have a pretty unique kind of faith to amaze Jesus. Think about it, He knows everything. Jesus, in a glimpse of His humanness, was amazed at the faith of this Gentile.
Look what he says next, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith." And the implication here is, "I should have found it here in Israel. You are the people of the covenant Promise. You are the people of the inheritance.
Oh, He found faith among the Jews. We saw that in Matthew 4. But never in this kind of combination, never with this much virtue. I mean love is here, affection is here, thoughtfulness is here, humility is here and absolute confidence in the power of Christ. You know, what Jesus said about his own disciples in Matthew 6:30, "Oh, you of little faith."
It is a foretaste of the Kingdom Jesus gives. Do you know that Gentiles will have greater faith than Israel? The church predominantly is a Gentile church. Israel still rejects the Messiah. And Jesus makes this clear in verse 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.”
There is coming a millennial Kingdom and an eternal Kingdom in the future. And in that Kingdom, God's wonderful promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will come to pass. The Gospel and salvation came through Abraham's seed and we are sons of Abraham by faith.
But the thing Jesus is saying in verse 11 is this. "Many shall come from east and west and sit down with them." Who are the many? The point at which this begins is Israel; but as you go east and west from there you encompass the whole Gentile world. So what He's saying is, "The Kingdom will be filled with Gentiles."
The Jews didn't believe that. This was contrary to all their teaching. Now listen to verse 12, "while the sons of the kingdom ( i.e. the Jews) will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” They're called sons of the kingdom because, by right, they are the inheritors, but when the Kingdom comes, they're going to get thrown out. You cannot be sons if you reject Jesus.
In John 8:37, they argue with Jesus about that; and they say that they are the sons of Abraham and, as such, they will be saved. And Jesus says, “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me.” And then He says, “44You are of your father the devil.”
Many quotes about hell come from Jesus Himself. I know people think Jesus just talked about love and forgiveness but, listen, I have never preached a sermon as strong as any one the Lord Jesus preached, never. I have never said anything as devastating as what He said.
And so He gives a sermon that was not forgotten, in the midst of this miracle; and then verse 13, "Jesus said to the centurion, “13Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.” Can you imagine if the centurion believed what he believed before, what he must have believed afterwards?
Can we all claim that little phrase, 'Let it be done as you have believed?” Not necessarily. Jesus said that to the centurion. Paul believed that God could heal him, but God didn't, right? That's a sovereign choice. Sometimes He would heal people who had no faith. In fact, the Bible doesn't say anything about the faith of the servant. He healed him for the benefit of the centurion and everybody else in history who would read this story.
Now Matthew adds one more healing in verse 14, “And when Jesus was come into Peter's house..." And the other Gospels tell us it was on the Sabbath, and they had been to the synagogue and then they go home and have dinner; but they were having a problem there. Mark 1:29 tells us that Andrew was there, and James and John also were there; so you have six people, and the tragedy was that Peter’s mother-in-law is sick.
"When Jesus was coming into Peter's house, He saw his wife's mother lying and sick with a fever." Peter was married. We know that, because 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says later on his ministry, that it is not wrong for Peter in his ministry to travel with a wife. How do the Pharisees look at women?
Pharisees get up and say the same prayers every morning like this, "I thank You that I am not slave, a Gentile or a woman." They had a very low view of women; and for Jesus to throw in a healing of a woman is just another indictment of their traditions. And a mother-in-law, I mean, you know, that's even going beyond.
Verse 15, "He touched her hand, and the fever left her." The indication of the other account is that it was so severe, she could have died from it; and Jesus reached out His hand and touched her, and immediately, "The fever left her and she arose and got about making dinner." She ministered.
She was immediately healed. The power of Jesus Christ made manifest. If you can still deny that He's God in the face of all these things, it is not because there is no evidence. It is because there is no faith in your heart, and the reason is because your heart is bound by sin. Let's pray.