Reaction to the Power of Jesus
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 26 August 2012
We're continuing our study this evening in Matthew 9. We come, really, to a very brief portion for our lesson, 2 verses only, and let us discuss what the Spirit of God would have us to learn from it. Matthew 9:33-34, “And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke. And the multitudes marveled, saying, “It was never seen like this in Israel!” 34 But the Pharisees said, “He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons.”
Matthew gives us the 2 responses to the miracles that Jesus had done. There was the marveling multitude and there were the rejecting Pharisees. But before we get into that specifically, let me see if I can't get you to think in line with what the text is saying to us.
When our Lord was just about 40 days old, He was taken by His mother and Joseph to the temple; because it was required that they gave an offering of purification after giving birth to a child; and while in the temple, they met a man by the name of Simeon. Simeon was an old man who had been waiting for the arrival of the Messiah; and now he had the privilege of seeing the Messiah.
In Luke 2:30 he says, "30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation 31 which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, 34 Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel.” Simeon said: this Child will become the dividing line to determine the ultimate destiny for every individual. Most will reject Him and fall. Some will receive Him and rise again.
That always has been the way God works. There are those who are planted like trees by the river of waters that bring forth fruit; and there are those who are the weed that will burn. There are the godly and the ungodly. There are the righteous and the unrighteous, and there are only those two categories.
This was not new information for Mary. In Luke 1, as she praised God she said, "50 And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 52 He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.”
Mary knew that it was characteristic of God to receive some and refuse others, to bless some and curse others, to give strength to some by gathering them, and to scatter others, to pull down the proud, and to lift up the humble, to fill the hungry and to send away the full. In other words, there would always be this dividing line.
There are those, said our Lord in Matthew 7, who enter the narrow gate and are blessed; and those who enter the broad gate and are damned. There are those who build their house upon the rock, and it stands in judgment. There are those who build their house on the sand, and it collapses. There are those who try to hold onto their life and lose it. There are those who lose their life and, in so losing it, they find everlasting life.
Matthew 10:32 begins with, "32 Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven. 34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”
Again, Jesus is the dividing line: “35 to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, 36 and a man's greatest enemies shall be those of his own household.” It goes like that continuously through Matthew and the other Gospels as well.
Matthew 21:28-32 says, "28 A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ 29 He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he regretted it and went. 30 Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?”
They said to Him, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.”
In other words, the first son was irreligious; but he repented and went. The second son was religious, he had the facade of religion, he pretended to obey; but he didn't go. Son No. 1, who said no and repented, was the tax collector and the sinner. Son No. 2, who said I will, but didn't, was the Pharisee and the hypocrite, and Jesus said the tax collectors and the harlots would enter the Kingdom before the pretenders would.
Christ is the demarcation line. The Apostle Paul picks up this same concept that the entire human race is divided into believers and unbelievers, into heaven-bound souls and hell- bound souls, into the blessed and the cursed, and that the dividing line is their faith or lack of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What Matthew wants to do is to help us understand that Christ is who He claims and that a decision must be made. He calls us to make a right choice, to choose life, to choose righteousness, godliness and to believe. So he presents in chapter 8 and 9 irrefutable evidence that Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah and the Savior.
Matthew 8 and 9 record nine wondrous miracles. Miracles beyond the capacity of any human being not only to do, but even to fathom; and they are only samples of the full scope of His miracles. John 20:30 says, "And many other signs Jesus did in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book." In John 21:25 he says, "And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
How did people respond to these different miracles? In the first three miracles He showed His power over disease. He healed a leper, He healed a centurion's servant of paralysis, and then He healed Peter's mother-in-law of fever. Then the second three miracles, He restored physical disorder, He calmed the waves and the sea. Then He dealt with spiritual disorder, by casting out a legion of demons. Then with moral disorder, by healing the paralytic and forgiving his sins.
And then He dealt with death, healing a dead tongue giving back speech, dead eyes, and then raising Jairus' daughter from the dead. Each miracle demonstrated Christ's power in another dimension and they are representative of the myriads of miracles that He performed in all of those categories. And following each set of miracles was a response section that we want to discuss.
Let us start in Matthew 9:35 first and then we will look at the responses in verse 34 and 33. Note verse 35 says, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” He was constantly working; and you can see why as it says, "He went about all the cities and villages."
Josephus, the historian, tells us that at the time of Jesus, there were 204 towns and villages. The difference between a city and a village was a wall. If you had a wall, you were a city. If you didn't have a wall, you were a village. Little villages didn't fortify themselves, but cities did. Jesus was in all of them; and that would be about a 70 by 40 mile area.
And He was moving through all of these rapidly. Josephus writes, "The cities are numerous, and the multitude of villages everywhere crowded with men because of the fertility of the soil, so that even the smallest town contained about 15,000 inhabitants." So there were 3 million people that Jesus could have reached in just that area of Galilee.
Now, let us look at the three things that He did that were mentioned in verse 35, “teaching in the synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”
First, teaching in their synagogues. What does this involve? Wherever there were Jewish people, there was a synagogue, a gathering together place. That was the center of Jewish community life. It was like a church, a town hall and the local court. It was where the Jewish people met together in the community.
Now, the synagogue was an addition to Judaism that didn't come around until the Babylonian captivity. All of their worship had been focused on the temple; but when they were taken captive and the temple was destroyed for those 70 years in Babylon, wherever there was an opportunity to meet together they formed these little synagogues.
And in the time of our Lord in Galilee, there were synagogues in all the little towns and villages. They were usually built on a hill or, if there wasn't a hill, they were built at least on the highest spot, or they would build them by a river. Now, the Jews always used the synagogue as a place of teaching. As they were in occupied countries from time to time in their history, they would exercise whatever authority they had in their synagogues.
Philo, the historian said, "Synagogues were mainly for the detailed reading and exposition of Scripture." Now, when the sermon was given on any given day, it could be given by any leading member of the congregation who was knowledgeable in the Scripture. But if there happened to be a visiting rabbi, it was customary to let that rabbi preach and give the sermon.
Jesus taught many times, one example for instance starts in Luke 4:15, “And Jesus taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.” Let’s look at the people’s response in verses 16 – 22, “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”
Every Jew in that synagogue knew that that passage referred to the Messiah. And Jesus gave a very short sermon. “20 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. 21 And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He said, "I am the living fulfillment of that passage."
Well, that's real shocking news for them. He went on to say some other things; and by the time He got done, verse 28-30 says, “So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29 and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. 30 Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.”
Their response was a response of unbelief and anger and they meant to kill Jesus right then and there. The miracle here is that all those people did not have the power to kill Jesus. Only when it was His time did Jesus voluntarily gave Him self to be crucified. Times have not changed much; anything that is biblical based is disregarded and considered extreme and old fashioned.
Jesus explained the Old Testament in the synagogue but He also was preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom everywhere else. And His message was always the same, good news, that's what Gospel means. This was the unfolding of the mysteries which had been hidden from people in times past. This was the new covenant, the new revelation, the proclamation; and always the Kingdom.
And both of these preaching ministries were verified by the miracles; healing every sickness among the people, as a way to affirm the validity of the first two and there was no way to refute them. Do you know that the Pharisees never denied His miracles? They only denied the source of them, because they were undeniable.
We have already seen some responses. The first three miracles in Matthew 8 had this response. Three men said, "We want to follow You, Lord." But because they loved personal comfort and personal riches more, they turned back and walked away. They illustrate a superficial interest that never becomes real, a momentary response and a fascination that has no root.
And then there are people like the Pharisees who just got irritated at what Jesus says, because He confronts their religious status quo. And then there are people like the followers of John the Baptist, who, all their life, have been in one religious system; and they're very confused about this new thing that they're hearing. Then there are people like Matthew, who really believe, and who go out and bring all their tax collector and prostitute friends to believe also.
And now we come to the third set of miracles and the their responses and there are two. Matthew 9:33, "The multitude marveled." Verse 34, "The Pharisees rejected," and they said He did it by the power of Satan. They couldn't deny that He did it. They just denied that the source was God. Later on in chapter 12, Jesus says to them, "That just shows you where you are that you think Satan goes around casting out Satan."
The word marvel, thoumodzo, is a very full, comprehensive kind of word. It can mean they were amazed. They were, in fact, super-astonished. Luke 9:43 sums it up, "And they were all astonished at the mighty power of God...and they marveled every one at all things which Jesus did."
Many people have been in awe of Jesus who didn't know Him. Pilate said He was a Man without fault. Pilate's in hell. Some other people who are in hell said some good things about Jesus. Napoleon said He was the Emperor of Love. Lekke said He was the highest pattern of virtue. Bakant said He's the Holy One before God. Francis Cobb said He was the regenerator of humanity. And somebody said He was a superstar...
For many Jesus is acceptable as long as we don't really have to confront sin; we can always deal with a holy person as long as He is not too close. The Pharisees of Jesus' time were always honoring the prophets; but the people who lived when the prophets were alive killed them; and the only prophet that was alive in Jesus' time was John the Baptist; and they killed him; and then there was Jesus; and they killed Him too.
Now, listen please. Both kinds of responses are wrong. Both end up in hell forever. You mean these hating, rejecting people that blasphemed and said He was of Satan, and then the multitude that marveled and were fascinated and were amazed too? Yes, because that's not the proper response. The only response is to believe and to receive Christ, not just to be fascinated by Him. How about you? Let us pray.