SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to take your Bible this morning to Matthew chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 8 as we continue our walk through Matthew's Gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I have continually been amazed and appreciative of how God works.
SPEAKER_01: We've just been doing the same thing every single week, just continually walking through Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: But every week it has seemed in these last few weeks and months, somehow, in some way, it has been richly appropriate to what we are experiencing and enduring in our world at the present time.
SPEAKER_01: And today's text fits right in with that.
SPEAKER_01: It's directly applicative to what we are facing in our world.
SPEAKER_01: It's Matthew chapter 8, beginning in verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: If you would like to follow along with your Bible or your device, I'll begin reading in verse 14 and read through verse 17 this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's Matthew chapter 8, beginning in verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: It says, When Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law, that is Peter's mother-in-law, lying sick with a fever.
SPEAKER_01: He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she arose and began to serve him.
SPEAKER_01: That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.
SPEAKER_01: This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: If we were living four hundred years ago, we would not be dealing with coronavirus, but more like the bubonic plague.
SPEAKER_01: And we would hear a sermon on this text, most likely about how priests should be able to marry, because Peter had a wife and therefore had a mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_01: But we are not 400 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: We are today, and that is not the main point of this text, so we will not preach that particular point.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, this passage is a summary.
SPEAKER_01: It functions as a summary of the first part of chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: We've been walking through this chapter looking at the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the third miracle, that is Peter's mother-in-law being healed, is the third miracle highlighted by Matthew since Jesus came down from teaching the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: First, Jesus encountered a leper, whom he healed, but who did not then seek to obey the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus further progressed in his travel, he arrived at the village of Capernaum, situated on the Sea of Galilee, which we found in chapter 4 of Matthew, he had made his home base of operations, and which was also the location of a home of Peter and Andrew.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't their original home.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they had a fishing base out of Capernaum.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly.
SPEAKER_01: But Peter did have a home there, and Jesus there was sought out to heal the servant of the centurion.
SPEAKER_01: Now this is the third account, and it is yet more personal.
SPEAKER_01: We followed Jesus down the mountainside and into the coastal village of Capernaum.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in the village, we follow Jesus into Peter's own home where Peter's mother-in-law is sick.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus heals her with merely a touch.
SPEAKER_01: Now most of you know what it's like to live in a small town.
SPEAKER_01: We're in North Dakota, after all.
SPEAKER_01: News travels fast in a small town, right?
SPEAKER_01: As a result, the word spread like wildfire.
SPEAKER_01: And by evening everyone knew that Jesus was in town.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus spent the rest of that evening and late into the night, the other gospels tell us, healing all who were sick and demonized.
SPEAKER_01: It's a fairly simple account.
SPEAKER_01: And at first glance, it may even have this sort of quaint kind of feel.
SPEAKER_01: But it is far more than that.
SPEAKER_01: It is far richer than that.
SPEAKER_01: But before we look more intently, let's remind ourselves of what Matthew's intention was.
SPEAKER_01: There were clearly an untold number of healings and miraculous events in the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, verse 16 and 17 tells us that.
SPEAKER_01: We don't even know how many, but he spent all evening hours apparently healing people just in this one village.
SPEAKER_01: And those were just one day, one event.
SPEAKER_01: There's three years of ministry in the life of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: How many healings were there?
SPEAKER_01: How many cleansings were there?
SPEAKER_01: Why then did Matthew choose these three?
SPEAKER_01: Why did he choose this leper?
SPEAKER_01: Why did he choose this centurion servant?
SPEAKER_01: And why did he choose Matthew's mother or Peter's mother-in-law to include?
SPEAKER_01: We have to know this.
SPEAKER_01: We have to find out why did Matthew write these three?
SPEAKER_01: Because if we don't, then we miss grasping the entire point that Matthew's trying to make.
SPEAKER_01: And if we miss his entire point, then we will misapply the miracles to our own lives.
SPEAKER_01: So why does Matthew include these three miracles?
SPEAKER_01: I think it's very simple.
SPEAKER_01: He chose them to highlight the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: To highlight the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Back in chapter 4, we saw where Jesus introduced himself, he revealed himself as Israel's promised king, as the promised Messiah, as the coming one.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew told us that he began to proclaim the kingdom because he was there.
SPEAKER_01: And so his Sermon on the Mount then is an expression of his kingship.
SPEAKER_01: It is an expression of the demands and the expectations of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of that sermon, Jesus went even further, concluding that he is the one who rules over the kingdom of heaven, and therefore he has the authority to grant entrance or to deny entrance into his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He said that only those with genuine faith in him will be granted entrance.
SPEAKER_01: And the distinguishing mark, he told us at the end of chapter 7, of those with genuine faith is obedience to the word of God through Christ the King.
SPEAKER_01: Those who believe in Christ have some knowledge of who he is, they have some grasp of his authority that motivates them to follow him and to obey him.
SPEAKER_01: And it's only those with faith that obeys who will enter the Lord's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that surprises you.
SPEAKER_01: If it does, you're not alone.
SPEAKER_01: Because it astonished the crowds that followed him as well.
SPEAKER_01: It astonished them because Jesus spoke with one who had authority.
SPEAKER_01: Not as someone who pretended to have authority or merely spoke authoritative words, but he spoke as one who actually possessed the authority to command people to obey.
SPEAKER_01: You are likely familiar with it, where we have that great commission where Jesus said, Go and make disciples of all nations.
SPEAKER_01: But do you remember what he said just before that?
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 28, verse 18, Jesus says to his disciples, all authority has been given to me.
SPEAKER_01: Not some authority, not partial authority, but all authority has been given to me.
SPEAKER_01: That's how the gospel ends.
SPEAKER_01: So all throughout this gospel of Matthew, we have this sense, this theme of authority of Christ running all the way through it.
SPEAKER_01: But from chapter 7, verse 21, all the way through chapter 9, verse 8, we sort of have this book within a book.
SPEAKER_01: Because we find some, we can call them bookends.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 7, verse 21, we have this discussion that begins, this authoritative sense that involves the crowds being amazed at Jesus' authority.
SPEAKER_01: Then in chapter 9, verse 1, you can look at that with me just briefly.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 9, verse 1 and 2, Jesus is again near the Sea of Galilee, and some friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus with the intention that he's going to heal him, of course.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't immediately heal him, instead, he forgives his sins, which instantly erupts a controversy.
SPEAKER_01: Because who could forgive sins except God alone?
SPEAKER_01: See, Jesus knew that the paralyzed man's greatest problem wasn't his paralysis, it was his sin.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus healed his greatest problem.
SPEAKER_01: That created a controversy.
SPEAKER_01: Notice in verse 6 what Jesus says in response to the controversy.
SPEAKER_01: So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.
SPEAKER_01: And he rose and he went home.
SPEAKER_01: And when the crowd saw it, they were afraid and they glorified God who had given such authority to men.
SPEAKER_01: There's the book in.
SPEAKER_01: And where we are is right in the middle of that thread that's very strongly about the authority of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so the first three elements that highlight the Lord's authority are those three miracles of healing.
SPEAKER_01: The leper, the centurion servant, and Peter's mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to think back with me through those three elements, those three miracles, as we sort of recap and remind ourselves of where we've been, of what has been pointed out to us from Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: First, with the leper, we saw the Lord Jesus demonstrate his authority to cleanse from judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We saw from Pastor Anton how leprosy in the Old Testament is continually associated with this sense of judgment, for sinful rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: Leprosy was a very vivid and public sign of God's displeasure with a person's sin.
SPEAKER_01: That disease made the person unclean.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result of being unclean in the Jewish law, they were driven into seclusion.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine living COVID-19 in your own home, not able to go out, not able to be with people, not able to go out and shop with everybody else for your entire life.
SPEAKER_01: And if you did go out, you were required to shout out unclean, unclean, unclean, so that people could purposely avoid you.
SPEAKER_01: That was the man's life, and it was a vivid demonstration of God's displeasure and his sin.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus cleansed that leper.
SPEAKER_01: With a touch and with a command, he removed the disgrace of God's judgment on his life.
SPEAKER_01: With a touch and with a word, he removed the visible demonstration of God's displeasure.
SPEAKER_01: What grace and mercy is that from the Lord Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And what was the response from that leper to that grace and that mercy?
SPEAKER_01: Sadly, it was not to honor the Lord Jesus' authority through obedience to his word, but instead to go and do his own thing.
SPEAKER_01: He did what he thought was right instead of what the Lord Jesus commanded him to do.
SPEAKER_01: Then in the centurion situation, we saw the Lord demonstrate his authority to heal with merely a word.
SPEAKER_01: You can look back at that and see it for yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was on his way to the centurion's home to heal the centurion's servant, but the centurion sent word to him saying, Lord, I'm not even worthy for you to cross the threshold of my front door, much less my back door.
SPEAKER_01: Don't come in.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not worthy.
SPEAKER_01: Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how far apart they were.
SPEAKER_01: They were in the same village, the same community.
SPEAKER_01: Very least, there's several blocks, several houses away.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe much further than that.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was not in the sick person's presence.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he healed the servant.
SPEAKER_01: Through that, he he showed his authority to admit a despised Gentile soldier into his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: While at the same time declaring that many who thought they already had their ticket to heaven hadn't gotten on the train yet.
SPEAKER_01: It was a slap in the face to the prototypical Jewish faith that rested its hope on its ethnicity instead of on genuine faith.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus taught those Jewish crowds what faith was like, and he did it through the faith of a Gentile soldier.
SPEAKER_01: And then we come to Peter's own home.
SPEAKER_01: And there in Peter's own home, the Lord Jesus demonstrated his authority to heal without a word.
SPEAKER_01: A mere touch is all that was needed to restore a woman to health.
SPEAKER_01: These three demonstrations of power and authority are incredibly unusual.
SPEAKER_01: Before this moment, Naaman, the Syrian, was the only person in the pages of Scripture cleansed from leprosy.
SPEAKER_01: He's the only one.
SPEAKER_01: So this is at best very, very rare in the hearing of the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus cleansed the man so completely that he could go and offer proof of his cleansing to the temple officials.
SPEAKER_01: If this was anything like what we know today as Hansen's disease, it could be very, very atrocious.
SPEAKER_01: People could lose their fingers.
SPEAKER_01: There are records of people losing their ears, their noses.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Jesus healed this man so completely, so perfectly that he could go and offer proof, visual proof, of God's mercy and grace to the temple officials.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't go, but he could have.
SPEAKER_01: See, Jesus didn't partially heal, he fully restored.
SPEAKER_01: So we've seen then that there's authority that exists in the Lord Jesus, authority of divine judgment.
SPEAKER_01: There's authority over sin and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: There's authority over the composition of the human body when the leper's restored.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus acts as creator.
SPEAKER_01: He acts as judge.
SPEAKER_01: He acts as God.
SPEAKER_01: There can be no doubt who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions when you come down from the mountainside hearing the Sermon on the Mount, these remove all doubt.
SPEAKER_01: They prove that Jesus has the authority to proclaim and to demand what he says in his Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: He displays authority over heaven and hell.
SPEAKER_01: He displays authority over eternal punishment, over space and distance, over time and physical barriers.
SPEAKER_01: There's authority over the paralysis of the human body and whatever causes that paralysis.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the fake healings of modern TV healers who promise to heal you if you give them a donation.
SPEAKER_01: This is true authority.
SPEAKER_01: The term that Matthew used in verse 6 of the centurion servant lying down, paralyzed, and Matthew's mother-in-law lying down in verse 14, sick with a fever.
SPEAKER_01: The word for lying there is the same word.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not it's not a soft kind of word that indicates that you know they didn't feel very well, and so they went to their bed and laid down.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that means that they were body slammed.
SPEAKER_01: That this this illness, whatever it was in these two individuals, sort of picked them up and just threw them to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: Devastating, devastating illnesses.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you might remember from Luke's gospel that how Luke records the centurion servant is that he was on death's door.
SPEAKER_01: He was in such bad shape that they were afraid he was gonna die before Jesus could heal him.
SPEAKER_01: These are devastating situations, if not for the authority of Christ over his creation.
SPEAKER_01: To Jesus, they are merely another aspect of his world that obeys his authority.
SPEAKER_01: There's more.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus exercises authority over cultural barriers.
SPEAKER_01: It was not culturally appropriate to touch a leper.
SPEAKER_01: If you did, you were unclean.
SPEAKER_01: It was culturally unacceptable for a man to touch a woman in public.
SPEAKER_01: Yet he touched Peter's mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_01: This is where the current doctors in medicine will appreciate scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It was culturally unacceptable to touch someone who had a fever.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Jesus touched her.
SPEAKER_01: These instances did not taint the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They did not infect him, they did not impact him in any way because he was the one promised by the prophets who would come to take away our illnesses and carry away our diseases.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he has perfect and complete authority to restore what the curse of sin has corrupted.
SPEAKER_01: There was no grafting, no skin grafting surgery for the leper.
SPEAKER_01: That was not required.
SPEAKER_01: There was no months-long or years-long regrowth of healthy skin needed for the leper.
SPEAKER_01: It was go, show the proof to the priests now, today, do it.
SPEAKER_01: How could he do that if he was not perfectly cleansed?
SPEAKER_01: Instantaneously.
SPEAKER_01: The servant didn't need to go through physical therapy to strengthen his paralyzed limbs.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, PT folks, Jesus put them out of business in that time.
SPEAKER_01: We're thankful for you now, though.
SPEAKER_01: Peter's mother-in-law had a fever.
SPEAKER_01: You remember how you feel after you've had a fever?
SPEAKER_01: Feels like you've been hit by a truck, right?
SPEAKER_01: What did Peter's mother-in-law do?
SPEAKER_01: She got up and she served Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, no effects left from her illness.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, there is healing in the hands of the King.
SPEAKER_01: And that healing is based in his perfect and complete authority, authority that resides only in the creator of all things.
SPEAKER_01: Is it any wonder then why the Apostle Paul would write of Christ Jesus, for by him all things were created, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things exist.
SPEAKER_01: What have Jesus said?
SPEAKER_01: To a disease or to a virus, thou shalt no longer be upheld.
SPEAKER_01: Poof, it's gone.
SPEAKER_01: There's compassion here in Jesus too that we can't miss.
SPEAKER_01: It's easy to miss.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw the sick woman and he healed her.
SPEAKER_01: You see how amazing that is?
SPEAKER_01: The leper.
SPEAKER_01: The leper came asking to be healed.
SPEAKER_01: The centurion servant.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, Luke tells us that the elders of Israel came to Jesus on his behalf, appealing, continually appealing for Jesus to come and heal the servant.
SPEAKER_01: Here Jesus walks in.
SPEAKER_01: Peter doesn't say anything.
SPEAKER_01: Big mouth Peter is silent.
SPEAKER_01: What does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: He sees his mother-in-law lying sick.
SPEAKER_01: He instantly knows what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: And he touches her.
SPEAKER_01: Grace and compassion flow from his hands without so much as a simple request.
SPEAKER_01: As he so often did, Pastor Charles Spurgeon spoke so eloquently of this.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Jesus lived in a hospital, and it was a hospital of incurables.
SPEAKER_01: It contained many distressing cases, yet in none of them was he overmatched.
SPEAKER_01: He dispossessed the devils who possessed poor men and women, not only calling them out, but casting them out with sort of a divine violence.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, Jesus feared no fever.
SPEAKER_01: No wonder then that as the day ended, Mark tells us that it was a Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: So everybody's in their homes resting, celebrating the Sabbath, and as the sun goes down, the Sabbath ends, and they come pouring out of their houses to seek out Jesus because they've heard he's back in town.
SPEAKER_01: No wonder.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus feared no fever.
SPEAKER_01: And in the end, in almost a passing comment kind of way, we're told of yet another element of the Lord's authority.
SPEAKER_01: He has authority over the demonic world.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see this in greater detail later on in the chapter when Jesus heals two men with demons.
SPEAKER_01: But here, Matthew just wants us to know that there is a vast, unseen world surrounding us, and Jesus possesses authority over every bit of it.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the pages are full of some very specific language about the spirit world.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, we know about holy angels, righteous angels.
SPEAKER_01: We know about the demons.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture refers to those demons as rulers, as authorities, as cosmic powers, as spiritual forces of evil.
SPEAKER_01: The Gospels and the book of Acts show us again and again that evil forces have the power to ravage human beings, to impact life and life events in this world.
SPEAKER_01: Satan is called the ruler of this dark world.
SPEAKER_01: And God the Son stepped into the domain ruled by Satan.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God took on flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_01: And the word of Christ took on the ruler of this world.
SPEAKER_01: And when he spoke, crowds were astonished.
SPEAKER_01: When he spoke, the servant was healed.
SPEAKER_01: When he spoke, demons obeyed.
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, in the few centuries before Jesus, the apocryphal book of Tobit says that the way to get rid of demons is to go fishing.
SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
SPEAKER_01: You go fishing and you catch a fish, and then you gut the fish, and you take the fish's heart and the fish's liver, and you burn them like incense in front of the demon-possessed person, and the demon will smell that burning and leave the person.
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: You can find out more crazy methods that they tried through the Jewish historian Josephus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus simply speaks.
SPEAKER_01: And they obey.
SPEAKER_01: With a word.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: There can be only one answer.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is greater.
SPEAKER_01: He has an authority and a power and a position that is greater than anything else in the spirit world, anything greater than righteous angels and evil angels.
SPEAKER_01: The only being greater than angels is God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: You can read the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 1, delineates that Jesus, the Christ, is greater than angels.
SPEAKER_01: He is God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And so it is, He dispossesses them with a word.
SPEAKER_01: Is it any wonder then why God makes it clear that this book that we possess today is his word and that it carries the authority and the power of Christ Himself?
SPEAKER_01: Never underestimate, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the power of the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It was even provided to us as an example in the life of the Lord Jesus in chapter 4, when he was in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights without food and water, and Satan himself came to tempt the Lord Jesus in the midst of those weaknesses.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus responded to the temptations, not with divine power, not with power that resided in himself, not with authority over Satan, but he relied upon the authority that is in the written word of God.
SPEAKER_01: He quoted the written word of God.
SPEAKER_01: The believer, my friends, in the Lord Jesus Christ has been given everything needed for life and godliness in the sufficient and authoritative word of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: Why then would we ever want to turn to anything less?
SPEAKER_01: We must beware of our innate desire to spurn the word of God, to turn it away for something less.
SPEAKER_01: Eve in the garden turned to the word of the serpent.
SPEAKER_01: And from that time on, people have been turning to insufficient means instead of to the sufficient word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's powerfully illustrated in the book of Judges, where over and over and over again people did what was right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: They looked at their own wisdom, they looked at their own experience, their own understanding, and lived life in light of that.
SPEAKER_01: And it led to a devastating cycle.
SPEAKER_01: In the last days of Israel's existence as a nation, before being carried off into captivity by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, God spoke to them through the prophet Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, My people have committed two evils.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
SPEAKER_01: And number two, they have hewed out cisterns for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Cisterns that are broken and that can hold no water.
SPEAKER_01: Choosing insufficient things.
SPEAKER_01: The very first house that my wife and I owned, it was built up on the top of a hillside, on top of a hill, outside of a little village.
SPEAKER_01: And when we first moved in there, there was no city water and no well.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we had a concrete cistern that was built right along the side of the house.
SPEAKER_01: We had to have water hauled in every couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01: It was a frustrating experience for many reasons, but one of them is because it leaked.
SPEAKER_01: God says, when you forsake me and you forsake my word, you're pursuing those things that are insufficient.
SPEAKER_01: When we look at Matthew's gospel, especially these sections in chapter 7 and chapter 8, we see the primary attribute of the word of God that Matthew wants us to see, like a neon sign in the sky, is the authority of the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It demands obedience, it demands respect, it demands proper treatment.
SPEAKER_01: We must not act like the king of Judah who took the scroll of God's word and fed it to the fire.
SPEAKER_01: In utter rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, God's people stand in awe of his word because we know its power, right?
SPEAKER_01: We know its authority, we know its sufficiency, we know its draw on our souls, all of which come from the one who speaks this word.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the response of genuine believers in the king whom they have come to love.
SPEAKER_01: They're like Peter's mother-in-law, who responded to his grace and his mercy with loving service.
SPEAKER_01: And then we read, at the end of that day, that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons.
SPEAKER_01: And he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.
SPEAKER_01: This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.
SPEAKER_01: Twelve times in 28 chapters, Matthew says, This is a fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: Twelve times he says that specifically, many more allusions to Old Testament fulfillments, but twelve times he specifically says, you need to know this is what God promised.
SPEAKER_01: This is a very specific fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: And here he highlights Isaiah 53, the passage about the suffering servant.
SPEAKER_01: Suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is the promised Messiah, the promised king, the one who is to come and bring salvation to Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, Matthew says, is that person.
SPEAKER_01: This is all about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Notice in your Bible all of the pronouns referring to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: In verses 14 through 17.
SPEAKER_01: He saw, he touched, they brought to him, he cast out, and so on.
SPEAKER_01: In the way that Matthew wrote this, those are all included in the verbs.
SPEAKER_01: So there's not a separate word.
SPEAKER_01: It's he carried or he took as this part of the verb itself.
SPEAKER_01: There's one difference that Matthew kind of pulls out and says, here's the one that has emphasis.
SPEAKER_01: And that's in verse 17 when he quotes Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: He took.
SPEAKER_01: He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.
SPEAKER_01: Here, Matthew not only reminds us that as the promised Messiah, Jesus' healing work was not only anticipated, but that it is proof of his ultimate purpose to come and heal the sin that causes diseases by making atonement for it.
SPEAKER_01: You see, in the context, Isaiah 53 is all about sin and spiritual salvation from that sin provided by the Messiah, the suffering servant.
SPEAKER_01: It details how the coming one will heal from sin.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew brings that in and he says that Jesus' compassionate work of sympathizing with sicknesses and diseases of the people is part of the Messiah's work.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't save from sin.
SPEAKER_01: Healing doesn't bring eternal salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Deliverance from demons doesn't automatically mean deliverance from hell, because the root of all causes, the root of all sickness, all disease, and all demon activity is sin.
SPEAKER_01: Without the sinful pride of angels, there would be no demons.
SPEAKER_01: Without the sinful choice of our first parents, there would be no sin, no disease, no sickness.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, as the suffering servant, had come to pay for sin, and in that coming, he faced the destructive elements of sin.
SPEAKER_01: The destructive results of sin.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew tells us that those who experienced and witnessed these healings and cleansing witnessed the proof that Jesus was indeed the one who would come to heal us of our greatest problem.
SPEAKER_01: Problem of sin.
SPEAKER_01: His complete work as the suffering servant would pay the price for sin.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus paid the price for sin, he would provide the way for perfect healing and perfect restoration.
SPEAKER_01: In the atonement on the cross, Jesus dealt with sin.
SPEAKER_01: He dealt with death and sickness.
SPEAKER_01: And someday in the future, all will be forever removed from God's creation.
SPEAKER_01: So these healings are meant to be astounding because they give clear proof and evidence to the authority of Jesus as the creator and the Lord of all.
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful and miraculous are the works of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Freedom is provided, health is restored.
SPEAKER_01: But those gifts given to those people serve to point us directly to the greatest gift of all promised through Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: Eternal healing that can be had through the King, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, this was recorded by Matthew many, many years, probably at least a couple of decades after the Lord Jesus returned to glory.
SPEAKER_01: There were some healings by the apostles that we see in the book of Acts for several years, but the healings and the release from demons naturally declined.
SPEAKER_01: So what hope is there for those who don't have healing, who don't have recovery from reading these things?
SPEAKER_01: Matthew's very first listeners, they would read this and say, that's not going on today.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't here.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew brings in Isaiah 53 to remind us that through Jesus, there is a resurrection hope for everyone who believes.
SPEAKER_01: There is a hope that will bring with it the final crushing of sin and the release of all of God's creation from the curse of sin, so that God's people will be perfectly and forever free from sickness and disease.
SPEAKER_01: That requires us to recognize that this life is not all there is.
SPEAKER_01: There is more to come.
SPEAKER_01: And it is greater and more glorious than anything we could experience here.
SPEAKER_01: Do you suffer under the burden of disease?
SPEAKER_01: Do you bear the weight of sickness and cancer?
SPEAKER_01: Have you felt the soul crushing of death?
SPEAKER_01: Then look at these demonstrations of Jesus' power and authority.
SPEAKER_01: Look at them and see him.
SPEAKER_01: See him, the one who possesses all authority.
SPEAKER_01: And now trust that in him one day he will heal everything.
SPEAKER_01: So there are two defining truths of this summary passage.
SPEAKER_01: One is the authority of Christ's Lordship.
SPEAKER_01: And the second is his power to heal.
SPEAKER_01: Who is your authority?
SPEAKER_01: Who is Lord for you?
SPEAKER_01: Whose directives do you obey?
SPEAKER_01: Is it Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: It should be.
SPEAKER_01: It must be if you are to be in his presence in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: But really, in the day-to-day moments of life, who is your Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Who is your Lord?
SPEAKER_01: If you give yourself freedom to sin in a particular moment, then self is Lord, not Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If you whine and complain about the demands of Scripture, are you not whining and complaining about the authority and the sufficiency of God?
SPEAKER_01: If you listen more to yourself than you do to your Lord, if you remind yourself more of your own experience instead of what Christ Himself has said, then who really is your authority?
SPEAKER_01: Thinking about sickness and disease.
SPEAKER_01: I want to upend what we hear popularly on television and from health and wealth proclaimers.
SPEAKER_01: It is God's intention.
SPEAKER_01: It is fully God's intention to bring ultimate and perfect healing to everyone.
SPEAKER_01: But it is not for the present.
SPEAKER_01: He has promised and he will do it.
SPEAKER_01: But he has promised to do that when all who oppose Christ have been crushed and he rules over all, bringing with it perfect restoration without sin and without any of sin's consequences.
SPEAKER_01: And so we are reminded that sickness and disease that cannot be remedied in this life or that costs us greatly in one form or another all point us directly to our desperate need for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The Christ who heals, yes.
SPEAKER_01: But ultimately the Christ who brings perfect and complete healing through the blood of his cross and his future victory over sickness, disease, and death through the crushing of sin and Satan forever.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone who trusts in Jesus, the King, the Messiah, the great healer, has that hope.
SPEAKER_01: And you can rest in that hope.
SPEAKER_01: May that blessing be yours this week.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you in humility, acknowledging our inadequacies.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, too often we rely on our own strength.
SPEAKER_01: We rely on our own wisdom, our own experiences.
SPEAKER_01: We don't trust your word.
SPEAKER_01: We don't trust your authority.
SPEAKER_01: We don't rest in you.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive us and cleanse us and restore in us a heart that longs for you.
SPEAKER_01: That seeks to obey you.
SPEAKER_01: And by your spirit work within us to cause us to walk more fully in line with you.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to see and to rest in the power of your great might.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, to heal physically because you are the possessor of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: You are the creator of all things.
SPEAKER_01: But even more, help us to rest in your might to heal us and rescue us from sin, that we might be with you for eternity in your glorious presence and perfect health.
SPEAKER_01: And so we all say, Lord Jesus, even so come.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.