Power to Heal

Matthew 8:1-17

Immanuel – 3/17/24

Matthew is the only Gospel writer to arrange these three miracles together. That is because Matthew is not looking to give His readers a chronological accounting of Jesus’ ministry; instead, he gives us a thematic and theological structure to his gospel.

Very likely, the cleansing of the leper, the healing of the centurion’s servant, and the healing of Peter’s mother did not happen one after the other; nor is it likely that they happened right after the Sermon on the Mount. Instead, Matthew is organized in accordance with his thematic purposes.

Remember, we have seen the Jewish Messiah arrive in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And as soon as Jesus launches His public ministry, we get this astounding proclamation:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” -Matthew 4:17

A few verses later, Matthew gave us the following summary:

And [Jesus] went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought Him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and He healed them. And great crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. -Matthew 4:23-25

We have seen that summary statement expanded in the Sermon on the Mount for the past three months. What a proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom of God! We’ve heard Jesus explain what the kingdom of heaven looks like, how it functions, and how we are to live within it.

When He concluded the sermon, Matthew tells us that the crowds were astonished at Jesus’ teaching. It was like nothing they had heard before; it was absolutely revolutionary. Perhaps they didn’t realize just how revolutionary His teaching was.

Thus, as Matthew arranges things, Jesus immediately manifests the radical nature of His kingdom through three demonstrations of power – three miraculous healings. Now we get to see the power of the kingdom of heaven expanded upon through Jesus’ miraculous healings.

Purpose

1. Explain the circumstances and significance of each miracle.

2. The kingdom of heaven is the revolution we all need!

Read vs 1-2

The Leper

All the disciples and the multitudes of others that sat and listened to Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount now follow Him down from the mountain, and a leper approaches.

According to Mosaic Law, this man would not have silently walked up to Jesus. He would have approached shouting, at least initially. It would have been a tremendous spectacle.

The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. -Leviticus 13:45-46

Picture a ragged looking homeless person: clothes are tattered, hair is wild with a disheveled beard. This leprous man would have looked something like that. And he was unclean – incurably unclean. Other forms of ceremonial uncleanliness could be remedied, but there were forms of leprosy that were permanent, leaving the leper without hope. Yes, leprosy was a term used in the Bible for a variety of skin diseases, but it is these incurable strains that terrified every single Jew.

For to be unclean in this way meant that you had to separate yourself from everyone else, an outcast of society, unfit to live among the people of God. A leper had no access to the temple, no entrance into synagogue, forbidden from worshipping God with the people of God.

And if ever a regular, clean person came around, you had to warn them of your presence by shouting “Unclean!” Otherwise, if a leprous person touched someone, even if they accidentally grazed up against someone, the person they touched would be defiled. The very touch of a leprous person would make a clean person unclean.

Practically speaking, this prevented highly contagious leprosy from spreading. Relationally speaking, as lepers had to separate from family and friends, this was utterly devastating. Yes, to become an unclean leper was the stuff that haunted every Jews’ worst nightmares.

Imagine the scene now: one of these lepers approaches the crowds of people, approaches Jesus. Did he shout, “Unclean,” as he made his approach? And as he gets near to Jesus, the crowds – that had so recently been jockeying to be near Jesus – are suddenly swept back in a wave of recoiling disgust. In the middle of the crowds Jesus stands alone, with a desperate leper bowing at His feet.

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

Though the leper just states facts, he is asking Jesus for something. Yes, he wants to be healed, but that is not what he says. He wants to be clean. More than anything, he wants to be clean. And wouldn’t you want the same? To no longer be an outcast? To be welcomed back into your home again? To be with your loved ones? More than anything, isn’t that what you would want?

Even greater, becoming clean would mean he is clean before God. He would be welcomed back into the temple and be free to worship. He could finally be in right standing before his Creator; something so painful for this Jewish leper to have been excluded from for who knows how long.

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

The leper is certain that Jesus can heal him. What he doesn’t know is if Jesus would want to heal him. After all, he is an outcast, and one of the worst kinds: He’s a contagion. He’s a pariah. He’s incurably, hopelessly unclean.

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

Then Jesus does something that no one in the entire world would have done. With otherworldly compassion He stretched out His hand and touched the leper.

Read vs 3

“If you are willing…” He is willing, more than willing!

Though Jesus could have simply spoken a word and the man would have been healed (like He does with the centurion’s servant), Jesus didn’t even flinch. How many years had it been since someone touched this leper?

You can almost hear the collective gasp of the crowd when Jesus touched the man. It was a touch that should have defiled Jesus; made Him unclean. But instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper became clean. Jesus is so intensely pure, so aboundingly clean, that the tiniest touch is enough to swallow a whole life of uncleanliness. Immediately the leper was healed. An even greater collective gasp from the crowd this time.

For those with more severe cases of leprosy, as seems to be the case with this man, a cleansing of leprosy was something like a resurrection. For in the Old Testament, such a cure was akin to being raised from the dead (2 Kings 5:7).

Read vs 4

Jesus sends the man on a journey, to travel nearly 100 miles south to the temple in Jerusalem and undergo an eight-day cleansing ritual. Mostly because this is what the law required for the cleansed leper to be formally accepted back into Jewish society.

Yet Jesus commands the man to tell no one because He doesn’t want to be understood as a mere miracle worker and he doesn’t want the Jews to begin thinking that their Roman occupiers were about to be thrown off. The popular Jewish assumption of the time was that when the Messiah appears, he will defeat the Romans. Jesus wanted to avoid any association with those misunderstandings.

He was revolutionary. But not in that way.

Read vs 5-6

The Gentile

While in Galilee, Jesus had made Capernaum His home base. It appears that a centurion was aware of this and waiting for Christ’s return.

During Jesus’ ministry there were no Roman outposts in Galilee. This was territory governed by Herod Antipas, who was himself a puppet for Rome. This centurion, who commanded perhaps 100 soldiers, was thus a symbol of Jewish oppression. He was also a Gentile.

According to Mosaic Law, Gentiles were also unclean. They were worshippers of false gods and lived in the spiritual filth of their paganism and sin. Unless Gentiles converted, they were unclean.

The Mosaic Law commanded that Jews separate themselves from Gentiles: they couldn’t eat with Gentiles, they couldn’t enter Gentile dwellings, and numerous other things. On top of this, being the chosen people of God, Jews generally saw themselves as racially superior to Gentiles; so much so that Jews referred to Gentiles as “dogs.” (We will see Gentiles called dogs later in Matthew).

And like the centurion, the servant would also have been a Gentile. The word translated as servant is a word for a young servant. This servant was a youth, possibly a child. Though we do not know why, Luke tells us that the servant was precious to the centurion (Luke 7:2).

Some terrible illness has so afflicted the young servant that he is lying paralyzed in bed – and apparently in great pain. Again, gathering more information from Luke 7, the boy was “at the point of death.”

Just like the leper, the centurion does not ask for anything; he simply states the facts. But the question is implied – and obvious. He is asking Jesus to heal his precious servant.

Read vs 7-9

In my English Standard Version of the Bible, Jesus responds to the centurion with, “I will come and heal him.” But the NIV does a better job translating this, because Jesus asks a question in reply: “Shall I come and heal him?” When you realize that verses 5-13 brim with racial tension, you understand the subtext of Jesus’ question. Jesus is effectively asking the centurion, “Shall I, a Jew, enter a Gentile’s house to perform a healing?”

And now the centurion’s response makes much more sense.

Read vs 8-9

From the Gospel of Luke, we understand that this centurion knows Jewish culture very well. He knew that Jews could not enter Gentile houses. He understood that his question placed Jesus in an awkward position. If Jesus did not heal, He could be accused of a lack of compassion. If Jesus entered a Gentile home, the Jews could accuse Him of being a lawbreaker.

Again, if Jesus is asking, “Shall I, a Jew, enter a Gentile’s house to perform a healing,” then the centurion’s reply could be understood in the following manner: “Of course not; I couldn’t expect you to come under my roof. But you have an authority far greater than my own. If you are willing, you have the authority to heal my servant from where you stand. All you need to do is speak the word.”

Jesus was stunned.

Read vs 10

The centurion’s response to Jesus masterfully transcended the racial issues of the day, was humble, and was simultaneously filled with Christ exalting understanding and trust. It was such an expression of faith that Jesus felt a very human emotion: amazement. Usually, we hear of the crowds marveling at Jesus. Here we see Jesus marveling at a Gentile.

The racial divide has just been turned upside down. Which is where Jesus goes next. Jesus turns to His disciples, all Jews, and tells them all that race affords no privilege.

Read vs 10-12

Jesus’ statement in these three verses is absolutely packed with significance and layered with revelation.

In the kingdom of heaven all racial barriers are dissolved, for it will be filled with people from every corner of the earth – a vast multitude of many peoples! Formerly, Jew and Gentile couldn’t eat together, but in the kingdom of heaven everyone will recline at table – with the great Jewish patriarchs – and forever feast upon heaven’s delights together. Jew and every kind of Gentile, together.

But the sons of the kingdom – meaning those who cling to the old kingdom and the unjust, legalistic traditions that governed it – they will be cast away from the kingdom of heaven. They will be cast to the outer darkness, far from heaven’s banquet lights, into that inky and eternal separation.

Notice the distinction. There is unity and joyful fellowship in the kingdom of heaven, rest and pleasure. But the kingdom of darkness is filled with empty isolation, the ultimate end of prejudice and self-reliance. In endless loneliness there will be an overflow of mourning. In woeful grief, and consuming bitterness, the eternally lost will gnash their indestructible teeth.

Jesus speaks about hell more than anyone else in the New Testament.

Read vs 13

Jesus does not give healings based on the proportion of the centurion’s faith. He does not work that way. He heals simply because the centurion does believe, just as the leper did. Neither healing is about what the centurion or what the leper brought to Jesus. But the healings were because Jesus willed it. He wanted to heal. For in that same hour, at the very moment Jesus spoke those words, the centurion’s servant was healed. Jesus is willing!

It might be tempting to think that if you have faith like the centurion, or even like the leper, then you too can receive a healing. But that would be to turn Jesus into a miracle vending machine; where if you put in the right amount of faith, out would come a healing. No! We believe that Jesus will heal, but He will do it in His own time and in His own way; according to His own will.

He could heal with a touch, or perhaps with a word. His healing might come in this immediate moment, or it might be at that distant day of all healing – when death is defeated at the resurrection. Either way, His healing will come. Believe and you will receive. For as you have believed, so it will be done for you.

Read vs 14-17

The Woman

The four gospels indicate that Jesus made Peter’s house in Capernaum something like His ministry headquarters. Jesus and the disciples return once more to the house and there is Peter’s mother, sick with a fever. Again, from the other gospels, we know this was a severe fever. Like the centurion’s servant, it is likely she was near death.

This time there is no request for healing, implied or directly stated. No one needs to say anything. She is burning up in bed. Like with the leper, Jesus touches her, and she is immediately healed.

And as soon as she had this encounter with Jesus, she begins to serve Him. She was transformed – from near death to full health – and her immediate response is to serve this man from Nazareth, her Savior and her Lord. And in whatever way she served her King that day it was no small thing, for here we are some 2,000 years later remembering her service to Christ!

O, brothers and sisters, how we can learn from Peter’s mother-in-law! You don’t need to get it all together to serve Jesus. It does not take great faith to serve Jesus. All you need is to have been transformed by Him, and then what great joy is there than to serve the Lord of all the earth and the Savior of your soul? Amen and amen! May we be so faithful! And know that when you offer service to Him, it will be remembered for 10,000x10,000 years from now!

And may we encourage those we introduce to King Jesus to immediately respond with such humble obedience – as did Peter’s mother-in-law.

If it isn’t obvious, Peter’s mother-in-law was a woman! In that day, women were like second class citizens, with few rights of their own. It is commonly quoted that Jewish men would thank God for not making them women, slaves, or Gentiles. But here is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah withholding nothing from this woman.

Jesus has now healed a leper, a Gentile, and a woman. He is indeed doing something revolutionary. R.T France writes, “So the ‘weakness’ which Jesus is here portrayed as responding to involve social as well as physical dimensions. The leper is restored to normal society, while the Gentile and the woman, even if their objective status cannot be changed, have found not only physical healing but also acceptance with Israel’s Messiah which they could not have taken for granted.”1

I can’t help but think about Paul’s words to the Galatians.

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

-Galatians 3:26-29

Bloodlines, socioeconomic status, and gender offer no privilege in the kingdom of heaven. What matters is faith in Jesus Christ! He is the healing that our souls ache for! He is the resurrection that is our life: like the leper brought back into fullness of life; the Gentile and the woman rescued from death’s tightening grasp.

And Jesus’ compassion moves far beyond these three cases.

Read vs 16-17

Whatever the ailment or affliction, Jesus healed them all. As with the centurion’s servant, all of them He healed with a word.

To punctuate this moment, Matthew quotes from one of the greatest passages in the Old Testament, written hundreds of years earlier. He quotes Isaiah 53:4, but I will expand his quote just a bit.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. -Isaiah 53:4-5

What a prophecy! Jesus’ chastisement is our peace! His wounds are our healing!

I know my selfishness is a disease. I know that if it could be fully seen, like leprous skin, I too would be repulsive to behold. My sick heart would throw me in bed, burning with lusts and on the verge of death, too weak to ask for help. I am the unclean dog, deserving to be cast into the outer darkness.

But Jesus took my shameful chastisement (and yours) and went to the cross, crucified as a social abhorrence. Pierced for our transgressions, His strength bleeding to the ground, no help came in His agonizing weakness. Esteemed as stricken, like an unclean dog, in death did He descend into our darkness. Cast from the presence of God, Jesus cried, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. -Isaiah 53:4-5

The healing of the leper, the Gentile, and the woman were echoes of a healing far, far greater. Jesus heals the heart, cleanses the soul, and reconciles us unto God. In Him we have forgiveness and life, peace with God and peace with one another.

Jesus’ power to heal forces us to ask the question, who is this man? Jesus’ power to heal is meant to begin a revolution in your soul that will turn everything upside down. You may wonder, is Jesus willing to heal me in this way? He is willing – just as He was for the leper, and the Gentile, and the woman. He is willing. Believe. Listen to His word, and find healing for your heart.

And then, get up. Serve Him. And live in obedience to your Lord and Savior.

3France, R.T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Pg 305. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co.