This is one of my favorite chapters in Matthew. It has one of the cooler Deity claims about Jesus that is often overlooked. How Jesus calms the storm like YHWH.
8 When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
The leper is a really interesting miracle. Leprosy is highly contagious and is a near guarantee for death. The leper had the faith to know that Jesus could heal him, but he was unsure if Jesus would be willing to. So, this miracle both shows the faith of Jesus and the faith of the leper. Jesus had to be willing to embrace danger and death to heal the man by touching him. Which is why the leper said “if you are willing” as he knew that normal people would be unwilling to touch him even to pray for him. Yet he didn’t hesitate to do so.
Jesus literally reached out and touched the untouchables to bring them back into right standing with society and the father. In the same way that he reached out and brings us out of the mud and muck of our messed-up lives. Jesus’ love for us is so great that there is nothing to stop him from coming to us!
The Faith of the Centurion
5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
7 Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.
The centurion’s faith was great as he believed that Jesus merely saying that his son would be healed would be enough. The reason Jesus marveled at it is that the centurion wasn’t a Jew. He was not a part of the covenants or the law and had no reason to approach the Messiah, and yet he did, and with more faith than the Jews who appeared before Jesus. Then Jesus says that many Jews will be in hell but seems to indicate that the gentiles will eat at the table with the patriarchs. Which is a foreshadow of the explosion of the church into the roman empire (and Gentiles in general). The grafted in branch supplanted the natural branch until our current day where Jews are coming back to their messiah!
Jesus Heals Many
14 When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. 15 He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
16 When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
and bore our diseases.”
This is a reference to Isaiah 53. We see that the early church saw Isaiah 53 to be directly applied to Jesus and not Israel at large. This shows that one of the expectations of the Jews at the time was that the messiah would do these things. And He did. He cleansed every demon possessed and broken person brought before him.
The Cost of Following Jesus
18 When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
21 Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
You may have to leave your families and your homes to follow Jesus. There is a constant reminder that those who are not willing to sacrifice everything for Jesus are not worthy of him. I hope when the day comes for my life to be taken from me, that I will have the faith to speak boldly in the name of Jesus.
Jesus Calms the Storm
23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
Jesus is sleeping in a cubby below deck on the fishing boats. We have actually found one of these fishing boats and it is exactly as described in the gospels. Giving evidence that the authors were recent and local to the area to know this obscure detail.
Jesus is unafraid of everything. He simply commands the weather (which he designed and made) to behave itself and it did. This is a reference to the Old Testament though. In Psalms 107:23–32, Yahweh is portrayed in this exact situation where there are those who are in a boat in a storm and call out on the name of God and Yahweh calms the storm “to a hush”. Which is really awesome!
The disciples understood that Jesus was great and the Messiah, but they didn’t think he was God at this point. This showed a marvelous power and glory to Jesus that they were not expecting. We can read the Old Testament and see that Jesus is God and has these features, but his disciples were unlearned (unlike Paul). They didn’t have access to what we do now. Imagine someone you have spent a year with watching doing miracles then he just commands the storm to cease.
Jesus Restores Two Demon-Possessed Men
28 When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. 29 “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. 31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”
32 He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. 33 Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.
The demons seem to understand and know that God will torture the demons who rebelled against him in the lake of fire. They also recognize Jesus as God. They use the term son of God. So, this could be a heavenly title for Jesus that angels use to refer to him.
The pig herders may have driven Jesus out of the town as they were angry that so much of their livestock was destroyed. An interesting thing to note is that Jesus sent the demons into “unclean” animals since pigs aren’t kosher. These were non-Jewish farmers. So, Jesus sent the unclean angels into unclean animals in an unclean land, and they were destroyed.
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