The Healing Work of Jesus

Matthew 4:23-25

Matthew Chapter 4 and we're looking at the last paragraph in this chapter tonight and going to consider briefly what the Lord has to say to us here through His Holy Spirit by the evangelist Matthew as he writes to us.  Jerry already read the text so I won't read it again and I'm sure it's set in your mind.  Perhaps the thing that stood out here in your thinking as you listened to it being read and as Jerry commented on it was the fact of the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.  The section could well introduce us to this whole concept of healing.  This is the first great statement about His healing ministry made in the gospels. 

And as we know, if we study the New Testament, particularly the gospel record, and even into the book of Acts, one of the key ways in which Jesus demonstrated His majesty, one of the key ways in which He manifested His deity was in healing.  Healing was a very vital part of Jesus' demonstration of His power.  In fact, in a broader sense the whole area of miracles was a tremendously important aspect of Christ's messianic and kingly credentials.  We find, for example, the entire thrust of the gospel of John is based upon this primary element, that Jesus is giving His messianic credentials.  And John particularly focuses on two things:  one His words and two His works.  You might say that the gospel of John is the gospel of the Messiah's credentials.

And so what Matthew is introducing to us here is really expanded in great breadth and depth in the gospel of John.  In fact, John opens his gospel in Chapter 1, let me have you look at it with me for just a moment as an introduction, John opens his gospel with a great statement that, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  A great statement of the deity of Jesus Christ.  It goes on to prove His deity because He is the creator, in other words His creative power indicates that He is God. 

In Chapter 1:14 he says that He had the glory of the Father in Him, again a statement referring to Him as God.  Verse 18, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."  In other words this Jesus is God in human flesh, God in full glory, God in full declaration.  That's John's thrust.  And John sets out to prove this by his miracle power.  For example in Chapter 2, we have the first of Jesus' miracles and in verse 11 it says, "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth His glory and His disciples believed on Him."  His miraculous works were to manifest His deity in Chapter 5, again in verse 36, Our Lord Jesus said, "But I have greater witness than that of John."  In other words I have a greater witness than that of John the Baptist.  "For the works, which the Father hath given Me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of Me that the Father hath sent Me."  Again He says the works that He did, the miraculous things that He did were testimony to His deity. 

In Chapter 7:31, of John's gospel we read, "and many of the people believed on Him and said, 'When Christ cometh, or when the Messiah cometh will He do more miracles than these, which this one hath done?"  In other words they caught the message.  They were saying He has given us the Messianic credentials, miracles.  Could someone else come and do more miracles than this man has done? 

In Chapter 10 of the gospel of John and verse 38 Jesus said, we're backing up to verse 37, "If I do not the works of my Father, believe Me not.  But if I do, though you believe not Me, believe the works that ye may know and believe that the Father is in Me and I in Him."  In other words the works are the testimony.  If I don't do the works don't believe me; if I do then you'd better believe me. 

In Chapter 14:11, John again pointing up this element of Christ's credentials says, "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me."  Just because I said it is implied, "Or else believe Me for the very works sake."  Believe my words and if that is not sufficient believe my works. 

And then in Chapter 20:30 and 31, the great climax of the gospel of John in which John clearly states his purpose in writing and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book."  By the way, John's gospel records eight of the major miracles of Jesus, eight of them.  There were many many others, many others as we shall see, but these eight, says John in verse 31, "Are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name."

John also included the tremendous claims of Christ, didn't He?  The I Am, the Bread of Life, that's in his gospel.  The I Am the Resurrection and the Life.  The I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  The I Am the Living Water.  The I Am the Light of the World.  The words and the works of Jesus, the Messianic credentials particularly emphasizing his works.

In Acts Chapter 2 Peter preaching the very first sermon the church ever heard, the first sermon the day the church was born said this:  "Ye men of Israel," verse 22 of Acts 2, "Hear these words.  Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs."  You get the message?  Those were His credentials.  Now listen.  Jesus gave His messianic credentials in His mighty works.  To deny these works is to deny His deity.  To deny His deity is to deny His works.  It is the most heinous crime there is to deny the deity of Jesus Christ.

Listen, the whole purpose for which Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written was to conclude that He was God, not just another man.  His works, as well as words, look at John 12:47, John 12:47, "And if any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world."  Did you notice that Jesus really doesn't accept the responsibility for a person's damnation.  He that rejects me and receives my words has one that judges him.  What is it?  The word that I've spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.  In other words you deny the deity of Christ and deny His words and deny His works and you pass sentence on yourself.  The very words them self if held in unbelief become their own judge, their own sentencer. 

So you can see that John's purpose is to present the words of Jesus and the works of Jesus and he has Jesus over and over again say, "These are enough so you should believe."  So notice, people, the ministry of Jesus Christ when He came to earth was a ministry of words and works and the whole idea of what He said and what He did was messianic credentials.  It was to prove to the world that He was not just another man, but He was God.

Now let's go back to Matthew Chapter 4.  When Matthew, then, introduces the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he includes these elements.  He says, "Jesus went about," in verse 23, "Teaching and preaching," that's His words, "and healing," that's His works.  That really makes up the ministry of Jesus Christ, what He said, what He did, and it ought to have been enough to prove the point.

I always think of the story of the blind man in John 9.  A man born blind and his disciples found this man and they said to Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?"  Now they had wrong theology.  They thought that everybody who was sick or everybody who was diseased, or everybody who was maimed was so because of sin.  That's not true.  Sometimes you can get sick from sin.  Ananias and Sapphira got so sick they died.  I Corinthians 11, people got sick, weak and sickly and some slept.  The Lord can allow disease be a chastening and a punishment for sin.  But not everybody who got sick is sinful.  Was Job?  No.  There was not such a righteous man on earth as Job.  And Jesus said, "This man didn't sin nor his parents.  The reason he's sick is that the works of God should be made manifest."  In other words, God allowed some people to be sick so Jesus could heal them and in such a healing manifest His deity.  And later on the blind man was healed and the Jewish leaders said, "Well this is very strange."  And they came to Him and said, "Who is this, who is this, what's this all about?"  And the blind man said, "That's very very interesting.  Here is a marvelous thing," he says in verse 30, "that you know not from where He is and yet He has opened my eyes."  That's pretty ridiculous.  You see he got the message.  If this man was not of God he could do nothing.  He knew, the credentials got through to him.

Now let's look at how Jesus approached His ministry in Matthew 4, in just these three brief verses and it won't take us long to look at it.  This is the beginning of the official ministry of Christ, great passage, and we've been studying it now for several weeks.  And I told you from the very beginning of this passage, which was verse 12, that it was really all one unit and Matthew having presented the birth and the genealogy and the homage of Christ and all of the wonderful things and every one of them sort of portraying His majesty, now begins to talk about the beginning of the King's ministry. 

And you remember how I told you that first of all he said the King began His ministry at the right point.  Remember that?  At the right point.  Look at verse 12, "Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison He departed into Galilee.  And leaving Nazareth he came and dwelled in Capernaum."  And secondly he not only began His ministry at the right point when John's work was done and John the forerunner was cast into prison it was time for Jesus to begin, secondly He began in the right place.  And it tells us in 13 He left Nazareth, which had been His home for the first 30 years of His life, since He left Egypt, and He came and dwelt in Capernaum.  Why?  Because the Old Testament had said, verse 14, "Isaiah said the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, those were the people who sat in darkness, those were the people who would see a great light and to them who sat in that region in the shadow of death light has sprung up."  In other words the prophet predicted that it would be, in fact, in that area where he would arrive.

So he began at the right point, in the right place, thirdly with the right proclamation.  Verse 17, "From that time Jesus began to proclaim and say repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  He began at the right point, in the right place, with the right proclamation, and last week we saw number four with the right what partners.

Verse 18, "And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea because they were fishers.  And He saith unto them, 'Follow Me and I'll make you fishers of men.'  And they straightway left their nets and followed Him.  And going on from there he saw two other brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and He called them.  And they immediately left the boat and their father and followed Him."

He never intended to do it alone, remember I told you last time?  He wanted some people to help him so He called and trained His own workers and He never turned them loose until three years later in the great commission.  He said, "Now I've trained you.  I'm leaving.  You go do the job."  So the light had dawned in Galilee all on a divine schedule, at the right point, in the right place, by the right proclamation, with the right partners, and now fifthly, on the right plan.

Jesus had a clear explicit plan.  The plan was this:  By words and works He would establish His deity.  By the things that He did and the things that He said, He would make manifest who He really was.  And you know what?  They were really struck by those two things.  In John 7:46, the chief priests, the officers came in and they said to the chief priests, "Never man spoke like this man."  They were shocked by His words.  It was incredible the things that He said.  And the officers had it right, "Never man spoke like this man."

There was a division in Chapter 10 among the Jews, John 10, "And some said, 'He has a demon and He's mad.  Why do you listen?'  And others said, 'These are not the words of him that has a demon.'  And then they said, 'Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?'"  See it was His words and His works that overpowered them.  These were the marks of His majesty.  These were the marks of His messiah ship.  So Matthew focuses on them to begin with.

Let's look at verse 23:  Jesus began on the right plan.  "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."  Now here we come right to those two dimensions of messianic credentials: His words and His works.  Let's look at some specifics here.  "And Jesus went about," that's an interesting verb.  I want to stop for a minute and it's an imperfect tense verb and when you have the imperfect it doesn't mean it's less than perfect, it's just a term used for something that's continuous action in the past tense.  It means that He was constantly going about, the idea of a constant endeavor.  You might even translate it, He was continually going around, incessant effort is the idea.  And really what you have in verse 23, hang on to this thought is a one-verse summary of the whole Galilean ministry. 

Now notice Matthew will take this one verse summary and expand it in Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, so that those chapters to come 5 through 9 are an expansion of verse 23.  In fact, His words are the subject of Chapter 5, 6, and 7.  His works are the subject of Chapter 8 and 9.  So Matthew simply introduces those two elements here and then he begins to expand them in the next section verse 5:1 through 9:38.  First 5, 6, and 7, His words, the great truth of the Sermon on the Mount, that was absolutely shocking, devastating, and divine, and then His mighty works and miracles Chapters 8 and 9.

So He went all over the place incessantly and constantly, and you'll notice it says, He went about all Galilee.  He was moving all the time.  Now all Galilee is a strong expression.  The term all is a very strong term and when it says all in this sense it really does mean in a comprehensive sense.

Now basically I've been showing you that Galilee is not a large area.  You could simplify it by saying it's about 40 miles wide and about 70 miles long.  It had about 204 villages and towns according to Josephus.  In fact, Josephus says this:  "The cities are numerous, the multitude of villages everywhere are crowded with men owing to the fertility of the soil so that the smallest of them contains above 15,000 inhabitants."  And Josephus, by the way, ought to know about Galilee because in 66 A.D. he was the Commanding General of all Galilee.  He was not just a historian; e was a general.  And Josephus says there were 204 towns, teaming with people 15,000 and up all crowded into an area 70 miles long, 40 miles wide.  By the way, Josephus says one generation after our Lord, when he was really writing there were three million people in Galilee.  Now we don't know how many there were at the time of the Lord, but not many less than that.  The point is this:  that to cover 204 villages and to move around through all of that mass of humanity required much time and constant travel and Jesus was busy.  Somebody figured out just to touch every town, moving at a rate of one town a day is going to take a half a year, and that would be only if you stayed one day in each place. 

And so Jesus moved about.  He was going to touch as many as He could.  It was important that the whole of all those people, and remember they were Jew and Gentile mixed, and even the Jewish ones had been exposed to Gentile culture, He was really in a very real sense announcing Himself as the Savior of the world at the very beginning, just as He had when His first, the first person he ever announced his messiah ship to was a half-breed Samaritan woman.  So he moved among these people teaching, preaching, and healing.

Let's look at those three elements of His ministry for a minute.  First of all it says in verse 23, "Teaching in their synagogues."  Within Galilee Jesus chose to kind of center His ministry in the synagogues.  Now the synagogue was the most important institution in the life of any Jew.  Keep that in mind.  It was the most important institution.  It is very like the church is to you, you that are Christians, you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you're active at Grace Community Church, you're involved here, this is the most important institution in your life.  Your family is here, your kids are here, your friendships are here, this is your life.  No different in those days.  The whole of Jewish life centered around the synagogue.  In fact, in some cases it would be even more intense because even the politics of life and the economics of life, you traded there, you learned to sort of match up your businesses with people of like trade because they sat according to trade.  It was everything to the Jewish people.  In fact, the worse thing that could ever happen to a Jew was to be unsynagogued.  Assynogased to be unsynagogued was it.  And you see that's exactly what happened when a Jew became a Christian.  He was dis-fellowshipped from the synagogue.  It was vital.  That's why the whole book of Hebrews is written.  It was written to Christians, but also there are warnings throughout that book to certain Jewish people who were so afraid of being unsynagogued that even though they believed the gospel, they wouldn't receive Christ.  This synagogue was the key to their life. 

In most cases the synagogue was built on a hill, using the most prominent hump in the city of the little town, and every town had one.  And there would be the synagogue and it would be the highest place in the city and usually would be distinguished by a tall pole shooting up in the sky so that everybody could focus on that.  It was as a familiar sight to go into a Jewish town and see a synagogue spire, as it is to go in the middle of New England and see a little church spire in the little villages.  It's common. 

Sometimes if there weren't any hills they would build along the river and the bank of the river, and very often they built synagogues without a roof.  They just let their worship go up to God.  And we don't really know, for example, in the synagogue that we've uncovered, not we, Christians I mean.  I never dug up anything.  But the synagogue they've uncovered in Capernaum and have reconstructed really doesn't have any roof.  We don't know if it did or didn't have one or what kind of one it had, but it was where they gathered.

Let me tell you a little bit about what they did there.  Divine worship was held in the synagogue every Sabbath, every Saturday.  Sabbath ran from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, and on the second and fifth day of every week they had special services, every Sabbath they had special services.  Of course, they had special services every festival day, all the feast days and all the special days.  Now basically when they came together on the Sabbath, if it wasn't a special day, this is how the format went:  first there was the reading of the law and the reading of the prophets by certain people who were called upon and then there were prayers offered by the leader and then there were responses by the people.  They would respond with amen's and various praises to God. 

Following that there would be an exposition of some text of the Scripture and that went all the way back to the return under Ezra and Nehemiah.  When they read the Scripture, you remember in Nehemiah, then Ezra, the Scribe stood up and gave the sense of it, expository preaching is not something new in this generation.  It is the kind of preaching in the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah and it is historically what the Jews have done in their synagogue, first the reading, then the prayer, and then the exposition.  And it was interesting, if there was a visiting dignitary or a visiting rabbi he would be given the right to speak the exposition very often, and that's where, of course, Paul moved right into the synagogue and used some Old Testament text and took off.  That was very common. 

The affairs of the synagogue were administered men, basically, ten elders of whom three were called the rulers of the synagogue.  They acted as judges.  They would admit proselytes or not admit them.  They settled issues.  There was a fourth ruler called the angel of the church who was sort of the chairman of the board.  There were others who were called servers who carried out the direction of the three and the one.  There was an eighth one, according to Jewish tradition, who was the Hebrew interpreter who took the ancient Hebrew and translated it into the vernacular.  There was a ninth one who headed up the theological school.  And by the way, every synagogue had a theological school in it.  And there was a tenth one who interpreted the theological school instructor stuff because it was usually over the heads of the people.  So they had this whole organization, this incredible structure.

Listen, the synagogue became the court of law and any disputes or court problems or civil things they came there, and their judgment was made and execution was even pronounced.  Listen, you know the Roman government only took away from the Jews the right of execution at the time of Jesus.  They could do everything else.  They could run their own affairs.  The only thing they couldn't do was take somebody's life.  That's why they had to take Jesus to the Romans to have Him crucified. 

Now they didn't have synagogues in the same, I shouldn't say in Jerusalem, the synagogue wasn't the main issue in those days, the temple was.  But the same mentality prevailed.  They ruled their own affairs.  And as we see the small villages and towns in the time of Jesus they would have their own court of law.  Also the synagogue was a public school for boys, and the little boys would go there, in their childhood and learn the Talmud.  And further, the synagogue was a theological school for the men.  So this was the center of the whole concentration of Jewish life.  And when Jesus went there to that place He would be stepping right into the midst of Israel.

Now there's a vast difference, remember between the synagogue and the temple.  There's only one temple and that is at Jerusalem.  That's the only temple.  There isn't one there now, as you know, not since 70 A. D. when Titus came in and wiped it out.  But there was only one temple, but wherever there was a small colony of Jews, wherever there was a handful of Jewish men they could start a synagogue.  And so they were every place and they were the platform for Jesus and they were the platform for the apostle Paul.

By the way, the temple was not a place for teaching and the temple was not a place for preaching unless like Jesus you happen to stand up in there and take off.  The temple was a place for offering sacrifice and making offerings.  But the synagogue was a place of teaching and preaching.  It was essentially a preaching/teaching place.  In fact, the church today pretty well had modeled its patterns after the synagogue.  Now we still have Jewish synagogues with us.  There's one right down the street, only now they call it a what?  A temple, but it isn't, because there's no blood sacrifice being offered there.  It's simply a synagogue, a gathering place.

Well Jesus took advantage of the opportunity for any dignitary, any visiting rabbi or teacher to have the opportunity to speak.  And so Jesus would go in the synagogue and He would teach why because this would reach the heart of Israel.  Listen, the most zealous people for God were in the synagogue.  That's where you'd find the true hearts, if there were any in Israel.  That's where the remnant would be, wouldn't they?  They'd be there worshipping the true God in the best way they knew how, so Jesus went where they would listen to Him, where they would hear Him, the synagogue.  And He would go in and He would teach the Scripture.  That was His pattern, to open the Scripture, to give exposition.  This is exactly what He did throughout the pattern of His ministry.  Even when He was in Nazareth He broke open His whole ministry by doing an exposition on an Old Testament Scripture that referred to Him.  Even in the Sermon on the Mount He kept referring, "You have heard it said, and the Scripture says, and I say," and He'd take off from there, either from a Scripture of God's authorship or from some ancient tradition that they had held to, Jesus would move off from there to do the exposition and turn the whole thing to Himself.

And so Jesus was teaching in the synagogues.  By the way, the word didosko has to do with didactic instructive relating of truth.  The word concentrates on the passing of information.  The word emphasizes the content, the passing on of information.  That's what Jesus did.  And by the way, His method, I'm quite confident was expository, taking the text and out of it teaching the principles.  I really believe this is the greatest way to preach and teach the word of God.

Secondly, it says in verse 23, 'Not only was He teaching in their synagogue, but He was also preaching the gospel of the kingdom."  Now this is a different word.  Karuso and it means to proclaim and it concentrates not so much on the didactic method, the relating of truth, the content as it does on the very voice, the very style of proclamation and it simply means He heralded it out, He cried out.  That's preaching.  Teaching is where there is the careful instructive relating of content.  It's kind of from the mind to the mind.  Preaching is the crying out, the impassioned cry of Jesus Christ to the people.  And there it wasn't so much in the synagogues, although He did both there as well, and the two are mixed up in His ministry so you can't separate them.  There was never teaching without preaching and there was never preaching without teaching, but the preaching is the crying out.  It is the heralding of the gospel. 

Some have said preaching is the heralding of the gospel and teaching is the explaining of the gospel that's been heralded.  Jesus did both, preaching, making a public announcement.  William Hendrickson, who's a great commentator, says this:  "Between preaching and teaching there is a difference.  Though it is true that good preaching is also teaching, the emphasis is nevertheless not the same.  Preaching means proclamation.  Teaching, on the other hand, indicates imparting more detailed information regarding the proclamation that was made."  That's the idea.

So if you want to know what I do, if I really, if I can evaluate what I do, sometimes I don't even know what I do, but I have a combination of both.  And what I do is I preach and by that I get exercised and I proclaim some great truth and this is what the word of God says, and then from there I endeavor to explain to you the meaning of that proclamation.  The proclamation is what is called the kerugma and the teaching is what is called the didiche.  You may see those terms sometime in your reading and there's never any good kerugma without didiche.  It doesn't do any good to proclaim something if you don't explain what it is. 

And the theme of Jesus then, preaching and teaching.  Look at it in verse 23, the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom.  This is what He was always talking about, always.  He was always talking about this.  In fact in Acts Chapter 1, after He had risen from the dead, until He ascended He had 40 days with His disciples, and it says in verse 2 of Acts 1, "Until the day in which He was taken up after He thought the Holy Spirit had given commandments under the apostles whom He'd chosen, to whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs," now watch this: "Being seen by them 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." 

From the time He began His ministry in Matthew right here, to the time He was silenced in His ascension He never spoke of anything other than the kingdom of God.  He never got dragged into social issues that were unrelated, He never got dragged into politics, into revolutions, into economics, He spoke of the kingdom of God.  And it's a great pattern.  I feel in my heart I need to follow that kind of pattern.  Sometimes people ask me why I don't say things about this and that and the other thing, and I guess maybe it's because Jesus until He was taken up spoke to them the things concerning the kingdom of God, and if that was His priority then that's going to be my priority.

Now what do you mean by this?  What is the gospel of the kingdom?  Well first of all, the word gospel means something simple, good news, good news.  It's good news and the world is full of bad news, isn't it, all bad news.  This is the only good news, really good news.  The teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ was filled with good news.  You know something interesting?  Listen to this:  John the Baptist's preaching is never called good news, never. 

Now maybe it was good news and maybe it might have been called good news, but it never is.  I began to think about why.  Perhaps it is because the note of judgment is so strong, the ax is laid at the root, the winnowing fan is moving, the fire is consuming, and John fired out so much judgment and so much condemnation and cried for such repentance that maybe his message was too strong to win the gracious title good news.  But it really was good news, wasn't it?  It's kind of like the deal you've got to have bad news before you get good news. 

But I think the reason John's is never called good news is because there never really was good new until Jesus arrived.  There never really was any good news until Jesus came.  And it is Jesus who is said to preach the good news.  John was saying, "Get right, repent, get ready and avoid judgment."  And then Jesus came along and gave the other side of it and come to Me and I'll take you to heaven.  That was the good news.

After the Messiah had encountered more and more of the hypocrisy and more and more of the hostility of the hierarchy of Israel, His preaching became even more stern than John's.  Did you know that?  But at the very beginning there was no strong word of condemnation.  Jesus didn't come saying there's going to be an ax, and there's going to be a winnowing fan, and there's going to be a fire consuming you.  You don't hear that at the beginning of Je