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 Samarita