What Kind of Man Is This?
Read Matthew 8:1-4. What do you find significant about these verses in regard to the reasons for Jesus' coming into the world?
The way Matthew tells it, the healing of the leper takes place as soon as Jesus comes down from the mountain. Fresh from delivering the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus runs smack into the furrow of human need in the valley. And the first challenge He confronts is leprosy, a symbol of our sinful human plight. Jesus touches the leper (what to make of that?), and the leprosy is gone! Such is the power of our Lord.
In what follows in the rest of Matthew 8 and in chapter 9, Matthew would depict Jesus as having power over nature: He calms the storm (Matt. 8:23-27); power over demons: He frees the demoniacs (vss. 28-33); power "over sickness, disease, and infirmity": He heals the paralytic and the woman with a hemorrhage (vss. 1-9, 20-22); and power over death: He brings Jairus' daughter back to life (vss. 18, 19, 23-26). Making it personal, Jesus has power over the storms of our lives, over the demons in our lives, and over the disorders (of whatever description) that plague us.
What lessons can we learn from Matthew 8:23-27?
In certain ancient mythologies, water was regarded as a foe that God overcomes. "To Israel, the raging, unruly waters symbolized the powers which are opposed to God's sovereignty."—The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), vol. R-Z, p. 809. The reaction of Jesus' disciples should be ours, as well: "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!" (Matt. 8:27, NIV). In a way, their exclamation recalls a statement in the first chapter of Isaiah, where God calls heaven and earth to witness the rebellious determination of His people. "The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand" (Isa. 1:3, NIV). Of all creation, His people are the only ones disloyal. So here we may well ask whether we are the only entities of nature to stand in resistance to Jesus. The winds and the waves obey Him. What about us?
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