Matthew 8:1-17 (click to display NIV text)

March 30, 2008: Second Sunday of Easter

Pastor Dwight A. Nelson

 

" . . . and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 'He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.' "

 

        Matthew weaves together several accounts of Jesus' healing miracles, all around the theme of authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew writes "the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority." Now we see Jesus' actions that come from the authority of God. The Gospel is teaching and action, word and deed. But what is the healing ministry of Jesus, and how does it relate to the cross and resurrection?

        A leper comes to Jesus and says, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Jesus encounters a man with a disease that was greatly feared in the ancient world. It was more than a disease; it was believed to be evidence that a person was cursed by God. Those who had leprosy not only suffered a skin disease, they became outcasts from society and from the community of faith. To have leprosy was to be ritually unclean. The disease was almost never cured. Healing from leprosy was put on a par with raising a person from the dead. But Jews held that when the Messiah comes, there will be no leprosy.

        So, to be healed from leprosy meant to be cured of a disease, to be made clean ritually, to be included in the community, and to be accepted by God. Jesus was willing to make this leper clean.

        A Roman centurion came to Jesus, asking for help for his paralyzed servant. This man is a Gentile, one from the nations, and there is some question as to whether Jesus, a Jewish teacher, might be allowed to enter his house to heal his servant. The centurion quickly makes it clear that he holds no expectation that Jesus would have to enter his home. He is aware of the culture and the impossibility of such a thing. For him, just a word is sufficient.

        There is more to this than simply trying to save time for the busy Jesus, or trying to avoid an unpleasant scene. The centurion is reflecting a view of authority that he learned in the Roman army. The Roman military system was built on the conviction that all authority belonged to the Emperor and was delegated by him. So when a centurion gave an order, he spoke with the Emperor's authority. What that meant for a foot soldier was that if he disobeyed an order by his commander, he was not merely disputing the word of an ordinary centurion; he was in fact defying the Emperor himself. You do not defy the Emperor of Rome.

        The centurion is then applying his principle to Jesus. He sees in Jesus the authority of God. When Jesus speaks, God speaks. Who is to defy God? He knows that Jesus does not need ritual, incantations, magic or any kind of help. His word alone carries power and authority.

        Jesus sees in this response the presence of faith, even great faith. So he gives a rather military-sounding command, and at that moment the servant was healed.

        And so on. Peter's mother-in-law. Then all who were sick or who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and with a word, he healed them.

         What does this mean? What do these healings have to do with the cross?

        Matthew does not leave us in the dark. After relaying several instances of healing, he then interprets the healings by quoting Isaiah 53:4: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases." However, if you look up Isaiah 53:4, what it says in the NIV is this: "infirmities and . . . sorrows." In the King James Version, which may be more familiar to us from Handel's Messiah, the passage reads, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." So we have tended to focus on sin as the cause of sorrow and grief, and forgiveness as the ministry of the Messiah, to the exclusion of healing.

        Donald Carson says that "Matthew renders the Hebrew so as to speak of taking and carrying the physical infirmities and diseases of people rather than just suffering vicariously for sin." R.T. France puts it this way: "It seems that for Matthew the figure of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah, which other early Christians looked to only for an explanation of Jesus' suffering and death, was a more holistic model for Jesus' ministry." So Matthew is putting together the healing ministry of Jesus, "carrying our diseases," with the cross, dying for our sins.

        The larger context of Isaiah 53 supports this. It says the Servant of the Lord is "pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities." It was the "punishment on him that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed."

         So, Matthew is saying just as Jesus in his ministry carried the physical diseases of people, so on the cross he carried their sins. He is connecting healing and forgiveness.

        Jesus is not simply like a medical doctor who diagnoses disease and then treats it without carrying it or having the disease enter his life. Jesus carries our diseases, takes upon himself our infirmities, and becomes himself the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Both healing and forgiveness are signs of the New Creation. We are beginning in Christ to experience all that we hope for in God's kingdom. When the Messiah comes, there is no leprosy, no AIDS, no malnourished children, no explosions in crowded cities. He carries our infirmities now. One day we will know his rule in completeness.

        I have noticed in the recent writings that promote atheism and criticize Christianity and any belief in God, that one theme is to say that if there were a God, life would work better. If God the Creator is sovereign and loving, there would not be so many problems, so many diseases, such turmoil.

        What I notice now in reading Matthew is that the Gospel does not begin with answers to the Big Questions of our day. Rather, the Gospel says that Messiah Jesus, the Savior, speaks and acts with the authority of God by carrying our diseases through the ministry of healing, and by bearing our sin on the cross, and it is this life that leads to resurrection and new creation.

        The Gospel is not a philosophy developed to answer all the Big Questions, but it is an announcement that God is on our side, and God is working to save us, to heal us, even to resurrect us.

        The Gospel is that Jesus is willing to help us.

        The Gospel says that Jesus looks for faith in us.

        The Gospel says that Jesus stops along the way to take up our diseases and our sins, in a way that is continuing, that is daily, that is by grace.

        I go back again today to the testimony relayed by Don Frisk of one of the early Covenant people, touched by the revivals in Sweden. Matilda Foy came under the influence of the revivals, but she did not find peace with God until the winter of 1850. She was at home recovering from an illness, and she writes, "I longed for assurance, but I could not accept it. Then one day the thought struck me like lightning. 'You are saved and blessed -- it is done -- it is finished -- it has long been your experience, but you have not seen it. Christ is your Savior -- you have the forgiveness of your sins -- you don’t have to pray any more to be forgiven: you can rejoice, for you are saved, blessed for time and eternity. All your doing, all your striving, all your praying is nothing -- He is all.' I flew up from the sofa and got hold of a Bible. The Holy Spirit led me to look up Romans, and I read it through without stopping. He himself explained the contents to me. Everything fell into place. The snare was broken and the bird was free."

        "It has long been your experience, but you have not seen it."

        The experience is that Jesus carries your sorrows, your sins, your diseases. He is not sick with your sickness, or sinful with your sin, so that your grief over-burdens the Lord. But he carries your sorrow to the cross and to the resurrection.

         The snare is broken. The bird is free.

        This is the Good News: "He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases."

        Amen.