THE KING CONTINUES TO MANIFEST HIS GRACE AND POWER (Matthew 9)

THE KING CONTINUES TO MANIFEST HIS GRACE AND POWER (Matthew 9)

H. A. IRONSIDE

His works of power attested His Messianic claims. All His miracles were wrought, not for self-glorification, however, nor to have men hail Him as “some great one” (Acts 8:9), but to alleviate the ills of suffering humanity. It had been predicted long before that God’s anointed King would open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, cause the lame to leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb to sing (Isa. 35:5, 6). All this the Lord Jesus did, and more, ministering to needy people out of the loving compassion of His heart. 

  Men are ever prone to consider physical ills as of greater moment than the sinfulness of their hearts, and so are far more concerned about obtaining and preserving bodily health than they are about being right with God. But our Lord placed the emphasis upon the state of the soul. To Him physical ill was but the testimony to the fact of sin being in the world, and He was not content to deal only with the effect, but He ever sought to reach the cause. 

  MATTHEW 9:9 - “He saw a man, named Matthew … and He saith unto him, Follow Me.” Matthew, also called Levi (Mark 2:14), was the tax collector of the port of Capernaum. Evidently, he had before heard and seen the Lord Jesus. Now the time for decision had come. Obedient to the call of the Saviour, he arranged immediately to close up his business, and become a disciple of Christ in full-time service. He became the author, under God, of this Gospel. 

  MATTHEW 9:12-13 - “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” Jesus directed the attention of these legalists to a declaration made by Jehovah through Hosea (6:6). It is far more to God to see mercy extended to the needy than to receive sacrifices and offerings. So Jesus had come, “not to call the righteous”—that is, those who supposed they had no need of mercy—but His mission was to sinners, whom He called to repentance. 

   MATTHEW 9:16-17 - “No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment.” He had not come to add something to the legal dispensation but to supersede it with that which was entirely new. To attempt to amalgamate the two principles of law and grace would annul the true meaning of both (cf. Rom. 11:6).

The new wine of grace was not to be poured into the skin-bottles of legality. Such an attempt would only destroy both. It is all-important that we realize this, for we see in Christendom today many teachers of the law who, as Paul says, are without understanding as to what they affirm when they try to impose legal principles upon those who are saved by grace (1 Tim. 1:5–7). 

  MATTHEW 9:18-19 - “There came a certain ruler.” The name of this man was Jairus (Mark 5:22). He was a leader in the local synagogue at Capernaum. He evidently believed in the claims of Jesus Christ and so besought Him to come to his help, for his little daughter was, as he put it, “even now dead;” that is, she was so ill he realized she was at the point of death, unless there was divine intervention. 

  MATTHEW 9:20-21 - “A woman … touched the hem of His garment.” Afflicted with a constitutional disease, her very life ebbing away, this woman pressed through the crowd and touched the border of the Lord’s robe, that blue fringe which was worn by every pious Israelite, in obedience to the Mosaic law (Num. 15:38–41; Deut. 22:12), and which marked them out as the subjects of the Holy One. 

   MATTHEW 9:23-26 - “The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.” Was the little girl just in a coma, or was she actually dead? The consensus of opinion among most Christian scholars is that this was the sleep of death, but the fact that a different Greek word is used for “sleep” here to that which is found in other passages where sleep and death are used synonymously, has led some to conclude that she was simply in a state of suspended animation. At any rate, she was dead as far as human power to help is concerned.

“He … took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” Elsewhere we are told that He tenderly commanded her to arise, and as He took her hand she responded and came back to life, and was given food (Mark 5:41–43; Luke 8:54, 55). 

MATTHEW 9:30 - We may wonder why Jesus bade them refrain from all this. The reason doubtless was that He desired people to be impressed by His message rather than His works. He was, while on earth, as we are told in Hebrews 1:3, the express image of the Divine Person: that is, the exact expression of the character of God. The compassion He manifested for distressed mankind shows out the heart of God as He looks upon the sorrow and suffering that sin has brought into the world.

   MATTHEW 9:35 - This term, “the gospel of the kingdom,” is an important one. It was the proclamation of the good news that God was about to set up His kingdom in this world. The kingdom was offered to Israel by God but only on condition of their repentance and acceptance of the King. As we know they failed in this, and the kingdom was taken from them and given to others who were ready to meet the proper requirements. There is, of course, a difference between “the gospel of the kingdom” and “the gospel of the grace of God;” yet they are not to be distinguished as two gospels, for we are told distinctly in Galatians 1:9 that to preach any other gospel than that which Paul himself carried through the world was to incur the curse of God. The gospel is God’s message concerning His Son. It takes on different aspects at different times, but it is all the gospel of Christ. In Matthew, as we have seen, Christ is presented as the King: that is, the emphasis is upon His royalty rather than upon His redemptive work, and yet the latter is not ignored, as we shall see in a later chapter; and in fact, at the very beginning of this Gospel the angels’ declaration was, “He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The different aspects of the gospel are, therefore, to be distinguished but not confused. They all have to do with the presentation of the Christ of God as the only remedy for the world’s great need.