9  Responding to  Jesus’ Power (9:33b-35)

and the multitudes marveled, saying, “Nothing like this was ever seen in Israel.” But the Pharisees were saying, “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”

And Jesus was going about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (9:33b-35)

A contemporary British writer has commented, “The problem with humanity is this: humanity stands at the crossroads, and all of the signposts have fallen down.”

For Matthew, however—as for every other writer, preacher, and teacher of the New Testament and for every believer today—humanity’s needed spiritual signposts are very much in place and are entirely reliable. The problem with humanity is not with the signposts but with those who ignore or reject the signposts God has made abundantly evident (see Rom. 1:18-23).

Among those signposts are the miracles that demonstrated Jesus’ divine nature and messiahship, His power to save and His right to rule. In addition to demonstrating who Jesus was, His miracles also served to separate those who accept Him from those who reject Him. For some people, Jesus’ miracles were a sign of divine power and glory that drew them nearer to Him; for some they were supernatural marvels by a good man, but a man who had no claim on their lives; and for others they were an affront to religious propriety that drove them even further from the Lord.

Jesus is the dividing line of history and the demarcation point that determines the ultimate destiny of every individual on earth. When Jesus was only about forty days old, His parents took Him to the Temple in Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord as their first-born male child and to perform Mary’s rite of purification after giving birth. While they were there, a godly man named Simeon, whom the Holy Spirit had promised “would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ,” took the infant Jesus in his arms. He praised God for the Child, saying of Him, “My eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel” (Luke 2:26, 30-32). Then he blessed Mary and Joseph “and said to Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel’” (v. 34).

Those who reject Jesus “fall” into God’s judgment and consequently into hell, whereas those who accept Him are saved from sin and death and “rise” into eternal life with God in heaven. Those are the only two possible destinies for a human being. Those who trust God are saved and are “like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season,” while those who reject God are lost and “are like chaff which the wind drives away” (Ps. 1:3-4).

Even while Jesus was still in her womb, Mary praised God as “the Mighty One . . . [whose] mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.He has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things; and sent away the rich empty-handed” (Luke 1:49-50, 52-53). From her knowledge of the Old Testament Mary knew that God receives those who come to Him humbly and penitently and rejects those who proudly and arrogantly trust in themselves and see no need for His mercy or deliverance. At the beginning of His ministry Jesus declared,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and cast insults at you, and spurn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets. (Luke 6:20-26)

Those who are blessed are the saved, and those who fall under God’s woes are the lost.

Using other figures to teach the same truth, Jesus said the saved are like those who build their lives on the rock of the Lord’s righteousness and the lost are like those who build their lives on the sand of man’s religion. Those who build on the rock withstand God’s judgment, whereas those who build on sand do not (Matt. 7:24-27). Using still another figure, the Lord said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” (Matt. 16:25). On another occasion He said, “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33). Those who identify themselves with God’s Son, Jesus Christ, God will identify as His own children. Jesus made clear that His peace is only for those who belong to Him. For those who reject Him, He does not “bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household” (vv. 34-36).

In a parable addressed specifically to the unbelieving chief priests and elders in Jerusalem, Jesus said,” ‘A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, “Son, go work today in the vineyard.” And he answered and said, “I will, sir”; and he did not go. And he came to the second and said the same thing. But he answered and said, “I will not”; yet he afterward regretted it and went. Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The latter.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I say to you that the tax-gatherers and harlots will get into the kingdom of God before you’” (Matt. 21:28-31). The second son represents irreligious and ungodly people who come to recognize their sin and repent of it, turning to God for salvation. The first son represents religious hypocrites who make an outward profession of God but are inwardly rebellious against Him. Whether religious or irreligious, only those who turn to God through Jesus Christ can be saved.

The apostle Paul wrote often on the theme that the human race is divided into believers and unbelievers—into the heaven-bound and the hell-bound, the blessed and the cursed, the glorified and the damned—and that the determining issue between them is their response to the Lord Jesus Christ. “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place,” he wrote the Corinthian believers. “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life” (2 Cor. 2:14-16). Christians touch all the world with the fragrance of God, but that fragrance is a pleasant blessing only to fellow believers. The more the saved hear and understand and fellowship with those who also believe the gospel that redeemed them, the more they rejoice and grow in their new life in Christ. But to those who are doomed to hell, who reject the good news about Christ, all that believers are and teach carries only the smell of death. The more they hear the gospel and see it manifested, the more repulsive it becomes to them and the deeper they entrench themselves in their lostness. Their continual rejection of the gospel serves to confirm their spiritual deadness.

The writer of Hebrews says, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:29). The more the saving gospel of Jesus’ sacrificial atonement for sin is denied and purposely rejected, the deeper becomes the spiritual darkness and the severer the punishment of eternity.

In Matthew 9:33b-35 we are first shown two superficially different but basically similar responses to Jesus’ miracles, and then we are given a brief summary of His Galilean ministry, which is also a summary of His entire ministry until the time of His crucifixion.

THE RESPONSES OF THE PEOPLE

and the multitudes marveled, saying, “Nothing like this was ever seen in Israel.”
(9:33b)

After the first group of three miracles, the general response of the people is characterized by three men, each of whom was attracted to Jesus but found an excuse for not following Him (see 8:19-22; cf. Luke 9:57-62). The first response after the next group of miracles was the call and conversion of Matthew (9:9), which was followed by the insincere questioning of Jesus by the unbelieving Pharisees (v. 11-13) and the sincere questioning of Him by the confused disciples of John the Baptist (vv. 14-17).

Throughout Jesus’ ministry—as throughout the New Testament and the history of the church—the responses to Jesus Christ show variations. Some people immediately recognize Him for who He is but fall short of seeking His salvation. Others acknowledge and trust Him and gain eternal life. Some at first reject Him but later accept Him, and some outwardly claim to accept Him but inwardly remain unchanged and unsaved. In every case, however, the response reflects one of only two basic decisions—that of true acceptance, which leads to salvation, or that of rejection, which leads to damnation.

In this text the Holy Spirit shows the responses given to Jesus after the third and last set of miracles recorded in Matthew 8-9.

THE RESPONSE OF THE MULTITUDE

The first response was that of the multitudes, who marveled at what Jesus was doing. They publicly testified that nothing like this was ever seen in Israel. They knew of the many miracles God wrought while Moses appealed to Pharaoh to release the Israelites from bondage, and of the deliverance through the Red Sea and the provision of water and manna in the wilderness. They knew of God’s giving the law on Mt. Sinai on tablets of stone inscribed with His own finger and of His dramatic crumbling of the walls of Jericho. They knew of the great miracles of Elijah and Elisha. But in less than a year’s time, they themselves had witnessed miracles of a greater and absolutely unique magnitude. Here was a display of divine power unequalled not only in the history of Israel but in the history of the world.

Thaumaz (marveled) means to be greatly amazed and astounded, to be overcome with awe. The intensified forms of the verb found in Matthew 27:14 and Mark 12:17 carry an even stronger meaning. As Jesus’ miracles increased so did the astonishment of the crowds. They became amazed beyond amazement. When Jesus stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples were more afraid of the divine power that stilled it than they were of the storm itself. The vast number and variety of healings and other miracles made them both incontestable and incomprehensible. The people were therefore continually “amazed at the greatness of God” (Luke 9:43).

Yet, as astounded as the people were, most of them were fickle in their praise of Jesus. As He entered Jerusalem on the Monday preceding His death, “most of the multitude spread their garments in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees, and spreading them in the road. And the multitudes going before Him, and those who followed after were crying out, saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest’” (Matt. 21:8-9). But by Friday of that same week—persuaded by the religious leaders that Jesus was going against established Judaism and that He might even become a threat to their safety because of Rome—that same basic multitude chose to release Barabbas the criminal and to crucify Jesus the Savior (27:21). Because their fascination with Jesus’ miracles was superficial and involved no submission to Him as Lord and Savior, the marveling multitude eventually screamed for His blood in death.

Great throngs of people praised Jesus and walked many miles along hot, dusty roads to see Him perform His amazing works; but they admired Him only from a distance. They did not lastingly identify with Him or submit to Him. They were always astonished and sometimes afraid, but never committed. They were mere onlookers, willing to cheer but not willing to participate. They came to Jesus out of curiosity and to be entertained.

In John 6:26-27, for example, Jesus said to the crowd, “Truly, truly I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.” They came to Jesus only for free food! And because that is all they sought, that is all they received. Eventually they turned away from Him and then turned against Him, because there is no other course for those who will not have Him as Lord and Savior.

History is replete with people who heap high praise on Jesus but who give no evidence of submitting to Him and in many cases flagrantly oppose the truth He taught. In front of Jesus’ sworn enemies, Pontius Pilate declared Him to be innocent of any wrong and then a short while later approved His death sentence. The French philosopher Diderot said Jesus was the unsurpassed, and the great French emperor Napoleon said He was the emperor of love. D. F. Strauss, the liberal German theologian, said Jesus was the highest model of religion. The English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill called Him the guide of humanity. William Leckey the Irish historian, said He was the highest pattern of virtue, and James Martineau, the English theologian and philosopher, called Him the divine flower of humanity. The French historian Joseph Renan acknowledged Jesus to be the greatest among the sons of men. Theodore Parker, an American Unitarian clergyman, referred to Jesus as the youth with God in His heart, and the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen said He was the irreproachable. A popular musical refers to Him as a Superstar. Those are lovely sentiments, but they all fall short of saving truth.

The Pharisees and other leaders of Jesus’ day loudly praised the Old Testament prophets, but their counterparts who lived when the prophets were alive were the ones who put the prophets to death—just as the Pharisees led the people to reject and crucify Jesus. Many people today praise and identify with the great Christian leaders of church history yet reject the central doctrines and standards those leaders taught and often died for.

A few years ago a group of Christian students at a state university held a series of meetings to present and defend the biblical standards of morality. As long as the presentation remained in general terms it was received fairly well. But when statements were made condemning homosexuality as unequivocally sinful in God’s sight, an avowed homosexual faculty member stormed down the aisle of the meeting hall shouting obscenities at the speaker. Afterward, many of the gay students spit on the Christians who had attended.

As long as Jesus can be kept at arms’ length, and as long as His demanding and confrontational teachings are ignored or denied, He is often acceptable to the world. But when He accuses of sin and demands repentance and submission, the world turns away. When man’s need for salvation is preached and Jesus’ claims of lordship are pressed, that is another matter. Those who once praised Him become His critics, and those who once marveled at Him become His enemies. People will often give the highest praise to Jesus, even acknowledge His divinity and perfection—as long as no mention is made of His condemning to hell the liar, murderer, adulterer, homosexual, thief, and every other sinner who refuses to repent and receive Him as Savior and Lord.

THE REJECTING RELIGIONISTS

But the Pharisees were saying, “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” (9:34)

From that statement it is clear that many of the Pharisees not only were suspicious and envious of Jesus but already had determined Him to be an absolute enemy of traditional Judaism, of which they were the chief custodians. And in their minds, the enemy of their religion was the enemy of God.

Because they could not deny the fact of Jesus’ miracles, they chose to deny the source. And because they refused to recognize Jesus as the Messiah of God, they declared Him to be an agent of Satan who casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons. They could not assail the miracles themselves, because they were too numerous, public, and provable; instead, they foolishly assailed the One who performed them.

A short while later Jesus exposed the elemental illogic of the accusation (slightly revised from the one in 9:34) that He “casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons” (Matt. 12:24). Beelzebul was probably a form of Baalzebub (which means, “lord of the flies”), the pagan Philistine deity considered to be the prince of demons, Satan himself. But as Jesus pointed out, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?” (vv. 25-27). The darkness, hardness, and anger of the Pharisees’ hearts led them to attack Jesus with a foolish charge they hoped the people would believe—a charge that, in their blind and determined unbelief, they probably believed themselves. Truth cannot be contradicted with truth; it can only be denounced with falsehood.

When an unbeliever is determined not to believe, no fact or reason, no matter how obvious and convincing, can enlighten him. The person who is sold out to darkness refuses to recognize the light, even when it is blindingly clear. And the person who praises Jesus but rejects Him or ignores and rejects Him is just as damned as the person who denounces and rejects Him. Any response to Jesus but the response of faith amounts to rejection and results in damnation.

THE WORKS OF THE LORD

And Jesus was going about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (9:35)

Following his presentation of the responses to the third set of miracles, Matthew gives another brief summary of Jesus’ Galilean ministry (cf. 4:23).

We learn from the Jewish historian Josephus that at this time there were some two hundred cities and villages in the region of Galilee, an area about 40 miles wide and 70 miles long. “The cities are numerous and the multitude of villages everywhere,” he wrote, “crowded with men owing to the fertility of the soil, so that the smallest of them contains above fifteen thousand inhabitants.” Based on that assessment, Galilee then contained at least three million people, most of whom could have had direct exposure to Jesus.

Cities of that day were distinguished by having high surrounding walls for fortification, whereas villages were unwalled. During His brief stay in Galilee, Jesus visited all of them as He fulfilled His threefold ministry of teaching,… proclaiming the gospel . . . , and healing.

TEACHING

teaching in their synagogues, (9:35b)

Synagogues developed during the Babylonian exile (which began in 586 B.C), and from that time on they were the centers of Jewish community life. The synagogue was a place of worship, a town hall, and a courthouse. Before the Exile all worship centered in the Temple at Jerusalem, from which every Jew in Palestine lived less than a hundred miles. But when they were separated from the Temple for those 70 years of captivity, they began to gather together in a synagogue, which simply means “place of assembly.” Wherever at least ten Jewish men lived, a synagogue could be formed, and many large cities of the ancient world had numerous synagogues.

The synagogue was usually located on a hill or by a river, and was frequently built roofless—as was most of the Temple—in order for the people to look up to heaven as part of their worship. The synagogue was often identified by a long pole that went high into the air, much as a church steeple. A stranger in town could always find his way to the synagogue simply by traveling toward the pole.

Members of the synagogue would meet for worship on the Sabbath and on the second and fifth days of each week. They also met there to celebrate their many feasts, festivals, and holy days. Regular worship services were simply structured. They began with a time of thanksgivings or blessings, which included songs of praise and spoken testimony of the Lord’s goodness. Prayer followed and was concluded by a congregational “Amen,” a statement of affirmation that means “So be it.” Jesus often used the term amn (translated, “truly,” or “verily”; see Matt. 16:28; Mark 9:1) to emphasize the truth of important teachings; and the early church, following the synagogue practice, used it as a response to prayer (see 1 Cor. 14:16).

After prayer was given in the synagogue service, a designated reader would stand up and read from the law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). The passage was read in Hebrew and then translated into Aramaic, the common speech of Palestinian Jews (cf. Neh. 8:8). That would be followed by the reading, translation, and exposition of a passage from one of the prophets. The Jewish scholar Philo, who lived in Alexandria during the time of Christ, wrote, “Synagogues are mainly for the detailed reading and exposition of Scripture.”

The practice of reading and expounding Scripture therefore began as early as the time of Nehemiah and remains the soundest way to preach and teach God’s Word. The Master of such exposition was Jesus, and to the people of His hometown synagogue at Nazareth on one occasion He explained that He Himself was the fulfillment and true interpretation of Isaiah 61:1-2, which He had just read to them (Luke 4:16-21).

Because of the policy called “freedom of the synagogue,” the exposition of the Scripture passage could be given by any qualified man of the congregation, and the privilege was frequently extended to visiting rabbis or dignitaries. Both Jesus and Paul took advantage of that privilege, which became instrumental in the spread of the gospel during the first century (see Matt. 4:23; 13:54; Luke 4:15-21; Acts 9:20; 13:5; 18:4; 19:8).

The typical worship service was closed by a benediction and a final congregational “Amen.”

As already mentioned, the synagogue was also a place of instruction, as reflected in the Yiddish word for synagogue (schul, akin to our English school). It was the public school, or seminary, where Jewish boys were trained in the Talmud (the official commentaries on the law of Moses) and where many Jewish men (besides the elders and rabbis) often spent time studying the Scriptures (see Acts 17:11).

Religious and community affairs were administered by the ten elders, or rulers, of the synagogue, such as Jairus (Mark 5:22). All of the elders acted as judges, and from their number they selected a chief ruler, an interpreter of Hebrew for the worship services, a director of the school, and other such officers. All religious disputes were settled in the synagogues, and in most countries and provinces during New Testament times the Roman government permitted the Jews to handle many of their own civil disputes and even to administer punishment. Cases would be tried, judged, and the punishment carried out in the synagogue (see Matt. 10:17).

PREACHING

and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, (9:35c)

Proclaiming is from kruss, which is often translated “to preach” (Matt. 4:17; 10:7; Mark 16:15). The basic meaning is to herald a message, to make a public announcement for everyone to hear.

Jesus not only taught in the synagogues but He went about proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom wherever He went—in a synagogue, on a street corner, on a hillside, or on the seashore. It was through proclaiming the gospel that He made His major evangelistic thrust, calling on His hearers not simply to believe what He taught but to believe in Him. In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, Jesus was not expounding the Old Testament, as He did when teaching in the synagogues, but He was proclaiming the New Testament, the New Covenant which He would seal with His own blood (Matt. 26:28). He was unfolding the mysteries that were mentioned but not explained in the Old Testament, hidden even from the most faithful believers of previous times. He was thus giving new revelation about God’s plan of redemption.

Gospel (euangelion) means “good news,” and in the New Testament it is used in particular of the good news of the kingdom of God, which Jesus not only proclaimed but of which He was both the entrance and the Ruler (Matt. 16:28; 18:3; Luke 22:29-30; John 14:6; 18:36).

Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom was not just about the future kingdom, in its millennial and eternal states, but about His present spiritual kingdom, into which a person is born by forgiving, transforming grace the moment he trusts in the Son of God. Every Christian is a citizen of God’s kingdom in this present life. Christ is the King, the Lord, of every believer. He rules our lives, supplies our needs, guarantees our salvation, and in every way is sovereign over us. The kingdom is the rule and reign of Christ—now in and over His saints on earth, eventually over all the earth during the Millennium, and ultimately and eternally over the new heavens and the new earth.

The dual tasks of teaching the Word and proclaiming the gospel are still the primary ministry of the church today. Our first calling is to teach men the truth of God’s Word and to lead them to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:19-20).

HEALING

healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (9:35d)

In his book Counterfeit Miracles, B. B. Warfield wrote, “When our Lord came down to earth, He drew heaven with Him. The signs which accompanied His ministry were but the trailing clouds of glory which He brought from heaven, which is His home” (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, [1918] 1983, p. 3).

Jesus’ ministries of teaching and preaching were verified as divine and true by the display of supernatural power in His ministry of miracles, manifested especially through healing. Those three activities summarize the public ministry of our Lord.