Encounter Jesus – Matthew Week 8

How Did Jesus Prove His Authority?

Matthew 8-9

HANDOUT

Encounter Jesus Week 8 Handout

AUDIO

OUTLINE

  • Remember chapters 5-9 are bookended by Matthew 4: 27 and 9: 35 – the Kingdom is teaching, proclaiming, healing
  • We’ve spent 5 weeks talking about the teaching – Sermon on the Mount
  • Proclaiming and healing are important – they show the nature of God’s Kingdom, His vision for restoration of creation.
  • Also prove why we should take the teaching seriously
    • Read 7: 28-29 – teaching as one with authority – great if He can prove it!
    • Isaiah 35: 5-6 – the Messiah will heal the blind, deaf, mute, and paralyzed

Jesus Demonstrates His Authority (Matthew 8-9)

  • 10 miracles in 9 stories. 3 groups of 3 stories, with teaching on discipleship in between.
  • Cures diseases in person, cures diseases remotely, casts out demons, controls nature, heals paralysis, forgives sins, raises the dead to life, heals blindness, heals muteness
  • As you read, note how skillfully Matthew has written these narratives to work in the language of authority + faith
  • Note the different names of authority people apply to Jesus.
  • Only going in depth on 2 stories, but each is an incredible encounter with Jesus – take time to read each carefully. Ask what it says about Jesus and His authority.
  • Read 8: 2-3 – “If you will, you can make me clean”, “I will, be clean”
  • Healing the Centurion’s Servant (8: 5-13)
    • Read 8: 5-9 – Authority (BIG IDEA) – the Centurion gets it!
      • He recognizes Jesus’ authority and applies it
      • Centurion’s authority is from the emperor – to defy him is to defy Caesar
      • He recognizes the authority of Jesus flows from God
    • Read 8: 10-12 – Matthew’s Big Idea – People of God Redefined by Faith
      • Jesus is astonished – not just by faith, but because he gets Jesus’ authority
      • Jesus only commends the faith of 2 people in Matthew – both Gentiles
      • 11-12 are SHOCKING – that foreigners will recline with the Jewish Patriarchs at the Messianic Banquet – Isaiah 25: 6-9
      • Meanwhile ethnic Jews who do not respond in faith will be kicked out of the banquet (Sons of the Kingdom is an idiom for the nation of Israel)!!
      • What’s the link between this statement and the centurion? FAITH.
      • The people of God are no longer defined by birth, but by their faith response to Jesus.
      • The centurion is an example of someone who gets it.
      • Israel doesn’t get it – we see a  hint of this at the end of 9 as they grumble about His power over Jesus
    • Read 8: 27– “What sort of man is this that even the winds and sea obey him?” Authority.
    • Read 8: 28-32a – The demons clearly know who He is – “O Son of God” (BIG IDEA). They “beg” him – total recognition of His authority.
    • Read 9: 6-7 – Authority to forgive sins when He heals the paralytic
    • Read 9: 18-25 – Raising Jairus’ Daughter / The Bleeding Woman
      • Jairus demonstrates great faith in Jesus – kneels before Him (recognizing authority), asks Jesus to restore her to life. Jesus hasn’t done this before, so powerful faith – this is Elijah and Elisha territory!
      • Woman who was bleeding healed – just by touching His garment. Jesus senses His power going out.
      • Point – she was healed by faith. Both stories about great faith. But there is more
      • 18-25 are an intercalation (“an oreo”)
        • The bleeding woman story interrupts the dead daughter story.
        • Means they are certainly related thematically. What’s the connection?
        • Cleanness
          • You touch a dead body, unclean for 7 days – Numbers 19: 11
          • You touch a bleeding woman, unclean for 1 day – Leviticus 15: 26-27
          • 2 stories where Jesus should have become unclean if He were an ordinary person. Uncleanness spreads like a virus.
          • Jesus reversed the flow – cleanness flowed out of Him to the unclean.
          • This is the power of God – only  God can cleanse the unclean
            • Exodus 29: 37 – Altar of God makes what touches it Holy
            • Ezekiel 36: 25-27 – God cleanses the unclean, gives Spirit and new heart
            • Ezekiel 47: 7-8 – River of life makes the sea fresh
          • This is the power of God in Jesus – He makes clean the unclean, He revives the dead, and repairs the broken.
          • This is what He does for all who come to Him in faith – He is the fulfillment of those passages in Ezekiel.
          • We need to remember there is no uncleanness in our life that Jesus cannot clean.
          • There is no uncleanness in the lives of someone we encounter that Jesus cannot fix – we must not give up on people or write them off at first, second, or tenth sight. Because He can clean and restore ANYONE.