Matthew 8: 14 - 22
A Whole Lot Of Shaking Going On
14 Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 15 So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose and served them. 16 When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, 17 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.” 18 And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side. 19 Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 21 Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
The disciple Luke along with Mark also wrote of these incidents.
Mark 1, “29 Now as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick with a fever, and they told Him about her at once. 31 So He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her. And she served them.
Luke 4, “38 Now He arose from the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. But Simon’s wife’s mother was sick with a high fever, and they made request of Him concerning her. 39 So He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she arose and served them.
Luke 9, “And they went to another village. 57 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” 61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” 62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
As you can see they are similar but in a different order. So, let’s look at today’s passages.
14 Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 15 So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose and served them.
As you can see this incident with Peter’s mother-in-law occurs in all three synoptic Gospels. It gains in importance to Matthew because she is one of the inner groups of believers who welcome The Lord Jesus to their homes. But she was not welcoming Him this time. She was tossing and turning on her mattress. Matthew points out that our Lord Jesus ‘saw’ her. Thus he sees his Master Jesus as taking personal direct note of her. It is a reminder to us that He knows also about our needs. He ‘sees’ us too. In Mark we learn that they first tell Him about her, just as others may tell Him about our needs in prayer. But Matthew as usual cuts out the frills and goes to the essential point. Here we learn that He had a personal interest in her need, just as, if we are His, He ever sees our need. Knowing this then we have to remind ourselves that ‘What then have we to fear?’
Okay now, as we put the three accounts of the Lord healing Peter’s mother in law, we have some potential confusion.
According to Mark we find that our Lord Jesus took Peter’s mother in law by the hand and lifted her up and immediately the fever left her. Please note who came into the house with our Master. Andrew was Peter’s brother and James and John were Peter’s cousin so they were all family.
In Matthew’s version our Lord touched the woman’s hand and the fever left her.
In Luke’s version our Lord stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her.
I will tell you that they are all correct in their interpretation.
Have you ever been a witness to a crime or an accident? If you have personally took part in the after effects then you will understand fully what I am about to say. Let’s say that there were four bystanders to an accident. After the police arrived the officer is going to interview all four of you witnesses. Do you think that he will get the same story from every person. Since I help out in the Philadelphia Police Department, I can assure you that you will most likely get 4 different versions of the accident. ‘Why’?, you may ask. The reason is because all 4 will for one reason or the other focus on the accident differently. This is why all witnesses are interviewed. Then you can put every finding together and have a clearer picture of what actually took place. One person may be focused on the damage of the vehicles. Another will be inclined to center in on the people involved in the accident and to the extent of their injuries or emotional states. Another person may be focused on the traffic and the amount of people who are gawkers. Another may focus on the police and ambulances. Do you see my point. Now let us look at the healing of Peter’s mother in law again.
Mark as you can remember was Peter’s disciple. In fact in Peter’s first letter he referred to Mark as his son in chapter 5 verse 13, “She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son.”
Mark received his information directly from an eyewitness. Don’t forget they were in Peter’s house and it was his mother in law.
Now, Luke wasn’t there at all. He came back to Jerusalem and spoke with all the eyewitnesses. From their recollection he penned this information in his Gospel. So, this is what I believe actually happened.
I have had the opportunity to see first hand in Israel the remains of the city of Capernaum where all these things occurred. I stood in he very Synagogue where our Lord cast out the demon of a man. If you picked up a stone you could easily throw and hit the remains of Peter’s house – ‘29 Now as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.’
After their time in the Synagogue our Lord was invited to come over to Peter’s house for lunch, however, he was notified that his mother in law was sick.
Have you ever been invited to someone’s house and you found out that someone is this home was sick. What is the thing that you probably will do upon hearing this information? You will not go over to the person’s home. For one thing you do not want to catch whatever the sick person has or that you would feel uncomfortable going over while a member of the family was ill.
Don’t forget that our Lord had just cast an evil spirit out of a man so a few asked our Precious Holy Lord if He would go to help Peter’s mother in law.
There was something more going on here than just a normal illness for when our Lord came into the room where the sick woman was lying, what did He do? It say from Luke’s account that He ‘rebuked’ the fever.
This raises the question on why and how do we get sick. For one thing because of our sinful nature we can just get sick. It can be from the food that we eat or from catching a bug. And of course we can come down with illness or diseases from the enemy. Just look at all the incidents where our Lord goes about healing and you see the tie in with fallen spirits. I believe from Luke’s investigation it appears that Peter’s mother in law was knocked down because of spiritual attacks. This is why I believe our Lord ‘rebuked’ the illness, just like He a few minutes earlier in the Synagogue ‘rebuked’ the evil spirits to come out of the man.
After invoking His Authority the fever left the woman our Lord touched the woman’s hand and helped her up. In all three versions the authors commented how she immediately got up and served. Wouldn’t you?
Note how this parallels what our Holy Lord Jesus did with the leper. He touched both the leper and the fevered woman and they were both healed, and both would have been seen as ‘unclean’. Jewish Halakah forbade the touching of people with certain kinds of fever. But the One Who makes clean did not concern Himself about that. Once He had touched someone they were clean. Once we come for His touch we are made clean. He can touch us too at the point of our need. But how many of us then arise and serve Him? Does did comment sting?
16 When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick,
Having given three remarkable examples of healing; of a leper, a Gentile and a fevered woman, Matthew now goes on to emphasize how The Lord Jesus also healed many. It was a special time of healing because of the reason for His coming. He was demonstrating His role as the Messiahthe. Notice first that His power over the spirit world was revealed. He had come to destroy the works of the Devil. As a result of His coming the powers of evil were in turmoil and revealing themselves as never before. And His own authority was revealed in that He cast them out with a word. And He also healed all who were sick. For He wanted to make clear that He had come to introduce a new creation.
17 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”
One thing that you can keep aware of is that our Lord Jesus Christ many times touched people who were sick or had diseases. It indicated that He was identifying Himself with our infirmities as spoken by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 53, “ 1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”
The point being made here is that the One Who had come to save His people from their sins was thus also here to deliver them from the sufferings which resulted from that sin, because He was bearing it all for them. And that included being delivered from the power of the Evil One. And He was able to do it because He would bear their necessary sufferings on Himself. He was here as our representative and substitute to bear in Himself what the world deserved because of sin. Among other things He would take on Himself the groaning of the world. Thus these acts of healing were a part of His larger work as the suffering Servant Who would lay down His life as a guilt offering on behalf of many, with all its positive results.
In addition He Is The Servant Who was also the coming King. And this offering would result in healing and forgivenes. We must again draw attention to the fact that we are in the part of Matthew where the quotations from Isaiah specifically predominate, referring to both King and Servant. Jesus is revealed as having come here as the suffering Servant, and as in fulfillment of all the Messianic promises.
18 And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side.
As you know, our Lord Jesus’ ministry had begun with ‘great crowds’ from which He had entered the mountain in order to teach His disciples. But when He had descended from the mountain it was again to be met by ‘great crowds’. Now He determines once more to avoid them. He considers that they have seen and heard enough to be going on with, and is probably exhausted. But having already learned that the refuge of a mountain had proved not to be sufficient to totally avoid the crowds, He determined this time that He would cross the sea of Galilee in order to avoid them. It is quite probable that our Lord Jesus was physically exhausted. His healings were physically draining as ‘power went out of Him’, and the continual preaching and attention of the crowds would have added to the strain. That is presumably why He would shortly fall into a deep sleep in a boat in circumstances which were far from congenial. There was a limit to what even His body would take. And this period apart from the great crowds would also give some of the inner group of His disciples time to speak with Him, and would lead to further revelations which were meant for them, before He once more took up His ministry in Galilee. For consideration had to be given to all.
19 Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
The first man came and offered to follow our Lord Jesus. Please note that Matthew points out to us that he was a Scribe. We cannot skip the amazing answer our Lord gives to this man. We read in Psalm 8 that our El Shaddai – God Almighty – placed man above the animals. Do you catch what He Is saying here? He has chosen to place Himself below the animals, for unlike them who God has provided a home or living spot, He and His disciples do not settle anywhere. Are you listening Pastors? It is God’s call to wherever and whenever He wants to use you. Not some million dollar salary, beach and mountain homes, and all kind of worldly fixtures.
21 Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
The second group are addressing people who want a solid financial support system before they venture out in their service for the Lord. The man’s father was not dead. He was hoping Jesus would be impressed that he would follow the Lord after certain things happened. The Lord told him to forget that thinking. If you want to come and follow Him, today is the day to forsake all and follow Him. How many people do you know that comes under this category? How about yourselves?
The third man is listed in Luke’s account, “61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” 62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
It is interesting to me in that he is almost echoing the same words that Elisha said to Elijah in the book of 1 Kings chapter 19, “19 So he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle on him. 20 And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah, and said, “Please let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” And he said to him, “Go back again, for what have I done to you?” 21 So Elisha turned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them and boiled their flesh, using the oxen’s equipment, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah, and became his servant.
Our Lord answered the man to do the same as Elisha. For Elisha took his plow, slew an ox and followed Elisha. Our Lord told this man also to forsake what was his lively hood and join in with His group of followers right now.
If these three types of advanced courses that our Awesome Holy Spirit has helped you understand more fuller God’s Amazing truth then you have on your internal records 9 continuing education credits. And by the way, have you paid your tuition yet. You want to know how much you owe? Nothing! It has already been paid for you by the One Who taught the course – our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
