Well, good afternoon. I'm David Bercot, and we're going to be going again through the Historic Faith Commentary Series on Matthew, and today we'll be looking at chapter 8 of Matthew. It's not a chapter that has a lot of teaching that is direct teaching of Jesus. It has a lot of teaching of what we learn from Jesus ' example. Now, I'm going to just hit a few high points in today's discussion and leave most of it for you to be able to read in the commentary.
One of the events in here is right after the Sermon on the Mount, and when Jesus came down from the mountain, a leper came to Him. It says in Matthew 8, verse 3 and 4, I'll just read this, " And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him saying, " I wish be clean, " the leper asked him if he would heal him. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And then it says later, " And Jesus said to him, ' See that you tell no man. " What I wanted to talk about this afternoon is, why did Jesus say that?
See that you tell no man? It's not just in this instance, it happens a lot. He heals someone and he says, " Don't tell anyone. " What we don't know for sure, the early Christian commentators put forth several theories. Probably all of them are correct. Chrysostom mentions that this is a sign of Jesus ' humility. He did not want to attract thrill seekers. Oh, look at the new circus in town. Here's a wonder worker. So he's not wanting to attract those kind of people.
And it's really a good example for all Christians who work miracles or say that they work miracles. You know, so often today, I have to think about the difference where Jesus says, " Don't go and tell anybody. " And today, Christians who claim to be miracle workers, I mean, often they've got billboards and all kinds of literature advertising it, and they're always expounding, you know, this healing and that that they accomplished and this and that. It's a totally different attitude.
So I think Chrysostom has a valid point that he gives us an example of humility, the way a genuine Christian wonder worker should be acting. Another thing that's right there in the Scriptures why he told people that is because the leper, just like almost all of the other ones he healed, he didn't obey Jesus there. He went out and told everyone. And I don't think Jesus was upset about that. You can imagine how excited you would be if you had leprosy and now you're clean.
You'd lived as an exile your whole life and now you can associate with people and it'd be hard not to talk about it. But this is what we read. This is from Mark. It says, " However he, the leper, went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter. As a result, Jesus could no longer openly enter a city, but had to remain outside in deserted places. And they came to him from every direction. So once that reputation spread, yeah then he knew he would have these huge crowds.
Many, again, he would just be thrill seekers and he wouldn't be able to get the ministry done that he wanted. Now I wanted to talk a little bit about biblical leprosy. I remember years ago, this was back when I was in my early 30s. We had a missionary sister come to our church and talk with us. She was a nurse. She had a ministry in Africa. She worked at a hospital there for lepers.
And during the question and answer session, I asked her, " Do you think that modern-day leprosy is the same disease that you read about in the Bible that it calls leprosy? " And her answer was a very definite no. She was certain it was not one in the same disease. So that prompted me to do a bit of research just on modern leprosy and ancient leprosy. And I'll share with you some of the things that I learned, and this is all in the commentary. It's almost, I would agree with her assessment.
It's almost certainly a different disease that we read about in the book of Leviticus and then these healings that Jesus did. Now, the disease in Deuteronomy in Greek, you know, in the Septuagint, it's called lepra, and that's where we get our English word leprosy. But lepra did not necessarily mean what is today called leprosy, which the official name is Hansen's disease.
And the reason why the two got associated is that in the Middle Ages, Hansen's disease, which perhaps hadn't been around that much before then, it began to spread and people gave it the name leprosy, and immediately it got associated with the biblical term. And so, in everyone's mind, they were one and the same. But there's numerous reasons why doctors today feel almost certain they're not the same disease.
And these are many of the things that this nurse had mentioned to me when I asked the question there when she visited our church. Okay, number one, the early symptoms of modern-day leprosy include loss of eyebrows and eyelashes. The affected areas become numb, there's muscle weakness, there's eye problems. None of those things are mentioned in Leviticus as being the symptoms that affected these people with that disease that is called in our Bible's leprosy.
Number two, the prominent symptoms of advanced leprosy are nerve destruction. You lose your feeling in your arms and limbs. Your hands and feet become crippled. You have paralysis and eventually blindness. Again, none of those symptoms are mentioned in the book of Leviticus or in the New Testament where we read about leprosy being healed. Okay, modern leprosy cannot infect clothing and houses, but in Leviticus, it talks about whatever disease it's talking about. It's like some kind of fungus or something.
I mean, it can infect leather, it can infect houses, and there's all sorts of procedures of how to disinfect them. That can't be Hansen's disease, modern-day leprosy. Leviticus 13 required two seven-day quarantine periods to determine whether disease was actually leprosy or not. However, modern-day leprosy, Hansen's disease, progresses very slowly. It's over a period of years, not days. The existence of modern leprosy couldn't be determined in 14 days.
You need a year or several years to even know that a person has it. So again, it's not the same disease. Number five, the skin diseases that we read about in Leviticus were highly contagious. Now, although modern leprosy is a communicable disease, it's not easily spread from one person to another. It is spread that way, but it's not highly contagious. It requires prolonged constant contact with a leprous person.
Sometimes nurses or doctors who work with it contract it because they're in day-to-day contact with those people, but that you would just accidentally get it from a neighbor who had modern leprosy. No, that's extremely unlikely. So I think we can be pretty confident.
It's not one in the same disease, and it's too bad then that modern-day leprosy has been given this stigma because of a different type of disease that was called by the Greek name lepra that didn't necessarily have any connection with the modern-day leprosy. Okay, the next person I want to talk about as we go through Matthew 8, which is almost like a series of miracles that Jesus does, but in each one, there's lessons to be learned, and that's the centurion of remarkable faith. In verse 5, we read this.
And when Jesus entered Capernaum, there came to him a centurion pleading with him. And it turns out he asked if Jesus could heal his servant who was, I believe, paralyzed. And Jesus said to him, " I will come and heal him. " And we probably remember the words of the centurion. He said, " I'm not worthy that you would come under my roof. Just say the word and he will be healed. " We're not going to be talking about that incident, but that's one of the more remarkable parts of it.
But I want to mention some of the other things. And again, I'll just refer you to the commentary, read about it because there is a lot we can learn from that centurion and what he represented. Now, by offering to come to this centurion's house, Jesus was breaking one of the traditions of the rabbis. And this was such a strong tradition that several years later, you probably remember the incident when Peter was asked to visit the Gentile Centurion Cornelius.
I don't think it's a coincidence that both of these men would be centurions. And he told Cornelius after God had showed him it would be okay. He said, " Do you know that it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to keep company with or come to someone of another nation. " So that was a really strong tradition. Now, interestingly, the Mosaic Law does not forbid that. That is not a requirement in the law. It's not a commandment that you should not go into the house of a Gentile.
You weren't to follow their pagan worship, but it didn't say you couldn't go into their house. So Jesus wasn't suggesting that he was going to break the law because that wasn't in the law, but it was such a strongly entrenched tradition that Peter showed respect for it. It had become an unwritten law for the Jews, you might say. But when we look in the Old Testament, we have the example of Elijah, who lived for quite some time with the widow and Zarephath.
She was a Gentile, and you know he not only went into her house, he lived there with her. So by being willing to go into this Gentiles house, I think Jesus is showing two things. One thing, this is a man-made tradition, and he did make a point of violating and purposely breaking the man-made traditions that the rabbis had put upon the Jews, laying these heavy burdens on them.
Number two, I think he was pointing to the day when both Jews and Gentiles would be one flock, would be one church, and he was getting that thinking going by being willing to go into the house of this Gentile. Now at the end of that, after the Gentile shows His remarkable faith and His humility, Jesus makes this comment. This is Matthew 8, 11, and 12. I'll read it to you.
He says, " And I say to you, this is Jesus speaking, that many will come from the east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. " What is Jesus talking about there? I know when I was a younger man or when I was a teenager and when I was first reading that or first taking notice of it, I didn't know what Jesus was talking about.
Probably most of you are able to follow his thinking. The many who would come from east and west, he's talking about the Gentiles, that they'd be coming from all over the earth, and that they would be there in the kingdom, and he mentions with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So these would be the true descendants, the true children of Abraham that John the Baptist had talked about, that God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones. What about the children of the kingdom who were going to be cast out?
Well, he's talking about the fleshly Jews, the unbelieving Jews who had enjoyed the earthly kingdom of God for 1,500 years or so, but they had been unfaithful to God for most of those centuries, and now when God sends them their Messiah, His Son, they end up rejecting Him and even putting Him to death and then persecuting His followers. So he said they were going to be cast out of the kingdom, not every Jew, but only the unbelieving Jews who did turn out to be the majority.
In another of his parables later in Matthew, Jesus told them, " He said, " The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. " That nation would be the nation of Christians, composed of both Jews and Gentiles, who would make up the Israel of God.
Now, another thing I want to mention in regard to this centurion, and I've heard this so many times, people who are arguing that it's okay for Christians to go to war, it's okay for Christians to be in the military, they will point to this centurion. They say, here he was a Roman army officer. Jesus didn't tell him he had to leave the army. So what do we say in response to that?
Well, it's an argument from silence, which is always a very poor basis to argue from because someone doesn't say something or it's not recorded that someone said this or that, then that means that person approves it because there's silence. Well, silence doesn't prove anything. It just means nothing was said or nothing was recorded. The subject of the Centurion's profession never came up. He came to Jesus pleading that Jesus would heal his paralyzed servant.
This was about healing another man, not the centurion, but his servant. And he was a godly man who had built some synagogues, or at least one synagogue for the Jews, and the Jews themselves had come with him and were speaking up on his behalf, which was an unusual thing. So the subject of his profession never came into the discussion. So Jesus silence means absolutely nothing. You could point to a lot of other examples in the New Testament with Jesus.
What about the immoral woman who came and cried at his feet and wiped his feet with her washed him with her tears and dried it with her hair? And he said, you know, your sins, though many are forgiven. He didn't tell her, " You need to quit sinning. This way of life you've been living in immorality, this needs to end. " He said nothing. Does that mean he approved of her way of life, that it was okay for her to keep sinning?
The Samaritan woman, she had not only been married several times, but she was now living with a man who was not her husband. And Jesus didn't say, " You need to leave that man. " The subject never comes up. Or if it did, it's not recorded anywhere. So again, we have silence. Silence proves nothing. Would we argue that Jesus said, " Hey, it's okay just to live with someone because of that? " No. So his silence about this centurion means absolutely nothing.
Actually, people were making this argument as early as the second century, if not even before. And Tertullian addressed it. I'm going to read to you his words. He said, " One person cannot be bound to two masters, to God and to Caesar. How will a Christian man carry on war? In fact, how will he serve even in times of peace without a sword, which the Lord has taken away?
For although soldiers did come to John and had received instructions for their situation, and likewise, although a centurion believed, still the Lord afterward in disarming Peter disarmed every soldier. So this was before Jesus had told Peter, put your sword away. Everyone who lives by the sword will die by the sword. All right, now let's move to the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. This is Matthew 8:14 and 15. I'll read that.
It says, " And when Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother lying there, sick with a fever, and he touched her hand and the fever left her, and she arose and ministered to them. " Again, I'm not going to discuss the entire miracle. A few just points that I think are interesting. One, it shows that Peter was married. I think most of us are aware of that. One of the early Christians I was just reading this last week states that Peter had children.
Nothing is said about that in the Bible, so I don't know if that is correct or not, but it certainly is very plausible. So Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second century, he relates an episode with Peter's wife that they were both martyred in Rome and that he was bidding his wife to be faithful. So we assume that she died as a martyr as well. Now, the account there in Matthew mentions a house that they went to Peter's house. And I believe it's Mark who mentions, he calls it Peter and Andrew's house.
So they both lived there. We don't know if they owned it or if they rented it. It may have even been a family house from their parents. This was a house in Capernaum. Probably it was a very humble dwelling. I mean, they were just simple fishermen. We could think of maybe a stone hut or, you know, something fairly similar to that.
Now, the thing I wanted to mention, and this is described in more detail in the commentary, is that in 1968, archaeologists digging in Capernaum, they did find the remains of a simple house there in Capernaum that dates back to the 1st century AD. And there's a good bit of conjecture or a reasonable hypothesis, I should say, that this was that very house that Peter had lived in, that Jesus stayed at for a long time and where Jesus healed the mother-in-law.
Again, we don't know that for certain, but there are some good reasons behind it. For one thing, in studying this, they were able to determine that sometime after the middle of the first century. So let's say late first century, this house was converted into a meeting place for Christians, or if it was still being used as a house, Christians were meeting there and they pretty well had turned it into a meeting place.
They found it's over a hundred Christian inscriptions on the wall, things saying like Christ have mercy, stuff like that that are written on the wall. Plus, there's the fish symbol, crosses, things like that everywhere, which makes him pretty certain that this was a Christian meeting place. So that's why they think this could have been that house. It would be logical once Peter had moved out from it. And we know he was in Jerusalem after Jesus died.
Jesus told him to go there and then his ministry was in Jerusalem and then in other parts of the world. So he probably never returned to Capernaum. The house was there. It'd be logical that Christians would keep meeting there. And there's one other fact that makes it the theory, I think, highly plausible. In Mark 1:29, talking about this event, it says, " Now as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew. So it sounds like the house was very close to the synagogue.
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered into the house. Now, I have been there personally in the ruins of Capernaum and you have the house there that they think is Peter's house. And it is literally across the street are the ruins of a very large synagogue. Now, the ruins today would be a synagogue that was built in like the year 300, but it was built on the ruins of an earlier synagogue. So this would all fit. So it was kind of neat being able to be there.
Unfortunately, I think it's the Franciscans who owned that property, and they maybe built this before the house was discovered in 1968, but this very modern structure, it's oval like a flying saucer or something like that is right over the house. I mean, it's up high. You can see into the ruins of the house and all of that, but it's a little bit inappropriate. But I do appreciate that this Catholic religious order has preserved those ruins for us. Now let's move to another famous incident in chapter eight.
We're going to skip over the storm on the ocean when they're crossing the Sea of Galilee, and they go over to the far side to the land of the Gergesenes. And this is what we read. And when they had come to the other side, to the region of the Gergesenes, two men possessed with demons met him, coming out of the tombs. They were exceedingly fierce so that no man could pass by that way. And then we remember the account. Most of them only mentioned one man.
Matthew is a little bit more specific that there were actually two of them, but one was maybe more the spokesman and he asked to be healed by Jesus and Jesus healed him and, uh, yeah, totally, you know, cleansed from the demons. But then the demons asked Jesus for permission to enter into a herd of swine that were there nearby, and Jesus gave them permission. And then what happened? Well, the demons caused the swine to rush over a cliff and fall into the Sea of Galilee and be drowned. And I know all of my life.
I remember first as a boy and I think my whole adult life, I've always wondered, why did Jesus allow that? I mean, these poor swine, they get killed for no reason and the men who owned them, they ended up with a considerable loss of valuable property unless somehow they were able to get their carcasses out of the Sea of Galilee and perhaps still butcher them for meat.
Now, I had been told as a boy, I mean, the first theory I had heard was that these were Jews who were keeping these swine and that was forbidden under the law. And so, you know, they kind of got what was coming to them. But none of the early Christians understood it that way. They all saw these people as being Gentiles because the land of the Gergesenes was part of the region known as the Decapolis. It was on the East Side of the Dead Sea. There were some Jews who lived there, but it was mostly Gentiles.
So it was unlikely that these would have been Jewish swine herds. And again, they would have been breaking the law if they had been keeping swine. So probably this was Gentiles. And again, the early Christians ask the same question, why did this happen? And the early Christian commentators give some, I think, very plausible answers. Chrysostom mentions three things that I think are all, like I say, very good reasons. First of all, Jesus allowed this so that we could see just how evil these demons are.
I mean, we feel sorry for these pigs, but what about the people that get possessed by demons? And who knows what other kinds of evil that they stir up? How many of the wars that we've experienced on earth that were stirred up by demons? I mean, they are just outright mean and wicked. And so Jesus, for knowing what would happen, gave this as a powerful demonstration so that we would fear the powers of evil. Secondly, by this, we learned that the demons don't even have power over the animals.
They have to get permission from Christ or from His Father before they could even enter into a herd of swine. So we do know, thankfully, their power is not unlimited, that God does allow them to perform a measure of evil for whatever purposes God permits it. But they do not have unrestricted license. If they did, we would indeed be in dire shape, and no doubt they would have all Christians killed if they had that kind of unlimited power.
And the third reason Chrysostom mentions is that we could see this is what the demons would be doing to us, all kinds of evil things if we didn't have God's protection. And Tertullian adds, " It should help us to appreciate why we pray in the Lord's prayer, jumping in the middle of it, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, or it could be deliver us from the evil one. " I mean, the Greek can be translated either way. And that's why we pray that.
I mean, we have these wicked beings around us at all times tempting us, doing this and that, and would do even worse if God were not protecting us. But we can't take His protection for granted why we pray that prayer, and I try to pray it faithfully every day at least three times. Now, another incident that had puzzled me for a long time is this man who's been healed of demon possession. He asked Jesus, " Can I go with you? " He wants to be a disciple and a follower of Jesus. And Jesus doesn't allow him to do that.
But he says, " Go home to your friends and tell them about the great things the Lord has done for you, and that He has had compassion on you. " And the man did just as Jesus had instructed him. In fact, he not only told his friends, but he spread the news throughout the entire region of the Decapolis. So why didn't Jesus let him go with him? Well, two reasons again. First of all, he was almost certainly a Gentile. And Jesus was not at that point taking Gentiles as part of His disciples.
He said, I was sent only to the lost house of the sheep of Israel. All the disciples that we know that are spoken of were all Jews. So he wasn't at this time taking in Gentile disciples. But this man was a disciple in another sense, but he wasn't part of Jesus ' immediate group of followers, is what I mean. So that would have been one reason.
The other was, since Jesus was not going to be spending his time preaching to the Gentiles, this man could do more for the kingdom by going and preaching to the Gentiles there in the Decapolis region, rather than accompanying Jesus back into the land of the Jews. So those are some thoughts from Matthew chapter 8. There are plenty more treasures in that chapter. We've hit just a few of them in these last 30 minutes.
And so I really encourage you, and I hope it'll spur you to read the entire chapter yourself, read the commentary, what all we can learn about the events that happened in the eighth chapter of Matthew. Thank you for your time.