Matthew 9:27-34 Jesus Brings Mercy

The Purpose of Matthew and the Coming of the Savior

For the next few weeks, we're going to be looking into the Gospel of Matthew. We're taking a break from Acts. And the purpose of that is to take a closer look at the life of Jesus Christ. And we're picking up in a series that I left off on called, I'm Not Your Average Savior.

Now the fact of the matter is, I think everybody in life has a savior that they turn to. Now, do you know what I mean by that? Everybody has something that I would call like a functional savior. Some people turn to alcohol.

Some people turn to relationships. Some people turn towards work and fame or towards success or climbing the ladder. But everybody has a functional Savior. Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about when I talk about a functional Savior.

But Jesus Christ is not your average Savior. He is the one who was sent from God to be the Savior of the world. The Savior. So he's not your average Savior. And that's where the sermon series comes from.

And we're actually picking up in the middle of that. I'm not preaching the Christmas story because I think that all of the Gospels proclaim the Christmas story. That as we encounter any text that is about the life of Jesus, we see the purpose for why he came.

And that is, there's just this intensity as you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You get focus and passion and vision. And why did Jesus come to earth? And it's all there. At Christmastime, we celebrate, obviously, the coming of the Lord and Savior.

And the incarnation, the fact that God was made flesh, is one of the most amazing miracles of all. I think sometimes we can miss that a little bit because there's so many other things that swirl around the Christmas season, right?

But have you ever taken time to really consider why? Why did Jesus come in flesh? What was the reason? I think so often in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, we can easily lose sight of the purpose, the focus for why Jesus came.

And I can tell you that as a child, and growing up, and going through college, and listening to sermon after sermon, how many of you heard a few Christmas sermons? Okay, how many of you heard the Christmas story more than once?

Okay, you get used to the Christmas story. And I can remember sometimes hearing pastors and thinking, dude, you're getting Easter and Christmas confused. This is Christmas. This is joy. This is about the birth of the King.

This is about God coming in flesh. Don't get that confused with Easter. Do you know what, has anybody ever thought that before or felt that way? Like you're preaching the cross and this is about the manger.

Okay, this isn't about Calvary. This is about Bethlehem. But that's missing the point. I can't preach Christmas without preaching the cross. Because without the cross, Jesus had no reason to come. There was no point.

There was no purpose. He came. He didn't come just to kind of like on vacation to earth. You know what I'm saying? But I mean, I think sometimes we can't separate the two. He didn't just come here for like a stint, you know, just kind of like, I wanted to check it out, see what it's like, experience that, got the t-shirt.

No, He came to be the Lamb of God, to be the one who is slain for us. And that's, that's amazing. So with no nativity, there's no need for the cross. If there's no, there is no manger without a cross.

There's no Bethlehem without Calvary, the hill of the skull, the place where He paid the ultimate price for us. And this morning, Jesus is going to show us one of the primary focuses that He came. He came down to earth to show us what mercy looks like, and to bring mercy, to actually be mercy incarnate.

So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Matthew 9. I'm going to read a short, a shorter verse, a shorter section than we're used to, actually, but Matthew 9, 27 through 34. That's page 693 in the Bible in front of you.

693. And if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. We've, we, we order more of those, and we want to give them away. But Matthew 9, 27 through 34, and I recognize we're picking up in the middle of a text, and I'll kind of set some of the, the context after we worship in song.

And Jesus passed on from there, as, and as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying aloud, have mercy on us, son of David. When He entered the house, the blind men came to Him, and Jesus said to them, do you believe that I'm able to do this?

They said to Him, yes, Lord. Then He touched their eyes, saying, according to your faith, be it done to you. And their eyes were opened, and Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it. But they went away and spread His fame through all that district.

As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man, who was mute, was brought to Him. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke, and the crowds marveled, saying, never has anything like this, never was anything like this seen in Israel.

But the Pharisees said, He casts out demons by the prince of demons. Let's pray. Father, as we come to, we come to a text that demonstrates the mercy of Christ, the mercy of Christ towards those who are infirm, and are in need, and who recognize their plight.

Father, we have a plight. We have issues facing us. We are in need of mercy, and I praise You that 2 ,000 years ago, You sent Your Son. You didn't have to do that, but You chose to, because of Your immense and great love for Your creation, and for humanity, and for us.

And so, You sent Your Son to provide mercy, to demonstrate mercy, and to show us seeds, and signs, and give us that longing for a kingdom that is yet to come, where all will be healed, and all will be set right.

And so, Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to come before You and worship, that You would move in our hearts, and change us, and allow the songs that we sing to flow out of hearts of gratitude for this immense and awesome sacrifice, the sacrifice of the cross, and the sacrifice of the incarnation as well, and all that that means.

Father, I ask that You would unpack that for us in the next hour and a half. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks a lot to Dave and the band for leading us in worship. Looks like there's a handful of donuts left back there, and some more juice, and some coffee, so take advantage of that at any time during the message if you need to make yourself comfortable.

If my voice at any time sounds like I'm going through puberty, it might just be that I am. And so, that could be what's going on, or not. But we are coming into the middle of the Gospel of Matthew, and it might be good to remind us of some of the stuff that we've already gone through.

If you've been here for a long time, and you'd have to have been here quite a while to have caught the first part of Matthew. It's been probably about a year ago that we took time off of Matthew, and then went into the book of Acts again, and we've kind of been bouncing back and forth between different books.

So, Matthew begins right at the beginning. If you started right from Matthew chapter 1, Matthew chapter 1 is a big genealogy, an explanation of where Jesus comes from, what his history is, and who his family is, and all of that with a focus on the part of Matthew, the writer of this Gospel, to show us that Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah, that he fulfilled all the Old Testament requirements to be born of the right lineage that was important to the Jews, where you came from mattered, and that he came through the line of Abraham, that he came through the line of David, is a major emphasis in that.

We're going to see that in our text here, that Jesus is going to be called the Son of David, and there's significance to that. So, we see that Matthew's focus is primarily that a Jew could pick up his writing in the book of Matthew and come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah.

He uses a lot of Old Testament references so that we can kind of see from the Old Testament the proofs that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and even some of the stories and the way that he shares some of the stories are for the intended purpose to say Jesus is the Chosen One.

Now, is it a mystery to any of you that Jews are still looking for a Messiah? Well, I think that sometimes we can be kind of hard on them, but the reality is if you were thinking in your mind, if you were looking for a military leader, you were looking for somebody to set up a political kingdom and restore Israel to the center of all the world and the highest of nations and all of that, then does that make, does that shed a little bit more light on why Jews would still be looking for a Messiah?

Does that make sense? But instead, Jesus came and he was and is the Messiah, but he came and he brought a different kind of kingdom, right? The type of kingdom that is a spiritual kingdom that crosses all kinds of boundaries of politics and race and all different kinds of things that we think of as barriers in our mind to kingdoms, and he's broken that up to the point where we're part of a kingdom now that includes people who are dead.

Can you think about that? I mean, we think of death as a barrier to kingdom, right? How can you be a kingdom of both people who are dead and people who are alive? But we are. I mean, those who have gone and died before us are no less a part of the kingdom than we are here alive today.

Isn't that kind of amazing? So, we're a part of something that spans cosmic perspectives here. So, that's what Jesus came to do. He came as the Chosen One of God to bring about restoration and healing to the sin-cursed world and to set up a kingdom that will go on forever and ever and ever that will be ushered in on his second coming.

Our text begins with just this simple phrase, and as Jesus passed on from there, and that needs some immediate context so I can talk about the scope of the book of Matthew, but what was going on just before this being kind of important to understand.

We're picking up in the middle of a chapter. Jesus has just raised a little girl from the dead. That's what happened just previous to this passage. You can go back and look at it. Just don't get caught up in that and miss what I'm saying to you this morning.

And you can go back and listen to these, by the way. I think that we have these, or we're working on getting them up online, but going back and being able to listen to these messages through the book of Matthew, they should be in the process of becoming available for you, at least on our new website.

But how many of you would raise your hand and say, raising a girl from the dead, she was certifiably gone. How many of you would say that's a big deal? Okay, that's pretty amazing. How many of you'd like to see that happen?

I would love to be there. I would love the ability to do that. That would be pretty cool. I think my ministry would be in really high demand. If I could do that, it will, right? And we're going to see that Jesus' ministry was in really high demand because he could do that.

No small thing. And how many of you do think that that would collect a crowd? Okay, he raises a girl from the dead, and how many of you think that probably instant crowd, flash mob, everybody's there, and they're probably not flash mob like the dancing kind or something like that, but you know, like instant, like praising God, though, that kind of flash mob?

Like, yeah, like everybody praising God and just like in awe. And within that crowd, we find that there's two blind dudes. So these two blind guys are there, and they're somehow connected to this group of people who are like, wow.

And they're following him, the text tells us. As he departs from the house, they're shouting out loud at the top of their lungs. The only method means that they have to obtain his attention, and they're shouting, have mercy on us, son of David.

I'm not going to shout that because I will sound like I'm going through puberty if I shout it, but have mercy on us, son of David. These two blind guys have actually a lot of spiritual sight. Sometimes there's ironies, and I don't know how much it's intended or unintended, but they've got significant spiritual insight into who Jesus is by calling him son of David.

They had not seen, think about this, they had not seen the raising of the little girl with their eyes. Their eyes are blind. They had not seen any of the miracles firsthand that Jesus had performed. Have you ever thought about that?

These blind people, when they come, and multiple blind people come to Jesus asking for healing, they never saw him do a single miracle. What does that say about their faith? They're literally getting everything that Jesus did secondhand.

Somebody's telling these guys that Jesus just raised a girl from the dead, so they have to put trust in multiple channels in order to even trust that this guy is the Messiah. You getting that? And yet, in the text, they call him son of David.

All Jews knew that the Messiah would come from the lineage of King David. Significantly important. The prophet Samuel is the one who foretold that. And calling him this publicly is identifying him publicly in their hearts as the Messiah.

They're saying, by calling him son of David, they're saying, we believe you are the chosen one. We believe you are the one who is sent to restore all things. We believe that. They believe more than just that Jesus could heal them physically, they believed he was the solution to their spiritual problems as well.

Notice what they asked for. Look at the text. What are they going to ask him for? Jesus, give us back our sight, please. Is that what the text tells us? Is that what they say? Restore us to the way that we ought to be.

You should give us sight. Or Jesus, make us wealthy. Or Jesus, make us healthy. No. What do they ask for? Mercy. They ask for mercy. Now at this point, I don't want to make a... I could make too much of a theological point of this concept of mercy, because mercy in a technical sense means getting what you don't deserve in a grand scheme of theology.

But the word that's used here for mercy is not a technical theological term, it's a little bit more along the notion of pity. So can you think of them, if they're saying, have pity on us, what do you think they mean when they say, have mercy on us?

Do you think that maybe they want to be healed of their blindness? Isn't that kind of primarily what they're getting at? But is that what they ask for? Do they outright say, heal our eyes, because we know what is best for us, we know what we need, and you should heal us, because...

Are you getting what I'm saying by that? Although it might be subtle, although it might just be a little bit of semantics and working with words here, I think it's significant that they don't come right out and say, heal our eyes, but they say, have mercy, have pity on us, putting their lives over in the hands of the Messiah and saying, do with us what you desire.

Do you see the difference? I think it is different. I think it is significant. It's not that they're just saying, you know, save our souls and have mercy on us and don't give us hell. I think we could over-theologize that and be like, you know, the word mercy is in here, but it's a little bit more...

They did definitely want their eyes healed and they're coming to Him for that. What does our cry, what does our cry, what does our request to Christ look like? Are we satisfied to plead for mercy, or have we moved past that to telling Jesus what we need?

You ever think about that? What does our request, what do our prayers look like to God, but what does your primary heart's cry to Christ look like? Have mercy? Do what... Because doesn't that put trust in Him to know what we actually need versus telling Him what we need?

How many of you would say, we have tended to tell God what we need and then ask for those things? Would you agree? Am I the only one or some of you have done that? Okay, three of you. The rest of you have.

All of you, your prayer life is totally rock solid. That's awesome. Just praying for mercy and that's it. Don't hear me saying that God doesn't want to hear our needs. I mean, that's not what I'm getting at.

I'm talking about our heart. Do you see the difference of trusting God for what we need and saying, I trust you with that, but at the same time, do we have the freedom to come before Him and ask for healing, to ask for Him to take care of us, to take care of the ones that we love?

Absolutely, and we should, and we just did. We just prayed for Sharon, right? Was that presumptuous of Rob to ask for her to be well or for things to go well for them? Not at all, but we do ask that ultimately God is merciful towards us, whatever that might look like.

Part of the problem though, I think, when it comes to asking God for mercy or to be merciful with us is that we don't see ourselves as very needy of mercy because ultimately we're really not that bad, right?

So when we think about mercy in a theological sense, we think our primary need, if you think about this, is happiness or our primary need is pleasure or good things, but really deep down in our souls, mercy and grace are our primary needs.

That's what is central to our neediness. Jesus presumably heads home. We don't know exactly in the text exactly where the location of that house that He goes to is, but it's likely that it's the one He's staying in.

All of this is occurring in the town of Capernaum, which is in the north of Israel, about a day's walk north of Jerusalem and right off the Sea of Galilee. That's where Jesus had His base of operations and He actually stayed in a home there by the seashore and so it's likely that that's the house that's mentioned here in the text.

The blind men are so determined that they follow Jesus and they even follow Him into the house. So He goes home and they walk with Him and when He gets home, He goes home and goes in the house and they go with Him.

Does that sound kind of determined to you? Somebody's following you around and they go into your house? That's creepy, okay? And now though, within the privacy of the house, I think there's something about the privacy of the house, but Jesus addresses them, asking them a question concerning their faith.

He says, ultimately, in essence, using different words, but, do you believe I can heal you? Do you believe it? They again show their faith and reply, not just saying, yes, yeah, we believe you can heal us, but yes, Lord.

They acknowledge that He is their leader, their ruler, their superior, and they acknowledge that. There's no question that these two blind men have a significant faith in Jesus. They see Him as their ruler.

They see Him as able to heal them. They see Him as the Son of David, as the Messiah. There's a significant level of faith that they have and they see Him, ultimately, as the answer to their plight, to the difficulty in the situation that they're in.

He is the source of mercy. He is the source of restoration. He is the source of healing. Do we truly believe that Jesus is the solution to our plight? Think about that. Or, have you been guilty, like me at times, of seeing Jesus as your last ditch effort?

You know, I'll try everything else. I'll try to sew things up on my own and fix things myself and then, if all else fails, run to Jesus. If all else fails, then I'll pray to Him and I'll talk with Him about it, but man, I think I can pretty much handle my life myself.

Only in those really extreme circumstances do I need Jesus to come in and take care of things for me. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is He just a last ditch effort, or is He the first place that you run?

And what is our plight, anyways? I think we're thinking about that. What is the plight that you are in? Search down deep. If you were to look down deep in your heart, what is your primary need? What is your primary plight?

I think we would find that our own dark heart is our plight, that we are our own worst enemy. Have you experienced that in your life, where you do the things that you don't want to do and you find yourself wanting to improve and wanting to be a better person and wanting to achieve and get ahead and you just keep falling behind and getting worse and worse because your heart stands in the way?

And by heart, I don't mean the blood-pumping organ in your chest. I mean the essence of who you are, that you let yourself down. Has anybody in this room ever let yourself down? Like you had a standard for yourself and you're like, you know what, I just am not doing it.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what our plight is. So that the solution to that can never be fixing ourselves because that's just a spiral down, isn't it? Just trying to improve and trying to improve, and that's where we find ourselves.

And I think Jesus loves to find people in that cycle and change their hearts. But it's recognizing that you're in that cycle that is the humility that I think finally arrests the human mind and will and heart to the point where we're realizing, you come to that place where you realize, I can't do this on my own anymore.

And I think it's a reality that to be saved, you must hit rock bottom. I think that's an essential. You have to come to the end of yourself. You have to come to the place where it's like, I've been trying, it's like beating my head against a brick wall and I'm getting nowhere.

And that's when the light of Christ shines in. In this situation, it's literal light. Jesus physically touched their eyes. You ever think about how important touch is to a blind person? To know. How do you know somebody else is there?

Especially in our day and age where there's recordings and stuff. I mean, can you imagine walking in a room where somebody's tricked you and there's a recording and you think that they're talking with you or something?

I mean, how do you know somebody else is there if you're blind and you can't see? Touch. This is a sign of Jesus' compassion and his mercy. It's very important to a blind person. And he touches their eyes and then he says, because you believed it, it will be done for you.

I mean, not to read this as a kind of comparison, like because you believed a lot, you're going to get a great healing or something like that. It's just saying, according to your faith, not according to the amount of your faith, but because you have faith is the way we should read that.

So because you believed, it is now done for you. And then look at the simple sentence at the start of verse 30. Look at verse 30. Just a few words, but very powerful. And their eyes were opened. Such a short sentence, but such immense power and mercy found there.

He opened their eyes. Jesus gives sight to two blind men. Anybody like signing up to see that firsthand? It'd be awesome to be there. But then Jesus did something that can be very confusing. I think it's confusing.

It was confusing to me when I read it. It's confusing to commentators. It's confusing to people who are scholars, who have studied Matthew on down. What does he do? He sternly warns them to tell nobody.

They appear then to disobey him. And you're left with options here. Either these guys are just complete obnoxious boneheads, okay? Because what we're going to see in verse 31 is they're going to go and do like what appears he commands them don't go.

What has he just done for them? Anybody? Gave them sight, healed them. Like is that pretty significant? They've identified him as the Messiah, the son of David, their Lord, their King. He is going to do what appears to be issuing a command.

And then they're going to go out and do the exact opposite. Anybody think that that's like thumbing your nose at the Messiah, at your King? Or does anybody think that's a little bit weird? Anybody have an issue with that?

Okay, I think that that's reasonable to have an issue with that. And you see what a lot of there's a theme that runs through the gospel of Mark primarily. If you read Mark from beginning to end, if you read it in one sitting sometime, I challenge you to read some big chunks of scripture sometime.

If you get a break and you're looking for you're looking for something to do, it's awesome to get a chunk of scripture at one setting. You get the feel, the flow. It's amazing to see that thing come alive.

Now if you were to read Mark from beginning to end, you'd see that there's times where Jesus tells people to be quiet about who he is. He says that to demons a lot. The demons are like, son of God, have mercy on us.

He's like, shh, don't say that son of God thing yet. It's not my time yet. So a lot of people think that that's why he says that in this context. But they've already been out on the street shouting, son of David, have mercy on us.

They've already been out declaring that he's the Messiah. I think something is different, is going on different here, because I really struggle with the notion that these guys are so utterly obnoxious that they have complete faith in Jesus and then go out the next minute and completely disobey him.

Like literally like that. And not that that couldn't be the human heart. Could the human heart do that? And some commentaries see that. And I'm going to say that there's different opinions about this.

So I just want to be clear that what I'm about to, what my opinion is, is not everybody's opinion, okay? But I think that it follows another theme that's going on here. I think ultimately, Jesus tells them to not go out and to, I totally lost my train of thought there.

I'm really sorry. I got to get back in my notes. I'm sorry guys. Ultimately, I think that Jesus warned them sternly, but he doesn't issue a command. So I think he's warning them about another theme, and that is that people get persecuted for following Jesus, okay?

There's a common theme that runs throughout all the Gospels that those who are healed and get like lit on fire for Jesus and are really excited about him undergo persecution. So the word that's used there for sternly warned is not a command.

He's not telling them, don't go and tell anybody or else I'm going to get you. Now what does a warning look like, okay? A warning says, if you do this, something bad. Like the warning on the gorilla cage says, get too close and you're going to be missing some fingers, right?

Something bad is going to happen if you do this thing. What's the bad thing that Jesus is saying is going to happen to them? It says that he sternly warned them. Does that mean I'm going to get you? Think about the word warning here.

Jesus is issuing a warning. What's the edge to it? What's the backside of it? What's the punishment that's going to happen? What's the bad thing that's going to happen? I don't believe Jesus is at all saying, if you go and tell everybody I'm after you.

I think the warning is, if you go and tell everybody, do so and count the cost. That idea of considering the cost of recognizing that there is risk involved. I think Jesus actually even went so far as knowing these guys future.

He knew it was not going to go well for them if they went out and proclaimed. If they went out and shared. So see to it that nobody knows or else. Not I'm going to get you. Not I'm going to hunt you down.

Pharisees are going to hunt you down. Sadducees are going to hunt you down. The religious leaders and the scribes are going to hunt you down just like they're going to hunt me down. That's what Jesus is saying.

Do you see how that's a different notion? So that what we have is we've either got utter, creepy, obnoxious buffoons in the text or we've got heroes in the text. I don't know. And people see different sides of it.

But I see these guys as actually going and acknowledging the risk and then going out and living according to that risk and saying, Jesus told us to count the cost and that it could and probably will go bad for us if we go out and proclaim and we're going to do it.

Does that make sense? John 12, 10 actually goes so far as saying, remember this little story about Jesus raising a dead guy named Lazarus? Anybody remember that story? Okay, Lazarus in the grave for three days, his sisters say they're told to roll the stone away and they're like, he's going to stink.

Like he's decayed, like gross. Okay, I'm not going to roll the stone away from the tomb because this is disgusting. He's like, roll the stone away. He calls Lazarus his name and Lazarus comes out all wrapped up in his funeral, you know, wrappings with all the spices on it and stuff and they have to cut him free.

And he lives. And he hangs, how many of you, if you were Lazarus, you'd hang out with Jesus some after that. Okay, he spends time with Jesus. And do you know what it says in, if you're taking notes, write this down, this is kind of a cute little verse, John 12, 10.

It says that the Pharisees sought to kill, who? Lazarus. A man who had received an immense miracle. Why? Because he was kind of showing them up. Do you get it? So what's going to happen to these blind guys if they're out saying Jesus healed us, we were blind and everybody in our entire community knew we were blind and now we're healed and Jesus is awesome and he's all that and he's the Messiah and he's the chosen one and they don't like that.

So are you getting what I'm saying? So when we get to, when we get to verse 31, these men have been sternly warned and are actually willing to take risks by identifying themselves with Jesus who is the Messiah.

They spread the fame of Jesus knowing fully the risk that they are taking. That's what I think is happening here. But even as they were departing with their sight, Matthew says, and whenever you see the word behold, you can think of the phrase check this out.

Okay, so Matthew says check this out. They brought a man who is mute to Jesus. We don't know who they is, but some people bring a mute man who is also identified as demon oppressed. Verse 32 is where we're seeing all this and it's difficult to distinguish between the idea of demon possession and demon oppression.

What we're going to see them actually cast this demon out. Jesus actually casts him out. So I think that those two words are pretty similar, but the Greek word means it's demonized. It's not particular to, thanks, take another drink here.

We know that somehow a demon has some sense of influence in this guy's life because we see that it's linked to his inability to speak. The fact that he's mute has something to do with demonic activity.

We also know that demons are able to do that because we see what they do in Job's life. Satan is able to actually produce sores on Job's body. There are times when physical manifestations happen as a result of demonic activity and this man in his life, for some reason, it has to do with his inability to speak.

But think for just a moment. The attitude of scripture is not that every illness is the result of demon activity, right? Some people have down through the ages thought that a person is sick. Well, what have you done wrong, right?