Matthew 4:23-25 - May 5, 2024

And sometimes these things are fun and they just work out this way even when we don't plan them. But the passage from Acts also really demonstrated both the concepts of discipleship and evangelism. Evangelism is as Peter preached the gospel and people were saved and then discipleship as people just continued to do life together and spend their time in church and break bread together and eat with each other.

And as we get started today, I just wanted to take a moment to refer back to our discussion last week. And I wanna mention something that I think is a really significant oversight that I made, an oversight from our discussion of discipleship and evangelism.

Because I talked about two great misconceptions that were related to evangelism. But I think I missed a third misconception, one that's really, really important. And it relates to both discipleship and evangelism.

And that misconception that a lot of people in the church have is that the tasks that go along with discipleship or evangelism, whether it's helping someone grow in their Christian life or whether it's sharing the gospel with someone, there's the idea that those tasks are only for people who have been specially gifted or they're only for the professional Christians.

It's only for the people that are being paid to do these things, but that is simply not true. So these tasks are for everybody in the church. And if you look at scripture and you pay close attention, you'll see that these are intended for all of us, no matter what role we have in the church.

So I just wanted to say that. And as we continue on today, we're gonna look at Matthew chapter four, verses 23 through 25. And these verses are kind of interesting because they're just kind of a general overview.

But what they're doing is they're serving as a segue to something that's a lot bigger. So they're serving as a segue into the Sermon on the Mount, which we're gonna get into pretty soon, because that's one of Jesus's, probably one of his most well-known teachings or a teaching that we all love as well.

And these verses, they're actually referring to the ministry that he had, the ministry that he was doing leading up to his preaching of the Sermon on the Mount. And it's kind of a compressed summary because there's some important stuff there, but there's not a whole lot of detail.

So the verses, as we'll look at them here in just a second, they focus on these activities. They focus on teaching, preaching, and healing. And interestingly enough, from a literary perspective, Matthew does pretty much the exact same thing in chapter four, 23 through 25, as he does in chapter nine.

He puts almost the same block of text there to introduce another teaching, but obviously we'll get to chapter nine at some point. So before we jump into these verses, let's do a quick recap of what we've seen from Jesus's ministry so far, what we've seen from Jesus's ministry before we got here.

So we see that he fulfilled all righteousness by being baptized by John the Baptist. After his baptism, he showed that he was the Son of God by passing the test of temptation in the desert that Satan had for him.

He also fulfilled prophecy by moving back to the region of Galilee. And then he also started building his inner circle of disciples, as we saw specifically in the last couple of weeks. So now let's look at these three verses, Matthew chapter four, verses 23 through 25.

And this says, and Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

And the news about him spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them. And large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.

Jesus' Ministry in Galilee as a Summary of His Work

So once again, there's not a ton of specifics in here, just sort of a general overview of what he was doing. In fact, some of the other gospels have quite a bit more detail in them. In fact, if you look at this same period in the gospel of Mark, in Mark one, verses 21 through 45, we see a bunch of things.

We see Jesus healing a man possessed by an unclean spirit in the temple. We see Jesus healing Simon's mother-in-law. We see Jesus healing a leper. We see all these specifics from this very same period of ministry just in that set of verses.

But that's not what Matthew chose to do with his gospel. So he obviously opted to take a more general approach to some of the things related to miracles and healings, at least so he can get directly into the more substantial teachings.

But despite the general nature of these three verses, there's still some pretty significant principles that we can take away. So what we're gonna do, as we typically do, is we're gonna take a look at the verses, dig into those, and then see what kind of application comes out of that.

So let's take a look at the context of these verses. So one of the first things that's mentioned in verse 23 is the fact that Jesus was going throughout all Galilee. Now, hopefully this sounds familiar.

So I wanna take you back just a few verses to Matthew 4, verses 12 through 15. So those verses say this. Now, when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, he departed into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled, saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.

And verse 16 actually says, those who were sitting in darkness saw a great light, and those who were sitting in the land in the shadow of death, upon them a light dawned. So we see this is a fulfillment of prophecy, and this is a reference back to Isaiah 9, verses 1 and 2.

And I could go back and read Isaiah 9, verses 1 and 2, but they actually say exactly the same thing that we just read. So let's just pretend that we went back and read those. But it's significant that he was in Galilee.

So a couple of things that we can note about Galilee is the size of the region, and the amount of people that he was reaching, and the types of people that he was ministering to when he did that. So geographically speaking, Galilee is not a huge area.

Most of the commentators I read said that Galilee was roughly 40 miles by 70 miles or so. So again, it wasn't a huge area. People could be reached from just about anywhere there. They would be a short walk from wherever Jesus was since he was traveling around the whole region.

But despite the size, there was still a pretty large amount of people. There's a man that I've referenced in the past. His name is Josephus, and he was a Jewish historian. And the reason he's significant is because the history that he was writing came basically one generation after all these things that happened.

So he was very close, chronologically speaking, to the events that took place with Jesus's ministry. So writing about Galilee, Josephus said that this area had about 204 villages and roughly 15 ,000 people in each village.

So Josephus was estimating the total population of the region to be about three million people, which again, is not a small region and not an insignificant amount of people for him to reach. And D .A. Carson said this.

He said, at the rate of two villages or towns per day, there would be, excuse me, three months would be required to visit all of them with no time off for the Sabbath. So D .A. Carson is saying that he could probably have theoretically had the opportunity, not that he would have ministered to all three million people, but he would have had the opportunity to minister to all of these people over the course of three months.

And he was continuing to make a circuit around here, sort of as an itinerant preacher, as we'll see in just a bit. But one last word about Galilee for right now, and this is also something that we've talked about in the past.

Galilee is significant because Galilee was not specifically a Jewish region. Galilee was also called Galilee of the Gentiles. So we see that Jesus was not taking his ministry only to people that would have considered themselves the chosen people.

And this was one of the big emphases that Matthew had. He wanted to teach his readers the message that Jesus was preaching was for the whole world, rather than just a few people who considered themselves to be chosen.

Now, what we see in verse 23, so verse 23, and Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease. So this is where we see the three aspects of his ministry.

So the first one we're gonna look at is teaching in the synagogues. So like I said, Jesus is kind of serving as an itinerant minister in that he doesn't have a specific church that he's in. He's traveling around to reach as many people as possible.

And Matthew mentions he's going all throughout Galilee. And he gave pretty much all the people there the opportunity to experience his ministry. Like I said, just a second ago, no one would have been too far away from where he was at any given time.

But back to teaching in the synagogues. The synagogues were central to the life of the Jewish people at that time. John MacArthur says that the synagogue was not only the primary place of study, but also of community fellowship and legal activity.

The greatest tragedy for most Jews was to be disfellowshipped from the synagogue. And this is what happened to Jews that became Christians. So it's also significant to note that no matter how big or small a village was, it was gonna have a synagogue.

Because again, this was the center of Jewish life. So everywhere he went, there would be a synagogue. So this would give Jesus the opportunity to teach frequently. And one thing that they often did was invite visiting rabbis to come in and read the scripture.

So as a rabbi, and as a rabbi who hadn't stepped on too many people's toes quite yet, Jesus would have had plenty of opportunities to come in and read the scriptures and teach the scriptures to people.

Now, my bias tells me that when he did this, he was probably doing it in an expository manner. He was probably going verse by verse through the scriptures and teaching the people in the temple or in the synagogue the meaning of them.

Of course, he had perfect knowledge of the scriptures as well. But another reason I believe this is the case is because the idea of teaching comes from a Greek word didosko, which means to impart instruction or doctrine.

So it carries with it the idea of just more of a detailed teaching or more of a detailed explanation of scripture. And another reason this is significant is because the synagogue is gonna be where the most sincere Jewish believers were, right?

So despite some of the difficulties, you know, we just said Jews who became Christians were kicked out of the synagogue. But despite that, this is where Jesus is gonna find the people who would most naturally be receptive to his message.

Because they've read and they understand the scriptures. So they would know these prophecies and they would be familiar. And some of them would be likely to believe the fact that he was the Messiah. And while this might sound funny, this reminds me a little bit of a person that I know.

So this gentleman is a deacon in his church now. And he's somebody that I consider to be a very humble and a very godly individual. But this man was raised Catholic. And as an adult, he converted to Christianity.

Now, we all know there's a lot of overlap between Christianity and Catholicism, but they're still not the same thing. You know, there's a significant difference there in all the man-made elements and the traditions that are not in scripture that are elevated to doctrine that make this different.

But one thing we do have in common is the Bible. And this gentleman told me that his Catholic upbringing, one thing that it did give him or it did impart to him was the idea that scripture was something that we take seriously.

So he did read the Bible and he did take scripture seriously. What this meant was that when he had the opportunity as an adult to hear the true gospel, his heart was already prepared. That ground had already been prepared to receive that message.

And he was able to be converted to the truth of the gospel. The truth of the gospel, which is that salvation comes by faith alone. It doesn't come by any kind of actions that you take. So this may be similar to what Jesus was facing when he was teaching scriptures to Jewish believers in the synagogue.

And this is related though in slight contrast to the idea of teaching. But the next thing he was doing was preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And preaching is a word that we've already come across as well.

So preaching means to herald, just like John the Baptist was doing. Remember to announce the coming of a king, for example, which is what exactly what John the Baptist was doing. And we see Jesus doing the same thing.

When he's not in the synagogue, Jesus is outside. He's evangelizing and sharing the good news of the gospel of the kingdom of God. This is an interesting thing for me to think about too, because he's sharing the good news of salvation through him, through the promised Messiah.

But he's letting everyone know that God's kingdom is open to anyone who puts his faith in him. And we talk about the kingdom of God, and this is something that Matthew said very specific, preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

One of the commentators that I read, William Henriksen, writes about the concept of the kingdom. And he names four aspects that make up this kingdom. So the first one is God's kingship, God's rule or God's sovereignty.

This is the first part of the kingdom of God that would be preached. And this is the idea that God is sovereign over all things and God is Lord of our lives, that we're not equal, we're not the same as God, but we're subjects, or as the LSB would translate it even better, is slaves of God, because he is sovereign.

The next aspect of the kingdom of God that would undoubtedly be part of this message is complete salvation for the people who trust in the one person who's bringing this message, for people who trust in Jesus Christ.

The third aspect of the kingdom of God is the church. And the church is comprised of all the people who recognize God's kingship and who've received that salvation. And then fourth, the fourth aspect related to the kingdom of God is the redeemed universe.

And what this means is what we've been talking about a little bit already, but that's the fact that this message is for the entire world. This message is not just limited to the people that are inside of the church, it's not just limited to the people that have accepted it, but the message is available to anyone that will hear it.

And these things are all closely tied together. And they're at least part of what makes up the message that Jesus was preaching to those around Galilee. So we see that he was teaching, he was diving into doctrine.

We'll just continue to say that he was going verse by verse through the scriptures. And when he wasn't doing that, when he wasn't talking to the believers in the synagogue, he was out evangelizing, sharing generally the gospel to give people the opportunity to be saved.

But he didn't stop there, he didn't stop just at his teaching and preaching. We also see in this verse that he started doing miracles. This is when he started doing healings. And he healed anybody who came to him.

And if we jump ahead to verse 24, we see a sampling of conditions. So we read this already, but we brought all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains. So this is a catch-all for just about anything.

This is like all of us coming up to Al to talk about the things that are hurting. He also healed demoniacs, which are people who are possessed by demons. So this is interesting as well. Demon possession is the first thing on this list because at that time a lot of people believed that demon possession was the cause of a lot of other different things.

And then we see epileptics and paralytics and that he healed all of them. Now there's some important things that we have to recognize about the healings that we see. Going back to Henriksen, he said, Jesus was able to cure every illness, no matter what it might be.

Pains fled at his touch or even simply at his word of power. So one obvious sort of attention-grabbing aspect of his healing ministry was that he could heal anything. He could heal any issue that came to him, no matter what the cause of it was, no matter how severe it was.

And John MacArthur lists six characteristics that are unique to Jesus's healing ministry. And he says these are unique to the healing ministry because they have never been duplicated since. The apostles did some of this, but this is nothing that we've ever, ever seen since New Testament times.

So there's six of these things. And the first is that Jesus healed directly with just a word or touch, without prayer, and sometimes without even being near a person. Second, Jesus healed people instantly.

Three, Jesus healed people completely. Four, and this one's very significant, Jesus healed everyone who came to him or was brought to him or was asked by another person to be healed. And he didn't ask if they were a Jew or a Gentile.

He didn't take some kind of application for healing, no matter what the issue was. He didn't even ask what the issue was. He healed everybody who asked or even had someone ask on their behalf. Five, Jesus healed all ailments no matter how long the duration, no matter the cause, and no matter the severity.

And then finally, on the idea of no matter the severity, Jesus even brought individuals back from the dead. So even if the disease had completely run its course to the point where somebody died, Jesus's healing powers were so great that he was able to heal them still.

And continuing on with what John MacArthur said, he listed four things that were accomplished by these miracles as well. Now, the first is that they served of evidence of his divine nature. And they did this because Jesus was doing things that no regular person could do.

Jesus was doing things that people had not seen before. And there were people who were considered magicians at the time, and they could do some tricks. And we see priests in the Old Testament doing stuff like this.

But no one had done healing the way Jesus had done it. So it was evidence of the fact that he was divine. Now, second is the healings show that God is compassionate towards people that are suffering. Now, a lot of times people view suffering as God not being there, or God not seeing them, or God not caring for them.

But that's not true. And these healings show, indeed, that God does have compassion towards people that suffer. And keeping in line with what we've seen throughout the Gospel of Matthew so far, number three is that these healings, these miracles, show that he was the prophesied Messiah.

Because some of the healings lined up with what was predicted in some of these prophetic books. So, for example, we have in Isaiah, let me turn to that, Isaiah 35, verses five through 10. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.

Then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy, for waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah, and the scorched land will become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water.

In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, grass becomes reeds and thrushes, and a roadway will be there, a highway, and it will be called the highway of holiness. The unclean will not pass by on it, but it will be for him who walks in that way, and ignorant fools will not wander on it.

No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go up on it. These will not be found there, but the redeemed will walk there, and the ransom of Yahweh will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion.

So we see the eyes of the blind open, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like a deer. And if we turn forward to Isaiah 61, verses one through three, we see another small example of this as well.

Isaiah 61, one through three, the spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me because Yahweh has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of Yahweh and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a headdress instead of ashes, the oil of rejoicing instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.

So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may show forth his beautiful glory. So we see hints of this type of healing in the prophetic literature that Matthew was citing throughout the gospel.

And then finally, number four, the healing miracles showed that the coming kingdom of God was real. And these healings were just a taste of what the redeemed bodies of the believers would be like in heaven.

And not surprisingly, as we see in the first part of verse 24 and into verse 25, Jesus's ministry, the healing specifically, brought a tremendous amount of attention to him. We see that his news spread all throughout Syria.

And Syria was part of a Roman province north of Galilee. And the verse has also mentioned the Decapolis, and that's a region of 10 cities that were to the east of Galilee. So we already have this 40 by 70 area that people were in, which we said could contain as many as up to 3 million people.

But the news of what he's doing is spreading a lot farther and wider than that. And people are coming from outside this region just to go see what was happening. Because similar to today, if we heard that somebody was out healing someone somewhere, we'd probably wanna go check it out too, right?

And in fact, there are people that claim to do healings. Some of the evangelists on television claim to do this very thing. And they draw massive crowds. A lot of people come out to see this. And even more sad, a lot of people come out with the expectation that this person will heal them.

But the healings they're doing aren't real. And the healings they're doing, they don't extend to everyone. They won't just take anyone. In fact, a lot of times they plant people in the crowds and they screen participants, you know, to make sure that the people that are coming up have something that could appear to be healed.

But needless to say, again, Jesus's ministry drew very large crowds because of all the things that he was doing. So B .B. Warfield, he was a theologian as well. He said this about the healings. And I thought this was a great quote.

He said, 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. The number of miracles which he wrought may easily be underrated.

It has been said that in effect, he banished disease and death from Palestine for the three years of his ministry. One touch of the hem of his garment that he wore could heal whole countries of their pain.

One touch of his hand could restore life. And part of the reason that we approach the Bible this way here, part of the reason that we take this expository verse-by-verse approach is to fight back against this tendency that we have.

And this is a natural tendency. It's a tendency to take a passage like this, to take three verses in this chapter that don't really have any detail, that just kind of tell us a few general things and actually are serving as a segue to something that we feel like is more important or a segue to something that we like to read.

And we have this tendency to gloss over them. So the reason that we take this verse-by-verse just to see what's here is as a reminder for us to slow down and to really dig in and study what scripture has to say.

Because everything that's in the Bible is in the Bible for a reason. And I know we've talked about that before. And sometimes it really takes us stopping, slowing down, focusing on what we see here. And I encourage you as well to go to other books, go to commentaries on the books that you're reading, because there are people a lot smarter than me who have studied this stuff for a long time, who know all the background.

And it's amazing what you can turn up just looking closely, even at some verses that don't seem to have a tremendous message to them. But again, everything that's here in scripture is here for a reason.

So just to recap, I wanna briefly review some of the takeaways that we have or the potential lessons that we can glean from these three verses. So the first one is that Jesus shows us the importance of balancing preaching and teaching when it comes to the sharing of God's word.

So as he does in a lot of other things, Jesus serves as our example here. Because there are times when a situation just calls for a simple presentation of the gospel. There are times when someone just needs to be told that Jesus loves them and that Jesus died for them.

And if they repent of their sins and believe in the work that Jesus did, they can have salvation. And it's not necessary, and it can be harmful, even confusing, to take a deep dive into some kind of doctrinal concept or the kind of stuff that I like to talk about or that I like to read about.

Because that could even be potentially a stumbling block for them. It could cause them to start to have other questions and not just focus on what Jesus did for them. But all that being said, there are other times and situations where we do have to go deeper.

And we do have to understand the different doctrines. We have to look at these kind of seminary words and understand what they mean and understand the impact that they have on our lives. And Scripture, in the process of sanctification, it's like a lot of other things in our lives.

The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. You know, when you're new at something, you get really enthusiastic, you learn something, and you think you know everything about it. And then as you proceed on and hopefully become a little bit more mature, and especially with Scripture, you learn that there's so much more still that you have to learn.

And it almost doesn't matter how long you've been reading the Bible. So we're expected to grow, and Jesus shows us that balance. Just a couple of verses that show this concept, though. We see this in Hebrews 5, verses 13 through 14.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern both good and evil.

And Paul said this to the church at Corinth. This is 1 Corinthians 3, one through two. And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as spiritual men, but as fleshly men, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it.

So again, this goes back to the fact that sometimes people, especially people that are new to the faith, they really do need just the simple truths that are here. It's too much to throw everything on one person at one time.

But as we can see from these Scriptures, you're expected to grow. Paul is actually admonishing the Corinthian church, saying that I should have been able to teach you these things, but you were not ready for them.

And this is an important example for us to see, because some of us tend toward meat, and others tend toward milk. But we see Jesus, depending on what the circumstance is, taking both approaches. Jesus is not all doctrine.

He's not all a gospel. It depends on what's happening, and it depends on who he's talking to. So that's an example that we can learn from, is that it's important to balance teaching and preaching, as we see here.

The Gospel Is for All People, Not Just the Religious Elite

Now, the second point, and this one is probably the most important message that we have, the most important message that we can take from these verses, and that is that the gospel message is for all people.

The gospel message is for everyone. Now, we already mentioned when it came to healing, and this is one place we see this, that Jesus took care of anything and everything for anyone and everyone. He didn't discriminate between Jews and Gentiles, but he conducted his ministry in a place where both people or both groups of people would have representation there.

And the fact is that this offended a lot of people that were considered religious leaders. So these Pharisees and the chief priests and the scribes, we'll get to this too, they were extremely offended that he was bringing the gospel message to these people who they felt didn't deserve it.

They said, these are sinners, how can you talk to them? But Jesus did it anyway. And we have to keep verses like this in mind. First John 2, 2, talking about Jesus, Jesus said, he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Titus 2, 11 says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. And John 3, 16 is everybody's favorite verse. And every time I think about John 3, 16, I can't help but think about that cross that's on 29, that has John 3, 16 on it, lit up in blue.

But you gotta keep going, right? John 3, 17, for God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Our Jesus's ministry at that time was not a ministry of judgment.

Jesus was coming to share the gospel so that everybody had the opportunity to be saved. First Timothy 1, 5 says, it is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost.

And that's a reminder for all of us here in church, right? I look at you guys and I know that this is not happening, but sometimes we get to the point where we think about other people and we think the same thing that the Pharisees did.

We're like, that person is so far beyond redemption that there's no point in me taking the gospel to them. But we all are only one step removed from them. But for the grace of God, we would be that same unredeemable sinner, among whom I am foremost.

And then Luke 19, 10, for the son of man has come to seek and save the lost. The important thing about this for us to know as well is that not a single one of us has the knowledge or any kind of say over who's gonna be saved by the gospel message.

And like we talked about last week, that means that it's up to us to take the message to everybody. It's not up to us to discriminate who we share it with. We can't gatekeep the message. We can't judge someone else's sin as too dire to possibly be redeemed.

It's worth saying again, we have to remember that apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts and lives, our hearts are as black and sinful as any other person that we judge as unworthy of the gospel.

So the point here is that Jesus didn't discriminate in that way, and neither should we. Now, the last takeaway I wanna talk about here is also a little bit of a caution. So when we talk about Jesus's miracles and Jesus's healings, we said that people came to Galilee from all over the region.

Once they heard about the healings, people were coming from everywhere to see what was going on. People were coming from everywhere to be healed. Massive crowds saw the miracles, but a lot of them did not persist in their faith despite seeing these miracles.

And that's kind of interesting because people always wanna see miracles, or they always ask to see miracles, or people say stuff like, well, if I saw a miracle, I would believe. But we have to remember that just a few verses ago, when Jesus called his first disciples, there were no miracles done to try to convince the disciples to join him.

There was nothing but Jesus's word. There was nothing but Jesus's call to the disciples to follow him, and that was more than sufficient. And that's true for us today just as it was true for them. Paul reminds Timothy of this in 2 Timothy 3 .15.