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“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:17–18). God’s Law was permeated with His glory and reflected His holiness and righteousness. Though God was gracious in the Old Testament, the Law was not an instrument of grace because the Law saved no one (Rom. 3:20–22; Gal. 2:16; 3:10–12). It merely convicts sinners of their inability to keep perfectly God’s righteous standards, and condemns them to the eternal...

“John testified about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.”’ For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (John 1:15–16). John brought in other witnesses to the truth about the divine, preexistent, incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. He first called on John the Baptist. That John “cried out” speaks of the bold, public nature of his witness to Jesus; he was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of...

“The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). John 1:14 is the most concise biblical statement of the Incarnation. The first four words, “the Word became flesh,” express the reality that in the incarnation God took on humanity; the infinite became finite; eternity entered time; the invisible became visible (cf. Col. 1:15); the Creator entered His creation. God revealed Himself to man in the creation (Rom. 1:18–21), in the Old Testament Scriptures (1 Cor. 2:7–14), and, supremely and most...

“Jesus . . . gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness” (Matthew 10:1). Jesus granted the twelve disciples God’s divine authority to do exactly what He Himself had been doing. To do the kinds of works Jesus did would demonstrate they were sent by Him, just as what He did demonstrated He was sent by the Father. The book of Acts catalogs the very works Jesus gave them the authority to accomplish. The apostles cast out many unclean spirits and healed every kind of disease...

“Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority” (Matthew 10:1). When Jesus summoned His twelve disciples, He was making more than a casual request. The word Matthew used is an intense term that means to call someone to oneself in order to confront him face-to-face. It is used of God’s calling the Gentiles to Himself through the gospel (Acts 2:39) and of His calling His chosen men and entrusting them to proclaim the gospel (Acts 13:2; 16:10). The vocabulary implies that this summoning was connected to an official commissioning to the Lord’s service. Behind Jesus’ commissioning and training of...

“‘Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest’” (Matthew 9:38). “The Lord of the harvest” is a title of God that represents His role as the Judge of the unsaved—those who will stand before Him in the last day and be condemned to hell. We are to plead for Him to send workers who will lovingly warn them so they may be a part of those harvested to eternal glory. The Christian’s first responsibility is not to go and start working as soon as he sees a need but to come to the Lord...

A A Reset “‘Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest’” (Matthew 9:38). The primary problem that hindered Jesus’ ministry as He taught, preached, and healed in Palestine is the primary problem that hinders our ministry today: “the workers are few.” The workers Jesus is referring to are the people who would work in a field that was soon to be harvested—that is what the Lord is calling the disciples to do. This was the first part of our Lord’s training method with the Twelve. His disciples learned that the need for the gospel...

“‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few’” (Matthew 9:37). As Jesus changes the metaphor from shepherding to harvesting, He gives another motive for His ministry. He ministered because people face God’s final judgment. Jesus ministered compassionately and tirelessly because He could see the ultimate consummation of divine judgment toward which every person was headed—every one in the multitudes who did not trust in Him. Paul said, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11). In 2 Thessalonians, Paul paints a vivid picture of God’s judgment: “The Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven...

“They were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). The scribes and Pharisees offered a religion that only added burdens instead of lifting them. For them, the common people were the object of disdain, not compassion; individuals to be exploited, not served. In that sense the scribes and Pharisees were true descendents of the false shepherds against whom the Lord railed centuries earlier through Ezekiel (34:2–4). Many religious leaders today are still endeavoring to keep people out of the kingdom by distorting and contradicting God’s Word and perverting the way of salvation. By telling people they are...

“Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them” (Matthew 9:36). Examples in the gospels of Jesus’ compassion are notable. When He saw Mary and others weeping for the deceased Lazarus, “He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled” (John 11:33) and wept with them (v. 35). The phrase “deeply moved in spirit” connotes physical as well as emotional and spiritual anguish. As He saw Lazarus’s friends and family grieving, He entered into real crying with them. When arrested in the garden, Christ was more concerned about the disciples than Himself: “If you [soldiers] seek Me, let these go their...

“Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). Jesus felt compassion for the crowds as only the Son of God could feel. It is among God’s attributes to love and care because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The term for “felt compassion” literally refers to the intestines, and most often occurs in Scripture with the figurative reference to the emotions, the way we use “heart” today. But Jesus’ concern was not just symbolic. He no doubt physically felt the symptoms of genuine caring—ones such as aching...

“Jesus sternly warned them: ‘See that no one knows about this!’ But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout all that land” (Matthew 9:30–31). Usually believers need to say more, not less, about the gospel of Jesus Christ. But here our Lord had definite reasons for commanding the people to whom He had ministered most directly not to publicize what had occurred. He did not forbid them from speaking simply because He did not want their specific healing made known or because He did not want His miracles in general to be proclaimed. The miracles were evidence...

“The blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.’ Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘It shall be done to you according to your faith.’ And their eyes were opened” (Matthew 9:28–30a). Sometimes at conversion, the Lord wants sinners to give a more public profession of their trust in Him, in keeping with Paul’s teaching, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom....

“Two blind men followed Him, crying out, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” (Matthew 9:27). The attitude of the heart that Christ honors and accepts is one in which the sinner understands his or her personal unworthiness. That was the attitude of the two blind men as they came to Him. They realized they didn’t deserve Jesus’ help, but they also must have known that “The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works” (Ps. 145:8–9; cf. Joel 2:13). It seems...

“Two blind men followed Him, crying out, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” (Matthew 9:27). That the blind men called Jesus the “Son of David” means they recognized Him as the Christ. Son of David was one of the most common Jewish titles for Messiah. It was also a royal title indicating that Messiah would come from the family of King David and have a right to rule over the promised divine kingdom. God first promised that the Deliverer for His people would be a man, the seed of a woman (cf. Gen. 3:15). Later in the Old Testament,...

“When Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He said, ‘Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.’ And they began laughing at Him. But when the crowd had been sent out, He entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. This news spread throughout all that land” (Matthew 9:23–26). Unlike those in the contemporary Western world, funerals in most ancient cultures, including the Jewish one of Jesus’ time, were not events with reverent music and quiet whispers. Instead funerals featured much loud wailing by...

“‘Your faith has made you well’” (Matthew 9:22). In many instances in the gospels, the words translated “healed,” “made well,” or similar variations, are from the Greek word meaning salvation or saved from sin. For instance, when blind Bartimaeus came to Jesus to regain his sight, the Lord told him, “Go; your faith has made you well” (Mark 10:52). That Bartimaeus repeatedly called Jesus “Son of David,” a common messianic title, suggests that his physical healing included spiritual salvation. In the account of the ten lepers, Luke reports that all of them “were cleansed” (Luke 17:14), but this was from...

“A woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, ‘If I only touch His garment, I will get well.’ But Jesus turning and seeing her said, ‘Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.’ At once the woman was made well” (Matthew 9:20–22). When the godly Sir James Simpson was on his deathbed, a friend said to him, “Well, James, soon you will be able to rest on the bosom of Jesus.” But Simpson replied, “I don’t know that...

“Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did His disciples” (Matthew 9:19). Jesus was always willing to go out of His way to serve others in the Father’s name. This trait was certainly evident as Christ reached out to Jairus with accessibility and availability. There were certainly many other needy people in the region near Jairus, but the urgency of the synagogue leader’s circumstances demanded that Jesus go to Jairus’s home. From a distance the Lord could have sent the power to raise the man’s daughter from the dead. He chose, however, to manifest selfless love and...

“A synagogue official came and bowed down before Him, and said, ‘My daughter has just died; but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live’” (Matthew 9:18). Jairus’s belief that the Lord Jesus could honor his request to revive his daughter from death is especially extraordinary because Jesus had not yet performed a resurrection miracle. He had performed many healing miracles, but up to this point He had not brought someone back from the dead. So there was no precedent for such a request, yet Jairus asked it in faith. Jairus’s faith surpassed that of the centurion,...