Matthew 8:1 Jesus and Imperfect Faith. I. Notice the leper's appeal to Christ. This appeal, as every other, must have had some manner of faith to rest upon. The leper believed in a healing virtue nigh at hand. When you think of this and all it involves, you will discover this faith to be by no mea... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:3 Notice in Christ's touch of the sick I. His fixing and confirming faith in Himself, the Healer. It is in condescension to human weakness that He lays His hands on diseased folk; we believe in little that we cannot see. Pain and sickness are so sensible that we look for equally sensible... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:8 Several features of the character of this centurion are worthy of all imitation. Notice: I. His singular care for his slave. We know something of the hardening effects of slavery in the United States of America. But, as the greatest of Roman historians (Mommsen) tells us, African slav... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:10 I. Observe how this man got his faith, how it came to him. It came not in the midst of spiritual privilege, but in the midst of common life. Nay, more than this, it came from that particular field of common life which was his own. It came from his professional life as a soldier. To see... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:11 Faith the title for justification. Hearing and believing that is, knowing, confessing, and asking give us under the covenant of grace a title; nay, are the sole necessary right and title to receive the gifts purchased for us by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And now observe what t... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:11 I. There ought to have been nothing which startled the Jews in the first part of this announcement. The name of Abraham ought to have recalled to them the covenant on which their nation stood. That covenant would have told them of a blessing to all the earth. But they had never underst... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:22 It was the answer of our Lord to one of His disciples, possibly as an old tradition tells us, to the Apostle Philip, who, before following Him, wished to go and bury his father. The extreme urgency of the command is plain, nor is its meaning mistakable: "Thou art living in a world of n... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:23 The Stilling of the Tempest. I. "Behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea." A sudden and violent squall, such as these small inland seas, surrounded with mountain gorges, are notoriously exposed to, descended on the bosom of the lake; and the ship which bore the Saviour of the w... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:26 The paragraph before us has two parts. At first sight they are not distinct only they are incongruous. When you study them you see the harmony. Both represent Christ as the Restorer and Tranquillizer. The scenery of the two manifestations is widely different. The one is a storm at sea,... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:28 Jesus and the Possessed. I. Jesus was met with two possessed with devils. There is an evil and a good which we know to be not of ourselves. There is a devil and there is an angel to every man's life, a tempter and a saviour, and he is now as he has yielded to the one or welcomed the o... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 8:28 I. Consider the casting out of the devils. (1) The Gospel narratives are distinctly pledged to the historic truth of these occurrences. Either they are true or the Gospels are false. (2) Nor can it be said that they represent the opinion of the time, and use words in accordance with it.... [ Continue Reading ]