Matthew 9:1 Jesus and Man's deepest Sadness. I. "Jesus saw their faith." Jesus did not see their faith because there was in them no other commendable quality for Him to see; there was their common attachment to their unfortunate friend. But without their faith their affection for their friend coul... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:2 I. Sin its relation to the body. Sin, we know, is a "spiritual wickedness;" its sphere of action, accordingly, is in high places. Mere matter, whether it lie in an amorphous clod in the valley, or move as an organized living body, cannot sin. In those high places where a finite but immor... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:11 I. The religion of the Pharisees had degenerated into a religion of hatred and contempt. There was scarcely a class which did not suffer from their fierce denunciations and supercilious disdain. The world was divided into Jew and Gentile, and on the vast mass of the Gentiles they looked... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:15 Use of Observances. I. It seems at first sight as if a spiritual religion would dispense with observances altogether. And there is a sense in which this is the case always, and there are occasions on which all observances are dispensed with altogether. For it is undeniable that observ... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:17 There is an ever-living freshness in the words of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels. In reading them we are not with mere antiquarian curiosity studying the history of events wholly unconnected with ourselves, or recalling a state of society which belongs entirely to the buried past; r... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:18 , MATTHEW 9:23 The Raising of Jairus' Daughter. I. The miracles of raising from the dead, whereof this is the first, have always been regarded as the mightiest outcomings of the power of Christ; and with justice. They are those, also, at which unbelief is readiest to stumble, standing... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:21 I. Consider what this sufferer said within herself. (1) As displaying ignorance of the true nature of Christ. (2) As displaying not only ignorance, but error, along with truth. (3) Was her faith, then, a foolish credulity? Not at all. She knew the wonders He had wrought on others, and... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:18 , MATTHEW 9:23 The Raising of Jairus' Daughter. I. The miracles of raising from the dead, whereof this is the first, have always been regarded as the mightiest outcomings of the power of Christ; and with justice. They are those, also, at which unbelief is readiest to stumble, standing... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:35 Christ the Physician. In Christ we are allied to the highest and the largest ideal of the most disinterested efforts for the physical and moral welfare of man that our earth has ever seen. Times, indeed, there were in His ministry when it might even have seemed that the human body had... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:36 I. Our Lord here teaches us how to think of, or to look at, men. (1) Notice how here, as always to Jesus Christ, the outward was nothing, except as a symbol and manifestation of the inward, how the thing that He saw in a man was not the external accidents of circumstances or position; b... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 9:36 Jesus Seeing the People. Note: I. What Jesus saw. He saw the multitudes. The range of His vision could not be limited, nor His ministry confined, to the immediate requirement of the more palpable of life's sufferings. He saw the multitude scattered abroad, and as sheep without a shep... [ Continue Reading ]