Pastor Steve

My mother was eighteen when she married my father; nineteen when I was born and twenty when they divorced. For a brief time, I had a step-father – he left my mother with three more children. Though very poor (I didn’t know it at the time), I had a wonderful childhood – yet all the…

“And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of His garment.” Was it not desperation that drove this woman to Jesus too? The woman is nameless, but she is introduced as a desperate case since she “had suffered from bleeding…

Matthew records nine miracles in chapters 8-10. We first looked at these accounts largely as stories showing Jesus’ authority over sickness, just as chapters 5-7 focused on His authority as a teacher. But as we have progressed through these accounts, we have begun to see that they concern much more than physical healing.

We have already seen the beginning of opposition in the story of the healing of the paralytic in Matthew chapter 9. The teachers of the law objected when Jesus forgave the paralyzed man of his sins, claiming that only God can forgive sins. They accused Him of blasphemy. In the continuation of the story of…

Everything we have been saying about Jesus’ authority to forgive sin carries over into the next story, which is why Matthew has included the account of his own calling to be a disciple in Matthew 9. He told about the calling of some of the first disciples earlier. He will provide a full list of…

People who read Matthew for the first time may think the arrangement of material is haphazard or at best merely topical. It is not haphazard. It is topical. But it is more than topical. First of all, we see a progression in the nine miracles. They start with simple physical healings: the man with leprosy,…