You do not, as a rule, find chronological arrangement in this Gospel; that is not the design of the Spirit. Events are grouped rather dispensationally in Matthew, whilst in Luke they are given us morally. In chaps. 5, 6, 7, we have had the King revealing to us the principles of His kingdom, though these chapters suppose also His rejection. But principles alone are not sufficient; you want also the right man. Here we have One who can do everything; One with infinite compassion; One who can heal diseases, forgive sins, control the elements; One who is almighty. So in chaps. 8, 9, you find the right Person as well as the right principles. The leper shows what Israel was nationally. Leprosy is a remarkable figure of sin in the flesh in its polluting character. The condition described in Isaiah 1 is often looked at in a wrong way. That condition was the result of God's chastisement, as ver. 5 shows— “Why should ye be stricken any more?” They had been so beaten in God's governmental dealings that that had become their condition when Isaiah wrote, though of course it was their sins which necessitated the chastisement.
The Old Testament shows us that the leper had to be put outside the camp, he was not fit to be numbered with the redeemed people. He was like a sinner unfit for the presence of a holy, sin-hating God.
God required that those gathered around Him should be holy. It is well for us to remember how that came in. There was no restriction to Aaron going in at all times, till the fire came out and consumed the sacrifice. Then Nadab and Abihu took strange fire, and God resented it. Fire again came out and consumed them. Probably they were intoxicated, at any rate they were not rightly concerned with what was due to God, as Christendom is unconcerned about it now. Then it was that God said, “I will be sanctified in them that come near me.” There can be no toleration of evil. Then also God gave instruction concerning putting a difference between holy and unholy, and prohibited Aaron from going in except on one day in the year, the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement. Following this we have the details of their instruction for putting a difference between clean and unclean, and then God deals with the leper in Leviticus 13; 14 And I have no doubt, in ourselves we are all lepers. But it may be well to go over the details of the cleansing, they are full of beautiful typical teaching.
First, he is brought to the priest and outside the camp. The only ground where God can meet the sinner is where Christ suffered. And it is an unnamed one who brings him to the priest. There must be the unseen action of the Holy Ghost in the soul. He takes two sparrows, alive and clean, to typify the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?” I suppose their use here shows us that the one who knows and apprehends most the value of the work of Christ is sensible of how feeble is his thought of what the cross really is. It is what that sacrifice is to God, and not our thought of it, that gives its efficacy. One of the sparrows is killed in an earthen vessel over running water. The sparrow belongs to the firmament of heaven; and this tells us of the One Who came from heaven, and became flesh that He might die. We see here the truth of 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ “died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” Then the priest takes a piece of cedar wood and also hyssop. Now the Spirit tells us that Solomon wrote of all things from the highest to the lowest, “from the cedar tree... even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.” These then are taken, and also scarlet wool, and dipped, with the live bird in the blood of the slain bird, and then that blood is sprinkled on the leper, thus showing identification. The priest then pronounces him clean. The leper has not to judge himself clean, nor have we. He sees it all accomplished for him, and he is the recipient of it. Then the live bird is let loose into the open heaven, type of the Lord Jesus raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The man in our chapter seems to have believed in the Lord's ability, but not in His love. Some would rather view it as that he realized the Lord's sovereignty, and makes it a matter of that; but whichever way you take it, you get the opposite in the case of the man who brought his lunatic son when the Lord came down from the mount of transfiguration. The demon cannot be cast out until the Lord comes down. The disciples had failed, and the father says, “If thou canst do anything.” The Lord says, the “If” is, “If thou canst believe.” There is the contrast between “If thou wilt” and “If thou canst.” In Luke 18 we are told “With God all things are possible"; here, by faith using Him all things are possible to him that believeth.
Again, the Lord touches the leper. A living Christ on earth is for the Jews, a risen Christ in heaven for the church—for us now. If the Lord touches, it is a touch of power. If a needy sinner touches, it is a touch of faith. When in the next chapter the multitude thronged Him there was no sense of need on the part of the multitude; and the Lord inquires “Who touched me?” The Lord responds to faith and to owned need; and both are here.
The Lord would not have it told to anyone, for He shunned popularity. When they come to, make Him a king (John 6), He would not have it. The poor people followed the Lord; you do not find the priests following Him, but the Lord will have testimony borne to them. This was the time when the leper should go to the priest—the day of his cleansing. This brings out the Lord's sovereignty in blessing. He spake and it was done. He upholds everything by the word of His power. And He says, “I will, be thou clean!”
Was there ever a king like this? He is going to forgive all their iniquities and to heal all their diseases by and by. So ver. 4 refers to what we had in Leviticus 14. Had any other touched a leper, he would have contracted defilement by the contact. But He was undefilable. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” His was the touch of power; and the disease is gone. What a testimony that Jehovah Himself was here, for none but He could heal the leper. In 2 Kings 5:77And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. (2 Kings 5:7) the affrighted king owns that it required the God of resurrection to effect the cure of leprosy. Still when a leper was covered all over, and the leprosy was all out, then could the man be pronounced clean. So also with a sinner. “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Psalms 32).
Before that instruction was given when Moses was told to put his hand into his bosom (that is where the leprosy is) it was leprous when he took it out; but when he puts it in a second time it is healed. In Num. 12 Miriam is smitten with leprosy for speaking against Moses and the Ethiopian woman he had married, no doubt Zipporah. If we take up the cudgels in our own defense the Lord may withhold His hand and leave us to our own efforts; but if we leave our case with Him, He will see to it. Moses was “very meek." ... “And the LORD spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam"... “And, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow.” This was God's solemn government. They see their folly and make confession; but the Lord would make them feel it, and Miriam is shut out seven days. All this goes to show God's holiness, and what is due to Him, as it says in Heb. 12 “Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire.” It is God in His own nature as the Holy One.
This Gospel of Matthew was written for the Jews, and nothing is given therein to puff them up. So in the next incident (8:5-13) we have no, elders of the Jews mentioned as in Luke 7:33And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant. (Luke 7:3). The beloved physician, writing to Gentiles, appropriately gives us in his Gospel the honored place of the Jews as God's people, for at that time the middle wall of partition was not yet broken down. In both these cases—of the leper, and the centurion—there is faith. In the first, it is personal faith but in the case of the centurion it is the faith of one person for another. If leprosy represents sin in its polluting character, palsy shows man in his helplessness. It is a great point for a sinner to make that discovery. It is more to acknowledge I am helpless than that I am a sinner. To the Gentile centurion the Lord says, “I will come and heal him.” In the case of the nobleman in John 4 He says, “Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe,” and in spite of his reiterated request that the Lord would come down Jesus did not go, although he healed his son. No doubt he belonged to Herod's court. As the leper in the beginning of our chapter is the only one specifically mentioned in the three Synoptic Gospels some think he was “Simon the leper” (Matt. 26:66Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, (Matthew 26:6); Mark 14:33And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. (Mark 14:3)) in whose house at Bethany “they made him a supper” (John 12 '8).
The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed.” I suppose he had a good dwelling, he seemed to be pretty wealthy; but there was the sense of his unworthiness, and of the Savior's dignity. He recognized that here was an omnipotent One, and that no word of His could be void of power. He says, “I am a man” —not in but— “under authority.” A Roman captain over 100 men, he was a long way from being the head of the Imperial army; but even so he had this power to order the soldiers under him. There is something very sweet about that. His argument is that the Lord had all the authority in Himself. He had a glimpse of the Lord's glory such as Nebuchadnezzar had, when he said, “He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, what doest thou?” (Daniel 4:3535And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? (Daniel 4:35)). This is a sample of what was to be. The blessing in the millennial earth will not be confined to Israel; Gentiles will be blessed though not as now with the middle wall of partition broken down. Then they will be blessed through Israel. But the Lord here had not found so great faith in Israel. Faith is the gift of God, but where it is found the Lord commends it Syro-phoenician woman's faith is called “great"; the disciples' “little.” The only two cases of faith which the Lord commends are Gentiles' There are only two, also, to whom the Lord gives Himself away, so to speak—the woman of Samaria and the blind man of John 9.
Now the Lord goes on to show (vers. 11, 12) “that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, etc.” Of course the children of the kingdom were the Jews, and those cast out will be the unbelieving portion of them. When that kingdom comes, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be in their glorified bodies, and in the heavenly department of it, though not forming the Bride. They will be included in the symbolic number of the twenty-four elders of the Revelation, and in “the spirits of just men made perfect,” i.e., Old Testament saints. In Rev. 19 you have the marriage, but there are those “called to the supper,” as well as the Bride. The Old Testament saints will have their joy in it, though they will not have her place and portion.
The leper represents Israel in their condition of uncleanness, and the Lord coming in grace and displaying His power, a witness that Jehovah was there; and in the next case, that of the centurion's servant, grace goes out to the Gentile. But if grace does go out to them, the Lord's heart is still towards Israel. Peter was the apostle of the circumcision. No doubt this is a dispensational picture, but there are other lessons too. We have had man in his polluted condition, and we have had man in his helpless condition, and now we have man in his ungovernable passions—the fever. Idolatry is looked at as adultery in the Old Testament, and those who go after idols are spoken of as inflaming themselves. So here we have One who can deal with that which is ungovernable, We also see that while the fire of sinful passions is flaming you are unfit for service. The fever had to be subdued before she served. In one Gospel, she arose and ministered to Him. We are set at liberty to serve both the Lord and those who are precious to Him. Of course, we were noticing the difference between the Lord's touch and the sinner's. The Lord touched the leper, but not the centurion's servant, and He touched Peter's wife's mother. You get a measure of faith in the leper and great faith in the centurion; here there is no appeal, but there is need. The Lord always responds to faith and need.
That next paragraph (vers. 16, 17) is very important. You see the Lord Jesus, in every case He took up, felt it in His own spirit. Of course, He was Jehovah, Who could and did forgive their iniquities and heal their diseases. To human eyes the great thing is to cure the body; we know the greatest thing is to meet the need of the soul. Plenty of men will profess to absolve sinners, but they cannot save one who is down with a fatal malady. The Lord takes that up in a later case, when He asks whether it is easier to say Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say Arise and walk. “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins he saith to the sick of the palsy, Take up thy bed and go unto thy house.” In Him was omnipotent power for in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; but He never wrought mere works of power. He felt it all deeply in Himself. In Mark you get this specially.
So “When even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick.” In many of the cases when the even is mentioned, it is the close of the Sabbath, though the Lord would heal, if need be, on the Sabbath day; but one could not say certainly that it was so here. But the great thing in the first case in this chapter is His sovereignty; in the second His word, so here “He cast out the spirits with his word, and he healed all that were sick"; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet saying, “Himself took our infirmities, and bear our sicknesses.” I do not think we should have interpreted that verse so if the Spirit had not interpreted it for us; He took it all on His spirit.
(To be continued)