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can test the fulfilment or otherwise of the first statement, all can witness the second. There are many today who
pronounce the forgiveness of sins and wield a tremendous power over the ignorant and the superstitious, who could
not meet this challenge. So the Lord of glory stooped again in long-suffering gentleness:
`But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power (authority) on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the
sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house'
(Matt. 9:6,7).
The result according to Matthew was, `When the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had
given such authority unto men'. Mark says, `they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, we never saw it on
this fashion'. Luke's record is, `They were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We
have seen strange things today'.
Each Gospel records the calling of Matthew immediately after this miracle. Each records that at the feast that
followed the Lord said, `They that be whole need not a physician; but they that are sick ... for I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance'. Thus, as in the miracle, the physical shadows forth the spiritual.
(4)
The Culmination of Israel's Rejection
Matthew 9
This third group (Nos. 6 to 9, page 169) contains four miracles. Two are wrought upon women, and two upon
men.
In the first group (Nos. 1 to 3, page 169) the domain of ceremonial LAW had been entered when the Saviour, in
spite of the law of Moses, touched the leper. National exclusiveness had received a shock when the Gentile
centurion's prayer was heard and his faith recognized as greater than any exhibited in Israel. The unnatural
despising of woman in the estimation of the orthodox Jew received a rebuff when the Lord deigned, unasked, to cure
Peter's wife's mother.
The domain of SIN was entered, and spirit forces compelled to recognize their Master in the second group.
The third group brings the Lord face to face with DEATH. A ruler comes, and worshipping Him says, `My
daughter is even now dead: but come and lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live'. What a stupendous request!
yet see how naturally the Lord receives it. `And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did His disciples'. He even
allows Himself to be intercepted on the way to heal another sufferer. The woman who had an issue of blood for
twelve years (Israel's number coming out again) is another example of Israel's condition. Her complaint would
render her unfit to attend the house of God. It was recognised by tradition as a sufficient ground for divorce; it
placed her outside the pale of society generally. She was, in effect, in much the same position as the leper. Yet she
dared to contemplate touching the fringe of the Saviour's garment! Something must have told her that no defilement
could adhere to Him. Had He not touched lepers? Was He not even now going by request to touch the very dead?
How closely He came to the suffering world. How wonderful, beyond thought, that He, the holy, harmless,
undefiled, and separate from sinners, could so mingle with them as to appear in the eyes of the unsanctified as a
friend of publicans and sinners, in a sense lower than the Scriptural one! There is often more of the unsympathetic
Pharisee about our ideas and practice of `separation' than that of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Holy One of God.
Faith appears in some miracles very prominently; in others it is not mentioned. The faith of the centurion called
forth the words of Christ, `Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel'. There does not
appear any room for faith in the case of Peter's wife's mother. It was evidently possessed by the leper, for his `if'
was merely a question of `will' not of `can'.
The mention of `faith' in the storm is one of rebuke - `O ye of little faith'. Faith does not figure in the miracle of
the two demon-possessed. The faith which is expressly mentioned in the account of the healing and forgiving of the
man sick of the palsy is the faith of those who brought him (9:2). To the woman whose issue of blood was healed
the Lord said, `Thy faith hath made thee whole'. No one can question the faith of the ruler, but the word does not
appear. In the next miracle, that of the blind men, faith is prominent, and the cure was conditional upon it.