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No.4. The Third Group.
The Culmination of Israel's Rejection
(Matt. 9:).
pp. 45 - 50
This group contains four miracles. Two are wrought upon women and two upon men.
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 set.
The third series 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 recognized 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