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Catholic Bible Study
Matthew 9:27-38
00:30:00
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into 9:27-38.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to form. Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augusta Institute. And Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who is a professor of scripture here at the Augusta Institute. And we're going to continue our Bible study, our ongoing Bible study that we do each week now on the Gospel of Matthew. And so last time we left off in the midst of Matthew chapter nine. And we're going to pick up at Matthew chapter nine, verse 27. Feel free to grab a Bible so you can easily follow along with us. We'll mention what passage we're at, which is, of course, chapter nine, verse 27. Right now, the healing of two blind men. And this comes in the section that we talked about before of Matthew chapters 8 and 9, where Jesus does 10 mighty deeds, what we would call miracles today. And these ten mighty deeds express Jesus authority. They show the kind of authority that Jesus has. So as we walk through these 10 mighty deeds, we keep seeing in different angles and views, Jesus authority illustrated and manifest for us. And of course, that's going to prepare us for the discourse that follows in Matthew chapter 10, where Jesus will give a teaching, but that teaching is based on the authority that he demonstrates in chapters eight and nine. So we kind of move from narrative to discourse, or basically speech. And then again we'll get another narrative thread and then another speech. So Matthew's Gospel is punctuated by that kind of two steps. Narrative discourse, or the simple word discourse, simply means a speech, a long speech. And so now, Michael, let's just dive in. Jesus heals two blind men here in Matthew, chapter 9, verse 27. You want to lead us off?
- [01:34]
B
Yes. Let's take a look at verse 27. As Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, have mercy on us, son. Father David. Now this is a really important note in Matthew's Gospel. He's got this beautiful symphony, right, this beautiful orchestral theme of the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel. And one of the major themes is, of course, Jesus as the new David. We see that from the very first verse of the Gospel, Jesus is Jesus Christ. The book of the genealogy, the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Christ means Messiah. And we know that in the first century Jewish world, there were all kinds of hopes for the future, and different people had different expectations. It's not like all Jews believed the same thing. But one dominant strain was the hope for the coming of a future king. From the line of David, all kings were anointed. And in Greek, the word for anointed one is Christos. So the term that comes to be used for Messiah is Christ. So Jesus Christ, the son of David. Now what's interesting here is that the blind men cry out to him, have mercy on us. And when he entered the house, we read, the blind men came to him and Jesus said to them, do you believe that I am able to do this? And they said, yes Lord. Now one thing that we should really zoom in on here is the connection between Jesus healing ministry and his identity as the son of David. This is really an important theme in Matthew's gospel. So it's helpful to pause here and talk about it. In the Old Testament of course we know that David was the great king. David actually had healing abilities. We know from 1st Samuel 16 that the, the Holy Spirit came upon him. And then there's that great story of him and Saul, right, where Saul is afflicted by a demon and every time David sings his inspired psalms, the demon is driven away. But we also know that his son Solomon was known as a great healer as well as an exorcist. And we read about that. We have a hint of that in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which is in the Old Testament. It's only in the Catholic Bible. So you know, non Catholics don't know about this book because well, they don't have all of the books in the Bible. Catholics don't know about this book because well, they don't know about all the books in the Bible too.
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Sometimes it's in their Bible, they may not have read it.
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B
That's the problem.
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A
That's our goal here at the Augustine Institute is get Catholics to read their Bibles. But you're right, I mean the book of wisdom isn't in the Protestant canon of books. I mean the Protestants, Luther took that book out of the Old Testament and so they really lose a treasure. It's a beautiful book.
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B
It is.
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As well as the other six deuterocanonical.
- [04:38]
B
Books, there's this great line in Wisdom, chapter 7, verse 17. It says, for it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists to know the structure of the world, the activity of the elements. And then it goes on in verse 20, the powers of spirits and the reasoning of human beings, the varieties of plants and, and the virtues of roots. And so here we see Solomon has the knowledge of the powers of spirits and then also the ability to know roots. There's a first century Jewish historian, Josephus, and he tells the story of how exorcists in Jesus day. This is in book eight of the antiquities of the Jews. How exorcists in Jesus day would use roots as a way to bring healing and also in their exorcistic ministry. So Jesus is the true son of David. If you really are the son of David, demonstrate it.
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A
Yeah, no, so what you're highlighting, Michael, is that the son of David, Solomon, was known for his ability to have exorcism. And you find that in the book, in scriptures, like you just pointed out in that great passage in Wisdom 7, verse 17 and following. And then he's so Solomon. And that grows in Jewish tradition, doesn't it? So it's not just in the Bible, but this is often in Jewish culture. Right. That Solomon is somebody who's known for having special gifts of exorcism as well as other areas of wisdom and healing.
- [06:06]
B
Right. So people will refer to the therapeutic Son of David. Right? His therapy, his healing, and his exorcisms. That's famous for Solomon. So when the blind man cries out to Jesus, have mercy on me, Son of David, or the blind man, have mercy on us, Son of David, they are implicitly recognizing his messianic identity. He's the true Son of David. And they say, are you able to do this, Jesus? He says, do you believe that I'm able to do this? They say, yes, Lord. That's a loaded Lord, a loaded Kurios, because on the one hand it can refer to the God of Israel. On the other hand, it's the appropriate term for the King.
- [06:49]
A
Now what you're saying then is that your average Jew who would believe that the Messiah is going to come. And so there's this expectation of waiting for this heir of the line of David to come and save Israel. And here you have people who are ill knowing that the son of David, Solomon, who would be kind of a prototype of the Messiah, was known for his healing and his exorcisms. So people who need exorcisms are coming to Jesus because of the. Because of the Messianic expectation.
- [07:18]
B
Yeah, I think because they recognize that Jesus is performing miracles. It's really interesting. In the Gospel of Matthew as well as in the other gospels, Jesus doesn't call himself the Christ that comes from other people. But what first happens is people start calling him the Son of David, but that only happens after he starts performing miracles. So there's a slow revelation of his identity. First, his miracles. Always his miracles. Starts with his miracles. We often come to deeper faith in our life through recognizing God's work in our life, miraculous deeds in our life. So many people have A reawakening of their faith when they become parents, for example, just the miracle of life. Miracles lead to recognition. Well, son of David, which then leads to, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, which is by divine revelation. But there is a divine pedagogy here. God is teaching his people slowly. Jesus is revealing who he is slowly in the narrative.
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That's beautiful. Yeah, that's beautiful.
- [08:19]
B
All right. So then we read. And their eyes were opened. Well, okay, so then he touched their eyes. You see this in iconography, Jesus touching the eyes of the blind. So it's by his touch that they're healed. It's not simply by Jesus praying for them to be. Be healed. Which signifies the fact that the power of healing is coming directly from Jesus. He's not just the son of David. All right? He is the Son of God. And so then he says, according to your faith, be it done to you. This is a big theme in Matthew's Gospel as well. Healing is related to faith, right? Do you trust? Do you believe that I'm able to do this for you? Their eyes were opened. Then we get this interesting line. Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it. Now what's going on here? See that no one knows about it. Why does Jesus say, don't tell anybody about this? Some people in the past have speculated, well, the reason why Matthew, Mark say these kinds of things is, well, nobody knew that Jesus was the Messiah. And early Christians made up that belief. And so how did they explain the fact that Jesus didn't go around telling people? Well, they made up this idea that Jesus told everybody. Be quiet.
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The messianic secret.
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The Messianic secret, right. William Vrede, famous German scholar, is the first to notice that as a theme, I love the next line. But they went away and spread his fame throughout all the districts. So it doesn't really work, right. To say, well, the. This whole idea of the Messianic secret. Jesus told people. Don't tell people who I am. Jesus only did that because people didn't remember him talking about being the Messiah. Well then, if you're making up a story like that, why then go on to say, but they went around, they told everybody this, right? So that doesn't really work with that narrative. So anyway, we get then another healing. And here, before we dive into that.
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A
I just want to go back to that phrase in verse 29, because I think it's so powerful for us, all of us spiritually, where Jesus says, according to your faith, let it be done unto you right according to your faith. And so God's grace and power comes into our life and is actualized in our life according to the measure of our faith. If our faith is small, the impact of God's grace will be small in our life. And you know, the Council of Trent talked about the sacraments and it talked about, which most Catholics know and they're catechized about. I know I was, you know, that the sacraments work ex opera operato. In other words, by the very nature of their operation, they are efficacious signs of grace, that grace is available. But what most people don't know is the second half of that line. And Trent says, but it's according to the disposition of the one who receives. Will the grace bear fruit in their lives? And that line from Trent is almost right out of this verse. It's according to how you believe. In other words, the disposition of the heart to receive. And that's so important. We saw that already with the hemorrhaging woman. Many people touched Jesus that day, as Jesus is on his way to Jairus daughter's sickbed, you know, but the hemorrhaging woman touched him with faith. She said, if I only touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed. And power goes forth from Jesus and heals her. Many people touched Jesus that day, but power didn't go forth into their lives. And so that's what I think. Why Talking about our last episode, Michael, the image the Church puts in front of that second pillar of the catechism, the sacraments and liturgy, is the image of the hemorrhaging woman. And here I think we have a good follow up just to remind us why was that image put in the sacraments and liturgy by the Church? The Church has reminded us that the graces and the sacraments are present. But whether they bear fruit in your life depends on your receptivity, your heart being receptive to the grace of Christ. So that's so important for us to reflect on. We want to be receptive to that grace.
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Wonderful. And that is a sign of his mercy. Why is it that they have that faith? To have mercy on a Son of David is a sign of his great love for us. And of course, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we use that expression, Lord hath mercy. And so what happens, as you say, what happens in the sacraments, what happens in the Eucharist is illuminated for us in these stories. We see here that Jesus is able to open the eyes of the blind and many people are not able to See what is present. When we celebrate the Eucharist, it takes eyes of faith to recognize that it's not just bread and wine that's before us, but the Son of David. And so this miracle is perfectly suited for the Eucharistic service.
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A
I just want to highlight what you just said because it's so beautiful and important that for people to think about at home that, you know, we say the words of these two blind beggars, begging Jesus, Lord, have mercy. So think of the Carrie a la song, you know, if you ever sung that. We begin the mass with that threefold, lord, have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. And so we're imitating them, asking Christ to bring his healing power into our lives. So think about that next time you're at Mass and you use those words.
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B
Right?
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It's right here from Scripture.
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B
Before we go on, one thing we should also say is, why does Jesus say, see that no one knows about it. Why does he say that? Well, the reason is made especially clear in John's Gospel. When Jesus works miracles, they want to come and make him king. Jesus is Messiah, but he's not king in the way David was. His kingdom is not of this world. And so there is a truth to the fact that Jesus is a bit reticent to identify himself explicitly in Messianic terms because he understands that for a lot of people in his day, not for all, but for many of them, the Messiah was a military figure, right? And of course, once it's especially clear that Jesus is taking on the role of the Son of David, we especially see that in the Triumphal entry. Not long after that, Jesus is arrested and crucified as King of the Jews. He's not ready to have his ministry come to an end just yet.
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That's such an important point you make, Michael, because I think a lot of people are like, why doesn't Jesus, if he came to reveal himself, why doesn't he just. Why do people have to ask him, are you the Messiah? Are you he who is to come? And he gives cryptic answers. Why doesn't he just say, you know, rather than, I'm just simply the Son of Man? Which can have all kinds of different levels of meaning. Why isn't Jesus just blatantly saying, hey, I'm the Messiah, Believe in me? And it's because Messiah. We think of Messiah as a religious title, but people don't realize and appreciate that that's a political title, right? To be the Christ. As you said, Christos in Greek means to be an anointed one, and the one who's anointed is king. And guess what? There's Herod and then there's the person that he serves. Caesar, Rome, that have political authority over Israel. And so if Jesus goes around throwing around a political title like the Christ Messiah, well, he won't be long for this world. He'll be arrested. And as you said, he's not free for much longer than a few days after he goes to Jerusalem with a triumphal entry and starts taking on clear Messianic role. So I think it's important for people at home to understand that Jesus can't say Christ explicitly because it would lead to two things. And I think you covered them. You know, political trouble, and the crowds just want to make him king by force. And he wants them to listen to him. He's got an important project he has to get done before a political operation.
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That's right. It's interesting, you know, where he does specifically say, yes, I, who am speaking to you is the Messiah. Yeah, it's in Samaritan. It's not in Israel.
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He's not worried about the Samaritans making him king.
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He's not worried about Samaritans making him Jewish, made king. You find that story, if you're interested.
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In John chapter four, the exception that proves the rule. That's a great point.
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That's right. Yeah. All right, so we go on. Then, as they were going away, behold, this is now in Matthew 9:32. And following as they were going away, behold, a demon, oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke, literally cast out. Ekballa, throw out. Right. He really casts them out. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke and the crowds marveled, saying, never was anything like this seen to Israel. And then we get a key line. The Pharisees say he casts out demons by the prince of demons. So rather than recognizing, whoa, what the crowds do, there is something remarkable going on here. Instead, they refuse to acknowledge God's work that's taking place in Jesus. And instead, not only do they not attribute miraculous work to God, instead what do they do they. They attribute that work to Satan. This is what Jesus will go on to describe in terms of the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. We're getting ahead of ourselves.
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Yeah, but take note, because we're going to come back to this in Matthew chapter 12.
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That's right.
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And we're going to see where Jesus is Going to use an apologetic. Why it would be ludicrous for Satan to be turning against Satan, for the demons to be turning. And the tragic thing for me is that the demons don't fight themselves. They're never divided. It's only the good guys. It's only the church, the people of God that turn on each other. And there's a miraculous unanimity of evil.
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That's right.
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It's just amazing.
- [18:12]
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All right, so I'd like to get to this last part then. After Jesus works these. Well, after. We don't really want to say it was 10 miracles because it's more than that if you count them up. But it's 10 miracle stories. After these 10 miracle stories of Jesus, we, we go on to read that, you know, we get like a summary statement. He went through all their cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues. Oh my gosh, there's so much we could say about that. But got to move on. Proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. Notice he's the son of David, so of course it's the gospel, the good news of the kingdom, right? Healing every disease and infirmity. He saw the crowds. He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
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A
And I want to get into this sheep image. This is going to be important. But just, just to stop, like what you said is so important for people to realize, because I think people don't realize that Christ is a political title, that, that to be a messiah or Christ is a royal title of kingship. And then if you look at his message, it's about the kingdom. And so Jesus is the king and his message is all about the kingdom. And you can't, you can't separate Christ from the kingdom. You know, it's so important. It's worth. Because we've got time here for the end of Matthew 9. I just tell a story of. A friend of my wife's called me one day and said her brother had been surfing the Internet and come across an anti Catholic website and he was now going to leave the church and would I talk to him. So I said, sure, I'm happy to talk with him. So I called him up. He said, oh, my sister's worried. It's just the church I don't believe in anymore. I still believe in Jesus. I said, well, good. Would you be willing to talk about this? I know you've been researching, doing some studies. I'd love to hear what you've learned and share some things that I've learned. He's like, oh, sure, that'll make my sister feel better. So I remember we went out to this Olive Garden for dinner and his fiance, and his fiance was in RCA to become Catholic because she was about to get married to him. And he had convinced her that it got her all confused, like, oh, no, we don't need this Catholic thing. We don't need to be married in the church. So they were. So his fiance came with him. And so I sat down with him and he's like, look, I still believe in Jesus. It's just the church I don't believe in. And I said, you know, in my mind I'm thinking, you know, the church is not like a side order of fries. You got the main entree, and I don't need the church. But I had to show that to him. So I said, well, what's the main thing Jesus spoke about? What was his primary message, his primary teaching? And he thought about that and he said what I thought he would say. He said, well, love. And I'm like, no, give me an example of a parable he compares to love. He's like, well, yeah, there's not any parables that talk about love. Now I said, not that love's not important and you couldn't. Love is terribly important for Jesus, but it's not the focus of his teaching. There's another focus. And he said, what's the focus of his teaching? I said, well, almost all of his parables are about one thing, the kingdom of God. And so the kingdom of God is really important for Jesus. In fact, he's king. And he goes around talking about a kingdom. And you know, that's. It was an aha moment for him and his wife. And eventually they got married in the church and so we got him back on track. And I remember when I moved to Colorado, we worked with a small mortgage company and wonderful man, and he was a fallen away Catholic. And so I found out he was a fallen away Catholic. And so we had a conversation that went for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours plus. And he had grown up in New Orleans. He said, look, I went to Catholic schools my whole life, but tell me this, all my evangelical friends tell me this, isn't Jesus enough? You know, why do I have to have the church? Isn't Jesus enough? Now, I said, that's a great question. Now, of course it's a structured question because you're going to say Jesus isn't enough or Jesus is enough. And that either way, you answer that question, the church doesn't seem to be very important. And so what I said to him, I said, let me ask you a question, which I learned from an ancient rabbi, to answer a question with a question, that Jesus would do that, right? I said, tell me this. Can you say you're really loyal to a king if you tell him, I'm loyal to you as my king? It's just your kingdom I want nothing to do with. I don't care for your kingdom. In fact, I don't like your kingdom. I want nothing to do with your kingdom, but I love you as king. Can you do that? Could you say that you're a loyal subject of the king and not care about his kingdom? And he said, oh, my gosh. It's like he put his hands on his head, Michael. He's like, I was giving a headache. And he said, I've never heard it that way before. And I said, well, it's time you do, you know, and it's time we Catholics understand that. That Christ is a king and the church is his kingdom. And you can't have a king without a kingdom, and you can't have a Christ without a church. That's so important for people to get to know.
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B
That is so important. Well, we'll talk about that more when we get to Matthew 13. But just to kind of as a preview, right. In Matthew 13, we read about how there is, for example, the parable of the wheat and the tares, or the wheat and the weeds. And at the end, Jesus says that the Son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law breakers. What's he talking about there? Well, you know, we hear the kingdom of heaven, you might immediately think he's just talking about the heavenly Jerusalem, but that can't be what he's talking about, because you don't have evil doers, you don't have sinners up in heaven. And at the end of time, the Son of Man's going, all right, who broke in in the last 500 years? Or whatever? No, obviously, the kingdom there has to have a meaning other than the heavenly realm, right? That's beyond earth. Here Jesus is talking about the kingdom that's somehow present in the world. And as we'll explain later, as we get into the Bible study that's especially identified in Matthew's Gospel with the church, Peter's given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In the moment, Jesus talks about founding the church. So we'll draw on that much more. We'll just say something here. And then we'll preview it and we'll come back when we talk about Matthew 10 next time. At the end of Matthew 9, we read that Jesus said that the people were like sheep without a shepherd. And then he goes on to talk about how the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. So there he's mixing his metaphors there, right? The sheep, and there's harvest. And next time we'll come back and we'll look at how these two themes get played out in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, where Jesus now moves from his many mighty works to now going on to send out the apostles to do mighty works like he has.
- [24:52]
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Yeah, they're going to exercise the kind of authority he's been exercising and will know by which, because he's going to give his authority to them. And now we know what kind of authority, because we've witnessed it in chapters eight and nine. So word and deed, they go together so beautifully.
- [25:05]
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They most certainly do. Right. And you know, we could just say here at the end of this chapter, and we'll talk about this more next time. He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Here we have an echo of a great prophecy from the Old Testament taken from the book of Ezekiel. And just as a little preview, right. Ezekiel is a prophet who's announcing the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Why? Because he explains, the leaders have been blind, the leaders have become corrupt. Sound familiar? Do you know any prophets who announced the coming of the destruction of Jerusalem? Jesus does that. And as we just saw in the chapter immediately ahead of that verse, we saw that the authorities, the religious authorities, in this case the Pharisees, believe Jesus.
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Interacts with the devil.
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B
That's exactly right. So we're going to. We'll come back and we'll talk more about Ezekiel 34 next time. How that gets played out in Matthew 9 and 10.
- [26:06]
A
Yeah, it's. There's so much going on here that, you know, I think, you know a couple things. You know, John Paul loved that line, the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. And he used that in a couple ways. One, for the need for vocations for priests, that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. But it's also true, since Vatican II has re emphasized in an important way the universal call to holiness of all the lay faithful, because all of us are baptized. We are all called to be evangelizers. And if I just go back, it's worth a look back at the sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, and he calls not just the 12, that is the apostles, but he calls the crowds. And he says, you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. And he's saying that not just to the 12, not just the apostolic orders of the priests and bishops, but he's saying it to all who are gathered, all who would be his disciples. And so if we're going to be a disciple of Christ, we're called to be the bearers of light and salt. Salt to keep the world and the church from being corrupt and light so that the world can know the truth about God. And so it's so important here, when we hear Jesus say, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. We all, the laity, are to be the laborers. And so what's the harvest? It could be your neighbor next door. It could be your neighbor across the street. It could be a co worker. It could be a nephew or a cousin or an aunt or an uncle, right? It could be a family member. It could be a spouse, it could be a child. So what we have to realize is that the harvest is plentiful, as God says. And what is required is not the harvest, it's the harvesters. It's the people who would plant the seeds and be the light and to give the invitation of evangelization. And that's what we have to do. And that's so important. And that's what Jesus is going to commission the apostles to do in a very special way. But all of us are called to do that. All of us are called to be that light and that salt that's so important. And that's just kind of getting back to the heart of the mission of the Augusta Institute, Michael, that I know you and I are passionate about. And that is our whole mission here, is to help Catholics understand, live and share their faith. And if they don't understand it, we're not going to live it. And if we don't live it, we're not going to want to share it. And so it's so important for the laity to share the faith. Otherwise there's no effective evangelization. The clergy alone cannot evangelize the world. They're, in a sense, the officer corps. And, you know, who's the rank and file, soldiers and sailors. It's us, the laity. We're the ones who have to do the grunt work out in the front lines of the world because we live in the midst of the world, and so we can be a light there. So just think as we reflect on these great stories of Jesus authority, think about the authority he has and that he wants to empower you and I to share, to be his witnesses to the world. So who in your life can you witness this faith to share the hope and the grace of Jesus Christ with? That is a good question for all of us. I want to just prepare us for next time we're going to pick up with Matthew chapter 10. So get a chance to read that. Also, Michael made a great suggestion and that was really a key backdrop for understanding Matthew 10 in depth. Is going to be the prophet Ezekiel, especially Ezekiel chapter 34. And I might throw in Jeremiah 23. I think it is where Jeremiah has a similar discourse about shepherds. And I find great hope in that. And we'll talk about that next time in terms of corruption in the church and how we are to look at that biblically and how we're not to let those scandals shake our faith. So that's going to be one of the themes that we're going to talk about next time. Thank you for joining us and a special thanks to all of you who are our mission circle partners. You're part of our team. We're grateful. Keep praying for us and may the Lord bless and keep you.