Just after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus came down the mountain and, immediately, desperate humanity surrounded him. In Chapter 8, Jesus shows over and over exactly what kind of Messiah he is and exactly what kind of authority he has. He demonstrates mastery over disease in both Jew and Gentile, and mastery over the physical world and even over demonic possession. As we leave chapter 8 behind, we understand the awe that people felt around Jesus.
First, Jesus healed a man who had leprosy. We have lost our sense of how isolated and shunned such a person was. He should not have been in the crowd; he should not have approached Jesus. Jesus healed him, and healed him with a touch—absolutely unheard of (Matthew 8:1-4).
Next, Jesus heard from a centurion, a leader in the hated occupying force of the Roman Empire. The centurion asked for Jesus to heal his servant, remotely! He said that he understood authority, as he exercised authority himself. If Jesus said the word, he knew it would be done—and it was. Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith and held him up as an example (Matthew 8:5-13).
We can already tell that Jesus’ Kingdom will hold both Jew and Gentile.
Jesus next healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and then a host of sick and demon-possessed people. Matthew took note that this was foretold in the Prophet Isaiah’s writing: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (Matthew 8:14-18).
A couple of people approached Jesus and made promises of devotion; Jesus cautioned them that devotion to him was not going to be a bed of roses or a fun outing. They would be wanderers, with no fixed home. They would be separated from family, even old and vulnerable family members. Followers would have to think hard about their loyalty and commitment to the Jesus way (Matthew 8:18-22).
The next area of life over which Jesus showed his mastery was nature: he calmed a storm at sea. Jesus was asleep and the disciples woke him and told him they would perish from the storm. He asked them, “Why are you afraid?” Jesus stood and rebuked the winds and the sea (the same verb used as when he rebuked a demon). All was calm. The disciples asked themselves, “What kind of man is this, that even nature obeys?”
And then Jesus calmed a storm within, as he disembarked in a Gentile area, and two demon-possessed men met him. They were Gentiles, deranged and possessed, and they live in “the tombs.” (More unclean and out-of-bounds people didn’t exist for an ordinary Jew.) The demons within the men recognized Jesus as the Son of God, and they begged him to send them, not into oblivion, but into a herd of pigs nearby. (I told you this was a Gentile area). The pigs rushed headlong into the sea and were drowned. The newly-healed demon-possessed men were now well. The pigherds went into town, to tell everyone what Jesus had done. And what did the townspeople do? Did they throw a parade, give Jesus a reward, offer him the key to the town? No. They begged him to leave their region. So Jesus left (Matthew 8:28-34).