Matthew Chapter 9

Matthew 9:1-8 ~ The Healing of the Paralytic

Our text says, And when Jesus saw their faith. How does that work? The false gospel narrative will say when God sees your faith, He will work a miracle. What it is really saying is Jesus saw God's Spirit working in their life persuading them to carry that man and lower him down through the roof. They were not trying to prove anything. They were not down below saying, "You know if we had enough faith, we could get this guy healed. We are going to have to go up on the roof and really prove our faith." They did not do that. They had evidences that God's Spirit was bringing them and had arranged this whole episode. Jesus responds to faith, not the faith of people but the persuasion of His Spirit in people's lives.

Matthew 9:9-13 ~ The Position of the Disciple of Jesus Christ

I'm going to make a statement to you. There is no salvation without repentance. When you receive the Spirit of Christ into your spirit, you are surrendering yourself. You are saying, "I am no longer the Lord of my life. I am making the decision to change the direction of my life." His Spirit comes in and takes us down His road, down His direction. It is receiving His Spirit that makes the change because His Spirit comes in and takes over. He is now the Lord. And as I said before, some gospels in our culture say, you receive Christ then you take Him with you. But the Gospel of the Bible is that you receive Christ and He takes you with Him. The direction changes.

Matthew 9:14-17 ~ The Teaching on the Wedding, the Clothes, and the Wineskins

God will not pour out his Holy Spirit into an old man-made religious system. People can practice their religious practices all they want to, but it is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that God pours out His Spirit over, not religious practice. That is human. That is not spiritual. And yet some people would prefer the religious system. It is more secure to practice a religious system than it is to surrender one's life to Jesus Christ and develop a spiritual relationship with Him.

Matthew 9:18-26 ~ The Authority of Jesus over Death

Death could not contain Christ. And the Bible says that the death of the believer will not contain the believer. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, so shall the believer be raised from the dead. Here, Jesus was not only exhibiting His power over death but also His authority to produce life after death. See that is why the word sleep is important here. Death was experienced but also a raising up from out of death and into life. This young girl now had new life after death, and that was His ministry. Not just the authority and power over death, but the authority and power to give life after death. This is what Jesus did and this is the physical authority He has over death and the grave. But did you know that when a person is saved they experience a spiritual resurrection?

Matthew 9:27-31 ~ The Need for the Healing of Spiritual Blindness

The natural man cannot understand the spiritual things of God. But the spiritual man, the one who has the Holy Spirit, discerns and understands all things because the things of God are spiritually understood.

We see this when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus. Here is Nicodemus, the head religious teacher of Israel, and Jesus says to him, "Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of heaven." Many people think that means to go to heaven. No, it does not. Jesus is saying, "Nicodemus, you are the religious leader, but you cannot spiritually see the kingdom of God. It is standing right in your midst. It is moving right in your midst, and you can not even see it. You are spiritually blind."

Matthew 9:32-38 ~ You Cannot Volunteer for the Lord’s Work

In the church in Antioch, the Holy Spirit told the church, "Separate for me Barnabas and Paul for the work of service as missionaries."

From that, people are taking off and saying,  "We need to be more missionary minded.  We need to start training people to be missionaries.  We need to start sending them out like the early church did."

Well the early church did not do that.  The Holy Spirit said to separate out a couple of guys.  You see, the Lord called them and the Lord sent them out.  They did not volunteer.  The church did not train them.  The church laid hands on them and sent them on their way because of the Holy Spirit.  But that is how people twist the Scriptures to put more pressure on people to get busy in church work.  When in reality, it is not what the Scripture says at all.  It says we are to pray.  Pray that God would send people.  People cannot volunteer.  People cannot do it with their own human effort even if they wanted to.  It must be the Spirit of God.