Latest / Reformed Thinking / Mercy That Makes Worshipers: Kingdom Restoration and Doxology (Matthew 15:29–31)

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Mercy That Makes Worshipers: Kingdom Restoration and Doxology (Matthew 15:29–31) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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Today we are opening up the Gospel of Matthew again, and we
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are zooming in on a section that most people honestly just drive
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right past. Oh, without a doubt.
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It is Matthew chapter 15, verses 29 through 31.
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If you are reading through the Bible in a year, or even just
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listening to a Sunday morning series, this is the kind of
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passage that usually gets treated as a transition.
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Yeah, it is the classic meanwhile section.
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Right. Jesus moves from point A to
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point B, he heals a bunch of people, and then we get to the
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feeding of the 4000. It feels like a bridge between
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two major events. You see the header in your Bible
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that says Jesus heals many, and your brain almost automatically
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switches to skim mode. You think, OK, Jesus has a lot
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of authority, people got better, got it.
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And then you look for the next red letters or the next big
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controversy. Which is such a natural habit.
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It is, yeah, but it is very easy to miss the weight of what is
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actually happening here because it is summarized so tightly.
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But we are going to put the brakes on for this deep dive.
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We are going to park the car right here at verse 29 and stay
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there because as we looked at the sources and the commentaries
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for this discussion, it became very clear that this is not just
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a travel log. No, absolutely not.
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This is not Matthew just moving the chess pieces around the
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board to get Jesus to the next location.
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What we are looking at is what scholars call a summary panel.
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Matthew is not just acting as a historian recording dates and
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times. He is a theologian.
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He is crafting A deliberate narrative argument.
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He arranges these events to stop us in our tracks.
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Precisely. This passage is a collision.
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You have the absolute depths of human wretchedness, bodies that
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are broken, mute, blind, lame, crashing headlong into the
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absolute peak of divine sovereignty.
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And the mission for our time today is pretty specific.
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We want to see how this brief snapshot actually explains the
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nature of the Kingdom of God. We want to see how it
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illustrates the Reformed doctrine of total depravity.
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Which is a heavy topic I know. It is, but it is essential for
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understanding grace, and we want to see the proper end of all
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mercy. Because the goal of this passage
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is not just healthy bodies. That is the critical distinction
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we have to make right out of the gate.
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The goal is worship. We live in an era of consumer
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religion where Jesus is often presented as a very useful life
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coat. Right, He is there to fix your
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marriage, improve your finances, get your kids on the right
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track, or just make you feel a bit more put together as a
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person. But this text presents a Jesus
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who is not just useful, He is worthy.
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He is the Sovereign Lord. So let's open the text, Matthew
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15 verses 29 through 31. Before we get to the healing
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itself, we really have to set the scene.
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You called this a summary panel earlier.
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Help us understand how that functions in the book of
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Matthew. How should we be reading this?
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Think of it as a hinge on a door.
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A door swings on a hinge to move you from one room to another.
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This passage swings the reader from one theological context
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into a completely different one. To understand the shock of the
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scene, you really have to recall what happened in media
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completely before it. Which would be the first half of
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chapter 15. Right.
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Jesus was locked at a fierce debate with the Pharisees and
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scribes from Jerusalem. That was the controversy over
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hand washing. It was the religious leaders
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were obsessed with external rituals.
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They wanted to know if the disciples were washing their
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hands according to the tradition of the elders.
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It was a religion entirely focused on the surface.
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If you scrub the outside of the cup, you were holy.
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Spot on. And Jesus dismantles them.
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He exposes that system is spiritually bankrupt.
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He tells them essentially that they watch the outside, but the
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inside is full of filth. It is out of the heart that evil
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thoughts come. So we leave that scene of
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intense religious arguing, legalism and external pressure.
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And then the door swings open to this new scene.
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The contrast is completely deliberate.
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We move from a debate about fake purity to a demonstration of
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real restoration. We move from religious leaders
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who can only burden you with more rules to a Messiah who
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actually carries the burden and removes the curse.
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Matthew is saying you saw what man made religion looks like,
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now look at what the Kingdom of heaven looks like.
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Yes, yeah, and the location matters a great deal here, too.
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The text says Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea
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of Galilee, but he is not in Jewish territory, is he?
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No, he is not. He has just come from the region
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of Tyre and saidon that is where he met the Sarah Phoenician
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woman who was a gentile. Which was a massive moment where
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he granted mercy to a non Jew. Now, most sellers agree, based
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on the geography and the parallel account in the Gospel
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of Mark, that he has moved into the Decapolis region.
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For most of us, Decapolis is just a name on a map in the back
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of our Bibles, but you are suggesting this location is
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actually a theological statement.
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Oh, it is a massive statement. Think about what Decapolis
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means. Deca means 10.
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Polis means city. This was a league of 10 cities
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that were essentially islands of Hellenistic culture right in the
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Middle East. These were not Jewish towns.
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Not at all. If you walk down the street in
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the Decapolis, you are not seeing synagogues on every
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corner. You are seeing temples to Zeus.
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You are seeing gymnasiums where people exercise naked, which was
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abhorrent to the Jewish mindset. You were seeing pig farming.
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Pig farming, which coming off the previous chapter regarding
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Jewish dietary laws and hand washing, is about as offensive
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as it gets. It is the uncleanest of the
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unclean. Jesus leaves the Pharisees who
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are obsessively scrubbing their hands to avoid defilement, and
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he walks straight into the pork eating, Zeus worshipping
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heartland of the Gentiles. It feels aggressive.
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It feels like he is picking a fight with the concept of
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boundaries. Or perhaps he is redrawing the
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math entirely. He is showing that the Kingdom
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of God is not bounded by the ethnicity of Israel or the
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traditions of the elders. So geographically we are seeing
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the glory of the Messiah expanding.
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He starts with the lost sheep of the House of Israel, Then He
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extends mercy to 1 Gentile woman entire.
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And now suddenly He is in a region where great crowds are
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coming to Him. We are seeing the scope of mercy
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widening it. Is like a shockwave, it starts
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at the center and ripples out. And notice the escalation.
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In the previous section, one woman pleaded for crumbs.
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She said even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the
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master's table. Now in the Decapolis, thousands
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are coming. It is an abundance of mercy.
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The crumbs have turned into a feast.
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OK, so he is in this Gentile, a decent region, and the crowds
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are gathering. And then verse 29 gives us this
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very specific detail about his posture.
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It says he went up on the mountain and sat down there.
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Now I know Matthew loves mountains.
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We have the Sermon on the Mound, the Transfiguration, the Great
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Commission. It is a narrative spotlight.
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When Jesus goes up a mountain in Matthew, you need to pay
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attention. It is a place of revelation.
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It recalls Sinai where Moses received the law.
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But it also acts as a platform for authority.
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God speaks from the mountain, but the keyword you hit on is
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Sat. Sat down.
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The Greek verb is a cathedral. It is in the imperfect tense
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which implies A continuous action.
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He sat and he remains seated. OK, let's unpack this because I
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have to play the skeptic here for a minute.
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When I read he sat down. I just picture a guy taking a
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break. It is hot.
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He hiked up a mountain. His legs are tired.
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Why do we have to read enthronement into a guy taking a
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load off? That is a fair push back.
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If this were a diary entry from a hiking trip, sure.
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Maybe he is just tired. But Matthew's writing a
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theological biography, he uses specific trigger words to signal
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meaning. In the ancient Near East,
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posture was language. Who stands?
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Well, the servant stands. The servant stands because he
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has work to do. He is ready to run.
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He is attentive to the master who sits.
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The guy who has people to do the running for him.
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That's right. The king sits on the throne.
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The judge sits on the bema seat to render a verdict.
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The rabbi sits to teach his disciples.
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Sitting is the posture of finished work or established
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authority. So this isn't a break, this is a
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declaration of status. Precisely.
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It conveys rest, yes, but it is the rest of authority.
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It is the sovereign's rest. Think about the contrast with
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modern evangelicalism, or really modern life in general.
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We're obsessed with activity. We're frantic.
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If you want to draw a crowd today, what do you do?
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You hype it up, you get the lights going, you get the fog
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machine, you have a hype team, you send out the Flyers, you run
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the social media ads. It is highly kinetic.
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It is anxious. It assumes that if we stop
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moving, the movement dies. But look at Jesus.
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He goes up the mountain into the middle of nowhere and he sits.
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He's not pacing. He's not worried about the turn
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out. He's not strategizing on how to
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retain the demographic. He takes his place as the king,
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and the world comes to him. That is unnerving in a way.
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It implies a level of confidence that feels almost alien to us.
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Imagine a hospital emergency room.
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It is chaotic. People are bleeding, nurses are
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running, monitors are beeping if the chief surgeon walks in.
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He's usually moving fast, he is shouting orders, he's part of
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the kinetic energy of the room. Right.
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But imagine if the surgeon walks into the chaos, climbs onto a
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Gurney in the middle of the room, and just sits down calmly,
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legs crossed, just watching. That would be terrifying.
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It either means he has lost his mind, or he is so completely in
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control that the chaos does not touch him at all.
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That is the sovereign's rest. Jesus isn't pacing.
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He isn't wringing his hands, wondering if the crowd is too
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big or if he has enough might to handle the demand.
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He sits. It is a staggering amount of
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confidence. It aligns perfectly with the
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Westminster Confession chapter 5 on Providence, doesn't it?
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The idea that God, the Great Creator of all things, does
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uphold, direct, dispose and govern all creatures actions and
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things. It absolutely does.
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The mediator sits in control. He upholds all things.
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He isn't reacting to the crowd. The crowd is responding to his
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Regency. It acts as a rebuke to
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Arminianism, this idea that man is the deciding factor and God
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is just anxiously waiting for us to choose him.
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Here the King sits and his authority is magnetic.
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He is the unmoved mover. So he is sitting, he is calm, he
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is in charge. And then the camera pans to the
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crowd, verse 30 says. And great crowds came to him,
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but they aren't empty handed. No, and this is where the scene
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becomes visually and emotionally overwhelming.
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The text says they are bringing with them the lame, the blind,
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the crippled, the mute, and many others.
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I want to focus on the verbs here because the English
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translations often smooth this out.
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They say they put them at his feet, but the sources point out
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something really interesting about the Greek word used there.
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Yes, the Greek word is ripsen. It's a violent word.
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It does not mean gently placed. It means cast through or flung.
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Fling. That sounds incredibly rough.
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You don't fling your sick grandmother.
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You help her into a chair. You adjust her pillow.
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You do that when you are in a comfortable home or a sanitized
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hospital room. But imagine the logistics.
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Here you are in the wild. You are hauling A paralyzed man
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a dead weight of a mountainside. You are guiding blind relatives
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over rocky terrain where one slip means a broken ankle.
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It is hot. It is dusty.
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By the time you get to Jesus, you are exhausted.
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Your muscles are failing. You don't have the energy for
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etiquette. You just unload the burden.
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You cast it down. That image strips away the
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stained glass vibe of the story. It is gritty.
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It is desperate. It's totally desperation.
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This is the end of human resources and the list of
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ailments Matthew gives us. Lame, blind, crippled, mute.
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It is a catalog of misery. But we need to put our reformed
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theology lenses on here. This isn't just a medical chart,
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is a picture of the spiritual state of humanity.
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Total depravity. Total depravity.
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The world likes to think that humans are basically good, maybe
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a little misguided. Maybe we need a life coach or
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some better education. The Bible says we are dead in
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trespasses and sins. We are spiritually blind.
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We cannot see the glory of God. We are spiritually mute.
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We cannot sing His praises or confess the truth.
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We are spiritually lame. We cannot walk in his statutes.
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And crippled. The Greek word there, calos
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implies maimed, right? Like missing limbs entirely.
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Yes, it implies a condition that is naturally impossible to fix.
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You don't grow a limb back. If you cut off your hand, it is
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gone. This highlights that the
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condition of the center is hopeless.
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Apart from divine intervention, you cannot heal yourself.
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You cannot positive think your way out of being maimed.
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I love the image of them being at his feet.
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We talked about Jesus sitting as a king.
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If you are casting something at someone's feet, that is total
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submission. It is.
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It is the only safe place to be. Notice that Jesus does not
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recoil. He does not say, whoa, give me
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some space. This is too much.
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Too many sick people. Get them back.
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He sits there. He allows the brokenness to be
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piled up in his footstool. It implies that he is safe for
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the broken. If you are hiding your limp, if
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you're pretending you aren't crippled, you aren't at his
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feet. So we have the sovereign King
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sitting, we have the desperate crowd casting their brokenness
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at his feet, and then we get the remedy.
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Verse 30 ends with three words in English.
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And he healed them. The brevity is shocking.
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Matthew doesn't give us a play by play.
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He doesn't say Jesus went to the first guy, asked about his
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symptoms, checked his pulse, apply to poultice.
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It is just he healed. Them it is completely
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comprehensive and it brings us to a theological term that we
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use often on this show, monarchism.
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Yes, this is the heartbeat of reformed soteriology.
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It defined that for us again, just so we are all on the same
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page as we look into this. Monarchism is the doctrine that
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salvation is the work of God alone.
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Mono meaning one, ergon meaning work.
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In this scene, think about the mute man.
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Does the mute man articulate a prayer to help Jesus heal him?
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No, he can't speak. Right.
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Think about the paralyzed man. Does he walk halfway to Jesus?
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No, he is dead weight. Exactly.
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The work is entirely unilateral. Jesus acts upon.
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Them I want to drill down on this because it flies in the
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face of so much modern spirituality.
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We love the idea of synergism. We love the idea that I do my
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part, God does his part, or the idea that God is a gentleman
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never forces himself on anyone. But you are saying this text
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presents a different picture. I am.
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The popular view is what we might call the democracy of
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salvation. God votes for you, Satan votes
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against you, and you cast the deciding vote.
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That sounds nice and fair to our modern ears, but this text says
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no. You are the crippled man at the
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feet of the king. You don't have a vote.
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You are broken and the king decides to heal.
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Is that fair? I mean, I can hear the listener
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asking, doesn't that rob the person of their agency that the
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crowd did walk there, They did bring the sick.
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Isn't that partnership? That is the classic objection.
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I opened the door. God walked in.
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But look at the text closely. The sick people are the passive
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objects. They are cast down in the realm
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of salvation. A corpse cannot partner with a
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surgeon. Lazarus didn't help Jesus raise
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him from the dead. He just woke up.
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That is monarchism. It is offensive to our pride
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because we want to say, well, I at least made the right
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decision. The text says no, you were mute
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and maimed and the king touched you.
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It takes all the credit out of our hands.
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Which is precisely where it belongs.
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If you contributed even 1% to your salvation, you would have
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reason to boast in heaven. You can say Jesus did a lot, but
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I closed the deal. But in the Reformed view, we
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just say I was dead and he made me alive.
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And the nature of this healing, The word used is therapy low.
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It sounds like therapeutic, but it means more than just a
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clinical fix. It carries a nuance of service,
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of tender care. Even though he is the king on
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the mountain, he is caring for them.
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He is attending to them. It is not a cold, clinical ZAP
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from a distance. It is the compassion of a
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shepherd king. And what he's doing is reversing
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the fall. Yes, this is crucial for
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understanding the miracles. Jesus isn't just doing magic
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tricks to show off. He isn't a David Copperfield.
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He is restoring creation, order, Sin broke the world, sin brought
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disease, decay, blindness, silence.
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Jesus is rolling that back. He's fulfilling Isaiah 35 where
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it says then the eyes of the blind shall be open and the ears
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of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap
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like a deer. So when the crowd sees this,
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they aren't just seeing health, they are seeing the Messiah.
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They were seeing the Old Testament coming to life right
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in front of them. Spot on.
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These are sign gifts. They authenticate the king.
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They prove that he is the one Isaiah wrote about centuries
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earlier. I want to pause here and address
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some modern errors because this text gets heavily abused.
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You have the prosperity gospel on one side, and then you have
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confusion about healing in general on the other.
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Let's hit the prosperity gospel first.
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Notice what's completely absent from the text.
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Jesus does not ask for a seed offering.
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He does not check their faith level before he yields them.
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He doesn't blame the guy who is still lame for having a negative
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confession. Right, you didn't get healed
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because you have secret sin. None of that is here.
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None of that. He heals based on his sovereign
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prerogative. It is an act of grace, not a
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transaction. You cannot buy this.
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You cannot earn this. And then on the other side, we
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have the discussion about cessationism versus
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continuationism. We are looking at this from a
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Reformed cessationist perspective.
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How does this text support the idea that these gifts were for a
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specific time? We'll look at the nature of the
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healings. They were wholesale great
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crowds. They were immediate, and they
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were undeniable maimed limbs restored.
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This is very different from the modern charismatic claims of
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invisible healings, like my headache is gone or one leg got
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slightly longer. Or psychosomatic things that are
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very hard to verify. Right.
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These were organic, structural reversals of nature.
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The Reformed view is that these specific signs were unique to
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the systolic age to authenticate the messenger in the message.
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Once the Canon of Scripture was closed, the need for these
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authenticating signs ceased. That doesn't mean God doesn't
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heal today. He absolutely does in answer to
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prayer. But the gift of healing as a
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person who walks around emptying hospitals?
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That was a sign of the Messiah and his apostles.
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So we shouldn't look at this text and say if my church
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doesn't look like this every Sunday, we are doing it wrong?
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Correct. That leads to sheer despair.
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This text is pointing us to who Jesus is.
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Not necessarily promising what our Tuesday morning is going to
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look like every single time. OK, so the healing happens, It
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is massive, it is undeniable. And then we get the reaction in
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verse 31. It says the crowd wondered when
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they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame
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walking and the blind seeing, and they glorified the God of
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Israel. There is a very specific
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sequence here. Restoration leads to amazement
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and amazement leads to doxology. Doxology meaning praise.
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Yes, glory words, but notice the danger of stopping at Step 2,
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The text says The crowd wondered.
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It is entirely possible to be amazed by Jesus and not worship.
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Him. Oh absolutely.
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People are amazed by Jesus all the time.
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You hear it in interviews with secular historians or even
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celebrities. He was a great teacher.
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What a fascinating historical figure.
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I love his vibe. Right.
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He is a revolutionary, yeah, but that isn't worship.
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Amazement is just a reaction to novelty or display of strength
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is the feeling you get when you see a really good magician or a
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massive explosion. Worship is a response to
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identity, and the text says they glorified the God of Israel.
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Let's dig into that title, The God of Israel.
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Why that specific title? Especially if we were in the
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Decapolis, which is Gentile territory.
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That is what makes it so striking.
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If this is a largely Gentile crowd, as the context highly
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suggests, then this is a recognition that the true God is
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the God of the Hebrews. They aren't saying praise the
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universe or praise the divine Spirit.
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They are getting specific. They're acknowledging the
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covenant. It is like they're realizing,
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wait a minute, the God of those people over there, the Jews, He
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is the real 1. He is the one doing this.
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Spot on. It is the fulfillment of the
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promise to Abraham that through his scene all the families of
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the earth would be blessed. Here are the Gentiles coming to
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the Jewish Messiah and giving glory to the God of Israel.
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It is the beginning of the Great Commission.
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It is the Israel Church distinction being bridged by the
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Messiah. And the goal of it all is that
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glory I am brought to mind of the Westminster Shorter
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Catechism right here. Question one what is a chief end
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of man? Man's chief end is to glorify
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God and enjoy him forever. That is the grid through which
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we have to read this miracle. Jesus did not heal these people
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primarily to make their lives easier.
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That was a result, sure, but the primary purpose was to create
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worshippers. He heals the mute man so the
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mute man can say glory to God. He heals the blind man so the
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blind man can gaze upon the King.
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That is a hard pivot from consumer Christianity.
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In the consumer model, God is the vending machine.
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I put in my prayer tokens, I get out my blessing, and I walk away
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happy. I don't necessarily stay to
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praise the machine. Exactly, I get my product and I
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leave, but here the healing is a means to an end.
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If you get the healing but you don't get the God of Israel, you
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have missed the point. You've just made a comfortable
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trip to hell. The point is the relationship
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with the healer. We have to pause here because we
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have been talking about limbs growing back and blind eyes
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seeing, but I know for a fact we have listeners right now who
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have prayed for that. They've cast themselves at
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Jesus's feet and nothing happened.
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The cancer is still there. The chronic pain is still there.
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Is this text mocking them? That is the hardest question in
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the Christian life and if we have a shallow theology we will
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say something cruel like you must not have enough faith.
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Which is pure spiritual. Abuse it is, but look at the
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text again. Jesus healed them.
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The specific crowd that day. He didn't empty the hospitals in
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Rome. He didn't banish death from the
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planet. Yet He was providing a sign.
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A sign implies something is coming but isn't quite here yet.
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This gets into the already and not yet of the Kingdom.
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Think of D-Day in World War 2 when the Allies landed on the
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beaches. The war was technically decided,
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the outcome was secured, the opposing regime was doomed.
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But there were still months of brutal fighting, suffering and
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death before V Day. So we are living in the fighting
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season. We are the King has landed, we
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have seen his might, but the full liberation of the
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territory, the redemption of our bodies is still future.
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The sovereigns rest means he controls the timing of that
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final day. So for the listener who is
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suffering, the sovereign rest of Jesus isn't a sign that he
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doesn't care. No, it is the assurance that he
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is in control of the trial. If he withholds the physical
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healing, it is not because he is frantic or weak or out of
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office. It is because in his sovereign
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wisdom, he's using that weakness for a different kind of glory
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right now. Paul prayed 3 times for the
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thorn to be removed. Jesus said no.
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He said my grace is sufficient for you.
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And. The spiritual healing of the
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justification is immediate. That is a guarantee if you are
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in Christ. Your spiritual blindness is
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cured, your spiritual paralysis is gone.
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You are seated with Him in heavenly places.
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The body will catch up at the resurrection.
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We are waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies,
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but the soul that work is done. That brings us to the role of
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the church today. We saw the crowd bringing the
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sick to Jesus. That is our job description.
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We are the porters. We're the ones carrying the
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stretchers. But we cannot manufacture the
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healing, no. And that relieves the pressure.
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We don't have to save people. We don't have to fix people.
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Our job is to bring the spiritually lame, the
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spiritually blind, the broken people of our world and place
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them at the feet of Jesus. How do we do that, practically
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speaking? Through the means of grace, that
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is a good Reformed term, the preaching of the Word, the
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administration, the sacraments and prayer.
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When we preach the Gospel, we are carrying people to Jesus.
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When we pray for our lost neighbors, we are laying them at
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His feet. When we gather for worship, we
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are bringing the broken into the presence of the King.
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And true worship going back to the God of Israel comment it
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opposes the idolatry of the gift.
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Yes, we have to love the healer more than the healing.
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It is easy to say I love God when what you really mean is I
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love that my life is going well. Ouch, that hits home.
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It is a subtle idolatry, but true Reformed theology, which
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highlights our total unworthiness and God's total
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grace, actually produces the warmest heart.
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Because when you realize I was the mute man, I was the cripple,
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I had nothing to offer. I was dead weight.
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And then he saved you. Your praise is going to be the
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loudest in the. Room.
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It kills pride. You can't be a proud Calvinist.
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Well, people try, but it is a complete contradiction in terms.
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It is. Structurally impossible if you
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understand the theology. You were dead, He made you
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alive. All glory to the God of Israel.
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So as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to turn this directly to
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you, the listener. We have looked at the text.
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We have seen the king on the mountain.
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We have seen the crowd. The question is, are you the
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crowd? Are you trying to hide your
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limp? We all have one.
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Maybe it is a secret sin. Maybe it is a broken
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relationship. Maybe it is just the sheer
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exhaustion of trying to be your own savior.
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The text invites you to stop climbing the mountain on your
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own strength, invites you to be carried, to cast yourself down.
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It is a call to confess total inability.
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That is what total depravity means in practice.
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It means saying I can't. And hearing Jesus say I can and
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I have, we saw the King sitting in authority, We saw the depths
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of human ruin, we saw the simplicity of sovereign grace,
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and we saw the result, which is glory.
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Glory to the God of Israel. Here is a final thought for you
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to chew on as you go about your week.
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When you receive mercy, and you will, whether it is a small
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daily provision like a good meal or a massive deliverance from a
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crisis, does your heart stop at relief?
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Do you just say glad that is over or does it rise to
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doxology? That is the test.
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The mute man in this story didn't just turn to his neighbor
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and start talking about the weather.
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He used his new voice to praise the one who gave it to him.
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Don't just enjoy the gift, glorify the giver.
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Until next time on Reformed thinking.