Matthew 8:3

Matthew 8:3

Notice in Christ's touch of the sick

I. His fixing and confirming faith in Himself, the Healer. It is in condescension to human weakness that He lays His hands on diseased folk; we believe in little that we cannot see. Pain and sickness are so sensible that we look for equally sensible tokens of the energy of the restorer. Christ came into the world to heal sicknesses; and faith in Him, as Healer, was essential to the cure. By His touch He fixed men's thoughts upon Himself; this was the pledge of healing by which He stimulated and confirmed their faith.

II. His answer to our craving for sympathy. Christ's ability to cure would have been the same, though He had never touched a sick person of them all; but the weary multitudes would not have sought to be taken to Him. A very little thing was this touch, even as an indication of kindly purpose; but it was just the little thing that a sensitive sick man needed.

III. The symbol of His bearing our infirmities and carrying our sins. He "touched" our nature in all its pollution. He shrank not from it, but took it upon Himself, and bore its shame and suffering. A thousand will subscribe to a hospital, for one who will live with the idiot or deformed; a thousand will pay the doctor and the nurse, for one who will enter the cottage of the squalid sick and spend one night there. It needs much schooling of self to suppress the instinct of revolt at sickness hideously before us. Turn now and read of Christ, that He touchedthe sick and healed them. You will see that in His dealing with bodily diseases He did but symbolize how entirely He had taken human sinfulness to Himself.

A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch,p. 1.

References: Matthew 8:3. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 18; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 75; J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany,p. 463.Matthew 8:5. J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons,p. 17. Matthew 8:5. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 54.Matthew 8:5. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. ii., p. 12; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 211; Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 25.Matthew 8:5. Outline Sermons to Children,p. 116. Matthew 8:7. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 147; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 18. Matthew 8:7; Matthew 8:13. Ibid., Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1,422.