the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 3 of 5
Matthew 9:1-17
The different diseases which the Lord encounters and heals are so many aspects of the sad condition in which He found His creatures. The leper stresses the defilement of sin; fever stresses the continual feverish agitation of worldly man. The demoniac is under the direct power of Satan, while the dumb, the blind and the deaf (vv. 27, 32; Matthew 11:5) have their various senses closed to the Lord’s call, and do not know how to pray. Finally the paralytic whom they bring to the Lord Jesus shows the total incapacity of man to make the slightest movement towards God (cf. John 5:7). He says nothing, he waits . . . he hopes. But the divine Physician (v. 12) knows that a far worse disease is consuming the soul of this paralytic, and He begins by delivering him from that: "Thy sins be forgiven thee." What should we be troubled about most in ourselves and in others? Illness or sin?
The call of Matthew follows, the story being told by himself. He was one of the company of sinners for whom Christ had come.
Finally the question put by John’s disciples is the occasion of fresh teaching: in order to contain the new wine of the Gospel, the old bottles of Judaism were no longer adequate.
