Sermon Transcript
(Matthew 8:14–16)
June 14, 2026
Now, let’s turn our attention to Matthew 8. We’re going to be in verses 14-17 today. Before Jesus arrived on the scene, every ancient culture had spell books to ward off evil spirits. They had amulets to wear to ward off evil spirits. And when I was a kid, I remember that dream catchers were really popular. Dream catchers were, you know, created by Native Americans to ward off evil spirits while you’re sleeping—to protect you while you’re sleeping. And today, if you look online, it’s very easy to see advice on social media telling you to burn sage or incense to ward off evil spirits. There’s a crystal shop in Wake Forest for all your demonic warding-off needs. So there’s a ton of things that the world uses to ward off evil spirits, and there always has been.
But what has separated the God of Israel from the rest of the world is nowhere in Scripture does He give you any ritual to ward off evil spirits, because He expects you to just rely on Him. And there’s no difference between the God of Israel and Jesus because He is the God of Israel in the flesh—and not just of Israel, but of all the nations. When Jesus arrives on the scene, He exhibits the wonderful authority of His word. When He shows up on the scene, He looks at us while we’re living in a world that’s infected by sinful and demonic oppression, and He fixes the world with a word. With a word. And with authority, He drives out evil with compassion in His heart. He wants to make you well from your toes all the way to the top of your head. And today’s account is going to show us how that is so.
So rise with me as we read Matthew 8:14–17.
Jesus went into Peter’s house and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. So he touched her hand, and the fever left her. Then she got up and began to serve him. When evening came, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed. He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick, so that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
He himself took our weaknesses and carried our diseases. (CSB)
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Holy Spirit, please come. I ask that You would come and fill this place today and right now. I ask that You would help us to know Your word. I pray that You would please speak to us, that You would expel from this place any kind of demonic attack or demonic oppression so that we might worship You freely, unrestrained, so that we might see Your glory before us. I pray that You would please be with me and touch my mind. Get rid of distractions, Lord. I pray that You would fill me up with focus. I pray that You would fill this Church up with focus. I pray that You would please help all those who are at home to focus. I pray, Lord, that You would please draw people who are at home to come fellowship with us in person. I pray, Father, that You would help us to see that You care for us, that You have compassion and tenderness towards us. And again, Lord, help my mind. Take over my mouth and use me as Your vessel. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
We must trust that Jesus has compassion. Not just compassion, but a compassionate authority to restore us holistically through all of our painful struggles. That is the main point of today’s sermon. Matthew has put this story in the Scriptures for you to know that you can and you should trust the Lord Jesus in your life—that He has compassion for you. God is with you. He sees your pain. He knows it’s there, and He is not without the ability to lift you up. Even better than having the ability, He wants to do it.
And Jesus is more than concerned with just your physical ailments. You’ll hear me from time to time say, “Are there spiritual prayer requests?” because He doesn’t just want to heal you physically. He wants to heal you spiritually, and He wants to heal you morally. He wants to break into your life—all of it. But my question for you today is, what are you keeping from Him? Some of you have a hard time being transparent. You might say, “Pray for my foot,” but you’re not going to tell me, “I struggle with lust; pray for me in that regard.” Some of you might be saying, “Pray for my shoulder,” but you’re not going to tell me that you struggle with doubt. Jesus is a Messiah, a Shepherd who cares for you tenderly, and He wants to help you in every sphere of life. So it’s okay to be vulnerable, because He uses the Church today to get that done. He uses us. We are the hands and feet of Jesus, and He wants you to let us into your private life to get it done.
And how do I know that? Because in verse 14, where do we see Jesus enter? Church, that’s an honest question. Where does Jesus enter in verse 14? In the privacy of a disciple’s home. Jesus does ministry in people’s homes. Just this week, we were doing ministry in homes. We had a family come over, and they just got to see what we were doing. How do we do family worship? That’s discipleship. They just watched us pray with our children, read Scripture with our children, and they come back, and they say, “We want to do that with our children.” That’s ministry. It’s very simple. You don’t have to go to seminary for that, but it happens in a home. And Jesus, we see in verse 14, He has compassion to restore, and restoration takes place in a home.
Your health at home has a direct impact on the health of the Church. Let that sink in. How healthy you are at home with Jesus has a direct impact on the health of this Church, because you’re going to bring that health with you. If you’re not healthy at home, you’re going to be more inclined to not even come to church. Or if you come, you’re going to bring that here. And that’s fine. Bring all your unhealth; Jesus will fix it. But your health with the Lord begins at home.
Now, Jesus, He had been in the synagogue (Mark 1:21). All of that was where the spiritual monopoly takes place on holy places. And some of us in modern times, we also see it like that. We think that holy things only happen in the church building. The truth is, miracles and ministry and spiritual breakthroughs happen in homes as well. Jesus recognizes that. And in fact, the first churches, immediately after Jesus ascends to the Father, they’re house churches (Acts 2:46). There were no church buildings. Our ancient religion has its roots in homes.
Jesus Compassionately Restores Our Physical Health
Now, Jesus enters the scene and we see His compassion come on display because He approaches Peter’s mother-in-law. Now, in modern times, we think of a fever as a symptom. But in ancient times, when they called something a fever, it was literally being filled with a fire. That was the name of a disease, not a symptom. Now, what do we have in modernity that is a disease that’s primarily associated with these kinds of symptoms? Most scholars believe that what the New Testament authors called a fever, our modern doctors would call malaria. And malaria works in cycles of outbreaks and attacks. And each cycle has three stages.
The first is the cold stage, and you’re sitting there and you’re shivering. By way of hands, anybody want to confess they’ve had malaria? Usually, it doesn’t happen in America, and it’s mostly associated with overseas where you have poor living conditions and sanitation. But the first stage is a cold outbreak. You’re shivering, you’re cold, your teeth chatter. And followed by that, you get the hot stage, and your fever spikes through the roof, and you get a severe headache, and it’s to the point where you begin to vomit. And that transpires into the sweating stage. The fever breaks, causes profuse sweating, and it leaves you feeling absolutely exhausted. Well, that’s Peter’s mother-in-law.
Jesus walks in, and when we would see a person in such a state—hurling, shivering, burning up—our instinct is to put on a mask and run away. Not Jesus. Jesus makes disciples by tending to physical pain. Making disciples is not just teaching. We saw Jesus do that in Matthew 5–7. He gave us the beautiful Sermon on the Mount, but now He’s making disciples by showing how He tends to people’s physical pain. When you see someone hurt, disciple, I’m telling you, ask them in the moment, “Can I pray for you?” You are going to move people like you don’t even believe, like you can’t even imagine unless you’re already doing it. I didn’t think that it was a big deal for me to offer to pray over people until I repeatedly would see people’s faces. They could feel the hand of God. They’re just touched that someone loves them with the love of God.
Now, Jesus sees physical pain, He’s moved to compassion, and He says, “Let me pray over you, touch you, heal you.” He just moves in. And what’s cool, what I love about this, is Jesus is not afraid to be scandalous. You see, touching a woman was always a gamble in this time period for Jewish people, because if a man touches a woman, he risks becoming ceremonially unclean. According to Leviticus 15:19, if any person touches a woman who has had her monthly discharge within seven days, they become in danger of becoming unclean. So it was common in first-century Israel, you just don’t touch women. And if you did, and you became unclean, it’s incredibly inconvenient. You couldn’t go sit where you wanted because then you risk making the chair unclean, and then anybody who sits on it becomes unclean. You had to go through these purification rites, wash your clothes a certain way, just separate yourself from society in certain ways. You couldn’t prepare food for other people because you’d make their food unclean. Do you get the drift? It’s a big gamble, and it’s scandalous when Jesus lets His compassion drive Him to touch this woman. And Church, that’s the kind of disciples we need to be. When we see stinky, dirty, smelly people who are hurting, do not pinch your nose and say, “Ugh.” Let the compassion of God move you, and offer to pray for them.
In Mark, we read that they had asked Jesus to heal the mother-in-law (Mark 1:30). You know, you’ve got four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And a lot of times they overlap, particularly Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We call those the Synoptic Gospels because those Gospels overlap with a lot of details and similar stories and similar structure. Well, in Mark’s account of this historical event, Mark records that the disciples asked Jesus to heal the mother-in-law (Mark 1:30). But in Matthew’s version, they leave those details out. Sometimes how an author tells an account is just as important as what the author says. By Matthew leaving out the details that they asked Him to heal her, He’s showing a Jesus who initiates the healing. And by showing a Jesus who initiates the healing, He shows a Jesus with compassion. Jesus is moved to help you. The book of Psalms says that He collects our tears in a bottle (Ps 56:8). He loves you so much; He sees your pain and He wants to help you in it. None of this is a surprise to Him.
And you might be asking yourself today, “Why won’t He touch me? Is He not compassionate over my life?” God sees you in your pain and in your trauma, and you’re hurt. But because He does not fix us on our own timetables does not mean that He does not love you and He does not see you. It means that our minds are too feeble to comprehend how His compassion plays out on His stage. Our current contemporary pain is also used for our good. In the book of James, it says in the beginning that we ought to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of various kinds, because this ultimately produces endurance within us, and endurance gives us a complete and holistic faith (Jas 1:2–4). The best Christians any of us know are the ones that are most acquainted with grief and pain. I have never met a mountain-moving Christian who’s always had it handed to him. So while our contemporary pain might be unfathomable, do not let it lead you to doubt the Lord’s compassion for you.
Jesus’ authority and compassion result in this physical healing. Last week we talked about the power and authority that Jesus has, and now we see that power and authority result from compassion. Therefore, as noted in your bulletin, we must trust that Jesus has compassionate authority to restore us holistically, and that includes our physical health. Jesus compassionately restores our physical health.
So what about us in modern times? First, I want you to remember three things. All healing is a gift from God, whether by miracle or medicine (Jas 1:17). And let us not forget, modern medicine is a miracle. All of modern medicine is only possible because of the things that already existed in nature, which is a gift from God.
Secondly, and don’t worry, if you can’t write these fast enough, all these sermons are on the website by the end of the week. And I even transcribe them for you so you can read them faster than you can watch them. All healing is a foreshadow of the world to come. When you take an ibuprofen and that headache goes away, do not let the Marxists and the atheists tell you this is just a beautiful human invention. When the Lord relieves you of a headache, even through ibuprofen, you are getting a foretaste of the world to come when He will remove all sickness and pain (Rev 21:4). So give thanks to the Lord when He gives you relief over small things.
And the third thing to remember is that miraculous healings only happen when faith is present. Look at Matthew 13:58, the scariest verse for modern Americans:
And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.
Miracles follow faith. I’m not telling you that if you have faith, you will always have miracles. But I am telling you, if you have no faith, you will have no miracles.
So how do we respond to such incredible moments? This mother-in-law immediately expresses her gratitude by doing what, Church? It says she rises and she starts serving Jesus (v 15). This woman was vomiting, hurling, in pain, sweating. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I think we are at our ugliest when we are coming out of a bout with the flu or E. coli. I mean, that’s essentially what this woman is dealing with. She didn’t say, “Let me go powder my nose.” She says, “I’m getting up; I’m serving the Lord Jesus immediately.” Do not think that you have to look good or prepare yourself. I mean, get up and do something for Him. If Jesus has moved you, serve Him accordingly. That’s what this woman does.
Jesus Compassionately Restores Our Spiritual Health
Now, our physical health is only one component in the restoration of humanity. There is another part that Jesus puts on display for us in our text. When the demon-possessed arrive for healing, that tells us that Jesus uses His compassionate authority to restore our spiritual health. Jesus compassionately restores our spiritual health.
Look at verse 16. They immediately start to bring all of their demon-possessed to Him. In Mark’s account, Jesus arrives at Peter’s house on the Sabbath (Mark 1:21–29). So people had to wait until evening to bring their sick because they didn’t want to be accused of breaking the Sabbath law. Now, why would they start bringing the demon-possessed to Jesus? At this point in the Gospel, you haven’t seen that yet, I don’t believe. So, why would they automatically assume this? This is what’s great about looking at all the Gospels when you study one. In Mark’s account of this story just before it, we see that Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. While He’s teaching, this demon-possessed man blurts out—can you imagine this in a Sunday service?—
“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit threw him into convulsions, shouted with a loud voice, and came out of him. They were all amazed, and so they began to ask each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” (Mark 1:24–27, CSB)
And He says, “Get out of him.” He immediately exorcises the demon. So word immediately breaks out that Saturday and says, “Oh, we’ve got a guy who has authority over demons.” So when He enters Peter’s house, the sun is setting. That means the Sabbath is over. All of a sudden, everybody’s like, “Let’s go get healed.” These demon-possessed people are not even able to carry themselves. Maybe you have someone in your life where you feel like you’re trying to do everything you can—you pray for them. Don’t give up. These demon-possessed people needed somebody to carry them to Jesus.
Again, the notes are on the website, so I’m going to run through these. First, I want to say, before we go into how demons can affect you in your life, I want to first tell you that these people had to wait until evening to be healed, not because they were afraid of breaking God’s law, but because they were afraid of the religious leaders. When Jesus heals on the Sabbath, it says in Mark 3:1–6, they immediately started to plot Jesus’ death.
Can you imagine that level of legalism? Where you disobey something they feel like is a proper religious rule, so they immediately start plotting Your death. Jesus says on the Sabbath, He says this in Luke 13:15: On the Sabbath, if you see your donkey in need of water, you’ll lead him to water, and yet you will not lead a human to healing? This is how religion is different from a relationship with God. Religion has no care for other humans, but Jesus does.
So the sick are healed, and I want you to recognize that the sick are coming from demon possession. How do we know that? It says that He heals the sick, but I’m telling you the sicknesses here are demon-related. Why am I saying that? It is because while there are two verbal activities—kicking out demons and healing the sick—there is only one act of transportation, and that is transporting the demon-possessed (v 16). So the demon-possessed are the ones that are being healed.
And this highlights that spirits are fully capable of inhabiting humans. Modern psychology has told us to stop paying attention to this stuff; everything has a pill that can be written for it. And I’m afraid, Church, that our love affair that we have with modern medicine has left us to no longer pray regarding demonic possession. It’s real. And you wouldn’t realize it because it’s a common diagnosis that we often just say, “Well, I don’t know, give them a Valium for that.”
Scriptural Examples of Demonic Possession
Now, how do we know? Because in the Scripture, this is what we see. These spirits that inhabit people, they can give them superhuman strength.
- In Luke 8:27–29, we see that a man is able to break free of chains and shackles because he’s filled with a demon.
- In Matthew 9:32, we see that a man is made mute—he cannot talk because of a demon.
- In Matthew 12:22, a demon makes a man blind and mute; it’s affecting his eyesight.
- In Mark 9:17–27, we see a boy who is foaming at the mouth, grinding his teeth, and he goes rigid stiff because of a demon.
- In Luke 13:11–16, we see a woman who fits the diagnosis of scoliosis—the demon makes her bent over.
- And in Matthew 17:14–18, a demon makes a boy have seizures.
These are all things we would write a prescription for.
Now, Jesus arrives on the scene and He wants to restore our spiritual health. And our spiritual health means that we must be freed from demonic strongholds in our life. There are times also when demons will even cause people to speak things. But I want to address this.
Can Christians Be Possessed?
The question that a lot of you are probably asking at this point is, does this affect Christians? Two things I want to tell you. There are outside Christians, and there are inside Christians. That’s right.
Here’s the outside Christian: “Yeah, I believe in Jesus. I even go to church on Sunday.” But you do not have the Spirit of God. Even demons proclaim they believe (Jas 2:19). If you see no life change, no love for the widow and the orphan (Jas 1:27), if you don’t see repentance over their sin—you see a foul mouth, you see things like addictions that they just don’t even care to break, right? Addictions to pornography, and they’re just like, “Yeah, that’s my private business. You stay out.” There is a difference between somebody who is filled with the Spirit of God and somebody who’s not, and it looks like the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–12). They’re poor in spirit. They mourn when they sin. They’re a humble person. They hunger and thirst to be righteous. They’re merciful. They’re pure in heart. They’re a peacemaker, and they’re persecuted and mocked for being righteous in the name of Jesus. That is someone who belongs to the kingdom of heaven. That’s someone that I call an inside Christian—somebody who has the Spirit of God on the inside.
That person cannot be demonically possessed. Why? Look at 1 John 4:4:
You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
You have God living in you. You think God’s going to let a demon come have fun in His home? Absolutely not. Furthermore, Jesus says in Matthew 12:28–29—this is the general idea of the passage—demons and the kingdom of God cannot coexist in the same space.
Jesus liberates the sick from demonic oppression with a word. Do you see that here? With a word. Yahweh created all of creation with words. In fact, it says in John 1:1–3:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. (CSB)
He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through Him, the Word. And here’s what’s beautiful: not only does He create the world with a word, but He is recreating the world with a word. He set free the demonic with a word. That’s how powerful He is. He just says, “Go,” and they have no choice.
Jesus’ compassion to restore us holistically is seen also in this beautiful word, all. In verse 16, He healed all who were sick. All. I love James 1:5, where it says:
Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.
He doesn’t rummage through your dirty underwear to find what kind of faults you have to see if you’re worthy of Him to bless you. Yes, you’re a sinner. No, you do not deserve compassion. But you better believe it when I tell you that Jesus still has compassion for you and He still wants to bless you. He is gracious. Verse 16: He healed all who were sick.
Jesus Compassionately Restores Our Moral Health
At this point, you can see how Jesus restores our health physically and He restores our spiritual health. But if you were to ask a random person in this room or outside, “Why did Jesus come?” they will likely tell you, “Well, He came to save us from our sin.” And that is true, because Jesus came to also save our moral health. Jesus compassionately restores our moral health.
How do we see that? You might be saying, “I don’t see that in this verse.” It’s in verse 17. But we’ve got to walk through this in order to figure out how he comes to this conclusion—this crazy pastor of ours. Matthew says that the ministry that Jesus performed in Peter’s house was to fulfill the prophet Isaiah. And then he quotes Isaiah 53:4. This is a book in the Old Testament. This is a book that was written by Isaiah 700 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 53:4 (CSB) says:
Yet he himself bore our sicknesses,
and he carried our pains;
but we in turn regarded him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
Matthew cites this verse: He carried our sicknesses. And he says—but there is nothing in this verse that says that Jesus absorbed the sicknesses inside of Him. So how is it that Matthew can say that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 53:4?
Isaiah was a prophet. As I said, he prophesied 700 years before Jesus, but he wrote about a Messiah who was going to come and restore all of creation. I wish I could read this whole passage, but in Isaiah 65:17–25, read it on your own time. It’s a beautiful passage. It begins with, “For I will create a new heaven and a new earth; the past events will not be remembered or come to mind” (v 17). And this will all be because of the Messiah. It says that you’re going to have people who are going to be able to eat and not worry about their food being stolen. There’s not going to be sicknesses; there’s not going to be pain; there’s not going to be tears. All of creation is going to be restored, and only those who love the Lord are going to exist on the earth. All of creation will be made new, all because of the Messiah. So you have to keep that in mind when you get to Isaiah 53, the passage our Matthew is citing.
So how is it that Matthew says that this is being fulfilled by Jesus when He heals them? Here are some things to remember. Struggle, pain, and death—all of that entered creation because of our sin. This is very much clear in Genesis 3:16–19, when God pronounces the curse on the man and the woman. The woman will bear children with pain, and the men will work the field by the sweat of their brow. Struggle and pain. And God said, “The day you eat of that tree, you will die” (Gen 2:17). Death entered the world—pain, sorrow, struggle. It all exists because sin entered the world.
Furthermore, Deuteronomy 28:15–68 gives a list of all the curses that are going to come upon Israel if they break God’s law. And these include illnesses like fever and inflammation. So if you struggle with inflammation, you just thank your ancestors. Boils, tumors, mental illness—Deuteronomy 28:28 mentions madness, and in verse 65 and following, that’s anxiety. But mental illness is even included as a symptom of sin entering the world.
Hear me very clearly: I am not saying if you have anxiety, it’s because you personally committed a sin. I’m not saying that if you have a fever, it’s because you sinned. I’m saying these things are in creation because we as a species have sinned. So when the Messiah comes, He bears our transgression on Himself. It says, He who knew no sin became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). He took our sin at Calvary, and He bore it on His own body so that when God smote Him with the sheer terror of wrath and punishment, He was punishing all the sin that we committed. Amen? Your sin has been paid for. But when He paid for that sin, He began to undo the effects of sin on creation. And that includes all sickness. That includes all demonic possession. That includes demonic oppression, mental anxiety, sheer terror, inflammation, pain, suffering. All of this is going to be undone, and it’s made possible because Jesus took our sin.
Therefore, the Messiah secures forgiveness for sin, and He reverses all of its effects on the world. And that is why Matthew can say Isaiah 53:4 is being fulfilled in Jesus. When He heals them of their physical ailments, He is pointing to Him carrying their sin, because the ailments are the result of sin.
But Church, you might be thinking, “Okay, He’s forgiven me of my sin. Why does my body hurt?” It’s because the job’s not done. The healing of the world will not be completed until the Lord Jesus comes back. But Revelation 21:4–5 makes it very clear: when Jesus comes back, this world will be rolled up. All of its pain is going with it. All inflammation, all disease, and mental illness will be gone. Death will be gone, because according to Revelation 22:3, the curse that God pronounced on creation in Genesis 3 will be no more. Jesus has paid for your sin. If you are in Jesus, you are forgiven. But your effects from sin will be removed fully and completely at His return.
So Church, you have seen today that Jesus has compassion to holistically restore every aspect of your life. He wants to heal you physically, spiritually, and morally. And some of you are going to experience this restoration in this lifetime more than other people. And that’s okay, because we’re all going to experience it to the same degree when Christ returns. We will all be perfect physically, spiritually, and morally when He returns. And that is why we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Let’s pray.
Father, I come to You and I ask to send Your Son. Lord Jesus, hear me now. Come, crack open the sky, and with a thunderous arrival, come and bring an end to all death, disease, decay, destruction, and wars. Bring it all to an end, and come reign as our King forever on earth. In Jesus’ name, amen.