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Matthew 8:23-27
And when Jesus got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you little-faith lot?” Then he rose and told the winds and the sea to behave, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[T]he proper reaction to Jesus is “faith.” Again, this isn’t a general religious response to the world around; a “religious response” to a great storm at sea might be awe and terror, or frightened prayer to the sea-god. No: this “faith” is quite simply a trust that Jesus is the sovereign one who has authority over the elements (90-91).
First, how do we regard Jesus? It’s all very well to say in church, or in private devotion, that he’s the Son of God, the Lord, the Messiah, or whatever. Do we actually treat him as if he’s got authority over every aspect of our lives and our world?
A. Orendorff
I imagine that in response to Wright’s question, judging by the level of anxiety and stress that is evident in most people’s lives (including my own), we would have to say, “No.” We may confess wonderful, pious things about Jesus in our churches and in our prayers, but by default we simply do not believe that he really has “authority over every aspect of our lives and our world.” The wonderful thing about this story is that as we mediate upon it we notice at least two power lessons.
First, the storms in our lives are meant to lead us to despair of ourselves. Terror is a natural reaction to a world out of our control, as long as our eyes our fixed on us. “Save us, Lord,” the disciples cry, “we are perishing.” In other words, “We’re finished. We can’t get out of this ourselves. We can’t hack it. We can’t make it on our own.” The point of life’s overwhelming moments are just that, to overwhelm us and thereby drive us more desperately to Christ.
Second, Jesus not only tells the winds and the sea to behave, he brings with his sovereign authority a “great calm.” This gift is more than just a cessation of worry or the absence of stress, it is, as Wright might say, Jesus “putting the world to rights.” It is new creation in the here and now: real rest in anticipation of the ultimate rest when Jesus returns.
Seeing this Jesus ought not to lead us away from storms but rather to pray more earnestly within the midst of our storms for Jesus to show himself sovereign and give us this “great calm.”
Matthew 8:14-17
And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him. That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[I]n this sequence we start to see . . . a more rounded view of this authority. Jesus doesn’t have, as it were, absolute power for its own sake. He has authority in order to be the healer. And he is the healer by taking the sickness and pain of all the world on to himself. In verse 17 Matthew quotes from Isaiah 53.4, a passage more often associated in Christian thinking with the meaning of Jesus’ death, bearing our griefs and sorrows on the cross; but for Matthew there is no sharp line between the healing Jesus offered during his life and the healing for sin and death which he offered through his own suffering. The one leads naturally to the other.
. . . authority through healing, healing through suffering. Authority and suffering are strangely concentrated in this one man, who nobody at this stage quite understood, but who everyone found compelling (86-88).
A. Orendorff
Without the cross, Matthew 8:17 is simply incomprehensible. How, we ought to ask, is Jesus’ healings and exorcisms evidence that he “took” our illnesses and “bore” our diseases? Certainly there is power in this story, but substitution . . . where is there substitution?
It is interesting, as Wright points out, to note that for Matthew, no sharp distinction between Jesus as a physical healer and Jesus as a spiritual healer exists. The two flow into one another. They blur and blend so intimately that neither can stand apart from the other. What we see here isn’t Jesus just flexing his “god-muscles” (so to speak); rather, we are given a foretaste, an anticipation, of what Jesus will do for all of us upon the cross. Taking up our illnesses; bearing our diseases . . . absorbing our sin. “Authority through healing, healing through suffering.”
Matthew 8:8-12
But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
“Faith” is defined here, it seems, not as a general religious attitude to life, but as something much more specific: recognizing that Jesus posses authority (84).
The challenge for today’s Christian is to ask: what does it mean to recognize, and submit to, the authority of Jesus himself? . . . There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that “faith” is a general awareness of a supernatural dimension, or a general trust in the goodness of some distant divinity, so that some might arrive at this through Jesus and others by some quite different route. “Faith,” in Christian terms, means believing precisely that the living God has entrust his authority to Jesus himself, who is now exercising it for the salvation of the world (see 28.19) (85).
A. Orendorff
If faith is the recognition that “Jesus posses authority”—that, as Wright says, “the living God has entrust his authority to Jesus himself, who is now exercising it for the salvation of the world”—then this ought to not only transform our understanding of “spirituality”—i.e., the action and out-living of our faith—but it ought also to transform our understanding of authority.
First, a note on faith. Too often we associate faith with an emotional or mystical experience of the divine. Here, however, we see that while it is surely not less than that, it is indeed much more. Faith is submission to the authority of King Jesus, a believing, trusting submission that sees Christ as not only able to rule, but willing to save us through the exercise of that rule. The authority of Jesus, in which our faith ultimately rests, is an authority displayed supremely upon the cross, in his dying for his enemies and praying on their behalf, “Father, forgive them, they just don’t get it.”
Second, on authority. The vision of a crucified king ought to simultaneously transform our understanding of authority as well. Even here, Jesus’ authority is displayed not in might or ridicule, which is how we often see and display authority, but in touching the unclean and healing his enemy’s servant. So too, our use of whatever authority God has entrusted to us cannot be anything less. It cannot be an authority that lords itself over others. Rather, it must be a servant authority that sets itself to using whatever power it has to bring about God's kingdom through willing and redemptive suffering.
Matthew 7:24-29
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. . . . And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” . . . And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
Doing what Jesus says, or not doing it: this makes the difference between a house that stays standing in a storm and a house that alls with a great crash. . . . Are we “doing” Jesus words, or only reading them, hearing them, and thinking how fine they are? (80-81).
A. Orendorff
There’s just no getting around it: obedience matters. “Doing” or “not doing” are what distinguish the wise from the foolish, the stable from the soon to tumble. Much like the law contained within the Mosaic Covenant—to which Matthew likens his gospel by dividing it into five separate parts marked by one variation or another on the phrase “when Jesus finished these sayings” (Matt. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1)—obedience is not what gets us into God’s family, though it is what marks us as members. What gets us in is God’s redemptive work in Christ, applied by grace and appropriated by faith. Likewise, our obedience flows from that same Spiritual source. Another (more grammatical) way to put this is: Our moral imperatives are empowered by God’s redemptive indicatives. And yet, no matter how much we rightly stress the indicatives—what God has done for us—we dare not turn away from the imperatives—what we must do in response. Obedience, as Jesus plainly illustrates, makes all the difference in the world.
Matthew 7:21-23 Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Tom Wright,
Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1) The choice is spelled out at last, and there’s no avoiding it, no softening the hard line. Choices matter; actions and motives matter. Learning to follow Jesus and to know God as father matters. Eternal issues are at stake. . . . And as soon as you hear a little voice saying “maybe Jesus didn’t mean it – surely he can’t have been that strict – maybe it’ll all come right in the end no matter what we do,” you need the next warning.
Some it seems will have done remarkable things “in Jesus’ same” but without knowing him personally. Mighty deeds are not a final indication of whether someone really belongs to Jesus or not. . . . What counts will be knowing Jesus – or rather, being known by him (76-78).
A. Orendorff To the list of “mighty works” in v. 22, those of us in Christian ministry would be wise to add (with sobriety and perhaps a shudder), “Did we not preach powerful sermons in your name, did we not sing beautiful songs in your name, did we not teach educational Sunday School’s in your name, did we not build great worship halls in your name, did we not organize meaningful retreats in your name, did we not work many long hours in your name?”
We are tempted (perennially tempted actually) to justify ourselves by our works—whether by what we do and who we are—and if, when we read the closing verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, all we hear is one more exhortation to, “Do more. Try harder. Be better,” then we have not heard Jesus at all. What matters, Jesus says, is knowing Him, or rather, as Wright and countless others have pointed out, being known by him. This does not release us from the demands of Jesus. Obedience matters as well, not, however, in order to gain God’s merited favor or to receive his earned blessing but because, in Christ, we have already gained God’s unmerited favor and received his free, gracious blessing.
These verses ought to make us shiver, but in doing so we dare not turn to more and greater “mighty works.” Instead, with humility and trust we must return again to this Jesus, who is Himself the narrow gate and straight way.
Matthew 7:7-11
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
Maybe our refusal to [ask, seek and knock] actually makes God sad or puzzled: why aren’t his children telling him how it is for them, what they’d like him to do for them? . . . [F]or most of us, the problem is not that we are too eager to ask for the wrong things. The problem is that we are not nearly eager enough to ask for the right things (72).
We may well say that we’ve tried it and it didn’t work. Well, prayer remains a mystery. Sometimes when God seems to answer “no” we find it puzzling. . . . Some of the wisest thinkers of today’s church have cautiously concluded that, as God’s kingdom comes, it isn’t God’s will to bring it all at once. We couldn’t bear it if he did. God is working like an artist with difficult material; and prayer is the way some of that material co-operates with the artist instead of resisting him (73).
A. Orendorff
Taking prayer seriously is scary work. Asking, seeking and knocking are all unavoidably vulnerable verbs. They exposed us, first to the desperateness of our need and then to the free and incoercible grace of God. All real prayer begins with the bald admission of our own personal powerlessness as well as our culpable inability to “manage” life alone. Helplessness is never a comfortable feeling. Yet is here, at the moment of our deepest vulnerability and need, that God shows himself as “Father,” ready with “good gifts” to answer our asking, disclose to our seeking and open to our knocking.
Matthew 7:1-2 & 5
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. . . . You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[Jesus’ warning against judgment] doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have high standards of behavior for ourselves and our world, but that the temptation to look down on each other for moral failure is itself a temptation to play God. . . . [H]e is warning that the very people who seem most eager to tell others what to do (or more likely what not to do) are the people who should take a long look in the mirror before they begin (70).
A. Orendorff
A wise person once wrote, “Relief never comes by confessing the sins of other people. Everybody has to confess their own.” As much as we may like to confess by way of proxy (or better yet, to force a confession by way of well-meaning coercion), the truth remains the same: everyone must confess their own. It does us no good to confess the sins of others, whether to ourselves, to them, to other people or to God. Nor can we force confession (even, as we say to ourselves, if it’s “for their own good”). Our lot is to examine ourselves, to “get the log out of our own eye,” and only after wards to gently lead other to see and own the speck that belong to them. How much easier it would be to just play God.
Matthew 6:25-34
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . So don’t worry away with your, “What’ll we eat?” or “What’ll we drink” or “What’ll we wear?” For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Instead, make your top priority God’s kingdom and his way of life, and all these things will be given to you as well. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself. One day’s trouble at a time is quite enough (ESV & Tom Wright paraphrase).
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[Jesus’] teaching grew out of his own experience. When he told his followers not to worry about tomorrow, we must assume he led them by example. He wasn’t always looking ahead anxiously, making the present moment count only because of what might comes next. No: he seems to have had the skill of living totally in the present, giving attention totally to the present task, celebrating the goodness of God here and now. If that’s not a recipe for happiness, I don’t know what is (66).
A. Orendorff
Often I approach the words of Scripture as though they were disembodied etchings carved immediately by God’s finger onto tablets of celestial stone. I so easily forget the humanity that also stands behind them. What therefore strikes me about Jesus’ teaching on anxiety is not so much the profound or commanding nature of his words, but the life that was no doubt reflective of them. To live “totally in the present” is indeed a skill both hard-won and easily-lost. Yet in Jesus we are shown a man who had every reason to worry—who lived every breath beneath the impending reality of the cross—and yet tells his followers, just the same, to consider the lilies and examine the birds. I supposing knowing that you’re going to be rejected is a strong incentive to live for today instead of tomorrow. The challenge, then, is of course to go and do likewise. To live, as it were, anticipating the cross, freed from anxiety and wholly given over to God’s kingdom and perfect righteousness.
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