Matthew 4:24
And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
His fame as a healer spread from Galilee through Palestine as far as Syria, so that people brought to him from every city, town and village all who suffered with every kind of sickness, torment, demon possession, mental affliction and paralysis, and he healed them all. This healing belonged with his going about all Galilee teaching in the synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and it drew great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and beyond Jordan. He is the great Healer, the Divine Physician and great Medical Missionary, the Majesty of heaven in lowly human garb who in tender pity and love turned none away but healed body and soul together. Healing the body was not separate from preaching to the soul but one work, for relieving physical misery touched hearts, opened doors and prepared the way for people to receive truth and salvation. His going ministry of preaching and healing is the pattern for mission to all peoples today, to be carried forward by ministers and medical workers in loving, practical service for sick bodies joined with work for the soul.
Wording and Setting
His fame went throughout all Syria, and people brought to him all sick people taken with divers diseases and torments, and those possessed with devils, and those lunatick, and those that had the palsy, and he healed them. The lunatick named mental affliction and the palsy named bodily helplessness, meaning mental illness and paralysis, and the sufferers brought embraced every kind of sickness and disease, including fever and deafness and blindness and paralysis and lameness and mental illness. His fame as healer spread from Jerusalem and Palestine as far as Syria, drawing people from far beyond Galilee, from near and far, rich and poor, from every city and town and village. They came to the places where they thought he would pass to call for help and receive his touch.
The verse belongs with his going about all Galilee teaching in synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all sickness and disease among the people. Those healings drew great multitudes from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and beyond Jordan, and seeing that multitude he went up into the mountain with his disciples and gave the beatitudes. His tireless traveling from place to place drew those following multitudes. Galilee's crowded, diverse population gave an open field for work in cities and villages, and he was not seeking seclusion. Yet the enthusiasm became so intense that he sometimes hid himself and took precautions against provoking Roman fears of insurrection.
His work among people began unobtrusively even before his public ministry, which helps explain why so many gladly heard him when it began. At Capernaum many had come from the region about Jerusalem seeking him near the feast of the Jews after hearing of his miracles. News of his power to heal all kinds of diseases reached beyond Judea into the surrounding region, giving hope regardless of status. That report led the Canaanite woman to bring her demon-afflicted daughter to him. After his death multitudes who had looked to him mourned as the sick continued to suffer without their only hope of relief.
The crowds flocking to be healed prove how universal and numerous sickness had become. This was not as created in the beginning but after more than two thousand years of violations of physical laws. It had grown from cutaneous distempers after the Exodus through gout and consumptions and burning ague and disorders of the visceral organs and pestilences to fullness in his day. Disease and mortality still increased and human life was shortened by continued violation of the laws of life.
Christ the Healer
He is the great Healer, the greatest physician ever to walk the earth, the Divine Physician, the great Medical Missionary, the Restorer, and the greatest evangelist. He is the Majesty of heaven and King of glory in lowly human garb, who humbled himself to take human nature to meet men where they were, bringing the tidings of salvation to rich and poor, free and bond. Though rich, he became poor that through his poverty men might be rich. His healing of every kind of disease, restoring sick and suffering people to health, was a major part of his ministry. This healing ministry was the first experience the disciples had of his ministry.
His healing and life-giving power was given by God and was moved by tender pity, sympathy, compassion, and love. He turned none away but healed them all, laying hands on them willingly and joyfully. He asked those who came whether they believed he could make them whole, and he never failed when asked. His healing of those brought from across Syria with divers diseases and torments, demonic possession, mental illness called lunacy, and paralysis called palsy, was part of his constant work of doing good, showing the gospel through both deeds and words.
He healed on a very large scale out of limitless compassion and constant self-sacrifice for souls for whom he would soon give his life. His work was not confined to time or place but bounded only by love and sympathy. Multitudes thronged to him so that no building could hold them, and every town and village through which he passed became his hospital. He sought people wherever they could be found — on Galilean hillsides, in great thoroughfares of travel, by the seaside, in private houses, in public streets, in synagogues, and in the evening with day-laborers who through the day had to work to support their families. He toiled all day preaching to the multitude and healing the sick brought to him, then after dismissing the people to return to their homes to rest and sleep, he frequently spent the entire night in prayer before coming forth to renew his labors in the morning.
His healing opposed the harm Satan had caused, overcame evil, and showed power to heal every kind of affliction of body and soul. It shows what people could receive by simple faith and trust in God's promises, and his healing promises claimed now with simple, unwavering faith give hope that he can cure maladies and restore eyesight and bodily infirmities, imparting health of every faculty and cleansing of heart. Yet trust in his healing does not permit carelessness, but requires exercising all God-given powers to be right and do right and to preserve the physical house.
He is healer of bodies as well as souls, with power reaching both physical and spiritual suffering. His healing of the body went together with his work of preaching the gospel and healing the soul. Obedience to the laws of God's kingdom brings health and prosperity. His twofold healing of soul and body restores the whole person, physical, mental, and spiritual, and the same twofold work is to be done for the relief of suffering.
He served people rather than seeking distinction for himself. He blessed and comforted suffering people as he traveled from place to place, meeting human suffering with sympathy, tenderness, and practical care. He brought comfort, hope, and peace to the afflicted, the hungry, the grieving, and the distressed, and relief to those who suffered in body and soul. His kind words soothed them as the healing power of love went out from him to the sick and distressed.
Healing Joined With Preaching
Healing of the body went together with teaching in the synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing of the soul. Healing and preaching were not separate branches but one example work combining missionary work with the work of the great Physician. His healing ministry was part of His service to people and accompanied His teaching about the way of life, and obedience to the laws of God's kingdom brings health and prosperity. His going about all Galilee in this united ministry drew great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond Jordan, and seeing that multitude He went up into the mountain with His disciples and gave the beatitudes. This going ministry of preaching and healing is to be obeyed by faith when the Master calls to a certain work even when means are not in sight, as faithfully as the disciples left their vocations to follow Him.
Healing was done first to reach the sick and the witnesses of the healing so they would then receive the preaching. Once immediate physical misery was removed the person could better turn thoughts toward light and truth. This order is the work set before those entrusted with the greatest wealth of truth, requiring leaving self out and spending energy in the Master's service.
Restoring the body prepares the way for restoring the soul, for He is the Restorer who opposed the harm Satan had caused. His compassionate acts restored the sick to health, awakened deep interest in His work, cultivated hearts, and prepared people to listen to His teaching. In this way hearts are prepared to receive truth, doors are opened, and people are made ready to receive truth and salvation through Christ. The work of bringing healing and light is to be carried out everywhere, and the light received is to be shared with all nations and peoples.
Relieving suffering touched hearts and opened opportunity to speak of His love. His constant work of doing good was marked by sympathy, compassion, and love, and it showed the gospel through both deeds and words in loving, practical service that revealed the gospel. His healing work went together with teaching the gospel truths of Scripture and imparting soul-saving truth. Medical missionary work is thus the gospel in practice, not to be separated from gospel ministry.
His life was one of untiring, unselfish service from place to place, in the temple and the synagogues, in the streets of the cities, in the marketplace, in the workshop, by the seaside, and among the hills. He traveled from place to place with great multitudes following Him, and His healing work continued despite the physical exhaustion of His ministry while He also taught people the way of eternal life. His life is to be a lesson book, and the work He began is to be carried forward by teaching those who need to learn to read the Word of God and by bringing the message of salvation to the thousands who have not yet heard it.
Crowds and Results
At Capernaum those brought to him sick and afflicted were healed by his life-giving power and tender pity, and being restored to health brought joy to the sufferers themselves and to their families. His work made many families happy, caused light to dawn upon households plunged into affliction, comforted the sorrowing, instructed the ignorant, and awakened hope in the despairing. He turned none away, and his own heart of love rejoiced with the joy of those relieved. The people received his message and believed his words, with the poor and humble most willing to accept the truth. Their hearts went out in reverential love for their Benefactor, many were led to believe on him, people flocked to him from throughout the country and rejoiced experiencing the grace of a merciful Saviour, and his acts of matchless mercy won the hearts of the multitudes so that his labors resulted in great good.
Model for Ministry Today
His going ministry of teaching, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and disease, which drew great multitudes from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and beyond Jordan, is the pattern for the mission to prepare a people in all parts of the world to stand before God. That pattern carries the gospel to all nationalities and peoples, as healing and light are carried everywhere and the light received is shared, for hearts are prepared to receive truth in this way. It is to be obeyed by faith when the Master calls to a certain work even when means are not in sight, as faithfully as the disciples left their vocations to follow Him.
Ministers are to follow that example by going out to the ignorant and out of the way, including those in neglected places. They are to seek people wherever they can be found — in the public streets, in private houses, in the synagogues, by the seaside — toiling in preaching and in healing as He toiled all day and then, after dismissing the people to rest, often spending the entire night in prayer before renewing labor in the morning. They are to seek people where they are, visit the sick, pray with them, and when needed use remedies found in nature. Those who are closely connected with Christ can in this way be used by God to help heal sufferers, for His blessing and comforting of sufferers from place to place is their example.
His healing of the sick is the pattern to be followed in medical institutions and by medical workers, for He is the greatest physician who ever walked this sin-cursed earth and the greatest Medical Missionary the world has ever known. Medical workers are to remember that the Lord God omnipotent reigns, come to Him for healing power, be baptized with His Holy Spirit, and be fitted for service as a blessing in restoring the spiritual and physical health of those who need healing. That fitness is shown in manifesting His cheerfulness and hope and grace as the highest ministry of truth, in noble, helpful, sympathetic relief of suffering humanity for both soul and body. Institutions that receive the sick and afflicted exist for this same purpose, to point them to the saving power of God's grace as He came into the world to heal sick and suffering humanity.
Medical missionary work is the gospel in practice, not to be separated from gospel ministry, for His care for physical suffering was joined to His gospel ministry and His mission was to bless suffering humanity and restore people to health. Caring for sick bodies joined with work for the soul follows what He did on earth, and relieving suffering touches hearts and opens opportunity to speak of His love. Trained workers may in His name bring relief to the sick and injured, and relief from pain prepares people to listen to the truth. Ministers also bless people by learning and sharing the principles of health reform.
His way of working by preaching the Word and relieving suffering by miraculous works of healing cannot be the way for God's servants to work now, because Satan will exercise his power by working miracles and spurious works of healing claiming to be divine will be wrought. For this reason sanitariums established out of the cities, with connected workers carrying forward genuine medical missionary work for physical healing combined with teaching the Word and intelligent educational work, are the provision whereby gospel medical missionary work is to be done for many souls and a guarding influence thrown around those who come for treatment. The work set before those entrusted with the greatest wealth of truth follows His one example work of healing first to reach the sick and the witnesses so they would then receive the preaching, and it requires leaving self out and spending energy in the Master's service. It appeals directly to those entrusted with the Lord's goods to use their means to advance the truth.