Matthew 9:35b
"…and healing every sickness and every disease among the people."
There were none excepted! That’s the difference. When Jesus healed the multitudes, He healed them all, but they weren’t all believers. Don’t ever get that idea. The press, as we sometimes refer to it, those multitudes in upon Him, hey, they weren’t following Him because of His spiritual offer. They were following Him for what I said before, the free lunch! Nothing did they like better when He came out with those loaves and fishes.
I’m going to be making reference to it sometimes as I go into this Epistle of Hebrews, but remember back in John’s Gospel, when the disciples had been fishing all night and caught nothing? And they came to shore and there the Lord was. He asked them, you remember, "Have you any food, any meat?" "No," they replied, "Haven’t caught a thing all night." But, in the next verse it tells us that while He was standing there on the shore. What was also beside Him on the shore? "Bread and fish on the fire." So what we have to understand is the fact that all that was done was in a material or external-ism of sight, sound, smell, taste or feeling realm as was that of the priesthood and the law and prophets. We're told to walk by trusting God in the spiritual capacity and internal non-material world of the Word or law of God.
Since He’s the Creator, He’s the perfect operator of everything. Have you ever stopped to think, He must be the best chef the world has ever seen or known? I’ll bet that was the best tasting fish and bread that those disciples had ever tasted! And that gave rise then to the Lord’s question. "Peter do you love me more than – those?"
And I bet it was kind of tough to say, why yes Lord, because that must have been mighty good tasting food. Well, that’s beside the point. But He came to fulfill all the promises given to the Nation of Israel. And when He did He healed every sickness. Every disease. Because after all what was He proving? That He was the Christ! That’s what these "words of the beginning of Christ" were to do. To prove to Israel Who He was and is.
Now then, let’s skip over into chapter 10. And you have no idea how mad people can get when you show them these verses. You wouldn’t think people would get angry at the Word of God, would you? Oh but they do. If it flies in the face of what they’ve always thought, been taught and known. Oh, they get angry. There's heads nodding all over the place out there, I just know there are!. Sunday School teachers you know what it’s like. Oh they can get angry. But look what it says, I probably wont do it justice. I don’t think I can, but anyway. Chapter 10 verse 1,
Matthew 10:1-2a
"And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these;…"
He’s imparting to them the same power that He had. Now we’re not going to go through and rehearse them because you all certainly know who the Twelve disciples were but alright we’ll come all the way down to verse 5.
Hebrews 6:1a
"Therefore,…"
Because of what has just been said in the last verses of chapter 5, that it was necessary to feed them milk because they weren’t ready for meat. So Paul says:
Hebrews 6:1a
"Therefore leaving (or moving on from) the principles (or the words of the beginning of Christ, and) of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection;…" (or unto a maturity)
This is just like the Bible as a whole. Yeah! It’s a progressive revelation from Genesis to the book of Revelation; it’s a progressively revealing the things of God and of Christ. Alright, so now then to take another look at the "words of the beginning of Christ" or His earthly ministry. We’re going to go right back where we left off and that was in Matthew chapter 10.
We saw in chapter 9, that Jesus went everywhere preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. My, very few people understand that that is not this Gospel of the Grace of God. This Gospel of the Grace of God was that which was revealed to the Apostle Paul through the revelation of the mysteries (Deuteronomy 29:29 remember). But the Gospel of the Kingdom is what Jesus and, beginning with John the Baptist and the twelve, are proclaiming to the Nation of Israel and that is the good news that the King is here. He’s ready to give them the promised Kingdom that was promised all the way back to the Abrahamic Covenant. Now, in view of those promises then, we jumped into chapter 10 and we have the twelve disciples chosen and now here comes their marching orders. In verse 5:
Matthew 10:5a
"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and He commanded them, (now listen, when the Lord of Glory gave a command, that was not to be taken lightly. That was set in concrete and He commanded them) Go not into the way of the Gentiles,…" Did you hear that? Did you see that? How many times must we read this before we see it and understand just what He's telling them. We, my wife and I even as assistant adult Sunday School teachers missed or skipped over these verses back we were there. And I know if we did then there are thousands of others who do also.
Matthew 10:5a-6
"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and he commanded them, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans (who were half-breeds) enter ye not But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
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