Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back. This is our daily devotional for Thursday, November 20th, 2025. Now, realize that I'm recording this a day in advance, and so I'm speaking by faith, not by sight here. But it is my guess that last night's meal was absolutely incredible. And I hope that our time together last night, if you were able to make it or if you watched it on here, It actually records on here. But nevertheless, I hope that last night was a blessing to you as I shared to you One of the things that I'm gonna come to today is we continue our journey through the gospel according to Matthew Before we get to where we're going today. Do you remember yesterday? We were there in Matthew chapter 8 and we saw it's really fascinating y'all you not only do we see a definitive statement from Jesus about everything he had experienced thus far but in his earthly ministry, but you never hear anything like this again. You come close a few times, like the woman with the alabaster jar, that kind of stuff, but the statement made in Matthew chapter eight about this centurion, you remember what we saw yesterday, the centurion comes to Jesus at Capernaum, remember I showed you the courtyard where most likely that took place outside of the synagogue in Capernaum, but nevertheless, the centurion comes to Jesus and says, I've got this servant, And and he's he's got it. He's afflicted. He's paralyzed. He's in agony. Please come and heal him Jesus says, all right, I'm gonna come to him and I'm gonna I'm gonna heal me says no, no I'm a man in authority If I say to one soldier you go there he goes and I said this one come here He comes and if I say to make it happen it happens. Now, this is the Patrick Malfoy's version Jesus responds to him and and what he's saying to Jesus is You don't have to come You have authority You have all authority. What this is, is this centurion, who is a Gentile. recognizes that Jesus is not just some prophet. He knows that Jesus is so much more than that. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Son of God. And he says, from one man in authority to another man whose authority is so much greater than mine, you just say the word and it's done. Just like it is with me. So much more with you. And Jesus says, I haven't found anyone with faith as great as this. And there we see what faith is. Faith is not just an idea, it's not just a thought, it is action. That's why James says, faith without works is dead. That's why Luther said, we are saved by faith alone, but that faith is not alone. It is accompanied with action, with belief. Faith and belief are two different things. Faith is an idea. Well, it's not. Knowledge, faith, and belief are different things. Real faith is not just knowing. Say, oh yeah, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. It's living like it. and that centurion did so. And then Jesus makes that interesting statement about how, hey, when it comes time to sit down at the feast, it's gonna be subjects from the East and from the West that come in, but the ones who are already in the kingdom, they're gonna be thrown out into darkness where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. What he's talking about there, he's prophesying really the engrafting of the Gentiles and how they're gonna come and it's the ones who are here The ones that he went to, John chapter 1, he came unto his own, but his own would not receive him. Those are the ones that will be cast out of the great feast. So, nevertheless, that's what we saw yesterday. But where we continue today is equally important because we find something different here. And y'all, what is arguable, what can be arguably construed or arguably the case that can be made is that we're seeing really kind of sort of the first church where we come to next. Why do I say that? Well, I want to read something from Isaiah, and then we'll get to our passage, because the two go together. But let's pray first, because we need help to understand this. Our God and our Father, we pray that you would be with us now. Give us wisdom, give us understanding. Let us see not just the surface level of your word, but its deeper implications. And not only in an academic theological sense, in a very practical sense, as it relates to us right now. Father, please let us hear the calling, the command, the invitation of your word now. And we're not gonna do that without your Holy Spirit, so please guide us. And we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, y'all, so before we get back to Matthew chapter eight, I wanna read a passage that has great bearing. Book of Isaiah, Isaiah is God's prophet to Judah, and he comes before Jeremiah, this is around 700 years or so before Jesus was born, and he comes with this message of warning, and that is, if you don't turn back to God, to your father, he's going to destroy you. Now Isaiah was told they weren't gonna listen to him, but he goes anyway. He follows God's command. He makes these pronouncements of judgment over and over again, but interlaced in his pronouncements of judgment are also these pronouncements of hope because God always preserves a remnant for himself. Always. In the midst of all those that turn away, he always preserves some faithful folks. And what Isaiah is doing here is he's giving a prophecy to them. And it's in Isaiah chapter 53. He begins, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of Jehovah been revealed? Now, what message is he talking about? He's talking about the message of hope. He's talking about the message of fidelity, where you're supposed to be trusting in God, where you're supposed to be doing what God says. And he said, who's heard us? Who's understood? And then he tells us who. Verse two, he grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we consider Him stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds are we healed. You know, it's for this reason, Isaiah 53, and take your pick, Isaiah 9, I mean, there's so many passages that some refer to the book of Isaiah, and we'll be hearing from Isaiah very soon here in our Advent series. But there are those that refer to Isaiah, not just as the prophet Isaiah, but the gospel according to Isaiah as well, because he points to Jesus Christ in so many ways. And indeed, not only does he point forward to Jesus, When we read the Gospels, we see that the writers point back to Isaiah, and they say, this is it. Hey, 700 years ago, all of this was promised, and this is it coming to fruition. This is it coming to pass, just as was promised 700 years ago. And I'm using a round number there. But 700 years ago, this was promised. And we see that today. And also we see that thing that I talked about, where in some senses, we see the early church. Why? Well, verse 14, it says, when Jesus came, now this is right after the centurion, the centurion's been sent back. Verse 14, he's still in Capernaum. Remember, Capernaum is the city of Jesus, right? We talked about that last night. But nevertheless, it says, when Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. When evening came, now no change in location, he's still there in Peter's house. When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. Now, I'm gonna talk about why he did this, but there are those that argue, and I think an argument can be made for this, that what we see at Peter's house is really the first church. It's the first central location when those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ come together. Now, that argument wears a little thin because we don't see a worship service there. And you might say, well, church is not just for worship. No, but the sanctuary, right? The physical church. And the physical church can pick up and move anywhere. It can be a grove of oak trees. It can be a storefront, a warehouse. It can be a beautiful sanctuary like ours. But y'all, it's when the church is physically gathered. People say, oh, you don't have to go to church to be a Christian. Well, that's true. You don't, but you can't love Jesus if you don't love the church that he died for. And also, you cannot be obedient to Christ unless you are gathered with his people in corporate worship on the Lord's day. We see it in the book of Acts. We see it hinted at in Revelation. If you're gonna be obedient to God, you need to get yourself in a Bible-believing church. It doesn't have to be ours. Really doesn't, but you need to get yourself in a Bible-believing church. And the reason the argument is made is that this is the first church is because you have Jesus going to this house, Peter's house, and all of these things begin to happen there. And yes, just so happened to have been there. This is in Capernaum. Y'all, this is one of the places that was identified very early on by Helena, which is, again, Constantine's mother, who went and did a great exploration. There's a lot of veracity really put in the scholarship, the time and the effort. And she's doing this only 150 or so years after Jesus died. It's kind of like today, where we know that certain things happened. right, and even surrounding relatively minor events. Somebody asked me, Steele's Tavern, is that where Lee met with so-and-so? Historians know that kind of thing, okay? We have it documented. We know where these things took place, and certainly, they knew where Peter's house was. Now, you might be saying, well, what's this weird thing over the top? That's actually a church that is built over the top of where Peter's mother-in-law was healed. That's Peter's home. I mean, that's an A plus site. We know that is where Peter's house was. We know that when Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law, that was the place he went. We know that when people brought demons, demon-possessed people, to be healed by Jesus and all the sick, with a word, he healed them. And so you see those that have placed their faith in Christ gathered together in one spot. And y'all, that's what church really is. As I've said, there's an added component to it, and that is gathered together in that one spot to worship Him, but it's not gathered together in one spot to worship alone. It's gathered in one spot to be healed, to be nourished, to be enriched. It's gathered in one spot to enjoy one another, to marvel, to offer testimony. That's what church is. And that's why church is so important. Y'all, I know we live in the age and we stream our services on Sunday morning. I know that from time to time, people can't get, I get all of that, y'all, that's, but listen, if you never attend church and you don't have some medical condition and, you know, the medical condition thing, COVID really exposed a lot of this stuff, right? Oh, no, church is dangerous. Well, did you go to Walmart? Did you go to a ball game? Did you go to the movies? Look, y'all, people do what they want to do. It comes down to that, unless, you know, barring there's some health-related situation going on where sometimes people are awaiting surgeries or under treatment. I get all of that, and forget about it. It doesn't matter what I get. I'm not important. God understands all of those different things, but I'm not talking about those circumstances. I'm talking about if you can, you should. And we see a very early example of that in Matthew chapter eight, where the people who have placed their faith in Jesus come together. Now the question is why? Why did they place their faith in Jesus? Why did they come together? Now, on the surface level, we can say, well, what do you mean why? Matthew chapter five, I mean, even chapter four, verse 23, Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread over Syria. All people brought to him who were ill with various diseases, et cetera, et cetera, were healed. You hear about all of these crowds that are gathering, Matthew five. Now, when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down and began to teach. It is arguable that people said, well, they just heard about this going on. But y'all, it's deeper than that. It's deeper than that. Why? Well, Matthew tells us what's really going on. Yes, yes, people are placing their faith in Jesus. Yes, people are coming together in one spot because they believe on the name of Jesus Christ. That's why it's arguable that that's the first church. But The deeper side of this is how this portion of our passage ends. Matthew tells us why this happened. Verse 17, and forget about Matthew, this is God breathing out his word. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. See if this sounds familiar. He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases. Does that sound familiar? Isaiah 53.4, surely he took up our infirmity and carried our sorrows. Matthew uses a different word there for diseases, but sorrows arguably in 53 could be translated diseases. And then we go on to find out, hey, he paid for our sins too. So what you see here going on is yet again, this paradigm that John really brings out a lot more than Matthew. And it's the paradigm of the sign. The point of the miracles, y'all, it's not that, obviously, the people that were demon possessed, the people that were sick, Peter's mother-in-law, obviously are recipients of God's grace. It's a beautiful thing for them. But the deeper point shows us something about Jesus. Yes, he's wonderful. Yes, he's sinless. Yes, he's powerful. All of those things. But it's here for the first time that we really see that Jesus, he's a man on a mission. He's a man on a mission sent to fulfill all of the prophecies about him. Now it's fascinating that Matthew, that God, now remember Matthew's writing to a predominantly Jewish audience. Some have converted, some have not. It's fascinating that this is the portion that he chose But y'all, when he starts quoting Isaiah 53, the Jewish mind doesn't stop with, oh yeah, he took up our infirmities and carried our diseases. The Jewish mind continues with the prophecy that he was pierced our transgressions, that he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. And therein we see the mission that Jesus is on. That yes, it's wonderful the things that he's doing, it's important that he's fulfilling the prophecy, but y'all, the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 53 is not healing people. That just points to the validity of who he is. The ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah 53 is Jesus, the spotless lamb, being offered as our sacrifice. It's Jesus being pierced for our transgressions. It's Him being punished for our iniquities. And by His wounds, we are healed. And y'all, there's a physical aspect to this, but the ultimate healing that Matthew is pointing to here, that Isaiah was prophesying that the Messiah, Jesus, God, the Son would bring, is not physical healing. Though that comes too, sooner or later. Sometimes it's this life, sometimes it's in the next, doesn't matter. It matters, but that's God's business, which one it's going to be. He will heal you. But the ultimate fuller healing that's pointed to here is healing us from our being dead in our transgressions and in our sins. Our being blind so that we can't see, our being deaf so we can't hear the good news. Jesus' ultimate healing is what he says in Revelation 21 five, behold, I'm making all things new. It means you, it means me. It means no matter what we face, he's working. Do you know that? No matter what we go through, he is always working for our good and for his glory. And praise be to God that Jesus, knowing he was a man on a mission, did not flinch, did not turn back. but kept on going, and here we find the sign of it. It took place right here, right in Peter's house. Let's pray. God and our Father, we thank you so much for your kindness, your gentleness, your grace, your mercy, your peace, and also the healing that only you can provide through Jesus Christ. We pray that you would work in our hearts that we would see our need to gather together with one another as we worship you, as we celebrate you. But also, Father, let us see the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, how none compared to him, how none can do what he does. And in seeing these things, let us reflect heavily on the fact that we did nothing to deserve your favor, but you gave it to us freely. Thank you, Father, for your love and for your mercy. In turn, let us be loving and merciful, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time. Lord willing, we'll be back tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Until then, have a great day, Thursday, morning, afternoon, evening, night, whatever it is. Take care.