The Question Beneath Our Prayers
An Introduction to Matthew 8:1–17
Have you ever wondered whether Jesus would really help someone like you?
Not whether He can. Most people who know anything about Christianity believe Jesus is powerful and that He can do great things. The deeper question is whether He would. Would He help someone carrying your failures? Someone burdened by your circumstances? Someone who feels ashamed, unworthy, overlooked, or forgotten?
That question is often the one hiding beneath our prayers, even when we don’t say it out loud.
Matthew chapter 8 takes us straight into that question. Having just recorded the Sermon on the Mount, the highest, most demanding teaching Jesus ever gave, Matthew now turns to proof. He has shown us the Person of Jesus and the Preaching of Jesus. Now he shows us the Proof of Jesus being the Messiah, through a sequence of miracles. And the first three people Jesus heals are not who you’d expect.
A leper. A Gentile centurion. A woman confined to her bed with a fever. The outcast, the outsider, and the overlooked. Matthew is not simply showing us what Jesus can do; he is showing us who Jesus does it for.
The leper in this passage didn’t doubt Christ’s power. He doubted whether Jesus would use that power for someone like him. If we’re honest, many of us ask the same question, just dressed in our own circumstances.
H.A. Ironside wrote that we need to learn to confide in Jesus more fully, because as we do, we discover by practical experience how real and definite His concern is for those who trust His love and count on His power.
That is exactly what this passage sets out to show us — three times, three different ways.