Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Did Jesus Heal People? | The Gospels | Matthew 4:23–25

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Why did Jesus perform so many miracles? What were his healings actually showing us? And why were desperate, hurting people the ones flocking to him? In today’s episode, Keith explores how Matthew 4:23–25 shows that Jesus’s miracles were a glimpse of what the world looks like when God takes the throne—and a promise of the complete restoration still to come. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Matthew 4:23–25

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Today we're in Matthew chapter 4, and before I read the passage, I just want to ask you a couple questions. How would you summarize Jesus' message? In other words, if you had to take all of Jesus' teaching, how would you condense it down into a sentence or two?

And then my second question is this, why did Jesus perform miracles? I think a lot of people believe that Jesus performed miracles to validate that he was God, the son of God. And I think there's truth in that, but I'm not sure that's the main reason Jesus did miracles. Okay, with those two questions in our mind, let's read Matthew chapter 4, just a few verses here, starting in verse 23. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. news about him spread all over Syria and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases those suffering severe pain the demon possessed those having seizures and the paralyzed and he healed them

large crowds from galilee the decapolis Jerusalem Judea and the region across the jordan followed him let's pray father i pray that you would open your word that we would be able to see your truth in it and I pray that you would open our heart, that we would receive your truth and that it would change us to make us the men and women you want us to be. Amen. Here's what I want you to see in this passage. I want you to see what Jesus' message was, and I want you to see what the miracles actually meant. And then we'll add one more. I want you to see who showed up when Jesus started teaching.

So the first is that the message that Jesus taught was the kingdom of God. Verse 23, Jesus went throughout Galilee. In other words, he went from place to place, from town to town, village to village, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. His message was not the good news of a technique for a happier life. His message was not the good news of a self-improvement program. It's not even at this early stage in his ministry and explanation for how you get forgiven. No, the good news is the news of the kingdom.

The announcement is that in Jesus, God became king and has begun. to reign. Now you might notice that Matthew is the only gospel writer who says the kingdom of heaven. Mark and Luke say the kingdom of God. Matthew was a Jewish man and his gospel was written primarily to a Jewish audience. So out of reverence, the Jews did not say the name of God. So the kingdom of heaven is a reverent Jewish way of avoiding the divine name. When Matthew says the kingdom of heaven, he's not talking about a different kingdom than Mark and Luke were, nor is he just saying the afterlife. When Jesus says kingdom, he's not primarily talking about a place you go when you die. He's talking about a reign and a rule, the active kingship of God breaking into history. Notice the verb Matthew chooses. Jesus is proclaiming

this. He's announcing it. Imagine a herald making a great proclamation. A herald does not debate. A herald does not negotiate terms or take a vote. A herald walks into the town square and announces what the king has already decided. The decision has been made somewhere else by someone else, and your job is to hear it and get on board with it. That is what the gospel is before it is anything else. It is good news. It's not good advice. And watch the order that all this happens in.

In tomorrow's episode, we're going to start going through the service. on the Mount, which is commonly referred to as the greatest sermon ever preached. And of course, that's true because it was preached by Jesus. But for now, notice that Jesus announces the kingdom before he explains how his people live inside of his kingdom. In other words, Jesus does not open with ethics. He opens with news. The king came first. The instructions come second. That's the way it always is. So verse 23, he heals every disease and sickness among the people. And now, we tend to see the miracles as kind of Jesus's credentials or his resume, as if Jesus were saying, here is a supernatural act to prove that I have the authority to say the religious things I'm about to say.

Sometimes we see miracles as evidence of Jesus' deity. But if that's true, it's only partially true. Because in Matthew, the miracles are the message. They're the message in physical form. They demonstrate what the kingdom will be like. See, Isaiah had already told, Israel, what the arrival of God's reign would look like when it finally came. In Isaiah 35, he says, the eyes of the blind will be open, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping. In Isaiah 61, he says, good news will be preached to the poor, the brokenhearted bound up, prisoners released. So when Jesus opens blind eyes and unbends bent bodies, he's not doing something adjacent to his preaching. He's saying, this is what it looks like when God takes

the throne of the world. You can watch him make this argument himself in Matthew 11. There, John the Baptist is in prison and he sends word to ask, are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else? And Jesus says, go tell John what you see. The blind sea, the lame walk, the deaf here, the poor have good news preached to them. The works are the answer. And in Matthew 12, he makes it explicit. He says, if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Let's look back at verse 24 again. It says, news about him, news about Jesus, spread all over Syria, and the people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed,

and he healed them. Matthew is showing you a world under occupation, body, are held hostage, minds are held hostage, spirits are held hostage. Every category of human ruin, of human hurt and pain is represented in one crowd, and a king walks in and he starts to take back territory one person at a time. Every healing in Galilee is a small piece of ground reclaimed under the name of Christ. But it all hasn't been reclaimed yet. I mean, we should be honest about the limits of the kingdom, at least here and now, because we're sitting here with real bodies and some of our bodies are not working and a sermon that over promises is cruelty. See, every single person Jesus healed in Galilee eventually died. Every single one, even Lazarus, who he raised from the dead,

eventually died again and stayed dead. The paralyzed man who walked out of that crowd was buried within 50 years. These healings are not the finished kingdom. They are the first light on the horizon of a morning that has not yet fully broken. That's not a disappointment. It's a promise. What Jesus did in a handful of bodies, he intends to do the whole creation. Just like he healed their bodies,

he will heal all of creation. You've seen the preview. The film is still coming. In verse 25, it says, large crowds followed him. I want you to picture that crowd. It wasn't a sanctuary full of good people and good clothes. No, Matthew has just told you,

who is in the crowd. It's a crowd of the sick and the convulsing. It's a crowd of the tormented. People are carried in on mats by their friends because they couldn't get there on their own. People who had been to every physician they could afford had nothing to show for it. This is a crowd whose single common qualification is they had run out of options. They were desperate. They were needy. They were hurting. And notice who is not in this crowd. Nobody in that crowd came because their life was working. Nobody walked up to Jesus in Galilee because things were going so well that they had time in their life for a little religious hobby on the side. Nobody in this crowd was there to add Jesus to an already satisfying life. They were there because life wasn't working for them. They were

desperate. Jesus did not go looking for the qualified. He went into dark places and people came running to him. Now, you might know that in your New Testament that the chapters are not original. In other words, when Matthew wrote this gospel, he didn't start with chapter four and then chapter five and chapter six and so on. The chapter division is not from Matthew. It's not from God. So if you were receiving this gospel and you were reading through it, you would go from the very end of chapter four and all these needy people coming to Jesus and you would go straight into chapter five when it says when Jesus saw the crowds he went up on a mountainside and sat down his disciples came to him and he began to teach them so the crowds that came around jesus to hear what is now going

to be the sermon of the mount are the ones full of sick people desperate people the ones carried in on mats the one tormented by demons and what are the first words out of jesus's mouth well blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are those who mourn for they will comforted. See, at the end of Matthew 4, it tells us who is sitting on the hillside. Jesus looks out at a crowd of the poor, the sick, the torment, the desperate, people with nothing going for them. And the first thing he says to them is the kingdom belongs to you. Now, there are two wrong turns available here, and I want to try to avoid both. The first wrong turn is to hear all of this as an assignment, like go find some needy people and be kind to them. Now, that's a great thing to do.

But that's not what Jesus is saying here right now. That reading lets you stay in the position of the helper, right? You're the helper. You're the one that helps hurting needy people. That's a very comfortable place to hide. We like being the helper. The second wrong turn is a little more subtle and therefore probably a little more dangerous. It is to hear Blessed of the Poor and Spirit and immediately start working on your poverty of spirit,

to treat neediness as a new achievement, to try to be humble enough to qualify. qualify, but you cannot manufacture your way into the qualification of being poor in spirit, of having nothing. The moment you were working at it, that means you have something to offer. Now, the point is much simpler. Need is not a barrier to the kingdom. Need is the door. Did you catch that?

Need doesn't keep you from the kingdom. Need is your way into the kingdom. Nobody in the gospel, who came to Jesus with a resume, got what they wanted. not one. I mean, remember the rich young ruler? He had these incredible credentials, but he walked away sad. It's the people who have nothing that went home healed, that went home whole. So hear this. The kingdom did not arrive in Galilee because a group of needy people finally got their act together and became worthy of a visit. The kingdom arrived because the king came down into the mess and took the weight on himself. The crowd followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Judea and what were told from

all across the Jordan, they all followed for one reason because they had nothing, and they saw everything in Jesus. That's still the entry requirement. It hasn't changed. If you come empty-handed, if you come with nothing, you come with a diagnosis, you come with an exhaustion that is so deep you can't explain, you come with a grief that has not been lifted, you come with a habit that you have been trying to break, but failing. You come with a faith that is weak. You come broken. You come broken, and needy and helpless, well, if you come to Jesus, you come to the right place because that's the person he welcomes. If you come that way, he welcomes you. Father, I just confess that oftentimes we come with our resume. We come with our goodness. We come with our effort. We come with our

smarts. We come with our connections. We come because we're good people, good parents, good employees, good friends. Oh, fathers, we repent of our goodness. And we ask that you would allow us to see us as we truly are, needy and broken and helpless. We come to the only one who can help, the only one who can heal. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Hey, before we wrap up, can I tell you about something we've been working on here at 10-minute Bible talks? We believe that everyone should know how to read the Bible.

But the truth is, a lot of us have never been shown how. That's why we created the 10-minute Bible guide. It's a simple framework for helping you understand. God's Word and build a sustainable Bible reading habit. Not so that you can simply check the Bible reading box off your to-do list, but so that you can spend meaningful, life-giving time with God in His Word. Inside our guide, you'll find practical tips for getting started, strategies for how to stay consistent, ideas for how to apply the Bible to your life, and how to pray through the Bible, and even journal through it once you're done. So if you've ever thought, I want to read my Bible,

but I don't know how to start or how to stick with it, then this is for you. You can download our free 10-minute Bible guide today at 10-minutebiblicaltalks.com or just hit the link in our show notes.