READINGS IN MATTHEW'S GOSPEL (3)
READINGS IN MATTHEW’S GOSPEL (3)
Matthew 5:1-26; Matthew 5:48; Matthew 8: 1 - 34
JT No doubt many will be aware that there are seven mountains spoken of in Matthew. This is the first one in chapter 5, and it is of consequence that it should be noted, because it gave the Lord the opportunity to elevate Himself in His ministry. So that it is said, “seeing the crowds, he [p. 141] went up into the mountain, and having sat down, his disciples came to him; and, having opened his mouth, he taught them”. The position is thus very clear as to the Lord placing Himself where His disciples can receive His instruction, and it is to be noticed that “his disciples came to him”. He did not ask them to come; they just came, showing that the interest in Him was increasing, and now He is ready to teach them. There are certain blessings to be observed, in the chapter, nine in all. The thought is that, after we have considered the verses read in chapter 5, we should proceed with chapter 8, leaving out chapters 6 and 7 on account of lack of time. It is to be observed in the beginning of chapter 8 that the Lord is said to have come down. He is on the level of the earth, as it were; that is to say, lie is where He would be in touch with men. We thus observed, no doubt, that we have not yet properly come to the assembly, and we shall not come to it until we take up the later chapters.
VCL You referred to the nine blessings; is there any link with the fact that nine times in the chapter later on the Lord says, “I say unto you”, as over against all that has been said before? Is this the beginning of Christianity?
JT I suppose Christianity is anticipated. That is to say, the Lord was about to inaugurate it, and now, in this section in chapter 5, it is a question of [p. 133] legislation, so that we may call it the legislative section, and we might call the mountain ‘the mount of legislation’. There is the idea of blessing in the early part of it, and then the Lord asserting His authority in the words, “I say unto you”. So it is said that the listeners were impressed with what He said, because He spoke with authority, not as the scribes, and, of course, it is a matter of great importance that there should be authoritative teaching of Scripture.
PL “Think of what I say, for the Lord will give thee understanding in all things”, 2 Timothy 2: 7 Just so. That is what Paul said, reflecting the Lord’s own way.
Ques Would this be the law of the kingdom in the absence of the King?
JT I would say that. It is the law of the kingdom in a certain sense, although, of course, the assembly is more in mind than the law. Nevertheless, the Lord stressed the law of Moses, really, in this chapter when He says, “one iota or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all come to pass”. We have thus to differentiate between the law of the kingdom and the law of Moses, and yet the law of Moses has to be fulfilled. We have to understand too, as we proceed, how it is to be fulfilled.
Ques The Lord emphasises the characteristics of those that would have a part in the kingdom?
JT I think when we come to the kingdom and those who have part in it, we have to come to the principle of law. As it says, “I speak to those knowing law”, Romans 7: 1. That is to say, the Roman saints knew law, and so it is that in Christianity we know law. The law of Moses is not abrogated at all; it still stands, and every jot and tittle will be fulfilled, which is very important. There are no voids left in the ways of God; His thoughts remain intact; wherever they appear, they [p. 134] remain intact. But then we have to remember the gospels are rightly called the gospels; they refer to Christ. It is the Lord Jesus, as it says in the beginning of this book, “unto the Christ”. That is to say, the forty-two generations had to come in until the Christ. The whole long period had to come to pass “unto the Christ”, and the Christ, of course, was born of Mary.
WmH Does He then become law to us?
JT That is what I would say. He becomes law to us, because He is God, as it says in John’s epistle, He is the “true God and eternal life”. We have to begin with the idea of God, and then the added thought of eternal life, linking up the idea of life, which is so necessary for ourselves; that is to say, for men in this world.
Ques Has Paul that in mind when he says, “Not as without law to God, but as legitimately subject to Christ”, 1 Corinthians 9: 21?
JT That is right; “legitimately subject to Christ”.
AAT In verse 3 the kingdom of the heavens is spoken of. Is that different from the kingdom of God?
JT The “kingdom of the heavens” is a question of the law of heaven, here below, on the earth. The Lord says in chapter 6, “let thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth”. Then it says, “Give us today our needed bread, and forgive us our debts”, and so forth. It runs on to the idea of the authority of Christ, in the sense of legitimate or legal authority. It is not simply the word ‘legal’, but what is according to the mind of God in a legal sense.
EAL In that passage, “thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth”, it is that everything that happens on the earth is governed by [p. 135] what comes from heaven.
JT It is a question of what comes from heaven, and the priority that heaven takes over the earth. Heaven must come first.
JR Was not that what Nebuchadnezzar had to arrive at, that “the heavens do rule”, Daniel 4: 26?
JT Quite so.
MAW Would all that be involved in the righteousness which is to surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? ‘A better righteousness’, according to the footnote to verse 20 of chapter 5.
JT It says, “For I say unto you”. It is one of the “I say’s”; one of the Lord’s deliberate assertions of authority. “I say unto you, that unless your righteousness surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of the heavens”. That is to say, the scribes and Pharisees are out of it. The Lord is the supreme authority now in regard of the law. It was not what Moses said, but what He was saying. At the same time, what Moses said has its own place and the Lord would not allow one jot of it to pass away until all was fulfilled. The thought of God is that all His will must come to pass, and the Lord Jesus is the One to do it, as John would say, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”, John 3: 35.
WSS Is the thought that these principles are to be worked out first of all in the assembly?
JT I think that is just the thing, they are to be worked out in the assembly. That is to say, everything must, as it were, be put aside until the time of the assembly, and, of course, the time had not yet come. The Lord had to die and to rise again and go into heaven before these things could come to pass. But they must come to pass, and the idea is that they will come to pass [p. 136] in the assembly.
WSS I was thinking that in the millennium this will be realised in the kingdom on the earth, but in the meantime the assembly is in the position where these things are worked out as under the rule of heaven.
JT Quite so. The idea in the creation according to the beginning of Genesis was that the earth must come into view, but that the heavens must come first. Genesis had its own place from Moses, but the assembly must come first; it must have precedence. We are now in the days of the assembly.
Ques Do these sixteen verses emphasise also the thought of what is in the heavens, the reward in the heavens and the Father in the heavens? Would you say something as to those features marking the disciples, in view of what has been said about them coming out in the assembly.
JT The order of the truth is that it was the time of legislation, and these first sixteen verses of chapter 5 give the main thought. The Lord had gone up, according to the word, “seeing the crowds, he went up into the mountain, and having sat down, his disciples came to him; and, having opened his mouth, he taught them”. Notice this, He sits down on the mountain and they come to Him, and having opened His mouth He taught. We have already had the thought of the mouth of God, but here it is the mouth of Christ. “Having opened his mouth, he taught them, saying ...” and the sayings are in the following verses. There are a number of blessings, nine of them altogether.
AA Is there any significance in the change of pronoun in verse 11, from the third person to the second? It says, “Blessed are they” until verse 11, and then it says, “Blessed are ye”. Would the assembly be in view?
JT It is the disciples, and they anticipated the assembly. They are potentially the assembly, but,
[p. 137] of course, we have to remember what John writes, “the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified”. That is to say, the Spirit of God had not really come because Jesus was not yet glorified. Now, of course, He is glorified, but then He was not. The time of the Spirit had to be awaited, but the time of Christ was there, according to the verse in chapter 1, “unto the Christ”. The Christ is presented as here now, in the passage we are dealing with, so that things are progressing; the ways of God are proceeding, and in due time room will be made for the assembly. It has often been said that the assembly is the main express train, so to say, and other things must give way, take side tracks, to let the assembly go through. But in the meantime other things were going through, and the Lord Jesus was causing them to go through in this wonderful gospel.
AA Is it that He has in view potential material for the assembly?
JT Quite so potential. The way for it is coming, but in our chapter the assembly has not come yet. We get it from chapter 13 onwards, and I hope that God will help us to look at the idea of the assembly in the proposed meetings in London. But here, in the verses we are now reading, the assembly has not actually come into action. We have to wait for the assembly, because we have to wait for the Spirit. Nothing can happen without Hint, and so, as the Lord said in a later gospel: “Do ye remain in the city till ye be clothed with power from on high”. We have to learn to wait for the power.
JSE Would it help us if we were to lay hold of the fact that the legislation is here, and that it is the only legislation by which perfection is reached?
JT Just so. The word ‘perfection’ is used and that is why we read the one verse in the end of chapter 5: “Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. We have to weigh carefully those words, because we have the same idea in Hebrews 11, “that they should not be made perfect without us”. They have to wait for us before they are perfect, but on account of the Holy Spirit indwelling us we belong to those that are spoken of as perfect. The greatest possible fact at the present time is that we have the Holy Spirit.
Rem In verse 16 He says, “Let your light thus shine before men, so that they may see your upright works, and glorify your Father who is in the heavens”. It would seem that that links on with the last verse you are referring to, “Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.
JT We have to read it in the context, because the word perfect here has not exactly the same force as the word in Hebrews 11. Perfection now refers to those who are indwelt by the Spirit of God; these are the only ones really perfect at the present time. Of course, people may say, are any of us perfect? — but that is not the point, for the word ‘perfect’ has to be used in the abstract.
AH Why is the testimonial position in view here? I was thinking of verses 13 to 16 particularly, and the effect of the saints’ presence upon the earth.
JT We have to consider whether the Holy Spirit is here in testimony, or whether the Lord Himself is here as He was now in the passage we are considering. He is carrying on on His own lines; it is the Christ. It is not yet the Spirit, but the Christ. Now I just want to know what you have in mind as to the testimonial position.
AH I was thinking of what the Lord says, “ye are the salt of the earth ... Ye are the light of the world”, and then “Let your light thus shine” so that the Father is glorified.
JT [p. 139] All that is wanting really of what the full thought of the assembly has in mind. We have not come to the full thought of the assembly yet, in Matthew. We have to wait for things; and the testimonial time will come in due course. The idea of perfection here is short of the full thought, and the reason is that we must have the Spirit before we can get the full thought.
WC What is the force of the passage in 1 Corinthians 2: 6, “we speak wisdom among the perfect”?
JT That is Christianity, involving the Spirit.
WC That supposes that what we are speaking about has been arrived at in principle.
JT Well, the assembly has not arrived yet in the chapter. The Lord has arrived, and He said, “I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it shall have been accomplished!” Luke 12: 50. The Lord had to do that, but He is speaking here anticipatively. He has to go to heaven and sit on the right hand of God before that can fully happen. He is there now.
HFN Is the emphasis here on the Father as the standard of perfection just as God said to Abram, “Walk before my face, and be perfect”? Is it the Father as the divine standard whom we reach on moral lines?
JT Just so, but it is a question of what we understand by the Father. We have to see the way John presents the Father and the way Matthew presents Him. Matthew presents Him in a certain Jewish connection, and we have to be patient and see how it is worked out; we have to be patient till time is given to work things out. The Lord said, “how am I straitened”, He had to lie three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. That is one great fact. But then He rose from the dead and remained on earth for forty days before He went [p. 140] to heaven, and before He went to heaven the Spirit had not come. So we have to wait for things and see how they are worked out.
Ques Does verse 17 suggest what was there personally in the Lord Jesus Himself, “but to fulfil”?
JT He says, “Think not that t am come to make void the law or the prophets; I am not come to make void, but to fulfil”. That is to say, it is potential. The Lord is anticipating things, but He is saying them in His own way, which He has a right to do. He had become the Christ and was here on earth, and He had to wait to do certain things. He, Himself, had to die — wonderful thing that always touches us, but at the same time He is doing things; it was a doing time. The gospels are all on that line, but particularly now Matthew. John is different, his gospel having a character all its own, and so he makes way for the Spirit, but then he says the Spirit was not yet, and the reason was, because Jesus was not yet glorified. So we have to wait for things. Things have not all come to pass at once: we have to wait for them and, in fact, we have to wait for Paul. The Lord intended to have Paul, but He waited for him, and He did have him.
JTJr Does the principle that things have to be waited for come out in the first chapter of Genesis? We begin with the first day and then there are six days one after another.
JT Very good. The seven days had to come round; and we must not forget to say that He made the stars, as well, so that nothing is omitted; only give time for it.
JAP Are these ‘blesseds’ in the main the Lord’s own character?
JT Well, they would be; but He is speaking of them as having an application to the disciples, because they came to Him. It was He who took the initiative, as it says: “But seeing the crowds, he went up into the mountain, and having sat down, his disciples came to him; and, having opened his mouth, he taught them”. That is to say, they were there, and He utters all these blessings. It is a question of how these features come out in them, how that character is to be seen in them. Of course, in some sense they must have come out in the Lord, but it is a question of what has come out in the disciples. When we come to chapter 10, the Lord will help us more clearly to see these points, because there we have the apostles. As soon as we come to the apostolic time, then we get something. We have not got that yet; we have to wait for chapter 10.
Ques Why does the Lord begin with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? Is that a kind of basic idea?
JT I should think so. But I am reminded of a passage in the Psalms, where the word ‘poor’ refers to the Lord Himself. In Psalm 34:6, it says, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him”. I think the Lord Himself graciously took this attitude, which is a remarkable thing.
Rem I just thought that “poor in spirit” would form a kind of basis on which other things could be built up. Haughtiness of spirit is the contrast, and that is cultivated in us in the world, is it not?
JT I think it also brings out what was happening, in connection with these wonderful people. I use the word wonderful because they become the most wonderful men on the earth; the apostles. They are called disciples here. “His disciples came to him; and, having opened his mouth, he taught them”, and then later on it says, “Blessed they who are persecuted on account of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens”. That is to say, the saints come into persecution, and that has marked the history of Christianity from the very outset. It took on a peculiar character at the time of the Reformation, but now we have things easier. The Lord says, “I do not cast upon you any other burden; but what ye have hold fast till I shall come”. There is modification in our times, but in Luther’s time there was peculiar and intense suffering, and, of course, at the beginning of Christianity too there was great suffering. Suffering, however, is the order of the day, as it says, “to you has been given, as regards Christ, not only the believing on him but the suffering for him also”, Philippians 1: 29.
FM The Thessalonians experienced it in a very serious way, too, did they not? It says, “so that we ourselves make our boast in you in the assemblies of God for your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations, which ye are sustaining; a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that ye should be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for the sake of which ye also suffer; if at least it is a righteous thing with God to render tribulation to those that trouble you, and to you that are troubled repose with us”, 2 Thessalonians 1: 4 - 7.
JT Just so. God regards it as a question of righteousness. The Thessalonians were peculiarly cared for by the apostle. They were like his beloved children, and, in the second epistle, he specially speaks of that, and he says it was a righteous thing with God that they should rest with him; that is, with Paul; that they should rest with him in view of the persecutions they had to endure.
AHG In what sense was the kingdom of the heavens theirs?
JT In the sense that the King was there, in the city of the great King; things were happening.
AHG Would it involve that they had all the gain of the power that is connected with the kingdom of the heavens?
JT What I am endeavouring to say is that things were happening because the King was there.
Nathanael says, “Thou are the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel”, and the question is, what is He doing? When the Lord was here, the kingdom was here in His Person, but the kingdom is here now because the Spirit is here; that is the difference. The Spirit being here involves the kingdom too, as well as when the Lord was here.
GMS Does chapter 8 make manifest that the King is there? I have in mind these wonderful examples of divine power as manifested in the Lord here. There is not a situation but what He can meet; the King is there.
JT That is it. That is just what I am thinking. The King Himself was there, but the Holy Spirit had not yet come and His presence here would also involve the kingdom. No one will be in the assembly until he has the Spirit. So that there is an immense difference.
PL Do we have this suggested in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes? You have the expression, “The king’s favour”, Proverbs 14: 35, and “the word of a king”, Ecclesiastes 8: 4, and many other references to Him, but all awaiting its filling out in substance in the virtuous woman.
JT Quite so. The woman of worth is there. Solomon said that he had found one man, but he had not found one woman. That is to say, we have to wait until the woman comes.
WSS Do we not all need to realise much more fully the fact that the power of the kingdom is here today and that we are in it?
JT That is the point; that is just what I am trying to stress, that the power of the kingdom is here; it is here today in this hall. That is to say, the Spirit of God is in this hall actually amongst us and trying to help us, and is helping us.
WSS I was thinking of it in relation to all the problems around, the difficulties which have to be [p. 144] faced, the elements which are a menace to the position, and the fact that the position is impregnable.
JT So that the Spirit of God never fails us. He never fails the saints. There are the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. The Spirit is graciously helping us, but the Son is the only One that could have died. The Son has died and is risen and gone into heaven; but the Holy Spirit has come down. The Lord Jesus has come down Himself; He was not sent down, but the Holy Spirit has been sent from heaven, and He is here now to do everything for us in the sense of the Paraclete. So that everything is attended to. There is not one thing missing if we only let Him act for us.
JMcK Does the position that the Holy Spirit takes up in Acts 2, sitting upon each of them, correspond somewhat with the position the Lord took upon the mount authoritatively?
JT I would think so. The Lord Himself says, “He shall give you another Comforter”, and you might say He is equal with the first One.
JMcK I was thinking that whilst we have things so beautifully set out in the Lord, we have to keep them there and wait for this moral power and authority in the assembly to fill them out.
JT Quite so. In the book of Acts, the Spirit of God is seen as acting of Himself; chapter 13, for example, shows that while God the Father was in heaven and the Lord Jesus had gone up into heaven, the Spirit had come down and He was acting of Himself.
We might as well proceed now with Matthew 5, showing how it works out in the idea of perfection. These ‘blesseds’ are most precious because they are so diversified and they are anticipating, because the apostles themselves could hardly be said to be characterised by all these things. Even Peter himself [p. 145] got out of the way; he denied the Lord, so that we have to see that the Spirit of God was awaited in all these matters, and He has now been sent down from heaven that everything should be cared for and nothing should be left unattended, and that the truth of the assembly should proceed steadily.
EAL Would you say that, in an abstract sense, with the Lord’s presence with them, they had the victory over the world?
JT Well, so far. You did not mean otherwise than what we have said, that some of them were very imperfect, as, for instance, Peter. What can we say about that, but be humbled about it?
EAL Bearing in mind that they had the presence of the Lord there, and then as we have in John’s epistle, “Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God”. And then we have, “And it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is the truth. For they that bear witness are three: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood”. We have the cleansing power of the water, and the redemptive power of the blood, and while the Spirit is here now, the Lord’s death must have come first, before the Spirit could bear witness.
JT Quite so. All that is most important. It comes to us almost every day, that the Spirit of God must be made way for; He will then do everything for us which is needed to be done. “He shall receive of mine”, the Lord says, “and shall announce it to you”.
Ques Had you something to say about chapter 8, the Lord coming down from the mountain?
JT I thought it would open up the subject of the gospel, for the Lord Himself is acting in an evangelical sense. So the first thing is, “And behold, a leper came up to him and did him homage, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou art able to cleanse me. And [p. 146] he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will; be cleansed. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed”. The Lord did that immediately. “And Jesus says to him, See thou tell no man, but go, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses ordained, for a testimony to them”. I think we can all see that Christianity has not come yet in this passage; we have to wait for it; and so the Lord says, “See thou tell no man, but go, shew thyself to the priest”. The priest was one who had to do with God. That is the idea of a priest, as it was in the Old Testament times, and it was still there, and the Lord appealed to it and said there it was. He said, “I am not come to make void the law ... but to fulfil”, and so it was that the priest was there. The law was still in vogue, and in power, and He was active, and therefore the man was healed. So you go on, in verse 5, “And when he had entered into Capernaum, a centurion came to him, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lies paralytic in the house, suffering grievously. And Jesus says to him, I will come and heal him”. Notice this, how quickly the Lord does things. It is an evangelical time and the Lord is doing it Himself; He has not the apostles even, to do it; He is doing it Himself. There are times in which He does things Himself, and He will do them at times if we let Him do them. “The word of a king is power”.
VCL Would not this, where the Lord acts as a model, underlie all that the apostles are able to take up and do in the Acts after the Spirit had come, and would all be in their minds as having seen the Lord do it and the way He did it?
JT Very good. Is it not wonderful that the Lord says, “he shall do greater than these, because I go to the Father”. A wonderful thing! The Lord says, They shall do greater things even than I am doing. Now, I am careful in saying that. The Lord [p. 147] was doing things Himself; there was no one else to do it but Himself, and He did it, He did not leave it undone.
EAL Mr. Darby is very emphatic on that. He says this dispensation is greater.
JT Quite so, it is greater; it is going to pass away, but it is still what it ever was. It is the greatest of all dispensations and it is still active, and it is a question of each one of us being in it and doing what we can. It was said of one “What she could she has done”. It is a question of doing what we can, because the Lord will accept it.
MAW Is the Lord seeing a foreshadowing of this dispensation when He says, “Not even in Israel have I found so great faith”?
JT Chapter 8 is a great evangelical chapter; but it is the Lord Himself who is doing things. He is not even speaking of the disciples doing it. He is doing it Himself.
GMS So the quotation from Isaiah, in verse 17, is “Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases”.
JT Quite so. You will remember that it says in Luke, “Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old”. “He was beginning to be”, and He was there ready as of age. He was a fully-developed man according to time. He was there, and “He was beginning to be about thirty years old”.
GMS Would you say more about “Jesus himself”?
JT Well, it is the consciousness of the Lord Himself; the consciousness in Himself, that He was there. It is wonderful that such expressions should be used, because He is God Himself, as we have already said, but now He is here in this gospel and in the other gospels, in a mediatorial sense, and He is doing things Himself.
[p. 148] A M. Does the incident as to the centurion stress the importance of faith? Is He calling attention to faith?
JT I think the word faith is now coming into prominence, because it is a question of the dispensation that we are in anticipatively. It is a time of faith, and the Lord Himself says, “when the Son of man comes, shall he indeed find faith on the earth?”, Luke 18: 8. Well, He is hopeful of that clearly, in the time of the Son of man, but now it is the time of the Spirit. The Spirit is here as sent from heaven; it is the time of the Spirit, and He is promoting faith in the saints.
AM Apart from present active faith in the Lord Jesus, has the Spirit power to operate in us?
JT The Spirit is here to do that, but then you might well say the Lord is here too. “Behold, I am with you all the days”, He says in Matthew 28: 20. According to that passage, He has never left, but according to the book of Acts He has left. So that we just have to sec things as they are in Scripture and deal with them accordingly. But to proceed with the evangelical side of the chapter, it says, “the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not fit that thou shouldest enter under my roof; but only speak a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man under authority”. Now notice that, “For I also am a man under authority”. The Lord was in that position too, which is a remarkable thing. “I also am a man under authority”. It is not in authority, but under authority. The Roman centurion was under somebody else; he has a general over him. It is to bring out the thought that the Lord was under authority too; He was under God’s authority. It was a mediatorial position. So that it says, “I also am a man under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say to this one, Go, and he roes; and to another, Come, and he comes;
[p. 149] and to my bondman, Do this, and he does it. And when Jesus heard it, he wondered, and said to those who followed, Verily I say unto you, Not even in Israel have I found so great faith”. Well, that is remarkable; but you could hardly say anything of the kind as to Israel now. It is a question of the Spirit now; not the Lord’s presence here now, but the Spirit of God is here, and things are being done because of that. Then the Lord says in verse 13, “Go, and as thou hast believed, be it to thee. And his servant was healed in that hour”. And then again, “when Jesus had come to Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law laid down and in a fever; and he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she arose and served him”. That is another beautiful indication of how things were being done at a particular time, and it is the Lord Himself who was doing it, and He made a servant of the woman. It says, “when Jesus had come to Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law laid down and in a fever; and he touched her hand, and the fever left her”. The Lord did it Himself, and then it says: “she rose and served him”. Elsewhere it says she served them, but here it says “she served him”, which is a fine thought in a sister. She served the Lord as having been healed of her fever. Fever is a very irritating thing, and causes much trouble in households, but the Lord healed her Himself. He does things Himself at times.
VCL Does the Lord really cover the whole sphere of evangelical service; first in the leper and then a man and then a woman? Does that not really set the example for the whole scene of evangelical work?
JT That is right; very good. It is a good thing you came to the woman, because there is a very great absence of service of sisters in that respect.