Matthew 8
8:1-3. Job says, “Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!” Job 14:4. Yet the leper says, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” And Jesus does – by touching him! He is willing to take all our uncleanness upon himself, see v. 17, and cf. Hag. 2:11-13.
8: 5-17. This story is told in more detail in Luke 7. There we see that the centurion actually spoke to Jesus through a delegation of Jewish elders. In Matthew’s culture this was an acceptable way for him to condense the story to get the essential points across, though different rules are customary now. He condenses the same consistent way in 9:18, where the synagogue official reports at the beginning that his daughter is dead, while Mark and Luke tell us in fuller accounts that she died a little later. The lesson is, I guess, not to assume we know more than we do. We are told the truth, but in brief, and it is still more than we can take in. There is no intent to deceive, but to clearly present the power and compassion of Christ. We tend to be curious about things of which the writers were indifferent, and it is they who write by inspiration of the Spirit of Truth.
8:18-22. Count the Cost. V.22 seems pretty harsh, but there can always be some reason to delay. Some suggest maybe the father wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps, but what is certain is that Jesus knew what was in the man.
8:23-34. These sorts of incidents testify to Jesus’ divinity. As Creator, he is the One who controls wind and wave. But these things also have a consistent figurative meaning in Scripture. The spirit powers and the nations, represented by the wind and restless sea respectively, are also seen obeying him in the next story about the two Gentile demoniacs. In a switch from Matthew leaving out details others include (as above), here he alone tells us that there were not one, but two Gadarene demoniacs. I think he is careful to do this because two is the number for witness (Mt. 18:16), and these two bore a testimony to the Gentiles.