Matthew 8:1-4: Jesus was not concerned about ritual defilement, but the reality of healed bodies, although He still wanted Moses’ law obeyed by man.
Matthew 8:5-13 & 26: The centurion had greater faith than the disciples.
Matthew 8:12: Rejection of Jesus will ultimately lead to extreme remorse, whether in darkness or fire.
Matthew 8:14-17: Matthew 8:17 quotes Isaiah 53:4, which goes on (not quoted here) to say He was punished by God and afflicted.
Matthew 8:18-22: It is odd that there is no response one way or the other when Jesus tells people the cost of following Him. Is that our response also - equivocate by not taking a clear position?
Matthew 8:23-27 At this point in their discipleship, the disciples did not really appreciate who Jesus was. After all, why wouldn’t a terrible storm be subject to the one who created nature and weather? Do we believe in Jesus more than the disciples? More to the point, how can we help our faith grow like the apostles must have in our walk with Jesus?
Matthew 8:28-34: Why can’t demons shut up? Why did Jesus even negotiate with them?
Matthew 9 continues with Jesus’ miracles; the point of these stories is not what He did, but what He does. He still intervenes to respond to dashed hopes, to the lonely, the social outcasts, the shamed, the mournful, the accused, to show how the Father feels about the ill. That’s the point of Matthew recounting these stories forty years after Jesus’ resurrection. He comes into the world of the lost to save them.
Matthew 9:1-8 The question which is easier to say might be taken in two ways, i.e., which is easier to say with power of fulfillment, or which is easier to say that others can verify? Jesus’ next act trumped both of these possibilities. More importantly, He canceled the presumption that every sickness is the result of sin, but showed His healing of the root of our lives from sin.
Matthew 9:9-13 One of Jesus’ mysterious twists on the subject at hand; He came to heal the sick, not the healthy (were the Pharisees really healthy?), but how does desiring mercy, not sacrifice relate? This is God’s perspective. The whole point of the law and prophets was not to get holiness through sacrifices (per Levitical law), but to empower people to love God and experience His love in return. So Jesus had a banquet with tax collectors. One of them wrote this gospel. Love and mercy reveal a transformed heart, while sacrifice can be extracted by legal maneuvering without real repentance.
Matthew 9:14-17: Jesus offers two metaphors to answer the question about fasting, pointing to the future: His death on the cross, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into born-again believers.
Matthew 9:18-26 Genuine faith is more important than symbolic acts or rituals. The bleeding woman needed to touch His cloak to connect her faith to Him, but it was the genuineness of her faith that mattered. A crowd of mourners with music may well work against connection with Him, unless one has genuine faith that results in seeking Him seriously.
Matthew 9:27-34: The blind men that were healed didn’t obey His command to keep quiet about it. Was this gratitude? When the Pharisees saw the mute speaking, since they only knew doctrine, anything supernatural was deemed demonic.
Matthew 9:35-38: Jesus went everywhere with a combination of supernatural healings and preaching the gospel. He had compassion on this vast ocean of lost people: those with dashed hopes, the lonely, social outcasts, the shamed, the mournful, the accused, and the ill. He healed them.
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