Summary Highlights:
Chapter 8 is all about faith, favor, and fear. A leper and a Roman officer demonstrated faith. Peter’s mother-in-law and all the people healed of devils and sickness received a demonstration of favor. The disciples, demons, and the people of Gergesenes demonstrated fear.
This is yet another powerful revelation. It reveals the message that some healed by faith, some by favor, but those who are “strangers” to God demonstrate fear and run into their own destruction.
Furthermore, this chapter gives us insight regarding the workings of fear demons and the power Yah’s children have over them.
Recommended Resources:
- Matthew 8 Study Guide on PDF (Complete Digital Printable Lesson)
- Blue Letter Bible Phone App or Blue Letter Bible online
- Bible Hub Interlinear
- King James Version Print Bible
Instructions: Read Matthew Chapter 8 in the King James Version to avoid confusion, since this is the version used for these lessons.
Video Lesson: This is a video originally created for a private bible study group. It summarizes the information below. It is recommended that you also read through the entire lesson so that you do not miss anything.
Final Thoughts:
There are three paths in every situation at any given period of one’s life. We are either overcoming by faith, have the favor of God because we have a divine purpose, or we are being overcome by fear.
Yeshua teaches us in this chapter that fear is not something to be proud of and it is the opposite of faith. The word demonstrates that fear is not from God, but from the devil and it leads us to destruction and to miss out on his presence and the blessings that being in his presence can deliver. Just like the strangers, many of us tend to run from the truth of Yeshua in fear. But he teaches us that God has given us power over fear, either by faith or by favor. Through faith we can command fear with our God-given authority.
Interestingly, fear is afraid of us when we have the Spirit of God in us – when we exist as the sons and daughters of the Most High and not as the Gergesenes – strangers drawing near. Which brings me to an even deeper message. If we exist as strangers drawing near to our God, we are vulnerable to be possessed by fear and to run from Him in fear. So let’s not act as strangers, but take our place as God’s children with the power to command fear demons to flee and the authority to heal with a word or by a touch. Let’s believe that we have favor, because we have purpose.
In Isaiah 42:6 our father tells us our purpose: “I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles…” Yeshua confirmed it in Matthew 5:14: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”
But how can we be a light lest we come out of darkness?
~Rev. D