Worship service

In Matthew 15:29-31, Jesus moves back from the region of Tyre and Sidon to the sea of Galilee. He goes on a mountain and sits down. He has been on mountains a number of times already to do various things. Most recently, he ascended to a mountain to pray as the Twelve went across the sea in their boat and had to be rescued from a storm. But here Jesus goes to a mountain and sits, and the only other time He has done that is at the beginning of the sermon on the Mount. Sitting is the posture of teaching, and Jesus sitting on the mountain is Moses, or Yahweh, delivering the law to Israel .

Once Jesus sits down on the mountain, people start swarming around Him, people with various sorts of ailments that need to be healed. Matthew mentions four categories: lame, crippled, blind, dumb; and Jesus heals all of these, so the dumb speak, the crippled are healthy, the lame walk, and the blind see.

The number 4 is significant in itself, as the number of the corners of the earth. Four represents universal extent in space. A fourfold healing covers the four corners of the earth. The conditions are also conditions that Isaiah talks about. When the Lord comes to restore Israel , He will make the lame to walk, the blind to see, the dumb to speak. Jesus is the coming of healing Yahweh.

Jesus restores these people to wholeness, and then “they glorified the God of Israel” (v 31). They are restored so that they can worship. Under the law, many of these deformities would have prevented someone from being a priest. But Jesus comes to heal them, and form from them a priestly people who glorifies God.

Once we see that the healings lead to worship, we can see the full sequence of this passage. This is a worship service Jesus ascends to a mountain, going nearer to the presence of God. He sits down, and presumably teaches them. Jesus heals the multitudes so that they are filled with praise to God, and in the next episode he feeds them before dismissing them. This is a worship service beside the sea of Galilee.

And this is what’s happening every time we come to worship. We assemble on the mountain, the heavenly Zion . Jesus is here, and He’s here to teach us, to heal us, to loose our tongues in praise and open our eyes to see and to restore our limbs so we can walk. And Jesus invites us to His table, where He seats us, as children, around His table, and feeds us.