All Things are Yours

Monday of Epiphany 2

January 19, 2026

Matthew 8

All Things Are Yours

Jesus was baptized, overcame the temptations of the devil, called His first disciples, and began to teach. But now He begins to show that He is the subject of His Sermon on the Mount. His sermon began with blessings, then described what it means to fulfill the Law. Now He begins to reveal that He has come to fulfill it in our place and bestow on us the blessings that come to those who have fulfilled it. The miracles He does in this chapter display that He gives the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit and that He comforts those who mourn. He gives the blessings that belong to those who have fulfilled the Law to those who have not.

He cleanses a leper of the most feared disease of the ancient world. He touches the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law and her fever departs. That night the word goes out and the town is flooded with sufferers oppressed by demons, and He releases them too. No pain, anguish, and curse of sin can stand before Him. The devil’s oppression breaks at His Word; the uncleanness of death is cleansed. Jesus breaks the bonds of sin that hold us, and the sicknesses, death, and demons that descend on us because of sin take off like a flock of carrion crows. Isaiah has foretold this blessed time, centuries before, writing about Jesus: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (Matt. 8:17).

And to His disciples Jesus reveals even more power hidden within Him. In the boat as they cross the sea, a storm descends and swamps the boat with waves. But Jesus is sleeping. They rouse Him, fearing for their lives; their fear drives them to Jesus. He has cast out demons and cured a leper; maybe He can do something about us drowning too, because we have no other options. Jesus wakes up and speaks to the wind and the sea, and they obey. But before this He rebukes His disciples: “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26)

Everything is possible to the one who believes in Jesus, because this man who is with us is God. He is with us and He is for us. God the Father gave Him to us as His gift, and all things are ours if we believe in Him. “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Cephas or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).

But you see that not everyone opens their present from God. Only the needy do, and even they mostly take only a little of all that God has given us in Jesus. The disciples with weak faith ask Jesus to help with the storm only when they have no other choice, and in great fear, not confident assurance. But the Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant, and when Jesus volunteers to come to his house, this foreigner to Israel and its God says, “Don’t trouble yourself. I am under authority too. I know what it is to command and have those under me instantly obey. I know that You can speak a word and all creation will obey You. You can cure my servant from here by Your Word without having to visit my house, which Jews are not supposed to do.”

The centurion grasped what the disciples did not—that Jesus is God in the flesh, God given to us. He couldn’t see that with his eyes any more than the disciples could. He believed.

Faith in Christ is impeded by having and being. Everything about the flesh of the centurion said he was starting a mile back from where the disciples were; he was an alien to Israel, not raised with the knowledge of the Scripture, not descended from God’s chosen people. But God chooses what is weak and foolish in the world, even the things that are not, to put the shame the things that are, that no flesh may boast in His presence. That is why when the scribe wants to follow Jesus, Jesus rebuffs him, when He grants almost everyone else’s request in this chapter. The Son of Man has no place to lay His head. Those who follow and serve Him must not expect anything else than to become nothing in this world, because that is what he has come to be. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:5-7).

But those who are nothing, who are about to die in a storm, who are possessed by the devil, who according to the flesh are aliens to God’s people, when they believe in Jesus Christ, find in Him everything. Let your sicknesses and vices not keep you away from Jesus. Come to Him with your nothingness and receive the Everything God has given to men.

Jesus has come! Now see bonds rent asunder!

Fetters of death now dissolve, disappear.

See Him burst through with a voice as of thunder!

He sets us free from our guilt and our fear,

Lifts us from shame to the place of His honor.

Jesus has come! Hear the roll of God’s thunder! (LSB 533 st. 2)