This brief verse serves as a scene-setter in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has left the region of Galilee in the north and traveled south toward Judea, the area around Jerusalem. As happened throughout his ministry, large crowds gathered around him wherever he went — people who had walked great distances, often bringing sick or suffering loved ones. Matthew tells us simply that Jesus healed them there. No ceremony, no qualification, no application process. This is a transitional verse, bridging Jesus's travel with the controversial teaching on marriage that follows in the next verses. It quietly reminds us that the same Jesus who would speak hard truths was also the one who stopped for desperate people in crowds.
Jesus, you saw the crowds and you healed them — not because they had the right answers, but because they were hurting. Help me see people the way you did. Give me the kind of love that moves toward need instead of past it. Amen.
Before the hard teachings, there was healing. Matthew slides this in almost like a footnote — 'large crowds followed him, and he healed them there' — as if it's background noise before the real action starts. But picture what those crowds actually looked like: people who had walked for hours in the heat, who had carried a sick child on their back, who had pushed through shoulders and elbows just to get close enough. People at the end of their rope. And Jesus didn't hand out numbered tickets or explain that he had bigger theological fish to fry. He healed them. There. Matthew keeps doing this — interrupting the narrative theology with these moments of quiet, almost unremarkable mercy. It matters because it tells you something about who Jesus actually is. The same person who will say difficult things about divorce and fidelity and the cost of following him is the same one who can't seem to walk past a suffering person without stopping. That's not a contradiction — that's a whole person. It's worth asking yourself: who is pressing in around you right now, desperate, hoping someone will notice? And what would it look like to simply stop?
Why do you think Matthew includes this small healing detail in what reads like a transitional verse — what does it tell us about what Jesus considered worth doing even on his way somewhere else?
Think of a moment when someone showed you unexpected, unhurried compassion. What did that reveal to you about what love actually looks like in practice?
We often mentally separate Jesus the teacher from Jesus the healer. What happens to your understanding of him when you hold both together at the same time?
Who in your immediate world is the equivalent of that crowd — hurting, pressing in, hoping to be seen — and how have you responded to them recently?
What's one specific, concrete way you could move toward someone's pain this week — not with advice, but simply with presence?
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
Matthew 9:35
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted , and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Matthew 9:36
And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
Matthew 4:23
and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.
AMP
And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
ESV
and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.
NASB
Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
NIV
And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there.
NKJV
Large crowds followed him there, and he healed their sick.
NLT
Great crowds followed him there, and he healed them.
MSG