Readings Judges 21, Luke 3

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters,

9:1  Jesus returned to His hometown.  Up to now, He had been healing, casting out demons, and teaching the people truth.  The entire gist of His teachings went against the religious attitudes and teachings of the scribes and the Pharisees, but not against the Old Testament law, or the Old Testament as a whole.  Remember the attitude that the people in His hometown had toward Him, He was raised in their city, they had watched Him grow up from a small child.  They knew that something was different about Him, since he had come from a far land, Egypt, and that his parents seemed to be on the run when they settled into the community Matthew 2:14-15.  They may have been aware that Jesus was an illegitimate child, according to the rumor of the land.  (Who would ever buy the story that God the Father had caused a virgin to become pregnant?)  They were aware that the carpenter Joseph and his wife Mary had a very large family of which Jesus was the firstborn, Matthew 12:46-47; 13:55-57; Mark 6:3-4.  There are many more references toward His immediate family and His siblings, but that is for another study.

9:2-8  The battle between Jesus and the Pharisees was kind of hidden up to now.  From this point on, it seems that the Pharisees and scribes are after Jesus at every turn.  From the Sermon on the Mount, the clear message was sent that Jesus was not out for common purposes, consistent with rabbinical teachings, but rather Jesus had His own agenda to fulfill.  With the healings, and casting out of demons, Jesus was demonstrating a power that the religious of the day had never even dreamed about.  With Jesus forgiving sins, it demonstrated to the scribes that He was preaching more than a good message.  He was actually equating Himself with God.  The demonstration in these verses clarify the fact that Jesus had power to forgive sins. One other verification of Jesus being able to forgive sins, the people were moved to worship God after the healing took place.  They were not moved to worship Jesus, this pointing of the masses to worship the Father is evidence of the validity of the message.  If Jesus was a false teacher, teaching out of the flesh as the scribes were accusing Him of, then the people would have been moved to worship the man, not the Father.  This would not have been a bad thing, since Jesus is God, but remember, He was setting the example for us to follow.

9:9-13  Jesus did not hold to the conventions of the Jewish faith.  He purposefully had dinner with tax collectors and sinners.  The point behind this is just as He said, He came to help the sick, not the healthy.  Jesus was smacking them in the face by calling them healthy.  This was the same as calling them self-righteous.  When a person reaches the point of self-righteousness, it is next to impossible to reach him with news of repentance.

I have to wrap up today, it is Saturday, and I have had the opportunity to spend a few hours at home.  Keep diligent in the Word, and if you have a different opinion than what I have shared, please feel free to write in.

Lord, keep each one of us focused intently upon You.  I pray that we will be able to see beyond our religious conventions and see the truth of the Word as You meant it to be written.

In Him,

Readings 1 Samuel 5, Luke 12

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

There are several stories written in the short passage that we have before us.  I am going to approach each story individually rather than going verse by verse. 

Synagogue officials daughter, 9:18, 19, 23-27.  This story is recorded in Luke 8:41-56 and Mark 5:22-43.  I find it interesting that a synagogue official would come to Jesus asking Him to heal his daughter.  From Luke, we find out that she is 12 years old.  That was the time where children became adults in that culture.  People will come to the Lord under extreme circumstances such as this.  This man was willing to risk everything to get his daughter back, even his job at the synagogue.  You can be sure that he was well aware of the scribes and Pharisees attitudes toward Jesus as well as the attitude of the high priest. 

Can you imagine the way the people who laughed at Jesus felt when the little girl walked our of the room?  I doubt seriously if they had left the local vicinity, it was important to them that if a person died they were to be properly sent off with great ceremony.  It was also important to get the dead person buried quickly, they didn't have our modern embalming methods.

Woman with a hemorrhage, 9:20-22.  A thought on this, under  the Jewish law, if a man were to touch a woman who is on her menstrual cycle, he was unclean for the rest of the day Leviticus 15:26-27.  It is believed that this woman was on a continual cycle, this was due to the Greek implications of the word, and it was continuing for twelve years.  Just by the act of touching Jesus, she would have made Him unclean.  I believe that she was healed the instant before touching Him.  The NASB has a footnote that indicates that she was healed "from that hour" which supports that the healing had already taken place.  He is the Lord of the universe, and cannot be made unclean in any way. Except when He chose to become unclean by taking on mankind's sin on the cross.  Which explains why she was healed before she even spoke to Him.  This also demonstrates how limited Jesus was in the human body, He was not aware of her until she touched Him and He felt the Spirit healing her.  God the Father was not limited to the human body and was protecting Jesus from any possibility of being unclean, even by accident.  Jesus was 100 percent human, we forget that he was limited by the human body, all the deity was crammed into one body, limited by the five senses.

Two blind men, 9:27-31.  These two blind men have always astonished me.  If Jesus had said the same thing to me, I would never had opened my mouth for fear that He would take back the healing.  Yet they blabbed, which goes to show that people are human, they will do what they want even if God tells them personally to stop doing it.  Jesus had told several not to say anything, including a leper in Mark 1:45.  The results of that one was that Jesus was hindered in his ability to minister in the area. 

These blind men understood more than the leaders of the Jews did regarding Jesus.  They understood that He was able to heal blind eyes, Exodus 4:11; Proverbs 20:12; 2 Kings 6:18-20.  They understood that Jesus was not locked into the conventions of the religious of the time, and that there was something different about Him.  I'll also bet that they had already heard stories about how Jesus had healed the sick, raised the dead, and put two and two together.

Demon possessed mute man, 9:32-33. There are two interesting things in this passage, first, the man was brought to Jesus, it is not indicated that he came willingly.  Second, he doesn't seem to exercise his own faith to be healed and delivered.  Jesus seems to be responding to the faith of the ones who brought him.  This man may have been a test by someone to see if Jesus was real.  Regardless the reason behind him being brought to Jesus, this man walked away restored in his speech, and having been delivered from demons.

9:34  In an attempt to explain the unexplainable, the Pharisees came up with the reason for Jesus being able to cast out demons, being that he was working with the devil.  This shows that these men were grasping at straws in an attempt to regain lost ground.  Jesus hit the scene and took the world by storm, His pure faith in God was contagious.  It spread to all those around him, and the religion of the Jews was challenged.  All the conventions and traditions that was passed down from previous generations was challenged for the first time, and found to be lacking.  The leaders of the people were frightened of loosing their status quo.  All four gospels record similar statements, Mark 3:23-27; Luke 11:15-22; John 7:20. 

9:35-38  Jesus was teaching in the synagogues at the time, healing people of every kind of disease.  The seed planted by the Pharisees in verse 34 had not yet began to grow. 

Try to imagine the frustration that Jesus had felt, the people had been locked into a religious relationship with God.  They had the synagogue which was ran by corrupt individuals who sought to pad their own pockets more than promoting the God of the Bible.  This left the people virtually leaderless since the leaders were not so much interested in leading and guiding but more in keeping the religion going. 

The words of Jesus in these verses are still true today.  In the Christian churches, we have a greater need for pastors than there has ever been before.  In many churches, the pulpits are not filled, and some of the ones that are filled are mirror images of the Pharisees of old.  The harvest is even more plentiful than before, people are waking up spiritually, overwhelming the few churches that are preaching the gospel.  The workers are still few in comparison to the need, it is up to believers today to do whatever we can to aid in the preaching of the Gospel.  I wonder what the answer of the couch-potato Christian is going to be on Judgment day...  The time is now, and we are the ones available to work.  The question is, are we willing to follow His leading?  Are we willing to show up at our churches on our off-time and help out?  Are we willing to open our mouths and speak the truth that we have secretly hidden in our hearts? 

Father, we have studied about the tremendous healings of the New Testament, and we ask that You will use each one of us to bring in the harvest, open our eyes to the ways that we can help out.  Lord, teach us to be harvesters and workers to build Your Kingdom.

In Him,