Your Faith Matthew 9:22

Faith is a tricky subject.  Many Christians have experienced deep discouragement, sadness, and guilt, because they believed for something that didn’t happen as or when they thought it should.

I don’t claim to have all the answers.  I like to think I have some.

Seven times in the first three gospels, Jesus told somebody that their faith had saved them.  These were all stories of physical healing.  The word ‘save’ is used in the Bible in more ways than simply a person being saved from sin and hell.  In fact, twice in the book of Acts, this distinction is entirely blurred.  You can’t tell the one from the other.

Matthew 9:22 ²² But Jesus turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has saved you.”  And the woman was saved from that hour.

Mark 5:34 ³⁴ And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.”

Mark 10:52 ⁵² And Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him on the road.

Luke 7:50 (NASB95) ⁵⁰ And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 8:48 (NASB95) ⁴⁸ And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 17:19 (NASB95) ¹⁹ And He said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”

Luke 18:42 ⁴² And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”

Acts 4:9–12 (NASB95) ⁹ if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been saved, ¹⁰ let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health. ¹¹ “He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. ¹² “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Acts 14:8–10 ⁸ At Lystra a man was sitting who had no strength in his feet, lame from his mother’s womb, who had never walked. ⁹ This man was listening to Paul as he spoke, who, when he had fixed his gaze on him and had seen that he had faith to be saved, ¹⁰ said with a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he leaped up and began to walk.

I would make the case that physical healing is part of the whole package of salvation.  But that would take a lot longer space.

Suffice it to say, always believe God for healing for your physical, mental, emotional problems.  It may not come as fast as you would like or how you would like.  But expect it to come, and no, I would never say that death is God’s answer.  But, yes, it happens. 

But you will never get anywhere if you keep thinking about what happened to other people or even yourself in the past.  All you have is today, and you are only ultimately responsible for yourself.

Seven times in the gospels, Jesus told somebody that their faith saved them.  Exact same words.  The perfect tense in Greek that emphasizes their present state of wellness. 

I learned a while back.  Pay attention to the gospels.  The life of Jesus, but more importantly, what He actually said and did.

Like Peter walking on the water (Matthew 14), it’s all about focus.  Keeping your eyes on Jesus and not on all the noise and things around you.

On a personal note, I have had cancer three times.

The first time was in 1996.  It was stage 3, and I turned down treatment, and then they said I didn’t need it.

The second time I had a lump on my neck the size of a tennis ball.  That didn’t go away like I expected, so I had treatment.  But I wasn’t clean of the whole thing until after the doctor said he didn’t expect the treatment to make any difference.

Now it’s a different kind of cancer, and no, I haven’t had any treatment.  Another test next week.

I’ll let you know what’s going on, but like Jesus told a man whose daughter had just died: Stop being afraid.  Only believe.  (Mark 5:36)

Are you oppressed? Acts 10:37,38

Acts 10:37,38 ³⁷ You yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed, ³⁸ Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

The idea of people being oppressed occurs a lot today in political discussions.  People are either oppressed or oppressors depending on their demographics. 

The Bible talks about oppression a lot but not the kind that politicians do.  You can decide which kind is more important.

In Luke 13, Jesus encountered a woman who was bent over and couldn’t straighten herself up.  And He healed her.  And when a religious leader complained that Jesus had done this on the Sabbath, Jesus responded by noting that anybody would water his animals on the Sabbath, shouldn’t a woman whom “Satan bound for 18 years” be let loosed on the Sabbath? 

We didn’t see the woman’s MRI of her spine.  I am sure she had degenerative discs of the spine and probably severe osteoporosis.  Yet Jesus attributed her problem to Satan and not physical causes. 

The text quoted above says that Jesus healed all who were oppressed by the devil.  He could have just said that Jesus healed everybody, which He did.  Jesus’ goal wasn’t to go looking for people to heal.  Most times they came to Him.  This woman happened to be where Jesus was, and Jesus couldn’t just ignore her. 

The question is whether this text is saying or suggesting that every person that Jesus healed was oppressed by the devil.  Peter’s mother-in-law who had a fever?  How did Jesus heal her?  He spoke to the fever, like it could hear Him.  (Luke 4:39)

Did Jesus heal people who were not oppressed by the devil?  Why would it only mention those who were? 

The fact is that we can’t see spiritual forces, spiritual realities.   When Job got sick, I am sure that if he went to Mayo Clinic, they would have found all kinds of abnormalities in his blood work, but the Bible is clear that all his ailments were from the devil.

Science and medicine are able to treat many of the physical ailments that people have. 

The mistake is seeing all physical ailments as entirely physical that can only be treated by physical means.  Not many people are able to deal with physical ailments spiritually, but I think a good first step is seeing that life is not all just the things that we can see and measure in a lab.  And our outcomes are not limited to what scientists and doctors think or say.

Yes, I had chemotherapy for lymphoma, but it didn’t go away until after I had reached stage 4, and the doctor essentially gave up any hope that the treatment was going to make any difference. 

Never lose hope for physical healing, and whatever you do to get it, make God your first hope and option and not your last.

 

 

 

 

Forever Children John 1:10-13

John 1:10–13 (NASB95) ¹⁰ He [Jesus] was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

1 John 3:1 (NASB95) ¹ See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Theoretically, God could have created the world very differently from the world He did.  Most animals reach adulthood within a year or so.  But human beings take far longer than any other living thing to reach full maturity.

And why might that be?

Because God see us, at least those of us who believe in Jesus, as His children.  Those of us who are adults now don’t usually think of ourselves as children of somebody else, but certainly not as children as all.  We like to think of ourselves as equal to our parents.

But to God we are always His children.

And this is why we have families.  So we know, understand, and always remember the feelings of childhood, because to God we are always there.

This is why when our children grow up, there are more children, the grandchildren, to capture again the idea of what it means to be a kid.

I venture to say that one of the hardest parts of being a Christian is getting and having this sense of family, that we are God’s children, He is our Father, and a Father delights in his children. 

We are always more focused on how we are doing.  Are we good enough?  Did we not fail at this or that? 

Yes, we know that our salvation is not in jeopardy when we sin, or fail, but we can’t help but think that God is not pleased with us.  We screwed up on something, and now He has to chastise us, for our good no doubt, but we have lost the sheer delight of childhood, of just loving to be with our parents and their doting love over us. 

We have families to teach us about God.  We have the Bible to tell us what it’s like, but we often need to see what it looks like.  Families aren’t perfect, but it’s the best we have.  Somewhere, whether it’s as a child, a parent, a spouse, we know what it feels like to be loved, unconditionally.  And God loves us more.

Impossible is the Norm Numbers 13:27,28

Numbers 13:27,28 (NASB95) ²⁷ Thus they [the 12 spies] told him [Moses] and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. ²⁸ “Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there.

Maybe the biggest challenge in life is to look at circumstances, or what you could call, life as it really is, and to know what circumstances should be accepted as they are and which ones should and can be changed.  And many of them will look impossible to change.

Our Bible text is Numbers 13:27,28.  God had promised His chosen people a land to live in, a land flowing with milk and honey.  They were slaves in a foreign country, and He brought them out through a series of miracles, culminating in an event which was a picture of Jesus’ death on our behalf to redeem us from sin and slavery and death.

But it wasn’t just enough to bring them out of their bondage.  He wanted them to live in a land of abundance, this land flowing with milk and honey.

When they arrived at this land, Moses, their leader, sent out 12 spies to look at the land and report back to them what they saw.  The verses at the top [we read] were the beginning of their report.  The descendants of Anak, a race of giants, were there.  Like Goliath, only a lot of them.  The cities were well-fortified, and though the land was everything they were told it was, taking the land would be impossible.

I venture to say that that is the norm, and we should get used to it.

Things that look impossible to us are not impossible with God.  Well, yes, we know all that.  God can do anything.  Our problem is believing that He will.  Or even wants to.

All things are possible to the one who believes.  Mark 9:23

Well, there are a lot of impossible things in the world.  Can we believe for any of them? 

The Bible contains stories about a lot of ‘impossible’ things happening, but they are not random wonders like a magician doing tricks.  God has a mission in the world, and we are not to judge its viability or the chances of its success by whether it seems plausible or not. 

We are to look to God and the Bible to see what God wants to do in the world and then look to God to make it happen without being sidetracked by how impossible it might be.  The classic example of this is Peter in Matthew 14:22-33, where Peter actually walked on water, albeit briefly, as long as he could keep his focus on Jesus and not on the impossibility of what he was doing. 

But I am saying, expect that a lot of the things that you will think God wants you to do will look impossible with no chance of success that you can see.  Now you need to keep your focus on God and not on the impossible thing that needs to be changed.

Loving your neighbors Leviticus 19:34

In Jesus’ ministry, the issue of what are the most important things to do in life came up at least twice: Mark 12:28-31, Luke 20:25-28

The most important thing to do in life is to love God with all our being, and the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

These commands are from the Old Testament, and this command to love our neighbors is noteworthy for how it is introduced.

Leviticus 19:1,2 (NASB95)  ¹ Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ² “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

After He says this, He tells them 15 times in this chapter: I am the Lord your God.  So each time you can consider it an affirmation of His holiness.  A reminder.

But what does that mean? 

It means that God has a special place in life.   He is not like anything else you know.  Yes, all of life points to God, but God is apart from and exceedingly higher than everything we know. 

He deserves and demands our utmost devotion and respect.  Is that because He a narcissist, always looking for people to praise him, like a talk show host once suggested?  No, it is simply a fact of life that God created everything, everything holds together by His power.  Our very existence and life depend on God.  Just like we need food and air and water, we need God.  It’s just that most people don’t know the extent of it.

But all this means that our lives need to resemble His.  Holy lives.  Lives separated unto Him.  That’s what it means to live a holy life: living a life conscious of His presence on it and conscious of your desire to live for Him.

So Leviticus 19 covers a number of things that that entails.

And twice it mentions loving other people like yourself.

First it mentions all kinds of things related to our relationships with other people.  And then in verse 18, it’s like a summary of all these things: Leviticus 19:18 (NASB95) ¹⁸ ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

But then later, He mentions it again but slightly differently: Leviticus 19:34 (NASB95) ³⁴ ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

This is a verse about immigration, one of the most contentious issues facing our country today.

We need to divide this issue into two separate distinct issues.

The first issue is government policy.  Briefly I would just say that a government, or a country, has the responsibility and the right to know who is coming into the country, and anyone coming into our country should have a medical and background check first.  Governments exist to take care of the people of their countries first, like you take care of your own kids before all the other kids on the block

The second issue is the personal one.  You are to love this person as yourself.  They are human beings created in the image of God for whom Jesus died. 

After loving God, this is the most important thing you can do: love other people.

It is easy to focus on things we do that we consider important.  Every person we meet is created in God’s image, and we need to respect them and be open to any way we might show God’s love to them and minister His grace to them.

 

 

 

Children of God

John 1:12,13 (NASB95) ¹² But as many as received Him [Jesus], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

I read an article yesterday on the decline of the American family. 

People just weren’t having any.

They weren’t getting married, and they weren’t having kids.

I found the article informative and interesting.

But what really got me were the comments that people made to the article.

Person after person told about how having kids changed their lives, gave their lives meaning and a joy they didn’t know before. 

Having kids is built into our very systems.  One of the strongest if not the strongest human desire is that for sex, and that act itself is responsible for the creation of new human beings.

Woman are told that they need a career to be happy and fulfilled, yet a career of something she does, while having children is something her body was designed to do.  It is built in her very body structure.

Throughout all of human history, people had little control over how many kids they were to have.  God did not make creating new life our decision.

We can speculate all we want about why that was, but our text here tells that we can become children of God.  Born of God.  We can become part of God’s family.

I have found that one of the hardest things for me to learn in life is feeling loved, not just by another human being, but as a child in a family.  No, I was not deprived of love as a kid, but it wasn’t engrained in me. 

It was only as I was much older, and especially after I had my granddaughter that it all really started to have the intended impact.

God gave us families to learn, to understand, and to appreciate His love for us.  We may know in our heads that we have been justified by faith and that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, but it was only when I could see myself as a child loved by his parents that I could feel God truly having my back, so to speak. 

 

Scandalous Women of the Bible – Studies in Matthew 1

Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy, a list of about forty-plus names of Jesus’ ancestors. 

If he were writing his gospel today, his publisher would tell him to begin with a story to get the reader’s attention, maybe a healing story, and then he can revert back to Jesus’ birth and show how this all began.

Matthew presents Jesus as the Hebrew Messiah, and this Messiah was to come from the family of David, so it would be necessary to show that Jesus indeed was a descendant of David. 

But to begin with that?

When you read the genealogy, you soon realize that this is not an ordinary genealogy, and he did need to do this first.  Matthew includes the names of people who wouldn’t ordinarily appear in a genealogy, so you know something is up.

Genealogies, or at least ancient Hebrew ones, trace a person’s lineage through their fathers, and this became especially important in ancient Hebrew society, because family origins were important for a number of reasons especially for inheritances which always involved the land they lived on. 

I know some people today will object to genealogies focusing on fathers, that this is evidence of a patriarchal system that repressed women.  Frankly, society needs a patriarchy, if you want to call it that, to survive.

Why?

Because men won’t become fathers to their children unless they know that the children are theirs.  Sure, men adopt children all the time, but if you’re with a woman and you doubt that her child is yours, you are not going to be the father that child needs. 

If the inheritances were passed through the men, you will have men committed to their wives and children and both parents involved in the raising of their children.  When society, and in this case God, gives men this responsibility, it ensures that fathers made it a point to know who their children were and took care of them. 

Men at that time often had more than one wife.  Throughout history, there were always more women than men in society.  Why?  Generally because of wars.  The men went out to fight, and many did not come back.  So, having more than one wife not only ensured the survival of the nation, but it also ensured that women would not have to grow old alone and without children, and that existing children would also have a father in the home.

But this wouldn’t work in reverse, where women would have more than one husband, because then men would not know who the father of the child was, and in most cases that child would not have the father that he needed in his life.

So Matthew begins his account of the life of Jesus with Jesus’ genealogy.

In Matthew 1:1, Jesus is said to be the son of David, son of Abraham.  But wait.  If Jesus was the son of David, He would have to be the son of Abraham.  There’s no need to mention that.

But he did.  So why did he?

Because Matthew wants to trace Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham and not just to David.

And why?

Because he wants to take note of three more people in Jesus’ line that would have been omitted.  In all, he notes 4 of the mothers of His ancestors.

But why?

To answer that question, we have to see who these 4 women are.

The first is Tamar.  Her story is told in Genesis 38.  She was the daughter-in-law of Judah.  She had married Judah’s oldest son.  He died, and as was the custom then, the next oldest brother took her as his wife.  But he also died.  Judah had another son, but he was reluctant to have his third son marry her, so since the son was still young, he put it off.  Time goes by, and Tamar is still without a husband.  And children. 

So when Judah went on a business trip, she followed surreptitiously and pretended to be a prostitute.  They often covered their faces for obvious reasons, and Judah took the bait.  She became pregnant.  With twins, no less.  You can read the details in Genesis, but Tamar’s firstborn became part of Jesus’ ancestral line.  They wanted to stone her to death for I guess adultery or something, but she proved that Judah was the father, so they let it go.

So Tamar had children through her father-in-law.  She seduced her father-in-law by pretending to be a prostitute.

The second woman noted in Jesus’ ancestry actually was a prostitute.  It wasn’t one instance of impropriety; this was her life.  But Rahab was maybe the only person in her city who believed in the true God when the Israelites came into their land, and her faith saved her life.  And this is noted in Hebrews 11, and she was written about along with Moses and Abraham and Enoch and other great examples of faith.

The next woman was Ruth, a Moabite.  The Moabites were perpetual enemies of the ancient Hebrews and forbidden to enter the assembly of the Lord to the tenth generation.  (Deuteronomy 23:3)  But she married into a Jewish family and after the death of her husband returned to Israel with her mother-in-law, embraced the God of Israel, and married a man who became the grandfather of David the king.

The fourth woman isn’t even mentioned by her name.  She was married to a soldier of Israel who is named, but David himself took her for himself, and she became pregnant.  That first child died soon after being born, but she then gave birth to Solomon who followed David as king, and he was a very notable king.

So we saw the lives of these four women who Matthew had to note were in Jesus’ ancestry.  But why did he include them?

Well, because the next person in Jesus’ ancestry included a woman with, shall we say, unusual circumstances.

She is engaged to be married to Jesus’ father, but she is found to be pregnant.  Joseph knew he wasn’t the father.  And many of Matthew’s readers will have heard the story of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth and their firstborn child.

Matthew fills in the details of that first child.  An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and assures him that everything is alright.  He can marry the girl.  The child she was going to have was from the Holy Spirit, and the child will grow up to be Somebody great.

So you think Joseph told everybody about this?  Anybody? 

“Oh, everything is alright.  This child is the Son of God.” 

No, this child grew up in Nazareth with everybody thinking that he was illegitimate.  And that had a lot more stigma to it than it does today.

And Matthew is saying, wait a minute.  You want to judge the life of Jesus by what people have been saying about Him for the last 30 years?  No, you need to put that aside, and see what God has done here.  Don’t be so sure about what God can or can’t do, or what He will or won’t do.

 

I am teaching a Bible class on the book of Matthew.  This was from the lesson on chapter 1.  We covered a lot more than what we did here.  I plan to go through Matthew in these videos and articles, but they won’t be as thorough as the classes.

We meet on Thursday nights at 7:00, and the case is open to anyone. 

I’m not saying this to advertise the class.  If you find this and other lessons like it on Matthew helpful, you might want to be a part of the group.  Just let me know.