Thank you, Dwight, it is good to be with you guys this morning.
Our passage this morning is going to be Matthew chapter 8
verses 14 to 17. So you I invite you to turn
there in your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, we do
have some there in the back. We would love for you to take
one of those. That is just a free gift from
us, no cost to you. We would invite you to grab one
of those if you don't have one. Like I said, we'll be in Matthew
chapter 8. While you're turning there,
let's catch up for a moment on where we're at in Matthew.
So Matthew has the first book in the New Testament.
It is one of the four gospels. And one of the keys to the book
of Matthew is that the author, Matthew, is really speaking to
an audience familiar with the Old Testament, a Jewish
audience. And throughout the book, he is
taking special care to show us where Jesus is the Messiah
foretold in the Old Testament and, and connecting those dots
for us so that we can see very clearly that, yes, Jesus is in
fact the Messiah. That yes, the message that he
has for us is important, a matter of life and death for us
to understand what it is that Jesus is teaching.
And so that's the angle that that or the perspective really
that Matthew has as we're going through this book.
And that'll come in for us very key today.
So a few weeks ago, we finished the Sermon on the Mount, a very
famous sermon that Jesus gives. And in large part, what's
happening here in the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus is
showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like, especially in
opposition to the Kingdom of man.
Those that are listening and we as we read those passages are
very familiar with what the Kingdom of man looks like.
But as we go to the Kingdom of God, we talk about things in the
Sermon of the Mount, like those in the Kingdom of God are poor
in spirit, they are meek, they thirst for righteousness, they
are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, they endure
persecution. There's also a boldness that
comes in being salt and light in the world.
There's a key that that we're we're not to be like the
Pharisees who go and follow the law just for the law's sake, but
that we go to the law. We see the heart of the law,
what God is doing for his people and we we follow the heart and
the righteousness found in the law.
Jesus summarizes this, the law, as love God and love neighbor.
And he at the end of the sermon in the Mount makes very clear
that it's very important whether one chooses to be of the Kingdom
of man or of the Kingdom of God, and that not many will do this,
that there is a narrow gate that one must enter and walk by the
narrow path. So Jesus is teaching this.
He's showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like.
Then he comes down from the mountain.
When we get into this next section of Scripture in chapters
8 and 9, where we're highlighting these miracles that
Jesus is doing, so he comes down from the mountain, he starts to
do these tangible acts. We talked two weeks ago about
the leper being healed and how much of that shows us that
there's cleansing of sin, that Jesus has power over sin to
forgive sins. There was also the servant and
the centurion that we talked about last week, which was this
great sign of what faithfulness looks like in an individual that
we see in the centurion. And Jesus marvels at the faith
found there. So there are lessons in these
healings if we pay careful attention.
But this short passage that we have today really goes to a core
question for us, which is what is the purpose of these
miracles? What is it that Jesus is is
teaching? What is the overarching thing
that he is teaching as he is doing these miracles?
And today's passage really serves as a key or an important
clue for us to to see that. I think of something like an
escape room. I find it interesting that our
culture has this idea that we like lock ourselves in a room
and there's a lot of intricate clues and that's a good way to
have fun. But I think that it's pretty
fun. So I should make fun of that.
But so so you're in a room and you start to figure out the
clues. And of course, after you're all
done, you can look back and it all seems quite simple, how all
the pieces fit together. But in the moment, it might have
been a little bit difficult, maybe too difficult, and we
didn't figure it out. And then you feel all the shame
that comes with happened to be let out, you know, not figuring
it out yourself. But in this passage, we're
fortunate that that Matthew makes this very clear what this
clue is. This would be like a level 1
escape room because the clue is right there in front of us.
So with that, let us go to our passage this morning.
Matthew chapter 8, verses 14 to 17 says.
And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law
lying sick with a fever, and he touched her hand, and the fever
left her, and she rose and began to serve him.
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by
demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed
all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was
spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore
our diseases. Now, first thing I wanted to to
point out in this passage really has nothing to do with the rest
of our our conversation this morning.
But I do think it's in the passage.
So we shouldn't go over it. And that is how many of us
realize that Peter was married. I think that that seems like
kind of an obscure Bible trivia fact that you would find, you
know, in some church Jeopardy tournament that Pastor Mike
would definitely win. So with that, that is in this
passage, we see that Peter has a mother-in-law.
And so that is in this passage. I think one of the reasons why
this is something, at least for me that I think is not common
knowledge is that throughout church history there has been an
emphasis placed on priests not being married.
And we as Protestants would look at that and say, no, that's
something that that has been added in and not something that
that should be held to you in Scripture.
And the reason that's kind of challenging is, you know, the
Catholic Church would say that Peter is really the the first
Pope or the one that the church was built upon.
And so it becomes a challenging fact to deal with.
What's up with the fact that Peter was actually married?
One might say, well, that happened before all of all of
this, before Jesus called him to be a disciple.
Anyhow, we're not going to go more into that.
I just wanted to point that out. It's food for thought, maybe
something to talk about at lunch or something like that.
But it is an interesting point in this passage.
Now as we continue in in our passage, we're going to start
with our first point here, which is how Jesus heals.
We see this in the passage as we go to verses 14 and 15.
It says And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his
mother-in-law lying sick with a fever, and he touched her hand
and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve him.
I think as we put ourselves in this scene, we can see, you
know, there's a lot here that maybe we wouldn't realize at
first. I find it, you know, we could
kind of put ourselves here from the perspective of Peter and.
And Jesus enters his home and of course, Peter's seen all of
these things that Jesus is doing.
Yeah. He enters his own house and his
mother-in-law is lying sick. Somebody close to him is in a
tough situation. Now, we don't know how severe
this fever was, if she was at death's door or if this was a
somewhat common ailment. I would say I think from our
modern perspective, we're probably tempted to look at
something like that, go, OK, you know, there's a fever, He just
takes medicine and you can get on with your life.
However, at this point in time and history, even a small
ailment could be a serious situation.
So I'm sure there was a lot of fear, uncertainty, trepidation
that's happening here. And yet Jesus comes in, reaches
out and touches her person close to Peter's heart, somebody that
he loved. He sees his Savior reach out and
heal her. I think we have to stop for a
moment there as we go on in this passage and just recognize the
kindness and compassion of our Savior.
I'm reminded of Jeremiah 2324. This in the NIV passage I grew
up with, says, This is what the Lord says, Let not the wise
boast in their wisdom, or the strong boast of their strength,
or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who
boast boast about this, that they have the understanding to
know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice, and
righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares
the Lord, this is the God that we worship.
This is the God that we have sung about this morning that we
read about, that we pray to. This is a God that that is
defined in his kindness and His justice, in his righteousness.
It can be so easy, I think, for us to forget that as in the
busyness of life or even in the challenging circumstances of
life, that this is such a key part of who God is, that he is
kind towards us. He has a loving kindness towards
us. As we look at the passage we see
a couple of key details and how it is that Jesus heals.
The first of these is that he heals with a touch.
We know that God is spirit. We see this in John chapter 4.
It says God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in
spirit and truth. We also see in John one that the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace
and truth. So God is spirit, yet through
Jesus spirit became flesh. And then we see here in this
passage that Jesus then reaches out to touch and to heal Peter's
mother-in-law. And we can know through our own
salvation that Jesus reaches out, touches us, and heals us.
It's an amazing thing that the Creator of the universe has come
to this earth for us. We can see in the past through
his birth and His death. We talk about that often as we
go through narrative passages of Scripture like Matthew that we
see in his coming. We celebrate that every year at
Christmas, this coming of Jesus, the kindness and compassion, the
glory found there. And then we see it again in his
death on the cross, that he died for our sins, that He's reaching
out and touching us in that, but it doesn't in there.
It's something that is ongoing. We can look to Hebrews chapter
10 verses 19 to 25. It says their four brothers.
Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the
blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us
through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we
have a great priest over the House of God, let us draw near
with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our
hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies
washed with pure water. I'll just stop there for a
moment. You know, this would have been
the situation that that the that the Jews found himself in the
time you had this holy of holies, this set apart place
where God resided. And in order to go in, there was
just one time a year that the high priest would first offer a
sacrifice for himself just to purify him of any lingering sins
that he could go into the holy of holies and be near God.
But now as Jesus has come, God become flesh has come reached
out to us, healed us. Now we through the sacrifice of
Jesus in the blood that he provided that the purity through
that blood we now can can approach God.
We don't have to go through a high priest.
We don't have to wait for there to be one time a year at which
this can happen. We can enter into the presence
of God through Jesus as he mediates on our behalf.
Verse 23 continuing, it says, Let us hold fast the confession
of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
We know the faithfulness of Jesus.
Verse 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love
and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit
of some, but encouraging one another.
And all the more as you see the day drawing near.
It seems kind of interesting that we would go right from
those first few verses into the second part.
I think what the author of Hebrews is really getting at
here is that when we look at this closeness that we have with
God, how he has reached out to us as we see in our passage, we
can be reminded that He continues to do that for us
today through His church and through the gathering of
believers. So when we gather here on a
Sunday morning, just as we're doing now when we sing together,
when we pray together, when we listen to the teaching of God's
Word together, Jesus is continuing to reach out to us
through that. During the week, as we gather in
smaller groups of believers, as we worship with our families, as
we worship with those around us in a small group or a community
group, Jesus is working through that to continue to to touch us,
to continue to show his loving kindness to us so we can be
reminded that he reaches out to us.
In the past when he came to this earth and died the death on the
cross. In the present, he is still
mediating for us. He is still working through his
church and other believers. And then we know that Jesus will
come again. We can be reminded of that.
We can count on that, that Jesus is coming back and there will be
a finality to this. That's something that we can
know and trust in continuing on the past.
I think the second thing that we see, we see Him reaching out and
touching. We also see that there is
immense power in His healing. In verse 15 it says He touched
her hands and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve
him. A couple of things here.
First off, we note that there is no delay in this healing.
There are are some who could say, well, maybe Jesus had some
special knowledge or you know, advanced knowledge.
So he he knew the right, you know, medicinal herbs to give
her or something like that. No, there's no room for that in
this passage because she rose immediately.
This was not a long term healing situation.
It's not something that was drawn out to take time after one
showed enough faithfulness. I think that's a key here.
There is a a prevalent theology throughout the world that we
would maybe call prosperity gospel that would say that if
one is faithful enough and that faithfulness measured through
various ways, whether that's they do enough things, they come
to enough things, they pray enough, or often times they give
enough financially. If they do those things, then
healing will come. That's not what we see in this
passage. It's immediate.
He touched her and the fever left her and she immediately
rose. Now that's not to say that God
cannot use long term faithful prayer in order to heal
somebody. In fact, we see this in
Scripture instructed for us to do.
We see this in James chapter 5 verses 14 to 15 says is anyone
among you sick? Claim call for the elders of the
church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in
the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will
save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
So we see that there is long term prayer that may come before
healing. But there's an important key
here, which is this is not healing coming from somebody who
is claiming to have the same healing abilities as Christ.
This is faithful Christians calling upon God to act.
There's a big difference there. So before we continue on, I just
want to issue that as a clear warning, a warning for US
against those who tie healing to some sort of specific
faithfulness often measured in giving or in giving of time and
especially giving of finances. We don't see that in Scripture.
I do not believe that to be an application of this passage,
that the most faithful of Christians would be able to then
go do exactly as Jesus did in this passage, to touch somebody
or to again ask for money and for there to be healing
associated with that as we continue on in our passage.
Our next point is why Jesus heals.
Let's start in verse 16, verses 16 and 17.
Here it says that evening they brought to him many who were
oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with the word
and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was
spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore
our disease. Now this is interesting.
So we have now three stories here of of healing with the
leper, with the centurion servant, Peter's mother-in-law.
And then the floodgates open. There's healing, there's casting
out of demons. Many people are coming and then
Matthew tells us exactly why this is occurring.
This is that clue that we talked about earlier.
It was occurring to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet
Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore
our diseases. Dwight read this passage for us
earlier in in Isaiah 53. Really, Matthew here is
summarizing off a big part of that passage.
I think we're most familiar with going to Isaiah 53, maybe in a
in a Good Friday service or something like that surrounding
the crucifixion. But there are parts of that
passage that speak not only of his death, but also of his time
here on earth. And and Matthew's really
summarizing that here. We see this most clearly in
Isaiah 53 verse four in the ESV. It says yet he himself bore or
sorry. I was reading the other one.
The ESP says surely He has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and
afflicted. In the CSV.
I think it's it's closer to the summary that we see here.
It says, yet he himself bore our sicknesses and he carried our
pains, but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God
and afflicted. It's so interesting just in this
one verse that we capture so much of this Kingdom of God
versus the Kingdom of man. We see that that He has borne
our sicknesses. This positive aspect on Christ
of what he has done is He is showing us the Kingdom of God.
But then what we know to have happened, which is the latter
part of these verses, which is that we turn in turn regarded
Him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, that we rejected
him. This reminds us of what the
Kingdom of man looks like. That is where we all once were.
Some of us may still be this Kingdom of man, as all the way
from the garden we see in Genesis 317 says the ground is
cursed because of you. You'll eat from it by means of
painful labor all the days of your life.
Isaiah 59 too. But your iniquities are
separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden His
face from you, so that He does not listen.
Romans 623 For the wages of sin is death.
Romans 512 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through
one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all
people, because all sin. This is the reality of the
Kingdom of man. This is the reality of the
world. The world is broken and evil.
It is not redeemable apart from God as as many in our culture
would hold to that. It's just a matter of a few
people acting in a bad way or just our environment that
corrupts us or these various things.
Now this is what Scripture teaches.
This is the reality of the curse of sin all the way from the
garden, that there would be brokenness and evil.
Yet on the other side of things, we have the Kingdom of God that
Jesus has just taught us all about in the Sermon on the Mount
and that He is now tangibly showing through His healing
works. He's showing us that where there
is sickness in the Kingdom of man, there is healing in the
Kingdom of God. Where there are demons and evil
things in the Kingdom of man, there is power and compassion in
the Kingdom of God. Where there is death in the
Kingdom of man, there is life in the Kingdom of God.
And where there is separation from God in the Kingdom of man,
the root of all of this, there is unity with God through Jesus
in the Kingdom of God. So now as he's doing these
healings and has, he's casting out demons.
This doesn't just fall into a vacuum.
This is exactly what he's showing us.
He's showing us that this is the Kingdom of God.
It has power over that Kingdom of man.
It confirms his message as he's doing this.
It's showing that there's something to what he is doing
here. The message that he has is
confirmed as he casts out these demons, as he heals people, and
he does it with the word. The Word of God has power.
We'll talk just a moment now about about demons.
We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a couple of
weeks as we get to the end of chapter 8, But just a quick
overview here. Demons are fallen angels.
They act in allegiance with Satan and in opposition to
Christ in his Kingdom. We see in Scripture that demons
often oppress or possess an individual and that causes them
to to do things that are particularly evil or
particularly crazy in the mannerisms that they're that
they're living. That's not to say that everybody
who does evil things or acts in odd ways is possessed by a
demon, but some could be. I think there there's a spectrum
here. And as we look at our response
in the way that we think about demons and other things of this
kind of cosmic scale that we see in Scripture, on one extreme of
this, we could go and say that there is kind of a demon behind
every problem. So every challenging situation,
that's demonic activity. Every sickness that somebody
might have, that must be demonic activity.
Every sin struggle that somebody is going through, that's a demon
in that situation. On that end of the spectrum, we
know that isn't completely true because we know that those who
have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit would not be possessed by
a demon. And we also know those of us
that are believers that just because we are believers does
not mean that we don't have challenging situations in our
lives, sickness in our lives, sin struggles in our lives.
At the other end of the spectrum, there could be those
that pay no attention whatsoever to this cosmic scale battle of
good and evil that we read about in Scripture.
I think there's there's error on that side too, because we can
know and be encouraged in the power of our Savior by knowing
those things are going on. It can affect the way that we
pray when we know that those things are going on.
So there's a bit of a spectrum that we need to find ourselves
in. I think of when I think about
demons, something that immediately comes to mind for me
was an experience that I had when I was in college.
I had, I had the opportunity to spend a summer in India and we
were there doing ministry. And at this one particular day,
we were in this very rural community.
And there was a big difference to how people dealt with
spiritual things in the cities versus in the rural areas where
things were maybe a little bit more real, a little bit darker
in the way that they viewed as spirituality.
And I was talking to a guy that was about my age and we had been
talking about Scripture and we have been talking about the
gospel and he is getting really interested.
And it was exciting. The Lord was working in his
heart. And for those of you that are
familiar with Hinduism, which was the predominant religion
there, it's a polytheistic religion, meaning that there are
many gods. And so one has to be very
careful when when sharing the gospel with somebody at a
polytheistic religion that we truly teach that Jesus is the
one true king, right? That there's not all of these
other gods that you can just stick him next to.
Because that was error that was made by the original
missionaries that went into India in the 17 and 1800s.
They, they brought in Jesus and people said that Jesus sounds
really good. I'm going to stick him up on the
shelf next to all of my other gods.
And now there's a whole sect of Hinduism that that worships
Jesus, that worships Mary alongside other gods.
And it's, it's a false religion. So we started having this
conversation. And I said we were sitting on
the steps of this temple. And I turned around and looked.
I said, you do understand that all of this is not real, that
all of this is fake, that these are not real gods, that Jesus is
the only God. And his response to me, I won't
forget this was he said, yes, I understand that there are no
gods in there. There are only demons in there.
And he went on to talk about the fear in their community over
this worship and that if they did not worship correctly, that
there was fear that their crops would die, there was fear that
their animals would would get diseases, all of these different
things. And that kind of stuck with me.
I don't have all of the answers here when it comes to this kind
of stuff, but there is some mystery to what demonic activity
really looks like today. But what we can know is that
again, that there are spiritual battles going on.
One we can also know too, that Jesus has power over those
things. And we can know that in His time
here on earth, Jesus displayed His power over those things to
show that He truly was the Messiah, to show that the
Kingdom of God was truly being ushered in.
We see this in Luke 1120. It says, But if it is by the
finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God
has come upon you. So we know by the fact that
Jesus is casting out demons that the Kingdom of God is being
ushered in by Jesus. So let's go to our last point
this morning. We're going to spend a little
bit of time here as we look at 2 main areas of response.
There's two applications I think that we really need to highlight
in this passage. The first comes from the 1st 2
verses, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law.
And then we'll get to the second dealing with kind of this
overall picture of Jesus healing.
So as we go back to verses 14 and 15 says, and when Jesus
entered Peter's house and he saw his mother-in-law lying sick
with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her.
And then what is her response? And she rose and began to serve
him. That's such a big part of the
healing of Jesus is what? What is our response?
That our response is to serve him?
Yeah, we see this. It's so important for us to
properly understand when we're looking at salvation that we are
not saved by our works, but that doesn't mean that works play no
role in the life of the believer.
I heard recently from a Christian historian, Wes Huff.
Some of you may have heard of him.
I would recommend his stuff he deals with, especially in the
history of the Bible. But in an interview I heard him
say this, that we are not saved by works, but we are saved for
works. I think that's a helpful way for
us to think about it. As we look at Ephesians chapter
2 verses one through 10, a commonplace in Scripture to go
and explain this, this glory of the gospel, we can see how clear
this is starting out. It says, and you were dead in
the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
Following the course of this world, following the Prince of
the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons
of disobedience among whom we've all once lived, and the passions
of our flesh carrying out the desires of the body and of the
mind. And we're by nature children of
wrath like the rest of mankind. Pause there for a moment.
That's the Kingdom of man right there.
That is the reality of the situation that we have in this
world. We, apart from Christ, are of
the Kingdom of man. But then the passage goes on, it
says, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love
with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated
us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in
the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his
grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
That's Jesus reaching out to us. You know, it's such an amazing
thing as we think about salvation and how glorious it
would be if we only saw the mercy of Jesus, if we recognize
that we were completely dead in our trespasses.
And then Jesus took away that sentence.
What a glorious thing that would be, that we were a billion
dollars in debt and that debt was erased.
But that's not where the gospel ends.
As Jesus reaches out to us, he raises this up into the heavenly
places. We receive the righteousness won
by Christ on the cross. So not only are we a billion
dollars in debt and then we go to a 0 sum, we're credited that.
And so we are raised up with Jesus says, for by grace you
have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.
It's the gift of God, not a result of work.
So that no one may boast. There's that clarity that what
we're talking about here is not being saved by works.
But the passage doesn't end there.
We have one more verse. We go to verse 10 and it says,
for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good
works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk
in them. So when we're saved, we then go
and glorify God by going and doing the things that He has set
beforehand for us to do. This is an important part of the
walk of a believer. We have the example of Jesus in
this. We have Matthew 2028 says even
as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give
his life as a ransom for many. This is part of our response to
our salvation is that we go and do the works that God has set
beforehand for us to do. So what does that look like?
I think there are many things that that can look like, but
let's let's work in in close to us and work our way out.
We glorify God when we serve our families, we when we serve our
spouses, when we serve our children, when we serve our
parents. We glorify God in the way that
we do that what a picture of the gospel.
It is when we think about in our marriages that we serve one
another for the glory of God that we aren't so concerned
about everything being equal about if I do that this, then
they're going to do this and and if they put in 50%, I'm going to
put in 50%. If they put in 100%, then I'll
put in 100%. The picture of the gospel is
that we have been saved by grace through faith.
Let us then go and do good works.
Let us be a picture of what it looks like to serve our spouses
and let God worry about the other stuff with his
relationship and our spouses that we can show that example.
And when we do that, that shows such an example to our children,
children in the room as you obey your parents and you serve and
your family that glorifies God as you do that.
As we go out a little bit further, we glorify God when we
serve our church family. And there are so many ways that
we serve our church family. A few that just came to mind as
I was thinking about this. One way that we serve our church
family is by living transparent lives.
It's on the sign over there, something that we hold to that
we would live transparent lives. When we come to church in an
authentic manner, when we live life together that encourages
one another, that serves one another, that glorifies God.
When we come to church, try to put on a perfect face all of
that. All that that does is steal that
encouragement from other people. All that does is make other
people sit there and think, oh man, they have everything
together. What is it that I'm doing?
When we come authentically, we're then we can pray for one
another. We can see what's going on in
each other's lives. We're encouraged by that.
We encourage one another through wise counsel.
I've seen this happen multiple times.
I think of a specific situation that I have in my mind in our
hallway that I just walked past the conversation the other week
where somebody in our church was struggling with a situation that
somebody else in our church had already been through, and there
was wise counsel given there, encouragement given there.
In those situations, God is glorified.
This may be a hobby horse for me, but when we sing for one
another on a Sunday morning, we glorify God in that service
towards each other. We're going to talk about this
next week in Sunday school, and so if you would like to join us
for that, we meet right in here at 9:15 for Sunday school and
we've been talking through spiritual disciplines.
We're talking about worship next week and one of the things we're
going to talk about is that in worship there is a vertical
component, absolutely, where we are singing praises to God and
we are communing with God in that situation.
There is also a horizontal aspect to worship where we are
singing together, glorifying God together.
When we raise our voices, whether it's in tune or out of
tune. When we raise our voices
together as a church and we sing the truths that we see in
Scripture that are captured in the songs that we sing, that is
service and encouragement to one another and that glorifies God.
And yes, absolutely serving also can look like serving in formal
ways. It is no secret to anybody that
it takes a lot to do church together on a Sunday morning,
especially in a in a setup and tear down church like we have in
this current season. We can serve one another by
being here early to set up chairs or staying late to take
them down. We can serve one another by
providing snacks with hospitality.
We can serve one another absolutely.
In the kids areas, there are kids there just now that are
learning more and more about the gospel with their teachers back
there. And I think it can be helpful
for us as we think about this service, that really what's
happening here is that we are recognizing that we have been
saved, that we have been healed by Christ, and that that moves
us to service. And when we serve one another,
that provides more opportunities for others to feel that same
love and kindness of Christ. That can be the perspective that
we have as we serve one another, especially in some of those hard
areas. Like, you know, sometimes kids
area can be hard or sometimes, you know, it could be tough on
the back setting up chairs and tearing them down every week.
But when we're doing that, we're glorifying God.
We're providing opportunities for others to hear his truth.
And then as we go outward one more time to a large area, which
is all of those around us that do not believe whether those be
close to us, friends, neighbors, family, Co workers, or whether
it's people that we have very little interaction with.
Maybe it's the least of these people in difficult situations
in that we glorify God by serving them.
And yes, that absolutely sometimes looks like providing
tangible needs, showing kindness, but even more so, it
involves us sharing the truth of the gospel in those situations
so that people can know the truth that we know in Scripture.
Our second point of application comes from the last two verses
as we talked about what is really going on here with Jesus
healing, you know, is our is our application here to to say, OK,
Jesus has healed these people with a touch.
Now we are supposed to go and do that exact thing or point out
that this is a descriptive passage of Scripture, which
means it's telling us about what's happened.
It's not necessarily prescribing that we go do that thing.
However, there is something here in a descriptive passage.
There is still a lesson to be learned.
I think that there is, we have to find a little bit of a
Goldilocks zone here as we look at a spectrum here of, you know,
there is a danger on placing too much emphasis on these miracles
and how we must see or play out these miracles in our church
life in order for us to truly be faithful.
There is danger there. There's also danger in too
little where we say, you know, all of the supernatural things
that were going on in Scripture, that was all just something that
happened back then. We don't expect that God works
in supernatural ways anymore. There's there's a danger here on
either side, but the key here is faithfulness.
I spent a lot of time in the last few weeks reading stories
of people that came out of this kind of prosperity gospel we
talked about earlier where, you know, your faithfulness as a
believer is really judged by whether it be wealth, health or,
or, or success that comes through believing the gospel.
And I think that this fictional story here that I'm going to
share in a moment kind of summarizes a lot of those
details and, and really hit close to to my heart.
So we have this individual, we'll call him Joshua.
He considers himself spiritual, even a Christian, kind of a
Christmas and Easter kind of Christian.
That's that's how he grew up. That's how his life was until
his life started to get complicated.
As life does in that complication.
He found himself on his knees before God and gave his life
over to Christ. And for the sake of this story,
let's just say this was a genuine salvation.
He truly did turn over his life to Christ, but he's pretty
immature now. He's a brand new baby believer
with nobody around him. As he's reading his Bible, he
starts to recognize that scripture calls people to get
together and talk about the Bible, just like we talked about
in Hebrews chapter 10. So he tries to find a church.
He goes to the the biggest one near him.
He's seen a billboard or something like that.
He starts going to this church. He likes that they're talking
about the Bible. He finds it may be a little bit
strange that they talk so much about money and giving, but as
he starts to learn more about the Bible and he starts to apply
those principles to his life. Things start to get better.
His complicated life gets a little less complicated.
He's finding some success in work as he applies biblical
principles to his life. As you would hope, a lot of
situations are improving. So all is well and good until
it's his turn to get some some bad medical news.
He gets a diagnosis. His life is going to be cut
short. So what does he do?
He immediately starts to think about what have I done to
deserve this? In what way have I been
unfaithful and I'm being punished in this way?
So he starts looking for every sin that he could confess.
He starts to do as much as he can at church to give more money
than he is able to just to try to compensate for something
going on in his life. He starts to seek counsel from
other believers, but the only thing that he is getting from
them is that his motives must not be right if he's still
struggling with this. So he gets sicker and sicker,
and meanwhile he's having more anxiety and more anxiety,
feeling worthless as his health continues to deteriorate.
He sits in a position where he thinks he must be a poor excuse
for a Christian if he can't believe well enough to be
healed. That ought to make us a little
bit angry to think about that, the twisting of Scripture that
leaves so many people in a situation like that or where
there's too much emphasis placed on this.
Another story comes to mind. When Taylor and I were in
college, we were at a church in South Carolina and there was a
family there that found out they were having a baby.
There was all the excitement that comes with that.
At the 20 week appointment they found out that that baby had a
rare that condition and that the outlook was bad.
The baby probably would not make it to birth, or if it did, it
wouldn't make it much further. But to complicate the story,
they also found that there was cancer in the placenta and so
the doctor's advice was that this would be the textbook case
for terminating a pregnancy. The baby had little chance of
life and there was danger that the mother would would contract
cancer throughout the process of the pregnancy.
They felt no peace about that and they went to the Lord on
their knees. Their church came around them.
They continued on with that pregnancy and praise the Lord,
the baby was born. The baby was fine.
That baby is 13 years old today, and the mother did not contract
cancer. The Lord worked a miracle in
that situation. Praise the Lord.
But we also know that sometimes that's not how that story ends.
Sometimes people get sick, they reach out to the Lord in
faithfulness, their church comes around them in faithful prayer,
and they still die. And those are tough situations.
Probably all of us have experienced that in some way or
another. But what we can know is that
through the faithful prayers of the believers that God is
glorified. Through their endurance and
suffering, God is glorified. And in his infinite wisdom and
knowledge and sovereignty, God is over that situation and
there's a reward in heaven. We know all of that to be true
as we close here. Our main idea this morning as we
summarize what we just talked about.
An important aspect of Jesus's ministry on earth was to show us
what his Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, looked like.
By healing, by casting out demons, Jesus displayed how His
Kingdom overcomes the curse of sin and darkness.
Even more so than physical healing.
We have witnessed Jesus power and salvation and should respond
as Peter's mother-in-law did by serving our Savior.
If you were here this morning and, and and you look at this
and you say I definitely see myself in the Kingdom of man, I
would invite you to consider the verses and Ephesians that we
read. Jesus has already paid the price
by believing in Him through grace and faith.
You can't have life in Christ. I would urge you not to delay to
do that. I would urge you to consider
that today to talk to a Christian friend, to talk to one
of the pastors here, to come to the Lord on your knees.
For we know that he is faithful to save.
And for those of us that can look and say we are in the
Kingdom of God, let us be motivated as we look back to the
healing that God has provided us in salvation.
Let us be motivated to continue to serve him, to serve him by
serving our families, by serving our church, by serving our
communities, and by bringing the love of Christ to others.
Would you join me now in prayer? Father, we love you, we praise
you. We all know the realities of the
Kingdom of man and the darkness and the struggle there.
We pray that we would be encouraged by the Kingdom of
God, knowing that you have victory over those things.
And as we wait for you to come back and we live in this in
between time where there is still the presence of sin and
death, help us remember that there is no victory of sin and
death. For those of us that look at our
lives right now and see some of those hard situations where we
are praying and praying and praying for healing and have not
seen healing come first, we pray for encouragement.
We pray for endurance. We also pray that ultimately we
would be looking to you and what you have said to us and that we
know you'll be glorified in whatever that outcome is.
We praise you this morning and we pray.
Amen.