Miracles!
Had a great breakfast with cheesy grits and two poached eggs. May be my new favorite breakfast. I might of well have been in Georgia! I then conducted the chapel service at the MacKenzie Place here in Fort Collins. We had a group in attendance this morning and they were a cooperative and supportive group.
BIBLE VERSE FOR TODAY…. The man bowed down before him and said, “Lord, you can heal me if you will.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man and said, “I will. Be healed!” And immediately the man was healed from his disease. Matthew 8:2,3
Following Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” and the teaching about the Kingdom of God, we find a series of miracles Jesus performed in the following two chapters. There is a wide range of miracles and some common observations that can be made from each of them.
We read an account of healing of man with leprosy, the healing of the Centurion’s servant who was paralyzed and in pain. Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a high fever, and then delivers those who were possessed by demons. After leaving Capernum, Jesus calms the storm on the sea and then arriving in the area of the Gadarenes he drives the demons out of two men who had terrorized the community. Jesus travels back across the sea and heals a paralyzed man brought to him by friends, Jesus then heals a women with an “issue of blood” before He raises the daughter of a ruler of the synagogue from the dead and then as he leaves the city He heals two blind men. Jesus then heals a man who was mute because of a demon and scripture records He healed, “all kinds of diseases and sicknesses.”
In all of these we Jesus reaching out to the rejected, the despised, those who had no hope, He delivered those bound by demons and gave physical and spiritual life. His motivation is referenced in Matthew 9:37-38 “When he saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them because they were hurting and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus said to his followers, “There are many people to harvest but only a few workers to help harvest them. Pray to the Lord, who owns the harvest, that he will send more workers to gather his harvest.”
We can note Jesus compassion for people in need, but because of the enormity of the need, there were more people than even He could reach and touch. As a result, He said the need was to “pray…for more workers…” What Jesus immediately does is to send out His disciples to preach and to heal those in need. We need to remember that the Lord continues to use “workers” called by Him and willing to be used by Him to touch others with the compassion of Christ.
In all of these miracles we see people coming to Jesus and expressing their faith in Jesus’ power to bring healing and meet them at their point of need. Some of them literally, “cried out” others fought through the crowd, others had the help of friends.
We see Jesus affirming their faith, encouraging faith and rewarding faith. We see on two occasions that it was the “faith of someone else” that was the key to a miracles. Jesus does honor “faith for others” to be healed.
In each of these lives, their future was radically changed. Jesus’ touch brings a new life. The dead are raised, outcasts are embraced by the community, the blind and destitute have a new purpose in life, as do the lame and those delivered from the bondage of demons.
I have mentioned at times how you can observe the similarities in people over the centuries. May those similarities not just be related to that which reflects the frailties of the human condition, but also a faith and a hope that says, “if I can get to Jesus, if I can get my friend to Jesus, their life will be changed.”