Thank you, Brian, and good morning to all of you. Nice to see you. It's not snowing outside, like was predicted earlier in the week, but good to see all of you here. The weather has turned out nicely for Sabbath Services Day as well as the memorial for afterwards. Anna Hastings, one other addition to announcements, just requested to thank everyone for your prayers regarding the situation that we sent in a prayer request for earlier regarding her son. Things have worked out very well in that regard, so I appreciate your prayers regarding that. I do see we have several visitors with us today, and I would like to comment about our service formats a little bit different today. Usually twice a month we have what is called our series on the Harmony of the Gospels, the Harmony of the Gospels being this book which most of you, hopefully all of you have a copy of. And a Harmony of the Gospels is just a chronological story laying out all of what the four Gospels say. And today we'll be beginning on the bottom part of page 18 and page 19 of that. Hopefully we'll get through that page in half of material, get going on a record-setting pace here. But this is a long-running study. We've been doing it for about a year and a half now. We've covered about 25 different studies, I think, on the Gospels. And at the rate we're going, I hope to finish it before I'm pushing up Daisy, which may be about another 7, 8, 10 years from now. We'll see. But again, a lot of information packed into what we'll be covering today. So we'll launch right into it, leaving off where we left off last time. Again, on the bottom part of page 18, we covered the top part of page 18 last time, which described how Jesus healed a possessed man in the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath day. And we discussed what it means that Jesus spoke with authority, or smeekah. We went into that discussion quite a bit, showing that he had great authority as a rabbi from God, as a great rabbi from God. And today we'll pick up and see what happens immediately after this healing on that Sabbath morning there at the synagogue in Capernaum. And we'll read now from Mark's account, which has the most detail here. So beginning with Mark's account, and let's see, yeah, I actually better catch up with what I'm projecting here on screen. You can't just follow along with what's on screen here too, and pay attention to that. Now, as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they, referring to Jesus and his small group of disciples at that time, entered the house of Simon, Simon Peter and Andrew, with James and John. But Simon's wife's mother lay sick with a fever, and they told him about her at once. So they leave the synagogue immediately, as it says, they arrive at Simon Peter's house, and find out that Simon's mother-in-law, or Peter's mother-in-law, is sick with a fever.
Notice here a problem for one of the major religions in the church, which is that Peter is married. He has a wife, he has a mother-in-law, which clearly shows that he is married. And, of course, one of the major religions of the world teaches that their leaders have to be celibate, that their priests have to be celibate. And they also claim that Peter was the first pope, so there's an obvious problem here. This is something you might bring up to some friends of that persuasion at some time, to point out that there's an obvious issue here. So I'm not sure where that idea of priestly celibacy or papal celibacy came from, but as we see here, it clearly did not come from Peter, since he has a wife and a mother-in-law. Verse 31, so Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her, and she served them. So we see here this is an immediate healing, with no recovery period even, no transition, apparently, that she immediately gets up and begins serving Jesus and Peter and James and John and whoever else was with them there. Notice also that no sooner had he healed her than she was up and doing what? Serving, tending to the needs of her guests there in their home. Jesus healed her, and the first thing that she does is to use that blessing of having her health restored to her to serve others. That's a great attitude. And as we discussed in our series on spiritual gifts several months ago, all of those gifts, one of which includes serving or ministering, are for the purpose of serving, serving God's people, serving the congregations, the body of Christ.
Continuing with our story here, moving on into the afternoon, now it comes sunset time, and we see what happens next. That evening when the sun had set, they brought to Jesus all who were sick and those who were demon-possessed. And the whole city was gathered together at the door.
The whole city of Capernaum has a population of about 1,000 to 1,500. There's quite a crowd here gathered around the door of Simon Peter's house. It's also a fairly cramped city, as we'll show here in a little while. You might envision this scene here that way.
Then he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he did not allow the demons to speak because they knew him.
Now what we're seeing here is the miracles Jesus had performed, the casting out of the demon from the possessed man earlier that morning at the synagogue, and then the healing of Peter's mother in law here, were things that just could not be hidden. Word spread immediately of those things. And thus we see that it's sundown. As it says here, the whole town comes out to see him.
So it's rather interesting that he heals a demon-possessed man there in the morning.
So those... and then it says people come out, those who were demon-possessed, so people who are bringing their friends or family members, whatever who might be possessed with demons, they hear about this miraculous healing of the demon-possessed man. So they bring others who are suffering with that affliction as well. And no doubt, word of healing of Peter's mother-in-law also got around. So all of those who are sick and afflicted come to... and wanting healing come to Jesus that evening after sundown. So this is a wonderful and exciting time, no doubt. Probably the biggest event that small town of Capernaum had ever seen.
But it's also rather tragic as well, as we'll see later on in the story of the Gospel, because why are the crowds coming to him? Why are they coming to him? They weren't coming out of love for him or love for what he taught or love for the message that he brought. They were coming because to the blood of what they could get from him. Because of what they could get from him. They wanted to use him. In other words, they wanted the healing that he could provide.
And later, Jesus would tragically condemn them because the people there would see miracle after miracle after miracle throughout his ministry there. And yet, they still didn't believe or did not believe enough to allow it to make a transformation in their lives. They just would not allow that word to sink in. We'll notice this is skipping ahead in the story, but a rather tragic corollary to this we find over in Luke 10, verses 13 through 15. This is much later again. But notice what Jesus says about the cities in which he did his greatest miracles.
He says, Woe to you, Corazin. Corazin is about two or three miles from Capernaum. Woe to you, but Sieta. Sieta is about five miles away from Capernaum. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, Tyre and Sidon in the Old Testament were symbolic of some of the great sins in cities that were brought to destruction for their sins. They were notable bad examples. But Jesus says they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment time than for you.
And then he singles out Capernaum, the city where he is living, his headquarters, you might say, for his ministry. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades, to the grave, for their unbelief. So again, the point I bring these up is people are coming to Jesus constantly, but not for the right reasons. They're coming to use him, to get what they can from him, not because they necessarily believe. That's not to say they had bad intentions, but they just did not let the truth that he brought transform their lives and convert them there, so that they would repent and receive God's Spirit. So rather sad story there. So we see that in the long run, all of these miracles just simply did not change the lives of most of those who saw him. And in the same way, an application of that for us today, is that if we are in this only for what we can get from God, then we're really no better off than they were. If we're in it just for what we can get, we're no better off than they were. We're just like them. If we're only here to get what we can't, we ought to be here to allow God to transform our lives, to become more Christ-like in every way, which is the whole point of these studies. One of the study questions I sent out was, why did the people wait until evening to bring people to Jesus to be healed?
Why did they do that? Any answers here? Who studied that? Let's see, I see Tina back there. Yes.
Right. Right. Yes. Yes, according to their teaching, the oral law was against law to be healed on the Sabbath day. So therefore, that's why they wait. This is taking place on the Sabbath again.
Christ teaches and heals a demon-possessed man. In the synagogue, that Sabbath morning, then performs the healing of Peter's mother-in-law that afternoon. So after sunset, people come out of the woodwork from all over town for healing because they thought it was wrong to do that. A little more specifically, getting into some of the details of this teaching, or in that culture of the day, you could take steps to prevent someone who is sick from getting worse, but you could not take steps to improve their situation because that would, in their mind, involve work or effort, expenditure of energy and effort there. And that was wrong. Or, if the person's life was in danger, you could intervene. If it was a life-threatening situation, say someone is bleeding to death, then you could intervene. But if it was a normal routine disease or illness or injury that they had had for weeks or months or years even, no, you could not heal then because that was viewed as unnecessary. You could wait and do that at another day of the week rather than Sabbath day.
So this is one of the primary reasons why people waited there. Another aspect of that was their rule about carrying a burden on the Sabbath day. And they defined a burden as anything that weighed more than two dried figs. I don't have a scale to measure how much dried figs weigh, and I don't have any dried figs in my house, but probably no more than a few ounces there. So anything heavier than that was a burden that you could not carry on the Sabbath without working on the Sabbath. So for instance, if you had a friend or family member who was crippled and needed to be carried on a stretcher or even putting your arms around somebody for support and they helped you walk that way, that could not be done on the Sabbath because that was bearing an unnecessary burden.
So I don't know. I didn't read this, but presumably those people would just not even be able to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath to worship God. They would have to stay home or maybe knowing how picky they were at times, maybe they brought them there to the synagogue before sundown on Friday and let them stay there throughout the Sabbath until sundown and then took them home after that. That would be the type of rules that they would create and enforce on people there.
So, and of course, this is one of the ways that the Pharisees, some of the people in the oral law, as Tina mentioned, others made the Sabbath into a burden instead of a blessing and a delight as God intended it to be. So Jesus set them straight on that, as we'll see. It's interesting that there are 40 some odd places where the Sabbath is mentioned in the Gospels, and a large number of those mentions of the Sabbath involve Jesus healing people on the Sabbath. A large number of them.
And those were the kind of man-made rules, again, made the Sabbath a burden. And Jesus, through his example, showed that there's nothing to that. God does not support that kind of pickiness there, particularly when it comes to blessing and healing people there. So he seems to have gone out of his way, clearly went out of his way at different points in his ministry, to heal people on the Sabbath, as he did that very day with the demon-possessed individual that morning. So this is the background as to what is taking place here in the cultural practice of the time. And this is why we see that right at sundown, which they defined, and Jewish people still define this day, when let's see, it's either two or three stars are visible in the night sky, that is sundown. There, as they define it, the ending of the Sabbath after the Sabbath day is over there. So apparently, they wait for those two or three stars to appear, and then the crowd starts surrounding Peter's house there in Capernaum. And Jesus heals them. So this, again, had to be a Sabbath that would be remembered for a long, long time there in Capernaum. Because again, Jesus, going back to last time, astonishes people with his teaching there, his teaching with Smica on the Sabbath, his healing of the demon-possessed man, his healing of Peter's mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever, and then the healing of, doesn't say how many people were healed, but we'll touch on that in just a minute here. I once went to a lecture several years ago. Let's see, I think Don, is Don Harms here? I thought I saw him earlier, but maybe not. But anyway, Don and I went to a lecture, an archaeological symposium, and one of the speakers there was a medical doctor who had given up his practice to study archaeology, specifically biblical archaeology. And he had studied the issues of health and healing and sanitation and so on in the Bible. And it was a very fascinating lecture to get an insight into the health and healing situation of the biblical times there. But one thing he said that stuck out in my mind, it really astonished me, and that was that he estimated that based on the writings of the time and on the archaeological evidence that it had been uncovered, that one out of five to ten people lived with a serious illness or disease or injury during that time. One out of every five to ten people lived that way, chronically sick, chronically injured, chronically diseased. And that's a staggeringly high number. That means out of Capernaum, a city of maybe 1,000, 1,500 population, there may have been from 100 to 300 people needing healing. Possibly that's how many people came to Jesus to be healed that evening after the Sabbath there. Again, that's a staggeringly high number. And yet, I think, if we as we read through the Gospels, we'll see that there are large numbers of healings that Jesus performs. Large numbers of crippled, injured, diseased people who come to Him for healing.
I think that figure is probably supportable. That maybe gives us some insight into what we see in the Gospels, that there are so many people who are suffering with diseases and illnesses and that sort of thing and come to Him desperate for healing. And as we see, that is clearly a focus of His ministry there. Continuing on, back here, we'll pick up an element that Matthew introduces here from Matthew 8 verses 16 through 17, an element which Mark and Luke don't mention.
But Matthew brings in the prophecy from Isaiah 53. Matthew 8 verses 16 through 17, When evening had come, they brought to Jesus many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.
He is quoting or paraphrasing here from Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5, a verse that we read every year at the Passover. Part of Jesus Christ's sacrifice was not just giving His blood on our behalf to wash away our sins, but also the fact that He was wounded for our transgressions. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
Again, Jesus came to give His life as an offering for our sins, that we might have our sins forgiven and washed away and be reconciled to God the Father. But He also gave His body to be bruised, to be beaten, that by His stripes we could be healed, we could receive God's gift of healing.
Matthew here tells us that these dramatic healings by Jesus Christ and His ministry were a direct fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that we read here. Again, we see healings again and again and again throughout Christ's ministry, reflecting His compassion, His empathy, and His love for others. I'd also like to bring in here a few details from archaeology that give some interesting insight into this. In an earlier study, I showed you this photo of the synagogue ruins in Capernaum, made out of white limestone here. It's very, very white building with nearly everything else around there. It's made of real dark grayish-brown black basalt volcanic rock here.
These are the restored ruins of the synagogue there in Capernaum. This is what they look like. If you ever visit or are privileged to visit Capernaum, you can't miss it. It's the most prominent thing there in the city, being this stark white standing out against all the gray and brown around that. These particular ruins, as I mentioned earlier, date to the 300s to 400s AD.
This is not the synagogue in which Jesus taught and preached and healed. I want to make that clear.
However, it's rather interesting because in the 1960s, archaeologists started exploring what was underneath the floor and the foundation of the synagogue. They found something very interesting.
They found underneath it, where this synagogue is directly built on it, the foundation stones of an earlier synagogue. You can see this white limestone up here. It's built directly right on top of the foundations of an earlier synagogue that dates to the first century, which would have been the synagogue in which Christ taught and preached and healed there. So you can't walk right into the synagogue in which Jesus performed these miracles and taught, but you're standing in a synagogue that was built on top of the earlier, which was destroyed.
Destruction of building is very common in that area because of the constant warfare. It's also a very earthquake-prone area, so there are no intact buildings dating back to that time. But this is quite interesting that you can visit the site of the specific synagogue that we've been talking about here if you go to Israel. I know you see several of us, a lot of the Lockwoods and others who have been there to this very synagogue. I know what they're talking about there. But they were able to date this earlier synagogue and the later one because of things like coins, pottery, shards, specific types of pottery that were found either directly underneath the foundation or, in some cases, actually buried in the foundation of these two synagogues when they're constructed there.
So that's rather interesting. Seeing this also helps give us a good idea of the architecture, of the structure, of what the synagogue would have looked like there in Jesus' time. This is illustrating the white limestone one, but again, it's apparently built right on the foundation of the earlier one and gives us a good idea of what the architecture would have looked like there for that. I've mentioned also several times the schooling, the educational system that took place, the classroom, you might say, for the Jewish children to learn the books of the Bible at the synagogue.
That was what this large wing is off here on the side. That is the largest synagogue school that was found anywhere in the world up until about the 15th century or so. It again shows the dedication and the religious emphasis and teaching of the culture there in Galilee at that time. Now let's notice where I'm going with this is to bring in another interesting detail from archaeology. Notice again what Mark wrote here in Mark 1 in verse 29.
Now, as soon as they had come out of the synagogue where Jesus has been preaching and where He had healed the demon-possessed men, as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon, Simon Peter, and Andrew with James and John.
Now what does this tell us? As soon as they came out of the synagogue, they came to that house. Well, what that tells us is Peter's house is very close to this synagogue, very close to it here, because immediately they came to that house. Now, when archaeologists were excavating Capernaum back in the 1960s, in 1968 they found something very interesting. They found the remains of an eight-sided structure, an octagonal structure. This is what it looked like when they excavated it.
And if you know anything about archaeology of the Holy Land, wherever you see an eight-sided structure, that is a religious shrine dating from the Byzantine period, roughly 300s, 400s forward up until the Muslim conquest of the land. Wherever you see these eight-sided structures, that's where there was a church that was built later. So they found the remains of this eight-sided structure with mosaic floors. Mosaic floors were somewhat common, but the average person in first century Judea or Galilee could not afford mosaic floors.
Those were for the upper crust. Mosaic floors were also very common in the Byzantine period. So this eight-sided structure had mosaic floors, which were very common of churches of the Byzantine period as well. Now underneath this eight-sided structure, they went down digging below that as well, because that's what you do with archaeology. You want to always find out what's underneath it. Unfortunately, in the process, it kind of destroys what is above it, so that's why they keep very meticulous records so they can reconstruct what was above it if need be.
But anyway, underneath this eight-sided structure, they found the remains of a first-century house, typical house there for for Capernaum for the first century. However, this first-century house had some different features about it, too. It had a large central room, and I've mentioned before houses in that time generally had a large kind of a central courtyard that was kind of the communal kitchen, living room, slash utility room, playroom, everything. So that was fairly typical.
But what was interesting is that this room had been plastered multiple times around the walls, and also the floor had been plastered multiple times. And that is a bit unusual. What was really unusual, though, is in the plaster they found more than 150 inscriptions where people had etched their names, dates, graffiti, whatever. More than 150 in the plaster of these rooms and the walls and the floor of this particular room. And they were inscribed in Greek and Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin and Syriac. All of these different languages over a period from the first century on up to the 300s AD when that room was destroyed and built over by a later church that was built in the 400s. Actually, I take that back. Actually, there was a church built in the 300s, and then what we're seeing here was built in the 400s. Again, they can date this pretty specifically due to coins and pottery and things like that. They also determined that that first century room had changed from just being a typical residential room into a larger public area there to which many people could gather at one time. It was enlarged, in other words, and the roof had been raised because pillars had been built in there to raise the roof and make it into a two-story structure there. This is quite interesting to this chain of study and history that they've looked at here, plus two churches having built over the same spot. Now, if you go there today, you can't see this. What you see is this. This big thing that kind of looks like a flying saucer, which is a modern church that has been built over it. But the church, you can see, is actually elevated on pillars, and those original ruins are underneath it. This church actually has a glass floor, which you can't see, but you can actually peek over and look down and see those earlier ruins dating back from the first century to 300s to 400s AD there. It's quite fascinating. Now, I will tell you that I rarely put much stock in the supposed holy sites where churches have been built all over the Holy Land, where John the Baptist sneezed or whatever. You see them all over there. Most of them, I think, are totally unsupportable. However, this one, I think, is probably built over the site of the house of Peter there in Capernaum. There are a few others that I would agree like the Garden of Gethsemane. I think that, archaeologically, is verifiable, is the likely place where where Jesus spent his last night on earth before his crucifixion. But there's very few of these sites that I think are authentic, but I do believe this is probably one of them, one of a handful that are authentic. It's also rather interesting. Notice this detail. This shows where it is in relation to the synagogue. Here's the synagogue and here's the site there. And, of course, that would agree with what Mark wrote about they left the synagogue and immediately they came to Peter's house and healed Peter's mother-in-law. You can see this is no more than 70-80 yards, if that much. And notice also how close it is to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. What is Peter's occupation? He's a fisherman. So it makes perfect sense that his house, the house of him and Andrew, would have been very close to the shore there. So I think putting together the archaeological evidence with the scriptural evidence that probably this was indeed the actual house of Peter, where this modern church is built over. And again, if you're ever at Capernaum, you can take a look at that.
I think it's well worth your time if you go there. Are there any questions about what I've covered so far before we reached a transition point to move on to another section? Any questions on anything here? Raise your hands high. It's a little bit dark in here, so I may not see them.
If not, we'll move on to the next section then, which is where Jesus is titled, Jesus Tours Galilee with Peter, Andrew, James and John. Now Mark and Luke, you can look at their accounts there, and they place the first part of this on the very next morning after Jesus has healed all of those people that night after the Sabbath. Again, I'll read from Mark's account since he has more details. So Mark 1 verses 35 through 39. Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, Jesus went out and departed to a solitary place, and there he prayed. Let's consider a few things here that are packed into this little bit of information. First of all, notice that Jesus goes out to a deserted place. It doesn't mean desert, it just means something like an empty field, perhaps an olive grove, something like that, somewhere where there's not other people around. He needs some quiet time. He needs some private time with God. And he needed that quiet time with God. And so do each of us. We all need this as well. This is one reason why we've long said within the Church of God that the best time for prayer is early in the morning.
Early in the morning, before the phone starts ringing, before the email starts flooding into the computer, before you watch the news on TV or things like that, and a thousand other things that start happening in our day to sap away our attention. This is a great example by Jesus Christ of when and how to pray. Go to a solitary area by yourself and spend quiet time with God to start your day. It's proven that it works. That's what Jesus did, and that's something that we should follow in terms of our example as well. So Jesus does this. We'll see later that he does it again as well. But this is his example. It's a great example that we can learn from and how we should start our day too. Start outright with communicating with God and framing our day based on that communication with God. But notice what happens as we can probably all identify with as well.
So Jesus is out there in a solitary area by himself, spending quiet time with God in prayer.
And notice what happens. Simon, or Peter, and those who are with him, searched for him.
When they found him, they said to him, everybody is looking for you, or everyone is looking for you.
So what we see is even Jesus couldn't get a break sometimes. Here he is trying to go off, spend time with God. And next thing you know, here comes Peter showing up with others and saying, look, hey, why are you out here? Don't you know everybody's been looking for you? They want to talk to you. That sort of thing. So he just wants to be alone with God, but what he gets is, hey, master, everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody wants to see you. Everybody wants healing, and what does Jesus do? Well, he does what we would expect of him. He gives himself, gives himself to answer the cry of human need, human needs that are crying out, and he goes.
Continuing on then, verse 38, But he said to them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth. And he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and casting out demons. So he kept focused on his mission. He kept focused on his mission of traveling around Galilee, of teaching in the synagogues. It's interesting, the synagogues and Capernaum, which I just showed you, is not the only one they have found there in Galilee.
Virtually every town that archaeologists excavate in, they find synagogues there, usually right smack in the middle of town, as is the case with the one there in Capernaum.
Some of the towns I know of are Corazin, where they have found synagogues. Corazin, again, just two, two and a half miles uphill from Capernaum. Magdala, where Mary of Magdalene is from, just maybe three miles around to the west on the shore of the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum.
Tiberius, about nine or ten miles away, they found a large synagogue there. And Gamla, which is about eight miles east of there, these are some of the towns that have been most excavated in that area.
And everywhere they dig, they find synagogues there. Every town had its own synagogue. They're serving as a center of worship, as well as kind of a community center that we've talked about as well before. The one in Magdala that I mentioned, they only found about two years ago. It's just now being excavated. They found another one just in the last year with a beautiful mosaic floor of Samson, the biblical hero there. A lot of synagogues did have mosaic floors there to make them very special. So they just regularly find these synagogues, wherever they dig. And that just confirms more of what we see here from Matthew, Mark, and Luke that Jesus went teaching in the synagogues throughout Galilee because every town had one.
Some towns, they haven't found the synagogue yet, but that's mainly because they have an excavator to have an excavated in the right part of town there. So find that another interesting detail from archaeology. Matthew here adds a few more details also that Mark and Luke leave out. So let's take a look at what he says in Matthew 4 verses 23 through 25. Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then his fame went throughout all Syria.
Where is Syria? And they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them.
As I noted in an earlier message a couple of months ago on why Jesus chose to settle in Capernaum, why that particular spot, that particular city, there was an ancient super highway that ran by Capernaum called the Via Maris, the way of the sea in Latin is what it means.
It ran through Capernaum, right by Capernaum, and where did it go? Well, it went north. What's north of Capernaum and Galilee? Syria. So what we're seeing here is, as we read here, then his fame went throughout all Syria. How did the word get up into Syria? Well, obviously because of the Via Maris. People are traveling along this road right by Capernaum are seeing and hearing about this miracle working rabbi, and they take that news, that word, of what Jesus is doing north into Syria. There, makes perfect sense. It's rather interesting too. Let's see, continuing on verse 25, then Matthew writes that great multitudes followed him, and where are they from? From Galilee, from Decapolis, we talked about that, the ten cities as it means, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Well, it's really interesting the way Matthew words this, because, well, as we covered earlier, let me just show you a map here. We looked at this, but the Decapolis, let's see, here's the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum is right up here where the road passes by. The Decapolis area is right over in here. Jerusalem is down about right here. Judea is this region right in here. Beyond the Jordan is talking about this area here on the eastern side of Jordan.
Archaeologists also know, and writers write about, another major highway that ran right along the Jordan River Valley. You've got this one major superhighway, the Via Maris, and another road that branched off that and ran through the Jordan River Valley and on up to Jerusalem.
Basically, what Matthew is describing is the road system there. That's how people traveled back and forth. These two roads intersected all of the areas that Matthew mentions here. The Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. This is how word spread of Jesus' ministry and his miracles. Again, this gets back to why he chose to settle at Capernaum, because it was along this Via Maris and it was also connected to other roads coming up from the Jordan River Valley and down to Jerusalem. From there off into the Decapolis areas and Judea and the area beyond the Jordan there as well. That was the communication network. That was the travel network that people used in that day. That's how people learned about him.
Again, this is a short section. Any questions or thoughts before we move on to the next part?
Yes, Connie points out that I didn't cover why he didn't let the demon speak. Actually, I saved that for later deliberately, but good, thanks for pointing that out.
That was deliberate. I just didn't want to cover the same material twice, so I decided I would wait until later to cover that. Any other thoughts, questions, comments? Any other questions I've overlooked? Yes.
Oh, okay, excuse me. Yeah, that's okay, Mike. Yeah, go ahead. Uh-huh.
Right, right.
Yes, thanks, Mike. By the way, for those of you who don't know Mike and Rose, Mike was a long-time deacon here in Denver. He's been around since dirt. I remember him for many, many years. He was one of the first people we met when we came to Denver years ago. A long-time servant now living over in Kansas. Kansas or Nebraska? Nebraska, okay, yeah. So, they're also long-time friends of Bob Stahl and came here for the memorial service. But, yeah, Mike's observation is, yeah, the Pharisees taught against healing on the Sabbath, and Jesus is in your face in some of the things like that. He deliberately challenges some of their beliefs and ideas at various times.
And this is one of the factors that lead to him being crucified, too, the level of hostility there. Because Christ criticizes them for placing more emphasis on their picky rules than on the Word of God. We'll come to that later on, Matthew 23, in particular, where he says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for their different practices that are actually in conflict with the Word of God not supporting it. And this is true. We do see Jesus deliberately challenging them on some of their beliefs. Now, I might add one qualifier. We'll discuss this more as we get into some of these events. We tend to paint all Pharisees with the same broad brush.
We need to understand that all Pharisees were not alike. It depended on which school of thought, you might say, or which rabbi you viewed as most authoritative. There were a number of famous rabbis. We talked about some of them last time, such as Hillel, Isgomilel, Akiva, others like that. And they varied all of them hell to obey in God's Word. That was never an issue. Obeying God's laws. Actually, I probably shouldn't get off into this because it's a long discussion. But the issue came down to which laws took precedence. And a classic example of this, which Christ brings out, is if you have an animal that falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, all of the Pharisee-okel teachers said it was okay to pull that animal out of the ditch on the Sabbath. And Christ goes on to say, well, if it's okay to pull an animal, an ox, out of the ditch on the Sabbath, is it okay to heal a man on the Sabbath who's been suffering for years?
Well, He's doing that to challenge your thinking and make them think about it and think through.
Obviously, in God, the obvious implication is, yes, it's okay to heal somebody on the Sabbath. But some of them, because of the review of the law, said, no, that's an unnecessary burden to heal somebody on the Sabbath. So we find these type of debates. And again, I'll get into more detail when we come across examples of that, which we haven't to yet. So, but yeah, good observation. And Dave, yes. I was really struck by Jesus performing these miracles. As it says in Matthew 4 and verse 24, it's vain when it's throughout all hysteria. So it's just hate or it's crap.
Right. Right. And I'm thinking a relationship of Israel needing Egypt, all the flames that happen, targeting the Red Sea, this spread ahead of them too. Yes, yes.
And I would think also it would be the same case of Jonah.
That's stood out on the shore of his pain, kind of went before him.
Right. In that same manner. He didn't just stay there right in that era. Yeah, that is clearly one purpose for miracles that we see in the Bible. It gets attention.
It wakes people up. It tells them there's something miraculous going on here they need to pay attention to. So yes, that happened with Jesus Christ's miracles, happened with the Exodus period, happened with Jonah and others, as Dave was mentioning here. Yes, there was another question.
Oh, yes. Would I spell the name of the highway? Yes. It's via Morris, via, V-I-A. You can see that in Latin. Via means way or route or road.
Morris, it's actually spelled two ways, M-A-R-I-S and M-A-R-E-S, depending on where you come across it. Morris in Latin means sea or ocean. The via Morris, so the way of the sea or route of the ocean or depending on exactly how you would interpret that. But yeah, it's called the way of the sea because because it ran along the Mediterranean coast here, it went further down into Egypt right along the Mediterranean coast. Here it actually ran inland a bit because the coastal areas are somewhat swampy in that area, so they had to route the road inland a few miles in that particular area shown on the map here. But yeah, the via Morris was, let's see, I actually talked quite a bit about it. Well, yeah, the reason I have this illustration I used it in and the messenger gave about why Christ settled in Capernaum. Solomon, when he became king, the scriptures tell us one of the first things that he did was to fortify the cities of Hothor and Megiddo and Gezer. It doesn't say why, but when we understand that these three cities were choke points along this major super highway that has been in use for or had been in use for centuries before that, that's why he fortified those particular cities because he could control all the commerce along there. He could take taxes of all the highway traffic, the trade, the caravans, the merchants moving through that area. It also protected the northern and southern flanks of his kingdom. Gezer was also a choke point for the city of Jerusalem, which is over right about here. So that's why the Bible doesn't tell us why he fortified, set up garrisons, chariots, armies, military garrisons in those three cities, but that's why he could control the traffic along that international highway there. It was crucial when the Assyrians, when the Babylonians, when the Hittites coming from the north and from the east, and the Egyptian Empire, which is down to the south and to the west, whenever they fought each other, which they did constantly for a thousand years or more in that period, they always used this via Morris. That's why Israel is caught in the squeeze between these ancient empires there because of the via Morris. That was the only way. Everything is desert off here to the west. Nobody could travel through that and live. Over here is the Mediterranean Sea. So this major route ran right through the heart of Israel. And Jesus took advantage of that highway to help spread the word through word of mouth of his miracles. So good observations. And yeah, don't mind your questions because that gives me an opportunity to get a drink of water here from talking up here. So feel free to do that. So we'll move on now to a very fascinating episode here about the healing of a leper. And to understand what is really going on here, we need to understand a bit about leprosy.
What is leprosy? One of the study questions I sent out last night. What did that mean? What was it like to be a leper there in first century Galilee? In the Bible, the word leprosy is a more general term that includes a range of skin disorders or diseases. It's not strictly leprosy, as we use the term today. It could be anything from a rash to what we would call cirrhosis.
There, flaking of the skin, that sort of thing, to full-blown leprosy. And there are several different kinds of leprosy as well. There are several different afflictions that are called leprosy in the Scripture. Let's go back to Leviticus 13. This entire chapter, Leviticus 13 and 14, are about leprosy. We don't have time to cover that, but I'll just get a few high points from this.
It tells us some of the biblical instruction about leprosy. Verse 1 of Leviticus 13, The Eternal said to Moses and Aaron, When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. The priest is to examine the sore on his skin, and if the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is an infectious skin disease. When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean. Now notice the concern here. This is talking about a health law. The concern is an infectious skin disease. So what we're reading about here are procedures to quarantine somebody so this skin disease does not spread to others. I looked up last night on the World Health Organization website about leprosy to see how it is spread. And the bottom line is scientists actually don't know how it is spread. They don't know whether it's spread by breathing in mucous droplets with the leprosy bacteria in it. They're not sure whether it's spread by skin-to-skin contact or by contact with the clothes of someone who has leprosy. And leprosy is a bacterially caused infection. And so they're not sure exactly how it spreads. But they do know that contact with a person with leprosy vastly increases the odds that someone will contract leprosy. So God here is talking about how to prevent this about 1500 BC, you know, 3500 years ago. And to this day, scientists don't know how leprosy spreads, just that contact or being in close proximity has a role in it. So scientists still haven't figured out what God is telling us 3500 years ago. That if somebody has leprosy, you quarantine them. So the leprosy does not spread is the whole point here. Now we won't read all of this chapter again, but we see something else here. And that is that the priests performed another important function in ancient Israel. And that was to serve as kind of a national health service, you might say, because individuals had to be brought and examined there to determine whether this was a spreading skin disease, a potentially infectious skin disease, or something that was not to be concerned about. And all the details of that are spelled out. Again, we don't have time to cover them in the chapter. But the bottom line is, if someone was diagnosed with a serious skin disease like leprosy, there was a severe protocol, a health protocol, to be followed. And we find that near the end of this chapter in verses 45 and 46. And we'll read this.
The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face, and cry out, unclean, unclean. As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone. He must live outside the camp. So the person who has this skin disease must visually signify that he does have a contagious disease there. He has to do that by wearing torn clothing, by not combing his hair, shaving, that sort of thing. He had to cover the bottom part of his mouth with a cloth. And wherever he went, had to shout out, unclean, unclean, don't come near me! There to prevent the spread of it, possibly through respiration there. So there was a purpose for this, which was to prevent the spread of disease. In a time in which, frankly, the causes and cures of disease wouldn't be discovered for another 3,000 years. They had no idea, no concept about germs, bacteria, virus, things like that then, much less a way to cure those things. So this is a precaution. And this is what life was like for a leper in 1st century Galilee and Judea. What did leprosy do to the human body? It's something that's largely eradicated in our country now, but was fairly common in places a century or two ago. And it's a rather gory subject, but to understand what is really taking place here, we really need to understand that and the lessons we should learn from this. Leprosy is a hideous disease, again, caused by a particular bacteria. First, and I'll show you some illustrations of this. And again, it's fairly gory, but there are much gorier ones there. So these are somewhat tame compared to the reality. But first of all, when someone had a leprosy, nodules would form all over the body, little bumps, lumps there. And eventually those nodules, as we see here, would become very disfiguring for a person's face. The bumps would swell and grow to where the person eventually is barely recognizable as a human being. These nodules would eventually start to ooze and become ulcers or open sores, again, all over the body. The person would have difficulty talking because the vocal cords would also be infected. And all they could do is kind of do a harsh whisper like this. So it's very difficult for them to communicate with other people. The hands and feet and fingers and toes would inevitably develop open sores and eventually to be blunt, decay, and fall off. And if you look at the man on the hands of the man on the left there, you can see his fingers are just stumps or, in some cases, he's missing fingers entirely. Same thing with the toes. There you can see the man on the far right, his rightmost finger, half of it's gone and his thumb is gone at the joint. The fingers, toes, literally decay and fall off, followed by the hands and the feet.
So he ended up with just stumps there instead of usable hands and feet. Another outgrowth of this is that the tendons in the fingers would contract and before the fingers would fall off, it would essentially turn into a claw-like hands, very gnarled. It was, again, a hideous, hideous disease. There, as far as other people were concerned, the lepers were the living dead.
The living dead. Now, this led to the view among many people, it was the common view, that lepers were basically cursed by God, that they had done something so evil that God had cursed them with this disease and punishment for their sins. Some diseases were reviewed as trials that God would use to help a person build character. They had that concept back then. Some diseases were viewed that way. However, leprosy was in a category by itself. Leprosy was never a way of God helping you. Leprosy was God cursing you because you were an evil person and you needed to be punished for your sins. So, it was viewed as a curse because you were an enemy of God to be a leper. It was so bad that in the time of Christ, some rabbis wrote that they literally carried around rocks in their pockets so that if they encountered a leper, they would throw rocks at him to drive them away.
Not showing love toward him, but throwing them away by throwing rocks at them. One rabbi wrote that he wouldn't even eat food that he had purchased in a street where a leper had walked the day before. They were so detested that way. If the wind was blowing...you could not come within six feet or four cubits of a leper was one of their rules there. If the wind was blowing from the leper toward you, you had to be 50 yards away to keep from getting infected by the leper. We know now that those were unnecessary. It takes pretty much sustained contact with somebody to contract leprosy, but these are the rules they made. Very demeaning, very degrading there.
And again, these are not God's rules, these are man's rules. They are viewing these lepers as wicked people who deserve to be punished by God. Lepers were so detested and so despised by other people that it didn't take long before the lepers came to detest and despise themselves.
And their life in life was so horrible that they were mentally tormented. Not just physically tormented by their illness, but mentally tormented as well. Again, they were viewed as the living dead.
Many likely would have killed themselves, but God's commandment said, you shall not murder, you shall not kill even yourself. So they wouldn't commit suicide, even though they wanted to, because they didn't want to disobey God's commandment.
So picture yourself. Let's put ourselves in the sandals of this leper who comes to Jesus.
You have to wear torn clothes. You cannot comb or dress your hair, shave your beard, things like that. You have to cover your mouth, the lower part of your face, with a rag there. And everywhere you go, you have to shout out, unclean, unclean! Don't come near me! I'm unclean! That is your life. You have to live away from other people by yourself or with other lepers. Your skin is oozing open sores all over your body. On top of that, nobody can touch you. Not your spouse, not your family, not your friends, your children, your parents. Nobody. Nobody is allowed to touch you.
No one can ever shake your hand. Nobody can ever give you a hug. Nobody can ever pat you on the back. You are literally an untouchable person. Think about what that would do to your psyche, to your mind, to your outlook. Nobody can touch you, ever. That is your lot in life.
And that is what being a leper was like in the first century. Because you were cut off from contact with other human beings, you could never go to the temple to offer sacrifices, to get right with God, to obey God's commands, to come to the pilgrimage feaks, and things like that. You couldn't go to the synagogue with other people. So not only are you cut off from contact with other human beings, you are cut off from God, from the means of temple worship and synagogue worship, to get right with God. You are totally isolated, totally alone. You are invisible. You are anonymous. Nobody will talk to you. Nobody will speak to you. Nobody will give you the time of day.
You are despised. You are rejected. And you would be this way until the day you died.
Nobody cared. You literally had no hope. And that is the situation of the man who comes to Jesus. That is the reality and the background that we need to understand if we're going to understand what is taking place here. So now let's read the story. We'll read again from Mark because Mark has the most detail. Mark 1 verses 40 through 45. Now a leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him, If you are willing, you can make me clean. What does a leper do? He expresses complete faith that Jesus can make him clean and heal him. He seems to be so humble the way this is worded that he doesn't even ask to be healed. He just says, Master, if you're willing, you can heal me. You can make me clean. But he doesn't even come out and directly ask that, as we see here. What a wonderful attitude. What a humble attitude that this man is showing here.
Luke, the physician, Luke's account, adds that the man was full of leprosy. And various commentators seem to indicate that that's a term describing somebody who is so covered with leprosy that he's in a fatal condition that he's going to die soon because his body is so covered with leper sores, oozing and stinking and all of that. So this man probably looked horrible as he comes to Jesus. And then Jesus does something that is unthinkable in that culture. That was one of the study questions I sent out. What did Jesus do that was so unthinkable, so surprising to people there? Something that would have shocked anybody who witnessed it. Verse 41, then Jesus moved with compassion, reached out his hand, and did the unimaginable. He touched this leper.
Again, the rule of the day was you can come within six feet of the man.
Jesus not only comes four feet, three feet, two feet, one feet, he reaches out and he touches the man and said to him, I am willing. Be cleansed, be cleansed. And as soon as he had spoken immediately, the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. So Jesus ignored the rules about lepers, ignored the six-foot rule. What would those standing around have thought when Jesus did that? Well, they would have thought at first, oh no, he touched the leper. Now he has leprosy.
He's become infected with leprosy.
But yet the leper is standing there and suddenly the leprosy is all gone.
And they look at Jesus and, well, he doesn't look like he has leprosy. What's going on here?
Their minds are totally blown. This paradigm that they've had of totally avoiding lepers because they're contemptible. They're being punished by God. Everything that they have thought, everything they have grown up with believing about lepers and leprosy is certain.
And leprosy is suddenly thrown out the window by Jesus reaching out and touching the leper and saying, be cleansed. It's shock therapy. Shock therapy to the disciples there.
When he does this thing that is unthinkable, you just didn't touch lepers. Nobody did that. It was unthinkable in that culture because at the very least you would have become unclean yourself from touching a leprosy if you did not in fact actually contract leprosy for that.
But then right before their eyes the man is cleansed. Where did the leprosy go? Did it go to Jesus? No, he looks okay. There. What happened? They just can't believe what is going on here.
It's such a shock therapy to them again. And then having healed the leper, Jesus tells him to do something. Verse 43, And Jesus strictly warned him and sent him away at once, and said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Two questions here. First of all, why did Jesus tell the leper not to tell others that Jesus had healed him? We're not told, but we see this. We'll come across this several times where Jesus performs miracles and tells people not to go and spread the word of the miracles. However, there are other times where Jesus does tell them to go spread the word of the miracles. As I discussed several times ago when talking about the background of Galilee and Capernaum, there were various ethnic, cultural, religious groups living around the Sea of Galilee. The religious Jews that lived around here, which is where Christ spends the bulk of his ministry. There were the Herodians who were cohorts with the Romans here around Tiberius. There were the pagans over here in the Decapolis. There were the Samaritans down here to the south. But up here are the zealots, the ones who want to overthrow the Romans, who want to start a war, who want to kick out the Romans, who want to knife every Roman or tax collector they see in the back to get rid of them. So what's going on here? Why does Jesus tell the healed leper to not tell anybody? And this ties in with a question also about the demon possessed people. Why does Jesus not allow them to say a word? Well, we read back there with the demon possessed people that they knew that he was the Christ. They knew that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. What were the zealots wanting in a Messiah? They're wanting a military leader who will lead them into a war to throw out the Romans. And Jesus knows the devastation that's going to bring. And indeed, that's exactly what happened as we talked about earlier about 45 years later, when the Jews in this very region up here revolt and leads to a devastating civil war and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. So I think the evident answer is that where this happens, and we're not told which city it takes place is, Luke just says it was a certain city. He doesn't name it. It's an interesting question. Why doesn't he name it? I don't have time to go into that today. Maybe we'll discuss that sometime. But apparently, because he doesn't want the word to get around and these zealots to get riled up and lead to tragic circumstances here.
Well, to back this up, let's notice what happens in a later miracle where Jesus multiplies the bread and the fishes to people. John 6, verses 14 and 15. Then those men, when they had seen the sign, the multiplying of bread and fish, that Jesus did, said, This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world. Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone. So we see here that Jesus is...people are about to make him a king by force. And what does he do? He runs away in heights. So that won't happen because he knows what that will lead to. So I think this is the background as to what is taking place here. And a second question is, why did Jesus tell the heel leper to go to the priest and to make the required offerings? Both Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention that. And there's another study question. I don't have time to discuss that.
If you think about it, healing was not all that the man needed. Yes, he needed to be healed. No question about it. But what the man needed now after healing was to be fully restored as a member of the community, as a member of his family. And Jesus could not do that.
Because as we read earlier in the Levitical law, the man had to go to the priest to be pronounced clean. And they were actually issued a certificate then that said, you know, I, Zedekiah the priest, or one of I, certify that this man is clean. He's no longer a leper. Therefore, he's welcome back into the synagogue, and the temple, and his community, and his town, and all of that.
So the man needed not just healing, he needed reconciliation too. He needed restoration.
So that he could again become a part of the community of his family, so that he could come into contact with other people as well. Healing was just part of it. He needed that. And Jesus could not do that. Only the priest could do that. So that is why Jesus sends him to go to the priest and get certified that you are now clean, and to give the prescribed offerings. Which again, we don't have to have time to go into that. Continuing, however, we see, verse 45, getting back to Mark's account here. However, the man went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places. And even then, they came to him from every direction. So Jesus' mere word of this miraculous event takes place. And again, Jesus has to go off and lie low for a while. Lest the people who are sympathetic to the zealots come and try it by force to make him a king there. So another study question that I asked was, why did Jesus do and teach rather than teach and do? And we see this over here in Acts 1 and verse 1. This is the introduction to the book of Acts. Luke has already written the Gospel of Luke, and he adds on the book of Acts. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. Why this particular order? Well, what was Jesus' teaching method with his disciples?
Well, he called them to follow him around, to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, fellowship, teach, walk, talk with him 24-7 around the clock. That was the way you taught your disciples, the way that they would learn from you by your personal example.
There, and see how by watching everything that he did, and that was why that form of training was so effective. There, it's one thing to hear about how to do something, but it's something entirely different to see someone do it and demonstrate it, or to actively engage you and have you participate in doing it. Sometimes, this is why I use the term shock treatment, sometimes Jesus taught his disciples through shock treatment. Things like my Kerless mentioned about confronting the Pharisees there. Healing on the Sabbath. That was just something you didn't do. It was accepted. You just didn't do that. You just didn't touch a leper there. So sometimes Jesus uses that method.
You know, Jesus could have taught his disciples for hours on end to love lepers, but none of that had the impact of going there and actually reaching out and touching a leper, and demolishing everything that they'd ever thought and held true about lepers and how you treat them there. You know, Jesus didn't have to touch the man. We read earlier how he healed a nobleman's son from about 25 miles away. He didn't have to come six foot from a leper to heal him.
Didn't have to do that at all. He could heal from 25 miles away. He could heal from six foot away.
But he doesn't. He teaches his disciples, by example, what it means to show love to somebody, even a despised leper, by reaching out and touching the man there. It's a rather graphic picture there, and that's why Luke describes Jesus's methods as do and teach instead of teach first and then do. I want to mention one other one other point here as we get close to wrapping this up here about the name Jesus, or Joshua as it would be, and Hebrew, or Yeshua as it was probably pronounced here in the original Hebrew. We know, I've covered this before, that the name means God's saves or God's salvation. I've also mentioned previously that Hebrew words have a considerably broader range of meanings than we do in English. It's because Hebrew has about 150,000 words. Biblical Hebrew in English, modern English, has about 700,000 to 800,000 words. So there are many more precise words in English, whereas Hebrew has rather broad ranges of meanings there.
What does that have to do with our discussion today? Well, my point in mentioning this is that the root Hebrew word for saves in Yeshua, which means Yah, God, saves, or God's salvation, has some other meanings too. It can also mean not just saves, but helps, or preserves, or delivers, or rescues. Now why don't we bring that up? Did the leper in this story need salvation from Jesus Christ? Yes, obviously. We all do. We all need God's salvation. But perhaps more than that, the man needed to be rescued, which is another meaning of that Hebrew root word in Yeshua, or Jesus. He needed to be delivered. He needed to be rescued. He needed to be rescued and delivered from an utterly hopeless and helpless situation that he was in, without hope, doomed to this lot in life until the day that he died.
We could also say that the name Jesus, or Yeshua, means not just God saves, but also God delivers, and God rescues. And indeed he does, as we'll see throughout Christ's ministry going through this series, there are times when his focus isn't so much on saving people as it is on rescuing or delivering people, which again is part of the Hebrew meaning of his name. Just plain rescuing them from situations where people are hopeless. Hopeless situations, helpless situations like this leper. He does it here. He'll do it again and again and again, as we'll see in going through this series. Sometimes he'll do it for you and for me, too. He'll deliver us from those situations when we are hopeless and helpless. Yes, he is our Savior. I don't mean to diminish that in any way, but more than that, he is at times also our rescuer, our deliverer, as he was with this man that day. That's some food for us to think about.
So to wrap this up, briefly here, what are some of the lessons, some of the takeaways we can take from this? What do we learn from this about God, about Jesus Christ, about ourselves? What does it teach us about our conditions? Here are just a few things I wrote down. I wish we had time to discuss these, but just a few here. First, we just talked about this, but Jesus is our Savior, but he is also our rescuer. Sometimes we just need rescuing from the difficult situations and circumstances we find ourselves in. Another one, point two, Jesus never turns people away. We've seen that as a theme in what we covered today. On that one Sabbath, he first taught in the synagogue, perhaps for several hours. Then he heals a demon-possessed man, and that had to be pretty draining on him. Then he heals Peter's mother-in-law. Then after sundown, hundreds of people, the whole city is described there, comes out bringing everybody who needs to be healed. Again, maybe 100 to 300 people who need healing there. What does he do? He goes away early in the morning to go pray to God. What happens? They keep coming. The crowds keep coming from him. But what happens? He does not turn people away. He doesn't turn himself away from people. When does he get rest?
Practically never, as we'll see going through the Gospels. But we saw that was his purpose. That was his mission, as he said. What do we learn from this? Well, we learn that Jesus Christ and God, the Father, never turn away from us. Either they are always there. Yes, they may not heal us when or in the way that we humanly want. But although sometimes they do, and there are other times when healing doesn't come in this life, but we have the promise of an ultimate healing that is far better than anything we can experience in this life. A healing when we'll never be sick again, when we'll never suffer again, when we'll never hunger, never thirst, never ache from our weary bones or injuries or aging or that sort of thing. God will give us the ultimate healing, that is sure, in the resurrection from the dead. We have heard prayer requests today from several people who are in very serious situations and may not be healed in this life. But God will heal them in the resurrection from the dead. He'll heal them again far beyond any kind of healing we can get in this life. Another point, point three. We saw that Jesus needed quiet, alone time to spend with His Holy Heavenly Father, and so do we. We saw this several times in these few verses here. If Jesus needed it, how much more do we need it? If He is God in the flesh, how much more do we need to pray and have that contact with our Father? Jesus also knew that He could not give out what He was not taking in. And if He was to exercise divine power, as He did, He needed to be close to that source of divine power and taking it in. And if Jesus needed to recharge His spiritual batteries from time to time, being God in the flesh, how much do we need to recharge our spiritual batteries in the same way by spending close, alone time with God? Another point, sometimes God is unpredictable when it comes to our expectations. Jesus utterly shocked His disciples and everybody else standing around when He reaches out and touches the leper there.
God the Father and Jesus Christ don't always operate within the limits of our expectations.
Their thoughts are not like our thoughts. Their actions are not like our actions. Sometimes they do things totally unpredictable. We've probably all seen that at times in our lives where we pray for something and an answer comes in a totally unexpected way. So sometimes God is unpredictable.
Another point, point five. There are seven of these, by the way. Before our calling, we were like the leper, covered with our sins and cut off from God.
And helpless and hopeless, I might add. A scripture you might want to write down that ties in with that is Ephesians 2 and verse 12 from the NIV. Remember that at that time before your conversion you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, spiritual Israel, that is, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise. And notice this last phrase, without hope and without God in the world. We were like that leper, covered with sins, hopeless, helpless, unable to do anything about it until the Father called us and reached down and touched us as Christ did that leopard, and healed us, and restored us, and gave us a future, and gave us a life beyond our helpless and hopeless situation.
Another point, six. God responds to those who want to be cleansed and seek Him to be cleansed.
That's what the leper did. He came seeking out Jesus Christ, even though in that culture rabbis, as I covered earlier, were hostile to lepers, throwing rocks at them, going out of their way to avoid them, wouldn't even walk down the same street where a leper had been. There, yet this man recognizes something in this rabbi Jesus that is very different, and He comes to Him for healing and cleansing.
Do you need to be cleansed? Do you need to be baptized to wash those sins away? Do you want the sins covering you, like the leprosy covering that leper, be washed away? If you do, let's talk about it. Talk about it with me or one of the other elders here. A last final point, God uses do and teach with us. God uses do and teach with us as well. Sometimes we have to do something first before we get the lesson, before we get the teaching. Sometimes we have to step out on faith.
We've been through that. Things like keeping the Sabbath, perhaps risking a job loss or lack of promotion or things like that, or the Holy Days, going away to the Feast of Tabernacles and not doing whether we're going to have a job when we come back. Things like tithing, stepping up, faith to obey God's instructions before that. Sometimes we just have to do those things, not knowing if God is going to be faithful, not knowing how or if or when or under what circumstances we're going to be blessed, or not coming to a full understanding of those things like the Holy Days. The Holy Days, I've been keeping them now since 1970, 30-something years, and there are still new things to learn every year about God's Holy Days. Because as we do those things, He reveals to us greater and greater understanding, and how they apply, and what they teach us about Jesus Christ and His plan for us. So we have to step out on faith first and do things sometimes, and then God can begin to teach us. Again, there are many other, no doubt, many other lessons we could draw from these. These are just seven that struck me. But we are out of time now. We'll be starting the memorial service here in about five minutes. So until next time, let's keep studying. Look forward to continuing this in two weeks.
