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Tag: Restoration (Page 5 of 5)

“She Didn’t Want to Do It.” Lk. 8:46-48

January 22, 2017 /

“And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace”(Luke 8:47-48).

Our Scripture today concerns a woman who was desperate. The Bible tells us that for 12 years she had dealt with a physical issue that had not only ravaged her body, depleted her resources—more, it had caused her to live in fear, shame, and, isolation.

So, let me ask you, as we step into the closing weeks of this New Year—what “dis-ease”, are you carrying into this new season from times long passed? And what, if anything, has you in a state of desperate abandon for your right-now miracle?

You see for her, this woman with no name, it was a physical healing she was after—it’s what forced her fear right out her front door! She had been bleeding for 12 years. 12 years! And in those years of chasing after a cure, she had spent all that she had…

Now, broke, and still bleeding, she heard some commotion near her home. A crowd was gathering in the village. She Peeked out through the crack in her gate she saw Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue. He was on his knees before this new Rabbi, this Jesus. She’d overheard others speak of His miraculous healings…

What if He could…No! I couldn’t possibly. The law forbids it! He’s a rabbi, a Holy man—and the crowd, all those people, I’d be stoned!

These tempestuous thoughts were chasing each other around in her mind. Yet, in her belly—in that place of her knowing, there was a calm…

She began to recognized her need to take a step of faith. It was like something was beckoning her to come…

Is it possible that this Jesus may be her only hope?

If we’re willing to be honest, I’m certain we’ve all experienced living in that kind of tension. In the fear of having our issue—that thing that shames us, brought out into the open. Yet our want for freedom pushes us to the very brink of that fear. Leaving us teetering.

We may know what needs to be done, what must be done in order that we be healed…

Yet, we’re frightened. Because the first step required to receive our healing is confession. It’s bringing that thing, that issue, shaking and sniveling out of its comfortable darkness, out of its hiding place—and exposing it to the Light of the World…

You see, the law had kept this woman bound in fear and shame. To touch a woman such as herself made one ceremonially unclean until the sun went down. She was a thing to be avoided, shunned at all cost. She was defiled. “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean” (Lev. 15:25).

Seeing herself as such, how could she go out among normal people to see this Jesus? What if she touched someone—what if someone touched her? The shame of it…

Can you relate?

Have you ever felt like this woman?

Are you feeling like her today? Afraid? Uncertain? Ashamed? Isolated? Alone?

Are you, like her, frightened of being found out? Of having your issue exposed? How long have you been hiding your shame?

For her, it was twelve years. It may well have been a life time. It  certainly felt that way…

She had tried everything she could think of, to handle her business on her own. She saw anyone she thought might heal her—help her. But nothing. Twelve years had passed and she was still bleeding.

Now what she saw as her last chance to get her healing was standing only feet away. It was this Jesus…

She knew that if she could just touch His clothes—no, just the tassels of His outer garment as they slid past her fingers in the dust, everything would be okay—she’d be healed.

I’ll just slip into the crowd unnoticed. I’ll stoop down low enough to the ground to just touch His tassel as He passes by—He’ll never even know I was there! And hopefully, neither will anyone else. I’ll just stay real low to the ground and …

Shame will do that to us. It steals our dignity. It causes us to feel unworthy to even go before the only One who is truly able to heal us—save us, free us from our sin, wrong thinking, and, shame.

But Jesus was having no part of her worldly way of thinking! He was not interested in playing hide and seek. He was not going to allow this woman to live her life isolated any longer…

He was interest in healing far more than her mere issue of blood… “Who touched me?” Jesus asked (Lk. 8:45).

Her worst nightmare had just been realized. He had singled her out! Oh no, no, please, no, Lord I did not mean to... “And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him…” (Lk. 8:47).

Why? Why would Jesus call her out? Surely, being God—He knew who it was who had touched Him and why…

So why call her out in front of the very people she was so ashamed and afraid to be seen by? To touch…

Was He trying to shame her? Was He going to publicly rebuke her?

No. Quite the contrary…

Our first clue to Jesus’ motives in calling her out comes through His choice of words. He called her daughter. It’s a relational title. A title that infers privilege. A daughter has unfettered access to her dad—she shares an intimacy and bond with him that is not shared with just anyone…

Secondly, He declared her healed. Again, let’s look at His choice of words…

He uses the expression Shalom—which encapsulates; renewal, completeness, and, a blessing for peace…

Jesus knew that for His daughter to be truly healed—soul healed, she, as well as those around her, needed to hear Him openly declare her to be healed. From the root of  her need, not merely from her symptoms.

His words restored her, made her touchable once again, worthy of love, worthy of all the rights and honors a father confers, lovingly, upon his daughter…

In bringing her issue out into the open Jesus not only healed her physically, He released a life that had wasted away in a prison of religious isolation. She had skulked through 12 long years of shame—of others thoughtlessness disregard…

Jesus gave her, and indirectly those around her, permission to once again live communally, openly, equally. To live a life made whole. “And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace” (Lk. 8:48).

She didn’t want to do it—take that first frightening step into the all revealing light of Christ. That Light that would bring illumination to her secrets, and expose her hidden fears.

Overcoming shame, and the fear that often accompanies it, requires us to muster the courage to fall—to humble ourselves, at Jesus’ feet and confess openly to Him our “issue”…

We must be brave enough to finally walk away from—reject, both our own human thoughts and vain imaginings, as well as those imposed on us by others…

We must leave behind those ideas that caused us to close ourselves off from Jesus—and simply accept Him at His Word.

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isa.53:4-5).

 

He wasn’t interested in simply stopping her bleeding. Nor is He interested in just stopping yours. He wanted her restored to Him. And He wants that same restoration for you as well.

Now, and for all eternity.

It’s why He came into the world. Why He stepped across time and eternity to bring heaven to earth…

Why He would not walk away from such a pitiless death. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour” (Jn. 12:27).

Won’t you, like the woman found in today’s Scripture, bring your issue to Jesus? Why squander another year of your life carting around something you weren’t created to carry…?

Give it to Jesus today. Receive His power in exchange for your weakness. “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me” (Jn. 8:45-46).

 

“There’s Nothing Wrong With My Sight!” Jn. 9:16

November 19, 2016 /

alone-971122_960_720  “Some of the Pharisees said, “The man who did this is not from God because he doesn’t follow the traditions for the day of worship.” Other Pharisees asked, “How can a man who is a sinner perform miracles like these?” So the Pharisees were divided in their opinions” (Jn. 9:16).

If only the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day could have seen what it was this man—blind from birth, saw. Perhaps the whole of Chapter Nine would not have ended up reading like a tragic comedy. Tragic—because it glaringly illumines the out-and-out blindness of the Pharisees and religious leaders present in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day. And comedic in its irony. It was the man born blind that can see the Truth of who Jesus is.

And, it is the man blind from birth who confirms their teachings concerning Messiah in his reply to their scathing, dissection of his miraculous healing at the hand of Jesus… Listen to him:“We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but he is ready to hear those who worship him and do his will.  Ever since the world began, no one has been able to open the eyes of someone born blind.  If this man were not from God, he couldn’t have done it”  (Jn. 9:31-33).

There is a familiar saying that goes as follows: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” It’s believed to be taken from God’s conversation with the Prophet Jeremiah. (Jer. 5:21).  And it seems to rightly fit the mindset of the religious leadership of Jesus’ day.

It’s what Paul was teaching Timothy, his young son in the faith, to be on the lookout for—have nothing to do with them! Although Paul is talking to Timothy about the Godlessness that will permeate the last days, his list of reproachful descriptors certainly applies to those hard-hearted religious leaders who refused to acknowledge our blind friends miracle…Proud, boastful, lovers of self and of money—treacherous, and, rash—to name only a few. But,Perhaps, the most telling—the most revealing truth of their spiritual condition, is found in verse five. “They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that” (2 Tim. 3:5)!

Once, when He was teaching his disciples, along with those gathered at the temple courts, Jesus aptly instructed them that they must obey the Pharisees and teachers of the law—“because of the office they held. They sat in Moses’ seat” (Matt. 23:2-3). Paul basically mirrored to Timothy the litany of rebukes Jesus used to point out the character— or the lack thereof, of the religious leaders of His day (Matt.23:1-34).

Yet, neither Jesus nor Paul were gentle in their choice of words. Jesus called them snakes, a brood of vipers! He referred to the religious leaders of the people as blind guides! And, throughout John’s Gospel we see evidence of just how blind these so-called, “seeing” spiritual leaders were. Their obvious inability to see who Jesus truly is wasn’t  limited to their sinful mishandling of our blind friend and his miracle…

No doubt the religious leaders of the day were present in the temple courts on the day of Passover preparation. Surely they witnessed Jesus making a whip out of cords. Chasing those who were changing money and selling all manner of things out of what He claimed to be His Father’s house! They’d conceivably gotten word of His changing six, thirty-gallon, stone jars of plain water into the best wine served at the wedding feast He attended at Cana in Galilee…

Or, further back still, they were certainly walking among those gathered around the edge of the Jordan river in Bethany where John was baptizing. Perhaps even at the very moment that he proclaimed Jesus to be, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:26;29)! It’s safe to say that from the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, the religious leaders of the day knew of Him. That fact is evidenced throughout the four Gospels…

They knew of the transformative encounter He had with a woman—a Samaritan woman—at Jacob’s well. And, the effect that one encounter had on an entire town…

Yet, they could not relate to such an experience…

They knew of the royal officials’ son who, having been near death, was miraculously healed…

Yet, they knew nothing of True healing…

But that aside, it’s the healing done for an invalid of thirty-eight years that ushered in the proverbial last straw. It broke the backs of the Jewish religious leaders’ willingness to endure this one they labeled an interloper any longer…

Their protest? The source of their outrage? Jesus was healing people on the Sabbath…

Surely, if He was their long-awaited Messiah, He would have known better, the law is quite clear! And, doing anything outside of what the law states was after-all, is strictly forbidden! Besides, they were the ones in positions of great authority. And He, well, who was He?

Even when doing a thing was meant for good, still, it was forbidden… “One Sabbath day Jesus went to eat dinner in the home of a leader of the Pharisees, and the people were watching him closely. There was a man there whose arms and legs were swollen. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, “Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?”  When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away.  Then he turned to them and said, “Which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath? If your son[b] or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?” Again they could not answer” (Lk.14:1-6).

So, it wasn’t that they didn’t see—couldn’t see, who this Jesus is, unlike our friend blind from birth. Rather, they hard-heartedly determined they wouldn’t see! They chose to adhere to what they knew. Laws. Rules. Rituals. Ceremony…Leaving no room for growth, relationship—or vision.

I ask you today—rather, our text challenges you, to check your vision. To choose what it is you’ll allow yourself to see…

Will your sight be born from a heart willing to step out with whatever faith you’re able to muster and say, “Who is this Son of Man? Tell me so that I may believe in Him” (Vs. 36). Or, will it narrowly focus on the familiar? On the way you’ve always done it? “We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but for this fellow, we don’t even know where He comes from” (Vs.29)! Will it be the way of the Pharisee who allowed for the lure of worldly power, the seeking of public recognition to overtake them. Blinded, by the lusts of their flesh, and, thus, their hearts waxed hard and cold.

Ridged, they could no longer bend to serve those placed in their care…

Or, hopefully—prayerfully, you will choose the path of the man born blind? The one given a sight beyond that of those who’d been sighted since birth. One who cared little for man’s judgement. Who chose to believe for the impossible that he might see beyond the inside of his own darkened world view. One familiar with pain, rejection, humiliation, with living beneath God’s intended best for him…

Why? Because blindness had eaten up most of his life. Fault, or not. Yet his heart remained pure, willing—open. Unlike the Pharisees and rulers of the law, his heart had stayed malleable. Thus, God could use this man who held no station—had no religious standing, to upset rulers and challenge their dogmatic laws.

How? By the Truth of his testimony…

Reality can’t be argued away. The Word of God says it this way; “A gift opens the way and ushers the giver into the presence of the great” (Pro. 18:16). God used the suppleness of our blind friends heart to bring him boldly—confidently, before the religious leaders of his day. Blessing him not only with what the Pharisees had possessed all along, their physical sight; but greater, Jesus opened the eyes of our blind friends understanding to the Truth of who He is!

A Truth that those who choose to sit in darkness, however sighted, will never see…

Our choices are simple and these…

To be—mimic, go after, live as, the Pharisees. Or, to be—choose, openness—malleability. To live as self-effacing as our once blind friend, that we too may gain our sight.

“Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (Jn.9:35-41).

 

 

 

 

 

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