SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/5/2021 11:41 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “Jesus
Was Touchable and Impartial”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
9:20-22
Message of the verses: “20 And a woman who
had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and
touched the fringe of His cloak; 21 for she was saying to herself, "If I
only touch His garment, I will get well." 22 But Jesus turning and seeing
her said, "Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well." At
once the woman was made well.”
I
have mentioned that as we look at the book of Matthew we only see a very small
fraction of the miracles that Jesus did while here on earth, as Matthew used
certain miracles, sermons and other things in the life of our Lord to show his
readers that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and to demonstrate that He was able
to do the things prophesized in Old Testament that the Messiah would do in His
coming kingdom. With that said we can be
sure that throughout His earthly ministry, that thousands of people came into
contact with Him, and also many hundreds of them talked with Him and certainly
touched Him; but many of them were not touched by Jesus. MacArthur adds “Throughout the history of the
church, countless others—such as Mahatma Ganhi, mentioned above—have also come
in close contact with Jesus; and many of them, too, have remained untouched by
Him. He knows the difference between the
person who approaches Him out of mere religious curiosity or a sense of
adventure and the one who comes to Him in desperation and genuine faith.” (The story of Mahatma Ganhi was in an earlier
SD.)
I
am not sure but it could be stated that this woman’s wanting to touch Jesus was
almost superstitious, as he perhaps thought there was some power even in the
clothing of this miracle worker. We can
see that Jesus spoke to this woman with words of tenderness and also warmth and
intimacy as He said “Daughter, take courage.”
It is believed that something else was on the mind of this woman and
Jesus knew it, and that was that she had genuine faith, faith that was
acceptable to the Lord, and it was enough to make her well.
MacArthur
explains: “The common Greek word for
physical healing was iaomai, the term
used by Mark when he explains that this woman ‘was healed of her affliction’
(Mark 5:29, cf. 34). In saying that she ‘could
not be healed by anyone,’ Luke used another word for physical healing, therapeuo (Luke 8:43), for which we get therapeutic. But the three references to being made ‘well’
in Matthew 9:21-22, as well as those in the parallel passages of Mark 5:34 and
Luke 8:48, use sozo, the usual New
Testament term for being saved from sin.”
MacArthur
goes on in his commentary to give some more examples of the use of this
word: “When the blind beggar Bartimaeus
asked Jesus to restore his sight, Jesus replied, ‘Go your way; your faith has
made you well’ (Mark 10:52). Here sozo (‘has made you well’) is also used
in connection with the healed person’s faith.
Bartimaeus had repeatedly called Jesus the ‘Son of David’ (vv. 47-48), a
common messianic title. It therefore
seems probable that his being made well, like that of the woman with the
hemorrhage, included spiritual salvation as well as physical healing.”
Week-end
SD’s are usually a bit shorter, so we will stop here as there are some great
things to think about that we have already looked at, and there are some things
that we will continually look at as we are not nearly done with this section.
6/5/2021 12:06 PM
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