Healing Jesus Concludes...Matthew 9:27-38...A Prayer to Pray

 


It was all you can eat snow crab night at Sagebrush and I got invited along for the feast with some old friends and some new ones.  Some were from Louisiana so they knew what they were doing when it came to cracking the crabs.  I also got a bib with my name on it for future use.  

We finished up chapter 9 and will take a break over Advent and also our upcoming vacation in January and will then get back to chapter 10.  Matthew told us before the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) that we have a teaching Jesus, a healing Jesus and a preaching Jesus.  The Sermon on the Mount displayed the teaching Jesus.  Chapters 8 and 9 highlighted the healing Jesus.  So we will be going onto the preaching Jesus next.  It was great that Matthew bookended this passage with stating these three about Jesus again.

We find two blind men in this passage that shout out Jesus as the "Son of David."  They start what will conclude when Jesus comes into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey on what we call Palm Sunday by the crowd and the children.  Another obedience opportunity is given to them after their healing not to tell anyone but they do.  This is after calling Jesus "Lord."  I wonder if we do the same at times.  We call Jesus "Lord," our Master, Savior, the One we belong to, and the Decider of all but then when He gives us something to do, we, like the now not blind men, do the opposite.

Jesus gives us a couple more Messiah proving events in this passage by making the blind see and the mute to speak.  Matthew is helping us and his Jewish readers to see that Jesus is fulfilling the passages of the Old Testament about the coming Messiah.  The crowd is continuing to marvel at what they see Jesus doing and the religious leaders are getting angrier over what Jesus is saying.  They are now proclaiming that Jesus must be of Satan.

This section ends with Jesus looking at the multitudes and seeing them weary and scattered like sheep without a shepherd.  This is just the opposite you want for your sheep if you are a shepherd.  Being weary and scattered puts the sheep in a very vulnerable positions.  Jesus then gives His disciples a prayer to pray.  Pray to the Lord of the harvest to sent out laborers into His harvest.  This prayer is very common in our current situation.  This prayer includes those who are professing Christians already in the pews but also those God will bring to be gathering shepherds along with us.  When Jesus looks out into the world He sees sheep to be tended to and gathered up.  Do we see the same thing?  

18 inches of snow over the last 2 days here at Grand Lake.  The landscape has drastically changed overnight.  Things can happen overnight in the life of the church too.  Usually this is witnessed after the church body has been diligent in prayer and maybe the prayer is the one that Jesus gives us to pray in this passage.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all and may your family gatherings be blessed.

Adam



A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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