Episode 662

TODAY’S READING

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over, and came to his own town. 2 Some men brought to him a paralyzed man lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

3 At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

4 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? 5 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 6 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” 7 Then the man got up and went home. 8 When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.

Matthew 9:1-8

The story really talks about two things. And the first is the person that Jesus healed in this story. He had great faith, and by just seeing him, he was able to heal him. It doesn’t go into much detail. Beyond that. The person didn’t have to say anything. They didn’t have to demonstrate anything. But Jesus saw him and said Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven; the second part is talking to and about the scribes, religious people at the time. And they, in their hearts, questioned Jesus. They didn’t believe that Jesus was who He said He was. And it took Jesus to call them out to say why do you have evil in your hearts? I think that we can be many times both characters in this story. We can be the man who has great faith, and God can heal us in a moment just because we have the ability to get up, pick up our beds and go home. No matter what situation we find ourselves in, Jesus can look at us and say Your sins are forgiven because of the faith that we have. But also, at times, we can be on the other side of that, and we can judge people for the sins that they have. And we can Just Judge Jesus for healing that person. And we can question, was that God who moved in his life, or was that just another situation? 

We need to be the kind of person that does not judge when God moves. We need to be open and look for God’s fingerprints because he’s everywhere. And we need to be the kind of people who are receptive to when Jesus is walking and moving in our lives. We need to have our eyes open because God oftentimes moves in places that we wouldn’t expect him to do so. He was the friend of sinners; he hung out with tax collectors, and he was not popular. And I would have this deep feeling or have this feeling that if he came here today, you would hang out with people who are not popular. So let us continue to be humble person. Let us continue to pray for people. That is, be vigilant of when we become like the scribes and have evil in our hearts. Let us also be like the person who Jesus healed. Let us be willing and able and so full of faith though God looks at us. He says that our sins are healed.

Prayer:

Father God, we thank You, Lord, for this beautiful Tuesday. We thank you for the ability to continue to get to know you deeper, to read more of your word, to read up on the times that you healed people. Lord, if there’s any evil in our heart, please point that out so we can cast that out this season; who wants to be pure of heart? They want to be pure joy, pure grace, and pure love. And Lord, we continue to have strong faith that whatever situation we’re in, you may look at us and see that we lucked and, Lord, that our faith is in you and that you may heal our sins. We thank you in advance for everything that you do. And we pray this all in your son’s mighty name. Amen.