The Lord is clear that He isn't vindicating His people He is
magnifying His Name which they have profaned.
What He is going to do is to give them His Spirit so that they will
become truly His ambassadors and through them the nations will know Him. Does it seem amazing that not only does He
announce this several hundred years prior to doing it but He did it? The nation had always, like the church, been
a mixed bag of some people who were devoted to Him and others who were nominal
followers along with those who weren't followers at all, they were born into
the covenant community but were not, in any recognizable way, God's
people. When He addressed the nation it
was always clear that all would not receive His Spirit but there would be some
type of dramatic change in those who received this gift. They had some historical experience of such
gifting through Saul receiving the Spirit and prophesying, the leaders and Eldad
and Medad receiving some of the spirit given to Moses and the prophets like
Ezekiel himself speaking by the power of the Spirit. This promise is that the nation will receive
this gift, not just one person or a few people, and the purpose is to gather in
the nations. There was something to look
forward to in great anticipation.
In one case, the woman with the issue of blood, there is
amazing faith in the one healed, "If I only touch his garment, I will be
made well.” In the other, there is only
the faith of the father of the child, “My daughter has just died, but come and
lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
No one else in the crowd believed, they thought Jesus was a fool because
He didn’t even size up the situation correctly, "the girl is not dead but
sleeping.” Faith was a necessary
component in the healing in both cases because it was the force within that
impelled both the woman and the official to take risks to get to Jesus and believed
that in spite of every obstacle He could do something. The woman risked going into the crowd and
making all others, including Jesus, unclean by simple contact and the official
knew where Jesus had been, in the country of the Gadarenes, among the tombs and
now touched by this unclean woman and yet persevered in faith inviting Jesus to
his home no matter how much uncleanness He had potentially contracted along the
way, those were secondary issues. Their faith,
unswerving, desperate and entire, was rewarded that day. Things don't always work out this way,
sometimes people aren’t healed, but we must always believe He is able while maintaining
He is also sovereign, both great and good no matter the outcome.
I have to constantly remind myself of the truth that we
aren't at war against flesh and blood. I
have spent and am always tempted to spend time fighting the wrong battle with the
wrong enemy. I war with flesh and blood
not the spirits that are actually my enemy.
People are the living, breathing image of God but the spirit within, the
controlling spirit, is the problem and this passage reminds me that the weapons
I might choose, are of no use in that war.
I am to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Jesus wasn't at war with humankind, He told
Nicodemus that He wasn't here to condemn the world but that through Him the
world might be saved. The Spirit was
given that His Name might be great, it isn't people as created who oppose that
agenda, it is the spirit of the antichrist.
The war is won by faith and the Spirit nothing else. Let us spend the time evaluating our tactics
and our weapons and then replace that which is useless to the task at hand.
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