The Lord promises wonderful things for His people. To the poor and needy who seek water and find
none there will be water everywhere. “I
will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the
valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs
of water.” The desert and wilderness
will be lush with vegetation, everything will be changed. Additionally, He mocks the “gods” who are
pretenders, asking them to prove themselves, show us what you’ve got so that we
can tremble in fear, and then says, you’re nothing at all. The sarcasm drips from this passage
concerning idols and false gods. The
diviners have failed to discern the Lord’s doing, the raising up of one from
the north, only He has announced such things to His people. Does that first part of the passage stir up
longing in your heart for Him to do amazing things in your life and in your
eyes? You are longing for the kingdom to
come, for the new heavens and the new earth.
What does it mean that Jesus saw the faith of the men who
brought the paralytic? He saw their
perseverance and persistence in getting their friend before Him for
healing. In this Jesus saw that they
believed enough to do whatever it took to get this man to Him because they knew
He could heal. To hear Him, then, say
that his sins were forgiven was strange not only to the leaders but also,
surely, to them. They had brought him
for healing of his paralytic state, did Jesus not understand? I believe, as I have said before, that this
man’s condition was related to some sin in his life otherwise Jesus would not
have begun with forgiveness. The test
Jesus proposes, which is harder, to forgive sins or heal a paralytic, is one
that demands proof. It is easier to say
your sins are forgiven because who can know for sure. There is, however, no reason for Him to have
said this if there were no forgiveness necessary.
Paul writes to the Ephesians as brothers, an amazing thing
for a Jewish man, trained in the best rabbinic schools, to write to Gentiles. The work of Jesus has broken down the
dividing wall of commandments and ordinances which separated Jews and Gentiles,
not just the practice of ritual circumcision.
The fleshly division was incredibly important, witness the continuing
battles Paul fought with the Judaizers over this very issue of circumcision and
here he says that in Jesus’ flesh the real division was broken down. He doesn’t deny the division existed, the
Gentiles previously had no hope and were literally without God in the
world. He took this first passage
seriously, that there are no other gods who can lay claim to competition with
Yahweh but He Himself has done what no one or no god could do in the flesh of
His Son. Jesus could do not only physical
things but also spiritual things as well, just as the leaders found that day in
Capernaum.
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