Amazed - are you? Matthew 9.
podcast:
Do you remember sending or receiving your first e-mail? I do. I found the whole internet-enabled thing to be amazing. It was so quick and efficient! How about your talking on your first cellular phone? Back in the 80s, the first cell phones were huge by comparison to now. How great it was to call my mother from my car or the ballpark! Wow! It was so cool. Far more amazing than those was experiencing a miracle because of prayer-specifically, 15 ½ years ago when God healed my two-year-old of kidney disease. Realizing that Danny's life had been spared was nothing short of amazing, and it irrevocably changed me. The miraculous hand of God moved on our behalf. That is still amazing to me.
Reading Matthew 9 today, I once again saw people amazed. In verse eight, they watched Jesus heal a paralyzed man, then the crowd 'was filled with awe and they praised God.' Later in verse 33, Jesus healed a demon-possessed man who had been mute. 'The crowd was amazed and said, 'nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel'.
How did Jesus amaze the people? What does the word 'amaze' mean anyway?
amaze [uh-meyz] to overwhelm with surprise or sudden wonder; astonish greatly.1 The word goes back to the 13th century,2 which is quite interesting; seems we have needed a word to capture our wonder-filled response to something for a long time.
When people saw Jesus' miraculous works, they were amazed, and they could not help but tell others about this rabbi who was so different than any who had come before. Just like the woman at the well, whose story John tells in the fourth chapter of his gospel.
The woman was an outcast, and no upstanding Jewish man would talk to a Samaritan anyway, let alone a rabbi to a woman of ill repute in mid day! Scandalous. Seems Jesus did not mind the scandalous at all. He talked to her, saw her need to be filled with true life, and graciously offered it to her. She was so amazed that she ran back to town (verse 28) to invite other people to come and meet Jesus.
When we are truly amazed, we cannot contain it-we must share it.
Back to Matthew 9, where Jesus told his disciples in verse 37, something that applies yet today, 2000-plus years later: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
2016 marks a year in which many people simply do not know the love, power and character of God, as evidenced and realized through Jesus Christ. We now live in a post-modern generation in which so many have never heard-even with our technology and freedom of speech-about the life of Jesus, his work on the cross, or the resurrection-they have not heard that relationship with Jesus changes everything. I think of what Paul wrote, "But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?"3
When statistics are considered on religious beliefs, at first pass, we see that atheism is on the rise. A closer look indicates that it is not that people do not believe in God, they do not believe in religion. But here's the thing: when they hear first hand from a 'woman at the well', they are moved. When they hear first hand about Danny, who is the picture of health and soon to graduate from high school-when they see the pictures of his swollen, steroidal two-year-old face, and then see how God touched and healed him, when the doctors could not-they are moved, usually to tears. You see, people need to know from firsthand experiences how Jesus has changed things-that Jesus is alive, he hears and answers our prayers, and how Jesus comes to bring life to our lives.
To the Muslims learning of a God who loves, a Jesus who came to us, who lovingly taught, lived and preached mercy, they are amazed-especially when they grasp that this Jesus is alive and sits at the right hand of God the Father, praying for them.4 To a set-free Mormon, or a law-keeping Jew, the scientologist working to be 'clear', Jesus is freedom wrapped in love and grace.
But you and I must share from what we know and have experienced. A witness in a courtroom simply tells what she has seen with her own eyes. Ah, so that is why some of Jesus' last words were, 'You shall be my witnesses.'5 When we open our mouths to share the greatest news that has ever been-there is new life in Jesus-it is free, and it radically changes things-people are affected. People still are amazed by Jesus today. Will you tell them?
Christine
PastorWoman.com
3 - Romans 10.14
4 - Romans 8.33-35
5 - Acts 1.8
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