Jesus is wisdom!
Matthew 14:34-15:20
Where are we?
[Charts]
The Gospel According to Matthew
Part One – Jesus’ Fame
Who is he? (This is my beloved son.)
What did he do? (A light has dawned.)
Why did he come? (Lord of the Harvest)
Transition – Unbelief in
Nazareth
Part Two – The End Game
Part Three – Jesus’ Death
and Resurrection
The End Game - Unbelief!
Where did this man get
this wisdom
and
these miraculous powers?
1. Three guesses:
-
Herod looking at historical precedent
John
the
Baptist raised from dead
-
Disciples looking at personal experience
A
rabbi and
miracle worker
-
Disciples looking at the occult
A
ghost
walking on water
2. One answer:
Jesus
said,
“It is I.” (The Great I Am)
Disciples worshiped the Son of God
Chapter 14 begins to answer the question of where Jesus got his wisdom
and miraculous powers. It’s a
legitimate question. Let’s ask it
of some other famous figures.
Zeus had the one-eyed
giant Cyclopes make his thunderbolts and he won his power base in the heavens
when he drew lots with his brothers.
King Arthur got
much of his power from the Excalibur and his wisdom from the Wizard Merlin.
Muhammad
got his wisdom from an encounter with the Angel Gabriel and from out of body
experiences including one in heaven. He built his power base through persuasive
teaching, politically advantageous marriages, shrewd business practices, an effective
army and the Koran.[1]
Buddha, according
to one of his followers, attained all his supernatural powers by his own
efforts. His most extraordinary
features were the result of excellent karma from meritorious deeds in all his
previous existences.[2]
This is important because it speaks to where we get our own
power for living. Anyone have a magic sword? Anyone been chatting it up with
angels? So where did Jesus get his power and wisdom?
Matthew 14:34-15:20.
14:34 They crossed the
lake and came to land at Gennesaret, 35 where the people recognized Jesus. So
they sent for the sick people in all the surrounding country and brought them
to Jesus. 36 They begged him to
let the sick at least touch the edge (fringe or hem or tassel) of his cloak; and all who touched it were made well.
We ran into this
behavior once before. What made
people think they could touch the hem of Jesus’ clothes and get healed? And why would Matthew put this strange
little story here? For answers we
need we need some background.
The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to
them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the
corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these
tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that
you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by going after the lusts of
your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and
will be consecrated to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of
Egypt to be your God. I am the LORD your God.’” Numbers 15:37-41
God
knew his people needed to take this precaution. They were to associate the tassels on the hem of their
garments with the word of God. It was there to remind them to be obedient. They knew God’s word was powerful
because as Psalm 33:6 says by the word of the Lord the heavens were made.
That may be
enough to explain why people touched Jesus’ clothes to be healed. But there’s
also a prophesy about the Messiah in the last book of the OT that also urges us
to remember the word of God. One
verse reads: The sun of righteousness shall rise with
healing in its wings (or extremity) Malachi 4:2.
Every ray of the Messiah’s light would be effective to the farthest
corner of the earth.
Wings is the same word Moses used to
describe the corners of the garment. It’s
a strange word to associate with the sun. In his book, The Wings of the Sun:
Traditional
Jewish Healing
, Rabbi Avraham
Greenbaum, agrees the wings have to do with the word of God. He says they’re the teachings of the
Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.
Given that, touching
Jesus’ clothes was a reasonable expression of the people’s faith in God and the
promises in his word. They were
attributing Jesus’ healing power to God’s word.
And
that segues us into the next story. The religious leaders mistakenly believed
that their traditions were an equally good source of power.
15:1
Then some Pharisees and teachers of the Law came from Jerusalem to Jesus and
asked him, 2 “Why is it that your disciples disobey the teaching handed down by
our ancestors? They don’t wash their hands in the proper way before they
eat!”
3
Jesus answered, “And why do you disobey God’s command and follow your own
teaching? 4 For God said, ‘Respect
your father and your mother,’ and ‘If you curse your father or your mother, you
are to be put to death.’ 5 But you
teach that if people have something they could use to help their father or
mother, but say, ‘This belongs to God,’ 6 they do not need to honor their
father. In this way you disregard God’s command, in order to follow your own
teaching. 7 You hypocrites! How
right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you!
8
‘These people, says God, honor me with their words, but their heart is really
far away from me.
9
It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach human rules as though
they were my laws!’”
We have moved from
a passage that alludes to the importance of obeying the word of God to a passage in which the disciples were accused of not
obeying the traditions of the elders. And then Jesus countered their
accusations and explained that it was the Pharisees who were using their
teachings as an excuse to disobey God’s teachings.
Their own
teachings were the oral traditions accumulated over the years from various
rabbis. For example, hand washing regulations. They believed that not washing
hands would lead to poverty. Others taught that the devil sat on unwashed
hands.
Anther example was
this tradition that enabled a person to stop supporting his parents if he
declared his property was devoted to God. In effect, the Pharisees were making
it legal to disobey the Fifth
Commandment to honor their mothers and fathers. The owner could use the profits for himself while he lived
and then the religious officials got the property when he died.
Being the gatekeepers
of tradition gave the Pharisees a lot of social and political power. But it was a power wrapped up in death.
Jesus said they were just like the people Isaiah had described:
This
people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do
they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
The
Pharisees scrubbed their hands and let their hearts stay filthy. So their worship was vain, devoid of
truth and success. They didn’t
connect with the holy. They had no
power to contact the divine. It was a condition that Paul described to
Timothy. These guys who put so
much stock in their religious traditions were lovers
of self, arrogant and unholy - rather than lovers of God, having the appearance
of godliness, but denying its power (2Timothy 3:2,5)
In his commentary Matthew Henry wrote, “They will
assume the form of godliness, to take away their reproach; but they will not
submit to the power of it, to take away their sin.” By believing their thinking made them as
powerful as the word of God, they became foolish, fruitless and useless.
Jesus called them hypocrites.
This would have been a shock to the disciples. The Pharisees and the teachers
of the law were highly respected for their good deeds and piety. They would have enjoyed an esteemed
reputation that would have landed them on the cover of some magazine. On judgment day they will land
somewhere else.
They
stand in stark contrast to Jesus. He did obey the commands of God, all of them perfectly. He loved God perfectly. His heart was fully given to God. He was totally righteous. And as Psalm Psalms
37:30 says, The
mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom.
Not
one wizard or Cyclops or rich wife or any other comic book explanations played
a role in Jesus’ power and wisdom. His came from his knowledge of the word of
God and his obedience to it. In
fact, he was the Word. Because of his wisdom he was able to explain the folly
of those who thought they were smart with or without God’s word.
10 Then Jesus called the
crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand! 11 It is not what goes into your mouth
that makes you ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes you
unclean.”
12 Then the disciples came
to him and said, “Do you know that the Pharisees had their feelings hurt by
what you said?”
13 “Every plant which my
Father in heaven did not plant will be pulled up,” answered Jesus. 14 “Don’t worry about them! They are
blind leaders of the blind; and when one blind man leads another, both fall
into a ditch.”
15 Peter spoke up,
“Explain this saying to us.”
16 Jesus said to them,
“You are still no more intelligent than the others. 17 Don’t you understand? Anything that goes into your mouth
goes into your stomach and then on out of your body. 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the
heart, and these are the things that make you ritually unclean. 19 For from your heart come the evil
ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to
rob, lie, and slander others. 20
These are the things that make you unclean. But to eat without washing your
hands as they say you should—this doesn’t make you unclean.”
On the side of
tradition were the commandments of men, evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false witness, slander, hearts far from God, lip service,
and hypocrisy. Blind guides
leading the blind, who would fall in a ditch only to one day be rooted up by
God. Conspicuous by their absence
is any mention of power or wisdom.
On the side of the commandments of God are healing and wellness, honoring father and mother, keeping the Ten Commandments, true worship and being planted by God. And all who obey are the beneficiaries of Jesus who is both the power and wisdom of God (1Corinthians 1:22-24).
This is great
news. If we had to have
thunderbolts or travel out of our bodies or achieve our own supernatural
powers, we would be without hope. But we have access to the same scriptures Jesus did. We have access to the resurrected
Jesus. We have the promise of his
power at work in us.
Jesus' incomparably great power is for us who believe. Ephesians 1:19
Youth Message
Want Wisdom
Do
you want one of these treats?
How badly do you want one? Would you be willing to jump up and down three times? Would you be willing to spin in a
circle? Would you be wiling to
give me a hundred dollars?
What would you give a hundred dollars for? A new bike? A
trip to Disney World? Your own iPod?
Is there anything on your birthday list that you want bad enough to
give one million dollars?
307,692 Big Macs? A house
at the beach? A year’s vacation with your own tutor so you don’t have to go to school?
The Bible
has some advice on what to want.
Two
Proverbs (8:1,16:16) talk about how much more important it is to have wisdom
than gold. One says that nothing you desire can compare with wisdom and the
other one says that it’s much better to get wisdom than gold.
When you make a list of what you want for your birthday, the first item on the list should be wisdom.
[2] http://web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/tinhla01.htm
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