In the movie “Blues Brothers,” Jake and Elroy repeatedly
said they were on a mission from God. I
don’t know about Jake and Elroy, but we Christians are on a mission from
God. No doubt about it.
I know what you’re thinking. “Here goes Tim, telling us again about how we
need to be on a mission of spreading the Gospel.” Yes, I’ve said many times in many forums that
we all need to be consistently focused on our mission. But why?
We’ll look to Matthew 9:35-38 to answer
that. Let’s set the scene. Jesus has been going around Galilee—which was
like his main base of operations—healing people and teaching people and calling
the apostles to follow Him. That’s kind
of what we think about when we think of Jesus: going around the countryside,
preaching and healing people.
Well, He did that.
In fact, just a couple of chapters earlier in Matthew, Jesus gave the Sermon
on the Mount, which was out in the countryside.
But Jesus also went to the cities and villages. Now, cities in Israel were not quite like
what we think of as cities today. Only
about 5-7% of the population lived in cities.
But there was something special about the cities. The wealthy people tended to live in the
cities. The rulers and the elite lived
in the cities.
But guess what. On
the edge of the cities were the outcasts of society. The beggars and the poor stayed right outside
the city gates.
Jesus wanted to reach everybody. He didn’t care what their social status
was. And the cities had the rich and
the poor. So, in verse 35 we read “And
Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues
and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every
affliction.”
Jesus is going to where people are: the cities and
villages. And what’s first on Matthew’s
list of places where Jesus went? The
synagogues.
The synagogues were kind of like the churches of that
day. That’s where Jews assembled to
study the Scriptures and pray. Most
folks back then couldn’t read or write, and the synagogue is where they
listened and learned. So it made sense
for Jesus to start where people were already somewhat open to reasoning from
the Scriptures. He taught people in the
synagogues.
He also evangelized.
He spread the good news—God’s Kingdom had come. And guess what—that kingdom was personified
in Jesus Christ himself!
And what else was He doing? “… healing every disease and every
affliction.” Jesus went to the people
who were hurting and He healed them.
Matthew says “every affliction.”
It didn’t matter to Jesus what their hurt was… whatever it was, He
helped.
Let’s pause and think about that. Was Jesus facing something that we don’t face
today? I don’t think so. We have lost and hurting people all around
us. We can step outside our church
buildings and not go a quarter of a mile before we run into somebody who is
hurting—either spiritually or physically or emotionally—in a serious way.
I won’t harp on that because I’ve said it a hundred
times, and besides, you know it’s true.
Some of you may even be the ones that are hurting, and you don’t need to
hear it from me. But let’s just agree
that there are hurting people out there that need our help and need our Lord.
Matthew says in verse 36 that “When he saw the crowds, he
had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd.” Why did Jesus help
people? We know that He was doing His
Father’s will. We know He wanted to save
people from hell. But here we see that
Jesus had compassion on the crowds.
Jesus’ compassion is a recurring theme in the
Gospels. He felt compassion before He
fed the 5,000 (in Matthew 14). He felt compassion before He healed two blind
men (in Matthew 20). He felt compassion before He fed the 4,000 (in
Matthew 15), and before He healed
the leper (in Mark 1), and before He brought a
widow’s son back to life (in Luke 7).
Compassion for others is what drove Jesus to help and
heal. He looks out on the crowd and
feels compassion for the lost and the hurting.
He sees them as sheep without a shepherd.
That’s an interesting line: “like sheep without a
shepherd.” There’s a couple of different
ways that can be interpreted. The first
interpretation is one that most of us would think of: helpless sheep that would
just wander around hungry and lost without their shepherd. That is definitely one way of looking at lost
and hurting people: they have spiritual and physical needs, and we need to help
them the way Jesus modeled: teaching, sharing the Good News, and healing.
Think about those crowds that were coming to Jesus. They had leaders back then. Very religious leaders, too. The Pharisees, priests, and scribes were
there. But instead of helping the
people, they loaded them down with more religion. The leaders only made things worse for their
people.
That’s why the crowds were coming to Jesus. Jesus could relate to them. He cared for them. He taught them the truth. He helped them.
“Sheep without a shepherd.” Yep, they were wandering, lost, with no real
help from their leaders. But there’s a
deeper meaning here that we overlook sometimes.
When Matthew says they are like “sheep without a
shepherd”, he’s pointing back to 1 Kings 22:17. That’s where the prophet Macaiah told the
king of Israel that his people were like lost sheep. In that context, there was about to be a war
in Israel, and the sheep were going to suffer and be scattered.
So, bringing that symbol forward, we can see that the
people aren’t only like sheep because they are hurting and without someone to
help them. They’re also the targets of war:
Satan’s war on Creation. He wants to
keep them lost. That’s why Jesus had
compassion on them. They were
hurting. They were lost. And Satan was doing his best to keep them
that way.
We need to have that same compassion, for the same
reasons as Jesus. Our neighbors are
hurting, they’re lost, and Satan is doing his best to hang onto them.
To be continued…
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