The Purpose of Jesus' Miracles - Matthew 8:14-17

Thank you, Dwight, it is good to be with you guys this morning.

Our passage this morning is going to be Matthew chapter 8

Matthew 8:14–17

verses 14 to 17. So you I invite you to turn

there in your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, we do

have some there in the back. We would love for you to take

one of those. That is just a free gift from

us, no cost to you. We would invite you to grab one

of those if you don't have one. Like I said, we'll be in Matthew

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8. While you're turning there,

let's catch up for a moment on where we're at in Matthew.

So Matthew has the first book in the New Testament.

It is one of the four gospels. And one of the keys to the book

of Matthew is that the author, Matthew, is really speaking to

an audience familiar with the Old Testament, a Jewish

audience. And throughout the book, he is

taking special care to show us where Jesus is the Messiah

foretold in the Old Testament and, and connecting those dots

for us so that we can see very clearly that, yes, Jesus is in

fact the Messiah. That yes, the message that he

has for us is important, a matter of life and death for us

to understand what it is that Jesus is teaching.

And so that's the angle that that or the perspective really

that Matthew has as we're going through this book.

And that'll come in for us very key today.

So a few weeks ago, we finished the Sermon on the Mount, a very

famous sermon that Jesus gives. And in large part, what's

happening here in the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus is

showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like, especially in

opposition to the Kingdom of man.

Those that are listening and we as we read those passages are

very familiar with what the Kingdom of man looks like.

But as we go to the Kingdom of God, we talk about things in the

Sermon of the Mount, like those in the Kingdom of God are poor

in spirit, they are meek, they thirst for righteousness, they

are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, they endure

persecution. There's also a boldness that

comes in being salt and light in the world.

There's a key that that we're we're not to be like the

Pharisees who go and follow the law just for the law's sake, but

that we go to the law. We see the heart of the law,

what God is doing for his people and we we follow the heart and

the righteousness found in the law.

Jesus summarizes this, the law, as love God and love neighbor.

And he at the end of the sermon in the Mount makes very clear

that it's very important whether one chooses to be of the Kingdom

of man or of the Kingdom of God, and that not many will do this,

that there is a narrow gate that one must enter and walk by the

narrow path. So Jesus is teaching this.

He's showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like.

Then he comes down from the mountain.

When we get into this next section of Scripture in chapters

8 and 9, where we're highlighting these miracles that

Jesus is doing, so he comes down from the mountain, he starts to

do these tangible acts. We talked two weeks ago about

the leper being healed and how much of that shows us that

there's cleansing of sin, that Jesus has power over sin to

forgive sins. There was also the servant and

the centurion that we talked about last week, which was this

great sign of what faithfulness looks like in an individual that

we see in the centurion. And Jesus marvels at the faith

found there. So there are lessons in these

healings if we pay careful attention.

But this short passage that we have today really goes to a core

question for us, which is what is the purpose of these

miracles? What is it that Jesus is is

teaching? What is the overarching thing

that he is teaching as he is doing these miracles?

And today's passage really serves as a key or an important

clue for us to to see that. I think of something like an

escape room. I find it interesting that our

culture has this idea that we like lock ourselves in a room

and there's a lot of intricate clues and that's a good way to

have fun. But I think that it's pretty

fun. So I should make fun of that.

But so so you're in a room and you start to figure out the

clues. And of course, after you're all

done, you can look back and it all seems quite simple, how all

the pieces fit together. But in the moment, it might have

been a little bit difficult, maybe too difficult, and we

didn't figure it out. And then you feel all the shame

that comes with happened to be let out, you know, not figuring

it out yourself. But in this passage, we're

fortunate that that Matthew makes this very clear what this

clue is. This would be like a level 1

escape room because the clue is right there in front of us.

So with that, let us go to our passage this morning.

Matthew chapter 8, verses 14 to 17 says.

Matthew 8:14–17

And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law

lying sick with a fever, and he touched her hand, and the fever

left her, and she rose and began to serve him.

That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by

demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed

all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was

spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore

our diseases. Now, first thing I wanted to to

point out in this passage really has nothing to do with the rest

of our our conversation this morning.

But I do think it's in the passage.

So we shouldn't go over it. And that is how many of us

realize that Peter was married. I think that that seems like

kind of an obscure Bible trivia fact that you would find, you

know, in some church Jeopardy tournament that Pastor Mike

would definitely win. So with that, that is in this

passage, we see that Peter has a mother-in-law.

And so that is in this passage. I think one of the reasons why

this is something, at least for me that I think is not common

knowledge is that throughout church history there has been an

emphasis placed on priests not being married.

And we as Protestants would look at that and say, no, that's

something that that has been added in and not something that

that should be held to you in Scripture.

And the reason that's kind of challenging is, you know, the

Catholic Church would say that Peter is really the the first

Pope or the one that the church was built upon.

And so it becomes a challenging fact to deal with.

What's up with the fact that Peter was actually married?

One might say, well, that happened before all of all of

this, before Jesus called him to be a disciple.

Anyhow, we're not going to go more into that.

I just wanted to point that out. It's food for thought, maybe

something to talk about at lunch or something like that.

But it is an interesting point in this passage.

Now as we continue in in our passage, we're going to start

with our first point here, which is how Jesus heals.

We see this in the passage as we go to verses 14 and 15.

It says And when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his

mother-in-law lying sick with a fever, and he touched her hand

and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve him.

I think as we put ourselves in this scene, we can see, you

know, there's a lot here that maybe we wouldn't realize at

first. I find it, you know, we could

kind of put ourselves here from the perspective of Peter and.

And Jesus enters his home and of course, Peter's seen all of

these things that Jesus is doing.

Yeah. He enters his own house and his

mother-in-law is lying sick. Somebody close to him is in a

tough situation. Now, we don't know how severe

this fever was, if she was at death's door or if this was a

somewhat common ailment. I would say I think from our

modern perspective, we're probably tempted to look at

something like that, go, OK, you know, there's a fever, He just

takes medicine and you can get on with your life.

However, at this point in time and history, even a small

ailment could be a serious situation.

So I'm sure there was a lot of fear, uncertainty, trepidation

that's happening here. And yet Jesus comes in, reaches

out and touches her person close to Peter's heart, somebody that

he loved. He sees his Savior reach out and

heal her. I think we have to stop for a

moment there as we go on in this passage and just recognize the

kindness and compassion of our Savior.

I'm reminded of Jeremiah 2324. This in the NIV passage I grew

up with, says, This is what the Lord says, Let not the wise

boast in their wisdom, or the strong boast of their strength,

or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who

boast boast about this, that they have the understanding to

know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice, and

righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares

the Lord, this is the God that we worship.

This is the God that we have sung about this morning that we

read about, that we pray to. This is a God that that is

defined in his kindness and His justice, in his righteousness.

It can be so easy, I think, for us to forget that as in the

busyness of life or even in the challenging circumstances of

life, that this is such a key part of who God is, that he is

kind towards us. He has a loving kindness towards

us. As we look at the passage we see

a couple of key details and how it is that Jesus heals.

The first of these is that he heals with a touch.

We know that God is spirit. We see this in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

It says God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in

spirit and truth. We also see in John one that the

Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His

glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace

and truth. So God is spirit, yet through

Jesus spirit became flesh. And then we see here in this

passage that Jesus then reaches out to touch and to heal Peter's

mother-in-law. And we can know through our own

salvation that Jesus reaches out, touches us, and heals us.

It's an amazing thing that the Creator of the universe has come

to this earth for us. We can see in the past through

his birth and His death. We talk about that often as we

go through narrative passages of Scripture like Matthew that we

see in his coming. We celebrate that every year at

Christmas, this coming of Jesus, the kindness and compassion, the

glory found there. And then we see it again in his

death on the cross, that he died for our sins, that He's reaching

out and touching us in that, but it doesn't in there.

It's something that is ongoing. We can look to Hebrews chapter

Hebrews 10:19–25

10 verses 19 to 25. It says their four brothers.

Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the

blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us

through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we

have a great priest over the House of God, let us draw near

with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our

hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies

washed with pure water. I'll just stop there for a

moment. You know, this would have been

the situation that that the that the Jews found himself in the

time you had this holy of holies, this set apart place

where God resided. And in order to go in, there was

just one time a year that the high priest would first offer a

sacrifice for himself just to purify him of any lingering sins

that he could go into the holy of holies and be near God.

But now as Jesus has come, God become flesh has come reached

out to us, healed us. Now we through the sacrifice of

Jesus in the blood that he provided that the purity through

that blood we now can can approach God.

We don't have to go through a high priest.

We don't have to wait for there to be one time a year at which

this can happen. We can enter into the presence

of God through Jesus as he mediates on our behalf.

Verse 23 continuing, it says, Let us hold fast the confession

of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

We know the faithfulness of Jesus.

Verse 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love

and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit

of some, but encouraging one another.

And all the more as you see the day drawing near.

It seems kind of interesting that we would go right from

those first few verses into the second part.

I think what the author of Hebrews is really getting at

here is that when we look at this closeness that we have with

God, how he has reached out to us as we see in our passage, we

can be reminded that He continues to do that for us

today through His church and through the gathering of

believers. So when we gather here on a

Sunday morning, just as we're doing now when we sing together,

when we pray together, when we listen to the teaching of God's

Word together, Jesus is continuing to reach out to us

through that. During the week, as we gather in

smaller groups of believers, as we worship with our families, as

we worship with those around us in a small group or a community

group, Jesus is working through that to continue to to touch us,

to continue to show his loving kindness to us so we can be

reminded that he reaches out to us.

In the past when he came to this earth and died the death on the

cross. In the present, he is still

mediating for us. He is still working through his

church and other believers. And then we know that Jesus will

come again. We can be reminded of that.

We can count on that, that Jesus is coming back and there will be

a finality to this. That's something that we can

know and trust in continuing on the past.

I think the second thing that we see, we see Him reaching out and

touching. We also see that there is

immense power in His healing. In verse 15 it says He touched

her hands and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve

him. A couple of things here.

First off, we note that there is no delay in this healing.

There are are some who could say, well, maybe Jesus had some

special knowledge or you know, advanced knowledge.

So he he knew the right, you know, medicinal herbs to give

her or something like that. No, there's no room for that in

this passage because she rose immediately.

This was not a long term healing situation.

It's not something that was drawn out to take time after one

showed enough faithfulness. I think that's a key here.

There is a a prevalent theology throughout the world that we

would maybe call prosperity gospel that would say that if

one is faithful enough and that faithfulness measured through

various ways, whether that's they do enough things, they come

to enough things, they pray enough, or often times they give

enough financially. If they do those things, then

healing will come. That's not what we see in this

passage. It's immediate.

He touched her and the fever left her and she immediately

rose. Now that's not to say that God

cannot use long term faithful prayer in order to heal

somebody. In fact, we see this in

Scripture instructed for us to do.

We see this in James chapter 5 verses 14 to 15 says is anyone

James 5:14–15

among you sick? Claim call for the elders of the

church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in

the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will

save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

So we see that there is long term prayer that may come before

healing. But there's an important key

here, which is this is not healing coming from somebody who

is claiming to have the same healing abilities as Christ.

This is faithful Christians calling upon God to act.

There's a big difference there. So before we continue on, I just

want to issue that as a clear warning, a warning for US

against those who tie healing to some sort of specific

faithfulness often measured in giving or in giving of time and

especially giving of finances. We don't see that in Scripture.

I do not believe that to be an application of this passage,

that the most faithful of Christians would be able to then

go do exactly as Jesus did in this passage, to touch somebody

or to again ask for money and for there to be healing

associated with that as we continue on in our passage.

Our next point is why Jesus heals.

Let's start in verse 16, verses 16 and 17.

Here it says that evening they brought to him many who were

oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with the word

and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was

spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore

our disease. Now this is interesting.

So we have now three stories here of of healing with the

leper, with the centurion servant, Peter's mother-in-law.

And then the floodgates open. There's healing, there's casting

out of demons. Many people are coming and then

Matthew tells us exactly why this is occurring.

This is that clue that we talked about earlier.

It was occurring to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet

Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore

our diseases. Dwight read this passage for us

earlier in in Isaiah 53. Really, Matthew here is

summarizing off a big part of that passage.

I think we're most familiar with going to Isaiah 53, maybe in a

in a Good Friday service or something like that surrounding

the crucifixion. But there are parts of that

passage that speak not only of his death, but also of his time

here on earth. And and Matthew's really

summarizing that here. We see this most clearly in

Isaiah 53 verse four in the ESV. It says yet he himself bore or

sorry. I was reading the other one.

The ESP says surely He has borne our griefs and carried our

sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and

afflicted. In the CSV.

I think it's it's closer to the summary that we see here.

It says, yet he himself bore our sicknesses and he carried our

pains, but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God

and afflicted. It's so interesting just in this

one verse that we capture so much of this Kingdom of God

versus the Kingdom of man. We see that that He has borne

our sicknesses. This positive aspect on Christ

of what he has done is He is showing us the Kingdom of God.

But then what we know to have happened, which is the latter

part of these verses, which is that we turn in turn regarded

Him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, that we rejected

him. This reminds us of what the

Kingdom of man looks like. That is where we all once were.

Some of us may still be this Kingdom of man, as all the way

from the garden we see in Genesis 317 says the ground is

cursed because of you. You'll eat from it by means of

painful labor all the days of your life.

Isaiah 59 too. But your iniquities are

separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden His

face from you, so that He does not listen.

Romans 623 For the wages of sin is death.

Romans 512 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through

one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all

people, because all sin. This is the reality of the

Kingdom of man. This is the reality of the

world. The world is broken and evil.

It is not redeemable apart from God as as many in our culture

would hold to that. It's just a matter of a few

people acting in a bad way or just our environment that

corrupts us or these various things.

Now this is what Scripture teaches.

This is the reality of the curse of sin all the way from the

garden, that there would be brokenness and evil.

Yet on the other side of things, we have the Kingdom of God that

Jesus has just taught us all about in the Sermon on the Mount

and that He is now tangibly showing through His healing

works. He's showing us that where there

is sickness in the Kingdom of man, there is healing in the

Kingdom of God. Where there are demons and evil

things in the Kingdom of man, there is power and compassion in

the Kingdom of God. Where there is death in the

Kingdom of man, there is life in the Kingdom of God.

And where there is separation from God in the Kingdom of man,

the root of all of this, there is unity with God through Jesus

in the Kingdom of God. So now as he's doing these

healings and has, he's casting out demons.

This doesn't just fall into a vacuum.

This is exactly what he's showing us.

He's showing us that this is the Kingdom of God.

It has power over that Kingdom of man.

It confirms his message as he's doing this.

It's showing that there's something to what he is doing

here. The message that he has is

confirmed as he casts out these demons, as he heals people, and

he does it with the word. The Word of God has power.

We'll talk just a moment now about about demons.

We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a couple of

weeks as we get to the end of chapter 8, But just a quick

overview here. Demons are fallen angels.

They act in allegiance with Satan and in opposition to

Christ in his Kingdom. We see in Scripture that demons

often oppress or possess an individual and that causes them

to to do things that are particularly evil or

particularly crazy in the mannerisms that they're that

they're living. That's not to say that everybody

who does evil things or acts in odd ways is possessed by a

demon, but some could be. I think there there's a spectrum

here. And as we look at our response

in the way that we think about demons and other things of this

kind of cosmic scale that we see in Scripture, on one extreme of

this, we could go and say that there is kind of a demon behind

every problem. So every challenging situation,

that's demonic activity. Every sickness that somebody

might have, that must be demonic activity.

Every sin struggle that somebody is going through, that's a demon

in that situation. On that end of the spectrum, we

know that isn't completely true because we know that those who

have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit would not be possessed by

a demon. And we also know those of us

that are believers that just because we are believers does

not mean that we don't have challenging situations in our

lives, sickness in our lives, sin struggles in our lives.

At the other end of the spectrum, there could be those

that pay no attention whatsoever to this cosmic scale battle of

good and evil that we read about in Scripture.

I think there's there's error on that side too, because we can

know and be encouraged in the power of our Savior by knowing

those things are going on. It can affect the way that we

pray when we know that those things are going on.

So there's a bit of a spectrum that we need to find ourselves

in. I think of when I think about

demons, something that immediately comes to mind for me

was an experience that I had when I was in college.

I had, I had the opportunity to spend a summer in India and we

were there doing ministry. And at this one particular day,

we were in this very rural community.

And there was a big difference to how people dealt with

spiritual things in the cities versus in the rural areas where

things were maybe a little bit more real, a little bit darker

in the way that they viewed as spirituality.

And I was talking to a guy that was about my age and we had been

talking about Scripture and we have been talking about the

gospel and he is getting really interested.

And it was exciting. The Lord was working in his

heart. And for those of you that are

familiar with Hinduism, which was the predominant religion

there, it's a polytheistic religion, meaning that there are

many gods. And so one has to be very

careful when when sharing the gospel with somebody at a

polytheistic religion that we truly teach that Jesus is the

one true king, right? That there's not all of these

other gods that you can just stick him next to.

Because that was error that was made by the original

missionaries that went into India in the 17 and 1800s.

They, they brought in Jesus and people said that Jesus sounds

really good. I'm going to stick him up on the

shelf next to all of my other gods.

And now there's a whole sect of Hinduism that that worships

Jesus, that worships Mary alongside other gods.

And it's, it's a false religion. So we started having this

conversation. And I said we were sitting on

the steps of this temple. And I turned around and looked.

I said, you do understand that all of this is not real, that

all of this is fake, that these are not real gods, that Jesus is

the only God. And his response to me, I won't

forget this was he said, yes, I understand that there are no

gods in there. There are only demons in there.

And he went on to talk about the fear in their community over

this worship and that if they did not worship correctly, that

there was fear that their crops would die, there was fear that

their animals would would get diseases, all of these different

things. And that kind of stuck with me.

I don't have all of the answers here when it comes to this kind

of stuff, but there is some mystery to what demonic activity

really looks like today. But what we can know is that

again, that there are spiritual battles going on.

One we can also know too, that Jesus has power over those

things. And we can know that in His time

here on earth, Jesus displayed His power over those things to

show that He truly was the Messiah, to show that the

Kingdom of God was truly being ushered in.

We see this in Luke 1120. It says, But if it is by the

finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God

has come upon you. So we know by the fact that

Jesus is casting out demons that the Kingdom of God is being

ushered in by Jesus. So let's go to our last point

this morning. We're going to spend a little

bit of time here as we look at 2 main areas of response.

There's two applications I think that we really need to highlight

in this passage. The first comes from the 1st 2

verses, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law.

And then we'll get to the second dealing with kind of this

overall picture of Jesus healing.

So as we go back to verses 14 and 15 says, and when Jesus

entered Peter's house and he saw his mother-in-law lying sick

with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her.

And then what is her response? And she rose and began to serve

him. That's such a big part of the

healing of Jesus is what? What is our response?

That our response is to serve him?

Yeah, we see this. It's so important for us to

properly understand when we're looking at salvation that we are

not saved by our works, but that doesn't mean that works play no

role in the life of the believer.

I heard recently from a Christian historian, Wes Huff.

Some of you may have heard of him.

I would recommend his stuff he deals with, especially in the

history of the Bible. But in an interview I heard him

say this, that we are not saved by works, but we are saved for

works. I think that's a helpful way for

us to think about it. As we look at Ephesians chapter

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

2 verses one through 10, a commonplace in Scripture to go

and explain this, this glory of the gospel, we can see how clear

this is starting out. It says, and you were dead in

the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

Following the course of this world, following the Prince of

the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons

of disobedience among whom we've all once lived, and the passions

of our flesh carrying out the desires of the body and of the

mind. And we're by nature children of

wrath like the rest of mankind. Pause there for a moment.

That's the Kingdom of man right there.

That is the reality of the situation that we have in this

world. We, apart from Christ, are of

the Kingdom of man. But then the passage goes on, it

says, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love

with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our

trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated

us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in

the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his

grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

That's Jesus reaching out to us. You know, it's such an amazing

thing as we think about salvation and how glorious it

would be if we only saw the mercy of Jesus, if we recognize

that we were completely dead in our trespasses.

And then Jesus took away that sentence.

What a glorious thing that would be, that we were a billion

dollars in debt and that debt was erased.

But that's not where the gospel ends.

As Jesus reaches out to us, he raises this up into the heavenly

places. We receive the righteousness won

by Christ on the cross. So not only are we a billion

dollars in debt and then we go to a 0 sum, we're credited that.

And so we are raised up with Jesus says, for by grace you

have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It's the gift of God, not a result of work.

So that no one may boast. There's that clarity that what

we're talking about here is not being saved by works.

But the passage doesn't end there.

We have one more verse. We go to verse 10 and it says,

for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good

works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk

in them. So when we're saved, we then go

and glorify God by going and doing the things that He has set

beforehand for us to do. This is an important part of the

walk of a believer. We have the example of Jesus in

this. We have Matthew 2028 says even

as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give

his life as a ransom for many. This is part of our response to

our salvation is that we go and do the works that God has set

beforehand for us to do. So what does that look like?

I think there are many things that that can look like, but

let's let's work in in close to us and work our way out.

We glorify God when we serve our families, we when we serve our

spouses, when we serve our children, when we serve our

parents. We glorify God in the way that

we do that what a picture of the gospel.

It is when we think about in our marriages that we serve one

another for the glory of God that we aren't so concerned

about everything being equal about if I do that this, then

they're going to do this and and if they put in 50%, I'm going to

put in 50%. If they put in 100%, then I'll

put in 100%. The picture of the gospel is

that we have been saved by grace through faith.

Let us then go and do good works.

Let us be a picture of what it looks like to serve our spouses

and let God worry about the other stuff with his

relationship and our spouses that we can show that example.

And when we do that, that shows such an example to our children,

children in the room as you obey your parents and you serve and

your family that glorifies God as you do that.

As we go out a little bit further, we glorify God when we

serve our church family. And there are so many ways that

we serve our church family. A few that just came to mind as

I was thinking about this. One way that we serve our church

family is by living transparent lives.

It's on the sign over there, something that we hold to that

we would live transparent lives. When we come to church in an

authentic manner, when we live life together that encourages

one another, that serves one another, that glorifies God.

When we come to church, try to put on a perfect face all of

that. All that that does is steal that

encouragement from other people. All that does is make other

people sit there and think, oh man, they have everything

together. What is it that I'm doing?

When we come authentically, we're then we can pray for one

another. We can see what's going on in

each other's lives. We're encouraged by that.

We encourage one another through wise counsel.

I've seen this happen multiple times.

I think of a specific situation that I have in my mind in our

hallway that I just walked past the conversation the other week

where somebody in our church was struggling with a situation that

somebody else in our church had already been through, and there

was wise counsel given there, encouragement given there.

In those situations, God is glorified.

This may be a hobby horse for me, but when we sing for one

another on a Sunday morning, we glorify God in that service

towards each other. We're going to talk about this

next week in Sunday school, and so if you would like to join us

for that, we meet right in here at 9:15 for Sunday school and

we've been talking through spiritual disciplines.

We're talking about worship next week and one of the things we're

going to talk about is that in worship there is a vertical

component, absolutely, where we are singing praises to God and

we are communing with God in that situation.

There is also a horizontal aspect to worship where we are

singing together, glorifying God together.

When we raise our voices, whether it's in tune or out of

tune. When we raise our voices

together as a church and we sing the truths that we see in

Scripture that are captured in the songs that we sing, that is

service and encouragement to one another and that glorifies God.

And yes, absolutely serving also can look like serving in formal

ways. It is no secret to anybody that

it takes a lot to do church together on a Sunday morning,

especially in a in a setup and tear down church like we have in

this current season. We can serve one another by

being here early to set up chairs or staying late to take

them down. We can serve one another by

providing snacks with hospitality.

We can serve one another absolutely.

In the kids areas, there are kids there just now that are

learning more and more about the gospel with their teachers back

there. And I think it can be helpful

for us as we think about this service, that really what's

happening here is that we are recognizing that we have been

saved, that we have been healed by Christ, and that that moves

us to service. And when we serve one another,

that provides more opportunities for others to feel that same

love and kindness of Christ. That can be the perspective that

we have as we serve one another, especially in some of those hard

areas. Like, you know, sometimes kids

area can be hard or sometimes, you know, it could be tough on

the back setting up chairs and tearing them down every week.

But when we're doing that, we're glorifying God.

We're providing opportunities for others to hear his truth.

And then as we go outward one more time to a large area, which

is all of those around us that do not believe whether those be

close to us, friends, neighbors, family, Co workers, or whether

it's people that we have very little interaction with.

Maybe it's the least of these people in difficult situations

in that we glorify God by serving them.

And yes, that absolutely sometimes looks like providing

tangible needs, showing kindness, but even more so, it

involves us sharing the truth of the gospel in those situations

so that people can know the truth that we know in Scripture.

Our second point of application comes from the last two verses

as we talked about what is really going on here with Jesus

healing, you know, is our is our application here to to say, OK,

Jesus has healed these people with a touch.

Now we are supposed to go and do that exact thing or point out

that this is a descriptive passage of Scripture, which

means it's telling us about what's happened.

It's not necessarily prescribing that we go do that thing.

However, there is something here in a descriptive passage.

There is still a lesson to be learned.

I think that there is, we have to find a little bit of a

Goldilocks zone here as we look at a spectrum here of, you know,

there is a danger on placing too much emphasis on these miracles

and how we must see or play out these miracles in our church

life in order for us to truly be faithful.

There is danger there. There's also danger in too

little where we say, you know, all of the supernatural things

that were going on in Scripture, that was all just something that

happened back then. We don't expect that God works

in supernatural ways anymore. There's there's a danger here on

either side, but the key here is faithfulness.

I spent a lot of time in the last few weeks reading stories

of people that came out of this kind of prosperity gospel we

talked about earlier where, you know, your faithfulness as a

believer is really judged by whether it be wealth, health or,

or, or success that comes through believing the gospel.

And I think that this fictional story here that I'm going to

share in a moment kind of summarizes a lot of those

details and, and really hit close to to my heart.

So we have this individual, we'll call him Joshua.

He considers himself spiritual, even a Christian, kind of a

Christmas and Easter kind of Christian.

That's that's how he grew up. That's how his life was until

his life started to get complicated.

As life does in that complication.

He found himself on his knees before God and gave his life

over to Christ. And for the sake of this story,

let's just say this was a genuine salvation.

He truly did turn over his life to Christ, but he's pretty

immature now. He's a brand new baby believer

with nobody around him. As he's reading his Bible, he

starts to recognize that scripture calls people to get

together and talk about the Bible, just like we talked about

in Hebrews chapter 10. So he tries to find a church.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

He goes to the the biggest one near him.

He's seen a billboard or something like that.

He starts going to this church. He likes that they're talking

about the Bible. He finds it may be a little bit

strange that they talk so much about money and giving, but as

he starts to learn more about the Bible and he starts to apply

those principles to his life. Things start to get better.

His complicated life gets a little less complicated.

He's finding some success in work as he applies biblical

principles to his life. As you would hope, a lot of

situations are improving. So all is well and good until

it's his turn to get some some bad medical news.

He gets a diagnosis. His life is going to be cut

short. So what does he do?

He immediately starts to think about what have I done to

deserve this? In what way have I been

unfaithful and I'm being punished in this way?

So he starts looking for every sin that he could confess.

He starts to do as much as he can at church to give more money

than he is able to just to try to compensate for something

going on in his life. He starts to seek counsel from

other believers, but the only thing that he is getting from

them is that his motives must not be right if he's still

struggling with this. So he gets sicker and sicker,

and meanwhile he's having more anxiety and more anxiety,

feeling worthless as his health continues to deteriorate.

He sits in a position where he thinks he must be a poor excuse

for a Christian if he can't believe well enough to be

healed. That ought to make us a little

bit angry to think about that, the twisting of Scripture that

leaves so many people in a situation like that or where

there's too much emphasis placed on this.

Another story comes to mind. When Taylor and I were in

college, we were at a church in South Carolina and there was a

family there that found out they were having a baby.

There was all the excitement that comes with that.

At the 20 week appointment they found out that that baby had a

rare that condition and that the outlook was bad.

The baby probably would not make it to birth, or if it did, it

wouldn't make it much further. But to complicate the story,

they also found that there was cancer in the placenta and so

the doctor's advice was that this would be the textbook case

for terminating a pregnancy. The baby had little chance of

life and there was danger that the mother would would contract

cancer throughout the process of the pregnancy.

They felt no peace about that and they went to the Lord on

their knees. Their church came around them.

They continued on with that pregnancy and praise the Lord,

the baby was born. The baby was fine.

That baby is 13 years old today, and the mother did not contract

cancer. The Lord worked a miracle in

that situation. Praise the Lord.

But we also know that sometimes that's not how that story ends.

Sometimes people get sick, they reach out to the Lord in

faithfulness, their church comes around them in faithful prayer,

and they still die. And those are tough situations.

Probably all of us have experienced that in some way or

another. But what we can know is that

through the faithful prayers of the believers that God is

glorified. Through their endurance and

suffering, God is glorified. And in his infinite wisdom and

knowledge and sovereignty, God is over that situation and

there's a reward in heaven. We know all of that to be true

as we close here. Our main idea this morning as we

summarize what we just talked about.

An important aspect of Jesus's ministry on earth was to show us

what his Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, looked like.

By healing, by casting out demons, Jesus displayed how His

Kingdom overcomes the curse of sin and darkness.

Even more so than physical healing.

We have witnessed Jesus power and salvation and should respond

as Peter's mother-in-law did by serving our Savior.

If you were here this morning and, and and you look at this

and you say I definitely see myself in the Kingdom of man, I

would invite you to consider the verses and Ephesians that we

read. Jesus has already paid the price

by believing in Him through grace and faith.

You can't have life in Christ. I would urge you not to delay to

do that. I would urge you to consider

that today to talk to a Christian friend, to talk to one

of the pastors here, to come to the Lord on your knees.

For we know that he is faithful to save.

And for those of us that can look and say we are in the

Kingdom of God, let us be motivated as we look back to the

healing that God has provided us in salvation.

Let us be motivated to continue to serve him, to serve him by

serving our families, by serving our church, by serving our

communities, and by bringing the love of Christ to others.

Would you join me now in prayer? Father, we love you, we praise

you. We all know the realities of the

Kingdom of man and the darkness and the struggle there.

We pray that we would be encouraged by the Kingdom of

God, knowing that you have victory over those things.

And as we wait for you to come back and we live in this in

between time where there is still the presence of sin and

death, help us remember that there is no victory of sin and

death. For those of us that look at our

lives right now and see some of those hard situations where we

are praying and praying and praying for healing and have not

seen healing come first, we pray for encouragement.

We pray for endurance. We also pray that ultimately we

would be looking to you and what you have said to us and that we

know you'll be glorified in whatever that outcome is.

We praise you this morning and we pray.

Amen.