Matthew 15:29-31 The Equal Opportunity King

To the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

Gathering for Worship and Hearing from God

Good morning, everybody. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I just want to say that I'm glad that you've gathered together on this, what do you call this morning? Like, really cold and wet and rainy, dreary morning.

So I recognize that it would have been very easy for you to just pull the covers over your head and head back to sleep. So just grateful that you're here. And I hope that you're here in part really fundamentally to hear from God.

I think that that's very vital and important for us in our understanding of the world around us, and the things that we see, and the things that we encounter all week long is to hear from God. But I also hope that everyone is here because in another sense, you know you need others.

That you've come to this place to gather as God's people, because you know that there's something about the conversations that are going to happen here this morning, and the connection time, and the afterwards conversations, and things like that, that are actually beneficial for you.

You could have stayed home and read your Bible on your own this morning. You could have listened to a sermon online by your computer with your cup of coffee and just stayed there. But we are designed to need each other in our walk with God.

And so we gather as He told us to, so that we can connect and share life together, because that's His desire and His design for us. So I have a quick announcement for us before I introduce the text this week.

Start off by just giving a big thanks to all of those who came out to the building and scraped floors, and got things prepared, and worked outside, and worked on trails, and all kinds of stuff yesterday.

There were about, I think about 40 people showed up yesterday to help out at the building. So that was a big help to get the floors prepped for carpeting going on this week. We appear to be on target to have our first services in the building either the week before or the week after Thanksgiving.

And it's really hard to put a date on that. I see a couple people who kind of wanted to clap, but yeah that's an exciting thing. And that's applause to God, right? Because that's what He's doing, and He's bringing this together.

But I would just ask and encourage you to please be patient, and please exercise grace and flexibility as we move toward that transition into the building. And then even beyond that transition to the building, know that it's not going to be like we've got all everything worked out that first Sunday that we meet there.

We're not even sure if we're going to have the sound system completely in. It might just be an acoustic set for worship. But the first time that we can have a service there, and we have occupancy, we will be meeting out there.

So I also just ask for flexibility and understanding as we are going to be sending out more information over the next few weeks to you. I know that we're not trying to spam your inbox, but we want to make sure that everybody's informed about what's going on.

If you're not currently on that list and don't receive the e-cast, fill out that connection card and get on that list so that you can see the details and be updated directly. But please just check your inbox from time to time to see that information.

I don't want anybody to show up here the first time that the church is meeting out there. So the chances are pretty likely that that's going to happen, but don't let it be you. So pay attention to the announcements that are going out, and let it be somebody else who shows up here that morning and goes, where is everybody?

The Healing Ministry of Jesus in Matthew 15

This morning we're going to be back in the Gospel of Matthew, and Matthew shares with us an account of healing this morning that may sound a lot like passages we've already gone over. Now, how many of you know that we've had, maybe you've already been here a couple times, for passages on healing in the book of Matthew?

Have you heard a couple of those? Actually, between chapters 14 and 15 of the book of Matthew, Matthew's Gospel, he records three different times where masses and crowds gather around Jesus, and he heals them.

And we might begin to find the Gospel of Matthew repetitive, especially if you're just kind of reading through the Bible, and you read those two chapters back to back. You go three different times in two chapters that crowds are gathered around Jesus, and he heals them.

But the miracles, the healings, and the purpose of those healings are significant, and significant enough that in that day and that age when ink and parchment to write on was extremely expensive, Matthew took the time to fill up that parchment with all kinds of stories, all kinds of events that happened in the life of Christ that are important and valuable for us.

This is important that God wants us to be sure to understand that the King that we serve is the healing King. He is powerful to solve the results of the fall of mankind. In our sin, we have broken some things.

Would you admit that? Maybe even on a personal level, you've broken some relationships, you busted some stuff, and maybe even some people with your mouth, with the things that you've said, with the things that you've done.

And so we recognize that we need a healing, and God is the one who can provide that healing. We see in our text this morning the power of Jesus in this text, but we also see the glory of God in this text.

The crowds in their amazement respond in a surprising way to these healings that we're going to look at here this morning. So I read the short, as I read the short passage, pay attention to the end, pay attention to verse 31 specifically.

It's a short passage, only three verses this morning. So if you'd please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 15, verses 29 through 31. And again, as I read it, I want you to pay special attention to 31.

But if you don't have a Bible on your lap, Mike's got some in his hand back here, and if you just raise your hand, he'll bring you a copy of God's Word. But we want everybody to have a Bible in their hands this morning so that you can read and follow along and see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word.

I'm not making this stuff up, and not only am I not making this stuff up, but recast, we have the opportunity to hear from God. This is his revealed Word, the things that he spoke to his prophets and his leaders and his messengers down through the ages to communicate with us.

And so this tells us something about the self-disclosure of God. The Bible is in one sense kind of autobiographical. It's God's telling us about himself and how he worked in history and the things that he has done.

So Matthew 15, 29 through 31, short passage. Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.

And they put them at his feet, and he healed them. So that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the power that is expressed in this passage. And Father, a power that we need in our lives. Certainly, Father, you are the one who can and does provide healing. In a physical sense, that all healing ultimately comes from you.

It's even in the design of our human bodies. And you sometimes use medicine, you sometimes use doctors, and sometimes you use your own glory in the end as a person passes away and is brought into your presence and healing in the end.

And Father, we recognize that what we really need most of all is spiritual healing. A healing inside, a healing for the broken hearts that are in us. And we rejoice this morning. I pray that you would move in each and every heart here with wonder and awe and amazement and glory to you even as we sing because of the healing we've experienced in our own hearts and are experiencing.

That we recognize that we have a healer. And that whatever infirmity, whatever ailment, whatever it is that finally takes us home to be with you, that does not have the final word. But there is an ultimate healing that Jesus was just giving foretastes of here on this earth.

But there's a final hope, an ultimate hope, an ultimate glory that will be given to you in the end by all of those who belong to you and have been saved by you. And so, Father, I pray that we'd practice that with our voices right now.

And that even in the singing, that would just be a practicing for the week that is ahead of a life given over to you. Not just vocal chords given to you this morning, not just our voices singing together to you, but that our lives would sing together for you.

That our actions, our behaviors, the words that come out of our mouth, and the way that we speak to spouses and parents and children and co-workers and those around us, the words and deeds would match up with the things that we're about to say about you in these songs.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, a lot of thanks to Dave for leading us in worship. I appreciate the time and energy that he puts in each week. And I would encourage you to make yourself comfortable. If you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, well, supplies last over there.

And again, like I say every week, if the seat that you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, feel free to get up and stretch out in the back. We don't want anybody sitting there in misery. And I know that those are not the best things for your lower back there.

And then men's room is out the hall. Turn right and then go upstairs. And then women's is on the same floor at the bottom down here. So if you need that, that's where those are located. And then please keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 15 verses 29 through 31, as we're going to dig through this text.

This is the text that we're going to be walking through. And I want you to have it open in front of you so that you can kind of see exactly where we're going with this. I want to just start off by saying that the setting of the events in the gospel's narrative matters.

It's sometimes quite significant. The physical location of the events is like an extra character, an extra player on the field, if you will, that sometimes comes into play in a way, in unique ways. Like when a football team plays in one stadium, sometimes it's like that stadium has an impact on the game and the crowd and the size of the crowd and the volume of the crowd and all of those kinds of things.

Well, the location, the geography of Israel plays a lot in the gospel narrative. And so a lot of times we might just see Jesus doing something and we think, oh, he healed a bunch of people. But knowing where he's located when he does that healing tells you who he's healing, tells you who would have come from the villages in that area, what was that area like, and that helps us to understand the text a little bit more.

Remember that two weeks ago, Jesus withdrew to Gentile territory. Now, the Jews had a word for everybody that wasn't a Jew, okay? And it wasn't always necessarily a great word. It's a word we use nowadays just kind of as a common word, not a common word that you use every day, but a word that we would use without any pejorative sense to it, but it's Gentile.

To them, that would have been the foreign or the other, the one who is not like me, the one who is not religious like me, the one who worships pagan gods and is an idolater and it had a lot of negative connotation to it in that day and age.

But Jesus had withdrawn to Gentile territory where the Jewish leaders wouldn't follow him. The word withdrew in that text was significant because he's literally trying to get away from somebody and he was trying to get away from those religious leaders who had come up from Jerusalem.

The Pharisees and the scribes in our text a couple of weeks ago had talked about them coming up from Jerusalem to badger him about and pester him about a very petty question, why don't your disciples wash their hands before they eat?

And the pettiness of that question was kind of pushed out into the conversation with the entire crowd that was gathered around Jesus at that time and he told them, stop worrying about the filthiness of the world outside of you that you're concerned about cleaning your hands from.

Be more concerned with the filthiness inside you that comes out and defiles others. Be more concerned that your heart is filthy, that your heart is dirty. Then he left them there and he went up to the area of Tyre and Sidon, a major Gentile area, and he healed the daughter of a Gentile woman.

That woman had come to him in desperation, pleading for this Jew to heal her daughter and she was a Canaanite, kind of an enemy of ancient proportions and epic proportions to the Jews. One of those who had opposed their coming into the land in the first place and he showed mercy and compassion on her and healed her daughter.

And of course this was all, none of this was unintentional. I mean he just got done talking about don't be concerned about the filthiness of others, be concerned about your own heart. Now he goes up into Gentile territory where the Jews wouldn't have expected him to listen to the pleas of this woman and he heals her daughter.

And so we pick up where we left off. Jesus was up there, Tyre and Sidon in the north, and he begins to trek back toward Israel but heads instead to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, never leaving Gentile territory.

He's still in the territory of the Gentiles. The eastern side of the Sea of Galilee was occupied by Gentiles, the western side of the Sea of Galilee in the south was Israel, and so he's still never left Gentile territory but he's getting closer to Israel down there by the Sea of Galilee.

This is the area, by the way, where there were pig farmers. One of the ways that you can tell that there were Gentiles in this area is there's pig farmers. How many of you knew that Jews don't eat bacon?

Did you know that? So every once in a while you'll hear that in the, you hear that account in the Gospels where a demon-possessed man was freaking out and came to Jesus and he cast the demons out. And where did he cast them in?

He cast them into a herd of pigs. And you're on, pigs in Israel? What in the world is going on? It tells you something about the location of where he's at because you're absolutely right in identifying Jews would not have been farming pigs.

And so that factors into the story. But this is an area known as the Decapolis or the area of the 10 cities. Again, 10 Gentile cities in the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel of Mark, by the way, records this exact same event for us and tells us in that term, he says, and Jesus went to the Decapolis.

And further, this Gospel, Matthew, lets us know that he was in an area near the sea where there were hills and mountains. Again, we're talking about the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, eastern shore.

So Jesus is still focusing his ministry outside of Israel. By the way, that's an actual picture of the Sea of Galilee and the eastern shore where you can see the type of hill that Jesus may very well have gathered on.

And these people came to him sitting on the crest of one of those hills there. And so he gets to the top of that hill. He takes a seat on the top of the mountain. And you're kind of like, is he going to be like a guru here?

What's this kind of thing? He's like the mystic on the top of the mountainside and people are coming out to talk to him or whatever. But it's interesting to note that from this era and from this time, a Jew would have taken a seated posture when they were going to teach.

Now, if they were going to teach in the synagogue or on the Saturday Sabbath, they would stand for the reading of the Word of God and they would stand for the teaching in that formal gathering. But when a rabbi or a Jewish leader was out in the community and they began to teach, the first thing they would do is sit down and that was a signal, everybody hush and quiet, he's going to say something.

And so that would have been the logical understanding. He takes a seat and what we would expect to come next is Matthew to record him teaching us something. But instead, a great crowd came to him and they were bringing with them a huge crowd of people with physical ailments.

They brought the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others and they brought them to this hilltop by the sea. And I want to zero in on a phrase that ought to have a major point of application for us that probably our minds and our eyes skip over when we read this, but it's very vital and it's important for us and I think it might be even a central application that we ought to take on ourselves this morning and that is that they came to him bringing with them.

Do you see that in the text? They came to him bringing with them. See that in verse 30. They came to him. So let's start with the obvious. They came to him. They came to Jesus. They came to the Messiah of the Jews.

They didn't come to their pagan temple of healing that was located in this district not too far from here, just on the north side of the town of Sidon. I've uncovered this archaeologically that there was an actual temple of healing that was there, but word is certainly spread about Jesus and his miraculous power and the people come to him.

He was known all throughout the lands as the one who could help people in desperate situations and these people that are coming to Jesus are in desperate situations. And the people came to him, but hear me carefully, they did not come alone.

The people didn't come alone. They brought with them others in need. If you get nothing else out of this message this morning, please learn from these Gentiles and the Decapolis. Learn from these people who were considered to be far outside of the kingdom by the Jews.

Those filthy Gentiles. Learn from them. Come to Jesus and do not come alone. Don't come alone. As we enter a new phase as a church, it is indeed going to be a new phase and although it doesn't feel like it where you're sitting now, it's going to feel a little bit strange in the first time that we meet in that building.

It's going to just be different. It's going to be weird. It's going to be, you know, trying to figure things out and the setting and the environment and all of that stuff. God is giving us a building.

Our years of wandering are coming to an end. And again, get an amen on that. Is anybody excited about that? Some of you have been with us since the storefront and we met in the storefront for a while and then we've been here setting up and tearing down for a long time.

And we could easily set about the next several years making a kingdom of our own. A nice holy huddle away from the world out there. But Recast Church began with the intention and the purpose of being a hospital for the spiritually sick.

And we must never outgrow that primary role and responsibility that God gives to his people. Come to Jesus bringing others. Come to Jesus bringing others. I fear that many Christians are all too satisfied, by the way, coming alone and, oh, I just love my times alone with God.

Oh, I just have precious time in the quiet moments with my Savior, just me and him. I have a personal relationship. How many of you have used that phrase or heard that phrase? I have a personal relationship with Jesus.

I've even heard it outright stated by some family members that my faith is between me and God. That's another way of saying, don't talk to me about it, right? Did you know that? And how many of you heard that phrase before?

My faith is between me and God. And that's a way of saying, stop it. Don't press in anymore. Don't ask me any more questions. This is about me. Now hear me carefully. We need some times to be alone. Did you know that you need some times alone with God?

And that's a valuable thing. But ask yourself, honestly, do you only ever come to Jesus alone? Do you only ever come to Jesus alone? That's where the challenge is. Certainly you should be coming to Jesus alone.

You should be coming to him with others too. You should be bringing others to him. I would guess that many of us in this room have people who confide in you regularly. You have people who come to you that are hurting.

You have people that come to you that are frustrated with life. You have people in your life who are confused. How many of you would raise your hand and say you have some people like that who come to you for advice or come to you confused from time to time?

Many of us. And do you look on them with eyes like Jesus did? Not in a derogatory sense, but Jesus said he looked upon the masses like a sheep without a shepherd, with no protection, with no guidance, with no one pointing them in the right direction.

And there are many in our lives who are making extremely tough decisions and they're making those decisions alone. And maybe just the fact that you're aware of those decisions that they're making, maybe just the fact that they've come to you and brought those things up to you has a little bit more to do with your being placed in their lives to bring them to Jesus.

Not to try to solve the, I mean it's very, how many of you know that it's very quick and easy to give advice? Did you know that? I mean just being honest, I think all of us should raise our hand because somebody comes to you and what's the first thing that you want to do?

You want to solve it. You want to fix it. You want to be their savior. You want to have the wisdom to help. You want to, and that's, that comes from a good place, but would you admit with me that maybe you're not the solution?

Maybe, maybe bringing them to Jesus is the thing that they need most. Maybe you don't really have what they need other than to point them. Maybe you're just a sign and not the savior. Maybe you're an arrow, but not the one who's gonna be the solution yourself.

Come to Jesus, bringing others. Now the fact of the matter is many people in our lives are coming to us and it's not primarily about them being physically lame, physically mute, blind, deformed. The word there could be translated crippled, just so that you're not clear, like the the word crippled and the word lame sound the same, but there's a difference.

There's a distinction there. They have a deep spiritual wound. There are people in your lives who have deep spiritual wounds that are no less serious than these physical maladies that Jesus is taking care of here.

Jesus certainly has the power to heal all of the physical maladies that anyone can face, but he is so much more than merely a physical healer, and so I jumped to the spiritual, and I mentioned this in a message not too long ago, that it's very easy to jump to the spiritual and not necessarily deal with the physical healings.

I want you to be abundantly clear that I believe that all healing comes from our Father. All healing comes from God, whether that's the medicine that you take or the doctor who's got the scalpel that fixes things or takes the tumor out or whatever it might be, still healing is in the hands of God.

But did you realize, and I don't know how much you've put your mind to this kind of thinking about the things that Jesus did while he was here, but every single physical body that Jesus, ever healed, eventually resumed the process of dying, resumed the process of betraying its owner.

Did you think, have you thought about that? Every person, Lazarus, who was dead in the grave, was raised again, and I kind of wonder if there wasn't something in the back of my mind, oh great, I get to die again.

Like this is, I mean I already went through this once, I mean do I have to do this again? You know, it's like, come on. But everybody who was healed by Jesus still resumed that process of decaying and dying.

Now I experienced that, you know, I'm going to be 45 this year. Yep, I just said it. And some of you, that's like, whoa, only 45? And then some of you are like, 45? Are you serious? And I've got gray hair, so you already knew that I was at least that.

But I'm trying to decide whether or not, you know, there's some guys that are getting together to have a basketball team this year, and it's been the first time in my life where I've actually had to really think it through.

Like, am I willing to pay the price to do this thing this year? You know, because I mean it's really hard, it's really hard to not go all out, and I know that that's going to hurt. So I'm looking at this and kind of trying to decide, am I on the basketball team, or is this the year that I get to sit and watch and cheer or something?

Yeah, yeah, sure. He's going to crush me. It's going to be fun. But yeah, so you know that there's the effects of the fall, there's the effects of our bodies wasting away and wearing away. So was Jesus in this text just simply offering a temporary healing?

Was this like a circus sideshow? Was this just, you know, like him kind of just like, let me show my power here for a second. Poof, okay, that lame person can now walk. Poof, that blind person can now see, because see, I got it.

Is that what's going on here? Is it just kind of a temporary fix? Because at the end of the day, we know that it was temporary, and so what's he really accomplishing here? I believe that what he was doing in all of the healings, when you see the healings of Jesus here on this planet, it was a campaign of glory for sure.

So there is something about him demonstrating his power. There is something about him demonstrating the glory of God. But even beyond that, he was sowing seeds of the promise of a better life under his kingship, a better life that is to come.

How many of you have kind of come up against some hard things in this life that have started to wear you down to the point where you're like, heaven looks better, the new earth looks better. And I would suggest to you that every year of my 45 years, there has been progressively more waiting for me over there.

Do you know what I'm talking about? As this body wastes away, as people that I love go there, there comes a point I think in life where it's like, I got more over there than I have here. This world has nothing for me.

We sang that earlier, and I think when I was younger, I wasn't quite sure about that. I felt like this world had a whole lot more for me when I was younger, and as I age, I go, I think I was a bit naive when I was younger.

There's a lot more there for us. So he was giving foretaste of a life that is to come in his eternal kingdom, and he was demonstrating the power that he has to fix the problems that you and I face here in this life.

From casting out demons that plague us, to showing his power that they will not have a way in his first future kingdom, to the demonstration of his power over infirmity, that we're not going to carry blindness, we're not going to carry lameness into that kingdom, but it is going to be healed by the one who demonstrates the power over this.

Blindness is no problem for the king. Crippling deformity is not too tough for Jesus to fix. Muteness and lameness are curable by the Son of God. So in these healings, we see the trade show demonstration for the real deal that's coming.

He is here saying this is a foretaste of the good kingdom I will bring to all who will follow me. The miracles are like the sample spoon. I love the sample spoon. The sample spoon that offers a foretaste of the ice cream that is to come.

Right? The sample spoon. And as I mentioned earlier, the context matters because Jesus is sharing the ice cream with Gentiles. That was scandalous in this day and age. He's sharing the ice cream with the pig farmers.

He's sharing the promise of a kingdom to come to those who the Jews were like, well, you're, I mean, if you're anything, you're our king, but you're certainly not their king. Not the king of those filthy pig farmers.

Not the, not the king of those that are unclean and spiritually defective. But the standards of the religious leaders of his time, by those standards, these people were untouchable. They were filthy, ungodly, idolatrous Gentiles.

You don't go into the houses of these types of people. You don't eat their food. You don't physically touch them. Most people during this era, by the way, also, even further, it's one strike against them in the Jews' eyes that they're Gentiles.

But even further, during this era, they operated under the worldview that if you were blind, lame, crippled, or mute, then you were under a direct curse from the gods. But Jesus healed them. But Jesus healed them.

Look at, look at that little statement at the end of verse 30 in your Bibles. If you're reading out of the English Standard Version, it says, and he healed them. That's a simple statement. That's such a small little couple of words there.

And he healed them. But so simple, but so much glory and power demonstrated in this little short verse. He healed them. They cast the broken and the hurting at the feet of Jesus. The interesting word is, it's like they threw him down at his feet.

That's, that's the, the word is like the emphasis on the, on the urgency of those who were seeking healing for their friends. They cast them down at his feet, and Jesus, he healed them. What love is this that breaks down these social barriers here in this text?

What love is this that has compassion on the broken and the hurting? What love is this that looks upon those whose society is cast aside, and he looks on them with eyes of dignity and honor and heals them?

This is Jesus. This is our Lord and Savior. This is the one who came to seek and save the lost. And great crowds of needy messes came to him, and they came bringing the broken. Jesus could have turned them away as filthy and unworthy.

Jesus could have responded to them out of fear of defilement. Sure, I'll heal you, but stay over there. Don't you dare come close to me. Jesus could have withdrawn from that area to avoid the whole thing had he wanted to.

But he has compassion, and he is here offering a foretaste of the kingdom to those who are most considered outsiders. Who's, who's your gospel message for? Who is outside of his reach? The homeless? The Muslims?

The drug dealers and prostitutes? The politicians? The police? I want to encourage everyone here this morning to open your heart to God and ask him to expose your prejudices. Ask him to expose your prejudices now, this morning, maybe even during the time that we take communion, before you take communion.

Take a moment and say, God, expose in me the prejudice. Many of you are already sitting in indignation. The fact that I implied that you have a prejudice, you're sitting there going, Don, not me. Are you serious?

I love all people. You don't see in my heart, Don. You don't know me. I love everyone. And I would say to you that you need to get out a little more. There are only a couple of reasons any fallen human can say that they don't have any prejudices.

The first is possibly you stay too close to home and only spend time with people just like you. And so you haven't ever been out to let somebody offend you before. You haven't been out around others who don't do things the way that you do, so that you've been pushed to realize that within your own heart, you believe that you're always right.

You believe that your way of doing things is always right. Your way of speaking is always right. Your way of doing A, B, or C is always right. Second option is that you're pretty good at lying to yourself, because everybody, everybody has some prejudice in their own heart.

Everyone. The solution to the problems dividing our culture will not and cannot be solved by a media that thrives off of sensationalizing the problems. Do you realize that the media makes money off of bad news and divisiveness?

I don't know if you realize that, but that's their, that's their shtick. That's their, that's their growth model. That's their money maker, is division and problems and reporting on that. The more divided we are, the more that they have to report, the more money they make.

But let me humbly suggest that the solution runs, runs along the lines of people getting to know others who are not like them. Gracious, curious, and honest conversations where we listen to others would be a great place for us to start, Recast.

I've had a couple of conversations recently that ran along those lines, and I'm looking forward to more in the future where I've gotten together with some people who were not raised where I was raised, who don't look like me, who don't talk like me, and to interact with them and to realize just to sit and listen to each other and, and hear each other's background.

And I'm growing because of those conversations. They're growing because of those conversations, and it's, it's beneficial, and it's healthy, and it's good. Let's be careful that we never leave Jesus far from those conversations, because He really is the only hope for all people.