Leviticus 16:29-18:30, Mark 7:24-8:10, Psalm 41:1-13, Proverb 10:15-16
Today is the 25th day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian, it is great to be here with you today as we do what we do and take the next step forward together and that will lead us back into the book of Leviticus where we are learning the laws that will establish this people, the children of Israel, who have recently, relatively recently been delivered from slavery in Egypt. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week, Leviticus chapter 16 verse 29 through 18 verse 30 today.
Commentary:
Okay, so in the gospel of Mark today, Jesus heals a deaf man and we’ve already gone through the gospel of Matthew so, we know that Jesus does this kind of stuff everywhere that He goes and people are flocking to him because He does this kind of stuff. One interesting feature though of the miracles of Jesus, and if I have my numbers right there are 37 miracles of Jesus accounted for in the Gospels and then the gospel of John tells us, basically, Jesus did a bunch of other stuff too, if everything could be written down it would take all the books in the world. So, it’s not a secret that Jesus was considered to be a miracle worker, what is kind of interesting is what He does and He did it today when he healed the deaf man. He took the man aside, away from crowd privately, a couple of strange things like putting His fingers in his years and spitting and touching it to His tongue and the man gets healed and Jesus tells him essentially, don’t tell anybody about this, keep this quiet and He does this repeatedly, often. So, from…from a practical perspective, the more that the news travels about a miracle worker right, the more crowds probably will come. And we could think, well Jesus doesn’t want the crowds but the crowds are already upon Jesus. So, what else could be going on here, certainly the crowds and Jesus having to retreat and all of these kinds of like he can’t even find a place of eat. This information is in the Gospels, but what else could be going on here? Is that that Jesus didn’t want to be known as the miracle worker, like that wasn’t the calling card, He didn’t want the label because His ministry was far more comprehensive than simply restoration and healing but once the labels go on, it’s hard to get them back off, even in this day and age and it was certainly that way at that time as well. People are people. Or maybe it’s just really simple, Jesus was about the work that He said He came to do to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free and in every way, He is about this work and by our standards we would judge it miraculous. Well let’s pause here for a second and go all the way back to our first day together when we read Genesis chapter 1 and then by day two, we’re at Genesis chapter 3 and things start falling apart, but we have a minute to see things as they were created to be. We get to see Adam and Eve before the fall or what we know of as the fall, we see them before sin becomes a category in the human story. If we can begin to understand that no human walked the earth, after that sinless until Jesus came and then all the sudden His entire life, not just His death, His entire life becomes supremely important to us because it’s the first time that we can actually look at a human being without sin, inside a sinful world, were given an example of what humanity is supposed to look like, how it was created to be with intimate fellowship with the Father and no sin. And if that’s true then we are watching Jesus move about the earth doing what is completely normal to Him, healing the broken hearted and setting the captives free, restoring humanity, mending humanity, with every touch, with every word. And then the Scriptures go on to tell us that it is Jesus, we are to imitate, it is Jesus that we are to be like. We have a term for this: Christlike, we say it all the time. Christlike, which really doesn’t seem to be meant as an aspiration, like a goal of the things that were just trying to do but can’t do. It seems like we’re supposed to be part of the body of Christ in this world, it seems like were supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, we often wish for a moment with Jesus with skin on, but when we look at one another, that’s what we’re supposed to be seeing or as the apostle Paul would put it is no longer I who live, it is Christ who dwells within me or the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. This is the process on this faith journey known as sanctification, redemption, restoration, being set apart and made holy to God, like Jesus, joint heirs the Bible tells us. Joint heirs with Jesus in this kingdom, that is … we’re gonna have to talk about that more when we get into the sum of the letters in the New Testament, but that is mind boggling stuff to think about, joint heirs with Jesus. What Jesus gets, we get. That is crazy because we don’t deserve anything but when we realize we don’t deserve anything but have been given everything. Well, we can say yeah of course, I deserve this and we can get arrogant and we can become the human side of darkness. Or we can realize I don’t deserve to be here at all. And when we have emptied ourselves of all of our rights, and all of our wrongs and all of our offenses and all of the things that are holding us back like chains, when we realize, Jesus has come to set us free from these things and that we have been given permission to be Christlike in this world, well then, we need a model for what that looks like and that is what we find when we look at the ministry of Jesus. So, back to the miracles and Jesus is moving around the countryside and restoring people and some of them are receiving healing and miraculous ways, we need to wonder if that’s what’s supposed to be no normal. When we look at Jesus and stop looking at Him as the superhero but look at him as God made flesh, revealing what humanity was intended to be and look like and operate like, that is a game changer because then we immediately realize it’s not that way. In fact, it’s almost backward. Then we realize how far we have fallen, and how much we have normalized, how less we are living, than what seems to be offered to us. And so, yes, we rejoice in the miracles of Jesus, but they should serve as reminders of what a normal human being without sin, created in the image of God looks like, like Jesus, which is what we’re supposed to look like.
Prayer:
And so, Father, we invite You into that. Plenty to think about, we always have things to think about some days, we have things to wrestle with, some things we have some deep digging to do, some days You bring words of comfort and inspiration and solace and we thank You because You give us what we need as we need it and we are grateful. So, we’re still at the beginning of the year and as we contemplate what our total freedom might look like, what holiness might look like for us, we begin to realize that we can’t live on both sides of the fence. Our freedom requires that we surrender completely to You. And then all things become possible because it’s not just our wants and needs and desires and for You to dig us back out of holes that we’ve dug. Or that You give us a raise or You give us a better job, these things may be important but when we realize what we have been given and things become rewired in our own minds, we are flooded with gratefulness. It is, it is beyond our capacity to truly imagine what it would be like to be totally and completely free, with nothing tethering us and completely surrendered and open to You for Your work in this world and we ask for divine imagination, that we can imagine ourselves like this because this is what the process is supposed to be doing in us day-by-day, step-by-step, over time, we are being perfected, we are being made holy. May we never stand in the way of that. That would be standing in the way of our freedom. Come, Holy Spirit into all of this we ask, in the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
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And that’s it for today, I’m Brian, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.