Join us this week as we explore what it truly means to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a broken world. Through a careful study of Matthew 9, we'll observe how Jesus consistently made time and sacrificed to show compassion and care for people in need, even when it was inconvenient. Hear God's call to be more like Jesus.
GOD'S WORK – Jesus Shows Compassion and Mercy - Matthew 9:19ff
February 23rd
Introduction: Instead of asking, “What would Jesus do?”, we explore what Jesus did to guide our actions.
Observing Jesus in Matthew 9 (What Did Jesus Do?)
The Compassionate Work of Jesus
The Harvest and Our Role
Historic and Modern Expressions of Compassion
At BBCC:
Many people serve quietly: visiting shut-ins, cooking meals, sending notes, volunteering, and helping the sick or grieving. - Formally we have Care Team, Local Hunger/Homeless Outreach, Partners In Ministry Team When we make time and sacrifice for the hurting, we reflect exactly what Jesus did in Matthew 9.
Final Challenge: Pray for open eyes to see needs. Show God’s love through practical care, sharing words of hope and deeds of mercy.
BBCC Verse of the Week: Matthew 9:36 (NIV) 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd
To understand what compelled the compassion of Jesus, there are at least three different factors we need to see. First, with regard to the crowd, we need to see their size. Verse 36 says, "When He saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them." There may have been around 200 cities and villages in Galilee at this point, with a possible population of about three million people. When Jesus saw them, the text indicates that He literally felt agony. He was not just emotionally moved, but physically affected with compassion when He saw the crowds. Think about seeing someone you love hurting or suffering, so much so that your heart physically feels like it's going to burst for them. That's the kind of language used here. To have the compassion of Jesus for the crowds, we not only need to see their size, but we also need to feel their suffering. Matthew describes the crowds as "weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd" (v. 36). They were running after pleasures, pursuits, and people in this world, thinking that they could be satisfied apart from God, but they couldn't. Every road to satisfaction that this world offers—the road of success or sex or money or relationships or pleasures—is ultimately empty. Jesus knew this. These crowds desperately needed Him as a merciful shepherd. Third and finally, when we look at the crowds we need to realize their separation. In verse 37, Jesus said to his disciples, "The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few." This "harvest" language in Scripture is often associated with judgment. For example, the prophet Joel 3:13-14. – David Platt
9:22 your faith has made you well. Faith itself does not do the healing; God does. But the woman’s faith was the divinely appointed means for her bodily healing, as well as for her spiritual salvation. (ESV Study Bible)
Jesus embraced her need (9:22). Both by calling her "daughter" (perhaps welcoming her as a dependent — 9:18; cf. 15:22) and by his following word of encouragement (tharsei, which the NRSV renders "Take heart"), he addresses her fear. More critically, he acknowledges her act as an act of faith. By failing to offer a rebuke he demonstrated both that the healing came by God's power and not automatic magic, and that he was unashamed to be identified with her uncleanness (more clearly in Mk 5:30-34), which her touch would have communicated in the eyes of the public. This fits Matthew's portrait of Jesus (cf. 8:17), who embraced humanity's ultimate humiliation and shame on the cross (3:15), perhaps refusing even a simple narcotic to deaden the pain (27:34). - Craig S. Keener
9:27 This account of the healing of two blind men has significant differences from the healing of Bartimaeus (20:29–34; Mark 10:46–52; Luke 18:35–43) and should not be thought of as the same event. Jesus no doubt healed many blind people over the course of his ministry. Son of David. A reference to the promised messianic deliverer from the line of David whose kingdom will continue forever (2 Sam. 7:12–16), and the first of several times in Matthew that people refer to Jesus by this title (see Matt. 12:23; 15:22; 20:30, 31; 21:9, 15; 22:42; cf. 1:1). The messianic age was to bring healing to the blind (Isa. 29:18; 35:5). (ESV Study Bible)
9:27–37 The truly sad thing is that Jesus was anything but in league with the enemy. What he was doing sprang from the deep compassion and sorrow he felt in his own heart and mind as he looked at his fellow-Jews wandering around without anyone giving them the lead they needed. Often the only thing you can do when slander like that is being spoken is to carry on doing what you are called to do. Jesus looked at his contemporaries and saw them not only like sheep without a shepherd but, changing the farming imagery, like a field full of wheat with nobody to harvest it. Outside the Lord’s Prayer itself, Jesus doesn’t often tell his followers what to pray for, but this time he does. Go to the farmer, he says, and beg him to send workers to bring in the harvest. And, as his followers pray that prayer, the answer comes back worryingly quickly: you are, yourselves, to be the answer to your own prayer. What Jesus has been doing for the last two chapters on his own authority, his followers are now to do at his command. Israel must hear the message. Never mind the charges of collusion with the enemy; there’s no time to waste. Where are the fields today ready for harvest? What should our prayer then be? When we can answer that, we may discover, too, how we ourselves might be part of God’s answer. – N.T. Wright.
Pastor Samuel Sutter // sam@BBCCOnline.org
