Why has the Church survived and thrived?
Text: Matthew 9:18-34
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2024 CrossTalk Global
Brian: It is difficult to predict what products will succeed in the marketplace. In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a small device nobody thought they needed. But Apple has sold more than 1.5 billion. When Coca Cola was first introduced in 1886, it sold nine bottles a day. Today, around 2 billion Coca Cola beverages are enjoyed per day. When Google Maps was launched, paper maps were dominant. Today, over a billion people use Google Maps at least once a month. And the unassuming Toyota Corolla, introduced in 1996, has enjoyed 40 million in sales worldwide. It is difficult to predict which products will become a global success. It is also difficult to predict which people will succeed on a global scale. Take Jesus for example. Who would have guessed that this baby, born in a manger, who was not wealthy, without formal education, held no political office and had no army at his command, would become the most widely recognized and respected figure in human history? And that the organization he founded, his church, would grow to 2.6 billion christians, the largest organization of all time? How did this happen? There are many causes for Jesus surprising rise to greatness. But in Matthew, chapter nine, one reason stands out above all others. A reason that still propels the growth of his church today. Join Nathan Norman, Vicki Hitzkis and Kent Edwards as we discover the reason together. Welcome to Crosstalk, a christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today doctor Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzges and Nathan Norman continue their discussion through the gospel of Matthew. And if you have a Bible handy, turn to Matthew, chapter nine, verses 18 to 34 as we join their discussion.
Kent: Vicki, Nathan, we're all old enough to remember products or businesses that were popular once and have faded into irrelevance. Do any come to mind? What are some failed companies?
Vicki: Hula hoops.
Kent: Oh, it has been a long time.
Vicki: Since I've seen you win my head.
Kent: Use a hula hoop. Yep.
Nathan: I think of BlackBerry. Right, BlackBerry. BlackBerry, yeah, I had one of those things and they were called Crackberry for a reason. I still miss having and a full keyboard.
Kent: Ah, old school.
Vicki: Well, along those same lines. Dvd players, it wasn't.
Kent: That doesn't seem like that. Long ago when at church we would be giving out dvd's of past sermons. Everyone wanted the dvd and now I see people using dvd's tied up in a row with string outside as spinners.
Vicki: They're totally for cheap bad decoration, cheap bad decorations and cassette players, same way.
Nathan: I was talking with a pastor friend of mine and she was telling me that they have this. They used to have a ministry where they'd go out in the streets and hand out cassette tapes of a gospel presentation. And they found them and there's this huge treasure trove. And I said, you need to be the one to throw it out. And she's like, oh, it's hard. I'm like, are you going to hand out a Walkman with each cassette tape as well so people can listen to this?
Kent: And where are you going to find a Walkman?
Nathan: Right.
Vicki: My grandmother was a legal secretary, and she typed quickly and she had this enormous typewriter on her desk with these clunky keys and this big arm, big silver arm that she'd have to hit every time she came to the end of a line. And then I remember when I was in high school, they came out with correcting selectric typewriters, which were just amazing. And then even when word processors came out, I remember I was working at a PR firm and it took up an entire room and the screen was about as big as, oh, no, it wasn't big at all. And I thought that was. I called it the magic machine. And, you know, now you can word process on your telephone. It's just amazing. It's just amazing.
Nathan: Yeah. There is a blues singer, Jim Burns, he sings this song. He can't get that stuff no more. And every so often I sing it and it's very sad because it's talking about you can't get certain things anymore because it got shut down. They went out of business. And I think there's this place where we used to live in Kingsley called Taco Castle. Oh, my goodness. It was unbelievable. They're closed down. I'm still. It's been closed down for six years. I'm still grieving the laws of Taco Castle.
Vicki: Oh, there's lots of businesses like that. Kodak. Remember those yellow booths used to drive through and get pictures, like, in 24 hours, how quick you had.
Nathan: Or an hour. Wow.
Vicki: Yeah. Or an hour. Yeah.
Kent: That cost more, though.
Vicki: Blockbuster and toys r us. Yeah, there's lots of stuff like that.
Kent: Bookstores like borders. Now we just order on Amazon and you get it digitally in 10 seconds. Many products and organizations have failed, but not the church. Makes me wonder why. And I think Matthew answers the question, helps us answer this question with four vignettes that seem to have taken place very close together. In fact, as I read through, could be events that happen almost in just a single day. Of Jesus life. I'm not sure about the timing, but the events certainly are accurate. He mentions the first one in Matthew, chapter nine, starting in verse nine.
Vicki: There he says a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and he said, my daughter has just died, but come and put your hand on her and she will live.
Kent: So each of these vignettes is described in just a few words, but I think it's worth just pausing over each one and thinking about the emotion, the reality that's described in just those few words. Let's try and put some flesh and feeling into the scene. A synagogue leader came and said to Jesus, my daughter has died. Put your hand on her so she will live. Have you known a couple that has lost a child?
Vicki: Yeah, it was overwhelming. In fact, their marriage didn't last.
Kent: Really?
Nathan: Yeah. The grief is terrible and it lasts a lifetime, you know? I know when I was a teenager, one of our friends passed away and her mom reconnected with me not too long ago on social media. So this is going back, I don't know, 25 years or so. And most of her posts are about grief and processing the loss of a child. It's not something that you ever fully process, I don't think.
Kent: Yeah, I know. Years ago now, I had a younger brother who newly married, and he and his wife were to killed in a terrible car accident a few days before Christmas. I was in grief, but when I saw the depth of my parents grief, that was even greater. And as you've said, I don't think they ever fully recovered, but for at least three years, they seemed to be just incapacitated. So this is the kind of grief, this is the agony, this is the reality that this synagogue ruler is facing coming to Jesus. He's beside himself. My daughter has died. Could you put your hand on her so she will live? Then jumps to another episode, another vignette down in verse 20.
Vicki: It says, just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.
Kent: Here we switch to a woman with a chronic health problem. It's been twelve years and obviously it's continuing. She thinks that it is perhaps permanent. Obviously she has tried medical attention that is available to her, but nothing has worked for twelve years. Have you known people who have been debilitated because of a chronic illness?
Vicki: Yes. I think about a girl that was popular and fun and a cheerleader in my high school. And the last time I saw her, she was bed bound and had been for years and years. And I don't know what was wrong with her. I went to see her, and, boy, was her life different. She's died since then, but, boy, was her life different.
Nathan: Yeah, it's hard. We had a friend just pass away from my previous church, and she was hospitalized in assisted living for, gosh, I don't even know, maybe three or four years. And, you know, we would. People from the church, we'd go up and visit with her regularly, but she was stuck in her room 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That was her existence. So there was no social life. Her social life was phone calls and visitors who came out of their way. It was about a 45 minutes ride to go see her. It's just. It's hard. She couldn't come to church. She said it was the worst thing. She said, my dream is to be able to come back and sit in church one day.
Kent: Wow. Wow. This woman had an issue of blood. If she's continually bleeding, then she will be continually tired.
Vicki: And back then, they wouldn't have had iron pills. She would have nothing. And I can't imagine how tired she would have been.
Kent: No blood bank. Right. She can't get a transfusion and bring it up to a level where she could function normally, constantly tired. Many people have wondered whether this was a chronological issue. If that's true, then that would affect her, even religiously. She wouldn't have been considered ceremonially pure. To go to a synagogue isolated from different public functions. Probably that could have meant that that would have cut off any possibility of marriage or childbearing. This is an unsolvable problem. Kind of like the synagogue rulers, right. This is a woman in very difficult situation. But there's yet another vignette that we see here in verse 27.
Vicki: This is as Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, which seems impossible.
Kent: Why?
Vicki: Well, they're blind.
Kent: Yeah. So they might have been able to hear. Right. So to be able to follow a crowd. I do know that when you lose one sense, you kind of amplify the ones you have left and take advantage of that. But you are right that their ability to travel extensively is gone. How else would having a genetic inability to use your eyes, how would that change these men's lives?
Nathan: Well, they become beggars because they can't have gainful employment. In the ancient world, there was no standards for handicapped living and for accessibility for them to be able to find their way around, they would have had to rely either on the mercies of passerbys or their family members.
Kent: Yeah. There's certainly no. Nothing in Braille, no audiobooks for them to listen to and think of the implications religiously. Some people would have thought that because these men were born blind, that there could be. Maybe they were being punished. Maybe there was some spiritual malady that had brought this upon them. Their future, their life, would be enormously disrupted and limited because of this. Like the others, these men had enormously difficult, impossible situations, and they came and followed Christ. Number four, the fourth vignette in verse.
Vicki: 32, it says, while they were going out, a man who was demon possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus.
Kent: Wow. If all these events happened on one day, we're really being overwhelmed by people in impossible situations. Have you ever known anyone who has been demon possessed?
Vicki: Maybe. Maybe. I used to belong to a gym, and this woman came in, and she was screaming and cussing and like nothing I've ever seen before. And I said to my friend, I bet you she's demon possessed. And I don't know that she was. It's not something you see in Dallas. It's something you read about in the Old Testament, but it's something, when you read about it in the Old Testament. She exemplified all of that. And, you know, I don't know, but, man, she was ugly and mean, and I don't know. How about you, Nathan?
Nathan: I have. I want to be cautious in how I define those things. My default is always mental health. I'm thinking, okay, is this a mental health crisis? Right. And there's other markers. Is this. There's something more supernatural going on here. But I have, on a few occasions, come across people, one man who we knew from the community, who was just absolutely furious with not being greeted by a particular person at the church. When he showed up for one service, it made no sense. But I also know that he would have wild explosion of rages. He was not allowed to be in the hospital because of these frequent explosions. He had an anger towards the holy, seemed to possess some amount of supernatural physical ability. His own friends were afraid of him. As it got worse. It's horrifying. It's horrifying.
Kent: All these people came to Jesus with desperate needs, problems that no person then or now, could have solved. I'm not capable of helping someone, bringing someone back to life with chronic bleeding, genetic blindness, and even demon possession. But in each instance, when the person suffering or the people near them came to Jesus in faith, asking for Jesus to change the trajectory of lives in impossible ways, he did. Jesus, in every instant, did the impossible. I mean, we read about the synagogue leader and what happened in verse 18.
Vicki: And following it says, the synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, my daughter has just died, but come and put your hand on her and she will live. It's interesting to me in each of these that the people involved believed and said to Jesus, if you do this, this is going to happen. Instead of, would this happen? But did they just, could it happen?
Kent: Could it happen?
Vicki: Yeah, yeah, this is going to happen.
Kent: That's faith.
Vicki: Yeah, it's faith. Or beyond that, I mean, and the one coming up where she just touched his hand, but anyway, let's finish this one. Jesus got up and went with him, entered the synagogue leader's house, took the girl by the hand and she got up.
Kent: Can you imagine the scene?
Vicki: No. No.
Kent: I've been to many funerals and often the casket is open and you look down at the body and you, it is obvious that nothing could happen. But Jesus came, took her by the hand and she got up. Imagine the joy. Imagine the overwhelming experience the parents would have had.
Vicki: I've got a question for you two theologians. And the Bible says, absent from the bodies, present with the Lord, do you think, where was she in the, did she come back from hell or come back from heaven?
Nathan: I think she probably had some afterlife experience.
Kent: Sure.
Nathan: Well, that's, she might not have been able to talk about it.
Vicki: Wow. That I'd be like, whoa, leave me. You know, assuming she went to heaven, I don't want to come back here anyway. That's very interesting story. Read the next one for us. Are you through with your comments there, Kent?
Kent: Yeah, Nathan, what happened in vignette number.
Nathan: Two, the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years touched the edge of his cloak. Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed at that moment.
Vicki: So Jesus knew her problem, knew what she was doing, knew what happened, and said, your faith healed you. He knew.
Kent: Wow. Wow. How about the blind men?
Vicki: It says, when the two blind men called out, have mercy on us, son of David, Jesus asked them, do you believe that I'm able to do this? Yes, Lord, they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, according to your faith, let it be done to you. And their sight was restored.
Kent: Wow. Again, the trajectory of their lives totally altered in an instant.
Vicki: Totally, totally.
Kent: They came to Jesus with an impossible problem and look what happened. How about number four?
Nathan: Says a man who was demon possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. So obviously asking Jesus to help him. Jesus agreed. Verse 33 says the demon was driven out. The man who had been mute spoke.
Kent: Wow. All four instances, people came with impossible problems, and Jesus fully and completely did what no one thought was possible. He changed the direction, the trajectory of their lives. But not only were these individual lives impacted, other people's lives were impacted. I mean, there are three different instances where the same insight is shared. Verse 26, 31, and 33.
Vicki: It says, news of this spread through all that region. Don't you know that's true? But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been muted, the crowd was amazed and said, nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.
Kent: So in each of these tremendous episodes, where Jesus meets people's needs in ways that no one else could have done, his fame spread throughout the region because nothing like this had ever been seen in Israel. These changed lives were tangible evidence that Jesus was the real deal. I mean, he really was the son of God. Everyone could see that Jesus showed that he wasn't some kind of a magician. Like sometimes we see on stage where people are deceived with their sleight of hand tricks, where magicians pretend to do something they didn't actually do. Jesus actually transformed people's lives. He changed the trajectory of all of these people's lives. He did it then. He does it today. I mean, does Jesus heal people physically today? We saw a lot of healing stories. Does he heal people today?
Vicki: Yeah, I think he does.
Kent: Sure. James tells us in James chapter five, if any of you sick, come to the elders, and I have the elders pray for him so that they may be raised up. We have, I think, all seen people who have response to prayer been restored. Not everyone, of course, but God did it then. He can do it today. But while not everyone is healed physically, everyone who calls on his name can be healed spiritually. They can be transformed into the image of God. Isn't that what Paul says in Ephesians chapter two?
Vicki: He says, ye were dead in your transgressions and sins, but because of his great love for you, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. For we are God's handiwork, created in Jesus Christ.
Kent: Yeah. Paul is also clear in two corinthians 517 when he says, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. Now, we may not have witnessed all these kind of miracles that Matthew tells us but have you seen people's lives transformed morally, spiritually because of the power of Christ?
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can remember what it looked like. I can remember one woman, years ago, just started the church, angry, angry person literally cornered me once about a worship song that was sung that she didn't like. Literally cornered. Like I couldn't get around her. And I was in a corner and she's yelling at me, sticking her finger. And it was so petty. Absolutely petty. And then a number of years later, after hearing the word of God and being transformed by the word, someone from the church was kind of, ah, you know, that's how she is. And, you know, and I said, has she done any of this? Has she had any of these explosive things lately? Or. And she was thinking about it. There was a friend who'd known her for years, like, oh, my goodness, no, she hasn't. I mean, it's the life changing power of the word of God. Over the course of time, sitting under the word, she went from this angry, very petty person to this magnanimous, generous defender of other people, rather than defender of her own rights.
Vicki: Wow.
Nathan: Yeah, it was amazing. And then, you know, I have a friend whose wife was about to leave him because he was an alcoholic and all these alcohol problems, and then came to Christ and just stopped with the alcohol. And all of us were talking. He did all the programs he's supposed to do and still is involved with them. And we're all saying, hey, lapses and all struggles and everything, and he's like, I don't have any desire for it. It's just gone. And that's not normal. Typically, it is a long slog and a long process. But with him, he just. No, God took away the desire.
Kent: When people come to Christ in faith, like the people in Matthew did, and they come in faith and say, can you save me? Can you change me? Could you change the trajectory of my life if I give my life to you? If they ask that, guess what? He does changes you. He changes them. I mean, I think all of us could say, and many of our listeners could say that because of them coming to Christ, their life took a totally different direction. Their goals, their ambitions, their behavior. Everything about us is different because Jesus has transformed us. Christchurch has been successful throughout history and continues to succeed today because Christianity is the only religion in the world based on Jesus Christ. The founders of every other faith are dead and buried, but we have a risen savior who loves us so much that he died for us. And when anyone comes to faith in Christ, asking for salvation, they can and will be saved. And his transformation of our lives is so evident, I that others around us will seek him out. Those four miracles he did, perhaps on that one day, caused his fame to go throughout all of Israel. When people's lives are changed because of their faith in Jesus Christ, today his fame continues to spread. When people's lives are transformed by the power of Christ, his fame spreads like wildfire. Because no other religion can transform people's lives like Jesus. There is no greater witness to the love and transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ than the transformed lives of his people. That's why the church grows, because Jesus isn't a magician. He is the lord of the universe.
Brian: Ever worried that the church will fail and die away? We hear that so many young people are nuns, not members of any church or religion of any kind. The church will not go away because God is at work in the lives of believers. And there's no greater witness, no greater transforming power than to see a life changed as a result of a life changed by Jesus Christ. Christ's work in your life and those in his church is spreading his fame and growing his church today. I trust that today's discussion of God's word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the word, but doers together. Let's bring God's word to life, to our lives. This week, the Crosstalk podcast is a production of Crosstalk global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more or to support the work of this ministry, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. our next Crosstalk event is happening in Kansas. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also help support this show by sharing it on social media and telling your friends, tune in next Friday as we continue our discussion through the gospel of Matthew, be sure to join us.