GOSPELS 5 THE WISDOM AND THE WORKS OF JESUS

GOSPELS 5 THE WISDOM AND THE WORKS OF JESUS

We are now going to look at some of those powerful works of Jesus in Capernaum and greater Galilee that led up to the homecoming visit of Jesus to Nazareth, and his subsequent proclamation of the Jubilee Year.
Those events reveal a fascinating balance of the powerful works of Jesus and the unprecedented and challenging words of wisdom that stunned all those who heard them. The wisdom and the works of Jesus are recorded throughout all the Gospels but in the early chapters of the three synoptic Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke there is a strategic cluster of some of these meaningful events that deserve a mention.

Firstly, in Mark Chapter three, and Luke Chapter six and Matthew Chapter ten there is the significant account of the appointing of the twelve Apostles. And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons: (Mark 3:13)
Some of these men were called at the time of John’s baptism of Jesus, such as Philip and the group of fishermen, such as the brothers Andrew and Simon Peter and the brothers James and John, who were regathered by the Sea of Galilee as we mentioned earlier. 
Matthew had also been called in Capernaum, but there is no special mention of how or precisely when the others were called. These men were Bartholomew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot. After they were gathered together Mark goes on to say that they went in and occupied a house’. Jesus then prepared these men for the revolutionary things they were about to experience. They would see before their very eyes the greatest miracles ever performed on earth and they would hear the most revolutionary and life changing words that have ever been uttered.

There are three other stand-out events during that time, that are clustered in a sequence of one passage of Scripture after another in all three of the early Gospel Chapters. They are, Jesus being questioned about fasting, Jesus being the Lord of the Sabbath, and Jesus healing on the Sabbath. 
Jesus was being confronted in these Scriptures with criticism and antagonism by religious people who were threatened by his undeniable aura of authority. Even his own disciples weren’t quite sure why Jesus was doing the things that he did until they heard Jesus answering his religious critics, so Jesus was teaching them as well as the others in those moments of enlightenment because of his words of wisdom.

Mark 2:18 Once when John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees do?”
Jesus replied, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the bridegroom? Of course not. They can’t fast while the bridegroom is with them. But someday the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. He was also prophesying that he as the bridegroom Jesus, would be leaving his friends in due course, but he would be coming back soon enough and he would be looking forward to having his friends around him again and rejoicing, not in religious observance, but in relational blessing and celebration. The message for us is that he is our bridegroom now and we are more than friends – we can be his bride if we want to draw that close to him – revolutionary!

He didn’t stop there but continued talking and giving them everyday illustrations of the fact that something very new and lifechanging was about to come into history and become eternal truth, not just religious tradition. 

He went on to say ‘Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine must have new wineskins.’ (vs 21-22)

He was prophesying that something unique and unparalleled was soon to happen in the world of the Spirit where the power and love and truth that Holy Spirit would reveal to us would change the way we would relate to a living God, not with tradition and ritual, but by becoming partakers of his Divine nature. 
And this new way of living would also be something that religious tradition would never possibly be able to accommodate as it would tear apart the old garment of religious ritual. And just as an old wineskin is hardened and brittle the new wine of the Spirit would burst asunder the man-made traditional structures of the gathering and growing together of God’s people. The newly fermented wine is so alive and active that as it expands it needs the freedom and flexibility of whatever embodies that vitality. He was heralding a new era of the liberty of the life-giving Spirit of God in our midst. That would have been extremely difficult for anyone there to hear and to understand – and it still is! Orderly New Testament Church life needs structure but it is structure that accommodates the power and love and presence of God.

The next confrontation came on a Sabbath day as Jesus and his disciples were walking through the fields and the disciples were breaking off heads of wheat and eating the grain. Some of the Jewish religious leaders saw this and said to Jesus.
Mark 2: 23, “They shouldn’t be doing that! It’s against our laws to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath.” But Jesus replied, “Didn’t you ever hear about the time King David and his companions were hungry, and he went into the house of God—Abiathar was high priest then—and they ate the special bread only priests were allowed to eat? That was against the law too. But the Sabbath was made to benefit man, and not man to benefit the Sabbath. And the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

This was the startling revelation that the Sabbath was instituted to teach us how to live our lives in the rest of faith, not in the religious works of man. Here was another prophetic revolutionary revelation of grace and truth which was difficult if not impossible for the hearers to hear and understand. It is the truth that is to guide our lives of faith – and only Jesus has authority to decide how we are to live a Sabbath life of faith. He tells us to rest in faith while he works on our behalf in the world of the unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Jesus explained this truth to his disciples further at another time when John writes in his Gospel about the disciples need to understand the reality of works and faith when they asked him “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:28) Another religious revolution!

The next incident in this cluster of revolutionary wisdom sayings comes in the following verse in Mark about Jesus healing on the Sabbath.

Mark 3:1 While in Capernaum Jesus went over to the synagogue again and noticed a man there with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. Would he heal the man’s hand? If he did, they planned to arrest him!
Jesus asked the man to come and stand in front of the congregation. Then turning to his enemies he asked, Does the law of the Sabbath day require us to do good or to do harm? Is it a day to save lives or to destroy them? But they wouldn’t answer him. Looking around at them angrily, for he was deeply disturbed by their indifference to human need, he said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” He did, and instantly his hand was healed!

And while the Pharisees schemed to put together a charge of blasphemy against Jesus, he walked on toward the cross to secure for us a new and revolutionary life in the freedom of the Spirit – alive and free but captive to his love and to obedience to his living Word.