Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: Jesus Christ is able to meet every need in accordance with his will, but it's just such a narrow, it's such a small outlook. It's such a limiting perspective. You see, Jesus hasn't simply come to put a band-aid on my ouchie of the moment. No, he has come to make all things new.

He has come to restore me and to remake me. And while he's at it, he has come to renew the heavens and to remake the earth.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller and glad you're with us. And uh, Jonathan, man, I I so appreciate the fact that you're tackling this topic today because I think sometimes our view of Jesus is so small because we have these finite minds. We cannot understand who Jesus truly is, all that he is, all that he's come to do.

When you say he's come to make us new as individuals, what do you actually mean by that?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, as we look at these wonderful accounts of the miracles that Jesus performs in the gospel, you know, we we we see him undertaking these various healing miracles and the feeding miracles and they're they're striking, and they're dramatic, and they're impressive, but we stand back and we say, what is the point of all this? What is Jesus communicating?

And I think as we we take them together cumulatively, and look at the whole picture of what Jesus is doing, we we see that these are foretastes and indications of of the grand salvation scheme of Jesus, which includes remaking us and remaking the heavens and remaking the earth. And all that tells us, all that comes together to say to us that the salvation plan of Jesus and the salvation scheme of Jesus is operating on a much bigger scale than we might imagine.

You know, we come to him with our concern of the moment, not that those are insignificant, our need of the moment, not that that our needs are insignificant. But we come to him sometimes with a with a fairly finite and focused need, and we discover that Jesus offers us a salvation that is far more comprehensive than perhaps we knew we needed.

Guest (Male): Well, let's continue to look at that today from the book of Matthew. We're in chapter 15 as we focus on verses 29 to 39 with a message called The God Who Makes All Things New. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I'd like to begin this morning by asking you how significant do you think is the message of Jesus Christ? How far reaching do you imagine is the impact of his work? How wide and how deep is his salvation?

Our answer to those very important questions will have a profound effect for each one of us on how it is we respond to Jesus, on what it is we make of him.

You see, if you imagine that Jesus and his message are of little or no significance, you will, of course, ignore him entirely. That will be more or less the only rational thing for you to do.

If you imagine that Jesus is of some significance, you know, an interesting figure of history, a charming teacher of benign wisdom, you might take a polite interest in Jesus Christ, but little more. If you sense that Jesus did and said quite meaningful things, kind and merciful things, and that he spoke words of some weight and of some meaning, you might feel inclined to incorporate some of his teaching into your way of life. You might take seriously the Golden Rule, you might emulate, if you can, the Good Samaritan.

Well, here in Matthew chapter 15, Jesus sets out to show us that his word and his work are of profound and life-changing significance for each and every person in this world and even for the very creation itself. He sets out to demonstrate that the scope and the impact of his work, of his salvation program, the scope and the impact are bigger and wider and deeper and grander than anything you and I have ever imagined.

And he shows us these things in order that our hearts might be filled with wonder, that we might turn to him in complete trust, that we might live to bring him glory. He shows us these things. He demonstrates these things that we might find each one of us in him our everything, and then give to him our all in all.

How significant is the message of Jesus Christ? How far reaching is the impact of his work? How wide and how deep is his salvation?

In our verses today and in the two episodes that they recount, we discover that Jesus achieves a comprehensive restoration and he issues a comprehensive invitation. We start with the first of those, a comprehensive restoration. Notice with me again what takes place here.

Jesus went on from there, walking beside the Sea of Galilee. He goes up on the mountain. He sits down. Great crowds come to him and they bring with them, we read, the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others. They come and they they they put these people at his feet, and we read he healed them so that the crowd wondered.

Now, in these opening verses of our passage, we find a very, very compact summary of some very, very marvelous events. But we mustn't be fooled by the brevity of this account. This is actually one of the most comprehensive accounts anywhere of the sheer variety of Jesus's healing miracles. Just consider it with me.

Great crowds have come to Jesus. There's a large number of people. Lots and lots of people. Gentiles, it becomes clear. Jesus has been ministering in Gentile territory in this chapter. He's just been engaging with the Canaanite woman who approached him, if you remember, in desperation concerning her daughter. We'll return to think more about that incident in a few moments, but news then of the miracle of that deliverance, the deliverance of the daughter, were to spread.

Jesus has traveled now back down south to the Sea of Galilee, but but he travels down now the far side of the Sea of Galilee, the East Side, not the Western side, which is Jewish territory, but the more remote Eastern side. He's in a desolate place as he as as Jesus describes it in verse 33. He's in Gentile territory.

With with the news out of this deliverance, now come the crowds and they come with needs. They come with a plethora of needs. The hillside has now become the most busy emergency department in the whole of the ancient Near East on this day. There is hope of healing. Word keeps spreading.

Expectation is rising and the people there are coming in their droves to Jesus Christ. And and we see here the full litany of ailments, the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, many other people.

All these people, they're they're brought to Jesus, they're put at his feet, we're told. What's he going to do with them? He's healed plenty of people before, but will he heal and help these people today in this desolate place? Will he extend grace to these Gentiles, these non-Israelites, these outsiders? Or or will he tell them, look, I came for the people of Israel?

I can't possibly take on all this international work. It's too much. It's not my mandate. I'd love to help if I could, but it's beyond the scope, you understand. Well, no. No, that's not what he does. What does he do? It's put so simply, but what wonder is contained in these words? What relief, what help, what life transformation. We read that he healed them.

That's what he did. Simply, but wonderfully, he healed them. Lives transformed and the picture is marvelous. The crowds, they're moved to wonder, verse 31, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, the blind seeing. Picture it with me. Imagine the atmosphere, feel the emotion. There's there's little Chloe who never spoke a word in her life, mute. Her parents, they've taken her to every audiologist, every speech therapist, every expert, but she'd never spoken a word and now suddenly she's speaking. The tears of joy.

And then there's there's Billy in a wheelchair for 25 years after an accident down at the plant. Unable to work. His wife and kids had fallen into poverty. The marriage had collapsed under the weight of the pressure of this. He was a a broken man. Life seemed over for him. No hope, no prospects. But a friend brought him, and suddenly he's out of the wheelchair. He's healthy. He's whole again.

Then there's there's Sarah. Her sight started to fade in her late teens, and by her her mid-20s, she was totally blind. No one knew why. No no doctor could do anything to help. It was a slow and steady grief for her as she lost her sight by degrees. And now here she was, 20 years later, and and she had missed so much by this time. Totally dependent on her parents still, and they were elderly by this time, but they brought her to Jesus and suddenly the lights have come back on. Suddenly it's 20/20 vision, and it's as though her life has started afresh in an instant.

The healing touch of Jesus Christ has transformed countless lives. Something marvelous, something miraculous has happened here, here on the other side of the lake, in the remote place in Gentile territory. The God of Israel has done something wonderful and gracious and merciful and miraculous for these Gentiles, and they know it, and they respond in the only way that makes any sense. Verse 31. They glorified the God of Israel.

It's a lovely scene. It's a hope-filled scene. Tears, shouts of joy, hugs, so much more. What does it mean? Is it simply a a feel-good moment that sort of warms the heart and gives us a a window into the compassionate kindness of Jesus? Well, it certainly does those things. But there's more here to this. There's more than meets the eye.

This is a very compact summary of a diverse set of healing miracles. It's marvelous and remarkable what takes place here, but to the ear trained to hear the echoes of the Old Testament scriptures, it's making a very, very big point. Jesus is making a very significant point, and Matthew has been very careful in the way he has recorded it for us.

When we hear of the lame, the blind, the crippled, and the mute being healed, we are meant to think of one of the very great promises of the Old Testament, a promise that speaks of the coming Messianic Age, the age of salvation, the age of rescue, the age of restoration. Listen to these words from the prophet Isaiah from chapter 35, verses 4 and 5. Listen to this promise which is recorded for us in Isaiah 35 concerning the Messianic Age. The prophet writes this, moved by the Spirit of God.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. 800 years earlier in Isaiah 35, the prophet spoke of a day when the Lord would come to save his people, to restore his people, to bring them home. And when he does that, the prophet says, nature itself will be restored. The broken and forlorn natural order will spring to glorious life, then the fallen world will be made new.

Let me read to you actually the opening verses of that chapter, Isaiah 35. Notice just how it starts. Listen to how the chapter starts, the great promise, the great vision. Verse 1. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. That's that's how the chapter starts, the prophecy, nature restored. The world made new. And as part of this grand restoration, in what is we are told, a desolate place, the sick and the diseased and the disabled are made whole.

You see, the Bible points us forward to a time when the Lord will usher in a new heaven and a new earth. The creation itself will be remade, and the gray, bleak brokenness of the fall will be less than a memory for the saved people of God.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called The God Who Makes All Things New. Looking today at Matthew chapter 15, and it's part of a larger series called In the Presence of the King. And if you've missed any of the broadcasts in the series, come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at encounterthetruth.org.

Another way to listen is to get the Encounter the Truth app. You're going to find that for free at your app store. And it's a great way to listen to Jonathan's teaching on demand, whether it's this daily radio program, our weekend broadcast, or more. Again, check out the app. Encounter the Truth at your app store.

Well, a lot of times, when we first come to know the Lord, our our hearts are on fire. We're excited, we we can't wait to tell people about him. However, over time, and maybe with difficult circumstances, our hearts can be prone to drift. Our love can grow a little cold, and we end up just kind of going through the motions more than we ever thought we would. Well, thankfully, there's an answer to that, and it's the same regardless of the feelings or situations that you're in.

We need to stare long and hard at the love of Christ that's poured out for us at the cross. Paul Miller has written about this in a book called An Anchor for the Soul. He shows us how Jesus fulfills Psalm 22 and reminds us that our joy in Christ comes from not performance, but proximity. It's an anchor that our souls need as we go through the storms of life. We'd love to send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support. Find out more or give online at encounterthetruth.org, or call us at 1-833-99TRUTH. Again, that's encounterthetruth.org or 1-833-998-7884. Back to the message. Here's Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I recently spent some time out in the Rockies. I was there for a ministry conference and a few days before that, I I was in Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic Coast. And when you, you know, when you're standing before the Rockies in in Banff in Alberta, if you've done that, pausing to sort of regain your breath at the beauty of the site or or as you're you're you're watching the rolling fields of Prince Edward Island tumble into the grassy dunes and then descend to the Red Sandy beaches, it it in the moment, as you take in these very beautiful scenes, this this creation, this present creation, you know, it doesn't seem all that bad. It seems pretty good.

But if by contrast, you know, you drive by a landfill site overflowing with waste or you see a home devastated by a hurricane or you gaze into the slurry pit next to a chemical plant or you visit a crowded slum with no sanitation. In those moments, you know full well that things are not right in this world, that the creation is broken, that it is indeed under judgment, as the Bible tells us for humanity's sin.

And as the Lord Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry goes about restoring broken and maimed bodies here in Matthew 15, as he graciously undoes the ravages of the fall, he is signaling to us that he is the promised Messiah, indeed the Lord God himself, who has come to make all things new.

His business is, you know, it's not to heal five or six or seven or 70 or 80 or 100 people in a limited display of his power. No, his purpose is to signal that he is the one who will indeed remake all things. He is the God of the coming new creation.

He is saying to us, he is signaling to us that his purpose and his plan and his saving power are greater and wider and deeper and higher than you and I can possibly imagine.

Friends, I'm just so conscious that it is our tendency to have a small view of the saving program of Jesus Christ, of his plans and his intentions, of the implications of his work. You know, we tend to, all of us, I think, we tend to approach Jesus Christ from the vantage point of our personal concerns, which is not surprising and not always wrong, but it's limiting. It's narrow. You know, we we tend to think I've got my particular need at the moment, health, finance, relational need, whatever it is. And maybe Jesus Christ, you know, is the guy that can do something about it.

I've tried some other things. I've tried self-help. Maybe now I'll try Jesus help. I'll try, you know, a little dose of religion, a little dash of Christianity, and so I come to church, I come to Jesus, hoping that he can meet my needs. And of course, Jesus Christ is able to meet every need in accordance with his will. But it's just such a narrow, it's such a small outlook. It's such a limiting perspective. You see, Jesus hasn't simply come to put a band-aid on my ouchie of the moment. No, he has come to make all things new. He has come to restore me and to remake me. And while he's at it, he has come to renew the heavens and to remake the earth.

We've said before often enough that all the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels point forward to his greatest miracle of all, the saving, cleansing, redeeming work that he accomplishes at the cross.

And you know, when we think about it, all the suffering and all the devastation of this world traces its way back, all of it to the fall. When our human parents first rebelled against the God of creation in the Garden of Eden and invited his judgment upon this world. And for the curse of sin to be overturned, for the tragedy of the fall to be addressed, Jesus would need to deal with the problem that stands at the root of it all, the problem of our guilt before the God who made us.

Problem of our guilt before the God of justice and holiness. The problem of our guilt before God the Judge. Sin is the root problem behind all suffering, of all disorder, of all that is wrong in this world. And for healing to come, and for restoration to take place, the price of sin, it had to be paid. That's what Jesus came to do. That's what he achieved at the cross. And in these individual healing miracles, each one of them, Jesus is pointing us to the breathtaking implications, the glorious outworking of his saving work at Calvary.

Now, we need to be clear. Jesus nowhere promises to take away all our suffering in this life. He never promises to heal every physical disease for his people this side of heaven. If you ever hear anyone promise that, you have to ask yourself the question, why do we attend Christian funerals? Why?

It's not the promise of these miracles. But what Jesus does promise is to include all who trust in him in a new creation, in a world made new, where suffering is no more. And and we need to look at these miracles by the seaside and see in them a clear pointer to the new creation. We we look at this scene by the hillside, this marvelous scene and we cling to that hope. We need to rejoice together. We've got to rejoice together in the promise of a day when believers who suffered disability, blindness, infirmity, lack of speech, physical affliction, in a day when all that will be undone.

In a day when because of the cross of Jesus Christ, we will gather together at the feet of Jesus as a people holy restored in bodies made new. That's where this picture is taking us. That is where this scene points us. When Jesus performed these miracles of healing, the people responded in really the only way they could, verse 31. 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.

Friends, look at the big and glorious and life-giving scene of restoration here. And with the crowd that day, let your heart be filled with wonder and your lips be filled with praise.

Guest (Male): Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth and a message called The God Who Makes All Things New. We have to pause here, but we'll continue on our next broadcast.

Maybe you know you can't be by your radio next time Jonathan's program is on. Well, you don't have to miss. You can always come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org and you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen through the Encounter the Truth app, which you'll find at your app store. It's free. Simply search for Encounter the Truth.

Well, Encounter the Truth is able to be on this station, make the website and the podcast available because of your generosity, and as you give a gift this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a book called An Anchor for the Soul, written by Paul Millard. And Jonathan, who is this book written for?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, this book is for anyone who's walking through a time of trial or difficulty. And I'm so conscious that there will be many listening to the program today who find themselves exactly in that space. And if that is you, if you're walking through the valley of trial, I'd love to get this book into your hands to be an encouragement to you from the Scriptures to look to the Lord and find your hope in Jesus during this time. There will be others who are listening today and who have friends and loved ones who are going through a very difficult season in life. And perhaps you could get hold of this book and give it to that loved one and bring encouragement to them today. I'd love to get it to you.

Guest (Male): Well, we want to send you a copy of this book, An Anchor for the Soul, is our way of saying thank you for your financial support. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or over the phone. Our number is 1-833-99TRUTH. Again, the website is encounterthetruth.org and the phone number is 1-833-998-7884.

You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the US, at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For our producer, Mark Bruner, and our Bible teacher, Jonathan Griffiths, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.