Ministering Outside the Box. (Matthew 15: 29-31)

I.             Jesus Heals Great Crowds of People.

29 Jesus departed from there, skirted the Sea of Galilee, and went up on the mountain and sat down there. 30 Then great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others; and they laid them down at Jesus’ feet, and He healed them. 31 So the multitude marvelled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.  (Matthew 15: 29-31)

In many ways this is the second part of one passage that we began yesterday in verse 21. So, after he has the daughter of the Gentile woman who has showed not only a great deal of insight by recognising that Jesus was the Messiah mentioned in the Old Testament, a tradition that she had not grown up in, she also showed an amazing degree of faith in his power to heal. After that is all done, and Jesus has used the situation as a teachable moment for both his disciples and the onlooking crowd we are told he moves on and skirts around the sea of Galilee and he goes up into the nearby mountains.  Even so it seems a great crowd. 

Decapolis (Mark tells us this by the way) was a gentile territory, as a matter fact the name means 10 cities, and these were the 10 cities that manufactured the coins for the Roman government. It was a wholly Pagan place and so he gets there and a great multitude of gentile’s pagans either are waiting there or have followed him there.

From a Jewish point of view those are the people the Jewish leadership had called dogs a few verses ago. Any way these supposedly outside and outcast people come flocking to him and among them are the disabled, the blind the mute and people with other problems are brought by the crowd and they are laid at Jesus the feet of Jesus. Remember Jesus has recently been mainly teaching the disciples, this has been a sort of intensive sort of course in discipleship  training program recently. And he heals them he ministers to those who are otherwise considered the outcast. It appears the crowd get what is going on because in verse 31 it tells us.

So the multitude marvelled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.  Matthew 15: 31)

Once again we are told that they these gentiles saw that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and they at least at some level accepted him, remembering that the Pharisees had just  rejected him saying he was of the devil. So, they got and it says they glorified the God of Israel for what he had done among them. I think the first part of the purpose of this story is to continue to illustrate that those who are excluded are included when they have faith.

However, I also think the second part of the story is included to illustrate that Jesus again needed to teach has disciples that they ought to go embrace those who are excluded as part of their Christian ministry. As a matter of fact I’d sum up the whole thing by saying that in the training of the 12 Jesus is teaching them by example to minister to everyone, Gentiles as well as the Jews. I believe this is the sum of all that’s going on in this passage particularly when read in the context of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is training them and here he’s doing it by example. He’s saying to them that you ought to minister to not just the Jews but to gentiles, anyone in fact.

I think this is a foreshadowing of the fact that in chapter 10 he sent them just to the last sheep of the House of Israel and by chapter 28 we will see him sending them out to the whole world. So, these events represent the beginning of a transition from a message first for the Jewish people, to something with a worldwide perspective.

This is the beginning of that transition, Jesus is teaching the apostles they are to go minister to the gentiles, but they didn’t quite get it yet. When we get to the book of acts we will discovered that God had to give Peter a special vision to get him to go to Cornelius’s household. All along the way the struggled to grasp hold of what Jesus was saying, not surprising I suppose when you consider what and insular community these guys had grown up within. Eventually they did, and the gospel broke past the boundary of Judaism and broke into the nations of the world.

At this point I would like to make a couple of observations. I think the point of this passage is really rather straightforward and that is that it’s telling us that Jesus didn’t come not just for the Jews. True, he came originally (first to the Jews) but that the gospel is to go to the gentile world as well. 

It’s always tempted to preach on evangelism when looking a passage like these and say that we ought to be about the business of preaching the gospel to the ends of the world. Certainly, beginning at Jerusalem which for us I think means we begin we live. Which is our Jerusalem, which is where you live at the moment. This passage is telling us we shouldn’t just stick with your little close-knit group of friends  But break out past that reach out beyond that and give people the gospel of Jesus Christ, try to bring the message to people where they are, find intersection points where the good news of Jesus and the teaching of the Bible can help or even challenge people were they are sitting. More outreach than in drag. Clearly that is what is being taught here by example. 

However, it seems to me that there’s a second lesson here and it’s the one I want to conclude with because while that is no doubt part of the message here is about the preaching of the gospel to the end of the world, but  just focus on the story for a minute and it is obvious that this passage deals with people who felt like they were excluded from the religious life of the day. They’re gentiles, they’re dogs, and they have lived their entire they live in the Decapolis, they’re bunch of Pagan and from the standpoint of Judaism they were on the outside looking in.

Jesus comes and teaches his disciples in this passage and this time he teaches by example. This time he says I want you to teach you to go embrace those who are excluded. Go find them, well look at the list, the disadvantaged, the blind the mute and all others that are excluded. Embraced them, minister to them, go find those who are excluded by others, and you minister to them, care for them. In a separate parable which we will look at in detail when we get to Matthew 22 but let me read it to you quickly now.

II.            The Parable of the Wedding Feast.

And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, 3 and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. 4 Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.” ’ 5 But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. 6 And the rest seized his servants, treated them [a]spitefully, and killed them. 7 But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ 10 So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.  (Matthew 22: 1-14)

The parallels are clear in it we see Jesus tell the story of a King who to put on a banquet and he said go tell the invited guests to come immediately. 1st century Greek expert William Barclay says In those days they didn’t have refrigeration and they would put out an invitation and say I’m putting on a banquet Friday night will you come and or not, RSVP we call it today) If the banquet was  on Friday night they would invite people on the Sabbath or Monday night people would say yes or no  and then they would go buy the food and then prepare the food no more than 24 hours before the banquet. The food was all prepared and then they sent the servant out on the(Friday in this example) and he would go into the village that afternoon and say OK, the food is ready come. 

In the Parable it’s important to note that the people are told that the banquet was ready had all previously already previously been invited and agreed to come and, in that parable, they just started and because of the peoples excuses the King says because  I want my banquet house full, go into the city and invite not just them but everyone to come. Not just the elite of the city. So the servants come back and they say we’ve done that and some have responded to the invitation but there’s still room and then Jesus makes this very famous statement in the words of the King and he says, “Go into the streets and the lanes, the highways and hedges, the streets and the lanes are in the city ,and the highways and the hedges are outside the city.

Jesus is teaching by parable go get the excluded go get those that are outside the city don’t just go get the elite, the movers and the shakers, that’s the first group. They were invited they thumbed their nose at the invitation, but now go get the excluded outside of the city.

What I believe both these passages tell us is if we want to be Christ like we need to be about the business of ministering to people wherever we find them regardless of what they’re like. We ought to be about the business of ministering to those who are excluded. We ought to include those who are excluded, and we ought to minister to them wherever we find them and that is what Jesus di by example here.

III.           Closing Illustration.

Recently I read of a story of a man called John Gilbert. When he was five years old John was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. He had a particularly aggressive variant and was told upon diagnosis that it would eventually destroy every muscle including his ability to breath. In a space of a little more than 10 years it took his life. At the age of 25 shortly before the end of his life he needed the help of machines even to breathe.  He had only enough strength to move a computer mouse with his right hand.

John lost something one year it was the ability to run he couldn’t play sports with the other kids, another year he could no longer walk straight so all he could do was watch others play. Eventually he lost the ability to speak, so John knew something about the pain of exclusion he wrote that junior the junior high not surprisingly was perhaps the hardest era of his life were his first few years in high school and that it true for many people, I suppose. But what John experienced was far worse than most of us could imagine. He wrote that certain groups of students used to humiliate him because of his condition. He wrote about how he attended one social event at school and it was a disaster and he never went to another. A bully used to torture him in the school canteen and other places where there were no supervising teachers to the point where he was afraid to go to school. No one ever stood up for him maybe because they were afraid for themselves.

But there are other moments in John’s life, at one point he was named the representative for everyone in his condition in the state of California. One time the National Football League sponsored a fundraising auction and dinner at which John was a special guest. 

When the auction began one item particularly caught John’s attention a basketball signed by the players of the Sacramento Kings professional team.  John bit a little for it at the beginning but the bidding for the basketball rose to an astonishing amount and eventually one man named a figure that shocked the room, and no one was able to match the man went to the front and collected his prize but instead of returning to his seat the man walked across the room and placed it in his hands. hand that would never dribble it down a court or ever throw it towards a hoop. John wrote it took me a moment to realize what he had done I remember hearing gasps all over the room then thunderous applause and seeing weepy eyes till this day.

Well friends have you been given a gift that could never that you could never have got for yourself. Has anyone ever sacrificed a huge amount for you without getting anything in return, except the joy of giving it. This passage in Matthew when Jesus includes the excluded tells me somebody noticed me, somebody cared about me, somebody acted on my behalf. When was the last time you noticed, really noticed that someone felt left out or alone and excluded. I hope you’re listening to what Jesus is teaching all his students here and that we learn the lesson of how to really love like the father did and the Son taught.