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DAVID'S EMAIL BIBLE STUDY:
A "Bull" Session
A.
BACKGROUND...
steadily, Jesus is growing his ministry. Teaching, healing, confronting evil, and putting together his team (disciples). Each day brings new challenges and new opportunities, and Jesus uses each one for maximum advantage. I love the old Oscar winning foreign film, "The Gospel According to Matthew", because it shows Jesus fully engaged, totally focused, and very determined
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C. SUMMARY:
A group of friends band together to bring their friend, a paralytic, to Jesus. Jesus is teaching at an overcrowded house, so they can't get in. Undeterred, they go onto the roof, remove some of the it, then lower their paralyzed friend at Jesus' feet. Admiring the faith of those friends, Jesus tells the paralytic "your sins are forgiven". Some religious leaders had taken a critical interest in Jesus, and they wondered aloud who Jesus thought he was, since only God can forgive sins. Jesus challenged them back, asking which is more difficult: to forgive sins, or tell a paralytic to walk? He then does tell the paralytic to stand up and walk, exhibiting in one story a heavenly power and an earthly power.
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The POWER OF FRIENDS. We know nothing about the paralytic. But Jesus knew enough about the friends. The Bible says, "when he saw THEIR faith", Jesus responded. It was the faith of the friends who took action on behalf of the paralytic that set the miracle in motion. At Church we often talk about intercessory prayer. Intercession is when we do something on behalf of someone else, most obviously intercessory prayer. Our Associate, Rachel, and Anne Lyons lead our Prayer Group of about 10 people. Their ministry is to pray on behalf of others. They use their faith to bring people's needs to God just like the paralytic's friends brought him to Jesus. Anything we do as a stand-in for God's love, God's touch, God's presence is in the spirit of the paralytic's friends.
2. BULL Session. Our in-person Bible Study went off on an interesting tangent on Islam, Judaism, and differences from Christianity. What started the discussion was the criticism of Jesus by the religious leaders. Who were they? Why were they critical? The religions leaders of Judaism at Jesus' time were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and Temple Priests. They were the guardians of Jewish religion, teaching, tradition, and practice. By Jesus' time the focus was on the LAW, the 5,000 year Old Testament and tradition law that governed every aspect of life. Under foreign domination for centuries, adherence to the law was a clear-cut way to maintain one's Jewish identity. Our Bible Study discussion branched off into Islam and Judaism. Not the ISIS brand, not the extremists. But at their core, Judaism and Islam both seek a connection with God through close obedience to God's laws. The basic premise is that humanity cannot be trusted to live up to God's ideals on our own. We need rules, rewards, and punishments, warnings. And we need clear description of consequences of our sin, and a clear path to forgiveness. Hell, stoning, Sharia Law, blood sacrifices, and penance are part of the equation. Then JESUS comes along and forgives the paralytic without any effort on the paralytic's part. Jesus offers "grace", a totally unmerited gift of love. All the same sins are still wrong, but the path to forgiveness is paved with Jesus' footsteps to the cross, a path of total grace. "Just because", as the saying goes.
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