The Clarion, Sept. 2024
Welcome
No matter what happens in life these two things we know, God is good and God is faithful. This is what Autumn speaks to us. We see the leaves turn beautiful colors and we say, ‘God is Good’. We see the leaves fall and the trees go bare and we say ‘God is faithful,’ because we know that one day Spring will come and the trees will once again bloom. So when trials come our way, why do we question God? Why do we think that He has left us? Why do we think that God is no longer good? If the tree is willing to change knowing that one day it will come alive again and be beautiful, then why do we not trust God that this trial will one day pass, and God will return the beauty in our lives once again.
Here is a sandiegram to help during those trials. Storms/Trust/copyright2010
Trust
Time is endless when you know the Lord. Trust the Lord, for He is good and worthy to be trusted.
When all seems lost and you don’t know where to turn,
trust the Lord.
Give Him your anxieties and let Him fill you with peace.
In your weakness, your brokenness,
and your littleness, let the Lord take over for you.
Let Him strengthen you, let Him lift you up,
let Him make you tall as you allow Him to work in your life.
Nothing is impossible for the Lord if you trust Him.
He can make all things new.
He can change your life in every situation if you trust Him.
He is ready to take your hand and lead you.
Trust the Lord for He is worthy to be praised.
The Hidden Meanings Behind the Miracles of Yeshua : Part 3
Last month we looked at the great catch of fish. Yeshua moved on to Capernaum where He healed a man of unclean spirits, and He healed Peter’s mother-in law. Yeshua and His disciples traveled about the Galilee area healing and teaching about the kingdom. We find Yeshua healing a man of leprosy. Yeshua tells the man, “Do not tell anyone of this.” Of course, the man could not keep the secret and told everyone the good news. From that time forward Yeshua could not go about freely for the crowds gathered all around Him wherever He would go. Matthew 9 records this story. “A few days later Yeshua and His disciples again went back to Capernaum. The word traveled fast that He was back and most likely was staying at Peter’s mother-in-law’s house. The crowd gathered as Yeshua was preaching and many people brought those who were ill. Some men carried a paralyzed man to the house, but they could not get anywhere near Yeshua, so they made a hole in the roof and lowered the man who was lying on a mat. When Yeshua saw their faith He said to the man “Son, your sins are forgiven..” Now some of the teachers of the law were sitting there and thinking , “Why does this fellow talk like this? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?
Yeshua replied to these men this way. “ Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then He said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, pick up your stretcher and go home.” And he got up and went home. But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.”
So why did Yeshua say, “Your sins are forgiven”? Was it sin that caused this man to be paralyzed? If it wasn’t sin then why say it? Yes, Yeshua tells us that He wanted everyone to know that He had the authority to forgive sin. But why was this important, so important that He just couldn’t have said “Get up and walk.” Let’s look at another story about a paralytic who was healed.
John 5:1-14 tells us this story, “Now in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool which in Hebrew is called Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these porticoes lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, limping, or paralyzed. Now a man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Yeshua, upon seeing this man lying there and knowing that he had already been in that condition for a long time, said to him, “Do you want to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Yeshua said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. Now it was a Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is a Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?” But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Yeshua had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward, Yeshua found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”
So let’s take a closer look at all of this. We see in both of these stories that Yeshua refers to sin. One story Yeshua heals when He sees the faith of these men, the other He heals only after He asks the man if he wants to be healed. Let’s tie these two together. We see that sin is at the core of these stories. Yeshua wants the people to know that He is the forgiver of sins. Let’s start with Yeshua’s name and (only His Hebrew name) which means “God’s Salvation.” Let’s look at similar names which can be used for salvation, like pardon, keeping, liberation, release, redemption, emancipation. I think you get the idea that Yeshua was sent to set us free from sin.
We see this with the woman caught in adultery in John 8:2-11, “At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and He sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Yeshua, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing Him. But Yeshua bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Yeshua straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Yeshua declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Yeshua pardoned her of her sin.
So we see here three different times Yeshua pardoned people of their sins. But if one is paralyzed and one is sick, what sin have they committed? First of all the Scriptures do not tell us what caused the man to be paralyzed and the other man to become sick, so it could have been the result of sin. But as far as Yeshua saying one thing or another, He did speak of their sins. Remember when Yeshua turned the water into wine in part one of our series? We wrote about the Last Supper(which was the Passover Seder) when Yeshua lifted up the Cup of Redemption as Matthew 26:27-28 records. “And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
No doubt that Yeshua wanted the people to remember what He had said, about forgiving their sins, so that on the day of His crucifixion they would know that He was truly the Messiah who came to forgive sins as Isaiah 53 speaks of the one who would come as the “suffering servant.” Here is verse 4-5, “We thought that He was receiving punishment for His own sins. We thought that God was causing Him to suffer. But it was our sins that caused His wounds. The bad things that we had done crushed Him. The punishment that He received has brought peace to us. The wounds that He received have made us well.”
And so to the man that He asked if he wanted to be made well, we say, ‘that is an odd question, who wouldn’t want to be healed?’ Yeshua knew he wanted to be healed, but this is the beginning of the process to be forgiven. We are sinners and we must want to be forgiven and made whole. We also must want to repent of our sins, which is nothing more than making a complete turn around and begin living according to God’s Word. John came preaching repentance and Yeshua came preaching the same. Matthew 3:7-10 records John the Baptist confronting the scholars of his day. “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance; and do not assume that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you that God is able, from these stones, to raise up children for Abraham. And the ax is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit is being cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Yeshua tells His disciples the same in John 15:5-6, “ I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
This is why Yeshua told these men to go and sin no more. Yeshua’s disciples witnessed these healings and so John 9:1-5 tells us this, “As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Yeshua, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
You see not everyone’s plight in life is a result of sin. But when it is, we must repent and make the change in our lives by repenting and producing the fruit of that repentance, but first we must ask ourselves if we want to be healed.
Yeshua says to us, “Be healed and sin no more!”
Hebrew Corner: The Martyrs
Jude
Jude or Judas was the brother of James. Jude was commonly called Thaddeus. Jude was one of the twelve apostles. Jude is believed to be the writer of the book of Jude.
Matthew 13:55 says this, “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is His mother not called Mary, and His brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?
In John 14:22, Jude asks Yeshua this question. “Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what has happened that You are going to reveal Yourself to us and not to the world?”
Acts 1:13-14, “When they had entered the city, they went up to the upstairs room where they were staying, that is, Peter, John, James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. All these were continually devoting themselves with one mind to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Yeshua, and with His brothers.
Jude 1 says this, “This letter is from me, Jude. I am a bondservant of Messiah Yeshua and I am James’s brother.”
Translations into English from the original Greek of the New Testament vary in their rendering of Acts 1:13. A literal translation of the references to Jude in these passages gives “Jude of James” as in Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible, but scholars differ on whether this means “Jude, brother of James” or “Jude, son of James”. The King James and the Douay-Rheims versions call him “Judas the brother of James”, making him the same person as the writer of the Epistle of Jude, who identifies himself as “Jude, the servant of Messiah Yeshua, and brother of James” (Jude 1:1). There are many discrepancies about his name being connected to Thaddeus because Thaddeus, one of the twelve apostles, is often indistinguishable from Thaddeus of Edessa, one of the Seventy disciples. In some Latin manuscripts of Matthew 10:3, Thaddeus is called Judas the Zealot, a Jewish nationalistic party prior to 70 CE.
Jude suffered martyrdom in the year 72CE by crucifixion in Edessa. It is believed that Jude the Zealot and Simon the Zealot died together. Edessa is now called Sanilurfa in modern day Turkey. Some believe that he was martyred in the year 65CE by being clubbed to death in Beirut. Because of so many legends, and so little facts that were written back then, no one will ever know what is true except the fact that he was martyred for his faith, which should be an inspiration for us to always stand for the truth of God’s Word.
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