Jesus is still not done teaching the disciples that different nations (the Greek is ‘ethne’, meaning people groups) are just as important in His eyes as the Jewish nation. After teaching about the true nature of uncleanness, He brought His band to a fully Gentile region and tested their response to a Canaanite woman in distress. Delivering her daughter, Jesus moves to show the disciples the full acceptance of God of the ‘unclean’ people of non-Jewish origin;
“Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.”
This took place in Decapolis – a distinctly Gentile region on the far side of the Sea of Galilee. The similarity of that scene would have been striking to the disciples, who previously watched the same thing unfold in both Jewish Galilee and Syria. It was a reminder that Jesus hadn’t actually taught them anything new. Just that He had been consistent in regarding the Good News of the kingdom and its manifestation as being for all people.
Recall how Matthew saw the same at the beginning of Christ’s ministry, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.” Further, He had done the same in Israel proper, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.”
In the Decapolis, Jesus hasn’t changed his method or His compassion, He has simply changed His location. His response to sinful people who have lost their way back to God is exactly the same – He teaches, preaches, heals and (when necessary) delivers. He does exactly what He demonstrated to and charged His disciples in doing. It is perhaps the single most ‘object’ of all the object lessons Jesus exercised in teaching His disciples.
It is a lesson we in the Western church must pay attention to as well. For the most part the Western church – now in the midst of a secular and post-truth society – has forgotten the value of both ministering in power and the value of reaching ‘the other’. For many churches, the pandemic (when God forced us to stay out of our church buildings) has only reinforced a collective desire to take what little time and spiritual energy was being invested in reaching others and divert it into investing even more into the congregation, who already have so much.
Surely Jesus has been teaching us a powerful object lesson also. Those in our wider community (the unsaved) are just as much in His eyes as those already in His Kingdom, and we have spiritual responsibility for them too. Will we ‘get’ His this object lesson, or will we be just as dull as the twelve were?
To have the life and energy of grace decline is a grievous matter; better to see the flock cut off from the fold than grace from the heart.
Charles Spurgeon
APPLICATION: Intentionality
Let us not be so focused on hoping for a dramatic move of God that we loose sight of His ordinary grace. He is ever speaking to us, sometimes in extraordinarily blunt ways.