God Has Visited His People

In one paragraph

Ray opened this message by walking through two Old Testament stories before turning to a section of the Gospels, letting the older stories do the work of framing what Jesus would do. The thread running through all of it was compassion that crosses every line people normally keep: clean and unclean, insider and outsider, the destitute and the prosperous. Before touching a word of the New Testament,...

Read together

1. 1 Kings 17 Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, flour and oil provision, and resurrection of her son
2. 2 Kings 4 Elisha and the Shunammite woman, birth of her son and his resurrection
3. Psalm 42 congregation sang 'As the Deer' based on this psalm, identified by the preacher
4. Matthew 8:1-2 man with leprosy healed as Jesus came down from the mountain, noted as previously covered
5. Matthew 8:5-13 centurion comes to Jesus asking healing for his paralyzed servant, Jesus amazed at his faith
6. Luke 7:1-10 Luke's account of the centurion's servant, Jewish elders urge Jesus on centurion's behalf
7. Luke 7:11-17 Jesus raises the widow's son at Nain and gives him back to his mother
8. Deuteronomy Moses foretells God will raise up a prophet like him, quoted in connection with the crowd's response at Nain
9. Romans 15:13 benediction: may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in him

Talk about it

1. Ray spent time on the literary genre of Scripture before getting into the text, noting that some parts are historical, some poetic, some figurative. How does paying attention to what kind of writing you are reading change the way you understand a passage?
2. In both the Elijah and Elisha stories, the prophet gave the dead child back to his mother. Ray pointed out that Luke uses almost exactly the same phrase when Jesus raises the widow's son at Nain. What does it mean to you that Jesus is doing what only God's greatest prophets had done before, but without praying or laying on the body, simply by speaking?
3. The centurion was part of an occupying army that the Jewish people deeply resented, yet Jesus said he had found no greater faith in all of Israel. Ray noted that Jesus had just finished preaching 'be merciful, do not judge, do not condemn.' How hard is it to extend that kind of mercy to someone you have every reason to resent, and what would it look like in your own life?
4. Ray observed that Jesus touched the leper, touched the coffin, and agreed to enter a Gentile soldier's home, each one something that would have made a practicing Jew ceremonially unclean. He said it was not the uncleanness that infected Jesus but Jesus' purity that cleansed the situation. What does that pattern tell you about how Jesus approaches people that others have written off?
5. Ray closed with the benediction from Romans 15:13, that God would fill us with joy and peace as we trust in Him so that we overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where in your life right now do you most need that overflow of hope, and what would trusting Him look like in that specific situation?