The People Jeered

Today as I spent time in God's presence with a preface of absorbing in His Word, I read in the book of Matthew about several of Jesus' incredible miracles. One miracle of which was when he healed Jairus' little girl. To every outward evidence they were given, this young lady was dead and gone from her parents' arms and the life she lived here on this earth. Yet when Jesus came on the scene with great faith, he said something so weird to the rest of the grieving crowd there. He said she was simply sleeping.

Now be honest. If you have been a Christian for a length of time and have read this story before, I'm sure you may have turned a questioned expression up to this statement at least once in innocent ignorance. It's understandable. I'm sure the people weren't dumb. They knew a dead person when they saw one. But here comes this crazy person saying the girl was just asleep. If you were there, you probably would have questioned Jesus' words. Admit it. But something else completely jumped off the page at me when I read this story today.

23When Jesus came into the ruler’s house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, 24He said to them, “Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him.  (Matthew 9:23-24 NKJV)

Take a moment now and imagine yourself there as this story unfolded. But also imagine that you have the luxury of knowing that the man standing before is the promised Messiah and savior of the world that would soon take away all sins and forever sit at the right hand of God making intercession for you as his child. Now imagine he just walked up and said that the girl is only sleeping. Now imagine you responded how the crowd responded. My Bible says they ridiculed him.

As soon as I read those words in my Bible my heart broke for those people. Can you imagine going down in the history books as the person who looked straight in Jesus' face and ridiculed him? We have all been ridiculed ourselves at some point in our lives. It's not fun. It hurts. It cuts so deeply! Yet these people did it to their future savior! In another translation it states that they jeered at him.

Jeer: make rude and mocking remarks, typically in a loud voice

And they did this to Jesus! The Messiah! The Lamb that would be slain to remove all their sins. They dared to make a mockery of him. But why? Because they had faith in the evidence...what they could see. They saw the dead body laying before them and immediately considered the words of one the most revered men to be an idiocy compared to their own supposedly superior knowledge. To this we shake our heads because we see how dumb it is. We see that these people were mad and twisted in their actions not to believe Jesus' words as an almighty healer through God's power. But... do we do the same thing? 

When we read in God's word that we are more than a conqueror, do we jeer at Jesus by going to our friends and complaining about how weak and helpless we feel? When we read that we have overcome through the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony, do we ridicule Jesus by saying how we don't know how we'll make it through another week? These jeers and ridicules usually show up in insignificant words of conversation. But would we still let these words pass over our lips if we considered them to be a mock of our Lord and Savior who has promised to always keep us lifted in his grace and love and mercy?

Let's lift up Jesus' name instead and be ready to say how much we are thankful for his promises to never let us down. For he is indeed faithful who call upon his name. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button at the top if love my blog! We are all in this together! Don't forget that God loves you so much!