Authority 4 (Matthew 9 - P23)

We are in the middle of an incredible display of the authority of Jesus recorded in Matthew 8 and 9.  The people around him were amazed.  And that is an understatement.  They marveled at a man who carried the kind of authority - both in word and in behavior - as did Jesus.  It is so easy for us to read these encounters with a 'ho-hum' attitude and mind.  Familiarity does indeed dull our senses.  Today, as you read, try to place yourself in the story ... place yourself on the street in the midst of the crowds.

I am writing on the day after Thanksgiving, 2012.  Did anyone watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on television or online?  Better yet, were you in New York and could go in person?  I was in New York one Thanksgiving a few years ago and not the crowds nor the mass of humanity nor the impossibility of getting a good view kept me from being on the streets that morning.  I wanted to experience it.  I wanted to be there ... in person.

How I wish we could read these verses with that same sense of "I want to be there ... in the midst of it all" mentality.  Try ...

Read Matthew 9: 18 - 34

Authority.  We have looked at many different illustrations of Jesus' authority ... but today ... in this reading ... Jesus exercised his authority over death.  Death.  We fear it.  It is Satan's ultimate weapon against us.  Everything about it screams loss and pain and separation and finality and endings and darkness and sorrow and grief and ... and ... and.  Even as believers, we struggle with our fear of death.  

In Matthew's simple description, he merely says, "he went in and took the girl (the dead girl, remember) by the hand, and she got up.  News of this spread through all that region"  I dare say!  

Listen to some of the things that scripture tells us about death ...

Ecclesiastes 7:2 - " ... for death is the destiny of every man ..."

Romans 5:12 - "Just as sin entered the world through one man, (Adam) and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned ..."

Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death ..."

And that is our destiny ... that is the end of fallen flesh in this world.  

I believe God wants us to know that His Son, Jesus, has authority over death.  He can reverse it.  He can thwart it.  He can bring life.  Therefore we are told about this young girl ... this girl who had died ... and Jesus steps in and says "No, she will live."  

You and I are this young girl.  We are the ones who are on a death march.  

But listen to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 50 - 57:

What I am saying brothers and sisters is this:  flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.  Listen, I will tell you a mystery!  We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.  ...  then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:  'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'  'Where O death is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?'  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God!  Indeed!  Because that final terror is under the ultimate control of our Lord.  His authority will prevail.

When the apostle John was given the Revelation of things to come ... he has a vision of Christ.  John writes:  "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.  But he placed his right hand on me, saying, 'Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.'" (Revelation 1: 17 - 18)

We need not fear death.  That is so much easier to type than to believe.  But our Lord holds the keys.  And He has prepared a place for us where death no longer exists.  There will be no more fathers having to bury little girls.  No more wives loosing husbands or husbands loosing wives. No more friends burying friends.  No more.  No more.

And we see Jesus' complete authority over this most potent of human fears and conditions through a little girl of a synagogue official in Capernaum in Galilee.

Thanks be to God!