Day 3: The Authority of Christ

Read Mathew 7-9

Hey everyone, my name is Asish Mathew from St. Paul’s Mar Thoma Church.  And there’s not much time, and I have a lot to cover, so lets just go straight into it!

The passage for today’s meditation is taken from Mathew 7-9, and here’s just a little bit of context.  So Jesus gets baptized and starts his ministry at the age of 30, and from there after fasting for 40 days and nights Jesus gets tempted in the wilderness.  Jesus gives up the worldly fame and worldly glory that the devil offers Him and continues on in his ministry. Moving forward we get to Mathew 5 where we receive the Sermon on the Mount, and this is where Christ illustrates the upside-down nature of the Kingdom; what I mean by that is that it says the poor in spirit are blessed, the meek will inherit the Kingdom of God, and so on. So its kind of a new thing for us to hear.  So we get to Mathew 7 and its the final stretch of the Sermon on the Mount, and I’m pretty sure we can all recall certain things from the Sermon on the Mount - the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, the Golden Rule, and what I wanted to get to today was the subheading “Ask, Seek, and Knock.”  John Piper said this: 

When you pause to consider that God is infinitely strong and can do all that He pleases, and that He is infinitely righteous so that He only does what is right, and that He is infinitely good so that everything He does is perfectly good, and that He is infinitely wise so that he always knows perfectly what is right and good, and that He is infinitely loving so that in all his strength and righteousness and goodness and wisdom He raises the eternal joy of His loved ones as high as it can be raised—when you pause to consider this, then the lavish invitations of this God to ask Him for good things, with the promise that He will give them, is unimaginably wonderful. - Ask Your Father in Heaven (John Piper - Desiring God)

So knowing this, how do we fall into that tragedy of prayerless-ness? We are invited to pray in this passage three times, and I guess you could call them commands to ask Him what we need.  In verses 7-9 it actually says, 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened”. - Mathew 7:7-8

So ask your Father for what you need, seek your Father for the help you need, and knock on the door of your Father’s house so He will give you what you need.  Ask, seek and knock.  So at the end of His teaching, the audience was astounded and recognized that Jesus spoke with an unmatched authority, and after completing the sermon, Mathew begins recounting events in Jesus’ ministry.  If you just read the subheadings of some of the stuff in the chapter, it says:
- The Cleansing of the Man with Leprosy
- Jesus Heals Many
- Jesus Calms the Storm
- Healing of Two Demon Possessed Men
- Jesus Heals the Paralytic
- A Dead Girl and a Sick Woman
- Jesus Heals the Blind Man and the Mute

So that’s a lot of stuff in these next few chapters and you can just see how much Jesus did in such a short amount of time.  So Mathew 8 shows Jesus’ authority over sickness, nature, demons and paralysis.  And then Mathew 9 demonstrates His authority over disabilities and death.  So the concluding summary of miracles in chapter 9 also contains another declaration of Christ’s authority, and it says we must ask the Lord to send out workers to demonstrate Jesus’ authority over these needs.  “The workers and few and the harvest is plenty,” so we need to go and make workers and spread Jesus’ authority.

So I suggest you read all three of these chapters because there is just so much in them and it is hard for us to cover them in such a short amount of time.  So with that I just wanted to share with y’all a song “Stay And Wait” by Hillsong United that Christo, Lydia and I are covering.  Thanks for listening!

Stay And Wait
Hillsong United
Who spoke the Earth and sky to form
Who sets the sun and calls the dawn
Who breathed me out of dust to life
With the will to trust or run and hide

I will stay should the world by me fold
Lift up Your name as the darkness falls
I will wait and hold fast to Your word
Heart on Your heart and my eyes on You

Who loved me through my rebel way
Who chose to carry all my shame
Who breaths in me with endless life
The king of glory Jesus Christ

I will stay should the world by me fold
Lift up Your name as the darkness falls
I will wait and hold fast to Your word
Heart on Your heart and my eyes on You

God of wonder and God of grace
Let my soul stand always to praise You
Fix my eyes on Your perfect way
And I'll never look back

I will stay should the world by me fold
Lift up Your name as the darkness falls
I will wait and hold fast to Your word
Heart on Your heart and my eyes on You

Who lifts the poor and heals the blind
Who trampled death for all mankind
Who stands for all with arms stretched wide

My King forever Jesus Christ

- Asish Mathew