MIRACLE IN A COTTAGE
Luke 4:38–9
Jesus left the synagogue and came into Simon’s house; and Simon’s mother-in-law was in the grip of a major fever. They asked him to do something for her. He stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them.
HERE Luke the doctor writes. In the grip of a major fever – every word is a medical term. In the grip of is the medical Greek for someone definitely laid up with an illness. The Greek medical writers divided fevers into two classes – major and minor. Luke knew just how to describe this illness.
There are three great truths in this short incident.
(1) Jesus was always ready to serve. He had just left the synagogue. Preachers know what it is like after a service. They have given of themselves and need rest. The last thing they want is a crowd of people and a fresh call upon their energy. But no sooner had Jesus left the synagogue and entered Peter’s house than the insistent cry of human need was at him. He did not claim that he was tired and must rest. He answered it without complaint.
Members of the Salvation Army tell of a Mrs Berwick in the days of the London blitzes of the Second World War. She had been in charge of the Army’s social work in Liverpool and had retired to London. People had strange ideas during the blitzes and they had the idea that somehow Mrs Berwick’s house was safe; and so they gathered there. Though she had retired, the instinct to help was still with her. She got together a simple first-aid box and then put a notice in her window, ‘If you need help, knock here.’ Always Jesus was ready to help; his followers must be the same.
(2) Jesus did not need a crowd to work a miracle. So often we will make an effort in company that we will not make among our own private circle. So often we are at our best in society and at our worst at home. All too commonly we are gracious, courteous, obliging to strangers and the very opposite when there is no one but our own family or friends to see. But Jesus was prepared to put out all his power in a village cottage in Capernaum when the crowds were gone.
(3) When Peter’s mother-in-law was cured, immediately she began to serve them. She realized that she had been given back her health to spend it in the service of others. She wanted no fussing and no petting; she wanted to get on with cooking and serving her family and Jesus. Mothers are like that. We would do well to remember that if God gave us the priceless gift of health and strength, he gave it that we might use it always in the service of others.
THE INSISTENT CROWDS
Luke 4:40–4
When the sun was setting all who had friends who were ill with all kinds of sicknesses brought them to Jesus; and he laid his hands upon each one of them and cured them. Out of many there came demons, shouting out and saying, ‘You are the Son of God.’ And he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Anointed One. When day came, he went out and went to a desert place; and the crowds kept looking for him and they tried to restrain him so that he would not go away from them; but he said to them, ‘I must tell the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns too, because that is what I was sent to do.’
(1) Early in the morning Jesus went out to be alone. He was able to meet the insistent needs of others only because he first made time to be with God. Once, in the First World War, a staff conference was due to begin. All were present except Marshal Foch, the commander-in-chief. An officer who knew him well said, ‘I think I know where we may find him.’ He led them round to a ruined chapel close beside General Headquarters and there, before the shattered altar, the great soldier was kneeling in prayer. Before he met his men he must first meet God.
(2) There is no word of complaint or resentment when Jesus’ privacy was invaded by the crowds. Prayer is great but in the last analysis human need is greater. Florence Allshorn, the great missionary teacher, used to run a training college for missionaries. She knew human nature and she had little time for people who suddenly discovered that their quiet hour was due just when the dishes were to be washed! Pray we must; but prayer must never be an escape from reality. Prayer cannot preserve us from the insistent cry of human need. It must prepare us for it; and sometimes we will need to rise from our knees too soon and get to work – even when we do not want to.
(3) Jesus would not let the demons speak. Over and over again we get on Jesus’ lips this injunction to silence. Why? For this very good reason – the Jews had their own popular ideas of the Messiah. To many of them the Messiah was to be a conquering king who would set his foot upon the eagle’s neck and sweep the Romans from Palestine. Palestine was in a volatile state. Rebellion was always just below the surface and often broke out. Jesus knew that if the report went out that he was the Messiah the revolutionaries would be ready to flare up. Before people could call him Messiah, he had to teach them that Messiah meant not a conquering king but a suffering servant. His injunctions to silence were given because people did not yet know what Messiahship meant, and if they started out with the wrong ideas death and destruction would surely follow.
(4) Here is the first mention of the kingdom of God in Luke’s gospel. Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God (Mark 1:15). That was the essence of his message. What did he mean by the kingdom of God? For Jesus the kingdom was three things at the same time.
(a) It was past. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in the kingdom and they had lived centuries ago (Luke 13:28).
(b) It was present. ‘The kingdom’, he said, ‘is within you, or among you’ (Luke 17:21).
(c) It was future. It was something which God was still to give and which must be constantly prayed for.
How can the kingdom be all these things at the same time? Turn to the Lord’s Prayer. There are two petitions in it side by side. Your kingdom come; Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Now, as any verse of the Psalms will show, the Hebrew language has a way of saying things twice; and always the second way explains, or develops, or amplifies the first way. Put these two phrases together – Your kingdom come; Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven. The second explains the first; therefore, the kingdom of God is a society upon earth where God’s will is as perfectly done as it is in heaven. If anyone in the past has perfectly done God’s will, that person is in the kingdom; if anyone does it now, that person is in the kingdom; but the day when everyone will do that will is still far distant, therefore the consummation is still to come; and so the kingdom is past and present and future all at the same time.
We do that will spasmodically, sometimes obeying, sometimes disobeying. Only Jesus always did it perfectly. That is why he is the foundation and the incarnation of the kingdom. He came to make it possible for us all to do the same. To do God’s will is to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. We may well pray – ‘Lord, bring in your kingdom, beginning with me.’
THE CONDITIONS OF A MIRACLE
Luke 5:1–11
Jesus was standing on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret while the crowds pressed in upon him to listen to the word of God. He saw two boats riding close to the shore. The fishermen had disembarked from them and were washing their nets. He embarked on one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to push out a little from the land. He sat down and continued to teach the crowds from the boat. When he stopped speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Push out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have toiled all night long and we caught nothing; but, if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done so they enclosed a great crowd of fishes;
