Reverse the Curse

Introduction

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In 1936 the Japanese Empire created Unit 731 which was responsible for doing research in biological warfare. It is estimated that they were the cause of 300,000 inside and outside their facility. They referred to the people that they experimented on as “logs.” They would inject diseases, test biological weapons, and dismember victims which they kidnapped including men, women, and children.

It seems impossible that someone could be so desensitized to the value of human life. How in the world could someone spit in the face of Death and force his hand to get advantages over others? Certainly only a totally depraved society could allow such experimentation. Would you agree?

The commander of Unit 731 was arrested by the United States at the end of the War. Certainly our nation would do what is right! But instead, the US gave him immunity and hired him to give lectures on the use of bio weapons. Some say he continued his experimental work—that he aided the US government in the Korean war.

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It’s impossible to think that there are people out there who specialize in spreading death. It’s impossible to think that governments would pour so many resources into obtaining such power over death. So much effort to have power to cause more death. And yet we universally recognize death is wrong.

You would think a society that is good would do everything they can to prolong life.

And even in life, this life, there is curse. A prolonged life is not enough. We don’t just need life, we need new life.

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In Matthew 9 starting in v. 18, we will see a glimpse of this new life that Jesus promises to those who trust in him.

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This morning we will be going through Matthew 9:18-26

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Move 1- Sin Brings Death

Context

Adam and Eve were the representatives of humanity—the best of us in the garden of Eden. They rebelled against God and plunged mankind into the depths of this sinful curse.

God said if they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they would die. Adam and Eve certainly knew good and evil, but eating the fruit was essentially robbing God of his right to determine good and evil and them determining it for themselves. And we can certainly see where that leads when we decide good and evil for ourselves: death.

Death is not only a natural consequence of the fall, but so also is what the book of Revelation calls the “second death.” That is, eternal separation from God in a place of torment called hell. Rebellion against the highest authority deserves the highest punishment.

But God was not done with humanity. He had not washed his hands of humanity and allowed death to reign. Instead, he promised a seed of the woman, an offspring, would crush the head of the serpent. From the dying womb, life would spring forth and reverse the curse.

Eventually God called the Hebrew people his own. He called Abram out of the land of Ur and brought him to the Promised Land. His family sojourned down in Egypt and were made into slaves. The God rescued them with a mighty hand. They had grown numerous and formed a whole nation. And God gave them law—sacred law to preserve the value of life.

Within this law, there were laws concerning one’s purity. Purity did not necessarily have to do with sinfulness. Rather, it had to do with one’s physical condition to approach God. God’s presence was with his people in the tabernacle and then in the temple. But they could not enter into his presence in the state of impurity. Certain things associated with death such as bodily fluids like blood and touching corpses could lead to a state of impurity.

Leviticus 15:25–27 ESV

25 “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days. . . or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. 26 Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity. And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity. 27 And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

To summarize: This is ritual impurity. Ritual impurity is not sinful, though it bars one from God’s presence. There were many other forms of ritual impurity like eating an unclean animal or touching a corpse. Notice a very important aspect of this ritual impurity: it spreads. The person who is impure can spread their impurity by a mere touch.

Keep this in mind as we read the first half of the text.

Revelation

Matthew 9:18–20 ESV

18 While he was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 And Jesus rose and followed him, with his disciples. 20 And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment,

This story actually weaves together two different stories to make a point abundantly clear about who Jesus is and what he accomplishes.

Notice that we are faced with two scenarios surrounding the curse of death. 1. A Young girl who has passed away. 2. A women suffering with an unceasing discharge of blood. I mentioned before that loss of blood was representative of death; and certainly that could be taken a step further for this particular loss of blood if you can read between the lines.

Notice also the tension in the plot. 1. The ruler of the synagogue asks Jesus to lay his hand on her. We should recognize this for what it is. He is asking this esteemed rabbi to defile himself. And reasonable Pharisee would balk at the request— “ME? Become unclean? Absolutely not!”

Second, the woman with the discharge also touches Jesus, defiling him—or so we would think.

To give you the context:

Matthew Exegesis

The Mishnah commanded a Jewish man to inquire whether a woman was in a state of uncleanness if she accidentally stepped on the man’s robe or sat next to him on a boat because that was sufficient contact to leave the man in a state of defilement

And people complain about the patriarchy today! Could you imagine if that happened today. If a lady bumped into you and you had to say, “Sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask. . .is it, you know, that time for you?”

Relevance

Notice that both the ruler of the synagogue and the woman are desperate because they have both been devastated by the curse of death and its effects.

Of all the places they could have turned, they go to this wandering teacher.

Your childhood friend commits suicide and you keep asking yourself what you could have done differently.

A young father of a toddler passes away in his sleep without any warning.

The soldier or first responder makes that ultimate sacrifice and we feel that everything we do to honor that sacrifice is not enough.

Your grandmother gets that terminal diagnosis of cancer is and given 6 months left to live.

The child passes away unexpectedly and we dream of all the life that could have been.

We ball up our fist and turn to heaven and cry, “Why God?”

Death should make us desperate. It should drive us to seek answers.

Death drove men to perfect war and assassins. Death drove men to search the stars. Death drove men to spend billions on medical knowledge. Death drove men to appease so many so-called gods.

Death has driven men to doctors to tame it, to adventure to find it, to thrill to come close to it, to entertainment to ignore it, to religion to manipulate it, to evil to wield it.

All because of a bite of forbidden fruit.

But physical death is not the worst part of death. Physical death is a part of living in this cursed world.

There is an eternal death. A second death. A death of everlasting separation from God in torment because the wages of sin is death.

And we have the tendency to think that hell is filled with people who fairly good and if they had just one more chance that might have believed in God. But here’s the truth: if God came and opened the doors of hell, the people there would come. They would come crawling over each other, stampeding just to shut the door in his face. The people in hell would rather burn in torment to do their own bidding rather than submit to God.

The picture of the sinful human in his spiritual condition is not a person adrift in sea in a storm calling on God for help. He is not a person drowning in the ocean hoping God will throw a rope.

No, the spiritual condition of a lost soul, according to the Bible is that if God threw him the rope he would try to tug on the rope to cast God in the sea so that he might drown with him.

Romans 3:11–13 “11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.””

A desperate need causes us to reach out for anything to meet that need. Science, education, counseling, religion, entertainment, relationships, adventure, etc.

Isaiah 59:10 “10 We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.”

Why do you think there have been so many philosophies that have arisen in opposition to Christianity? Because fallen man rejects God and wants to build his own heaven on earth without him. He keeps building his towers of babel to reach heaven on his own terms. And if he could, he’d kill God too.

There was so much certainty as to what was true after the Enlightenment. Rationalism marched the goddess of reason into Notre Dame and began the reign of terror. Empiricism justified the slave trade. Nihilism began the holocaust. Marxism always sheds blood by violent revolutions. And now the only problem is if someone does express certainty with regards to truth, and we can see where that is getting us.

We all try to determine good and evil for ourselves and it always ends up in death and in misery. The curse of sin brings death; But thankfully, Jesus brings life.

Move 2: Bring Life

Matthew 9:21–26 ESV

21 for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. 23 And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 24 he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. 26 And the report of this went through all that district.

Revelation

This woman with the discharge of blood, with the 12-year ban from the presence of God, the stigma of being impure, deliberated to herself that if she just touched the tassel, she would be made well. How could she know this? She knew this man had the authority to forgive sins. She knew that purity flowed from him.

In response to this, Jesus affirms that it was her faith that made her well. This was not magic or superstition. This was faith that was active. And notice, the faith is not in the healing, the faith is in the person—a theme we will pick up on later.

Then Jesus makes his way to the ruler’s house. It was standard in that day for even the poorest person to hire mourners and flute players for the death of a loved one. Someone with the standing of the ruler of the synagogue would have the ability to hire many. It seems that, we could speculate, given the ruler’s faith in Christ, someone else took that faith for foolishness and went ahead and hired the mourners.

Jesus tells the mourners to go away. And they, in response laugh. Now, why does Matthew include this detail? On a surface level to tell us that all these people recognize the girl is really dead. But on the literature level, it reminds us of the last time people laughed when God brought life from death. This is when God provided Isaac from a womb that had already become a tomb. The name Isaac even means laughter.

And notice that he took the girl by the hand. Again, physical touch is emphasized because Jesus is reversing the purity laws. It should be impurity that spreads and defiles, but instead, Jesus’s purity is spreading.

This is similar to the hot coal in Isaiah’s vision. Isaiah was commissioned by God in Isaiah 6. He was in God’s very throne room. In God’s presence all he could think about was his own impurity, especially in regards to the very thing that God would have him to be: his spokesperson. All Isaiah could think about was how often he used his own mouth to sin against God. An angel took a hot coal from the fire and brought it to Isaiah’s lips and purified him. This is one of the first times we see God’s presence going out and purifying what is defiled rather than the other way around.

Jesus is that hot coal. Jesus is the one who reaches out and purifies. Jesus is the one who reverses the curse. Jesus brings life.

The question of course, is how is that purification realized in my life?

Move 3: Faith

Revelation

The necessary condition is faith

Pay careful attention to how the ruler of the synagogue approaches Jesus in v. 18. He is confident that if Jesus lays his hand on his girl that she will live. Presumably Jesus has not yet raised anyone from the dead. And yet this man has such a great faith in who Jesus is.

Sometimes faith is defined as a leap in the dark. Sometimes faith is defined as irrational belief, while science is factual belief.

But that is not what faith is at all in this text.

Look at the woman who had the discharge of blood. She trusted that purity would flow from him rather than her impurity defiling him. And faith healers will get this mixed up all the time. If someone does not get healed they will say, “You did not have enough faith.” The quantity of the faith is never an issue in the Bible. Jesus says, “faith like a mustard seed can move mountains.”

Relevance 1: Person v. Need

Faith healers want you to have faith in the impossible. They want you to have faith in the healing. They’ll say things like, “believe you are healed right now.” Half the people will feel better just because of a placebo effect. Same thing with the “Name it and claim it” people. What are they required to believe? Positive affirmation and all the like.

But notice that the faith of these people in this story is not placed in the healing or in the need, but in the person. The confidence rests on Christ not from wishful thinking or a leap in the dark, but from some knowledge of who he is and what he can do.

Paul asked three times that his thorn in the side be removed, but God said that his grace is sufficient. Faith in healing would have but lost and he would have left the church. But Paul’s confidence was not in healing, he rested on the fact that God knew best.

Consider this question:

Do you come to God with your list of needs or did you allow God to write your list?

So much wrong with Christianity in the West! So many statues to Baal and Asherah poles that need to be torn down.

We’ve got our food and water, we got our hospitals, we got or education and counseling, so we come in to the church saying, “I just need some emotional fulfillment from you, God.” Then we have some emotional experience in a worship song that designed to play on the heart string. We believe ourselves to have found our fulness in God. But do you know him? Do you know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Do you know what Jesus taught about our needs? Do you know what he taught on sin and hell and faith? Do you know what he commanded us to do?

No, but I had an emotional experience designed by some musician to manipulate my affections, so I am now self-deceived into believing I’m good with God and will continue to seek that emotional fulfilling experience.

20 and 30 years ago people still believed that avoiding hell was a great need that they had. So they went to the crusades. They prayed that prayer. They invited Jesus into their hearts. Let me ask you a question. Maybe a question you’re too afraid to ask. It’s now been 20 years since the last Billy Graham crusade. Where are all those people now?

Did you know Jesus said his disciples would continue to make disciples? That his disciples would desire to regularly gather together in what he established as the church?

And yet we were able to march all these people into so many church services around the country convince them of a need to avoid hell and get them to pray a prayer, fill out a card, and dunk them in some water. How’s that going?

Your greatest need is not a problem to be solved, a felt need to be met, or a torment to avoid. Your greatest need is not how to fix your marriage problems, how to raise kids, how to do finances, how to do taxes. None of these things! Your greatest need is not a problem but a person!

What we need is for God to give us a new heart!

Need first vs. God first