Sabbath: Jesus Ministered to Their Needs
Read for This Week’s Study: Mark 5:22-43, Mark 10:46-52, John 5:1-9, Ps. 139:1-13, Mark 2:1-12, Acts 9:36-42.
Memory Text: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (Matthew 9:35, NIV).
Jesus with People
A retired Seventh-day Adventist woman in an African country did not wish to stop ministering in retirement. Her community needed healing because of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. The most urgent need was that AIDS orphans didn’t have adequate nutrition. In 2002, she and her church started feeding the children in the community a solid meal six days a week. They started with 50 children and, as of 2012, were serving 300 children per day. That led them to start a preschool, and now 45 of those children are attending. Other services include distributing clothing from ADRA, sharing vegetables and maize from a garden that they maintain, and taking care of the sick. They started a skills-development program for women, who teach one another skills that helped them earn a living. This demonstration of the love of Jesus spawned a new church. There were five members in the beginning and, as of 2012, 160 were attending. God provided means for building an orphanage and a new church building in 2012. What a powerful and practical example of how meeting the needs of the community is so important for Christians.
* Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, August 27.
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whose synagogues was Jesus teaching in? Does that statement in the memory verse mean that Jesus was not one of the members of the synagogues?
It was the Jewish synagogue, I believe.
I think that " their" means the synagogues of the already mentioned cities and villages. it should be read more like " teaching in the synagogues of the villages he went to"
Jason, Jesus taught in many different synagogues. The one from his home in Nazareth would have probably been the most visited.
Synagogues are not quite analogous to our current idea of a church. They were more like community centres for worship, meeting, education. If they could afford it they may have some scrolls of the scripture. They varied from a purpose built part of a family home to largish structures capable of holding a large audience. Synagogues were administered locally and they were not all of the same "religious flavour". Like today Jewish culture extended from the secular to the deeply conservative and even the mystical.
Bear in mind that what is referred to as a synagogue in modern Jewish parlance is much closer to our idea of a church.
The Memory Text for today is almost identical with the text found in Matthew 4: 23 to emphasize the point that Christ's ministry is the pattern we should follow, viz going through our communities, meeting the spiritual, physical and emotional needs of people. He looked carefully at God's people disfigured by sin, downcast, depressed, diseased, helpless, vulnerable to satan etc and I imagined Jesus could not ignore their plight. My view is that Jesus saw more than their physical appearance. He saw the condition of their hearts apart from Him and realized they were lost without hope. They were "sheep without a shepherd". The Jewish religious leaders who were tasked to shepherd the people to God, were instead fleecing the flock, seeing them as a bother. So Christ saw the great need of a lost people and was moved with compassion to save them. No amount of interruption, inconvenience, challenge was able to deter Him from His ministry. On another occasion the disciples saw that they were facing an insurmountable challenge they went to Jesus and asked Him to solve the problem by human needs "Send them away" (Matthew 14:15) Jesus saw the issue differently and felt compassion for them. Jesus wants us to see the needs of people dying without hope the way He sees them and do as He did - love and show compassion for His sake.
Are we so focused on preparing men and women for the second coming of Christ, that we only focus on their spiritual needs and don't bother with their emotional and physical needs?
Ooooh, it's high time we woke up and preach no matter how small in number we're. God is willing to support those who are having the spirit of serving the poor and those in need. Let's join hands for that great work of God.