It may be a nice sunny day when we are building our house of faith, but the tribulations, persecution, fiery trials, and afflictions are inevitable. The storm is coming and when the rain falls, the winds blow, and the floods flow, the substance of our faith will be revealed and the foundation will be exposed. That foundation will either sustain us or fail us depending upon how we have responded to the teaching of Jesus.
Mark recorded that Jesus “could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them” (v. 5). Why so few? It is probably because only a few were willing to come to Jesus. The people could not set aside what they thought they knew about Jesus to believe that He could actually minister to them.
Sometimes it can feel like life is squeezing the joy and hope out of us. As we age and our bodies remind us of the effects of the Fall, as friends and family pass from this life, and as the years ahead of us are become much fewer than the behind us, it can be easy to lose hope. But the good news of Jesus Christ is that He has come to restore hope, bring healing, and restore dreams. If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable, but thanks be unto God that the suffering of this present life is not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
Once people realized how special Jesus was, everywhere Jesus went the people crowded around Him. Eventually some of the religious elites began to worry that Jesus might challenge their positions or their authority, so they also began to show up in order to critique and criticize Jesus. They were constantly watching with a critical eye and listening for something with which to accuse Jesus of, such as, fraud or blasphemy. Sadly, in process of their criticism, they likely deprived themselves of the ministry that could have been for them. People who come to church only to pick apart the sermon and criticize the preacher are rarely blessed.
In verses 14 through 16 James asks three rhetorical questions, followed in verse 17 with a conclusion. You know what a rhetorical question is don’t you? Men, it’s when your wife comes home with a new haircut and asks, “Do you think this haircut looks good?” That is not a real question. In a rhetorical question the answer is implied in the question. It’s like when a man asks his wife, “Don’t you think that ‘bigger’ flatscreen TV would look good in the family room?” It’s more of a statement than an actual question
If you could ask God for one, and only one thing, in your life, what would you ask for—more money, health, a long life? What would you ask? In fact, there’s an account in the Old Testament where God actually gave a man the opportunity to ask for anything he wanted, and this man asked for wisdom. You probably know the story from 2 Chronicles chapter 1—Solomon became king of Israel following his father David, and he became a great king because the Lord was him. One day Solomon went up to the tabernacle his father David set up for the ark of the covenant, and he offered a sacrifice on the bronze altar. That night, God appeared to Solomon and said, “Ask! What shall I give you?”
Jude opens his epistle making it clear that his intention is to sound the alarm about “certain men” who have “crept in unnoticed.” Jude intends to expose these people and to warn the church not to let these men to seduce the church with their twisted message. These people taught that it is possible to be a believer while also engaging in sexual behavior that violates the very precepts of God’s Word, including the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. Indeed, these people even denied “the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” So why were these people in the church, how did they get into the church, and why should these people be forced out of the church unless, of course, they repent and observe whatsoever Jesus commanded? In verses 12 and 13 Jude provides a compact but powerful answer to these questions.
A common misconception of Christians is we must always be non-confrontational and passive … no matter what. Even within the Christian community there is a rather pervasive view that believers should always be smiling and agreeable while conceding to others in our attempt to keep the peace. It is true that we are called be peacemakers, ministers of reconciliation and ambassadors of Christ (2 Co 5:19-20), yet the example of Jesus clearing the temple with a whip, along with various militant metaphors employed in the epistles, demonstrate that there are, in fact, times when we must fight for what we believe. Jesus Himself said that “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Mt 11:12).
In our text we see a Gentile mother going to a man from Galilee named Jesus—a man some were saying was the Jewish Messiah. Only a mother desperate for her daughter’s deliverance would presume to go to person from an ethnic group who considered her to be an unclean dog. Yet, before this encounter was over, Jesus said this Canaanite woman had “great faith.” This is significant, because only two times in the Bible does Jesus call someone’s faith “great,” and in both cases they are Gentile.
