Healings and Early Controversies

Cleansing a Leper

(Mt 8:2-4; Mk 1:40-45; Lk 5:12-16)

¹²In one town a man with leprosy all over him, saw Jesus and fell on his knees in front of him, and begged him, ²“Sir, if you’re willing, you can cleanse me.”

⁴¹He felt sorry for him, and reached out and touched him, “I’m willing; be cleansed.” ⁴²Immediately his leprosy was gone.

⁴³Jesus sent him away at once, 44“Don’t tell anybody about this. Show yourself to the priest, and offer for your purification what Moses commanded—as a witness to them.”

Instead, ⁴⁵he went out and spread the news about Jesus so that he couldn’t go in a town openly anymore. He stayed out in the open areas, and big crowds were coming to him from everywhere ¹⁵to listen and be healed. ¹⁶Jesus would go to places away from any people and pray.

Healing a Paralytic

(Mt 9:1-8; Mk 2:1-12; Lk 5:17-26)

^2:1Days later 9:1they got in the boat and crossed back over to his town, Capernaum. People heard he was home. ²So many people came that there wasn’t any room at the door, and he was speaking the message to them.

¹⁷Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They’d come from Jerusalem and every village in Galilee and Judaea. The power of the Lord was with him to do healing. Four ¹⁸men, carrying a paralytic on a stretcher, were trying to bring him in to Jesus. ¹⁹Since they couldn’t, because of the crowd, they got up on the roof ⁴and took the roof off above where he was. After they’d taken it apart, they let him down through the tiles with the stretcher right in front of Jesus.

⁵When he saw their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Cheer up, Son; I’ve forgiven your sins.”

Some of the scribes and Pharisees began thinking to themselves, 7“Why’s this fellow talking like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God?”

⁸Jesus knew what they were thinking, 4“Why are you thinking critical things? Which is easier, to say, ‘I’ve forgiven your sins’; or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk?’ ²⁴So you can know that the Son of Man has a right on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—“‘Get up, pick up your stretcher, and go on home.’”

²⁵At once he stood up in front of them, picked it up, and went home, glorifying God. ⁸When the crowd saw it, they were astonished and afraid, and glorified God for giving such authority to people, “We’ve seen incredible things today.”

Calling Matthew;

Controversy About Eating with Sinners

(Mt 9:9-13; Mk 2:13-17; Lk 5:27-32)

¹³He went out again beside the lake. The whole crowd went along, and he taught them.

Jesus went along from there ¹⁴and saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth. He said, “Come with me.” He got up and left everything behind, and went with him.

²⁹Levi gave a big reception for Jesus in his house. A large group of tax collectors and others came and ¹⁵reclined at table with Jesus and his disciples, because many of them were following him. ¹⁶When the scribes of the Pharisees saw him eating with sinners and tax collectors, they started saying to his disciples, “Why is your Rabbi eating with tax collectors and sinners?”

¹⁷Jesus overheard it, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor; sick ones do. I didn’t come so much to call good people, as sinners to repentance.”

Question About Fasting

(Mt 9:14-17; Mk 2:18-22; Lk 5:33-39)

¹⁴Then John’s disciples came, “Why do we and the Pharisees’ disciples fast often ³³and offer prayers, but yours don’t fast?”

³⁴Jesus said, “You can’t make groomsmen fast, can you, as long as the groom’s with them? ³⁵The time’s coming when the groom will be taken away from them. They’ll fast then.”

³⁶He gave them an illustration too.

“Nobody tears a patch from a new cloak and puts it on an old one. He’d be ripping up something new, and the patch from the new wouldn’t jibe with the old. ²¹Nobody sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. The new patch would pull away from the old material and make the tear worse. ¹⁷“People don’t put new wine in old wineskins. The wineskins would burst and be ruined, and the wine would run out. They put new wine in new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Healing and Controversy at the Pool of Bethesda

(Jn 5:1-47)

^5:1After that, there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²At the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool that had five porches, called Bethesda in Hebrew. ³A crowd of infirm, blind, lame, and paralyzed people was lying in these porches. [⁴]ms ⁵One guy had been in his condition for thirty-eight years.

⁶When Jesus saw him and knew he’d already been there a long time, he said, “Do you want to be cured?”

⁷The crippled man answered, “Sir, I don’t have anybody to take me in the pool when the water stirs. While I’m making my way down, somebody else gets there ahead of me.”

⁸Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your bedroll, and walk.”

⁹Right away the guy was cured. He picked up his bedroll and started walking.

It was a Sabbath day. ¹⁰So the Jews started telling the cured man, “It’s the Sabbath; ¹¹it’s against the law to be carrying your bedroll.”

He answered, “The One that cured me told me, ‘Pick up your bedroll and walk.’”

¹²They asked him, “Who told you that?”

¹³The cured man didn’t know who it was, because he hadn’t notice Jesus leave in the crowd. ¹⁴Later, Jesus found him in the temple, “You’ve been cured. Don’t sin anymore so something worse doesn’t happen to you.”

¹⁵The man went and told the Jews it was Jesus that cured him. ¹⁶The Jews began to harass Jesus because he did it on the Sabbath.

¹⁷But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working till now, and I’m working.”

¹⁸Now the Jews wanted to do more to him and put him to death. Not only had he broken the Sabbath; he said God was his Father. That made him equal to deity.

¹⁹Jesus answered them,

“The Son of Man can’t do anything on his own. He does what he sees the Father do. ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him what he’s doing; he’ll show him greater deeds than these so you’ll be amazed. ²¹As the Father raises the dead, so the Son makes alive the ones he wants to. ²²The Father doesn’t judge anybody; he’s given judgment to the Son, ²³so everybody will respect him like they do the Father. Whoever doesn’t respect the Son doesn’t respect the Father that sent him. ²⁴Whoever listens to what the Son says and believes the One that sent him, has eternal life and doesn’t end up condemned. He’s crossed over from death to life. ²⁵The time’s coming—and is now—when the dead will hear the Son and come to life. ²⁶As the Father has life in himself, he has enabled the Son to have life in himself. ²⁷And, he has given him the right to judge, because he’s a human being.

²⁸“Don’t be amazed that the time’s coming when everybody in the tombs will hear him. ²⁹The ones that did good things will come out to a resurrection that leads to life. The ones that did evil things will come out to a resurrection that leads to condemnation.

³⁰“I can’t do anything on my own. As I hear I judge, and my judgment is just, because I’m not trying to accomplish my own purpose, but the purpose of the One that sent me.

³¹“If I speak for myself, you might consider suspect, what I’m saying. ³²There is somebody else that speaks for me, and I know what he says is true: ³³you sent to John, and he spoke the truth. ³⁴I don’t receive people’s claims about me, but I do say this so you can be saved: ³⁵John was a burning, shining lamp, and you were happy for a while in his light. ³⁶But I have greater things to say than John did. The deeds the Father has given me to do speak for the fact that he sent me. ³⁷The Father has spoken for me. You’ve not heard him speak or seen him, ³⁸and you don’t believe in the One he sent. ³⁹Search the scriptures, because you suppose you have eternal life in them; they talk about me. ⁴⁰You just don’t want to come to me to have life.

⁴¹“I don’t accept glory from people; ⁴²I know you don’t love God. ⁴³I’ve come in my Father’s name, and you don’t accept me. If somebody comes in his own name, youpl accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another, and don’t strive for the glory that only comes from God? ⁴⁵Don’t suppose I’m going to accuse you to the Father. Moses accuses you, the one you’ve put your faith in. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you’d be believing me, because he wrote about me. ⁴⁷If you don’t believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say?”

Another Controversy About Breaking the Sabbath

(Mt 12:1-8; Mk 2:23-28; Lk 2:1-5)

12:1At that time Jesus was going along through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and as they went along, they started picking off heads of wheat, rubbing them in their hands, and eating the grains.

²When some Pharisees saw it, they said, ²⁴“Why are your disciples doing what’s against the law on the Sabbath?”

³He said,

“You’ve read, haven’t you, what David and his men did when they needed food? ⁴He went in God’s house ²⁶at the time of Abiathar the high priest, and took the consecrated loaves, ate them, and gave them to the ones that were with him. That’s against the law for anybody but priests to do.

⁵“Or, you’ve read in the law, haven’t you, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and are innocent? ⁶Something more important than the temple is here. ⁷“If you’d known what this means, ‘I WANT MERCY MORE THAN SACRIFICE’ [Hos 6:6], you wouldn’t have criticized innocent people. ²⁷The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. ⁸A person is more important than the Sabbath.”

Healing a Man with a Paralyzed Hand

(Mt 12:9-14; Mk 3:1-6; Lk 6:6-11)

⁹He left and went in their synagogue again and taught. ¹⁰A man with a paralyzed right hand was there. ⁷The scribes and Pharisees were watching to see if he’d heal on the Sabbath so they could find something to accuse him of. They asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

⁸He knew what they were thinking, and said to the man with the paralyzed hand, “Stand up where people can see you.” He stood up. ⁴“Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or take life?”

They didn’t say anything.

⁵He looked around at them aggravated, dismayed over their lack of sympathy. ¹¹“Wouldn’t any of you pull out your sheep that fell in a ravine on the Sabbath? ¹²A person is worth more than a sheep, so it’s lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

¹⁰He looked around on them, and said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” He held it out, and it was restored like the other one. The Pharisees ¹¹were angry and talked to each other about what they could do to Jesus. ⁶They went out right away and plotted with the Herodians to destroy him.

Jesus and the Multitudes

(Mt 12:15-21; Mk 3:7-12)

Jesus knew it ⁷and went with his disciples to the side of the lake. A huge crowd followed him from Galilee, Judaea, ⁸Jerusalem, Idumea, from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon. They came because they’d heard about the things he was doing. 15He healed them all ¹⁶and charged them not to expose him—¹⁷in fulfillment of what Isaiah the prophet said,

¹⁸“MY SERVANT THAT I’VE CHOSEN,

MY BELOVED THAT I DELIGHT IN—

I’LL PUT MY SPIRIT ON HIM,

AND HE’LL DECLARE JUDGMENT TO THE NATIONS.

¹⁹HE WON’T QUARREL OR SHOUT;

NOBODY WILL HEAR HIM IN THE STREETS.

²⁰HE WON’T BREAK A BENT REED,

OR PUT OUT SMOKING FLAX,

TILL HE BRINGS OUT JUSTICE TO VICTORY.

²¹THE NATIONS WILL PUT THEIR HOPES IN HIM” [Is 42:1-4].

⁹He told his disciples to bring a boat up close so the crowd wouldn’t throng him. ¹⁰He’d healed so many people that everybody with an ailment was crowding up to touch him. ¹¹When unclean spirits would see him, they’d fall down to him and cry out, “You’re God’s Son.” ¹²He’d strictly order them not to tell who he was.

Calling the Twelve Apostles

At that time, he went up a mountain to spend the night praying. At daylight, he called the ones he wanted. He appointed twelve and named them “apostles.” He appointed them to be with him so he could “send” them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. The twelve were Simon [Bar-Jonah, “Son of John”], that he named “Peter” [or Cephas, “Rock”], and his brother Andrew; James and John, sons of Zebedee, that he nicknamed “Boanerges [Sons of Thunder]”; Philip, Bartholomew [or, Nathanel?], Matthew [Levi, son of Alphaeus], Thomas [Didymus]; James, son of Alphaeus; Thaddaeus [or, Judas, son of James; Lebbaeusms], Simon the Zealot [or, Cananaean], and Judas Iscariot [son of Simon Iscariot], who also betrayed him.