52 Why Jesus Healed the Blind (Matthew 9:27-34)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for downloading the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll be studying Matthew chapter 9, verses 27 through 34, and this is the 52nd talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, or you can go directly to them at wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 5.2. I'm so glad you joined us today. We're essentially finishing Matthew chapter 9 today. There are a few more verses at the end of the chapter, but I'm going to include them with the next section. In chapters 8 and 9, Matthew has been telling us about various miracles that Jesus performed, and these miracles have proved that Jesus is in fact the Messiah and testify that God has given him authority. We're going to wrap up that theme today and we're going to spend most of our time summarizing what we've learned. But let's start with Matthew 9, verses 27 through 31. And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, Have mercy on us, son of David. When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to him, Yes, Lord. Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it done to you, and their eyes were opened, and Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it. But they went away and spread his fame through all that district. After the raising of Jairus' daughter, which we looked at in the last podcast, Jesus is confronted by two blind men. Perhaps he's returning to his own home after leaving the home of Jairus, we don't know for sure. It's likely that the crowd is still following him, and in that crowd are two blind men. Perhaps the two men know each other, perhaps they've been talking about who Jesus is and what he can do. Matthew doesn't tell us too much about these men, other than the fact that they're blind. It's likely though that they were beggars, as in those days not many professions were open to the blind. However, beggars were considered to offer a kind of service. Every pious person was expected to give to the poor. And in those days, of course, you couldn't write a check and you couldn't transfer funds electronically. When you wanted to give to the poor, you had to go out and physically find them and give them something. Beggars then would sit in public places and call out to the passers by, give to God, give to God. The beggar was essentially saying, Look, I'm offering you a golden opportunity to fulfill one of your obligations to God. Give to me here in this public place, and you will gain a reputation as an honorable, compassionate, pious person. Then when a beggar received money, he would usually stand up and proclaim in a loud voice that the giver was among the most pious of men and invoke God's blessing upon him. And such public praise was worth a small gift to a beggar. Of course, one of the difficulties with being a beggar is that some kind of visible handicap was necessary. A blind man would be guaranteed success because his handicap would have been obvious and apparent to all passers by. At the same time, most beggars, especially if they were blind, had no education, training, or employment record. If these two men have been blind from birth, it's likely that they would have no other marketable skills, and when they are healed, they're going to find self-support difficult, at least at first. But these men must have wrestled with all that, and they've come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah and they seek him out for healing. We know this because they cry out, Have mercy on us, son of David. We've talked about this before, but let me just review. Son of David is a messianic title. By calling him the son of David, they're deliberately saying, We know who you are, you're the Messiah. When the nation was settled in the promised land, God chose David to be king over the children of Israel. But David's importance extended far beyond the fact that he was king over the nation of Israel. God made a great promise to David, and we find that entire promise spelled out in 2 Samuel chapter 7. But I'm just going to read 7.16, I think that sums it up. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever. So God tells David that one of his descendants will sit on the throne of Israel forever. But again, the significance of the promise goes much farther than Israel. David understands that ultimately his throne will rule over all the earth. God is going to bless the entire world through the throne of David. And who is qualified to sit on the throne of David? A descendant of David, a son of David. Now, unfortunately, at first this promise to David didn't seem to work out so well. Various of David's descendants did sit on his throne. David was followed by his son Solomon, but after Solomon's death, things quickly went bad. After the death of Solomon, two of his sons fought for the throne, which ended in a civil war, and that split the kingdom. The northern part of Israel split away from David's kingdom and formed a new kingdom with a new king. The southern part, two tribes, formed a different nation with a different son of David on the throne. All the kings of the northern kingdom were evil and rebellious leaders who ignored God. Most of the kings of the southern kingdom were equally bad, but there were a few exceptions of southern kings who did follow God. Ultimately, both the northern and the southern kingdoms fell into godlessness and rebellion, and God judged them by destroying the throne of David and sending the children of Israel into captivity. First, Assyria conquers the ten tribes of the northern kingdom, and then later Babylon conquers the southern kingdom. At this point things are looking very bad indeed. What has happened to God's promise to David about his throne lasting forever? Well, God sent prophets to answer that question. The prophets said that God was still going to keep his promise to David that his throne would last forever. And the prophets tell us that David's throne will last because one day a king will come, a descendant of David, who will sit on that throne forever. This coming king will abolish evil, establish justice, bring peace, and conquer death. And this one king, this son of David, would come and bring blessing to the entire world. So by calling out to Jesus as son of David, the blind men are saying, You are that promised son of David. They knew that the Messiah would be a descendant of David who would restore David's throne and rule over all the earth, and they believe that Jesus is that Messiah, that son of David. They cry out to Jesus, have mercy on us. And again, we've talked about this concept of mercy before. To show mercy does not always mean to forgive someone. It often means to act kindly or to be gracious, to take the trouble to help someone else. And that's the kind of mercy these blind men mean here. In essence, they're saying, We have no right to demand it, but we know that you are the Messiah. You have the power of God to heal, and we're asking you to graciously take the trouble to heal us. And Jesus does. This is Matthew 9, 28 and 29 again. When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to him, Yes, Lord. Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it done to you. So as we've seen in a number of the miracles, Jesus often talks to those seeking him about their faith, and here he's very direct. The men ask Jesus to heal their blindness, and he clarifies exactly what they're asking. He wants to know if they actually believe that he has the authority of God to heal, and they say, Yes, we do. Then Jesus touches them and says, It shall be done to you according to your faith. And I think he's essentially saying, You believe that I am the Son of David, the Messiah from God who can heal your blindness, you are right, and that is what I will do for you. You're right to think that I can heal you, and in fact I will. Then Matthew concludes in 9 30 and 31, and their eyes were opened, and Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it, but they went away and spread his fame throughout all that district. Well, after he heals them, Matthew tells us that Jesus sternly warned them not to tell anyone. Matthew gets across that he's very serious about this warning. He sternly warned them. And why does he do that? People write about this question a lot. After all, one of the purposes of the miracles is to demonstrate to the children of Israel that Jesus is in fact the Messiah. Jesus does many miracles in public and in the synagogue where everyone can see, so clearly he's not trying to keep the fact that he can heal a secret. But at this point in his ministry, Jesus is very careful not to create a mass movement or a mob of people who want to riot and make him king. During this phase of his ministry, whenever the crowd gets too big or too pushy, Jesus would take his disciples and leave. For example, we see this in Mark chapter three, this is verses seven to ten. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem and Idumea, and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyree and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him, and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around to touch him. Here we see the crowds are growing so large that Jesus has an escape plan ready. He tells his disciples to have a boat ready to quickly remove him if needed. And we see an example of such an escape after Jesus heals an invalid in Jerusalem. After the healing the crowds are asking the man who healed him, and John in five thirteen records, Now the men who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. If Jesus had a different agenda, he could easily have gathered a crowd large enough to create a power base for himself. He's generating so much interest and attention that he could have manipulated the situation to his political advantage, but he's not interested in that kind of power at all. He's following God's agenda. As he does these miracles, he tries to contain the excitement as much as he can. He doesn't want the crowds to get so worked up that he has to leave again, and he doesn't want them to get so worked up that they try to riot and rebel against Rome and make him king. But these two blind men can't help themselves. They leave and they tell everyone what happened. It's kind of difficult to judge them with that kind of news. Of course, they're going to want to immediately tell their family and friends, and their friends are going to ask, How did this happen? And of course they're going to say, Well, Jesus healed us. Well, that brings us to the last miracle story, and this is Mark 9, 32 through 34. As they were going away, behold, a demon oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke, and the crowds marveled, saying, Never was anything like this seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, He casts out demons by the Prince of Dons. Well, this is a very short story. Matthew gives us only the basic situation. He skips over the miracle itself to the reaction of the crowd, and then contrasts the reaction of the crowd with the reaction of the Pharisees. So we see a wretched man who's oppressed by a demon and cannot speak. Presumably, people who know him bring him to Jesus for healing. Jesus heals the man and restores his speech. We're not told anything about him or his faith. We don't know how Jesus interacted with him. We don't know if Jesus spoke with him at all. Matthew tells us only that he had a demon and it's gone, and now the man can speak. As with the last two stories, Matthew emphasizes that people are really getting excited about Jesus. After Jairus' daughter is raised and the woman with the bleeding is healed, Matthew says in 926, and the report of this went through all that district. After the two blind men are healed, he tells us in 931, but they went away and spread his fame throughout all that district. And now he summarizes this one by saying in 933 and 34, and the crowds marveled, saying, Never was anything like this seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, He casts out demons by the Prince of Dons. So Matthew is telling us, wants us to notice, the crowds are amazed. They are marveling. We're not told here who they think Jesus is, but I bet at least some of them were thinking that he's the Messiah, because they say never was anything like this seen in Israel. This is new, this is a big deal. God is doing something new and marvelous. However, if you know how the story turns out, you know that the crowd will ultimately turn on Jesus by the end of the story, but at this point he's very popular and he's generating a lot of interest. As if to foreshadow what's coming, Matthew contrasts the crowds with the Pharisees. The Pharisees think that Jesus is in league with the devil. They're not prepared to believe that Jesus is the Messiah from God. In their eyes, he couldn't possibly be the Messiah. He was from Galilee, he's not from Jerusalem, he's a carpenter, he's not a trained rabbi, he just doesn't fit the profile, he can't be the Messiah. Sure, what he's doing is supernatural, but it couldn't be from God. Matthew has been foreshadowing this growing conflict with the Pharisees. He tells us the scribes thought that Jesus was blaspheming when he healed the paralytic. Then he points out that the Pharisees were grumbling about Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors. And now we see this open opposition of the Pharisees as they claim that Jesus is in league with demons. And this conflict is going to come up again later in Matthew. Ultimately, the unbelief of the Jewish leadership is going to be a crucial part of the story. I'd like to spend the rest of the time we have today summarizing what we've seen in chapters 8 and 9 and review the main themes. This will be a lot of review, but hopefully it will also pull together all the threads that we've been talking about. First, these miracle stories are about faith. In many of these stories, Matthew explicitly mentions the faith of the person healed, but in the other stories we can extrapolate. These people that are coming to Jesus have heard about him, their suffering, or someone they love is suffering, and they face important questions. First of all, they wrestle with do I believe in God? Do I believe that God can heal? Do I believe that God is with Jesus? Is Jesus acting and speaking with the authority of God such that he can heal me or my friend or my family member of this problem? They wrestle with these important questions of faith before deciding to seek Jesus out for healing. And in many of these stories, we're explicitly told that the seekers are coming to Jesus in faith. They believe that God is with Jesus and that he has the authority of God to heal, and they seek his merciful compassion. The leper said, If you're willing, you can make me clean. He had no doubts. The Gentile centurion acknowledged that Jesus was acting under the authority of God, and all he had to do was speak, and it would be so. The paralytic and his friends believed so much that they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the paralytic through it so that Jesus could heal him. The woman who was bleeding pushes through the crowd, risking their wrath and their indignation just so she can touch the hem of Jesus' robe. These two blind men call out Jesus, Son of David, we know you're the Messiah. They affirm they believe. Sometimes we see Jesus commending these people for their faith. Jesus says that he has not seen anyone in Israel with a faith as great as the centurion. He says that the centurion, like many other believing Gentiles, will eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God. He tells the paralytic, your sins are forgiven. That is, his faith is a genuine saving faith, and therefore he will find mercy and forgiveness in the kingdom of God. He tells the woman who touches his cloak, your faith has saved you. That is, God has responded and healed you because you have done this act out of saving faith. Now let me clarify something important. One of the most common inspirational messages in American movies and TV and media today is great things will happen if you only believe. And sometimes that message is great things will happen if you just believe in yourself. And we see this theme over and over again. We are told in inspirational movies and TV, what you really need is a determined refusal to doubt yourself. Life rewards those who steadfastly believe that good things will come to them if they just keep believing. And faith is pictured as a kind of power that gets you what you want. Faith is seen as this kind of stubborn refusal to even entertain the possibility that you won't get what you want. And in the church, we have a Christianized version of that. We think that if we believe hard enough, without any doubts, then God will answer our prayers and give us what we want. That is not what is going on here in these miracle stories. To my knowledge, the Bible never teaches that. But if we approach the Bible with that kind of cultural perspective, and then we see Jesus saying something like, Your faith has made you well, it's easy to reinforce that cultural belief. Well, I am quite convinced that Jesus does not mean that. That is not what the Bible teaches about faith. Jesus is not saying in these stories that your conviction that you would be healed was strong enough to make it happen. He's saying God has healed you because you are right to trust me and believe that God sent me as his Messiah. He's saying, your beliefs about me and who I am are right. I am sent from God. God is capable of healing you. God has shown his willingness to heal through my ministry. You are right to seek and trust God. You are right to believe in me and seek healing from me because I am the Messiah sent from God for deliverance. Even more important than the miraculous healing in these stories is the belief that these seekers have shown. Jesus sees faith as a fundamental issue. Ultimately, our eternal destiny depends on whether or not we put our trust in Jesus. For the leper, the centurion, the paralytic, the woman, the blind man, the most significant thing that happened to them is not that they have been physically healed, although that is significant. The most significant thing is that they have faith in Jesus Christ. All right, the second theme. Jesus' miracles are specific and concrete acts of mercy for individuals. So in chapter 8 and 9, we've seen him heal leprosy, fever, demon possession, paralysis, blindness, bleeding, and death itself. Some of these problems also involved ritual uncleanness, which alienated these people from their community. In each case, God, through Jesus, has brought spectacular, supernatural relief from great suffering. And we don't want to minimize that. These stories are encouraging examples of God's kindness. God still performs such acts of great compassion today. And when Jesus comes speaking for God and representing God, it is fitting that a large part of his ministry is healing people from all kinds of suffering, because ultimately that is what Jesus came to do heal his people from their ultimate suffering from sin, death, futility, and corruption. Well, that brings us to the third theme, which is related. Jesus' miracles are significant, meaningful, symbolic acts that foreshadow the ultimate mission of the Messiah. So, yes, these healings are specific acts of kindness and mercy to specific individuals that received the healings, but the healings are more than that. They have meaning and significance. It's fitting that God chose acts of mercy and kindness to testify that Jesus is the Messiah. I mean, think of all the things that Jesus didn't do. He didn't call down plagues, he didn't stop the rain, he didn't multiply the rain, he didn't guarantee the harvest, he didn't go into a gambling den and make someone win a fortune, he didn't call down fire and brimstone. His miracles have a theme, they have a pattern, they point beyond themselves to the greater work that Jesus came to do. They are specific acts of kindness and deliverance, and they are an example and a reminder of God's ultimate intention to save and deliver his people from the burden of sin. Furthermore, these miracles in these stories often hint at the kinds of deliverance Jesus will ultimately bring about. He casts out demons and he will ultimately defeat all the forces of evil. He delivers people from diseases that render them ritually unclean, which points to his work in making his people holy and restoring them to fellowship with God. He rescues people who can't see, who can't hear, who can't speak, and can't walk, which points to the spiritual renewal of those who will now truly see, truly hear, truly speak, and truly walk. He rescues people from death because that's his ultimate goal. One day he will rescue his people from the power of sin and death forever. So each of these miracle stories point to a greater miracle to come. And these miracles remind us of the prophetic themes of the Old Testament. The most obvious one is Isaiah 35, 3. Isaiah is speaking to Israel about the future days when God will restore them to all their promised blessings. I'm going to read Isaiah chapter 35, starting in verse 3. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God, he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. Now I don't think that Isaiah intends to predict here that when the Messiah comes, he will heal the blind or make the lame walk. Instead, I think Isaiah is using striking pictures of restoration to represent the full restoration that God has promised in the future. And Jesus' miracles remind us of this picture of restoration from Isaiah. The Messiah who will bring a future day of complete restoration is here now performing smaller temporal miracles of restoration. The eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame are walking, and the mute are speaking. The Messiah has arrived and he is doing miracles to show us who he is. If we've read the Old Testament, these are the very sorts of symbolically appropriate and significant miracles we would expect him to do. Later, when John the Baptist starts to wonder whether in fact Jesus is the Messiah, this explains, I think, why Jesus answers as he does. This is in Matthew 11, 4 and 5. The disciples of John have come to Jesus and say, Are you really the one? And Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. I think Jesus is saying to John, I am performing miracles from God. And if you stop and think about it, you'll realize that these are the very sorts of miracles you would expect the Messiah to do. And I suspect Matthew is quite aware of that. He knows this summary that Jesus gave John the Baptist, and that Jesus' summary will describe exactly what we've seen in chapters eight and nine. So I think Matthew is making a larger point. He's not trying to teach us that Jesus was just a miracle worker. He's teaching us that Jesus did the kind of miracles that we would expect the Messiah to do if we've read the Old Testament. The miracles of Jesus point both backwards to the Old Testament and they point ahead to the day when God will bring in the fullness of his promises. That brings us to the fourth theme I want to talk about, and that is that the miracles of Jesus are intended to give proof of his God-given authority. We saw this theme most clearly in the story of the paralytic. Jesus sees the faith of the man and his friends and he says, Your sins are forgiven. Then the scribes and the crowd are offended because he's made such a blasphemous claim. Who is this man to forgive sins? Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus challenges them and says, basically, I do have the authority to forgive sins. The way I'm going to show you that God gave me the authority to forgive sins is to show you that he gave me the authority to heal. He says, which is easier to say your sins are forgiven, or to say rise and walk. Well, clearly, rise and walk can be easily verified. Everyone will immediately be able to see whether or not it worked. So he says, Rise and walk, and the man does. There Jesus is making clear that his miracles carry a message. There is an act of faith by the man, there's an act of kindness and rescue by Jesus, and there is also a message from God. And that message is that God has given his authority to this man Jesus. Jesus is doing the work of God. He speaks with the authority of God, and we know that because he does things only God can do. An important reason that the apostles wrote these stories down is because they show us who Jesus is. His claim to be the Messiah is verified and supported by these miracles. The power of God is at work through his ministry to give sight to the blind, to cast out demons, and to raise the dead. God is with him and we ought to pay attention. Finally, then the last theme is that these miracles are meant to provoke further thought. These miracles confront us with a choice. They raise issues we have to respond to. There's a right response and a couple of wrong responses. One wrong response we talked about already. The Pharisees rejected Jesus and refused to believe he was the Messiah. They said he was casting out demons and doing these healings by the power of Satan, and that he was blasphemy by saying that he had the authority to forgive sins. Now it is true that we are called upon to be discerning. If someone appears to do something miraculous, we are not to automatically assume that he is from God. We are called upon to be wise and discerning. We don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah just because he did miracles. If his teaching contradicted the rest of Scripture, or if his lifestyle was evil and ungodly, we would know that there was some other explanation for the seemingly miraculous. But Jesus' life was profoundly godly. His teaching was profoundly biblical and true and wise. The Pharisees rejected the evidence of the miracles because they didn't want to believe it. In Luke sixteen, nineteen through thirty one, Jesus tells a parable, and I want to bring that up because I want you to pay attention to how it ends. This is the parable of the rich man. I'm going to start in Luke sixteen nineteen. There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish, and besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. Now, for the purposes of talking about the miracles of Jesus, pay attention to this next part starting in twenty seven. And he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come to into this place of torment. But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to them, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. Now there's a lot we could talk about in this parable, but for our purposes in talking about the miracles of Jesus provoking a response, I just want to point out that the sort of person who believes because of a miracle is the same sort of person who believes because of the scriptures. A miracle has no power to convince a heart that does not want to know the truth, and that's exactly what we see with the Pharisees. They're staring right at a miraculous event. They are face to face with the Messiah himself and yet they refuse to believe. They are spiritually blind. And if you and I had been there in the house when the paralyzed man walked out, we would not be forced to believe in Jesus either. We would have to be willing to believe, and ultimately this willingness to believe is a gift from God. One more wrong response to the miracles is rejection. An example of this comes from John six after the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus has just miraculously fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fishes, and the people get so excited that they want to grab Jesus by force and make him king, but he slips away, and then the next day the crowd goes looking for him, and when they find him, Jesus says this to them, this is John six twenty six and twenty seven. Jesus answered them, Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him God the Father has set his seal. He's saying, Look, I know why you came looking for me. You want more bread. I gave you miraculous bread, it was a merciful kindness from God, but what I did was more than feed you, I was sending you a message. That miracle was a sign, it meant something. Through it, God is telling you that He sent me. It's as if God has put His seal on me and said, listen to Him. That miracle showed you that I'm the Messiah. I am the true provider that God has sent to rescue you. If you look at me and say, Hey, here's a guy who can give us all the food we want, then you're missing the point. Yes, God cares about your physical needs, but he cares about saving you from sin and death even more. I have come to give you the true bread, which will give you eternal life. If you fix your hope on the kind of bread that I gave you yesterday, you're going to be lost. And that brings us then to the right response to the miracles, which is fix your hope on Jesus. Seek the bread that can sustain your soul, not the bread that sustains your body. Yes, God cares about his people, but suffering is part of life. God is not indifferent to our physical needs, but he will gladly sacrifice physical comfort now for the sake of eternal well-being in the kingdom of God. Our physical needs and the circumstances of our lives engage most of our attention. I mean, that's natural. But we can easily be tempted to believe that physical comfort and security now are the main point. They are not. If the paralytic had walked out the door and said, Wow, it's so great that I can walk, but what was all that stuff about forgiving sins? Who cares about that? He would have missed the main point and the main gift. If the woman who touched his robe had actually escaped unnoticed through the crowd, she would have missed the main gift that Jesus wanted to give her. These miracles point to something bigger. The miracles are meant to provoke further thought. They challenge us to believe and to recognize what true blessings are. We come to know God not just because He can bless us, but because He knows what blessing we truly need. In short, these miracle stories teach us that we should believe, they teach us why we should believe, and they even teach us what we should believe. That's truly significant because the story of our lives is determined by what we believe. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You can hear all the previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, but most importantly, tell a friend what you learned. And if you can, tell them where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician Reggie Coates. You can find all of Reggie's music and CDs at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.