March 27 in KidQuest

By establishing Jewish law (the law God gave Moses for His people, the Israelites), God set up rules for how people were to live their lives. Because God is holy, people needed to purify themselves in order to approach the temple or sacrifice to Him. Some of the ways people could become “unclean” were by: eating unclean foods, touching someone who had leprosy, coming into contact with body fluids (including blood), or having contact with a corpse. However, when Jesus came to earth He satisfied the law. He physically came to be with people, so no one needed to keep themselves “clean” in order to approach God. One of the first ways He proved this was by physically touching people who were considered “unclean.”

After Jesus healed the leper in Matthew 8, He said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (v. 4). Jesus knew that only the Jewish priests could lawfully certify that a miracle of healing had occurred. So in order to allow this man to return to the community, Jesus knew Jewish law would need to be followed. Though Jesus came to fulfill the law, He still had respect for it. He also shows sensitivity to the healing of the whole person by wanting to see the leper restored, not only physically, but also spiritually and socially. (For more information on Jesus’ healing of the leper, visit: http://bible.org/seriespage/cleansing-leper.)

Jesus’ faithfulness to the law took precedence over His desire for His work to be hidden. Jesus probably knew that not telling the priests about the miracle could make it appear suspicious. This could have been one of the many reasons that Jesus instructed the healed leper to not tell anyone what had happened to him; Jesus might have wanted him to have validation from the priests first, before others found out. Healing a leper would be evidence that the kingdom of God had arrived. And in God’s divine timing, He was revealing Himself in the way that He thought best.

In this lesson, Jesus commends a woman for her faith to go out of her comfort zone and crawl through the crowd to touch Him. He commands faith from Jairus, when he hears from his friends that his daughter had died. Though God is faithful, it is not true that faith is an automatic formula for getting what we want, or even what we think we need. Though we might have to wait patiently, God always turns to us and hears our cry. He might not respond in the way that we would have imagined, but He hears, and He responds.

Is there a place in your life where you need God to hear your cry? Have you given up hope that He will hear you in this area? Take hope. God is listening and He will respond to your cry in His timing.

Pray the kids would know that God will hear them and respond to them, too. God loves them and cares about them because they are His children. Though they might need to be patient, they can trust in the knowledge that God will hear and respond.