Friends In Need

Jesus spent a lot of time in Capernaum when He started out in His ministry. In particular He stayed with Simon Peter the fisherman whose house happened to be very near the synagogue. So when the story started we read of Him being in the house, we can take it that He was in Simon Peter's house which you may also say His own home. Everywhere that He went, Jesus loved to teach the people, who came to hear His teaching, all about the love of God the Father. So when the story started, it was just another day that Jesus was teaching at home.

So many people came to hear Him that there was an overflow of people and it must have been an extremely packed house. So when the four friends heard that Jesus the Teacher and Healer was in town and was having another of His teaching sessions, they decided that it was about time that they did something for their friend who was paralyzed in his body. Not being able to find a way into the house, they must have surveyed the structure of the building, found a staircase that led them up to the flat roof of the house ( very common phenomenon in the Middle East ) and carried their friend up those narrow steps. When they reached the top, it was not difficult to locate the airwell of the house, dug around the sides of the opening to expand it big enough for the whole bed to go through....

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5." When Jesus saw their
faith, He said to the
paralytic, "Son, your sins
are forgiven you."
Mark 2 :5 NKJV

10" Teach me to do Your
will, For you are my
God; Your Spirit is good.
Lead me in the land of
uprightness."
Psalms 143:10 NKJV

Are you "the Coming One" or do we look for another?

Matt 11:2-7 And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."

John the Baptist's Question

In reading John's question it almost seems as though he was confused about the identity of Jesus while he was contemplating things in the prison at Machaerus. This is a very interesting question posed by John, the messenger and herald of the Messiah, who no doubt spent countless hours examining the Scriptures concerning the One to whom he was to point the people to, as well as the Scriptures regarding himself, probably as it was with the Essene sect at Qumran where history testifies in the Dead Sea Scrolls of the smudging in the "messenger" texts of the Isaiah Scroll (Isa 40:3 in the Bible).
John was no doubt certain about Jesus' identity for he himself said "Behold the Lamb of God who takes upon Himself the sins of the world" (Jn 1:29). A brief look into ancient customs and the Hebraic backdrop of the time period can certainly help us to understand this question.

Ancient Hebrew Tradition

Though Jesus condemned the traditions of the religious leaders of His day, it is important to realize that all tradition was not bad, for God was the Author of the Torah Shebichtav, the written Law, and God was also the Author of much of the Torah SheBa'al Peh, the oral law, traditions in Judaism. It was when they put their traditions above the written Word of God and misunderstood their significance that Jesus made accusations. Tradition was a method, in God's infinite wisdom, for Him to tie a "spiritually dead" people to something that is spiritual, Himself. He established feasts and festivals, prayers and holy days, and many more traditions so that they would remember who it was that they were in a marriage relationship with. Daily reminders where they would have to realize that they were connected to a living spiritual God. They were reminded every day (morning and evening sacrifices), every week (Sabbath), every month (new moons), every year (harvest feasts), every 7 years (Sabbatical year), and every 50 years (Jubilee year).
Even when men went to the bathroom they were reminded daily of the Covenant that God cut with them through circumcision. Tradition was indeed an essential ingredient that connected a physical people to a God who was not of their 5 senses, until the day that Messiah would come and breathe the Holy Spirit into them and to all believers known as "the church" who would be not only Jews, but gentiles as well, "born from above" as the Scripture says.

(to be continued...)