Bible Study for June 7.2026

Opening Prayer:

Creator of all, we thank you for the opportunity to gather in study. Open our minds and hearts. By the power of the Holy Spirit, unite us in faith, hope, and love. Help us to be faithful to the gospel and to walk humbly with you. Grant us your peace as we grow in wisdom and understanding. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 Do the differing versions of the same story in the gospels (for example. Matthew compared to Mark) add to, or detract from, your understanding of their message?

Tax collecting in the Roman world was a legal system of graft in which the tax collector paid the taxes for his district and then received authority to raise whatever he could from the populace to recompense himself. Matthew 9:9-13 comes from Mark 2:13-17 with the invitation to “follow” Jesus representing an invitation to become Jesus’s student. Such an invitation shocked the Pharisees because the Pharisees considered tax collectors to be the worst kind of collaborators with the Roman occupiers.

Matthew 9:18-26 retells Mark’s stories of the healing of Jarius’ daughter and that of the woman with a flow of blood (Mark 5:21-43) with certain interesting differences. In Matthew, the ruler Jarius is unnamed (verse 18), and he reports that his daughter has died, asking Jesus to lay his hand on her despite her death in hopes of a cure. In Mark, the news of the child’s death comes while Jesus is en route to her house (Mark 5:35). The woman who touched Jesus clothing in Mark 5:24b-34 with the result that Jesus asks who touched him, does nothing of the sort in Matthew. Instead, the woman believes that she would be healed if she could touch his garment, and Jesus turns only to pronounce her cured (verse 22). Finally, in Mark, Jesus cured Jarius’s daughter by means of the Aramaic words talitha cumi (Mark 5:41), but in Matthew these possibly magic words are omitted.

Romans 4:13-24 How do you understand the role of law vs. faith for those who lived before Moses?

Converts to Judaism have no genealogy from Israel. Therefore, Pharisaic teaching gave them an artificial genealogy as children of Abraham, the first “convert” to the faith. In the present chapter Paul has just argued (4:1-12) that Abraham received God’s justification because of his faith (Genesis 15:6) before he received the command to be circumcised (Genesis 17:10). Thus faith came before the command (law). The way in which the Gentiles share in the lineage of Abraham, therefore, is through faith, not through circumcision. In verses 23-25 Paul draws attention to the fact that Abraham, who lived before the law was given, was still able to gain righteousness through faith. As the father of the converts, who also do not have the Law of Moses, their father’s ability to gain righteousness through faith is also possible for the offspring.

Closing Prayer