Mark 1:14-45 - Doing the Right Thing the Wrong Way

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. It has been a couple of days since I recorded.

I went through and pre-recorded a lot of things for, oh man, the past several days, and it made it so then when I was gone at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, that I was able to take that time off with my wife and enjoyed that a lot.

And we are in the Book of Mark, and we looked at Mark 1 yesterday, verses 1 through, where were we at? 13, 1 through 13, I believe. And today we are continuing in the story.

So Jesus, he has been baptized by John in the River Jordan. He was tempted by Satan, and now he is going out to accomplish his mission. And we're beginning in verse number 14 today.

Says after John was arrested, and here Mark doesn't give much in the way of context. You have to read some of the other books for that.

Basically, John preached against one of the rulers of this area of the world, King Herod, because he had taken his brother Philip's wife. And John preached against it. He said, that was wrong.

You should not have done that. And so Herod had him imprisoned. And here it says after John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee proclaiming the good news, the gospel of God.

Now here's what's interesting with where Jesus is. So he's in Galilee. So this is the kind of northern area of Israel.

All of the like really important people and things, they're all in the south, you know, near Jerusalem. That's the area where there's more teaching of God's word from the Pharisees and the priests and the Levites. That's where the temple is.

That's where they'd go three times a year for the different feasts and things that we learned about in the Book of Leviticus. All of that stuff would happen down in Judea, down around Jerusalem in the south. Jesus, however, is up north in Galilee.

This is just where regular, everyday people are, as we're going to see. And Jesus has a care for those, not so he can go where there's the most power to be had. He goes not where there's the most acclaim or the greatest learners.

Like, he's going to just everyday people like you and me. And it says he is proclaiming the good news, the gospel of God. Okay, what is this gospel?

Jesus says it this way in verse 15. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the gospel.

So here he says the time is fulfilled. He says what was prophesied in the Book of Daniel was prophesied to really Adam and Eve in Genesis 315. What was prophesied to David about the heir of his descendants that would sit on the throne forever.

Every promise, every prophecy, the time has been fulfilled. Jesus is now here. The son of man is here.

And he says, and the kingdom of God has come near. He says you guys have been interacting with the kingdoms of this world for a long time, but now God's kingdom is going to take place. So what's the call to action with the kingdom of God coming near?

Is it, you know, get your swords? Is it let's march on Jerusalem? Is it, hey, let's go all the way.

We're going to march to Rome? No, the call to action because of the kingdom of God is to repent and believe the good news. So we talked about repentance yesterday.

That's that turning from our way, repenting of our sin, turning away from it towards following God's way for our life. So he says repent, no longer pursue your way, pursue God's way instead. He says repent and believe the good news, the gospel.

He says, I want you to genuinely believe that what I'm saying about our world, about God's kingdom coming, you have to believe it. So then, you know, I don't know where I would go if I was saying, hey, the kingdom is coming.

I might look for a right hand man. I might look for an army, maybe some people that would help delegate and lead what I'm doing. And Jesus here does not go to find, you know, maybe a treasurer for the kingdom.

He doesn't go to find the smartest strategist. Instead, in verse 16, as he passed alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon's brother, casting net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

Okay, well, these are just regular, everyday people. Follow me, Jesus told them, and I will make you fish for people. Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.

Wow, incredible, they have this faith, this belief in this teacher. Here, this call, follow me, is not just like a temporary thing either.

This was something that a teacher, a rabbi would invite followers, disciples, imitators to come and to be with him all of the time.

That they would see the way in which he talked to people, they would see how, what he spoke, they would see how he interacted with them. It was a call to live your life with this person. And here, they left their nets and followed Jesus.

Verse 19, going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John in a boat, putting their nets in order. Immediately, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

We'd also know from John's Gospel that John and Andrew had had a previous interaction with Jesus when he had interacted with John the Baptist. That John the Baptist said, hey, behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

And John and Andrew went, oh, okay, well, this is the person that we need to be following then. So they had interacted with him a little bit then. Jesus goes into the wilderness.

Now he's come back to this area, kind of the Capernaum region, and along the Sea of Galilee, and now he tells them, okay, I want you to follow me all of the time. I want you to be with me. And they do so.

Verse 21. They went into Capernaum, and right away, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and began to teach. They were astonished at his teaching because he was teaching them as one who had authority and not like the scribes.

So here, Jesus' teaching, I want to just stop one moment and say, can you imagine what it would have been like to hear the Son of God open and declare and explain the Word of God?

I can't wait till one day when I'm in glory, and I just want to hear Jesus, like, explain the Bible to me.

I attempt to do my best to know Scripture and to explain it and to learn it, but Jesus would do it in such a better way than I could ever hope to. And so here he's teaching in verse 22. It says they were astonished.

They were amazed at his teaching because he was teaching them as one who had authority and not like the scribes. So the scribes would say, okay, well, Rabbi so-and-so said this, but Rabbi so-and-so said this about the passage.

So there was a lot of kind of debate in those days. There wasn't a whole ton of clarity on some different aspects of the law, expectations of the end times or of resurrection.

So there you have the Sadducees, the Essings, the Pharisees and the Zealots that all had their own kind of interpretations of Scripture. And so no one really said like, hey, this is what it means. This is what it says.

And Jesus did that. And you can look even at Matthew 5, among some other places, where Jesus goes and he enters into these debates on what does Scripture mean when it says this. When Moses said this thing, what are we supposed to take away from that?

And Jesus very emphatically goes, hey, here's what God wants us to learn as a result of this. So they're amazed. Jesus is teaching as one that has authority because he does have authority.

He was God himself. He is God himself. And he was not like other people.

Verse 23, just then a man with an unclean spirit was in their synagogue. Okay, so a guy with a demon wanders into the synagogue. This is not normal.

It's not regular. It says he cried out, what do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are, the Holy One of God. So here, the demon names exactly who Jesus is. And he has an expectation of, okay, I know who Jesus is.

This is the Son of God. Like, I'm aware. I'm a demon.

I'm a spiritual being created by God. And even as we would read in John 1 and in Colossians 1, all things were made through Jesus. And so here, the creator of this demon has now entered into the area, and the demon thinks, okay, it's time is up.

I'm going to be sent to, like we mentioned actually in the study in 2 Peter, I'm going to Tartarus. Like, I know Jesus is kicking me out and destroying me. And he declares who Jesus is.

He says, I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Okay, this is like a divine title, but here Jesus silences the demon, not necessarily because what he was saying was incorrect, that Jesus was the Holy One, that we all know that he is.

But here it is an unclean spirit. This is a demon, and so even right truths spoken from dirty wrong mouths can color how people think about the truth of scripture.

It's why we would want to live holy lives, so that when people hear us talk about Jesus, or talk about the fact that we go to church, or that we read the Bible, or that we want them to come to know Jesus, that they wouldn't go, well, I've seen how

you live, I've seen how you talk, I know what you have. And so as a result, I don't want to listen to you. And Jesus here rebukes this demon, verse 25, Jesus rebuked him saying, be silent and come out of him.

And the unclean spirit threw him into convulsions, shouted with a loud voice, and came out of him. Verse 27, they were all amazed, and so they began to ask each other, what is this? A new teaching with authority.

He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. Okay, well, now this was not something that was regular. People didn't normally get to cast out demons.

This was an astonishing display of power. It came after he had said, hey, this is what this means. This is what the Bible says.

Here, I'm speaking anachronistically. Technically, here's what the scriptures say. Here's what Moses says.

Here's what the prophets say. Verse number 28, the people are amazed, they're astonished, and it says at once, the news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity of Galilee. So now everyone's talking about this teacher.

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went into Simon and Andrew's house with James and John. So I'm sure there's a lot of excitement. There's like, man, we are following an incredible person.

But it says Simon's mother-in-law was lying in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. So he went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she began to serve them.

Here, when Jesus walks into the room, they tell Peter's mother-in-law about Jesus. And Jesus goes and he cares for here this elderly woman that has a fever.

And I want you to know, even if you're just like a relative of someone that you think is important, Jesus cares about you, and he thinks you're important, and he wants to meet your needs and care for you.

And then verse 32, When evening came, after the sun had set, they brought to him all those who were sick and demon possessed. So now they know, like, OK, if someone's sick and you bring in Jesus, they're no longer sick.

If someone's demon possessed and Jesus interacts with them, they are no longer demon possessed. And man, what a call to our lives that if Jesus is genuinely in our life, we should not be pursuing and following who we once were.

Maybe, you know, because we're not physically interacting with Jesus today, there's not necessarily a guarantee that we might be healed of all physical maladies or sicknesses. Our hope isn't for this world without Jesus to become perfect.

It's that with Jesus, everywhere we are, there'd be little lights. But we have sin sicknesses. We have sin maladies in our life.

And we need to, as we interact with Jesus day by day, no longer be the same as when we came to Him, that we would call out to Him, that He would cleanse us from all of our sin, from all of our unrighteousness, even as 1 John 1.9 says.

The Bible makes it clear.

We don't just get forgiveness from God, but God wants to cleanse us so that we would do good work, so that we would no longer live according to the lusts of our flesh or just the way in which we want to live, but that we would be following Jesus' way

instead. So they bring him, everyone that was sick and even possessed, verse 33, the whole town was assembled at the door. I've heard it referenced before, poor Peter's wife, because now everyone is right at her door.

Verse 34, And Jesus healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.

Man, I think here, Jesus didn't even let the demons tell everyone who he truly was, because it would color the way in which they would receive who Jesus was.

That it would be like, okay, well, the demons say that he's the Messiah, he's the Christ, he's God. Do I believe the demons?

And I think there's a great challenge for us that we would have a righteousness, a godlikeness, a holiness about our lives so that we can proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without tainting who Jesus is in the minds of those that we witness to.

Verse number 35. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place, and there he was praying. Man, Jesus, God's son.

It says very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up. Think of some of the verses even in Psalms where David, as he talks about his relationship with the Lord, he says, Early will I seek you and pursue you.

And here Jesus does this, where he gets up first thing in the morning, he goes out, he makes his way to a deserted place. He wasn't looking for the praise of men. He wanted to talk to his father.

It says, and there he was praying. And man, may we have that importance on prayer, that when we get up in the mornings, I've got a couple toddlers at home, and so I know what it's like that basically right when I get up, they're there.

But I want to make sure that I am spending time in prayer with my God because he's worth it. And I would say let's have an importance on that. Intentionally set aside time to pray.

And maybe it means we get up 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes early to spend time with the Lord.

Or maybe it might be as you get ready in your day, and maybe you've got a 30-minute commute to work, maybe you've got an hour commute to work, that you would utilize your time in the car, not just to listen to the radio or listen to something, but

you would spend time with the Lord. I know many of you even listen to Tabernacle Talk, and I would pray and hope that it would be a spiritual encouragement to you, that as you hear God's Word, that it would cause you to want to worship and follow

Him. But I'd encourage you to spend time in prayer. Prayer is one of the most important things that we can do in this life. God's Word is amazing and important, but don't just spend time in God's Word, spend time in God's presence with prayer.

Verse 37, sorry, 36. Simon and his companions searched for him, and when they found him, they said, Everyone is looking for you. And he said to them, Let's go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach there too.

This is why I have come. Here, Jesus, throughout the gospel, he's not looking to become popular. He's not looking to receive accolades.

He's looking to make a difference in people's lives. He's looking to preach the gospel. And so here, that's what he does, that though people are flocking to him, he says, Let's go to the neighboring villages.

Let's go to the people that haven't heard yet and preach to them as well. Verse 39, He went into all of Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Then a man with leprosy, and here this is that same kind of catch-all phrase, skin diseases that we read about in Leviticus, a man with a skin disease came to him and on his knees begged him, If you are willing, you can make me clean.

Man, this is faith. This is saying, God, if you want to do this, I am certain that you can and will do this. If you are willing, you can make me clean.

Let's go to God with that faith that says, God, if you are willing, I know that my family member will receive you. God, if you are willing, I know that you can allow me the strength to overcome this sin through your Spirit.

God, if you are willing, you can see, you know, maybe your church revitalized and grown again for the glory of Christ. So then verse 41, what's the response to this? If you are willing, you can make me clean.

It says moved with compassion. Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. I am willing, he told him.

Be made clean. Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

Then Jesus sternly warned him and sent him away at once, telling him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and I'll offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them.

He says, okay, here's how the process worked in Leviticus and I want you to obey and to follow God's word. You have been cleaned of your leprosy, so go tell the priest, show the priest.

The priest will like sign off on it and then you can basically have your life back. So he says, don't take a detour, just go and follow exactly what God has lined out for you.

Verse 45, yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but he was out in deserted places and they came to him from everywhere.

Here, though this man had fully good intentions of, I'm going to tell everyone how God has healed me through what Jesus has done. He did not obey Jesus and he didn't obey God's word.

Jesus here had told him, don't talk to anyone, go show yourself to the priest and it says, yeah, but except this man did not obey. And we can do the right things, evangelizing, declaring Jesus and his actions to us, testifying.

We can do that in such a way that disobeys God. You can witness in a way that is not right. Even as we saw with the demons, as we saw with this man, we can evangelize, we can declare who Jesus is in such a way that we disobey Jesus.

Here, this man did not do things in the proper order. The proper order was go show yourself to the priest, priest signs off, and then you can tell everyone. Jesus didn't say you can't permanently not tell anyone.

He says, but this is the process that God has laid out.

And may we be faithful not just to do things that, not just do things that we say, this is good, so I'm going to do it, but let's make sure we're doing it God's way, doing good things God's way, because you can do good things the wrong way.

But when we do it God's way, it brings glory to him. It shows him that we love not just what he can do through us or for us, but that we love him for him, that we honor him, we obey him.

And I think here it actually hampers Jesus' ministry that he can't enter into any town openly, like he can't go to where the people are. Instead, he has to be in deserted places and people are still coming.

But Jesus can't do the ministry in the way in which he wanted to do it because of the actions of this man. And just kind of in closing, I want to encourage us, think through how and why you do what you do.

And let's filter everything, everything we do at and in church. Let's filter everything we do in our home, everything we do in evangelism. Let's filter it through the Word of God.

Let's do what God wants in the way God wants in the order that God wants. Thanks for tuning in. Tomorrow, we're going to look at Chapter 2.