Every superhero has a secret to their great strength, and a hidden something that some might call a vulnerability. For the Green Lantern it was the special ring he wore that gave him the ability to form things out of nothing; for Superman, Kryptonite was the only thing that stopped his superhuman strength. These stories, of course, are mere echoes of the greatest superhero story ever—one that is totally true—our super action hero: Jesus Christ. There was a secret to Jesus’ ability to do anything He wanted, and also a hidden secret that moved Jesus to do things that later hindered Him.
In the previous verses we have seen Jesus reach out and heal all the sick and demon possessed that came to Him at Peter’s house in Capernaum. It was a wonderful day of seeing the kingdom of God reach out and take hold of the victims of the kingdom of Satan and free them of sickness and possession by evil forces bent only on violence and destruction. Day stretched into night and still they came until the group finally lay down to sleep, I’m sure full of the wonderful scenes of healing they had witnessed. But now watch carefully what Jesus does.
35
“Very early in the morning” means the third watch of the night, or 3:00-6:00am. It was still dark. It doesn’t say it, but I’d assume that since the healings of the last evening didn’t even start until after the sun had set, that the event probably went on into the night. Perhaps around 3:00am everyone went to bed, exhausted, but Jesus headed out the door, without anyone knowing it. It wasn’t that He was unhappy with the accommodations and wanted to check into the Marriott Capernaum or something—no, He knew of something even more important than sleep, and that was communing with His Father.
We don’t know what He prayed but Mark is pretty specific about Jesus’ actions: He “got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place.” Jesus removed Himself from other distractions and relationships so that He could concentrate on His relationship with His Father. I think that it is fair to assume that Jesus prayed for direction. As we’ll see in a moment, the demands of urgent ministry were about to be pitted against the strategic plan of His life.
Mark records Jesus praying at three different occasions: here, in chapter 6 after feeding 5,000 people, and before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the first two instances, huge success in public ministry had just been accomplished. Both here and in chapter 6 Jesus prays and then sends He and His disciples in a different direction, removing them from a follow-up to the success.
This kind of thing runs counter to every success-guru out there. It may have been a constant temptation to Jesus to take a short-cut and fashion a popular movement. But Jesus was not about popularity or doing what others demanded of Him. He was about one thing—fulfilling the Father’s mission of dying on the cross.
So the first lesson from this section is simple yet vital: get up, get out, and get praying for strategic direction in your life from your Father and especially when you have had success being used by God. The dangers we face in ministry come not primarily in the “failures” (though I would submit there is not failure when you heart seeks to do His will) but in the apparent successes. Do you take time before time takes you to seek the heart of God and reset the GPS for the next strategic move?
36 – 39
It seems plausible that word of the healings had spread even further and that the demands of the evening past were now turning into the opportunities of the present. But as I’ve often said, the presence of an open door does not mean you have permission to enter. The disciples were new at all this stuff and they seem a little miffed that Jesus would step away and be somewhere they didn’t know. It was just the beginning, really, of Jesus acting in ways counter to what they expected because He had come to be a Rescuer in a way they simply could not comprehend.
“Everyone’s looking for you” they exclaimed—meaning “why’d you run off when there’s work to do?” In response, Jesus does just the opposite and says “let’s move on, right now!” In fact, the phrase “let’s go on” could suggest that Jesus had already left and was perhaps just waiting for His disciples to find Him. Returning to bask in the accolades of healing would seem the logical thing to do, but not the right thing. That’s something we must often struggle with as well. The question we must ask ourselves, and ask God in prayer is: “what will bring you glory from my life today and into the future?” In this case the thing that brought the Father glory was to have the Son continue to preach the gospel because short term healing without salvation is meaningless. Really, short term anything without salvation is meaningless. Though not an excuse to without aid to those hurting—we must always at some point keep the gospel in mind.
So before things got too far out of hand—before the people started fixating on the short-term solutions to life—Jesus refocuses on His core ministry and heads out to preach the kingdom of God in the sixty by thirty mile section of Israel known as Galilee with over 250 towns to preach in. Notice, though, that our super action hero fights and wins against the enemy wherever He goes! Then, just one event, threatens Jesus’ plan of action.
40 – 42
The King James identifies the man as a “leper.” The word means “scaly” and was used for a whole host of incurable serious skin diseases. Some were contagious while others were benign, but under the Law, anyone with such a disease was a social and religious outcast. The fact that this man approaches Jesus shows his courage and his humility. Many people were afraid of catching leprosy and so would even throw rocks at them to keep them at a distance. Lepers lived in outside colonies until they were healed or died. Leprosy is often used as a metaphor for sin—an incurable disease that separates us from fellowship and relationship with God.
Like this leper, though, when we come to Jesus on our knees and ask for healing, we find it. Notice how he says “if you are willing.” Surely this man had heard of Jesus miraculous powers to heal. He could have said “it’s only fair that if you healed others you should heal me too.” Healing from sin is not a demand we make for fairness, it is a request we make from a humble position on our knees, knowing we are doomed and also knowing Jesus is the only chance we have.
Mark records something crucial about Jesus’ character here: His compassion. The Greek word means “to be moved as to one’s bowels”. The bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity. Jesus looked on this man and knew the suffering this disease had wrought on his life. His immediate response was “I am willing.” Do you know that Jesus has that same compassion when it comes to your suffering? As we’ll see, Jesus’ compassion is what drove Him to heal anyone who asked, but it would also hinder Him from fulfilling what the Father sent Him to do: preach the gospel. It is not a mistake or error at all: God is moved with compassion and will stop whatever He is doing to respond to a humble prayer for healing; even it meant putting off something else. What a loving God we have! Notice too that Jesus reached out His hand to touch the leper. Normally this would have made Jesus unclean. Jesus is willing to reach out into your uncleanness but instead of us making Him unclean, He makes us clean!
Next Jesus has a stern warning for the man, which will be ignored.
43 – 44
Jesus did this often—performed a miracle and then told them to keep quiet about it. I’m sure! The greatest thing ever to happen to this man and he’s going to keep silent about it? Jesus tells the man to go to the priests. I think there are several reasons for this. One was perhaps to put the religious leaders on notice that One was among them that could command cleanness where none was ever expected. The other is the wonderful ceremony that was to be performed in the case of a cleansing from leprosy.
The ceremony comes from Leviticus 14. After the priest examines the leper to make sure they are clean:
Leviticus 14:3-7 And the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him; and indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, 4 then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. 5 And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. 6 As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. 7 And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. NKJV
The symbolism of this ceremony are immense. The two birds represent us and Jesus. The bird that is killed is the Lord, who takes away our uncleanness by becoming “sin” or uncleanness for us. We are dipped in His blood—and then this is the wonderful part—are let loose in an open field. No more sin, not more uncleanness, no more captivity—we are free.
Well, there is no evidence that the man did this, but what he does do is only natural, he shares the good news with everyone!
45
This man was quite the evangelist. He spread the news about healing from an incurable disease so effectively that Jesus could no longer go into the villages, lest a riot break out, but instead stayed in the open country and let people come to Him.
Conclusions
The conclusion is really simple: Stay in communication with God for your small part today in His great plan for eternity, not letting your surroundings move you away from that direction. But also be aware of those around you and let God move you with compassion to be His hands and feet, even if that seems to deter you from today’s plan.
