Preview - (Before the reading of the Scripture)- As we read the Scripture this morning it may appear to us that Jesus is going about his day and we may get the message that Jesus is generous in his blessings. Though this is true, Jesus is more than generous, This passage is about authority, the authority of Jesus. In our sermon today, as we work through these verses, it will suddenly become apparent that Mark is showing us the great authority of Jesus, both in his time and in ours....
Scripture Reading
Jesus leaves the synagogue in Capernaum where he had driven an evil spirit out of a man and heads over to the home of Simon and Andrew, presumably to get something to eat. We saw last week that after Jesus had driven the evil spirit out of the man, the people in the congregation are alarmed and disturbed, rather that filled with great joy as we might expect, they are really shaken up. News about Jesus spreads like wild fire. People are freaked out and everyone hears about the unbelievable thing Jesus did and they have to come to see Jesus, but this is not a good thing – see people are coming to Jesus for good reasons, but not for the right reasons.
Things start off by Jesus and the four fishermen heading over to Simon and Andrew’s house. We’ll see up ahead in chapter three that Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter, but for now he is called Simon. Apparently Simon’s mother-in-law lives with him, so he must have been a man of great patience….. She would be with him if her husband had died and her own sons, if she had any, could not take care of her. Well, they all arrive to find Simon’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever – very bad news in that day and time. Jesus arrives, goes upstairs, and takes care of business. He takes her by the hand, and boom, she is well and ready to go, feeling so well that she starts waiting on the men, which means she is helping to serve the meal, probably lunch.
So Jesus heals Simon Peter’s mother in law…is that a good thing? Now the talk of the town is going to be: “Who is this man? He even heals a mother-in-law?”. Ok. I’m just kidding, I loved my mother-in-law. But that was too easy to pass up.
So Simon Peter’s mother-in-law gets up and starts serving. I can imagine that being healed by Jesus felt pretty good, how awesome would that be? I can imagine that she was walking on clouds. But, I think her getting up to help reflects more than just feeling good or an emotional state, she is expressing hospitality, honoring her guests, showing her love and respect for Jesus and the new disciples. Certainly she could have had a time of celebration for her healing and even run to tell the neighbors, awe them with her story and receive special treatment; certainly she could have bathed in self satisfaction and become the center of attention like many of those who Jesus healed – but she doesn’t, she thinks beyond herself and shows the Lord hospitality.
Several years ago, when I lived in San Antonio, the jr. high kids from our church were on an outing to the local lazar tag facility. When the kids arrived they were told that they were being bumped by a group of VIPs who had come to the facility just before them and so they had to wait an hour for their turn to play. The VIPs were none other than some of members of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. Our kids looked on, greatly disappointed, as the basketball players had their fun. Then suddenly, one of the Spurs stopped cold as he noticed the kids sadly looking on. He left the game and came out to talk to the kids. The next thing you know these jr. high kids were playing lazar tag against NBA basketball players – how cool is that? These men couldn’t bear to have fun while others looked on, out of the game. It was a lesson in hospitality that our kids would never forget. These men were world champions, at the top of their game and could expect special treatment wherever they went, but they were able to see beyond their blessings and set time aside to play a game of lazar tag with kids they didn’t even know. Shouldn’t we be like that too? A healing, as Simon’s mother-in-law received is a wonderful blessing: How many times do we receive a wonderful blessing from God and selfishly use the blessing to turn the focus to ourselves…rather than God?
Simon’s mother-in-law is the example of the right reaction to Jesus Christ – the rest of the people in town are an example of the wrong reaction to Jesus Christ. Let’s see how. People apparently delay coming to find Jesus until after the Sabbath, which ends on Saturday at sundown. They delay out of respect, or more likely fear, of the religious leaders interpretation of the law for keeping the Sabbath, who said that one could not heal on the Sabbath, so they delay until the Sabbath is over. Wait. Hasn’t Jesus already healed on the Sabbath by healing Simon’s mother-in-law? Remember, we have already seen that Mark shows us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of confrontation, a gospel that demands not only self examination, but also an examination of the values around us so that we can confront the sin in our lives. So Mark, again shows Jesus confrontation with the values of the society of the day. Scripture doesn’t say no healing on the Sabbath, anywhere. The religious authorities by ruling that healing was not valid on the Sabbath had gutted the intent of the law by removing acts of mercy – Here in verse 31, right here in chapter one, right at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus puts mercy back. Yes the Gospel is about confrontation of our sin and yes the Gospel is insistent that we repent, believe and follow Jesus, but underneath the nature of confrontation is love, mercy and grace: for if we continue on the path we are on our sin will destroy our lives, so it is in mercy that we are confronted by the Gospel.
Verse 33. The whole town gathered at the door means that the crowds were growing very quickly. They are all at the door because houses excavated in this area are quite small, in fact many houses have only one room. Simon and Andrew are not rich, but they are not poor either. We see that they are able to have hired help in their business so they would fit into what we would consider middle class – still their house would be fairly small. The weather in Galilee is quite mild and people probably spent most of their time outdoors, so a large house wouldn’t make much sense in their minds. Notice, though it is not the reason Jesus has come, Jesus heals those brought to him anyway.
People come to Jesus not because they recognize his divinity or because they want to change their lives, the people come to see Jesus because they have heard that there is a miracle worker in their midst. They have no concern with the sin in their lives. Repentance, that is not even on the radar. Through Jesus Christ the nearness of the kingdom of God is at hand, God is right in their midst….but the people can only think of the immediate , they only want relief from pain and suffering. They fail to perceive the significance of Jesus conflict with the demonic powers from earlier. In spite of the reasons people come, Jesus has mercy and heals people. I want to just say a side note here for us to reflect on – just because we have blessings in our lives, even blessings that are clearly from God, that does not mean we are right with God. Don’t confuse the blessings in life with being right with God. Jesus brings blessings to the crowd through healing, but the people’s motivations are not right, and they are not right before God. They are like paparazzi following Jesus to get whatever they can from him without being apart of him.
Again, we see that Jesus doesn’t want the demonic beings to reveal who he is. (verse 34) We saw last week that they are very aware of who Jesus is. As we saw last week, the demons don’t want to say his name as a confession of who he is, they want to say his name in an attempt to defend themselves. Throughout the Gospel of Mark we will see this shadowing of the kingdom of God and of the person of Jesus playing out. We will explore this more as we work through the gospel. For now, we see that the people of the day are unable to see past their own agendas and face the sin in their lives….oh wait, that sounds like the America today, maybe nothing has changed.
The next day we see Jesus getting up before everyone else to go out to pray. People would get up at sunrise and go to work, so to avoid the folks in the town, Jesus rises before anyone else and gets out of town and heads to a solitary place.
You may have heard about a man and his wife that were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. One evening the man realized that he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight to Chicago. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (AND LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 AM." The next morning the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and that he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t woken him when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up"
Jesus goes out to a solitary place; The word used here means wilderness, so Jesus goes back out into the wilderness, essentially where he came from as we saw earlier in the chapter. But there is no wilderness here in Capernaum as it is all cultivated land. What Mark is alluding to is the pursuit of not only a solitary place, but a time to go back to the relationship with God. Here is Jesus, right from the beginning, seeking time alone with the Father. In Mark, Jesus is seen only three times praying, here in Mark 1:35; Again in chapter 6:46 (feeding of five thousand); Then again in chapter 14:32-42 (Gethsemane). In each instance there is solitude and there is night. In each of the situations Jesus recalls the wilderness experience where Jesus is sustained by God when He retreated to the wilderness right after his baptism. Again and again when we see this withdrawal to the wilderness, what we see is submission to God the Father. Jesus is not on His own, He is sustained by the Father. We see this in our life also. Prayer is not just a time of communication with God or a time of recharging – it is literally a time where we submit ourselves to the authority of God. When we submit to the authority of God all kinds of things start going in the right direction in our lives.
Jesus is in prayer submitting to the Father…. And Jesus is interrupted, 36 ‘Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” ‘In other words, “what are you doing when you should be out working the crowds?” Jesus had made quite an impression on the town – an impression the fishermen thought He wanted to make and they also thought the response from the people was the response he wanted. They are confused as to why he wasn’t out taking it all in, so they come to bring him back into the fray. The crowds had made their decision about Jesus, but it wasn’t an appropriate decision because it did not involve repentance, it involved only an attraction.
Katie and I have this friend Denny from the San Francisco Bay Area who started attending seminary a couple of years after we started. Now Denny is quite the handsome man, but I never realized how handsome he was until he started school with us, he was a total chick magnet. On his arrival we had lunch together at the seminary cafeteria and by the end of the day I had virtually every single woman in the school ask me, “Who was that man you and Katie were having lunch with today?” Denny and I would go to downtown Princeton to get some coffee or head over to the university library, and I kid you not, every woman we would pass on the street, would literally stop and stare at Denny. They waved, said hello, all were very friendly – something that doesn’t happen when the average person is walking down the street in New Jersey. We always got great service from wait staff, it was uncanny. Denny was oblivious to all of this. When we mentioned this to him he was baffled, what were we talking about? Well of course, he had never experienced anything different. A couple of years ago I saw Denny at a pastor’s conference and we went out to dinner and there it was again – as we walked to our table, the head of every woman followed our every step and remained upon us as we sat. It is at a moment like that, that you realize, “I am not one of the beautiful people”. The heads of the women followed Denny because of attraction; the people from Capernaum follow Jesus because of attraction, not because they wanted a changed life.
This is why Jesus interrupts his time to go elsewhere. 38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Jesus didn’t come to make people’s life more comfortable, something we are still confused about today, Jesus came to change our lives, and that change will include much discomfort.
Charles Colson has pointed out, “It is absurd for Christians to constantly seek new demonstrations of God’s power, to expect a miraculous answer to every need…this only leads to faith in miracles instead of faith in God.”
So Jesus moves on continuing to preach and heal. These people he leaves in this town had no faith in him, they did not want to face what was really making their lives difficult, their sin.
Then at some point Jesus comes upon a leper. We read in Lev. 13:45 “The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’” By law a leper was not allowed to touch another and was openly shunned by everyone because the cause and cure for leprosy was unknown. In fact the disease was so feared and so difficult to cure rabbis of the day said that is was as difficult to heal a leper as it was to raise the dead. Interesting.
The fact that this man even approaches Jesus shows bold faith. When he says if “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”, in verse 40, it is in no way an indication that he has a lack of faith, but shows humility before God, and belief that Jesus has authority. And again, Mark shows us that Jesus does have the authority, for not only does Jesus heal the man by simply speaking, He touches the man without fear or effect. Mark keep repeating this theme: Jesus has the authority, He calls people come; He speaks, demons flee; He reaches out a hand, a mother-in-law rises from sickness: He heals wherever He goes; He preaches and people are alarmed with his authority….Do you understand? Are you catching on? Who has the authority? Who, though He is not recognized by your average person for who he is, who has the authority?
The point Mark is making is not trivial, nor is it academic. Listen to this: when you have difficulty with a business and the person who is helping you is not able to make thing happen, what do you do? You say, let me talk to someone who has authority to make this happen. And here is a key to our spiritual lives that is right in front of us and we fail to see it over and over – who will make it happen? The one with the authority. Jesus. Period.
Now, the man is asking for healing, not to be declared clean. Yet Jesus tells him to be quiet about his healing and go before the priests to be declared clean. We read in Lev 14:1-32 the description of the particular sacrifices needed if a person’s leprosy was cured. He is to go to the priests to be declared clean, so that the priests will recognize his wholeness. The man disregards Jesus. This is not the mission Jesus has come to fulfill, being a magnet for crowds, so Jesus leaves the towns. He will continue to preach repentance, belief, follow me and we will see next week that he will continue to heal as well.
Let me end with this….
It is obvious that I love the Spurs NBA basketball team. Tim Duncan, who is on the San Antonio Spurs, is at the moment considered one of the greatest players of the sport. Tim Duncan routinely frustrates sports reporters as they interview him. The reporters want Tim to talk about how great he is, to reflect upon his accomplishments, to pump up his reputation, but each time Tim deflects praise from himself, rejects the opportunity for self indulgence and instead he talks about how great the other players on the Spurs are and how he wouldn’t be who he is without them. The reporters don’t seem to know what to do with Tim, for they have never had an NBA star who is so self secure he doesn’t need to talk about himself. My suspicion is that Tim, who is a devoted Christian, understands that Jesus Christ is the authority in his life and all the NBA championships in the world, and all the hoopla from adoring fans don’t measure up to who Jesus Christ is, and what He alone can accomplish in our lives.
Review (after final worship sonh/hymn) Who has the authority? Jesus, Period. Who will make it happenin your life - Jesus - by His authority, not by your authority, nor by anything else, by by Jesus. As we continue to move through the gospel of Mark, we need to keep in mind as Mark has established upfront in the first chapter here, all healing, all changed lives, all who repent, all who are forgiven - it is all through the authority of Jesus. Amen.
