Trinity Baptist Church

The Book of Mark

Kingdom Power

Mark 1:29–39

 

It’s important to note that in the opening verse of Mark, Mark makes this claim that the story he is going to be telling is about “the Son of God”.  It just seems to me that if you are going to make that claim, you better be able to back it up.

 

So the very first thing he tells us about is John the Baptist saying, “After me, one is coming who is mightier than I and I am not fit to stoop down and untie His sandals. I baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

 

Then, in verses 10 and 11 Mark takes us to the baptism of Jesus and the heavens open, the Spirit descends upon Him and the voice of God says, “You are My beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased.”

 

Then Jesus begins His ministry by withstanding the temptations of Satan Himself, ordering demons around and seeing men drop everything in order to follow Him.

 

So by the time we are only 28 verses into this book, we have amassed a great amount of evidence from several different perspectives to the deity and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Tonight we come to verses 29 and we get to observe just a part of one day in the life of Christ.

 

Verse 21 said they went into Capernaum and went into the synagogue because it was the Sabbath and Jesus was teaching, and that's where He cast the demon out. At verse 29, it’s still the same day. That would have occurred in the morning. And the services in a Sabbath synagogue would end at noon, and so we pick the story up at verse 29.

 

Verses 29-39

 

So now we see that the supernatural power and authority of Jesus is not only able to withstand Satan and overcome demons and have authority over humans, it has power over the effects of the curse on the body.

 

When Adam sinned, the whole human race fell. We were all cursed and bear the marks of that curse both spiritually and physically. So the Savior of the world,, if He will fulfill the promise God made in Genesis 3, must be able to rescue us from the effects of the curse in the spiritual realm, as well as in the physical realm.

 

So as we go through the ministry of Jesus and His life, we constantly see Him healing diseases and casting out demons to demonstrate His power over both the physical and spiritual realms which had both been devastated by the Fall and by sin.  And in this very brief summary of just part of one day, there are countless healings and deliverances that occurred.

 

Notice, first of all,

 

 

It is clear that He and others are declaring Him to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, but can He prove it? Does He have power that belongs only to God?

 

Verse 29

 

Now at this point, these four guys have been following Jesus since He called them.  They had left their nets and business to now become full-time followers of Jesus. And they had been there in the synagogue and now they invite Him home for lunch.

 

Now from 1 Corinthians 9:5 we know Simon Peter was married and he and his wife go on mission trips together as did some of the other men and their wives and the church supported them in that work. 

 

At this particular point, Peter and his wife are living in Capernaum, and very likely other extended family members, including his mother-in-law lived there as well.  Where tradition says Peter’s house was located was about a one minute walk from the synagogue.

 

When they arrived, according to verse 30, they discovered the mother-in-law was sick.  Luke tells us she had a high fever and I’m of the opinion the reason they invited Jesus home was not to eat, but in hopes He could heal her and that’s exactly what happened.

 

No sooner had He come to the house than they made request of Him in Luke's account. Luke says they made request of Him and Jesus responded by raising her up.

 

Verse 31

 

Luke adds, “She was lying down and He was standing over her.” And he takes her by the hand, pulls her up and Luke says he rebuked the fever.

That's some kind of power when even a fever obeys.

 

I don't know how long she had been ill but she had been ill long enough to be prone, flat and they were fearful. But at that very moment, the fever left her. And it says, end of verse 31, “She served them.” In other words, she got up from the sickbed and prepared lunch for them.  The infection was gone. The fever was gone. The symptoms were gone.

 

You would think she would feel weak and maybe want to rest and regain her strength, but apparently she had no weakness, no dizziness, no sweating, no struggling. All symptoms were gone. It was as if she had never been ill. In fact, she felt so well, she served Sabbath dinner and she didn't use a microwave to fix it or just serve TV dinners!  She did everything you had to do to feed four big fishermen and Jesus and the rest of the family!

 

And by the way, there are all kinds of side lessons I could mention found in that, but I’ll bypass that to say this:

 

Jesus had the power to heal.  By the way, God can do anything He wants to do in regard to healing, but I don’t believe He’s doing it through false prophets like Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn.  If God were going to give the gift of healing to people today, do you think He would give it to people with such bad theology?  I don’t think so!

 

There have always been false healers who claimed to be able to heal, who prey on people's sicknesses, who prey on people who are suffering, who prey on people who have disabilities for money.  In my estimation, they are the lowest of the low.  You don't get any lower than getting rich by promising a healing you can’t deliver to suffering people.

 

And I will tell you this, if there was such a thing as a gift of healing, I'd ask God for it. I’ve been to the hospital too many times and stood there feeling helpless and powerless.   I would give anything for the gift of healing. I would love to be able to do what Jesus did. I'd love to just go up and down the halls and in and out of rooms and put the doctors out of business.

 

I wish I had that power but I don't and no one else other than Christ does either.  Think about how thrilling it would be if somebody had that power. If you could just go through the cancer ward and heal everybody.  Go over to Africa and deal with Ebola and tuberculosis and AIDS.

 

Why don't the healers do that? They aren't going to go to Africa and heal people. They aren't going to go to India and Bangladesh. Why? Because they can't heal.

 

We need to be reminded God doesn’t promise us healing.  What God promises us is death.  You may be healed temporarily, but you will die.  That’s why the spiritual healing of Jesus is so much more important than the physical healing. Back to our text, He healed Simon's mother-in-law and it triggered quite a response.

 

verses 32-33

 

As soon as the Sabbath was over, they grabbed all the demon-possessed folks they knew, all the sick people they knew, and everybody brought everybody and it says in verse 33, the whole city had gathered at the door.

 

This has been quite a day and I’m sure Jesus would have liked to relax with His friends, but that wasn’t what happened.

 

Verse 34

 

And keep in mind this is just one day of a three-year ministry!   There are at least 90 mentions of healing in the gospels.  I think it hard to comprehend just how many healings Jesus did.  I think it very possible that there was very little disease left in Israel after three years.  Never was there in history such a healing barrage.

 

So we have the proof of His claims in His power over demons and disease.

 

 

verse 35

 

So that one day is over, and we are now beginning a new day and here we discover the power behind the power.

 

The power for what He was able to accomplish is found in this one little verse.

 

Before the sun even comes up, He awakes and makes His way to a secluded place, away from people to pray because He was absolutely dependent on the Spirit’s power to do the Father's will.

 

Three times in Mark it tells us that He went into that kind of secluded place to pray, here, Mark 6 and Mark 14. We find Him praying at the beginning of His ministry, in the middle of His ministry and at the end of His ministry.  He prayed all the time.

 

He prayed before His baptism; He prayed before calling the Twelve; He prayed before feeding the multitude; He prayed at His transfiguration; He prayed before He taught the disciples how to pray; He prayed before He raised Lazarus; He prayed on the last night with His disciples in the Upper Room; He prayed in Gethsemane and He prayed even hanging on the cross.

 

Why? Because He was subject to the will of the Father and the intermediary power of the Holy Spirit and He placed Himself always under the Spirit’s pwer to do the Father's will.

 

He prayed that all those things that were in the will of God would be accomplished. Communing with God was crucial to Him. That's why He said, “I only do what the Father tells Me to do, what the Father shows Me. I only do what I see the Father do. I only do what pleases the Father. I do it in the power of the Spirit.

 

Let me quickly share one final observation.  We see the proof of His person in His miracles. We see the power of His action was His prayer.

 

Finally,

 

 

The priority of His mission was preaching.

 

Verse 36

 

Everyone is looking for you.  I guess they were!  And I would be willing to bet they weren’t interested in His well-being either.  Maybe these were the leftovers from the previous day; perhaps it was those with less severe diseases or injuries.  Or maybe they just went further away from Capernaum and collected more people, but they're back.

 

And in verse 38 we find this very interesting response.

 

Verse 38

 

Why didn’t He stay and heal them?  Because the kingdom of God is not about getting everybody healed.  He’s out to establish His authority as the Son of God and He made His point in one day’s work.

 

And the next day He says, “Let's go somewhere else because somewhere else we can do it again.”

 

And then notice that comment at the end of verse 38

 

That's worth underlying. If you ever wonder why Jesus came, He said He came to be a preacher.

 

Elsewhere we read “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost” or “I am come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

But here He says, “I've come to preach.” How does He call sinners to repentance? How does He seek and save the lost? By preaching.  God only had one Son and He was a preacher. That's why He came, to preach.

 

The miracles only verified the authority and the truthfulness of His message but there was no salvation in the miracles. The salvation was in believing the preaching.

 

And so, just as we would expect, verse 39, He went into the synagogues throughout Galilee and He preached.

 

In that verse Mark sums up weeks if not months of Jesus doing exactly what He had done in Capernaum, preaching and casting out demons.

 

That tells me it's all about preaching and not just formal, Sunday morning worship kind of preaching.  We can't heal or cast out demons. But we can preach the gospel message to those who are lost.

 

Listen to Romans 10:13, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they call on Him whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they're sent?” No wonder it's written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news of good tidings.”

 

Jesus was a preacher because faith comes by hearing the Word.

 

So for weeks, even months and years He went from town to town, village to village preaching and proving the truthfulness of His message by miraculous deliverances from demons and healings.

 

The Savior not only verifies who He is, but proclaims salvation through faith in His name. And so, Mark pulls together these three realities that we will see played out throughout our Lord's entire ministry, a ministry of proof, a ministry of prayer and a ministry of preaching.

 

Let's pray.