Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, the hosts methodically show how Scripture is one cohesive story. Critical Thinking with a little bit of theology and apologetics and you have what this podcast is about. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity today must address woke, deconstruction, and progressive Christianity, all topics that are addressed if we go purposefully through the Bible. Join Glenn and Steve weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S5 || Unveiling Divine Authority: Jesus' Miraculous Acts || Mark 1:29-45 || Session 5 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
What happens when extraordinary acts meet divine authority? Join us as we unravel the mystery of Jesus' powerful demonstrations in Mark 1:29-45, where authority over illness and demons is brought to life through his miraculous deeds. Discover how Jesus' compassionate nature and divine purpose are intertwined with his human need for solitude and prayer, painting a picture of both God and man in action. Through the healing of Simon Peter's mother-in-law and his encounters with the demon-possessed and the afflicted, we explore the depth of faith and the courage it takes to seek healing, illustrating the profound metaphor of salvation in every act. This episode illuminates the essence of Mark's gospel, capturing the vibrant and action-packed life of Jesus, who continues to inspire and captivate hearts today.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible, where we go verse-by-verse through the Word of God. Today we are in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1. So if you have your copy of the Word of God, turn there. As we saw last time, jesus is in charge of the demonic world. He's also asking us to follow him. So today we're going to see more very impressive things. Mark, of course, presents going and doing and Jesus accomplishing things. So as we read this next section, see if you can figure out all the things in here that Jesus does. That would be very impressive. That would be very special To an observer. What does he do? In this next section we're about to read that would grasp people's attention and show that he is a very special person. So if you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to Mark, chapter 1, starting in verse 29 and going down to verse 45.
Speaker 2:And immediately after they came out of the synagogue they came into the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was lying sick with a fever and immediately they spoke to Jesus about her and he came to her and raised her up, taking her by the hand, and the fever left her and she waited on them. When evening came, after the sun had set, they began bringing to him all who were ill and those who were demon-possessed, and the whole city had gathered at the door and he healed many who were ill with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who he was In the early morning, while it was still dark speak. Because they knew who he was In the early morning, while it was still dark.
Speaker 2:Jesus got up, left the house and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. Simon and his companions searched for him. They found him and said to him Everyone is looking for you. He said to them Let us go somewhere else, to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for.
Speaker 2:And he went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee preaching and casting out the demons and a leper came to Jesus, beseeching him and falling on his knees before him and saying If you are willing, you can make me clean. Moved with compassion, jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him I am willing be cleansed Immediately. The leprosy left him and he was cleansed and he sternly warned him and immediately sent him away. And he said to him see to it you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them. But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city but stayed out in unpopulated areas and they were coming to him from everywhere.
Speaker 1:The flow of that section presents Jesus as a very special person that is accomplishing much. Again, mark is the gospel of going and doing. It presents what did Jesus do? He did many things, even in this section. It's cram-packed with action and accomplishments. That's what Mark is presenting here. Going down the list, what are the things that I came up with that would be very impressive to people. Verse 31, he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law. Jesus heals everyone in the community. Verse 33, the entire city came to Jesus and saw what he did. He healed the sick and cast out demons. He did not allow the demons to speak. He heals a leper. So with that, steve obviously, who was in?
Speaker 2:charge. Here. Jesus is in charge, as we spoke about in our last session and in verse 28,. In our last session it says there that immediately the word was spreading of who he was, because he taught with authority and he was casting out these demons with just his word. Jesus is clearly in charge of nature. He's in charge of disease. He's in charge of all these evil spirits and unclean spirits and demons. It's a demonstration of how much he's in charge.
Speaker 1:Why is Mark telling us of all these healings the mother-in-law, the leper, healing all these people? Why is this in here? What's the purpose for Jesus? Healing all these people?
Speaker 2:These were all things that spoke to the authority of who he was. As we progress through the gospel of Mark, we're going to see different situations that Jesus does that is different from the other rabbis or the Pharisees or the Sadducees Pharisees or the Sadducees and it shows his authority as to who he is and he's going to claim to be God. I know it's popular for people to say, oh, jesus never claimed to be God. No, we're going to see as we go through here that through his actions and through his healings and things that he does, he is essentially claiming to be God. Here in a little bit, when we talk a little bit more about the cleansing of the leper, we're going to see that through how he healed the leper, it's directly stating his authority of who he is, that he is God.
Speaker 1:Mark is showing that Jesus is a very, very different kind of a person. It would be a nice story if someone came to town and there was a great healing. But that's not what this is saying. Jesus comes to town, he healed everybody. He healed all sicknesses. All people were coming to him and he healed all of them. He did it at will. He was in control of the demons. They answered to him. He was in charge of the sicknesses. He could cast that out with the word.
Speaker 1:He was the one who was dramatically and thoroughly very different than everybody else. He's not just a mere man. He is doing something that only God can do, and you are quite right, steve, to say this points to the deity of Jesus Christ. But it shows the truth of the messenger. Mark doesn't present these great, grand teachings that he did like we find in John. In John Jesus says I am the light of the world. These very profound statements. Here we have what he does, what he accomplished Through his actions. We know that he is the true one. He is the truth because he demonstrated it.
Speaker 1:He also did very regular things here that a person would do, a human would do Verse 31, he came to Peter's mother-in-law and took her by the hand. It says Mark includes these small little details. Verse 35, he starts early in the morning before anyone else. Verse 39, he came and preached. Everywhere.
Speaker 1:There's these little human touches that are sprinkled through here that tell us that, yes, he was God, but he was also a man. He was a regular person that had tender love for people. I guess not so regular, but he was human, just like us, in the sense that he understood the humanity of taking someone by the hand or the need to go off by yourself and pray. He was both God Almighty and a human Notice. He commanded the leper. He didn't ask the leper, he didn't go through some process with the leper, he just spoke the word. But at the same time he came to the sick woman, took her by the hand and lifted her up. Steve, I find this very special. This passage is presenting both the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ and this is quite profound through this whole section.
Speaker 2:You know, glenn. In this section it says that he was preaching or proclaiming and that he was casting out demons and healing the sick and stuff. Let's go back and talk about what was it that he was proclaiming, because it goes into what we're talking about here, of why he's doing all these signs. If you go back into the 14th and 15th verse of this chapter, it says after John the Baptist had been taken into custody. It says Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent. Change your mind and believe in the gospel.
Speaker 2:This was the thing that he was talking about as he went into these synagogues. He was saying that the kingdom of God is here, the king is here. The gospel that he was talking about was the good news that the king was here. Now. It didn't include his death and resurrection, because that hadn't happened yet, but that was the good news. That was the things that he was proclaiming. So, as he proclaimed that the king is here, the Messiah is here, well, he was doing all of these signs and miracles in order to attest to his authority, to be able to proclaim and to claim that he was this king. It says there in verse 15, the time is fulfilled. He said the king is here, I'm the king.
Speaker 1:These miracles that we just read are, on one hand, yes, they speak to the truth of the message and the messenger that Jesus is who he said he is. These miracles also give us a physical illustration of salvation, of how we are in need. He comes to us and saves us. The very Christian doctrine of salvation is one that is illustrated in these healings. Take Peter's mother-in-law, for example. She is sick. She's incapable of healing herself. He comes to her, takes her by the hand, lifts her up. He reaches out and touches her by the hand. He reached out and touched the leper, and the leper were never touched by anyone. This was probably the first time that the leper had been touched since he had first gotten sick. He hadn't had a touch in a very, very long time. Jesus touched him. Jesus was very human, very loving. In that regard, it gives us a picture of salvation. He reaches down and touches Peter's mother-in-law, lifts her up and heals her. That's what he does with us with salvation.
Speaker 1:The leper talks about being cleansed of the leprosy. He cleanses us from our sin. The healings are yes, it's a picture of who Jesus is, but it's also a picture of what he does for us in salvation. He reaches out and saves us. Here's a question, steve. What did the mother-in-law do? What was the first thing she did once she was healed of the sickness? As soon?
Speaker 2:as she was made. Well then, she waited on them, she served them. That's what she did.
Speaker 1:She got up immediately and started serving. So what should we do right after we're saved? What should be the first thing we should start trying to do?
Speaker 2:We should go out and start serving Jesus and serving God, spreading the gospel and the good news and what he's done for us and also what he can do for other people.
Speaker 1:The gospel of Mark also speaks to a Roman world, and a Roman world interested in what Interested in authority. Jesus had authority over the demon. He had authority over the sickness. How would a Roman look at this? These passages say about Jesus' authority and power. Is that Jesus was the one in charge here because he had the authority and had the power. Roman world would have been very impressed with that. He was the one in charge. We should respect that. We should also realize that there's an element of faith here, because this deals with our salvation. Again, it's an object lesson, an illustration of our salvation.
Speaker 1:What does James say about our faith? It says show me your faith, right? So the faith here of the leper is that he came to Jesus because he believed that Jesus could heal him. Peter's family brought Jesus to the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law was in bed sick, but the family had the faith. Steve, we're going to see here in a little bit the healing of the man in the next chapter where they let him down through the roof. So people had enough faith to bring Jesus to the problem, or had enough faith to where Jesus could come in and heal them. So it says here that in this passage Jesus did all these things? How do we know that the leper had faith?
Speaker 2:Because he came and approached Jesus and he reached out to Jesus. The leprosy, as we know now, is caused by a bacteria. I think it's called Hansen's disease. It's a very long, debilitating disease and it's a disease of the skin and it affects the skin. There were procedures for the priests to go through to declare somebody that they had leprosy and once they had leprosy they were then determined to be unclean. To be unclean meant that no clean Jewish person could touch them. They were then placed into an area with other lepers. They had to cover themselves up from the nose down on their face. They had to declare themselves that they were unclean as they were walking around so that other Jewish people would make sure that they didn't touch him.
Speaker 2:So when we see this leper come to Jesus, that shows the faith that he had in Jesus to approach Jesus, and what was Jesus' response? Jesus' response was to touch him, was to hold his hand and to heal him. As Mark's favorite word here. It says immediately. While it was a long process for leprosy to take someone's life, the healing was immediate. And then Jesus told him go to the priests, do what is supposed to do in the Mosaic law to declare, so that the priest can declare you to be clean. Now, this was a couple of things that happened with that. One was, through rabbinic teaching, there hadn't been any Jewish person that had been known to be healed of leprosy. So now we have this Messiah, somebody claiming to be the Messiah, the King, and he not only heals him, but he heals him with his word. And now the leper goes back to the priest and the priest has to go through the process to declare the leper clean.
Speaker 2:This is all recorded.
Speaker 2:This is all getting back to the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Speaker 2:Whenever there was a messianic figure of someone claiming to be the Messiah, they had a process where they would go out and observe whether or not it was somebody that they should take further action upon, and after they did their observation, they would come back to the Sanhedrin and say, yeah, this person is somebody that we don't need to worry about.
Speaker 2:Or they would say, yeah, this person is somebody that we don't need to worry about. Or they would say, yeah, this person is somebody that we need to investigate further. And then the second step would be then for them to go out and challenge the person with questions. That's the process that we're going to see here and that we see in the other Gospels, where the Pharisees start to now come out and challenge verbally Jesus and ask him questions, as it mentioned in verse 28, word was getting out all around of who he was and that here is this messianic figure and now it's building up to the point, through the actions and his healings of who he is, that now we're going to start getting and seeing some of these confrontations between him and the Pharisees.
Speaker 1:The leper had enough faith to come to Jesus because he said if you are willing, you can heal me. Peter's family had enough faith in Jesus to go to Jesus and bring him to the mother-in-law. There's an element of faith here, jesus, when he responded to the leper, he said I am willing, and he touched him. Jesus had compassion on this man. He had compassion on Jesus, peter, rather his mother-in-law. And in the midst of all of this you read this chapter it's going and doing. In the midst of all of this, you read this chapter. It's going and doing in the midst of all this. Look at verse 35. He got up early to do what? What did he do in the midst of all this busy activity? What did he do in verse?
Speaker 2:35?. He went out and prayed first thing in the morning. That's a pattern that we see is that he goes out in a secluded place and he prays.
Speaker 1:How important is prayer and how important is it for us to go to a quiet place and pray?
Speaker 2:Prayer is that regular connection that we get with God, the Father, and it's important that it be a place of quiet and secluded, such as what Jesus did here, so that we're not distracted by the things of the world. Sometimes you can't do that. It might be somewhere where you're out traveling for business or something, but we should always try and do it in a place where the world's not going to distract us from our communication with God and the relationship that we build up through prayer.
Speaker 1:I think what happens to us when we don't take enough time to pray and to get some solitude with God?
Speaker 2:I think we start kind of losing that connection that we have and relationship and I think that we become a little bit vulnerable to be pulled back into worldly things.
Speaker 1:I would agree 100%. We need that time alone with God. The busier we are, the more we need to have some time with God. Then, right after that, he goes up, gets up early in the morning, goes out to pray Verse 36, 37,. Simon and his companions searched for him and said everyone is looking for you. Well, why was quote unquote everyone looking for him.
Speaker 2:Because he's out causing this commotion amongst the people by doing all of these activities. And again, as we mentioned last session, he's teaching with authority, he's casting out the demons just with his word, not going through a exorcism process. He's touching this leper and healing this leper immediately, without having to go through a process. The word is getting out amongst all the people, even so much so that at the end there it says he couldn't even go into the towns anymore. He had to stay out in the uninhabited areas and the people were coming to him. The word's getting around quite fast up there in that northern Galilean area of this man who's claiming to be the Messiah, there, in that northern Galilean area of this man who's claiming to be the Messiah, who's claiming to be the king, who's claiming to be God.
Speaker 1:Jesus comes in one day, does all these miracles, all these healings, all this wonderful stuff, gets up the next morning to go get some quiet time. Oh, everyone's looking for you. Well, everyone was looking for you because of the healings. They weren't necessarily looking for him because of who heings. They weren't necessarily looking for him because of who he was. They wanted the good things that he brought. If we then say, what was his response? The disciples were saying hey, come back, because the people of this town want to see you again.
Speaker 1:In verse 38, let us go somewhere else to towns nearby so that I may preach there also, somewhere else to towns nearby so that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for. I noticed several things there, steve, in that one little statement. We can dig some great truths out of it. First of all, he said that is what I came for. He came, and he's not talking about coming to that particular town, because he's saying going to the next one. He tells us he came. Well, where did he come from? He came from heaven. He came to the earth from heaven for a purpose. He's again alluding to the fact that he's not a regular human. He is a divine being. I came to earth for a purpose and I have to go and go through that purpose. That's what he's talking about here. He also says we're going to the towns nearby so that I can preach there also.
Speaker 1:Again, mark doesn't give us any of those messages, just the fact that he was going to all these cities and preaching from them. Steve, put yourself in the shoes of the people in this town. Jesus shows up, does all these wonderful things, then he leaves town and he's gone. So, steve, does it ever seem like in our lives that Jesus okay, he did some very special things, but you know what, lately it sure seems like Jesus is just out of town. It just seems like he left town and forgot about me. Does that ever happen? Do we ever feel like Jesus is just gone? Not, around.
Speaker 2:Well, I think for believers, this is where it's important to understand that we have the Holy Spirit, and I understand the question that you have there.
Speaker 2:I want to clarify that. Jesus said I must go so that the Spirit might come, so we have access to God through the Holy Spirit. I would say this if we're at a point in our day, as believers, where we feel that Jesus has left town and that we don't have this communication with him anymore, then we need to do some soul searching, because we have the Holy Spirit with us at all time and that we should encourage that, we should use that, we should acknowledge that and we should commune with God through the Holy Spirit. If we get to a place where we think that Jesus has just left, then I think it's something that we need to kind of go back to ourselves. What are we doing? Are we going to a secluded place in the morning, like we talked about before, and praying? Are we losing connection with God? What are we doing in order to maintain that relationship that we have with God? Because I don't think, as believers, we really should come to that place where we feel that Jesus has just left us and left us alone.
Speaker 1:I think your answer is exactly right. The problem with my question is the way it's phrased. What do we do if we feel like Jesus has left town? Well, we shouldn't base our relationship on the Lord God with how I feel or how you feel.
Speaker 1:What did Jesus say at the very end of I believe it was Matthew just before he left? He said I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He is there with us. The Holy Spirit is there with us and in us. If we are a child of the King, then he is here. How do we commune with him in prayer, in Bible reading? He is here. How do we commune with him in prayer, in Bible reading?
Speaker 1:And sometimes I may feel like boy. He's right there with me and doing all kinds of things. Sometimes I may feel like my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling and Jesus left town and left me here with a big mess. Well, I don't base truth on how I feel. I don't base the truth of my relationship with God on how I feel. I base it on what he promised me, and he promised to be with me even to the end of the age. He promised to be in me. He promised to adopt me as a child of the King. He keeps his promises. That's why we've, over the course of many books, we've taught we always emphasize God's unilateral promises. That's one of the great things here. So he touches Peter's mother-in-law, he touches the leper. Each of us should ask ourselves has he touched me, steve? Has he touched you?
Speaker 2:He's absolutely touched me, even though I came to believing faith at the age of eight. My life has been changed. My life was changed at that time and I know that the decisions that I have made through the years have not always been the best decisions, but I can tell you that the Holy Spirit has always been a person that's there to say what you're doing isn't right, steve. You need to get back to God. Whenever I was going off in the wrong direction, and in my early 30s, I finally gave in and gave complete control of my life to Jesus Christ for him to do what he wanted to, and my life has just been blessed from that point on. Yeah, there's been ups and downs, but surely I have been touched whenever I became a believer in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:The reason why no one would touch the leper is because if a regular person were to touch a leper, they would become ritually unclean and possibly infected with the disease. That's why no one touched him. When a leper touches you or me, we would have become unclean, notice. When Jesus touches him, just the opposite happens. The leper becomes clean. If we go out and touch something unclean, it makes us unclean. If Jesus touches it, then Jesus stays pure. The leper is the one who is cleansed. That brings up a question, steve, for us when should we separate ourselves from unclean things and when should we go out and be with them? Jesus could go out and hang around lepers and he could hang around unclean people and Jesus would cause cleanliness to happen. I go out and hang around unclean things. It has a habit of rubbing off on me. When would a wise person separate themselves from the unclean things of the world? When should a Christian go out and be a fisher of men and go out into the dark corners of the world trying to do the Lord's work?
Speaker 2:That's a very good question, because it's a very meaningful question and going out in the world if they think that where they are and if they know where they are, that the world is going to pull them in and pull them away from God and their relationship, versus going into a worldly situation where they have the confidence that they're going to be able to tell others about Jesus Christ and what he has done, who he is and what he can do for them. I think that's the difference between the two. Am I going into a situation where the world is going to be pulling me away or am I going to be going into a situation where I can make a difference in the world by preaching the good news and preaching the gospel?
Speaker 1:And I would agree. Each of us are called to a different ministry and there's some things that I just shouldn't be at, simply because my old flesh will be too tempted and I shouldn't be there. Other things that I'm strong enough and God may be calling me to. That's where I should go. I think that's really an individual thing, but we do need to be cautious, simply because the world can suck us in, whereas Jesus didn't have that issue.
Speaker 1:I notice also here at the end of this chapter, he heals this leper and Jesus in verse 44, commands him to go and do what Moses commanded. There was an Old Testament procedure for declaring him healed. Then he tells him see that you say nothing to anyone. I remember Vernon McGee talking about this. Jesus told this man not to tell anybody and he went out and told everybody. He tells us to tell everybody, but we don't tell anybody. And he went out and told everybody. He tells us to tell everybody, but we don't tell anybody. I think that's a good illustration of what we should do. Jesus has touched me and he's touched you and my friend. I trust that he has touched you as well. If not, if you go to him in faith, he will. But what does he want us to do? He wants us to tell his message and he has commanded us to go tell everybody. If you're touched by Jesus, you're going to want to tell everybody.
Speaker 2:One of the differences between those two situations is that it wasn't Jesus' time yet to be a sacrifice. So he commanded to the person here and other places is don't go tell anybody. Was to say it's not my time yet, but now in our day and age he has already become the propitiation, the satisfactory sacrifice, been buried and raised again. So we definitely are commanded to go out and tell everybody that good news.
Speaker 1:There's a big difference between those two situations Now that brings us to the end of chapter one, but it doesn't bring us to the end of all of the things we can dig out of chapter one. So I think, because of time, we'll stop here but tune in next time, because I think there's still some theological and doctrinal things that we can draw out of these healings of this leper and Peter's mother-in-law. I think we can apply this to our salvation. We'll have some more discussion on that next time.
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
