Verses 27-34
27 And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28 And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee. 29 And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. 31 And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 32 That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered together at the door. 34 And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
At this point in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ ministry just began a short time ago. In this time Jesus was baptized, sent out to the wilderness to be tempted, went into Galilee to proclaim the kingdom of God, called His first disciples, is at the synagogue teaching, and then goes to the house of two of His disciples. In this short time Jesus has had, at least from a natural perspective, quite an odd journey so far. One cannot help but wonder how the people who witnessed these scenes interpreted Jesus and what He did.
Jesus is markedly different from other people. He stands out; you cannot help but notice Him. People you have known for a long time, people of sound mind, just up and leave what they were doing to go and follow Him. Talk about strange. And then Jesus goes into the place you worship at every week and begins teaching. He teaches much differently than what you are used to. Jesus actually sounds like He has something you need to hear, He sounds like He even believes what He’s teaching on. And He is just teaching right from the Scripture; He doesn’t even mention the famous debate that took place over this text’s meaning, the debate that is ALWAYS mentioned when this passage comes up. You think this trip to the synagogue is turning out to be different than what you expected, but its okay; in fact, it’s pretty interesting.
So here you are, listening to Jesus, and a man stands up and screams “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” That’s, ummm, not what you were expecting. It’s quite an odd event, actually. I don’t know about you, but I have never been listening to someone give a sermon where somebody from the audience stands up and cries out against what the speaker is saying. The closest thing to this that I have experienced is hearing someone scream the word heretic at a Christian conference when a famous Bible teacher was walking to the podium.
But this guy in the synagogue isn’t just trying to create a scene; he’s actually possessed by a demon. Jesus then goes and exorcises the unclean spirit out of the man. Suffice it to say, this is no ordinary Sunday at Main Street Baptist.
Jesus then leaves the synagogue and goes to the house of two of His disciples. When he arrives there, he heals someone. It’s crazy. There is no one like this Jesus. He teaches with authority, he has authority over evil spirits, he has authority over illness, is there anything Jesus can’t do?
What is interesting is that after Jesus performs some very public acts of ministry, He leaves from there to go to His disciple’s home. Jesus could easily stir up the people and cause the kingdom of God to come by force. But instead, Jesus goes to participate in the personal lives of His followers. Jesus knows that His disciples need a healing touch right in the center of where they live.
In our day and time, a fever is not that big of a deal; we have medicine, and the warmth and coolness of our homes that help us to deal with our illness better. In those days even something as seemingly insignificant as a fever could easily lead to more sickness and eventually lead into death. Having good medicine, cool drinking water, or the comforts of a modern home were not as easily accessible as they are today. Getting sick with something like a fever, if you didn’t die from complications, could damage your body in irreparable ways. Jesus stepping in to heal this lady with the fever was not like Him healing someone’s everyday headache; Jesus was healing someone suffering from something that could have proved devastating to both her and her family.
Jesus not only stepped in to restore something in His disciples’ lives once upon a time, He steps in to our lives even today. Jesus steps into the center of our lives, into the places where all of our mess and all of Jesus need to meet the most.
But Jesus doesn’t step into the life of Simon and Andrew to heal Simon’s mother-in-law as an end in its self. Jesus never comes into our life just to make things look better on the outside; He comes to heal us from the inside outside. When Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, the end result is her being able to serve them. She probably did it out a sense of joy and not out of a sense of duty. She felt the healing from the Lord and got up to graciously serve this miraculous man.
After Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, people start coming by the house later that evening bringing other people who needed healing from the Lord. In fact, verse 33 says that the whole city was gathered there. There is a huge build that has happened in Jesus’ ministry in such a short time so far. Jesus goes from living in obscurity to being relatively famous very quickly.
An odd feature the Gospel of Mark contains is something known as the Messianic Secret. The end of verse 34 tells, “And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.” Jesus has this ongoing thing throughout the book of Mark where He does things that show Himself to be the Messiah, but He does it in such a way that He keeps His being the Messiah hidden. Jesus even seems intentional about people not knowing that he is the Messiah.
The Scripture does not give any perspicuous indication as to why Jesus may have done this, but it is clear throughout the book of Mark, and throughout all of Scripture, that the work of God sort of evades us. We can’t quite grasp it or see it clearly; we know God is at work in our lives and in the world, but we can’t quite see it or define what it is He is doing.
As it is true of the Gospel of Mark, so it is also true of our experience with God today. God is present with us, but the work He is doing is steps ahead of us. We can’t figure it out; we shouldn’t try to figure it out. A lot of what we have to learn to do as Christians is to live in the tension of knowing God in the present moment and stepping forward into an unknown future where we know God better but are nevertheless surprised by who He shows Himself to be and where He is leading us.
It’s always a journey where we understand more the longer we walk with Christ, but there is something about God and the work He is doing that always evades us. Living in this tension is not an easy thing, but it is how the Lord works. We may gather more frustration than insight into why this is the way it is, but we must always come back to the promise of God that tells us, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Questions for Mark 1:27-34
1. Have you ever been in the presence of a person who really knows the Lord? What was different about them? How do people respond to that person?
2. When the Lord saved you, what areas of your life did you see the Lord change that surprised you?
3. In what ways has the Lord brought about restoration or wholeness to the central parts of your life?
4. Why does the Lord desire that He be known and experienced in the central most aspects of our lives?
5. What do you do when you cannot sense that the Lord is at work in a situation?
6. Why does God choose to work in mysterious, and sometimes even hidden, ways?
Verses 35-39
35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.
So far in Mark, Jesus, a man once living in obscurity, began His ministry a short time ago. In this short period of time a lot of things have happened. Jesus’ work has gained a lot of attention; so much so that when he goes to a friend’s house to rest, the crowds follow him there. He cannot seem to get away from the crowds.
This section of Mark begins with Jesus going to have some private time on His own. Verse 35 tells us a lot of things, some of which are easy to miss. One of the first things the verse tells us is that Jesus rose “very early in the morning, while it was still dark”. This is not given to us simply to let us know some sort of declaration about the time of day Jesus set out to do this. One of the things to note is that it seems as though there is intentionality on Jesus’ part as to his going out to do this. He goes out “while it was still dark”, at a time when few people would be awake; there may have been some people moving about taking care of morning chores, but it would have been unlikely that they would have neglected the duties they do when they first get up to go find Jesus.
Verse 35 also tells us that Jesus goes “out to a desolate place”, which helps to show that Jesus not only rose early “to beat the crowd”, He even goes out to a place where it would be unlikely for people to be out and about at that hour of the day. Jesus sets a time aside to go by Himself to a very private place to pray.
What seems odd about this is not that Jesus wakes up early and sets out for a place to be by Himself. What is odd is that Jesus is going to pray. Although Jesus is a man in this section of Mark, Jesus is also at that same time God. We might play it down to explain it so that it seems less odd by saying that it is the Son having fellowship with the Father, which is altogether truth, but in many ways we miss the weirdness that this is in and of itself. In an essence, this verse is telling us that God is praying to God. They are different persons in the Godhead, but what is interesting is that while there is an inseparable connectedness between the three persons of God, there is still a need for them to be in relationship with one another; this is true not only in time, but also in eternity as well. Jesus is wholly God, but He is also wholly man in every aspect. Many people try to minimize these aspects in many ways, shifting from one extreme to the other, not balancing that Jesus is both fully, fully God and fully, fully man.
Question(s)
Even though Jesus has an inseparable connectedness to the Father, why does he need to pray?
What would Jesus’ praying help him to do?
Whether it was a short or long time we do not know, but after some time had passed people began looking for Jesus. The type of group that was with Simon is not mentioned, but it could just as easily have been just the people staying at Simon’s house as it could have been another crowd of people. If you had someone staying at your house and when you woke up they were nowhere to be found, you would likely go out searching for them to see if they were okay. With verse 33 telling us that “the whole city was gathered together at the door” of Simon’s house the night before, it is also likely that there might have been a crowd coming again the next morning to take in the signs and wonders. It is possible that the crowd looking for him was both a combination of concerned friends whom Jesus was staying with as well as people eager to watch the show; this seems to be the most likely explanation, as things in real life tend to not be so cut and dry as they often appear to be in fictitious stories. Any way this is to be viewed, the text is silent in defining who all is contained in this crowd.
Jesus is found and is told that people are looking for him. This doesn’t seem to be much of a surprise to Jesus, and Jesus responds with a statement that underscores his resolve to continue in doing what He knows He is called to do, namely, to preach to people in the neighboring towns.
Mark 1:15 tells us that Jesus was proclaiming that “the kingdom of God is at hand”, commanding people to “repent and believe in the gospel.” Jesus is, in many senses, “the kingdom of God”, the rule and reign of God Himself over all things. Jesus is going about teaching, showing that He is the Messiah, the chosen One, the One by whom God was going to move through to establish His kingdom here on earth.
“The problem faced by Jesus involves the ambiguity of miracles. He meant them to
be perceived as signs of the kingdom of God. They were intended to arouse
repentance and faith (see vv.14-15). The grave danger was that people, seeing
his acts of healing merely as spectacular feats of magic, would not alter their
relationship to God in the slightest. From much later in his ministry comes a
saying reflective of Jesus’ great disappointment with the people of Capernaum:
“And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down
to Hades. For if the deeds done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have
remained until this day” (Matthew 11:23).
When Simon and his companions
track Jesus down, bringing further news of his success, Jesus shows that he has
not been swayed from his task of widely proclaiming the kingdom of God. He goes
on to repeat in other synagogues what he has done in Capernaum- preaching the
gospel with authority and providing visible signs of God’s rule by exorcising
Satan’s minions.” (Mark, Douglas R.A. Hare, p.32)
Questions for Mark 1:35-39
1. What are your thoughts on Jesus, who is Himself God, taking time to spend with the Father?
2. What in your life distracts you from listening to what God is actually speaking to you?
3. Think of a time when you spent time with the Lord before you moved forward to go about your life. Think of a time when you did not spend time with the Lord to go about your life. What was different about your life during these two times? How did you respond to the situations in front of you during both times?
4. Why was it important for Jesus to go around to the other towns to preach?
5. The people in Capernaum came to Jesus looking for something other than what Jesus was intending for them to come to him for. Jesus came to proclaim forgiveness for sins, and the people came to see the signs and wonders, losing focus on what Jesus was truly trying to show them. Why did the people miss what Jesus was showing them? In what ways are people the same today as they were in Capernaum?
6. Verse 39 tells us that Jesus continued to do what God had called him to do, despite the people coming to him for the wrong reasons. Even though people may seem to want to come to God for many different reasons, what will the Holy Spirit continue to do to those who come into contact with Him?
7. Even though there are certain things that happen in our lives, almost as a natural consequence, when we receive the Lord, is it more important for Jesus to meet our felt needs or for him to meet our real needs? Why? What are our real needs?
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