A Day in the Life of Jesus — Part Two

We’re going to read from the Bible. I invite you to turn there. I’m not going to read the passage from Mark again. I’d like to read a few verses from Revelation chapter 21. And as we turn there, we greet our church family down at Green, and we are one congregation in two places and united in our study of the Bible, in our commitment to Christ, and in seeking to see unbelieving people become his followers.

We’re going to read from Revelation chapter 21 and the first eight verses:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

“He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I[’m] making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’

“He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.’”

And perhaps just one other passage, as I think about it, from Hebrews 2:5. Hebrews 2:5: “It is not to angels that he”—that is, God—“has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.’ In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

And the reason I read that is just because of that present and yet unpresent dimension of the subjection of everything under heaven and in earth under the rule and reign of Christ. God has not left anything that isn’t subject to him, and yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. And the people say, “Well, why are things the way they are if, in point of fact, in the death and resurrection of Christ, he has established his power and his triumph over all things?” And the answer is because all that is, if you like, insipient and is declared and is present in Christ’s achievement is not yet fully realized, and that we still “see through a glass, darkly,”[1] we still groan waiting for the redemption of our bodies and the redemption of the sons of God and so on.[2]

With all that said, we’re now working our way back to Mark and to chapter 1, and to the passages that we were reading this morning, and particularly now to the section that begins at verse 29.

I think having turned there, we’ll just pray for a moment, shall we?

Dear gracious God, please help us now in this evening hour, as the day is far gone, and sometimes our own powers of observation and concentration have gone along with the sunshine of the day. And we desperately require you to stimulate our thinking and enable our speaking so that we might pay attention and that we might learn and that we might be different as a result. So this is our humble cry to you, the living God, with whom all things are possible.[3] And in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Well, we said this morning that what we have here is Mark’s version of [24]. He gives to us a day in the life of Jesus. And we have sought to gather the instruction that is here from verse 21 to verse 39 under—or “around” is probably better—around three words.

The first word which we dealt with was the word confrontation, and that confrontation that is described for us between verse 21 and verse 28, taking place in the synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus, in all of his absolute holiness and purity, is confronted by the demonic power that is present in the man who assails him in the context of his teaching there in the synagogue. Our second word is the word demonstration. And the reason that we have this word is because in these little scenes that are provided for us by Mark, we meet something of the demonstrative power and compassion and purpose of Jesus, and it is that that we want to consider now.

You will notice that what Mark has done is he’s given us two specific examples of the ministry of Jesus. I think we have to be honest enough to recognize that in the Gospel records, since the writers are putting together a compendium of good news, they clearly do not include everything as it unfolds. And Mark here has chosen to give us two special examples of the way in which Jesus was ministering, the first of which we already considered; that is taking place in a scene that is public, it has dealt with demon possession, and it is, in terms of the passage before us, full of dramatic activity. He then goes on to give us a second scene. This one is not public, but it is private; it does not have to do with demonic activity but with physical illness; and it is not so much marked by dramatic activity as it is marked by domestic simplicity. And it takes place here, as Mark tells us, in the home of Simon and Andrew, and it is Simon’s mother-in-law who is the focus of this incident.

Now, what Mark is doing is he’s giving to us, highlighting for us, examples of what was happening and giving to us the indication of how Jesus responds to them. And the gathering at sunset, which he goes on to give to us in verse 32 and following, represents on a far wider basis the longing for healing and for freedom on the part of the crowd.

And you see how there are lovely people everywhere, and these lovely people are almost missed by us if we don’t pay particular attention to the fact that the people who were sick and demon-possessed were not bringing themselves. We’re told that people were bringing them. Notice what it says: “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus … the sick and [the] demon-possessed.” Notice again the distinction between physical illness and demon possession. Mark does not conflate the two. He does not suggest that sickness is related to demonic activity, nor that demonic activity is a sickness. No, there were physical diseases that Christ healed, and there was demonic activity that Christ rebuked and censured.

A Demonstration of Christ’s Power

Now, when we use the word demonstration, I want you to think, first of all, that in this, what we have is a demonstration of Christ’s power. A demonstration of Christ’s power. It’s small wonder that verse 28 tells us that the news about Jesus was spreading very quickly throughout the whole region of Galilee—no surprise at all, because, as we saw in verse 27, the people were saying to one another, “We can’t believe the authority of this individual! And he even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.” They’d never seen anything like this before. They were aware of evil activity, they were aware of demonic activity, but there was no one who had this kind of power to rebuke and to censure and to silence in the way in which Jesus had done on this occasion.

It is also quite dramatic, although in a different way, when, in verse 31, Mark tells us that having discovered that “Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever … he went to her,” he “took her hand,” he “helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.” There’s a wonderful progression in that, isn’t there? A masterful simplicity of language, and in it all, we see a demonstration of the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no funny business in this. It is not like contemporary attempts at healing, where people make all these elaborate claims and it takes forever to find out whether it is verifiable or not—“You’ll have to come back next Sunday,” or “Perhaps he’s gone behind the curtain and he’ll come out later, or maybe not at all,” or whatever it might be. But you never have that with Jesus. Jesus goes in, he confronts the condition, he reaches out his hand, he touches the woman, he lifts her up, he brings her back, and the indication of the immediacy of the transformation is found in the fact that “she began to wait [up]on them.”

In this little cameo, there is a sort of microcosmic indication of what is ultimately going to happen in the kingship of Christ.

I know some of the ladies think that this is a fascinating sentence: “The fever left her and she began to wait on them.” Shame on you for thinking that there is a self-serving dimension to the initiative of Simon or to the response of Jesus! No, it is an indication, surely, of the immediacy of the impact of the power of Jesus in this lady’s body. In other words, she’s restored to do that which she was happy to do and which she customarily did.

And there is, I suggest, in that little scene a cameo of what Christ’s kingly rule meant and means. Because what has taken place in her life is a restoration, right? She was restored. Her sickness had set her aside. Her sickness had meant that she was no longer able to do what she loved to do. Jesus then comes, and in a demonstration of his power, he makes the lady whole, and he makes the lady healthy. And I think that Mark wants us to see—those of us who have eyes to see—that in this little cameo, there is a sort of microcosmic indication of what is ultimately going to happen in the kingship of Christ.

And that’s why I read from Revelation chapter 21. Because ultimately, what happens in Jesus is that he takes all that is disfigured, all that is debilitating, all that hinders and hampers, and he transforms it, and he restores those whom he redeems to wholeness and to health. He will one day wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be a time when there is no more death. It’s virtually impossible to imagine, isn’t it? And no more mourning and no more crying and no more pain. And that’s why I read from Hebrews 2.

Someone says, “Well, wait a minute. There’s a lot of crying. There’s a lot of mourning. There’s a lot of pain. Where are we in the scheme of things?” Well, hold on. Be patient. Even if we suffered for our entire lives, it would be a moment in comparison to eternity. Indeed, some of our church family do suffer, and they do live with debilitating illness, and they do wish that things were different, and they wish they were different tonight by nine o’clock, without a question. And what we have to say is that somehow, in the mystery of God’s providence, he has chosen this pathway for us, in order that in the midst of these trials we may learn something of him and something of ourselves that we cannot and could not learn in any other way.

Can I just say a word concerning domestic service while we’re in this little scene, as well? I think the reaction of the woman here of selfless service in some senses hallows the routine duties of domestic life. Now, I have no basis for saying that except my own reading of the Bible and my own observation. But I think that the reaction of the lady here—it doesn’t say that he raised her up and she went out and taught a seminar on the Acts of the Apostles; that he raised her up and she went out and, you know, bought two donkeys and a field. It says that he raised her up and she waited on them.

“Something as insignificant as that? Something as trivial as that?” Pardon? When could that ever have been insignificant? When could two well-prepared boiled eggs and a wonderful slice of toast ever be insignificant? No, at this point in the twenty-first century, as a result of the inroads of feminism, as a result of the increasing pressure of an increasingly godless culture, we in the church are in danger of denigrating the essential, wonderful, biblical privileges of domestic, familial life. And I suggest to you that there was a reason why Billy Graham’s late wife had over her kitchen sink the sign “Divine service performed here daily.”

And to all the domestic moms, realize this: that when in the balance of things, in the record of heaven, God reckons out what he dispenses, don’t ever think for a moment that somehow or another it is essential for you to get out of there, to get over there, so that you might be involved in significant service.

They went into the house, and the mother-in-law was sick with a fever in bed. He went to her, he touched her, he raised her up, and she waited upon them. That was the service of Romans 12:1–2: “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service of spiritual worship.”[4] “What should I do, Lord Jesus, now that you have raised me up? Why don’t I do this for you? Why don’t I make you a wonderful salad?” Divine service.

A Demonstration of Christ’s Compassion

Secondly, as a demonstration not only of his power, but it is a demonstration of his compassion. Of his compassion. Was there ever a shepherd like this? Was there ever such a tender shepherd? The prophecy of Isaiah, anticipating the coming of Jesus, said that “he gently leads those who have young.” “He gathers the lambs … close to his heart.”[5] He is constantly on the lookout, constantly watching.

Surely it would have been possible for Jesus, after all of the dramatic encounter in the synagogue and the necessity of involvement in the healing process of Simon’s mother-in-law, when they finally all got together around the table and said, you know, “Let’s not only close the door—let’s close the blinds! Let us be done with this. Let’s call it a night! It’s been a great day so far, but let’s just forget it.”

And as they were going to rearrange the circumstances, somebody said, “Ah, well, I have a funny feeling there’s a crowd of people out in the courtyard.” And as they listened, they could hear the buzz, and somebody went out and said, “Oh, Jesus, we’ve got the entire town out here.” And “that evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed.” It’s hyperbole, isn’t it? He didn’t bring all the sick. “The whole town gathered at the door.” In other words, he was the talk of the town, and he was the focus of the town. There was nobody who didn’t know what was going on, and everybody who knew wanted to be a part of it, wanted to have a piece of the action, and so they all “gathered at the door.”

Jesus is reaching into the circumstances of these people’s lives, and he is rescuing them, because that’s what he does.

And Jesus sent out his disciples, and they said, “You know, if you could just slip away, because Jesus is very tired. He had a big event in the synagogue this morning, and he’s been doing a healing this afternoon, and frankly, it’s just time for him to go to bed. He’s having a salad, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.” But no, look: “And Jesus healed many who had various diseases,” and he “drove out many demons, but he would[n’t] let the demons speak.” Why would he let the demons speak? They knew what they knew, but they had no interest in saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,”[6] as Peter would one day say. Theirs was a grudging awareness of who God was. There was an unwillingness in their declaration, and they would frankly just make a mess of things. And so he wouldn’t let them speak. When the time came for the revelation of his personhood to be there in all of its fullness, that would be fine, but for now, that wasn’t going to be happening.

And you’ll notice that Jesus isn’t out looking for patients. You’ll notice, too, that he isn’t a specialist. And they brought people to him, and he “healed … various diseases,” “drove out many demons.” And I think what Mark wants us to see here, once again, is something that we can take out into the community with us, and that is that Jesus in his compassion rescues people from the destructive forces that were debilitating them. That’s what he’s doing. Jesus is reaching into the circumstances of these people’s lives, and he is rescuing them, because that’s what he does. That’s what Jesus does. And that’s what those who love Jesus do. They have a ministry of restoration. They have a ministry of reaching out to those who are debilitated and who are trapped and who are held and so on.

A Demonstration of Christ’s Dependence upon His Father

It’s a demonstration of his power. It’s a demonstration of his compassion. And if you allow your mind to go on to the next morning, in verse 35, you will see that his prayer in the “solitary place” is a demonstration of his dependence upon his Father. “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, [and] left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

One of the commentators refers to this as the preacher’s Monday morning. They say, “What would he do on the Monday morning?” Well, of course, this would be on a Sunday morning, because the Sabbath was Saturday in those days. And what does Jesus do? Well, he gets up “very early in the morning,” and he talks with his Father. It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? I think many of us have a picture of Jesus that this is just sort of playacting, you know: he does this because he wants other people to pray; therefore, you know, he goes and does a little praying so that other people will pray, but it’s not really anything of significance at all.

Well, surely it is. There’s only three occasions when Jesus is mentioned praying in Mark’s Gospel. One of them is here, the other one you’ll find in chapter 6,[7] and the other one you’ll find in chapter 14.[8] What did he pray? We don’t know. But I would imagine that he got alone and he said, “Father, I wanted to talk with you about what happened yesterday. I wanted to ask you to bless what I did yesterday. I planted, and I tried to water.[9] I told people about repentance and about the kingdom of God. I declared your power in transforming people’s lives. But Father, I want you to make it all grow now. And Father, while I have you, I want to ask you about where I’m going next, because my inclination is not to stay here. I think many of these people have already got the wrong end of the stick, and I think I’m going to pull out of here, and I wanted to talk to you about that. I wanted to know your mind on that.”

And when Simon and the others—verse 36—began their day and realized that Jesus was gone, they went looking for him. “And when they found him…” I think there is in the phrase “Everyone is looking for you!” both a clear expectation and also a veiled condemnation. Depends how you say it, doesn’t it? You can say it with a rising inflection, a lowering inflection. You can say it any way you choose. But I think it’s kind of “Jesus, everyone is looking for you! Everyone’s looking for you.” In other words, “What are you doing here? This is not the place to be, out here in the solitary place. We got the whole thing started. It’s just like last night. The day’s off to a flying start. They’re all looking for you. What are you doing here? Everyone’s looking for you.” Well, what was this, information that he needed?

An Explanation of Jesus’ Ministry and Purpose

That brings us to our third and final word, and that’s the word explanation. Explanation. Because both the crowd and his cronies needed an explanation concerning the ministry and purpose of Jesus. And that reminder is a reminder that is important to us at every point along the way. Because if you think about it, from the disciples’ perspective, the mission of Jesus was off, apparently, to a terrific start. Numbers were strong, interest was high, news was spreading. So it would seem that there was every indication that this was the place to put the tent. This is the place to camp for a while. It’s all going so wonderfully well.

And the inference would appear to be that “all you need to do now, Jesus, is build on this success and cash in on this popularity.” And if any of that is even close to the truth, then the reply of Jesus in verse 38 must surely have set them back on their heels: “‘Everyone is looking for you!’ Jesus replied, ‘Let[’s] go somewhere else.’” (“No, Jesus, we said, ‘Everyone is looking for you!’” “Yeah, I know you did, and I said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’”) “‘Let[’s] go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so [that] I can preach there also. That is why I have come.’” Now, the commentators say, “Is he referencing the fact that that is why he has come out of Capernaum, that is why he has come out into the solitary place? Or is he actually saying, ‘Let’s go to the other villages, that I may preach the gospel there. That is why I’ve come. That is why I’ve come from the Father.’” Well, it’s probably both, if truth be told. It’s not really something you have to get a PhD for, but the fact is that he says, “We’re not going to stay here. We’re going to move on.”

You see, Jesus knew the hearts of people, didn’t he? It doesn’t tell us that in this passage, but it tells us it elsewhere. Jesus knew how easy it was for crowds of people to view him as a means simply of relief from pain and affliction. And he knew that it would be possible for them, because of his compassion towards them, to be relieved of that which caused them pain and to be set free from that which afflicted them without them ever actually understanding his purpose in coming. Right?

Because in the nature of his compassion, he was happy to do what he did. He was demonstrating his triumph as a King. It was a demonstration of power and of compassion in dependence upon his Father. And yet, even in the exercise of that healing ministry, that in itself stopped short of the purpose of Christ’s coming. He did not come as a miracle worker. He did not come to heal as many people as he possibly can. He came proclaiming, “The time has come”—verse 15—“The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” As Calvin says, miracles were “appendages” to the Word, and that relationship was not to be reversed.[10]

So, what Jesus is doing is he’s interrupting his miraculous activity to go elsewhere so that he could proclaim the gospel of God. “I’ve come to do this,” he says. “I’ve come to make this news as widely known as I possibly can.” His primary mission is not as a miracle worker, but it is as a preacher.

Is there a lesson for us here? I think there definitely is. The task is never finished if you’ve simply drawn a crowd. Drawing a crowd is relatively easy. There are all kinds of ways that that may happen—good, bad, and indifferent. And Jesus looks out on this, and he says, “I know that you think that this is just absolutely the bee’s knees, but I have to tell you that this is not why I came here. I didn’t come here to do this. I came to tell people that they need to turn from their sins, and they need to turn to me, and they need to believe in me, and they need to trust me. So I think we should get out of here, and let’s go to some of the other villages so that we can tell them that too.”

Jesus’ primary mission is not as a miracle worker, but as a preacher.

It’s a reminder in our day, at this point in the twenty-first century, that heaven is committed to the Scriptures and that the task and privilege that is entrusted to the preacher is the task, ultimately and finally, of proclaiming that good news, so that no matter what else may happen and no matter who else may come along the way, it is by that standard that our task and our calling is to be judged.

I think it means that we need to pray very much for the preaching of the gospel in our day. The fact that people are attracted by all kinds of things, the fact that large crowds gather in America to hear different people, to observe different events, ought not to be confused—ought not to be confused—necessarily with the ongoing work of the gospel.

So, perhaps it will be helpful for us tonight to retain from this day in the life of Jesus a picture of him which will be a pattern for us. And this is the picture that I wrote down in my notes and I give to you: a picture of Jesus, in the early morning, in communion with his Father; a picture of Jesus, as the evening sun fades, in compassion towards the people; and a picture of Jesus, no matter what time of day or of night, as a communicator of this glorious good news that salvation is found in him alone.

Well, Father, as the sun has set upon our day and as we go back out into a world that is full of people who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,”[11] we pray that that sense of communion with you, the living God, may be the context out of which we return to the challenges and responsibilities and opportunities of home life and business life, of school and various endeavors this week. We pray that you will give to us something of the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we might see people not simply as clients, not simply as patients, not simply as congregants, but as those who need to hear this wonderful good news. And then we ask that you will help us to communicate it in a way that is lively, imaginative, clear, and unequivocal. Thank you that you have come as the great Shepherd of the sheep. Your sheep hear your voice, and they follow you.[12] Thank you that because you are our Shepherd, you will always give us what we need—sometimes what we want, but always what we need. And even when dark forces come against us, even when we face the valley of the shadow of death,[13] even there you will be our friend and our guide. And in you we rest. And in your name we pray. Amen.

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[1] 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).

[2] See Romans 8:23.

[3] See Matthew 19:26; Mark 9:23; 10:27; 14:36.

[4] Romans 12:1 (paraphrased).

[5] Isaiah 40:11 (NIV 1984).

[6] Matthew 16:16 (NIV 1984).

[7] See Mark 6:46.

[8] See Mark 14:35.

[9] See 1 Corinthians 3:6.

[10] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1846), 3:400.

[11] Matthew 9:36 (NIV 1984).

[12] See John 10:27.

[13] See Psalm 23:4.