[0:00] Good morning. Welcome to Christ's family. If you will please turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 1.! We're going to be reading from verses 29 to 39 this morning.!
[0:30] That which can be mimicked. Obviously we're not God in the flesh. But what can be mimicked of Christ, we ought to mimic Him as much as we can, if we abide in Him. So, an encouragement as we study through the Gospel, both corporately and individually.
[0:43] Whenever you see things of Christ's life that you can replicate, strive to do so. Really strive to do so, because that is the command of Scripture, and that is our great honor as Christians, is to reflect our God, Christ.
[0:57] And this is a reminder of the immediate context where we've been. Nathan, the first sermon that we preached on this series, he preached on Mark 1.1, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And the Gospel, as he showed us there, was a reference to Isaiah 40, the coming of the King.
[1:11] So, whenever we say the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he's not talking about the crucifixion quite yet. The pinnacle of the Gospel of Mark is the crucifixion of Christ, is death, burial, and resurrection. But, thus far, we're talking about the coming Kingdom and the coming of Christ.
[1:25] In the first nine chapters of Mark, Mark really desires and strives to show us Christ as the powerful Son of God, having authority over everything, as we're going to look at and see here in just a moment.
[1:37] And in the last couple chapters, Mark really slows down, because as everybody has pointed out when they've preached, Mark uses the word immediately quite often to hurry the narrative along. But, the last couple chapters are really shown, they really show Christ as the suffering servant who dies for sins.
[1:51] So, with that immediate context in mind, let's also look at the context of this actual chapter. Two weeks ago, Clay preached, and he showed us Christ's absolute and total authority over man, in that he said to the disciples, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
[2:05] He had authority over their will. They obeyed, and they complied to his command. Last week, we saw Kyle show us, we had Kyle show us, his absolute authority over the spiritual realm, in that there was a demon-possessed man in the synagogue, in that he cast the demon out, and the demon had no choice but to obey.
[2:21] Even though it wanted to rebel, obviously, as we see that, he told it to be quiet, and it still made a loud noise when it left. And this week, we're going to see quite a few things. So, let's read our text. Mark 1, 29-39 reads as follows, And immediately after they came out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.
[2:39] 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.
[2:49] 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.
[3:02] And he was not permitting the demons to speak, because they knew who he was. In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.
[3:13] Simon and his companions searched for him. They found him and said to him, Everyone is looking for you. And he said to them, Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach the gospel there also.
[3:25] For that is why I came for. And he went into their synagogues, through all of Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Scripture.
[3:37] We thank you that you've given us four accounts of the life of Christ, and that we're working through one of them. Father, I pray as we see your just absolute sovereign authority over all realms today, Father, and we see the need for prayer, Father, that we would be effectual hearers, and that we do what the Word says, Father.
[3:55] As Wes just talked about, that the miracle of hearing, and response, and faith would occur, Father, that we would have faith, that this is the Word of God being spoken, and that we would have repentance, Father, that we would conform ourselves to what it says, God.
[4:08] Father, Father, we ask that you would move spirit, if you don't move, all is vain. We praise you, and we worship you, and we pray all this in the name and glory of Christ Jesus. Amen.
[4:23] All right. So, our text is broken into three paragraphs, I'm sure in all of your Bibles, at least it should be. And it says, And immediately after they came out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
[4:36] So what Mark has done, he's established that we are in the same day as Kyle preached about last week. It's still the Sabbath. Teaching had occurred, demon had been cast out, and then immediately after they left the synagogue, they went to Peter's house.
[4:49] And upon going to the house, they find out that Peter's mother-in-law is sick, that she has a, Luke, the physician records in Luke chapter 4 that she had a high fever, and that she was sick to the point where Christ had to stand over her because she wasn't able to sit up.
[5:02] So we see that she is severely, severely sick in this text. Maybe not super severe, we don't really know, but the text came to indicate that she was really sick. And we see that Christ has authority over the natural realm.
[5:15] Before we get there though, in the Gospel of Luke in the fourth chapter, Luke the physician, the Gospel writer, had already told us that up until this point, Christ had already performed many miracles and healing. So we only have the casting out of a demon and the calling of disciples according to this Gospel account, but according to the Gospel of Luke, they had seen many, many, many miracles already occur.
[5:33] So, obviously they had trust in the authority and the power of Christ and His ability to do as He pleased in the natural realm as well as the spiritual realm. So, as we've looked at, and the emphasis that Mark is making here is he's wanting to show the absolute and complete and total authority of who Christ is.
[5:50] Like we just said, He has authority over man as we saw whenever Clay preached and He told the disciples to come. He has authority over the spiritual realm, over demons, those who rebel against Him from the beginning, in that He casts them out and they have no choice but to obey.
[6:02] And we see here that He has authority over the physical realm as well. Look what happens in verse 31 with me. And it says, And He came to her and raised her up, taking her by the hand, and the fever left her and she waited on them.
[6:13] So Christ came, simply takes her by the hand, raises her up, and she is completely healed. I'm sure everyone in here has had a fever of various kinds and whenever you have a fever, you feel like drunk.
[6:24] And even after the fever's kind of gone and the fever's gone down, you still feel ill, your body's still recuperating and recovering. But notice how Christ has healed her in such a way that she was immediately able to wait on them. And the wait on them in this context is more than likely that she served a Sabbath meal.
[6:38] They had a special meal on the Sabbath, the Jews did. And I'll remind you that they didn't have microwaves and freezers and refrigerators and ovens back then. So it was quite an ordeal to get fresh food and to prepare a meal for four burly fishermen because we see that Peter and his brother and James and John had gone in there.
[6:54] So four burly fishermen, whoever else lived in the house, and herself. So that was quite a meal to prepare. So there's a great joy in seeing that Christ has the authority over the natural realm and that he is able to heal so much so to the point where there's not even a recovery phase, but she is immediately well, automatically.
[7:13] And something that's really interesting and worth noting in the text, I'm sorry, in Luke chapter 4, is that Christ rebuked the fever with a word in Luke chapter 4.
[7:23] So we see then that Christ has the authority and power over the natural realm, not just in terms of how God has blessed us today with various types of medicines, surgery of various sorts, but by his word he's able to cure.
[7:36] And what's really cool is whenever we see the correlation here, we see that in 115 of the Gospel of Mark that Christ spoke to the disciples and told them to follow when they did. We see that Christ spoke to the demon, told him to be quiet, and cast out, and it was.
[7:48] And we see here, whenever we look at the parallel accounts, that Christ rebuked the fever and by his word he had absolute authority. In the same way that Hebrews talks about that he sustains all things by the word of his power, the word of God is powerful, both the Bible as well as Christ's authority.
[8:05] And one thing that we should note from the text that we should pull from the disciples seeing as we are disciples of Christ is the fact that they had seen Christ's authority, they had seen his ability to heal, his ability to cast out demons.
[8:18] These are miraculous things, by the way, I'm sure you all deduce that, but these are really big deals. There's things that hadn't happened for 400 years, more than that actually, since the days of Elijah. And he's speaking with authority, and they had noticed all these things, and let us note in verse 30 what it says.
[8:32] It says, Now Simon's mother-in-law was lying sick with the fever, and immediately they spoke to Jesus about her. The first thing that disciples did whenever they had a problem in their life, a situation occur, they didn't rely on themselves or anything like that.
[8:46] They immediately went to Christ. They went and spoke to Christ. I'm not saying this is prayer, because Christ was there, so they probably spoke to him. But we nowadays have the gift of prayer. And we would do well to learn, like the disciples did, because of who Christ is, because of his authority, to immediately speak to Christ in any temptation or trial, whether it be sickness, financial, temptation, in terms of being led to sin, being led to, in various ways.
[9:10] So we would do well to learn, as the disciples did, to look at the authority of Christ, because he is absolutely authoritative. He has sovereign dominion over all the areas that he had created, over both man in his own little realm, the whole nature, and the demonic forces.
[9:24] And I've repeated this like four times now, because it is that significant, that he has absolute authority over every single realm. And the disciples, knowing that Christ was kind and loving, they came to him knowing that he would help.
[9:37] Now, let me qualify this real fast. We see two natures of our Savior's office. We see both his nature as Savior, in that he was kind, and willing to help.
[9:48] And we see both, and we see also his nature as Lord, in that he was able to do what he wanted to do. So we see that when something was brought to him, he was kind enough to hear their petition, he was kind enough to hear their request, and to go and do it.
[10:00] And he had the authority and the absolute ability to do it. So, those are the two main points from the text. And there's a third point, which I think is very significant, that we draw from verse 31.
[10:13] It says, And he came to her and raised her up and took her by the hand and the fever left her and she waited on them. The last five words there, and she waited on them.
[10:24] What the Holy Spirit is doing through Mark in this gospel is he is showing us a proper response to those who have been touched by Christ, for those who have been moved by Christ. It is to wait on them.
[10:35] And there's two kind of branches within this them. There is obviously she waited on Christ. In this situation, as I said earlier, she probably prepared a Sabbath meal. She probably prepared food for them to eat and something for them to drink because it had been a long day at that point.
[10:48] Christ had been teaching, casting out demons, walking around and stuff. So we see that she waited on Christ and we also see that she waited on them, meaning the disciples and those who were with him.
[11:00] In the same way today, us who have been touched by Christ, us who have been healed, because we've been healed in a far greater way, beloved. She was healed of a fever. We had sin-sick souls. We were dead in our sin and our trespasses, rebelling against God, completely and totally against him.
[11:15] We had a malady that wrath was due us. The wrath of God was to be poured upon us. So we have a much greater healing than she did in this scene. We have been healed from our sin, both in terms of the wrath of God and from the bondage to it.
[11:29] So if she was so eager to wait on them in the text as we see that she immediately waited on them, should not we who have been cured and forgiven of so much more seek to serve our Christ in all ways that are possible?
[11:41] Beloved, there are many, many ways that one serves the church. Ms. Barbara, I told you I was going to mention you today. Ms. Barbara is very diligent. If you ever show up around like 9 o'clock and just watch her, she does like everything around here.
[11:51] It's crazy. It's pretty awesome. But in all seriousness though, there are many, many ways that you can serve the church. Romans 12, 6-8 reads, Since we have gifts that defer according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly.
[12:06] If prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith, is service and serving, or he who teaches and is teaching, or he who exhorts and is exhortation, he who gives with liberty, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness.
[12:21] So we see that Paul here is saying that the Spirit gives us many gifts in terms of how to serve the church. Perhaps God has given you some of the gift of preaching. Perhaps God has given you some of the gift of teaching.
[12:32] Perhaps God has given you the gift of music. Those are the more public things. There's also the things that no one sees. You know, the financing that occurs to keep everything running smoothly. The administrative aspect to keep everything planned.
[12:42] Even things as small as making the coffee in the morning. All these things are done and they bring us great fellowship. Think about it. The coffee seems like a small thing, but everybody's gathered around the coffee, drinking it, and enjoying fellowship.
[12:55] So all these different forms of service add to the church in a way that God has chosen. And an implication therein is that if you are not serving in a way that God has gifted you, then the body is neglected.
[13:06] The body is missing an aspect of service that it could have. And that is to the detriment of the body. But the greatest way, and above all else, the way that we can serve this body, serve the believers, serve the church, both visible, which means here in this congregation, and invisible, meaning the whole church, is through prayer.
[13:27] It is through praying for the service, praying for the worship, all aspects of it. The preaching, that God's word would be proclaimed through the hearing, as we've talked about several times already today, that the people that are here would respond in faith and truth to what the text shows.
[13:40] They pray for the singing aspect and the music, that God would be greatly glorified through the worship of His name and through the praise of His people. Pray for the Lord's Supper, that it would be the solemn and joyful event that it's meant to be.
[13:52] Pray for one another as we bear one another's burdens. The greatest service that you can do for the church is to pray. And that is a service that we can all do, that we are all gifted in. We all have the ability to sit down, get on our knees, lay down, have a pace, however you want to, to pray, and to pray for the beloved.
[14:09] So, don't tell me that you don't have the ability. Don't tell anybody that you don't have the ability. I think we're very blessed here with a body who does serve and serves very fervently in a lot of ways. And for that, I'm very thankful. I know Nathan is thankful.
[14:19] I've heard him say it many times. So, but if you're not serving, there are ways you can serve. And I would encourage you to seek them. And I know we have many teams here that do the audio, the service, and other stuff.
[14:33] Maybe Wes can make an announcement. I don't know. But, so, okay, so that concludes verses 29 through 31. We've seen that Christ has absolute authority, just to emphasize again, that the disciples had seen his absolute authority and felt comfortable coming to him with their request that they may be made known to him and that he may do as he pleases.
[14:53] And we see also that a proper reaction to being touched by Christ is to serve both him through the work of reconciliation, sharing Christ in the gospel, which is not exactly what this text says, but it's an implication, and also through various ways of serving the church, both physically and spiritually.
[15:10] So, let's look at verses 32 through 34. It says, 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.
[15:27] And he was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who he was. So, verse 32 starts off with a kind of interesting phrase. It says, when evening came, and after the sun had set, they began bringing.
[15:39] And the reason this was so was because you weren't allowed to carry anyone or anything on the Sabbath. In the Gospel of Luke, in the 14th, sorry, the 13th chapter, in the 14th verse, one of the leaders of the synagogues rebuked some Jews who had brought someone to be healed by Christ.
[15:53] And he's saying, there's six days where work can be done. Why do it on this day? So, obviously, the people had been taught that doing anything that was like that on the Sabbath was a negative thing that shouldn't be done. So, they waited until the sun had gone down, and the reason that was was because the Jews didn't understand days as we do from 12 a.m.
[16:08] to 12 a.m. They understood days as from sundown to sundown. So, whenever the sun had went down on the day of the Sabbath, which would have been a Saturday, not a Sunday, by the way, just so you all know from Jewish culture, the day would have been over.
[16:21] So, they would have been able to freely bring people to Christ. And let us see the kindness of Christ, and once again, the greatness and grandeur of who He is, in that He's able to heal all who are brought to Him.
[16:32] Mark records that He healed many. The Gospel of Luke in the 4th chapter records that He healed each one, indicating each individual person. So, we have a Savior who is both willing and able to heal.
[16:45] Now, I want to make a clarifying note here about healing. I'm not saying that God heals all the time. This is a very specific and special time in redemptive history when Christ was in person in the flesh.
[16:57] What we would do wise to learn is that though God can heal, He's in no way obligated to heal. He heals at His sovereign choice. At this time, in the Gospel, I'm sorry, the Gospel of Isaiah, in the Prophet Isaiah, we see that He had said that Christ came to take the infirmities of them all, meaning Israel.
[17:15] So, this was a very specific time and Christ was fulfilling a very specific role as the Messiah at this time period. So, though Christ is and though God is so able to heal, and I believe does so occasionally, that's a whole other sermon that can be discussed, He is not forced, His hand is not played by us to do so.
[17:32] So, if you go to Christ and pray for healing and it doesn't come, take comfort in knowing that God works out all things for the good of those who love Him and are called into His purposes. That if you are not healed, it is for your good.
[17:42] Even though it may seem bad to you initially, in the long run, you can take comfort in knowing that God, who is infinitely wise, infinitely knowledgeable, knows the future because He plans it, has decided that it is not good for you to be healed at this moment.
[17:55] So, let us observe though Christ did here, He is not obligated to today. even though many people would say He might be. Alright.
[18:09] So, let's move on to the last portion of our text. We've kind of gone through the first two portions relatively quickly because I want to spend the most time in the last portion. I think that's where the meat of what God has for us today is at.
[18:21] And it says, in the early morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. The first thing that Christ did with His day, the very first thing that this text shows us is that in the early morning while it was still dark, the KJV translated long before dawn, that Christ went out and He prayed.
[18:46] And what this shows us about Christ and His view of prayer is that He saw it as a priority. He is the first thing He wanted to do with His day. Before He saw the face of any man, before He had an encounter with any person or other thing, He wanted to see His Father.
[19:00] He wanted to see God the Father and interact with Him and be with Him. And also, it's really cool to see how, as we're kind of exploring a little bit here, that Christ's prayer was wedged in between His two forms of ministry.
[19:13] You know, He was healing and preaching the Gospel. Oh yeah, that's what I wanted to point out. Okay, real fast, backtrack with me for just a moment. This whole time, everything that we have been talking about, all the healings and miracles and whatnot, the emphasis is found in verse 15 of this chapter.
[19:28] It says, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel. So Christ's main focus in His ministry, as He's about to say, and we've already read once, was to preach the Gospel.
[19:38] And all these other things were happening because they were foretold that they would. But this whole time, while He's doing all these things, He has continued to preach the Gospel. that the kingdom of God is at hand, that God is literally there at that moment in terms of Christ and the Carnet, that the kingdom of God and that the people of God need to repent and believe.
[19:57] As we've already established, that the Gospel, in terms of Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and resurrected, obviously not occurred at this point. So He was telling them to repent, turn from their sins, forsake their evil, wicked ways, and believe unto God.
[20:09] So that is the context in which everything else is occurring. And we need to keep that in mind because it shows the focus of Christ's ministry. And it shows the focus when we do various kinds of ministry, what we will be doing and how we should be focusing.
[20:27] All right. I don't even know what I'm at in my notes. I haven't been using them. Anyways, let's continue on with verse 35. Yes, let us know, this gives back where we were.
[20:41] He went out early in the morning because He saw it as a priority in His day. It was the very essence of His day to start it off that way. He gave it the top priority because it was first.
[20:53] And also, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went to a secluded place. So why did Christ go to a secluded place? Why did He go to be alone? He went to be alone because He wanted to be alone with God.
[21:04] And I know that seems like an obvious statement based on what the text is saying, but we have to take a step back and think about what that really means. He didn't desire to be interrupted by the distractions of men, by the distractions of our society. He sought to seek God first and for that to be a priority in His life.
[21:18] And He sought to do it wholly, to be separated from everybody else and be wholly devoted to God in this time period. What's interesting here in the text, the word secluded, that's translated right here in verse 12 and other places in the text, is also the word that is translated wilderness.
[21:34] So in verse 12 where it says, immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go into the wilderness, the word wilderness there is the same place for secluded place here. So if you look at a map, which I don't expect you all to do, but if you look at a map, you'll see that there are no wilderness, how it's generally used to describe in Capernaum in the immediate area.
[21:52] So Jesus would have gone a relatively good ways away from the city to get away from everybody else, to go and pray and be alone with God and to spend time with the Father. And let us also see, wait, whenever you look at the rest of Scripture, you see Christ's prayer life continually.
[22:12] Let us remember that mark here in these first nine chapters and especially in chapter one as he's continually showed the authority of Christ, is showing Christ as the God-man, He who is powerful, who is far more able than we are in our own human flesh, in our own human selves.
[22:27] And yet Christ took the time to pray. It was His priority in His life. And the lesson for us as we looked at 1 John 2, 6, obviously we can't replicate the first part of the text that we looked at.
[22:38] We don't have the ability to heal the way that Christ did. We don't have the ability to do all those miracles, although Christ does do miracles today still. We don't have the ability like He did. But we can replicate this aspect of His ministry, of His life.
[22:50] We do have the ability to continue on in prayer alone and making it a priority. So that's why whenever we look at what Christ is doing here is significant that we take note and that we notice what He does, so that way we can do it too.
[23:03] If Him who was perfect sought to pray, how much more so do we who are imperfect need to? Christ had no sins to confess, which would take up most of our time in prayer, based on how sinful we are.
[23:13] He had no... Well, He didn't deal with temptation the same way that we did, in that we have to bitterly seek freedom from temptation. If Christ, who was God in the flesh, sought the face of His Father, probably praying for the ministry that occurred the day previous, that the word that had been sown would remain, that Satan wouldn't snatch it up and be on good soil, and praying for the next day, which was His preaching, if He sought so vigorously the Father as to make it a priority to rise early long before the sun rose and to go somewhere far away from everybody else after a long day of ministry, should not we as well?
[23:51] You told me that... You told me you're too busy to really sit down and take time to pray? That's crazy, because Christ was way busy than any of us. Look at His day. 32 through 34 is really just a summary of a day of Christ, that He killed many, many people, and that the whole town had literally come to Him and He healed all who were sick and demon-possessed.
[24:09] You told me that you are distracted? I understand, beloved. Whenever I seek to pray, that's like the only time I get text messages, the only time I get phone calls. It's really strange. People knock at the door. I'm really tempted to check Facebook.
[24:21] And various things. I can relate to your temptation, but far greater, far greater than my ability to relate to your distraction, your ability, or your tendency to be distracted is Christ's. Look here.
[24:31] Look at us in verse... Look at us, with me, in verse 36 and 37. It says, Simon and his companions searched for Him. They found Him and said to Him, everyone is looking for you. Christ had taken this great effort to arise long before everybody else, so that we hopefully, I imagine, that He didn't want to be seen, gone to this far-off place to be secluded, to be alone with God and to seek His face.
[24:52] And then disciples, wanting to do a good thing, I imagine, saying, everybody's looking for you. They go and distract Him. They go and take Him away from the Father's presence. So, beloved, listen, this is really, really important.
[25:04] Christ can relate to your weakness in this area. Christ knows what it feels like to be distracted while you seek the Father's face. It is no surprise to Him. It is not something He is unlearned in. And let us learn to look to the beloved, the beloved crucified Son of God who is risen and who knows our weakness to learn to cope with these things.
[25:25] Beloved. Let us also note that Christ in His flesh did not have infinite energy.
[25:37] It was not something that we see continuing in the Scriptures at moments like when Christ says, I thirst, and moments like that, that Christ did not have infinite amount of energy and that Christ had had a very busy day, far busier than what most of us experience on our regular day previously.
[25:52] And as we see from the following verses that He was going to go and continue to do the same thing continually. Yet He made the time and the priority to pray. So, if you feel tired, distracted, like you don't have energy to stay awake and sit there, beloved, Christ knows how you feel.
[26:10] Look to Him for guidance. Look to Him for wisdom. Look at His example. In Luke 5.16 it says, But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. One of the beauties of this text, as a man named Brother Paul Washer points out in a sermon, is that Christ slipped away to pray in the wilderness.
[26:28] And you slip away to that which you love. You slip away and go off to that which is most cherished to you. Maybe you slip away to play music or you slip away to read a book. Those aren't intrinsically bad things to do, by the way.
[26:39] I'm not saying those are sin. Those are good things to do and God refreshes our spirit to them. But Christ often slipped away to pray. And that shows us in the text, Christ slipping away, that was the most valuable to Him, was seeing the face and beholding the face of the Father in prayer.
[26:54] It was the great joy of His day. In the context of that passage, He had been doing many miracles. It says that He was healing many lepers. It says, but Christ would often slip away to pray. So let us learn, like our beloved did, to slip away to God, to make prayer a priority, to make beholding the face of God such a joyous thing in our hearts, that we long for to the point where, in spite of our busy day, in spite of our hectic schedules, in spite of our tiredness and all these things, that we slip away to it.
[27:22] That it becomes our source of strength and joy in the ministry. Because we're all called to the ministry of reconciliation. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul talks about all who are born again. And then he continues on and he ends the passage with a great exchange, justification by grace through faith.
[27:39] But in between that, he says that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Going out and proclaiming to men the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord. And let us learn, beloved, as Christ did, as he went about this same ministry, let us look at his example and see how he did it.
[27:56] He slipped away to pray. And my prayer for this point in the sermon is that y'all really see the value of prayer. Because Christ did it. Christ who was God made a common practice of it.
[28:07] If Christ, who was God in the flesh made a practice of it, we ought to. Because he is our perfect example. He is the captain of our faith, our elder brother, who we should look after to repeat. And let us also note in this text involving Christ's ministry and how he was, how he worked, how he shunned the comfort and popularity of the world.
[28:28] His disciples walk up to him and they say, everyone is looking for you. All men seek after you. This is a great, joyous proclamation. It would have been so easy to say, I'm popular here. I'm well received here.
[28:39] I'm going to stay here, continue preaching, continue healing, be loved by the people and continue on in my ministry. But what does Christ say? He says, let us go somewhere else to towns nearby so that I may preach there also.
[28:51] For that is what I came for. Christ knew the work that God had set before him and refused to rest in the comfort of works already accomplished. And I know myself, and I'm sure many of you can relate to me in this, that often I find the opposite to be true.
[29:05] I find myself only referring back to past experiences instead of continually pushing forward oftentimes in the work of God. I take comfort in what God has already used me for and what God has already done in me rather than striving forward.
[29:17] And we would do well to learn as our Savior did to not rest until we have done what God has given us to do. And as you all know, what God has given us to do is the Great Commission to go into all the nations, all the world, and preach Christ.
[29:31] And that has not been done, as we all know. So let us learn, as our Savior did here, not to rest in the comfort of our friends, the comfort of those who receive us well. Let us continue fighting on for the glory of God, advancing the flag of Zion.
[29:44] Let us not rest in ease and peace while men are out there not worshiping God as he ought to be worshipped, praising the Lord as he ought to be praised, and they are dying and condemned to hell as well. We should have a burden and urgency about us to continue pressing on because God deserves glory, both being bowed to as Lord and being rejoiced over as Savior.
[30:05] Because Christ deserves these things, let us press and press and press and rely entirely upon seeing the face of the Father in prayer as Christ did here. Verse 39 of our text says, And he went into their synagogues throughout all of Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons.
[30:31] This shows us that what Christ had said in verse 38, what he came to do, to go and preach, he did, and he accomplished. It's obviously a curse to the rest of the Gospels. I'm not saying at verse 39 it was done because it wasn't.
[30:45] Obviously, we have the rest of this Gospel in the Gospel accounts, but it shows that Christ continued on and pressed on with what he came to do. He, we see that Christ, ah, I'm trying to word this properly.
[31:01] It's not in my notes. That was a bad choice. We see that Christ is entirely dependent, as we've actually covered, and that he accomplished what he came to do because of the work that he had done previously.
[31:12] The power of his ministry was in prayer. The power of his ministry was in prayer, my beloved. We are not going to accomplish things because of our wit, our own ability, or anything like that.
[31:24] We will accomplish because we behold the face of God and act as Christ did, as our great brother. So, last page of the notes. Good. So, we're at the finally and the conclusion.
[31:38] Oh, yeah, I remember what I was going to say now. Sorry, I apologize for that distraction. But, what Christ came to do, he said, was to preach the Gospel. That was the focus and main aspect of his ministry. Um, oftentimes, you hear about social work these days and social justice is an area that has been often neglected by the church, especially among the evangelical church.
[31:56] And that's the tragedy because God loves social justice. He desires for it to be brought out and accomplished. But we see here that Christ's primary ministry was preaching the Gospel. What Christ came to do and what we are to push on doing is to preach the Gospel of Christ.
[32:11] We are to love as Christ loved, to walk as he walked as we looked at that first verse that I read, which includes looking after those who are sick, those who are destitute, those who are poor, unable themselves.
[32:22] But his primary focus was to preach the Gospel in all the places that he was going. For him, it was Israel. For us, he has expanded it to the whole world. So as we go forth, I know many of you are called to missions.
[32:35] I know many of you, whether it be missions overseas or missions in a different state or missions down the road or however it is that God has called you to do, let us not lose focus of the main thing in our time of going, that we not ever see the Gospel as less than an end and all these things as a means.
[32:54] Using these things to extol God. So, I want to, I want to, we've kind of looked at a bunch of like spider web strings and I want to show you how the web actually looks in light of the whole passage that we've been looking at.
[33:06] So we see the first that Mark has at this point established Christ's absolute authority. I hope you all have walked away with that because I've said it like ten times. So we see Christ as absolute authority and we see that the disciples were compelled by that absolute authority to go to Christ and to present their needs before Him.
[33:25] That they had comfort knowing that Christ would hear and faith knowing that He was able to do as He pleased. And then we see that Christ continues on with a really busy day and we see an emphasis on prayer in that Christ prayed and we see how Christ prayed.
[33:40] We see the emphasis of how Christ prayed being alone to be completely shut off to God and early showing a priority. So beloved, what God is showing us through Mark, one of the many things is the importance of prayer and turning to God in all things for ministry and for all.
[33:59] Whether it be the ministry of being a husband, a father, a son, a daughter, or the ministry of preaching the gospel to those who don't know Christ. God is showing us this great, great, great need for prayer.
[34:11] And beloved, Hebrews 4.15 says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us but in all ways was attempted as we were yet without sin. And then it goes on to say, now let us boldly approach the throne of grace, receiving grace as it is for the need.
[34:26] And beloved, listen, this is really important. We see that the emphasis of that passage shows us that because of who Christ was, we have boldness before the Father.
[34:37] We can come and make bold requests of God in our prayer, present bold things. That's why we have the ability to pray for things like revival because Christ is our token. His righteousness has paid for us.
[34:48] Our union with Christ, being one with Him, has made the road for us to be at the throne room of God. And we have the ability, the great and glorious, precious ability to walk before God, say Father, and present our requests to Him because of Christ, because of who He is, because of what He has done.
[35:07] So let us pray boldly. Let us pray often, alone, and boldly to our God who hears us and graciously, ever so graciously, condescends to answer our prayers.
[35:21] I have a confession to you all. As Nathan preached through the book of Nehemiah, he often talked about the value of prayer as we see in the book. And I so often found myself saying yes and amen in my heart, but so little had been changed by hearing what he was preaching about.
[35:35] And I promise you, until preparing for this sermon, God has birthed a greater prayer life in me through this text than before. But my confession is that it is not enough, brethren, brothers and sisters, to say yes and amen to these truths, to say that prayer is important and we need to do it and we need to push on.
[35:52] We must back our words with actions because in the letter to Corinth, in the first one, Paul talks about those who are reviling him and he says, well, I will come soon and they can have the words because the kingdom of God comes in word and deed.
[36:08] So, brethren, as we encourage one another to pray and to seek God's face, as we say yes and amen to these truths because they are beautiful truths found in scriptures, the righteousness of Christ enabling us to pray, let us back our actions, let us back our words with actions.
[36:23] I've been doing a lot of meditation on Christian liberty recently and something that God has really shown me through the meditation and the word is that there are two kind of people and James talks about this.
[36:33] There are the effectual hearers and those who do. There are people who say these things that will say yes and amen. Yes, these are true statements. We need to pray more. We ought to act as Christ acted in that way but then nothing changes in their lives and I'm fearful for that for many of you and for myself above all.
[36:49] Trust me. James 3.1 says, let not many become teachers for held to a higher judgment. So, I fear to sit here and preach this to you to say these things to you and then not change myself but I fear for you also because you have heard the word of God regardless of how poorly or well this sermon has been delivered you have seen that Christ prayed made it a priority and went to do it by himself and did so for the sake of his ministry and if you do not follow suit with what Christ has done you give an account for it because you have knowledge brethren I pray that the fear of God would press upon you in that regard and it would myself that we would know that God has called us to be these kind of people people of prayer people that seek him and that we would not stand before God on judgment day and give an account for all the truth we heard about prayer all the truth we heard about these beautiful glorious truths and also let's look at the beauty and the truth of who we get to pray to we get to pray to Christ who had absolute authority as we've seen in this text and over the past couple sermons over both man the will of man the nature the nature nature as well as the demonic world and the spiritual realm what a joy to bring to him our troubles and peace our troubles and seek peace from him anyways but
[38:05] I want to end with talking to any of you who are not in Christ who do not know Christ I tell you people that this sermon has very little to offer you because God is not obligated to hear your prayers God is not I mean he knows what your prayers are because he knows all things but he's not obligated to hear them in the sense of as a good friend listens to you whenever you talk in the book of Daniel in the 9th chapter in the 18th verse Daniel tells us that he is not praying based on his righteousness based on his own merits but on the great compassion of God and in the context of what happens there the next thing that Daniel says is forgive us forgive us oh Lord for our sins he's making he's praying for the transgression of his people so what that shows us is that whenever we talk about having such confidence and boldness and prayer being able to go to God Almighty and present our request is not because of who we are but is who Christ is and what he has done and the compassion that Daniel was talking about in that passage the compassion of the Lord is the work of Jesus Christ that he came lived a perfect sinless life never committed a single sin never lied once never had an impure thought everything if you are outside of Christ that you have done that is wrong he never did and that he died for his people he completed the work for his people and that he made redemption for their sins and that is the merit that we come and pray before our God with and if you are not in Christ
[39:35] I tell you and I invite you to join us Christ said that he will I'm sorry the scriptures teach that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved and you will also have this joyous access to this great God let me emphasize once more and now in my sermon we're in the preaching section of worship that God is not obligated to answer your prayers he is not obligated to do as you ask we do not force God's hand God rejoices to use the prayers of his people to accomplish his means but he has a far greater view and a far greater wisdom than we in many things so sometimes we may ask things and they may not be they may not be given to us they may not be granted to us by the Father but it is not because the merit of Christ is insufficient it is because God has a better and greater plan for his beloved to make them like Christ let's pray