Book of Mark Lesson 3

Well, welcome to Life in the Word, our verse-by-verse study of God's Word.

This is Pastor Brian from New Life Community Church in Scottsdale.

And uh we're continuing our study in the book of Mark.

Last week in our study, we continued in chapter one of Mark and finished at verse 35.

After preaching and healing at the synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus then pulled an all-nighter at 6 p.m.

on the Sabbath when the sun had set, everybody came to Peter's home.

Hundreds, they said, requesting healings and casting out demons.

And he just had an all-nighter basically, and we don't know what time he stopped.

But it says in verse 35, before daybreak, the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

And because I'd love to see all of us pray like Jesus, I began to list five particular things last week about Jesus' prayer life that we could learn from.

I gave you two of those five last week, and we'll cover those just a little bit in less detail today.

The first was the three C's, conversation, communication, and communion with God.

Prayer obviously involves speaking and listening.

In Isaiah 28, 23, God said to the prophet, give ear and hear my voice, listen and hear my speech.

So when we pray, when we speak to the Lord, we have we we incline a listening ear to what the Lord is saying to us as and when we pray.

I told you last week that often when I pray, I prefer to read Scripture as I pray.

I'll read it before, during, and afterwards, because often God will speak to me through his word, and I'll understand more what I need to be praying for.

Hebrews 1 1 tells us long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets, and now in these final days he has spoken to us through his son, who is his son?

His son is the word.

In the beginning was the word.

And through so he speaks to us through scripture.

Because Hebrews 4 12 tells us, for the word of God is alive and powerful.

It's life-changing.

It gives us wisdom and guidance and direction, particularly for me as I pray, and I think we would for you too.

Psalm 46.10 tells us, be still and know that I am God.

That's communion.

We need to be still and meditate on God's word.

Now, are there other ways that God speaks to us?

Absolutely.

He speaks through us through other believers, through sermons, through Bible studies.

I have a friend who's a former Muslim who had an experience where God clearly spoke to him in an inner voice in his head.

I've heard many, many other Muslims say the same thing.

I've heard some say it was through visions.

I just read one this the very day, just a few minutes ago, where for three nights in a row, this Muslim man who's searching for truth, God spoke to him in a dream three different nights in a row, and that was all it took.

God is revealing to these people through that inner voice or through visions that Christ is the living God, the creator of all things, and that he alone is the true way to God.

And we see that the people of Islam are turning to Christ like crazy.

It's unbelievable how quickly that's happening.

So anyway, prayer involves speaking, listening, and sometimes just being silent and still before God.

Secondly, prayer is not the convenient thing, it's the necessary thing.

It's necessary for your mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional well-being.

But it's never convenient, is it?

There's always a thousand other things to be doing.

But it's absolutely necessary that we spend time communicating with God.

It's like a marriage.

If if my wife and I don't speak to each other, we just completely stop communicating with each other.

We're going to drift apart.

And it happens with God.

I've seen it over and over and over during my years of ministry.

People quit communicating with God, they quit reading his word, they quit speaking in prayer, and their relationship just divides.

It just falls apart.

So anyway, those were the first two thoughts in prayer from last week, briefly.

So first question as we get into this week's stuff, why did Jesus pray?

I mean, why?

He's God.

Well, Jesus had just spent a Sabbath and fervorish activity.

He served until probably very late at night healing.

He had done practically everything but rest on the Sabbath.

And we have to remember that though Jesus was God, he didn't live as God apart from the Father, but rather as man in the dependence upon God.

He didn't have to pray a prayer confession ever, but living in a human body, he prayed for strength from God to fulfill his mission as plan.

I mean, what lay before him was the greatest challenge ever conceived.

And I believe one of the greatest reasons that Jesus prayed is because he wants us to live our lives on the same basis.

He was being an example for all of us.

I mean, if Jesus prayed in order to live a godly life full of power, so must we.

This is an overpowering argument for this.

Jesus is the eternal God incarnate, the creator of all, who holds everything together by his power.

Yet he still lived by and in prayer.

So we also need to make sure that we have regular times of prayer daily.

We need to make time to pray.

We need to create a habit out of prayer.

Number three, prayer is not something you have to do, it's something you get to do.

I mean, think about the model in the Bible where God is our Father and we are his children.

When a child gets to speak to their parent, it's because that parent loves the child and that parent wants the best for their child.

And that's the way the Father is with us.

He loves us, he wants the best for us, he'll not shame us or condemn us, so therefore, there's this great entry into the presence of our Father, our God, our Father, our Lord, our Savior through prayer.

However, many fail to think of prayer as a privilege.

Why is that?

Well, our I believe our failure to think of prayer as a privilege may be partly due to the fact that we can pray anytime.

It's not limited.

The door is wide open so continuously that we fail to avail ourselves of an opportunity which is always there.

I mean, the only time I think people pray anymore is when something bad is going on in life.

And quite often I find they wait and wait and wait and try to figure things out themselves before they eventually go to God.

I mean, it should be a delight when we get to talk to our Lord, the creator of the world, who loves us so much that he became one of an order of us in order to die a brutal and humiliating death on a cross to save us.

You know, I've told you this before that I personally know several pastors who never pray.

So why is it so hard for believers or pastors who know God's love for us, who preach and teach it to pray?

Well, many Christians find prayer difficult because of many things.

One, functional self-reliance.

I can take care of this problem, I can handle it on my own.

I don't need divine intervention.

I was speaking to a young man, a teenager just recently, and he's had a rough past life, okay?

He's been through a lot.

And he's really, he, and as he talked to him, he said, I'm trying to, I'm trying to fix myself.

I'm trying to get rid of fix these problems in my life, trying to get past them and over them.

And I said, My friend, you can't fix yourself.

I can't fix you.

But the one who loves you and wants to fix you can, and that's Christ.

His problem was he just doesn't trust Christ yet.

Okay, then other things that keep us from prayer are distractions, hectic schedules, digital noise, and wandering thoughts that make it hard to achieve the stillness required.

Also, guilt and shame.

When struggling with sin or failure, the natural human reaction is to hide from God rather than run to Him.

Also, disappointment and doubt from past experiences with unanswered prayer or perceived silence from God can lead to discouragement and a quiet disbelief in prayer's effectiveness.

I knew of a man many, many years ago who would grew up as a in the church as a young man going into college.

He was prepared to spend his life on the mission field.

He truly loved the Lord.

His life reflected that.

But one day his younger sister got very sick and he prayed and he prayed and he prayed for hours every day, but she died.

And this young man just said, I'm done with God.

Never did he have anything to do with God again in his life, just recently passed away, sadly.

And lastly, as I already mentioned, prayer can mistakenly feel like a burdensome chore rather than a relational privilege.

So that was number three.

Number four, prayer is not informing God about anything, it's inviting God into everything.

It's not like when we pray, we're giving God new information.

He already knows.

So we're not telling him anything new.

It's not like God is up in heaven and we pour out to him what's going on in our lives, and God goes, Wow, thanks for letting me know.

No, he already knows.

But he wants us to invite him into everything.

You know, as a parent, you can tell sometimes when your kids are a little withdrawn and there's something bothering them, you can tell, and you often know what the problem is.

You know what's wrong.

So you go to them lovingly and you say, Why don't you tell me what's bothering you?

Just you just want them to talk to you about it.

And it's like that with God.

He already knows what's bothering you, what's struggle, what you're struggling with, or whatever, or what you're going through.

He wants you to talk to him about it.

You're not telling him anything new, but you're inviting him in.

And lastly, number five, prayer is less about moving God's hand and more about moving our hearts.

I told God what to do.

I told God what he needed him to do, and he didn't do it.

Well, that's because God is not your assistant, he's your Lord, and sometimes yielding to that can be difficult.

But if you really believe that God is good and has your best interest at heart, and he does, even when he doesn't go according to your wishes, you can trust that a loving Father in heaven is going to do what's best and good for you.

I mean, I found that in much of my prayer, God is using it to change me.

I may be praying for these people or this person that God would change the heart, but often God does it to change me.

He changes my heart, my desires.

He wants my will to be his will.

For instance, when someone hurts me and I and I don't pray and I pray that God will smite them, and sometimes I'll sadly, I'll, and I'll be honest about that, I'll say, God either save them or kill them.

I've done that many times, so I'm sorry, I have.

But through that, I've learned to pray for those people instead.

And that totally changes my heart and makes it more like God's.

I mean, uh these political ads that we're seeing on television right now, lies, lies, lies, lies, and lies.

Well, I'm not going to condemn them, I'm going to pray for them.

They need to be saved too.

God changes our heart through prayer.

Anyway, one day the things that don't necessarily make sense now, we will be able to understand then.

In the meantime, we have to just trust we have a good and loving Father, a father who has our best interest at heart.

So when we pray, if God doesn't answer, that's okay.

If God's hesitant, that's okay.

We know God will answer in one way, but it hits his way because he knows the best.

He knows what we need and what we don't need.

So now look, let's look at our tax and look at some practical and simple steps that we can take to help us pray like Jesus.

The first thing about praying like Jesus is that it takes discipline.

Long before daylight, he went out to pray.

And frankly, I think that's the best time to pray.

Prayer before you start your day will help you gather your thoughts and get your heart in the right place.

It'll help you prepare you.

But plus, if you pray at night, what usually happens?

Well, if you're like me, you'll fall asleep.

I often close my eyes to pray, and that's all I remember.

I drift off to sleep.

We need to discipline ourselves to pray.

Maybe we need to get up early in order to pray.

Don't hit that snooze button, just get up.

I mean, how many of you get up early to go fishing?

How many of you get up early to go golfing?

How many of you get up early to hit garage sales?

I mean, how much time do you spend every day on social media, on YouTube, watching televisions, Netflix?

How about spending some of that time in prayer?

Discipline yourselves.

Create a habit.

God has given us 24 hours a day, so we need to be good stewards of those 24 hours.

In fact, they might be our last.

We don't know.

So the second way to pray as Jesus did is to get alone with God.

Verse 35 says Jesus went to an isolated place to pray.

Prayer is getting alone with God.

No phone, turn it off.

No computer, turn it off, no TV, turn it off, no intrusions, nothing to disturb your time with God.

Find a room, even a closet of that me to uh we need to shut off the outside world.

And if you can't find a place, go to a park, find a place.

Find a solitary place.

And start small, okay?

Begin with five to ten minutes of prayer instead of aiming for an hour.

Short, sincere commitments are easier to maintain and build upon for the long term.

So start small.

Lastly, focus your prayers on others.

Not yourself.

Focus your prayer on others.

I've asked many of my group to pray for the entire world daily with the focus on the lost, the poor and persecuted believers.

Pray for the world.

Pray for those you know around you who are hurting, struggling, those who are lost.

See, prayer gives us resolve, a determination to face the day after all that Jesus had done on the day of the night before his going out to pray early in the morning.

He went that whole day without much sleep.

His time in prayer had strengthened him, though, and prepared him not for just his day, but for the greater purposes of fulfilling God's purpose in his life.

I mean, it's very familiar to when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before he faced the cross.

His time in prayer strengthened him so that he was ready to face the evil cross.

And whatever you're facing each day, you need God's strength and wisdom.

And it comes to you through prayer and time in his word.

Whatever weaknesses you think you have, pray.

Whatever discouragement you are facing, pray.

Whatever is stacked against you, pray, and you will be strengthened.

So let's make the effort to pray like Jesus and see what God does in your life.

So let's get back to our scripture, verse 36, chapter 1 of Mark, verse 36.

Jesus has been out praying early in the morning, verse 36.

Later Simon and the others went out to find him.

37.

When they found him, they said, Everyone is looking for you.

So apparently the people at Capernaum continued to arrive at Simon Peter's house the next morning, hoping to hear more of Jesus' teaching possibly, and more likely just to see him perform miracles.

And I'm sure the disciples were thinking, Jesus, things are going great after last night.

Let's get back and capitalize on it.

But Jesus wasn't interested.

Verse thirty eight.

But Jesus replied, We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them too.

That is why I came.

So Jesus' primary mission was to bring people to a place of decision to have faith in God, not merely to remove their pain and suffering.

39.

So he traveled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons.

So the Romans had divided the land of Israel into three separate regions.

Galilee, where he was at, Samaria, the home of the Samaritans, half Jew, half half Gentile, and then Judea, where the city of Jerusalem was at.

Galilee was the northernmost region, and it was an area about 60 miles long and 30 miles wide, a very small area.

Jesus did a lot of his ministry in that area, though.

It was an ideal place for him to teach because there were over 250 towns in this concentrated area with many synagogues where Jesus could go and proclaim his message, the good news of Christ.

Great opportunity.

Verse 40.

A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed.

If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean, he said.

So leprosy was a terrifying disease because of the social rejection and the devastating impact it had on its victims.

And at that time it was incurable.

In keeping with the law in Leviticus 13 and 14, Jewish leaders declared people with leprosy unclean.

This meant that the lepers were unfit to participate in any religious or social activity.

Because the law said that contact with an unclean person made the other person clean, you know, they made sure the lepers were kept at a safe distance from everybody.

Even the mention of the name of this disabling disease terrified people because they were afraid of catching it.

So lepers lived together in colonies outside their community, and most would have remained there until they died.

It was a slow, ugly, painful death.

Leviticus 13, 45 says this the leprous person who has this disease shall wear torn clothes, and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, Unclean, unclean.

He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.

He is unclean.

He shall live alone.

His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

So they would call out, I'm unclean, unclean, so people could just flee and get out of their way.

They didn't want to be around him.

Rabbis in those days would not get close to a person with leprosy.

They didn't even want to breathe in the air or touch him or be near him.

One callous rabbi wrote, Whenever I see a leper, I throw stones at him lest he come near me.

That's horrible, isn't it?

Another rabbi even wrote, I refuse to buy an egg on the street that a leper has walked by.

I mean, we can hardly imagine the humiliation and isolation of this leper's lives.

They were ostracized from society because it was thought at the time that leprosy was highly contagious, which it's not.

The spiritual reality for all of us is that we are spiritual lepers.

This is what the image I think is meant to teach us.

That's what I get from it.

Once the great Christian patronist Lady Huntington invited her friend, the proud Duchess of Buckingham, to hear Pastor George Winfield preach, Whitefield.

Afterward the Duchess replied, It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth.

Arrogance, right?

This was highly, she said, offensive and insulting.

She didn't want to be told she was a sinner.

The less we know that there is anything wrong with us, the more full blown our leprosy is, though.

So when Jesus, when the news of Jesus' power reached the isolated huts of the lepers, hope began to stir in that wretched community, especially within this one leper.

In that poor soul, courage welled so high that he was able to break through society's cruel conventions and cast himself at the feet of Jesus.

Remember, there's probably people all around Jesus at that point, following him, wanting to hear him, wanting to see him do miracles, which he's about to do.

So he goes to the feet of Jesus, even though he's not supposed to be there.

He's not yelling.

Unclean, unclean.

He's pretty much yelling in his heart, help me, help me.

And in a parallel account given by Luke, the physician in Luke chapter 5, it says this leper was full of leprosy.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

I mean, his body parts were probably missing.

It was probably awful, disgusting, horrible thing.

This disease had run its course so that when this man arrived, he lay on the ground before Jesus, a mass of rotting flesh.

I mean, why do you think that a leper said to Jesus, though, a man he knew he says could heal him if you are willing?

Well, I think the issue is that sin controls people with two exactly opposite lies.

The first is that they are not sinners, okay?

Just as we saw with the Dutchess, nothing is wrong with them.

I'm not a sinner, I'm a good person.

The second is that when when they do see that they are sinners, they think they are so bad they're beyond help.

And I believe the leopard felt that way of himself because the leopard did voice some hesitation by saying, if you are willing.

Although he knew Christ could heal him, he did not know whether Christ would heal him.

Maybe he's too bad, maybe he's too wretched.

He was filled, though, with humility, but he did have faith.

And his request was reasonable.

He'd heard about Jesus, but he didn't know Jesus.

But where the leopard has hesitation, we can have certainty.

We know the gospel.

We know Jesus is a great heart of compassion.

So let's look at verse 41, the answer.

Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him.

Touched him.

I am willing, he said, be healed.

While all people shunned lepers, Jesus reached out with his hand or hands and touched this man covered with this dreaded disease, and that whole crowd must have gasped.

And we can reasonably assume that he had not been touched by a soft, healthy hand in years.

If he had a wife, he had not known her touch, much less her embrace for many long years.

If he had children, there'd been no kisses, no touch, not even once.

And now they're adults.

He may have grandchildren, possibly.

Whatever his family status, he must have longed for a touch.

I once read about a lonely man who was not a Christian.

He had no family.

He belonged to no church.

In describing his loneliness, he said that he had his hair cut once a week just to have someone touch him.

Now Jesus could have said, Yeah, I'm willing, I'm willing to heal you, but you stay back there.

You stay back.

I'll heal you from here, okay?

Just stay over there.

But he didn't do that.

So why did Jesus touch him?

I believe he wanted the leopard to feel his willingness and sympathy.

To touch him, said, I'm with you.

I understand you.

I love you.

That touch spoke volumes to the leper about the grace and the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And there's relevant application to all this.

We must understand that we will never affect others as Christ did unless there is contact and identification.

We have to be willing to take the hand of those whom we would help.

Sometimes a touch, caring involvement will do a thousand times more than our theology.

And this is what all churches need to be doing.

We need to be outside the walls.

We need to be getting involved in people's lives.

We need to get our lives dirty with their dirt.

I mean, we're great in theory, we're careful about our doctrine, but we need to lay our hands on some rotting flesh in our neighborhood.

Maybe where you work, in the city slums, maybe at your school.

We cannot expect this to be only the job of missionaries because a church that doesn't regularly place its hands on the rotting humanity around it will not be sending missionaries to do it either.

So anyway, now comes the miracle.

Verse 42.

Instantly the leprosy disappeared and the man was healed.

The healing was sudden and complete.

His feet, toeless, ulcerated stubs, were suddenly whole.

The knobs on his hands grew fingers before his very eyes.

Back came his hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes.

Under his hair were ears and before him a nose.

His skin was now supple and soft.

I mean, can you hear the man crying out, I'm clean, I'm clean.

He had his life back.

That's what Jesus did for all of us on a cross.

He gave us life, a new life.

Look at verse 43.

Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning.

Don't tell anyone about this.

Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you.

Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy.

This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.

So why did Jesus want the man to do this?

Well, Jesus was concerned that the man go immediately and fulfill the law.

When a leper was cured, he or she had to go to the priest to be examined, and the leper was to give a thanksgiving offering at the temple.

Jesus adhered to these laws by sending the man to the priest, thereby demonstrating Jesus' complete regard for God's law.

Jesus wanted this man to give his story firsthand to the priest and to prove his leprosy was completely gone so that he could be restored to his family and community.

This would be done as a testimony to them.

In addition, Jesus gave this man a stern warning because he didn't want to be a miracle worker in the sideshow, he wanted to be the savior of the souls.

Verse 45, last verse.

But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened.

As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and he couldn't publicly enter town anywhere.

So this man did probably what I would do or all of us would do.

You just got your life back, your whole life back.

I'd be screaming unhappy.

I'd be telling everybody too.

And perhaps if this man had gone to the temple right away, it probably would have inflamed the jealousy of these religious leaders who already felt uh evil towards Jesus, who seemed to be working against them by his authority preaching and popularity.

The people, everywhere everywhere though, after this incident, kept coming to him.

Even in the wilderness, it didn't keep hinder people from coming in need of healing or desire to see and listen to the healer.

They just kept coming.

That's the end of chapter one.

I hope you got some application out of this.

I hope you understand a lot about more about this Bible passage.

And I hope you'll you'll you'll you'll look through it today and see how it's challenged you, encouraged you by what you've read, and how maybe you can apply some of this to your own life, especially as we talked about prayer.

So thank you for joining us.

Hope you'll join us next week as we will get into Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Have a blessed week and keep your eyes focused on the Lord.