Jesus' True Priority

Thanks, Catherine. Well, I mentioned last week about a man I know who told me that before he’d become a Christian he’d been ruled by money. But he said that becoming a Christian flipped all of that on its head; it flipped his whole life on its head. And that’s because he came to see the authority that Jesus had to deal with the sin, and the effects of sin in his life. And, I guess, he knew no amount of health, wealth, success or happiness could deal with it in the way that Jesus guarantees and promises. Money in his words had “owned him” but he said becoming a Christian completely changed his priority. Jesus’ priority became what was mattered most.

This section in Mark’s gospel is all about Jesus’ authority. And it’s a growing authority – our author Mark is underlining again and again just how big it is. But as well as a growing authority, as we’ll discover, Jesus has a very clear priority. So that’s where we’re going, but before we get started, let’s pray...

1. Jesus’ authority to heal (Mark 1.29-34)

Reading from Mark 1.29-31:

And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon [who Jesus will later rename Peter] and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

So Peter’s mother-in-law is lying ill with a fever. Maybe her life is on the line. But enter Jesus, and with complete ease she is healed. And it’s not two days off work to catch up on sleep, it’s complete restoration. And (Mark 1.31) she began to serve them. i.e. she put Jesus and his ways first. Now we need to ask, is Peter the first and only man to keep following Jesus after he’d healed his mother-in-law!? It was actually my mother-in-law’s birthday on Tuesday, so as a special present I was going to tell her I’d make this joke tonight. But I thought, if I do she’ll just keep bringing it up. What’s the difference between a mother-in-law and a boa constrictor? A boa constrictor lets things go eventually. Back to Mark 1.32-34:

That evening at sunset they brought to him all who were sick oroppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. Andhe would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

The news of Jesus’ healing power spread quickly. People begin to pour towards Jesus: The sick, the disabled, the terminally ill, the broken... There are no hospitals. These people are desperate. Mark tells us it was like the whole city was at the door! And our compassionate Jesus heals, and heals, and heals. Peter’s mother-in-law was no one off. It’s like Jesus going to the RVI healing everyone there and emptying all 673 beds. Jesus’ authority to heal is off the scale. Last week we saw Jesus’ authority over the powers of sin and evil. Here we see Jesus’ authority over the effects of sin and evil on us and our world, and here we see him drive those effects back on a mass scale because Jesus came to do something about sickness and death. Back in Mark 1.15 Jesus preached:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand...

And the kingdom of God is the place where God rules unopposed over a perfect world: A world where there are none of the consequences of our sinful choice to turn our backs on God. And Jesus’ miracles were pictures of what this new world will be like. There’ll be no more sickness, no cancer, no arthritis, no hearing aids, no depression, no ageing, no medication, no disability, no death; nothing bad and nothing sad.

A while ago, some friends got married, and they are self-confessed “foodies”. So their wedding breakfast was top notch! But beforehand they had the joy of doing a tasting menu. But because it was a pretty fancy affair – they only got little taster portions. These verses are like a little taste of the new world to come. A taste you need if you’re going to fully anticipate what’s coming. Necessary. Wonderful! But what’s coming is so much bigger and better! And in the here and the now, we have little glimpses of where we one day will be. So we shouldn’t expect healings like this to be part of the everyday Christian experience. Of course, God does heal today. God made our bodies with the ability to recover from illness, at least at times. And God has given us the gift of modern medicine. God can heal miraculously too, but we shouldn’t expect him to. At least, not in this life. Because God will heal but it’s a question of when. And the Bible’s answer to “when” is that complete healing comes not in this world but in the new world to come – where believers will have new, healthy, ageless bodies. And, if we’re Christians, this is what awaits us. We need every single reminder we can get that there is far better to come! The power and authority to get us there belongs only to Jesus. And making sure that we get there, and as many of us as possible get there, is his number one priority. So, secondly:

2. Jesus’ priority to preach (Mark 1.35-39)

Mark 1.35:

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he [Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

There are two other places in Mark where we’re told that Jesus withdrew and prayed. One was after the feeding of the 5,000, where Jesus would have felt immense pressure to do more mass-scale miracles to meet people’s needs, and the other was in the garden of Gethsemane – where his temptation was to avoid enduring the God-forsaken awfulness of the cross. And along with our passage, these were crisis points because they were times where Jesus faced the temptation to pack in his mission and follow an easier path – the path of approval and celebration and the path of avoiding the cross. It’s a cliff-edge moment!Reading from Mark 1.36-37:

And Simon and those who were with him searched for him [Jesus], and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.”

So Peter and the disciples were saying “Jesus what are you doing? There’s loads of people here really need you. Why aren’t you helping them? Can’t you get our there and start healing again? What are they going to do?” But Jesus had a different priority (Mark 1.38-39):

And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for.” And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

So, Jesus’ priority was to preach – and instead of healing as many as possible, he wanted to go out and preach to as many as possible. And he says “that is what I came for”. i.e. “This is my purpose”. There are two more of Jesus’ purpose statements in Mark’s gospel. And putting all three together, shows us that Jesus’ purpose was to preach that people needed him to die for their forgiveness in order to get them back into relationship with God forever. And then Jesus backed that preaching up, by going to the cross and rising again from the dead. And all this is still the risen Jesus’ ultimate priority today: To turn us from rebels into subjects, by bringing us into an eternal relationship with him – the King, because to him this is what matters most. And if we think about it, Jesus could have gone about healing as many people as possible. And they’d have enjoyed a few years, or maybe decades, of good health but, eventually that would wear off. They’d get sick again, or they’d age, and they’d die. But Jesus knows that if our relationship with God is made right then eventually everything else will be. That is his priority for my life, for your life, for everyone’s life; because it does us no ultimate good to have physical health now only to lack the spiritual health of relating to God by trusting in Jesus; to then meet God at the end of time and realise we were wrong about Jesus – wrong about what matters most of all.

What are your priorities in life? Physical or mental healing? Good grades at school or Uni? Making friends? Spending time with family? Getting a job? Getting the next job? Coping with your job? Doing well at your job? Having enough money to get by? Having enough money for a house deposit? Getting married? Having children? Having happy, healthy, children? All of this seems so obviously important to us, and though some of us have to endure the pain and disappointment of not having some of these things, we must not make the mistake of thinking they are not important to Jesus. But we must also avoid the mistake of making them our absolute priorities when we need to accept that they ought not to be, because they are not Jesus’ absolute priorities for us. Because Jesus’ priorities are first and foremost that we trust in his forgiveness and get back into relationship with him, and that we grow in his likeness, and that we persevere in living for him – one day to be with him forever in heaven, and that we play our part in other people doing the same. And along the way, that might include receiving many other gifts from him. It often does. But on the other hand, it might not because God could be growing us in faith – by making us wait, or not get what we want. He could be making us more like him through the challenges that present themselves within the blessings we receive: like the job you’ve always wanted suddenly becoming really difficult, or a loving family member suffering a difficult illness. Or, he could helping us long for heaven and remember that this world is not all there is to live for – when we experience some of the worst things life can throw our way.

Life can be hard, but life is better following Jesus. That’s not because he always gives what we think will make life better now. It’s because when we trust him he promises us eternal life, which we’re told for sure will be “better by far” – and where every day will be better than the one before. That is his priority – getting us there. And trusting Jesus means that anyone can enjoy it. That’s what we see next. So, thirdly, and finally:

3. Jesus’ authority to cleanse (Mark 1.40-45)

Reading from Mark 1.40-45:

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

Remember, DJ Mark is turning up the volume – story by story. So, we can hear: Jesus has authority over the effects of sin and evil. But this account is a huge step up because leprosy at the time of the New Testament was a horrific skin disease and receiving a cure for it was almost unheard of – it was so difficult it was likened to raising someone from the dead. There were three elements to the disease: Firstly, the body of the affected person would literally begin to disintegrate. Secondly, leprosy was highly contagious – so those affected had to remove themselves from society. They’d lose their jobs, their families, their friends, and live the rest of their lives at outcasts. Thirdly, leprosy was a symbol of sin. It made people ceremonially unclean and unfit to come before God. And a leper contaminated anyone else they came near to, making them unclean before God as well. Even if (by some utter miracle) a leper did manage to be cured, the Old Testament law said they would still have to make special sacrifices in the temple to receive the inner cleansing necessary to properly relate to God and his people again. It was the job of the priests to decide if someone had leprosy, and if they did, their message was basically “stay away, go outside and rot”. So, this would have been the situation of the leper in Mark 1.40: a wretched, filthy, disgusting social outcast. He should have kept his distance, but he risked everything to come and kneel before Jesus, begging “If you will, you can make me clean”.

Jesus looks and he’s filled with concern for this man and his terrible suffering. Mark 1.41 Moved with pity he stretches out his hand and touches the man and says “I will; be clean”. Any other Jew at the time would run a mile in this situation, they’d recoil, they’d shout with disgust, but not the compassionate Jesus. He reaches out touches the untouchable. This man was like the living dead. Jesus touches him and with four short words he is healed immediately. Jesus tells the man to keep the news of how it happened to himself because Jesus wanted to reveal who he is on his terms, and in his way. Instead (Mark 1.44) he tells the man to go the priest, to offer the necessary sacrifice, to be declared clean, and re-begin life in the community. Jesus reached out and touched a leper – the Old Testament law could legislate for it, but could never achieve it. And once again, this healing a picture for us. Leprosy alienated people from God and from other people and that’s what sin does in our lives. The only thing we can do is to come to Jesus, to kneel before him, and to beg for his cleansing.

A good few years ago I sat with someone as he deeply mourned the sin in his life. He’s long since left Newcastle now. He was struggling with his housemates. Through some bad choices on his part, he really wasn’t getting on with them. And he was struggling with internet pornography. Again and again, he found himself failing. It was not a good situation. And he said “God won’t take me back...I can’t go to him again about this again...”And I said “God can take you back, and God will take you back, because you’ve trusted in Jesus’ death for you on the cross and that’s paid for your sin: past, present and future”. Because the hand of Jesus had already stretched out and touched his life, and when God looked into his heart he saw a forgiven person (a cleansed person), a person who’d placed his faith in Jesus, the saviour with the authority to cleanse. What about you? Maybe like the leper in our story you don’t doubt Jesus ability to save you. Your issue is whether he’s willing to. But nobody is too bad for Jesus. No matter what you’ve done, or how often you’ve done it. Jesus is ready and willing to stretch out his hand and touch your life tonight. So that you can be cleansed of your sin before God forever. Jesus is ready to forgive you, whether for the first time, or the millionth time. What’s shocking about our story is the leper’s final response to Jesus. He got his healing. But it doesn’t seem like he began a relationship with Jesus as Lord. Mark 1.45:

But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town...

The man wanted a superficial cleansing, but he didn’t seek the ultimate one Jesus offered. The cleansing of forgiveness, the certainty of eternal life, that leads to serving God. For Jesus, this is what matters most. He sees it as his ultimate priority. The question is, will we? Let’s pray…