Jesus Heals And Drives Out Demons | Week 13

Welcome. For those of you don’t know me, my name is Tony. I’m one of the ministers on staff here. And it’s a great honor that you chose to be with us. And I just wanted to say welcome from me, and especially if you’re a first timer, it’s really good to see you. It’s great to see the Church getting filled up again. I know that we have a bunch of people here who are visiting maybe the first time last week. So thank you for coming back. I know we have a lot of people who are watching us online, and I want to say I acknowledge that you’re here. I see you. I guess I don’t actually see you, but I acknowledge that you’re here. We want you to be here with us in person, but we know that situations, circumstances make it so that you have to watch us online. But I just want to say thank you for joining us that way. It’s been a few weeks. We’ve been kind of away from this sermon series that we started about ten weeks ago. But we’re in a sermon series that’s going to take us the better part of two and a half years.

And it’s just a walkthrough of everything Jesus ever did, everything Jesus ever said. We’re going to hit every single interaction, and we’re doing it for two reasons. One is to learn from Jesus, to understand who he is, to grow in our character as we watch him. But the other reason is to be the people that Jesus engaged with and to think about what it’s like to be the person being healed or being the person being set free or being the person challenged or being the person giving conviction to. And so I just want to say that this series is going to take us quite a long time. And over the course of this series, you’ll probably hear a lot of the same teaching because Jesus did a lot of the same things. And today we’re introducing one of the major themes of Jesus teaching. And we’re going to end up in Mark chapter one. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there with me. And while you’re turning there, I’d like to discuss a little bit about my own interpretive method, kind of my own personal Bible study and understanding of the Scriptures.

Like many of you, I would imagine, I grew up going to Church. I was about twelve or 13 years old. I’m sorry. I was about ten or twelve years old. I can’t remember how old I was 10, 11. I don’t know. When I started going to Church, my dad had started going, and my mom had started going, and they brought me to Church. I’ve gone to some Catholic churches before that, but had never gone to a place that sort of embraced the scriptures or understood the Bible. And while I was there, much of what I learned were the stories in the Bible, kind of like David and Goliath or Moses splitting the Red Sea or Meshach Shadrach and Abednego. I learned about Daniel in the Lions den. And I learned about during those times about the power and the need for faith and for courage and certainly to obey your parents. But at the time, and really, if you followed me throughout my Ministry life, it would have been difficult for me to explain what the Bible was actually about. Like, I knew the stories in the Bible, but I didn’t necessarily know the story of the Bible. Do you know what I’m saying?

Like, I knew that there was this giant that had to be slayed by the shepherd boy. But I didn’t understand how that related to the story that came after that or the story that went before that. I didn’t understand the United message of the Scripture. I really was kind of struggling with that. And I took that type of understanding of the Bible into my leadership with the teens. My first job here at the Church was working with teenagers. I worked with the teens for about four and a half years. My wife and I did, and we loved it. But much of the time there was just about showing the stories of the Bible, because that’s what I understood from the Bible. And all that changed one day when I came into one of our little staff meetings, and one of the elders, John Brush, had brought a basket of books that he was giving away. I guess his library had gotten too full and so he was getting rid of some books that he had read that were old. And so he put a bunch of them on the table, and he said, hey, you can have whatever you want.

And so I looked through it, and I found a commentary from the Book of Genesis. It was the first time I’d ever really Dove deep into the Scriptures. And I read a commentary on the Book of Genesis and everything in that book reminded me of this idea that the story was unified. And I didn’t understand how it was unified, but I kept on saying, the unified story of the Bible. The unified story of the Bible. The unified story of the Bible. And I thought, okay, well, what’s the unified story of the Bible? Until eventually there was a quote and I couldn’t find the book and I probably gave it away and I couldn’t find exactly what it said, but it said something along the lines of this. The Bible is the story of God trying to undo the wrong done in Genesis Three through the descendants of Genesis Three. And it began to make sense to me. It was a simple idea, but it became quite profound and it shaped the way I learned and it shaped the way I taught the Bible. And maybe this is a slight oversimplification, but here again is this picture.

I talk about this all the time. God makes a good world, and his last act of his wonderful creation is to make us. People who are given the responsibility to do for the world what God had done and what God had started, make the world good. But how are we going to determine what is good? Are we going to listen to God or are we going to decide to chart our own course? And you know, the story Eve grabs that fruit, and in that moment, she charts her own course. In an instance, we destroy our life, ushering in the curse of death and disease and despair, and we destroy our soul being alienated from God, our Father. And the whole story of the Bible is how to undo that work. Stories like David and Moses are all just sort of pictures of characteristics and traits that are a shadow of the one who will come and do the restoring and do the restoration. It’s pretty amazing. Anyway, but there are these two massive realities. And the two realities are the life is ruined and the soul is broken. But God our amazing creator. And this artist writes this masterpiece where he sends his son, the descendant of Eve, a descendant of Genesis Three, to restore the major problems of life, the brokenness of life and the restoration of the soul.

And so when we get to Jesus, there’s so many questions on our mind. And one of the major ones is, can Jesus, can Jesus solve the problems that man created? Can he do it? And namely, can he solve the problem of our broken bodies? And can he solve the problems of our broken souls? He has to have the power, both physically and spiritually, to undo the effects of the curse. And much of Jesus’ministry is about showing and displaying that power. And today we’re going to look at one day, it’s basically like a day and a half of Jesus’ministry where he just proves that he has the power to undo the problems that man started. Today is a little bit of a different lesson, we’re going to be covering a large chunk of scripture. I try to do just like one little section each time. But because we’ve skipped out in the Ministry of Jesus for about three weeks, I’m trying to fit in a whole bunch. So let me just give you a brief overview of all the points that we’re going to cover. If I was preaching for four separate weeks, these would be four separate sermons.

But for you, you can handle a lot because you’re mature people. So here you go. Number one, Jesus solves man’s greatest problem. We’re going to see that in the text. Two, we’re going to learn that proximity is key. Proximity to Jesus is key. Three, the blessed should be a blessing. And then lastly, everyone is and has always been looking for him. These would be four sermons in another world. But today we’re in one world. So just hang on with me. You ready? Are you with me? Okay. Okay, let’s try again. You with me? Great. All right, we’re going to start in verse 29. Our last study ended in verse 28. Jesus was in a synagogue. He had exorcised a demon out of a man who was living in the community and part of the Church. Today’s account comes directly after that. We pick it up in verse 29, Mark, chapter one, verse 29. It’s still the Sabbath. The deliverance happened during the Sabbath. And again, that’s all happening in verse 21 to 28. And now the Sabbath service is over. It’s about noon. And then it says this, as soon as they left the Sabbath, the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew.

This is a map of where we are. This is the map of the time of Jesus. We are in Capernaum or Capernham Or. There’s a million names for this place. This is Jesus hub, his base for the entirety of his Ministry, at least for the majority of his Galilean Ministry. Jesus is from a place called Nazareth, which is down here. Capernaum is the largest city in the area. It’s a crossroads between north and south, the great trading route between east and west. It’s a farming village because it’s right on the Sea of Tiberius or the Sea of Galilee. And so the whole town, there’s about 20,000 people in this town. The majority of these people would have gone to a single synagogue. There was lots of them, but there’s a massive one in Capernaum or Capernum or whatever you want to call it. And so this event happens immediately after that Sunday or sorry, Sabbath service. Jesus leaves the synagogue. On his side are Simon, Andrew, James and John. They’re all fishermen. But verse 16, Jesus had called them to leave their nets and to come follow him. They were fulltime fishermen. Now they are fulltime disciples.

They saw him removed this demon in this guy. And so it’s because of that that the next line says they invite him over for lunch. They invite him to come over. By the way, I’m just going to give you a quick picture. This is a picture of Peter’s House. They built a Church over the top of Peter’s House. We know where this is. Isn’t this crazy? Joe Stern said that he actually visited this area. You could see it. Right next to this place is the synagogue. And then you can kind of get towards Peter’s heart. The house is pretty incredible. And you might say, well, are we 100% certain this is Peter’s house? The answer is no, we’re not 100% certain. But it’s likely that it’s the case because they found etchings as early as the first century of Christian things in this place. And it’s likely that it was a Church at some point. Peter’s house was something. It was like a small version of the Encanto house. There’s like a courtyard in the middle and a bunch of rooms where his mother in law lived and he lived and his wife, obviously, and some other people.

Jesus is thought to have lived there while he was in Capernaum. So anyway, it’s very exciting. Long story short, is there we are, they’re finishing service. It’s about a mile away. Sorry about a minute walk from the synagogue to this house. They get there and verse 30 says this: Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever. So now you know exactly why Simon invited Jesus over. Luke, the physician adds that she had a high fever and understand, it’s ancient times and they don’t have modern medicine. They didn’t know anything about viruses or bacteria. People would just languish and eventually die of fever. If they had a severe infection, there was a chance that they might die, which was a grave concern, certainly to Peter and to Peter’s wife. There’s a family crisis. And so, of course, they invite Jesus over for lunch. I’d like to stop here and just make a point. No matter who you are, no one is spared from the consequences of sin, from the consequences of our original sin. Death, despair are everywhere. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Peter and you’re an Apostle and you’re following Jesus, or if you’re someone that’s not following Jesus at all.

The Bible says God makes it rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, on the just and the unjust. It doesn’t matter who you are. No one is spared of the consequences of sickness and death. I like to think of it this way, but life happens to everyone. Life happens to everyone. You’re like, but I’ve been following Jesus for 30 years and I’m still sick. Yeah, that’s the shrapnel of the original sin. It’s still impacting people. Sickness, death, financial troubles, job loss, general struggles. I’d love to say that as a disciple, it all goes away, but that’s just not the case. Life happens and it happens to everybody. But what I love about the Apostles here, and the disciples here is that, man, they are willing to bring Jesus into the area of their lives that are most difficult. Man, it doesn’t have to just be a spiritual matter for these guys. They’re like, we just left the synagogue, and maybe it’s time to go preach the word. But for them, they’re like, look, my mother-in-law is sick. She needs some help. And so they bring Jesus into the most difficult issue of their lives. Jesus wasn’t just limited to spiritual matters, because what they understood is something that we have to be firm in our understanding, which is that everything matters to God.

And let me just make a little thought here. To get a deep and robust theology of life, we have to begin to cross the chasm between things that we believe to be secular and things that we believe to be sacred. We have to clear that divide. And I forewarn you that divide is deeper than you might think. The secular sacred divide is this errorous idea that some things matter to God and other things don’t matter at all to God. It’s the things that we think, hey, God really cares about prayer and reading our Bible and coming to Church and mission trips, but he doesn’t care about our work. He doesn’t care about our family. He doesn’t care about the things we buy or the things we do. He doesn’t care about any of that stuff. And there’s this large chasm, and I think it’s a growing chasm in our minds, in many of our minds that says God cares about the secular or about the spiritual, but he does not care about the secular. The problem with this kind of widespread, domineering, destructive way of thinking is that if you start thinking that God only cares about sacred things, then what happens is that you become very clear that most of life is, in fact, secular.

And the sacred stuff is just like a tiny little slice. Like, how much of your life are you spending going to Church, praying, reading, and evangelism? Like, 4% if you’re really spiritual, like max. What that means is that God doesn’t care about the 95% of the rest of your life, right? Like, he doesn’t care about the grocery shopping or the walking of your dog or the cutting of your toenails. Maybe he doesn’t care about that. Or doing yoga or eating a burrito. Life is spent doing all those things. This is the stuff of everyday life. And I have seen that when we separate the secular and the spiritual, we begin to think, hey, I really need to focus my attention on the things that God cares about. And I will disregard adding spiritual things into the things that God doesn’t care about. Because of that, he a lot of times isn’t invited into the secular stuff, right? So much of your life is the mundane. There’s nothing glamorous about changing a diaper or answering emails or fixing an Excel spreadsheet. But we feel like sometimes that why would I pull Jesus into those things? Because they don’t really matter.

And here’s the point. I think the entire paradigm of this kind of divide is just totally out of whack. And not only is it untrue, but I also believe it’s kind of dangerous. And let me just make this point. To start off, even the word spiritual is something that we mix up a lot. Did you know that throughout the entire Old Testament library of scripture, there is not a single word for the word spiritual? That word never appears. Do you know why it never appears? Because everything is spiritual. So things as bizarre as the type of fabric that should be used on your shirt to faith and deeds, all of those things are spiritual, and all of those things matter to God. Imagine having a conversation with Jesus. Like, you know what? I don’t really want to invite you into this problem I’m having at work because it’s not really spiritual. Jesus would look at you like, what are you talking about? Everything is spiritual. Everything is spiritual. To him and to us, really. Life should be a seamless integration, a holistic experience where the sacred is all around us and where every single moment of our lives feels like God’s invited into those moments.

And I like to think of it this way, but God wants to be invited into every square inch of our lives. Your mother-in-law is sick with a fever, Jesus should be just as involved with that as your broken down car on the side of the road. Your heart is hurting because you can’t seem to find a mate. Well, Jesus should be invited into that, too. You go to a grocery store and you realize that the parking lot is full. You can invite Jesus into that, too. You’re wondering about what to eat or what to drink, about how to live. Jesus should be invited into everything, every square inch of your life. And what I love about the Apostles is that they finished watching Jesus do the miraculous, and then they’re like, hey, Jesus, could you just come follow me into my home? Could you be with me where I am? Today, we have a tendency of limiting God’s input into the things that we believe he would only care about. And everything else is for Google, right? God cares about that. But God doesn’t care about like this. So I’ll just Google it. But I think that’s a broken paradigm.

And I think God would love to be invited into everything. I think about that picture we showed a couple of weeks ago. God standing at the door knocking. I just want to get into your life. I want to teach you spiritual things about the things that you don’t even believe are spiritual. And when you invite him in, you’ll find out that he really does care a lot more than maybe even you think he does. We’ll keep going. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. Of course they did. And so he went to her, took her by the hand and helped her up, and the fever left her. No sooner had they come into the house that they made this request of Jesus. Luke four has an account of this. So does Matthew, chapter eight. And both of them say that they made this request. Can you heal my mother in law? And Jesus just does it. Luke adds, he rebukes the fever. I like, that. Go away fever. And it’s some kind of power that just kind of fills him, that comes out of him that no one else could possibly do.

He commands, and in an instant, in an instant, she is completely healed. And then it says at the end of verse 31, and she began to wait on them. This Greek word is the word for servant. She became their servant, is what it means. She got up and she started making Shabbat dinner. She’s like, hey, we finished Church service. Let’s make dinner, let’s go. And she’s totally fine. And I just want to make a little note here, but this is a quote from a book I read. It says, we have been saved to serve, healed, to help and touched so that we can touch others. And you see this right here with Peter’s mother-in-law. I’m healed and right away I’m in your service. Man, isn’t that the way life should be? You have been saved so that you could serve some other people. You have been healed so that you can help somebody else and you have been touched so that you can touch the lives of others. If you’ve been blessed in any way by the Ministry of Jesus, you should be bringing the Ministry of Jesus to somebody else. God set something right in your life, go ahead and go set something right in someone else’s life. If you’ve been loved, love somebody else.

And what I love about this is that there is this immediate healing, isn’t there? She’s laying there feverish, laying flat on the bed. Jesus grabs her, and she is so healed, she doesn’t need chicken soup. She doesn’t need to hang out on the side. If you’ve ever had a fever, you’re laying there for the next six months or like six days. You’re like, hey, I’m a little weak, but your fever left you a month ago. Yeah, but I’m still struggling a little bit from all that. No dizziness, no sweating, no struggling. The symptoms are gone. She is beyond healed. She is fully, totally, utterly restored. And she’s making Sabbath dinner. Just remember, there’s no microwave, there’s no ovens. There was no store to go to. That means that she has to work to make it happen. Work to make it happen. And by the way, there are four massive fishermen that she has to feed. Plus Jesus. So she got some empty bellies there. And I just think it’s amazing that she goes from lying nearly dead on the bed to serving this amazing group of people because that’s the power of Jesus able to heal the body like that.

It’s important that I make a little point here. So hold on to your seatbelts. I’m saying this because I care and because it’s necessary. But there have always been false healers who claim to be able to heal, who prey on people’s sicknesses and who prey on people’s suffering and prey on people’s disabilities. And they do it for money. They are, I think, the lowest of the low. You don’t get any lower than to try to get rich by promising a healing to a suffering person, a healing that you cannot deliver, and also a healing that God does not promise. Every time I hear one of these ridiculously false prophets say, if you send me your seed of faith, send me your money, I’ll pray over your letter, and God will send you a healing, my heart grieves. Those false promises prey on desperate people. And our world is full of these people. It’s heinous. It’s a heinous misrepresentation of God and of Christ. And to me, it’s also like a kind of blasphemy because what’s the net effect of that person? You pray for their healing and you have no power. You’re there because you want money and eventually that person is still sick.

You’ve given them a whole bunch of money and they’re still sick. Send me $1,000. Send me $1,000 is what I heard one day. Send me $1,000 and I will come. And if you have enough faith, you can be healed. Look, you are a fool, that person, and you are a blasphemer. And honestly, there is no place worse than the pit of hell for that type of person. And I’m just saying it because these people are desperate for healing and you’re using their desperateness in order to make money. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And I’m not saying that Jesus can’t heal people. Of course he can, but it’s very unlikely he’s going to use some fool to do it. Just saying. So that they can go fly a private jet. Are you out of your mind? False teachers, false teachers. If they were real, you know where they would be? In the hospital. They would be in funeral homes. But that’s not where you find those people. You find them. Cassandra and I drove back by a Church one day and it said healing is on Thursday night. So Monday night, Bible study, Sunday night, Church. Healing, Tuesday night.

Get out of here. Jesus was in the place where people were actually suffering. He didn’t need some building that you can go to to manage the moment perfectly. Jesus was a real healer, and these people are phony. And so, look, I don’t know. It’s important for me to just say it. It has nothing to do with this lesson. Verse 32. That evening after sunset, the people brought to Jesus. Look at this text. Read this. It says, the people brought to Jesus all the sick and the demon possessed. Remember I told you what’s the biggest issue? It’s the broken body and the broken soul. Jesus handled it right here. The broken body and the broken soul. The whole town had gathered at the door. You imagine that? You wonder why it’s evening? Well, Sabbath is over. And now they’re able to bring all their people. They have to carry them on mats. And so Sabbath is over. And they’re like, I can get to the work of getting people, getting Jesus to heal them. And it says, And Jesus healed many who had various diseases. They waited until sunset because they couldn’t carry anything before Sabbath.

As soon as it’s dusk, believe me, as soon as the sun went down, those Western Gallilean Hills were filled, filled with the sick and the demon possessed. And the whole village goes to see Jesus. And they don’t stay at home wishing that Jesus would solve their problems. Instead, they pursue. They pursue Jesus. And this is an important point that I made earlier, but I want to make again. Proximity matters. There’s something powerful about being with Jesus, about being around him, about getting in your word, about prayer, about fasting, where you can be connected to God. Proximity matters. Don’t go well, you know, I have Jesus somewhere deep down in my heart. Well, you better try to figure out how to uproot that. So it’s in every moment of every single fiber of your being. Proximity matters. A couple of months ago, Ezra, my middle boy, I was in the restroom. I just finished taking a shower. I was sort of getting ready. And all of a sudden, I heard this horrific sound, like, <gasp, gasp>. And I thought, what is that? There’s an animal dying outside. That’s literally what I thought. And I thought to myself, wow, that’s crazy.

So I called my wife because I was still trying to get ready. I was like, hey, do you hear that? She’s like, yeah, I hear that. And it wouldn’t stop. And I’m like, what is that? And then she calls me back. She says, It’s Ezra. So I get ready really quickly. I run over into his bedroom, and my son is on his hands and knees. And to me, it looked like he was trying to breathe. He’s two years old. I couldn’t even tell you what I was thinking. I thought, My son is suffocating, and he’s dying right in front of me. Eventually, I’m like, Are you okay? Like, I’m trying to pick him up. I don’t even know what to do. And it turns out that it wasn’t him breathing. It was a cough, and it was something called croup. And it’s really common. But for a first time parent, what the heck is that? It sounds like an animal is dying. So I’m freaking out, and I’m losing my mind. And I’m going, Call 911, call 911. I’m screaming, Call 911. And my daughter sleeping on the top box. She’s, like, totally knocked out.

She doesn’t even know this is happening. I’m freaking out. And in the house that day happened to be three doctors. They come into the room. I am calling 911. My wife is like, my husband is calling because my son, I think he’s suffocating. I don’t know what was going on. The three doctors walk into the room. One of them puts a hand on my shoulder, and he says, It’s okay. Like, it’s okay. I think what he has is he said it in Spanish, but basically croup. He’s going to be okay. I’m like, should we take him to the hospital? They’re like, we should. You should still take him in just to be tested. But he’s going to be fine. Let me tell you. I went from losing my mind to at peace in about a second. And do you know why? Because I had a doctor in my house. I had a doctor in close proximity when something terrible was going on. I think about the way that so many of us go through horrible issues without Jesus next to them. I think about this idea that, man, if only Jesus was there to put a hand on your shoulder and go, hey, look, I’m with you.

It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be all right. Like nothing bad could happen to you that I can’t make good. So many of us live a life without any proximity to Jesus. Jesus is at some Church building. In order to get to him, you have to hop in your car, and it’s too long by the time you’ve lost your mind. And I think to myself, Man, I’m so thankful. I got into the car. I took my son to the hospital and to just get some steroids, he was fine. But I called my dad while I was in the hospital. I’m sitting there, and I was like, high anxiety trying to help my son. And my dad’s like, It’s okay. He’s fine. I just lost it. I was, like, crying and crying because I imagined what could happen to my son. And then I remembered that moment when I had somebody who was there to tell me what to do. Man, I grieve for anybody that’s not close to Jesus. Not close to Jesus in times of trouble. These guys knew it. They’re like, hey, if I’m sick, I’m going to the one who can heal me.

I am going to be next to him. I’m going to wait outside. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to read a story. There’s so many people outside. Those people open up a hole in the ceiling and drop him down. I’ll do anything it takes to be close to Jesus, to be close to Jesus. Man, I hope that’s your heart close to Jesus. Jesus heals all these various diseases, the demonic, the paralyzed, the sick, the ill, the people with broken limbs, the people with no limbs. By the way, another little point of those fake healers. You ever see someone with one arm come out with two arms? No. It’s like I had back pain and now my back pain is slightly better. Get out of here. Jesus is like, you have no arm, now you have an arm. Jesus was amazing, by the way. There’s 90 times in the text in the Gospels that Jesus heals people 90 times. 90 times. If you look at the history of the Bible, you have from the time of the first ancestors until Genesis, chapter 20. Do you know how many healings there are? One. Thousands of years with one healing.

You know how many healings there are from that point until a point of Malachi, like about 25. So let’s assume, give or take, from the point of human species begin miraculous healings to the point of Malachi, there are 25. And then when Jesus comes on the scene, there are 90. Why? Because Jesus was solving the problem. I can heal the body. I can heal the body like no one else can heal the body. By the way, if you think that healings are all that popular, just know this, that there are no healings between the time of the end of the scriptures and the beginning of the end of the old Testament, the beginning of the old Testament, 400 years, zero. Zero miraculous healings the way we would describe miraculous healings. And I’m not saying that God can’t heal people. Of course God can heal people. But Matthew chapter nine says, nothing like this has been done in Israel before. Talking about Jesus. Nothing like this. In Mark, chapter two, after Jesus heals a paralyzed man, the Pharisees says, we have never heard of anything like this before. The idea that healings are super popular kind of diminishes the point that Jesus was there to show that he could do something that no one else in the whole world could do.

Isaiah, chapter 53, the Bible is telling us, hey, he took on the infirmities of us all. This is a prophecy of Jesus, not of every single person. Again, does it mean that Jesus can’t heal today? Of course, Jesus can still heal today, but all it means is that it’s less popular, less common. The miraculous healing is not going to happen like it was when Jesus was on the face of the Earth. Just saying, moving on. After he exorcises all the demons, it says he was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who he was. Jesus doesn’t want any affirmation from those demons. Do you know why? Because the most dangerous form of religion is the religion that affirms Christ and then teaches lies. That’s the most dangerous type of religion. Jesus want any promotion from those people. Any promotion. Don’t you demonic people say a single word about me. I don’t want anything related to you. I could talk about healers one more time, but I will not. Verse 35, this is the next day. I mean, what a day though, right? What a day for Jesus. He heals his mother in law and then thousands of people are waiting outside his door.

At that point, you deserve a break. It should say the next line. Then Jesus went on vacation to Maui. But that’s not what it says. It says very early in the morning, this is the next day. While it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Man, you’re so busy that you need to go pray. You know what? I can’t pray. I’m very busy. Have you been casting out demons all day? I’m very busy. I can’t go to a solitary place and find a place to pray. Well, have you woken up while it was still dark? But I do need my beauty sleep in order to do my work. Yet Jesus is doing this. Jesus. Find the time to pray. Find the time to pray. Simon and his companions went to look for him, of course. And what are they looking for him for? And when they found him, they exclaimed, Everyone is looking for you. We’ve made it. We’re about to make you King. This is amazing. Jesus is praying alone. Again, something worth imitation. And everyone and the disciples go find him.

And what’s the deal? What’s the deal? They’re like, we’re able to make you King. I think with the promotion you had on yesterday night, on Sabbath day, I think we could run for government now. We could make it big. We could do it. And I love Jesus response. Jesus replies, let’s go somewhere else. See, Jesus knew something that many of us struggle with, which is that everyone has always been looking for him. And no matter where he went, they were going to be looking for him. Because what they really need in life is Jesus, even if they don’t know it. So he wants to go to some nearby towns and villages so that he can preach there also. And then he says, this is why I’ve come. I’ve come to preach. I’ve come to bring Christ to everyone or to bring my good news to everyone. So we traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. They brought the sick. They brought the demonized. They keep bringing the sick and they keep bringing the demonized. And by the time you get to John, chapter six, the crowds are massive, 5000 men, probably 20,000 if you include women and children. And the crowds are so big, all because Jesus met the needs that have been the problem since day one. He healed the body, he healed life. And he fixed the problems of the soul. And so they kept coming and they kept coming, and they kept coming.

And I would venture to say the thing you really need more than anything else is a little bit more of Jesus. Well, I pray a lot. Well, you need a little bit more prayer. And I read a lot. Well, you need a little bit more reading. And I like to fast once a month when our Church fasts. You need to fast just a little bit more. All of us need a little bit more of Christ. He’s what we really need. Again, Jesus solves man’s greatest problems. Proximity, proximity, proximity, proximity. Get close to Jesus. The blessed should be a blessing, and then everyone is and has always been looking for Jesus. That’s my little summary of this text. Next week we’re going to see one of the most incredible interactions where Jesus touches a man with leprosy, touches a man with leprosy and restores his life.

And it’s going to be a time where I think hopefully you’ll grow in your love for Christ. Let’s pray together for our Communion. Jesus. Lord, I think about my little boy in that moment, and I think how many times in my life you have been there, just put a hand on my shoulder and tell me that things are going to be okay, that things are going to be all right, that you have it all under control, Lord, that Romans eight is true, that good things are coming, Lord, something great is coming. And I thank you for that promise, Lord. I just want to also acknowledge the moment here where we’re taking Communion, where we take this little piece of bread and this bit of juice. And it’s supposed to be a reflection, or rather a reminder for us of the body that you broke for us and the blood that you poured out for us and the life that you live for us. And I pray God that as we’re considering the time, as we’re considering Jesus’s life, Lord, that we’ll want to be someone that imitates him, that we want to be someone that wakes up early, that spends more time with you, Lord, that as we take this time, a reflection, Lord, that will also consider the life that you lived so that we would then live the life that we’re supposed to live.

God, we love you. We praise you. We thank you for this time in Christ’s name. Amen.