May 18, 2025 • 29 mins
What do you expect from Jesus — and what if he doesn’t meet those expectations? In the final verses of Mark 1, Jesus challenges his disciples’ assumptions and ours, choosing mission over popularity and bringing the outsider in through healing.
Originally preached to Ekklesia Churches by Dan on May 18, 2025.
This message explores two scenes: Jesus retreating to pray and moving on from Capernaum despite his rising fame, and Jesus healing a leper in an act of compassion.
Teaching Highlights:
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Jesus prioritizes prayer and the Father’s will over an enthusiastic crowd.
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True blessing is found in the pleasure of God, obtained through Jesus!
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The leper’s healing shows that Jesus comes to cleanse the outsider, which is all of us!
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Our expectations of Jesus must be shaped by the cross, not our own desires.
Jesus doesn’t always do what we expect, but we can always expect Him to work all things our for His glory and our good.
Learn more about us at EkklesiaChurches.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This sermon is from Mark chapter 1, verses 35 through 45, and is entitled "Expectations of Jesus."
It was delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, May 18, 2025.
So today, we're going to finish out Mark chapter 1.
(00:22):
And before we do, let's go over some of the things that Mark has shown us so far about Jesus in verses 1 through 34.
In verses 1 through 15, he showed us a lot about the identity of Jesus, that he is the long-predicted Savior that we were waiting for,
who came with all authority and power and yet came with a specific mission as the suffering servant,
(00:45):
with that end always in mind, that he would die on the cross and rise again, that that was the mission that he came for.
And then from verses 16 through 34, we start to see how Jesus interacts with the people he came to save.
And the people he will call into mission with him, and he calls first the disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, and John,
(01:09):
these guys who are unqualified to be the students of a rabbi, and yet he calls them and tells them, "I will make you into what I'm calling you to be."
All the while continuing to show his authority over all things, spiritual and physical, healing the sick, casting out demons, and teaching about the kingdom.
(01:32):
Today's passage is shorter, with only 11 verses, taking us to the end of chapter 1.
And basically we have two scenes that we'll be a witness to.
Verses 35 through 39, Jesus goes out to pray, and then later he goes on to the next town to preach.
(01:53):
And the disciples are confused as to why he left a city full of adoring fans in Capernaum to move on to the next place.
And Jesus says, "This is my mission to do this."
And then in verses 40 through 45, Jesus shocks everyone by touching and healing a leper who would have been the ultimate outsider in that context.
(02:19):
And as a result, he becomes so popular that he can't continue going into the towns to preach as he had intended.
In both of these sections, we see the theme of moving the mission outward while inviting the outsiders in.
And so we have kind of this back and forth that's happening, this pattern that's happening.
(02:42):
And I think in these 11 verses, we'll actually have our own assumptions about Jesus challenged, and probably some assumptions about how the church is to operate as well.
So let's begin by reading Mark chapter 1, verses 35 through 39.
"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place.
(03:09):
And there he prayed, and Simon and those who were with him searched for him.
And they found him and said to him, 'Everyone is looking for you.'
And he said to them, 'Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.'
And he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons."
(03:34):
So Jesus gets up before the sun or anyone else, and Mark makes a point to say it was even still dark outside.
No one knew that he had left, and he leaves the town of Capernaum and heads out to a desolate place where there are no people.
After spending the previous day preaching in the synagogue and probably working into the wee hours of the morning,
(03:59):
remember he was standing at the door of Peter's house just healing people, everybody who came to him and casting out demons.
But then he leaves and he goes out.
What is the priority? Why does he get up after only a few hours of sleep to retreat out of town to a quiet place?
Prayer. Prayer is the priority.
(04:21):
So don't misread this fellow introverts like me.
He doesn't need to get away from people to recharge.
He's not going for a morning run. He goes out there to pray.
And what's interesting in Mark's Gospel is that we don't see Jesus praying very often.
But two of the places that we do are here and at Gethsemane near the end of Jesus' mission.
(04:45):
So at the beginning and the end, we see that Mark has marked this with prayer.
One reason that we probably don't see prayer come up a whole lot in Mark is that Jesus liked to go off and be alone to pray,
just with his Heavenly Father, which means we naturally wouldn't have a record of it if there was nobody else there.
(05:09):
The other is that Mark is showing us right off the bat in chapter one that Jesus places a priority on prayer
and specifically on his reliance on the will of the Father.
Remember, Mark is a man of few words. He doesn't tell us anything just for no reason.
He doesn't just add this bit about prayer just as an additional detail.
(05:32):
He adds it because it's important to Jesus that he find uninterrupted time to pray,
even if it costs him sleep to do so.
I know about you, but I feel some conviction about that, even saying those words out loud now.
The disciples don't understand where Jesus has gone, and they certainly don't understand why he left.
(05:56):
So what do you think they were thinking as a crowd of a thousand people or so had come to the door of their teacher
and he had healed them and cast out demons?
They had to think they had it made, right? They were called to follow a teacher who had the authority of God.
And now they had a kind of celebrity status in the town of Capernaum.
(06:20):
Remember, this is their hometown.
Imagine that, for example, a teacher comes to Underwood, a small town around us,
which is about a thousand people and spends the night at your house healing all of the sick and the troubled in town.
You've got to feel like you're sitting pretty good, right?
Until you wake up the next morning and the crowds are returning to see the teacher again, and you can't find him.
(06:45):
Suddenly, the golden goose is gone, right?
This guy who you've only followed, remember, for about 24 hours at this point has left on your watch,
and you are about to go from the guy with the miracle worker living in his house
to the guy who lost the only great thing that ever came to Capernaum.
So Peter and the other disciples react kind of the way you would expect.
(07:09):
They run out of town and it says they searched for him,
but a far better rendering of this Greek phrase would be that they hunted Jesus down.
They were looking for Jesus with a purpose.
And can you kind of hear this moment when Peter starts talking through his teeth almost as he says,
"Jesus, everyone is looking for you," right?
(07:32):
And then Jesus answers them simply, "Yeah, it's time to move on."
Jesus wasn't there to make Peter and friends hometown heroes after all.
The mission was bigger than them, and it certainly wasn't about them and their fame.
The disciples in the course of 24 hours had forgotten that Jesus called them to follow him,
(08:01):
not the other way around.
They were almost acting like they were Jesus handlers instead of his disciples.
They couldn't understand why Jesus would leave a perfectly good crowd and local fame
to move on and preach in the next place.
Certainly not so soon.
They didn't understand the mission yet, but Jesus did,
(08:24):
because Jesus was aligned with the will of the Father.
And the disciples were only aligned with their own will and desire at this point.
To their credit, they do continue following Jesus, right?
When Jesus continues through the region doing what he came to do,
preaching and teaching and proving the authority of his message,
(08:47):
the disciples do continue to follow him.
So before we go on, let's talk a little bit about our expectations of Jesus.
Because Jesus is faithful to fulfill his promises,
but not necessarily to fulfill our expectations of him.
(09:09):
Let me explain and define that a little bit.
The disciples had expectations on Jesus that were based on their own wants and desires.
They had given up much with some expectation that it was going to be worth it,
and when they saw the beginning of fame, the miracles, the authority of Jesus,
(09:34):
they thought that it was leading toward an earthly reality
and did not even conceive that the will and plan of God might be leading to something like the cross.
That was just outside of their ability to even wrap their heads around at that point.
They had developed a misunderstanding of what the reward was supposed to be for following Jesus.
(10:01):
And so I have to ask, do we often have expectations of Jesus that are not centered on the cross of Christ?
The benefit that we have over the disciples in this story is that we know the end.
We know where Jesus was heading.
We know what his mission was.
We know that it ended in his death and in his resurrection.
(10:25):
But sometimes our expectations of Jesus are flawed, just like the disciples were here.
Just this last week, I got into a conversation with a few men in our church about what blessing looked like for Christians
and what kind of blessing we should expect.
They had heard some folks talking about whether they were blessed because they were financially well off
(10:51):
and then drifting into the prosperity gospel, which is all about physical, temporary blessing
and totally twist the blessing of God.
And it really got me asking myself as we talked about this,
do I sometimes expect certain things from Jesus like comfort, like financial security
(11:15):
or popularity in favor with people that are not promised to me?
What does scripture say about blessing?
Well, it's very clear that the blessing of Jesus is that we receive the favor of God through his finished work on the cross.
Our blessing is not based in our physical experience of comfort or ease or lack of persecution,
(11:44):
though we can be thankful to God for those things.
Those are blessings to be grateful for, but our status as a blessed people is not anchored in those things.
Our blessing is anchored in Christ alone.
So that's helpful to us when jobs feel unsteady.
(12:08):
We talked about this in house church this week where a couple folks were already talking about how there's some stuff
shaking and moving in my job and it's making me feel uneasy.
Sometimes relationships get hard and uneasy.
Sometimes the responsibilities of life feel heavy.
And the truth of the gospel, the good news is that we can still stand firm with confidence in the goodness of God,
(12:37):
that his favor over us is unshaken by circumstances because his favor is a gift given by grace through faith in Christ.
Galatians, anyone?
That's the message of Galatians.
That's the message of the gospel.
So what can we expect of him?
(12:58):
What can we expect of Jesus?
Well, here are a few things that are very helpful to remember and I think you'll find encouraging as I did.
If we bring our sin to Jesus and turn from it, he forgives and cleanses us.
That's something that we can expect from Jesus.
First John 1-9 tells us that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(13:29):
Yes, we're forgiven, but also we are cleansed, brought in.
He's both perfectly just and requiring payment for sin, but also he is merciful in providing that payment through himself, through Christ.
So that's something we can take to the bank, that we can bring our sin to Jesus and repent of it and receive forgiveness.
(13:53):
Another thing that we can expect of Jesus is that his plan for us is perfect in the end, even when it doesn't feel like it in the present.
That's good news when things feel shaky, right?
When things feel unsteady, when those jobs that we have feel like they're kind of uncertain under our feet,
(14:16):
when bad things happen that we can't explain, that we have a hard time understanding,
you can remember things like Romans 8-28 that says, "We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."
(14:37):
This is not a promise of earthly comfort, but rather a promise that God is working all things out according to his perfect plan in the end for his glory and for the ultimate good of those who love him.
And then here's one more.
One of my favorites is that Jesus promises to be with us always.
(15:03):
And then through 28-20, he records Jesus saying, "Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."
All of those are things that we can expect of Jesus, that we receive forgiveness when we bring our sin to him and repent of it,
that he has a plan for us that is for our ultimate good and that in the midst of all those plans, he is with us always.
(15:32):
So a good question to ask of those expectations that you have of Jesus is,
are our expectations grounded in the will of the Father or in our own desires?
I mentioned earlier that Mark only talks about Jesus praying in three places.
This is the first, the second is actually when he prays for the food when he feeds the 5,000, and the final one is in Gethsemane.
(16:00):
Notice what comes out of those first and last prayer times though.
Here in the first chapter, he says, "Let's go. This is why I came."
So he comes out to the wilderness, he prays, and when the disciples come, he says, "Let's go. This is why I came."
(16:22):
In Gethsemane, the disciples also come and he says, "Rise up. Let's be going. See my betrayer is at hand."
That's Mark 14, 42.
In both times, a core quality that is on display through the life and mission of Jesus is the ongoing prayer, "Not my will, but yours be done."
(16:46):
"Let's go. This is why I came."
So after going out to pray and refusing to come back in to Capernaum, Jesus takes his confused disciples out further still and the mission continues,
which leads us to the second scene in Interaction in today's passage. This is verse 40 through 45.
(17:09):
"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.
(17:31):
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 that was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter.
(18:01):
So to properly understand the gravity of what happened here, we have to get into the head of a first century Middle Eastern listener.
Taylor and I were talking earlier this week and he said, 'You know, I bet church kids are the only people in modern culture who have even heard of leprosy because the disease today defined as leprosy is so exceptionally rare.
(18:28):
It's basically been eradicated, at least in first world countries, due to the availability of effective antibiotics. You just don't see a lot of leprosy around.
And when I hear leprosy, honestly, I immediately picture a felt board in a Sunday school class from the 1990s when I grew up with 10 guys wrapped up like mummies, nine of them ungrateful, and a felt Jesus who's getting ready to heal them.
(18:55):
So some context. The word translated leprosy is a general term that is actually referring to any type of skin disease, not just the infection that results in literally body parts falling off, which is the leprosy that we recognize today.
As far as diseases go in the ancient world, though, skin diseases were considered the worst of the worst for a couple of reasons. First, while transmission wasn't really understood, they did get that people with skin diseases tended to share it through touch with others.
(19:33):
And so this led them to develop an understanding of skin diseases that really went beyond just illness, and it was considered an uncleanness, a blemish that couldn't be washed away with water, even going so far as to say this is almost like a spiritual uncleanness as well.
(19:54):
The Jews in particular had laws that had been given to the Israelite community by God in Leviticus 13 and 14, giving precautions to protect everyone from the spread of diseases like this, but also making a way for those people to come back in if and when the disease resolved itself and they were healed.
(20:16):
So the priest couldn't heal you, but they could declare you healed if you showed that all your symptoms had gone away, and then you would offer your offering at the temple and be essentially welcomed back into the community.
A leper was permanently dirty and impure, which caused them to be kicked out of the society entirely, including the marketplace, their family, and really most importantly for the Jews, temple life.
(20:50):
They couldn't worship.
With the rabbis of the day writing things like, for example, one rabbi said, "Leprosy is a fate similar to death." And historians even that were not Jewish rabbis like Josephus said, "Lepros are in many ways indistinguishable from the dead."
(21:14):
"Leprosy" was a death sentence. If you were a leper, you really had no hope apart from God, because unless God intervened to heal you, you were permanently on the outside.
I'm just going to read that one more time.
If you were a leper, you really had no hope apart from God, because unless God intervened to heal, you were permanently on the outside. Does that set off gospel alarm bells for anyone else?
(21:47):
If it does, you're starting to hear this story the way Mark intended.
So into this context, a leper comes to Jesus and breaks all the rules in doing so. He's supposed to stay about 125 feet away from all people, and yet he comes to Jesus and he kneels.
(22:08):
He's supposed to yell out "unclean" as he approaches any person so that they can give him a wide space. He's not supposed to go anywhere near rabbis, lest they become unclean and unable to serve. Yet he comes begging Jesus to make him clean.
This is a picture of a hopeless person who understands that Jesus is his only hope of healing.
(22:37):
He doesn't say "if you can, heal me." He says "if you will."
What was Mark showing us about how Jesus operates here?
He only ever operates in the Father's will, and here comes a leper with a better understanding of that principle than even the disciples. "If you will."
(23:05):
Jesus responds by doing three things. First, he's moved with pity. He touches the man, and he says, "I will. Be clean."
Jesus understands that this is no mere illness, that leprosy was a death sentence of isolation.
(23:26):
And the problem went beyond healing and illness and extended to his position within the community.
In the healing of this leper, Jesus reveals something about the will of God for these people, and it's not just that they be healed, but that they be made clean in a way that only Jesus can do.
For anybody else, touching this man would have made them unclean, and potentially would have made them sick, but Jesus isn't like anybody else.
(23:54):
Instead, touching this man doesn't make Jesus unclean.
Touching this man makes the man clean.
Don't miss this. This is a great look at how the work of Jesus is different from every other religion.
He's not calling you into a system through which you will make yourself clean or earn your own healing.
(24:20):
Through the work of Jesus, he bears the penalty for our sin, our uncleanness, and we obtain his righteousness, becoming clean.
And it's in the next verse that we actually get a little picture of Jesus making this kind of trade of places, because the leper disobeys Jesus.
(24:41):
In spite of the faith that he displayed by asking Jesus for healing, the leper doesn't actually obey Jesus' command to not tell everyone about the miraculous healing.
And as a direct result of this, people begin coming from every province in the area to see this miracle worker, Jesus.
(25:02):
The man's disobedience actually hinders Jesus from doing the mission of preaching through the towns.
We start to get a good idea here, finally, of why Jesus is commanding the demons to be silent, and telling people not to talk about the healing,
because the fame that would result actually makes his mission more difficult.
(25:28):
Now, Jesus is on the outside, unable to come in, and the leper is free to come in to the community again.
This pattern of out and in and out.
Just like when Jesus went out and the disciples called him back in, and he took them further out on a mission, something else happens here.
(25:53):
In our first couple of verses, Jesus goes out, the disciples call him back in, and he says, "No, we're going further out."
Here, the leper was an outsider. Jesus brought him in through healing, and now Jesus has taken the leper's place as an outsider.
The leper's affliction was a skin disease, but Jesus' affliction is fame, which it turns out is no less isolating.
(26:24):
There's a lot that we can take away from this interaction.
I mean, there's something to be said about how Jesus wasn't actually pursuing status and fame.
And following his example means the pursuit of status and fame can never really be what drives us.
There's something here also about how nothing can keep us from Jesus should we choose to come to him.
(26:50):
No social status, no stigma, position.
When we choose to come to Jesus in repentance, the way is open thanks to Jesus.
But if there's one thing that Mark is trying to make sure we walk away from this passage knowing, it's that we desperately need the restoration that only Jesus offers.
(27:13):
We are more like the leper than we know.
We are the outsider.
We are like dead people in our sin separated from God without the work of Jesus.
And the mission of Jesus was to go to the outsider, to the enemies of God, which was all of us, and offer us healing, adopting us in through his finished work on the cross.
(27:39):
You cannot understand the mission and work of Jesus, and therefore our mission and our work as his followers until we understand what he accomplished on the cross.
It wasn't until the disciples saw him raised from the dead that they understood exactly what he had come to do.
(28:00):
It wasn't until they understood his sacrifice on the cross that they realized how much they needed the eternal healing that Jesus offered through himself.
When we understand that Jesus came to seek and save the lost and that we are the lost who need Jesus,
(28:21):
then we can rightly respond to his invitation to himself and to his mission.
Since Mark loved to quote Isaiah, I think it's fitting that we close by reading from Isaiah 53 verse 5.
But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
(28:44):
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and in homes throughout the week.
We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples of Jesus.
(29:06):
You can learn more about our statement of faith and contact a pastor by visiting ecclesiachurches.org.
[MUSIC]
This sermon is from Mark chapter 1, verses 35 through 45, and is entitled "Expectations of Jesus."
It was delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, May 18, 2025.
So today, we're going to finish out Mark chapter 1.
(00:22):
And before we do, let's go over some of the things that Mark has shown us so far about Jesus in verses 1 through 34.
In verses 1 through 15, he showed us a lot about the identity of Jesus, that he is the long-predicted Savior that we were waiting for,
who came with all authority and power and yet came with a specific mission as the suffering servant,
(00:45):
with that end always in mind, that he would die on the cross and rise again, that that was the mission that he came for.
And then from verses 16 through 34, we start to see how Jesus interacts with the people he came to save.
And the people he will call into mission with him, and he calls first the disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, and John,
(01:09):
these guys who are unqualified to be the students of a rabbi, and yet he calls them and tells them, "I will make you into what I'm calling you to be."
All the while continuing to show his authority over all things, spiritual and physical, healing the sick, casting out demons, and teaching about the kingdom.
(01:32):
Today's passage is shorter, with only 11 verses, taking us to the end of chapter 1.
And basically we have two scenes that we'll be a witness to.
Verses 35 through 39, Jesus goes out to pray, and then later he goes on to the next town to preach.
(01:53):
And the disciples are confused as to why he left a city full of adoring fans in Capernaum to move on to the next place.
And Jesus says, "This is my mission to do this."
And then in verses 40 through 45, Jesus shocks everyone by touching and healing a leper who would have been the ultimate outsider in that context.
(02:19):
And as a result, he becomes so popular that he can't continue going into the towns to preach as he had intended.
In both of these sections, we see the theme of moving the mission outward while inviting the outsiders in.
And so we have kind of this back and forth that's happening, this pattern that's happening.
(02:42):
And I think in these 11 verses, we'll actually have our own assumptions about Jesus challenged, and probably some assumptions about how the church is to operate as well.
So let's begin by reading Mark chapter 1, verses 35 through 39.
"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place.
(03:09):
And there he prayed, and Simon and those who were with him searched for him.
And they found him and said to him, 'Everyone is looking for you.'
And he said to them, 'Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.'
And he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons."
(03:34):
So Jesus gets up before the sun or anyone else, and Mark makes a point to say it was even still dark outside.
No one knew that he had left, and he leaves the town of Capernaum and heads out to a desolate place where there are no people.
After spending the previous day preaching in the synagogue and probably working into the wee hours of the morning,
(03:59):
remember he was standing at the door of Peter's house just healing people, everybody who came to him and casting out demons.
But then he leaves and he goes out.
What is the priority? Why does he get up after only a few hours of sleep to retreat out of town to a quiet place?
Prayer. Prayer is the priority.
(04:21):
So don't misread this fellow introverts like me.
He doesn't need to get away from people to recharge.
He's not going for a morning run. He goes out there to pray.
And what's interesting in Mark's Gospel is that we don't see Jesus praying very often.
But two of the places that we do are here and at Gethsemane near the end of Jesus' mission.
(04:45):
So at the beginning and the end, we see that Mark has marked this with prayer.
One reason that we probably don't see prayer come up a whole lot in Mark is that Jesus liked to go off and be alone to pray,
just with his Heavenly Father, which means we naturally wouldn't have a record of it if there was nobody else there.
(05:09):
The other is that Mark is showing us right off the bat in chapter one that Jesus places a priority on prayer
and specifically on his reliance on the will of the Father.
Remember, Mark is a man of few words. He doesn't tell us anything just for no reason.
He doesn't just add this bit about prayer just as an additional detail.
(05:32):
He adds it because it's important to Jesus that he find uninterrupted time to pray,
even if it costs him sleep to do so.
I know about you, but I feel some conviction about that, even saying those words out loud now.
The disciples don't understand where Jesus has gone, and they certainly don't understand why he left.
(05:56):
So what do you think they were thinking as a crowd of a thousand people or so had come to the door of their teacher
and he had healed them and cast out demons?
They had to think they had it made, right? They were called to follow a teacher who had the authority of God.
And now they had a kind of celebrity status in the town of Capernaum.
(06:20):
Remember, this is their hometown.
Imagine that, for example, a teacher comes to Underwood, a small town around us,
which is about a thousand people and spends the night at your house healing all of the sick and the troubled in town.
You've got to feel like you're sitting pretty good, right?
Until you wake up the next morning and the crowds are returning to see the teacher again, and you can't find him.
(06:45):
Suddenly, the golden goose is gone, right?
This guy who you've only followed, remember, for about 24 hours at this point has left on your watch,
and you are about to go from the guy with the miracle worker living in his house
to the guy who lost the only great thing that ever came to Capernaum.
So Peter and the other disciples react kind of the way you would expect.
(07:09):
They run out of town and it says they searched for him,
but a far better rendering of this Greek phrase would be that they hunted Jesus down.
They were looking for Jesus with a purpose.
And can you kind of hear this moment when Peter starts talking through his teeth almost as he says,
"Jesus, everyone is looking for you," right?
(07:32):
And then Jesus answers them simply, "Yeah, it's time to move on."
Jesus wasn't there to make Peter and friends hometown heroes after all.
The mission was bigger than them, and it certainly wasn't about them and their fame.
The disciples in the course of 24 hours had forgotten that Jesus called them to follow him,
(08:01):
not the other way around.
They were almost acting like they were Jesus handlers instead of his disciples.
They couldn't understand why Jesus would leave a perfectly good crowd and local fame
to move on and preach in the next place.
Certainly not so soon.
They didn't understand the mission yet, but Jesus did,
(08:24):
because Jesus was aligned with the will of the Father.
And the disciples were only aligned with their own will and desire at this point.
To their credit, they do continue following Jesus, right?
When Jesus continues through the region doing what he came to do,
preaching and teaching and proving the authority of his message,
(08:47):
the disciples do continue to follow him.
So before we go on, let's talk a little bit about our expectations of Jesus.
Because Jesus is faithful to fulfill his promises,
but not necessarily to fulfill our expectations of him.
(09:09):
Let me explain and define that a little bit.
The disciples had expectations on Jesus that were based on their own wants and desires.
They had given up much with some expectation that it was going to be worth it,
and when they saw the beginning of fame, the miracles, the authority of Jesus,
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they thought that it was leading toward an earthly reality
and did not even conceive that the will and plan of God might be leading to something like the cross.
That was just outside of their ability to even wrap their heads around at that point.
They had developed a misunderstanding of what the reward was supposed to be for following Jesus.
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And so I have to ask, do we often have expectations of Jesus that are not centered on the cross of Christ?
The benefit that we have over the disciples in this story is that we know the end.
We know where Jesus was heading.
We know what his mission was.
We know that it ended in his death and in his resurrection.
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But sometimes our expectations of Jesus are flawed, just like the disciples were here.
Just this last week, I got into a conversation with a few men in our church about what blessing looked like for Christians
and what kind of blessing we should expect.
They had heard some folks talking about whether they were blessed because they were financially well off
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and then drifting into the prosperity gospel, which is all about physical, temporary blessing
and totally twist the blessing of God.
And it really got me asking myself as we talked about this,
do I sometimes expect certain things from Jesus like comfort, like financial security
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or popularity in favor with people that are not promised to me?
What does scripture say about blessing?
Well, it's very clear that the blessing of Jesus is that we receive the favor of God through his finished work on the cross.
Our blessing is not based in our physical experience of comfort or ease or lack of persecution,
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though we can be thankful to God for those things.
Those are blessings to be grateful for, but our status as a blessed people is not anchored in those things.
Our blessing is anchored in Christ alone.
So that's helpful to us when jobs feel unsteady.
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We talked about this in house church this week where a couple folks were already talking about how there's some stuff
shaking and moving in my job and it's making me feel uneasy.
Sometimes relationships get hard and uneasy.
Sometimes the responsibilities of life feel heavy.
And the truth of the gospel, the good news is that we can still stand firm with confidence in the goodness of God,
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that his favor over us is unshaken by circumstances because his favor is a gift given by grace through faith in Christ.
Galatians, anyone?
That's the message of Galatians.
That's the message of the gospel.
So what can we expect of him?
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What can we expect of Jesus?
Well, here are a few things that are very helpful to remember and I think you'll find encouraging as I did.
If we bring our sin to Jesus and turn from it, he forgives and cleanses us.
That's something that we can expect from Jesus.
First John 1-9 tells us that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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Yes, we're forgiven, but also we are cleansed, brought in.
He's both perfectly just and requiring payment for sin, but also he is merciful in providing that payment through himself, through Christ.
So that's something we can take to the bank, that we can bring our sin to Jesus and repent of it and receive forgiveness.
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Another thing that we can expect of Jesus is that his plan for us is perfect in the end, even when it doesn't feel like it in the present.
That's good news when things feel shaky, right?
When things feel unsteady, when those jobs that we have feel like they're kind of uncertain under our feet,
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when bad things happen that we can't explain, that we have a hard time understanding,
you can remember things like Romans 8-28 that says, "We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."
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This is not a promise of earthly comfort, but rather a promise that God is working all things out according to his perfect plan in the end for his glory and for the ultimate good of those who love him.
And then here's one more.
One of my favorites is that Jesus promises to be with us always.
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And then through 28-20, he records Jesus saying, "Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."
All of those are things that we can expect of Jesus, that we receive forgiveness when we bring our sin to him and repent of it,
that he has a plan for us that is for our ultimate good and that in the midst of all those plans, he is with us always.
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So a good question to ask of those expectations that you have of Jesus is,
are our expectations grounded in the will of the Father or in our own desires?
I mentioned earlier that Mark only talks about Jesus praying in three places.
This is the first, the second is actually when he prays for the food when he feeds the 5,000, and the final one is in Gethsemane.
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Notice what comes out of those first and last prayer times though.
Here in the first chapter, he says, "Let's go. This is why I came."
So he comes out to the wilderness, he prays, and when the disciples come, he says, "Let's go. This is why I came."
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In Gethsemane, the disciples also come and he says, "Rise up. Let's be going. See my betrayer is at hand."
That's Mark 14, 42.
In both times, a core quality that is on display through the life and mission of Jesus is the ongoing prayer, "Not my will, but yours be done."
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"Let's go. This is why I came."
So after going out to pray and refusing to come back in to Capernaum, Jesus takes his confused disciples out further still and the mission continues,
which leads us to the second scene in Interaction in today's passage. This is verse 40 through 45.
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"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.
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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 that was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter.
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So to properly understand the gravity of what happened here, we have to get into the head of a first century Middle Eastern listener.
Taylor and I were talking earlier this week and he said, 'You know, I bet church kids are the only people in modern culture who have even heard of leprosy because the disease today defined as leprosy is so exceptionally rare.
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It's basically been eradicated, at least in first world countries, due to the availability of effective antibiotics. You just don't see a lot of leprosy around.
And when I hear leprosy, honestly, I immediately picture a felt board in a Sunday school class from the 1990s when I grew up with 10 guys wrapped up like mummies, nine of them ungrateful, and a felt Jesus who's getting ready to heal them.
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So some context. The word translated leprosy is a general term that is actually referring to any type of skin disease, not just the infection that results in literally body parts falling off, which is the leprosy that we recognize today.
As far as diseases go in the ancient world, though, skin diseases were considered the worst of the worst for a couple of reasons. First, while transmission wasn't really understood, they did get that people with skin diseases tended to share it through touch with others.
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And so this led them to develop an understanding of skin diseases that really went beyond just illness, and it was considered an uncleanness, a blemish that couldn't be washed away with water, even going so far as to say this is almost like a spiritual uncleanness as well.
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The Jews in particular had laws that had been given to the Israelite community by God in Leviticus 13 and 14, giving precautions to protect everyone from the spread of diseases like this, but also making a way for those people to come back in if and when the disease resolved itself and they were healed.
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So the priest couldn't heal you, but they could declare you healed if you showed that all your symptoms had gone away, and then you would offer your offering at the temple and be essentially welcomed back into the community.
A leper was permanently dirty and impure, which caused them to be kicked out of the society entirely, including the marketplace, their family, and really most importantly for the Jews, temple life.
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They couldn't worship.
With the rabbis of the day writing things like, for example, one rabbi said, "Leprosy is a fate similar to death." And historians even that were not Jewish rabbis like Josephus said, "Lepros are in many ways indistinguishable from the dead."
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"Leprosy" was a death sentence. If you were a leper, you really had no hope apart from God, because unless God intervened to heal you, you were permanently on the outside.
I'm just going to read that one more time.
If you were a leper, you really had no hope apart from God, because unless God intervened to heal, you were permanently on the outside. Does that set off gospel alarm bells for anyone else?
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If it does, you're starting to hear this story the way Mark intended.
So into this context, a leper comes to Jesus and breaks all the rules in doing so. He's supposed to stay about 125 feet away from all people, and yet he comes to Jesus and he kneels.
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He's supposed to yell out "unclean" as he approaches any person so that they can give him a wide space. He's not supposed to go anywhere near rabbis, lest they become unclean and unable to serve. Yet he comes begging Jesus to make him clean.
This is a picture of a hopeless person who understands that Jesus is his only hope of healing.
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He doesn't say "if you can, heal me." He says "if you will."
What was Mark showing us about how Jesus operates here?
He only ever operates in the Father's will, and here comes a leper with a better understanding of that principle than even the disciples. "If you will."
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Jesus responds by doing three things. First, he's moved with pity. He touches the man, and he says, "I will. Be clean."
Jesus understands that this is no mere illness, that leprosy was a death sentence of isolation.
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And the problem went beyond healing and illness and extended to his position within the community.
In the healing of this leper, Jesus reveals something about the will of God for these people, and it's not just that they be healed, but that they be made clean in a way that only Jesus can do.
For anybody else, touching this man would have made them unclean, and potentially would have made them sick, but Jesus isn't like anybody else.
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Instead, touching this man doesn't make Jesus unclean.
Touching this man makes the man clean.
Don't miss this. This is a great look at how the work of Jesus is different from every other religion.
He's not calling you into a system through which you will make yourself clean or earn your own healing.
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Through the work of Jesus, he bears the penalty for our sin, our uncleanness, and we obtain his righteousness, becoming clean.
And it's in the next verse that we actually get a little picture of Jesus making this kind of trade of places, because the leper disobeys Jesus.
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In spite of the faith that he displayed by asking Jesus for healing, the leper doesn't actually obey Jesus' command to not tell everyone about the miraculous healing.
And as a direct result of this, people begin coming from every province in the area to see this miracle worker, Jesus.
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The man's disobedience actually hinders Jesus from doing the mission of preaching through the towns.
We start to get a good idea here, finally, of why Jesus is commanding the demons to be silent, and telling people not to talk about the healing,
because the fame that would result actually makes his mission more difficult.
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Now, Jesus is on the outside, unable to come in, and the leper is free to come in to the community again.
This pattern of out and in and out.
Just like when Jesus went out and the disciples called him back in, and he took them further out on a mission, something else happens here.
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In our first couple of verses, Jesus goes out, the disciples call him back in, and he says, "No, we're going further out."
Here, the leper was an outsider. Jesus brought him in through healing, and now Jesus has taken the leper's place as an outsider.
The leper's affliction was a skin disease, but Jesus' affliction is fame, which it turns out is no less isolating.
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There's a lot that we can take away from this interaction.
I mean, there's something to be said about how Jesus wasn't actually pursuing status and fame.
And following his example means the pursuit of status and fame can never really be what drives us.
There's something here also about how nothing can keep us from Jesus should we choose to come to him.
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No social status, no stigma, position.
When we choose to come to Jesus in repentance, the way is open thanks to Jesus.
But if there's one thing that Mark is trying to make sure we walk away from this passage knowing, it's that we desperately need the restoration that only Jesus offers.
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We are more like the leper than we know.
We are the outsider.
We are like dead people in our sin separated from God without the work of Jesus.
And the mission of Jesus was to go to the outsider, to the enemies of God, which was all of us, and offer us healing, adopting us in through his finished work on the cross.
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You cannot understand the mission and work of Jesus, and therefore our mission and our work as his followers until we understand what he accomplished on the cross.
It wasn't until the disciples saw him raised from the dead that they understood exactly what he had come to do.
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It wasn't until they understood his sacrifice on the cross that they realized how much they needed the eternal healing that Jesus offered through himself.
When we understand that Jesus came to seek and save the lost and that we are the lost who need Jesus,
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then we can rightly respond to his invitation to himself and to his mission.
Since Mark loved to quote Isaiah, I think it's fitting that we close by reading from Isaiah 53 verse 5.
But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
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Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and in homes throughout the week.
We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples of Jesus.
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You can learn more about our statement of faith and contact a pastor by visiting ecclesiachurches.org.
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