Bible Study

Keeping the Mission Centered

Mark 1:29-39

 

[Imperatives in this sermon:

  1. Know what is of greatest worth and what gives us greatest worth: the God of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

  2. Know who we are:  by grace through faith, children, servants, and heirs of God.

  3. Know how to recognize God’s guidance: by its consistency with scriptural guidelines for discernment. Powerpoint sources for this sermon (Some of the images are for sale and some are free): http://www.biblelandhistory.com/capernaum/index.html  or http://www.bibleplaces.com.] 

Understanding the Scripture

Mark 1:29-39 begins: And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 

 

From the synagogue Jesus went just down the street to the family compound of his disciples Simon Peter and Andrew. 

 

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.

 

Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a fever, and Jesus healed her. She began to do what disciples do, to serve Jesus and his mission.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed 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. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

 

As soon as the Sabbath was over, large crowds gathered outside the family compound. Jesus healed many who were sick with various diseases and freed many from demonic oppression and possession.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, 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." 

 

Before sunrise, Jesus went out to an isolated place to pray. His disciples eventually found him and exclaimed to the effect, “You are a hit back in town. Let’s get back there!”

 

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.

 

Jesus, fresh from listening to the Father, said, “No, we are moving on to proclaim the gospel in other towns, for that is my mission.” Everything Jesus did was to proclaim the message, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news.”

Jesus Is Amazing

As I read the Four Gospels, I am amazed by the miracles that Jesus does and by the suffering he endures, but the single thing that most amazes me is the freedom he exercises. He shows no need to please people, no need to be popular, no need to defend himself. Although always compassionate, he is anything but politically correct. In fact, his speech is often downright shocking.  Although he takes great risks to demonstrate genuine love and care for the lost, the broken, the forgotten, and the outcast, he daringly challenges everyone from the least to the greatest to settle for nothing less than the full perfection of the reign of God. With great nimbleness of mind, he sticks to his message, refusing to let tricky questioners divert his focus. Always he returns to the central question he poses, “How will you respond to the reign of God?” 

I am stunned by his accomplishment. If I ask the source of his extraordinary freedom, the answer is clear: it is the time he spends prayerfully listening to his heavenly Father.

Everything Jesus does flows from his constant awareness of what his heavenly Father is doing. In John 5:19, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.”

Everything that Jesus says expresses what the Father has commanded him to say. In John 12:49-50, Jesus says, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.”

This extraordinary prayerful attention to the heavenly Father’s guidance is the source of Jesus’ great freedom and mission focus. Jesus abides constantly in the Father and is constantly attentive to his leading.

And Even More Amazingly...

Now the really, really amazing part: Jesus wants us to exercise the same kind of freedom and effectiveness that he has demonstrated.

How? Jesus tells us that, if we want to be fruitful in our mission as his disciples, we must abide in him as he abides in the Father: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” 

The nitty-gritty truth is this: fruitful mission cannot be determined by popular pressures, but must stick to a God-directed course. This means that those who would lead religious communities in fruitful mission must give priority to listening prayerfully to God who alone can keep us free. We must abide in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Why and How We Listen to God

Many Christians have found it helpful to pray according to the outline Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Those are all good and vital things. But something is missing. These are all things we say to God in prayer.

Prayer must also include our listening to God.  There must be a time when we let God teach and guide us. Jesus took the time to listen to his heavenly Father, and that is the source of the amazing freedom with which he lived. 

How do we do that? If we want to live out the kind of freedom and effectiveness that Jesus demonstrated, I believe that the most important questions to keep before ourselves as we prayerfully listen to God are:

(1) Whom or what do we worship?

(2) Who are we?

(3) How can we know when we are hearing from God?

(1) Whom or what do we worship?

A Christview Ministries student came to me a couple of months ago asking the practical relevance for us today of all the Bible passages about not worshiping idols. He said, “I don’t personally know anyone who bows down before an image of metal or stone.”

I replied that the English word worship derives from worth-ship. We worship what we believe to be of greatest worth and what we believe gives us greatest worth. If we believe that money gives us greatest worth, then, whatever we sing in our Sunday hymns, we worship money. If we believe that sex gives us greatest worth, then, whatever words we use in our prayers, we worship sex. The first and most basic of the Ten Commandments tells us that we have only one God, the Lord, who has delivered his people from bondage, and that we are to have no other gods, no other source of ultimate worth, before us. We are called to worship the One who is of greatest worth, the One who gives us our greatest worth. This One is the Lord.

Our student now says that this perspective is one of the most helpful things he has learned at Christview. He says that he uses this method of self-examination frequently in his own prayer life and in situations in which others ask him for spiritual counsel. He says that, by asking ourselves in a timely manner what we actually are considering to be the source of our worth, we can catch ourselves when we are just starting to slip in our thinking, we can catch ourselves in time to avoid sliding all the way into the destructive consequences that follow from impure worship.  We can’t be serving God if we think that our greatest worth comes from somewhere else.

(2) Who are we?

Every believer is simply a sinner who has been, is being, and will be saved by the grace of God. By the offer of a salvation we have not earned, we are led to faith. Through faith in Jesus, we may be born anew of the Holy Spirit as children and heirs of God’s kingdom.  By virtue of our status as re-born children of God, we are called to represent the nature and purposes of God in all that we do. Our present service to God is a rehearsal for our future lives in a perfect new heaven and new earth where we will reign with Jesus. So, who are we? As Christians, we are sinners saved by grace, believers born anew, servants with a mission, and people of destiny.

Satan would like to convince us that either we are so bad or so damaged that the gospel cannot help us or so good or so smart that we do not need the gospel. Alternatively, he would be happy if he could get us to think that we are merely cogs in the wheels of society or that we are self-sufficient gods to ourselves. Then again, he could persuade us that we are simply products of our genetic heritage and our social upbringing, transient accidents of history who create for ourselves whatever meaning we find in life. There are many ways that Satan can distract us from the identity that God has given to us.  Prayer and study provide ways that we may reject these lies of Satan and reclaim the destiny for which God has created us. Great healing and empowerment can come into our lives when we get straight about who we are in Christ.

 (3) How can we know when we are hearing from God?

Listening to God is not a matter of straining our spiritual ears to try to hear the Voice speaking in our heads; it is not a matter of trying harder.  

Over the past twenty-five years, about half-a-dozen times, I have recognized what I believe to be God speaking words directly into my mind. Interestingly, every time I have heard “the Voice” it was to correct something I had failed to perceive correctly, something that I needed to see either for my own spiritual healing or for guiding the way I conduct my ministry. I am sure that some faithful Christians hear directly from God less often and some more often than I do. But I really distrust people who habitually preface their advice with, “The Lord told me….” Often enough in my experience, people who claim to be delivering messages from God are just plain wrong.

Far more often than I hear “the Voice” in my head, I get a strong impression or a gentle nudge that seems to come from a source other than me. The nudge may come though something I hear in a Christian gathering or something that I see in a work of art. It may come as a vision, as an idea, or as words. Often enough, God gives us no new or special guidance either because the matter has been sufficiently addressed in scripture and we can hear him speak there or because God is content to let us learn from that most thorough of teachers: experience.

My wife Judy and I both confirm that we hear from God far more often when we are obeying God’s calling to get out of our comfort zones and to get about mission; we see many more signs of God’s guiding and providing presence when we are out on the edge.  The reason is quite simple. God usually guides us only one step at a time. If we don’t respond to the first nudge, he has no reason to give us the second nudge.

Discernment

However the nudge comes, our job is then to sort out whether it really comes from God.

That is why, when we are listening for God, we prayerfully study the scriptures. Many scripture passages are designed to help us heed the voice of God and avoid the voice of the Deceiver. Here are my basic scriptural tests for discerning when I am hearing from God. Is the message consistent with:

 

In conclusion, if we want to develop the freedom and effectiveness that we see in Jesus, then we need to listen prayerfully to God, especially on these questions:

(1) Whom or what do we worship?

(2) Who are we?

(3) How can we know when we are hearing from God?

Freedom and effectiveness in mission for Jesus come from knowing that:

 

Decision

My challenge to you is that you regularly spend time prayerfully listening to God on these subjects so that you can be effective and free as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

If you have never begun the journey toward hearing from God, it begins with professing your faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and with accepting him as your Lord and Savior.

From that faith, it follows that we must repent, turning from all else toward living under the reign of God with Jesus as our Lord. 

We are then baptized into union Jesus, dying with him to sin, and being raised to walk in the new life of our faith.

We receive and share the forgiveness that God promises us through Jesus.

Finally, we invite the Holy Spirit to come into our lives, God present with us to confirm our faith, to guide and empower us as his children and servants. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us begin to hear from God.

But we must take the time to listen.

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