We Need a Hero
Article 4
Mark 4:35-5:43
The 4th article in our statement of faith begins this way:
We believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures…
God’s gospel is revealed in history supremely through the Person of Jesus Christ
Have you seen the Sprint-Mobile television commercials in which an athletes leg is shattered but the doctor just want him to know he has good news – that the athlete isn’t taking costing him extra money when the two are there talking.
We have been considering how the central message of the Bible is that God is declaring good news available to people. Today we come to the person at the heart of that good news, that gospel from God, i.e., Jesus. God’s good news, we have said, is revealed in history supremely through Jesus. But, when we go through what feel like bad times, we may sometimes wonder if the good news that is discovered through faith in Jesus has any relevance to the issues we’re facing. Is God’s good news like the commercial? Is it that we’re experiencing bad news – hurting -- but God says, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring glory to myself.”
What kinds of bad-news-crises am I talking about? I’m talking about the kinds of situations we all experience. I’m talking about times of natural disaster: When fires or earthquakes destroy all we possess. Or second, there are those times of great emotional stress and pressure. I’ve had many of those. I – like most of you – have had many times in my life when there seemed to be forces outside my control that made life hard.
Or third, there are times of physical pain and sickness when nothing seems to be helping. Or, perhaps more than any other are those times of family crisis. Particularly, when some one close to us is dying.
So, today I declare today again that the Maker of the universe has given us a book that will help us to understand our challenging world – but that God’s kingdom has broken into it so that there is good news from God to you in any situation. And, I declare also that Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, is at the heart of God’s gospel. What does that mean practically? There is a section of the Bible that will help us.
When I was doing my graduate studies focusing on the gospel of Mark, I noticed a rather long section in which there are four stories -- back to back to back to back – in which people are experiencing what we call bad news in this world. In each, people had come to the end of there wits. They didn’t know what they were going to do. They were standing at a place in their lives during which all that they could do was stop and cry for help and hope that a deliverer would come. And amazingly, they find that Jesus was there – and he 1) cared because he can empathize with their situations – he was fully man-- and 2) he could make a difference because of who he was – fully God. We find the disciples stopping to ask, “Who is this?”
So, we’re going to ask the same question today – and see what good news Jesus brought into the bad news of their worlds. And the thing that I want us to think about today so simply is what difference does it make that we follow this one through whom heaven and earth have been made but who entered as one who is fully human into our world -- when we hit those points in which we just want to cry for help.
Ready to look at them?
I. The Situations of Helplessness
1. Situation #1: A natural disaster. (4:34-41)
Most know the story, I guess. We learn it in Sunday School. It was the storm at sea. V. 37 says, “A furious squall came out” and the waves broke over the boat that these disciples were in so that this boat was nearly swamped. In biblical times, most people had a superstitious dread of the sea. Read through the book of Psalms, book of Isaiah. Almost always, the sea and storms at sea were associated with primeval forces that were outside of peoples’ control.
If you want to try to empathize with this situation -- it might be like us being here in this place and some one saying to us, “This room is filled with radioactivity.” That’s the kind of feelings that it evokes. Or nuclear energy is all around us. It’s about those untamable, uncontrollable, unseen forces that we just feel like we can’t do anything about. So, envision the disciples being in that situation. They felt that the only way for this world to ever truly to be at peace would be for a deliverer to come and to control those forces. The disciples were, quite literally, help-less.
2. Situation #2: mental disturbance. (5:1-20)
The story is about a violent madman. Jesus crossed the lake and when he got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs – among the dead. No one could control him -- not even with chains. He was more powerful than any human prison or chains.
Night and day among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones. Being out of control, he was involved in self-mutilation. He would cut himself; hurt himself – trying to find relief – trying to find something he could control.
I think a psychologist today would say he had a complete disintegration of his personality. When people asked, “What is your name?” His answer would be, “We are legion.” If he were being evaluated today, he would be labeled as having a psychotic mental illness. The Bible, of course, tells us that there was more to it than that. This man was demon possessed. It’s not that all psychoses are necessarily demonic. But I’ll tell you that demonic activity surely leads to this sort of emotional disturbance.
What is clear to me is that there are many people who feel the same kind of emotional and mental disturbance in our day as this man felt back then. We have times that we feel powerless in our search to find peace. Just think about all the efforts to heal him that had failed. And eventually, society had just cast him out so that he was living there in the cemetery. However we might diagnose this sort of disturbance, I want us to see in this man, a real human being in history -- a man who could not be helped by any one or anything in this world -- a man who couldn’t help himself! This man, just like the disciples at the sea, was helpless.
3. Situation #3: physical sickness. (5:25-34)
In 5:25-34, we read the story of the chronic invalid.A woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse (5:25-26).
It is pretty clear that this woman’s problem was gynecological in nature, some sort of uterine hemorrhage. If that is true, then probably, by the standards of Jewish ceremonial laws, she was an outcast, i.e., ceremonially unclean. So even though she wouldn’t have been considered insane like the man in verses 1-20, in many ways she was no better off. And nobody was able to do anything for her either. She had seen many doctors but instead of her getting better, she became steadily worse. Whatever her medical problem really was, it’s clear that healing for it was beyond the medical knowledge of her day. So, she was just like the disciples at sea and just like the man at the cemetery: This was a woman who was helpless.
4. Situation #4: Family fearing death. (5:21-24, 35-43)
This is the most moving of all the stories for me -- the bereaved parent. One of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come (5:22-23a).”
There are few tragedies in life more devastating than the death of a child. I would guess that many of us know that first hand. I doubt it would be hard in fact for any parent who is here today to fail to be able to imagine what Jairus felt in this episode. The dryness in the throat, the wetness in the eyes as he comes to Jesus and he says, “My little daughter is dying.”
Can you feel the pain? If you’ve ever been with parents beside the bedside of child who is desperately ill, you can envision the tears Jairus is fighting back and the panic that was almost driving him mad: “Jesus, I’ve heard about the power that you have. Can’t you do something?”
And yet, it seems like there was nothing that could be done because Jairus’ associates come to him and say, “Don’t bother this so-called prophet any more. Your daughter is already dead!” So you see, similar to the disciples in the storm, similar to the man who was violent and demon possessed, similar to the woman who just couldn’t find any healing for her health problem, this father was helpless.
Summary: So you see it in one story after another: The Bible gives us real-life stories of people who are at the ends of their ropes. These are those times in life when we feel as if we are falling off a cliff. In those times, we can feel the plunge toward doom happening and we find ourselves grasping -- hoping maybe there is a rock somewhere we might hold on to. Or perhaps – we hope there will be somebody who hears our cries and has the ability to grab our hands and rescue us. Similar to that, these people were helpless.
Now that brings me to the second part of my message. What did they do? Each one found help. But notice who came into their situations – and notice the ways that they asked for help.
II. The Prayers for Help – Bringing Jesus into the Situation
1. The accusing plea in the midst of frustration
In the midst of the storm, the disciples’ plea wasn’t a very humble prayer. It sounds more like an accusation in v. 38. The disciples woke Jesus up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care?” Many times I’ve heard such pleas. How many people in times of stress have just snapped that out to the people they are closest to? We say it to our spouses. Children say it to their parents. People say it to their church leaders. Sometimes we say it to God: “Don’t you know what’s happening around here? Don’t you care?”
The encouraging thing to me as a Christian is the way Jesus responded to their insensitive words. Instead of disregarding the impudence of it, he accepted it as an invitation. He understood that when we fellow-human beings say, “Don’t you care?” -- many times what we mean is, “Can’t you do something? I need help.” So Jesus did something. It’s amazing.
V. 39, “He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Peace, be still!” -- and the wind died down and it was completely calm. There is only one word for that: Power. Power consistent with what Genesis 1 reveals. Power to control those forces that are out of human control simply through words. And it was power used by the One who experienced life with them – the One who is fully God who was in the boat with them. It was power to change the helplessness of those men into hope that they could be calm again.
2. The defensive longing.
With the demonized man, the turn to Jesus seems to be a defensive cry: V. 7: He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me Jesus son of the most High God?”
It is always been interesting to me as I’ve visited emotional wards in hospitals to find that many of those who have the most severe emotional disorders have an almost uncanny interest in spiritual things. It happens all the time. Remember that even the disciples didn’t grasp fully who Jesus was at this time. But this man, at least through the demons in him, identified who Jesus was. “What do you want with me Son of the Most High?”
Jesus saw through that cry of the man to the positive healing that needed to be done. Even this man was not beyond the compassion of this man who was fully man and the power of the one who was fully God.
You know the story don’t you? This herd of swine was happily making pigs of themselves on the hillside. Jesus cast the demons from the man to the pigs. They go hog wild and become the first “deviled ham”.
This passage has led to countless questions -- as I’m sure you can imagine. Let me tell you simply what I think... I think that some times when it comes to dealing with the supernatural we just have to accept what the Bible says. This is what is clear to me: Jesus interaction with this legion is taking place on a realm far beyond what I have seen – but it’s clear that he has power over it. Jesus has power over it as only God can have power -- and he understands this man’s condition because Jesus lived life in this world and understood personally the sins and systems that lead to dysfunction.
And we have to just be as astounded as those disciples/crowds were in v. 15 -- when they came to Jesus they saw this man who had been possessed with a demon sitting there dressed and in his right mind. It would be a little bit like having Lady Gaga sitting in the front row of this service listening to my sermon -- wearing a business suit and singing hymns.
There’s only one word for this, isn’t there? That word is power. There is power here that doesn’t exclude the healing knowledge of this world -- but goes far beyond anything you see in any kind of psychological techniques. It is God’s power greater than demons and greater than whatever is disturbing us emotionally. It’s power from a God who understands us used to change the helplessness of one disturbed man into a life of peace and productivity.
3. The wish-filled grasp.
The sick woman’s way of connecting to Jesus is almost embarrassing for modern Christians. She engages in a superstitious gesture. Vv. 27-28, When the woman heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”
Superstitious people often do attribute good fortune to things like this: Throwing salt, avoiding a black cat, knocking on wood... But it’s beautiful to me that, for this woman who knew so little about him, Jesus didn’t just dismiss her superstition. Instead he saw through her superstitious act to the real glimmer of faith that was there. Do you notice verse 34? “Woman it is your faith that has healed you” -- not her superstition. But again, when we see that he heals her, he does something no people were able do. There is one word for it and it’s the word that the Bible itself uses in verse 30. It is power. It is the power of God used to bring compassion and healing to a person he shared life with.
4. The desperate cry
We have in episode 4 the most distraught and poignant cry for help of all. Verse 23: “Jesus, please come.” -- and the father falls on his knees.
Remember, this man was a Jewish ruler -- and in the ancient world, a powerful person was not supposed to show weakness. And yet here is a man who knew that showing weakness was not really weakness. He was simply coming to the right place for help. He doesn’t say, “Jesus, I’m a leader. I could help further your reputation, you know.” No, he falls on his knees before this young Jewish rabbi.
And, of course, at first it looked like Jesus hadn’t come quickly enough. In a very private setting (so different from many modern faith healers), Jesus speaks to the young girl in her language -- and she awakes. Just like Gen. 1 – God’s power through simple speech. Power even to dispel the shadow of the grave. Power even to turn the helplessness of a bereaved parent into hope.
We’ve looked at the four situations and at four very different kinds of cries for help. Why?
III. The Lesson
Why do you think God might have inspired for Mark these four stories back to back to back to back in his Word? I’m sure there are many reasons -- but partly they are there so that when we gather in a church and we have those times in which we feel helpless, we can come back and remember this One who is fully God and fully man and who is at the heart of God’s good news to us. You see, as we saw in Article 3 of our SOF, helplessness is a part of our human condition. All of us face the sorts of situations we have seen today.
I want to remind us that the Bible tells us that we have entered into a relationship with the person of Jesus – who is fully God and fully man. He is the heat of God’s good news to us. The main reason I have wanted to bring this message is that I long for us to learn to do what our brothers and sisters in Christ have done ever since the Bible-times, i.e., to call Jesus into our situations and to trust him. I know it’s so simple -- but I want to call us as a church family back to a simple child-like (not child-ish) faith in Jesus. This begins when we remember who he is:
We believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures. Jesus, Israel’s promised Messiah, was conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father as our High Priest and Advocate.
Fully God – fully man. One Person with these two natures. “Messiah”, the one who was to gather God’s people, gathering us together and defeating sin and death by cross and resurrection. This same Jesus – now our high pries and advocate.
Though we may not see exactly what he is doing in a situation, he wants us to come to him simply say in what ever way we can possibly do it, “Lord Jesus, I need your help and I’m ready to call you in, take my hands off, wait for you, trust you – and obey you until faith turns into sight.”
Now, I need to give two qualifications here before we go. #1: When I say that in times of need trust Jesus -- I’m not denying that God often uses natural processes sometimes to provide help. Sometimes, God does provide help through medical knowledge, through surgery, and through counseling therapy. But I doubt that many of us at LAC deny that anyway.
I think that few of us, when I would tell us to learn to trust in Jesus,will go and throw our medicines away and just trust in Jesus. The bigger problem we have is that we tend to become what I call “practical agnostics”. We believe in God -- but when it comes to the practical issues of everyday life, we tend to live the same as others live. We might have physical problems and the only thing that we do is go to the doctor. And the only way that we may pray is, “God direct the doctor’s hands.” I want us to learn first to go in simple faith to the One who is both fully God and fully man and who promises never to leave or forsake us.
#2: When God provides help, he may not do it the way we want him to do it. I was thinking of the book of Habakkuk in which God’s people asked for deliverance from all sorts of things. So God said he would do it. God said, “O.K., I’ll help. I’ll send the Babylonians.” But, the people’s first response is, “Not that way, Lord. The Babylonians are worse than our other enemies!”
God answered in an amazing way in Habakkuk but it was not at all the way they expected. And I have personally found that to be the case again and again. 26 years ago I prayed the prayer for our daughter that Jairus prayed – and we didn’t experience what Jairus experienced. After a prolonged period, and many desperate cries for God’s help, Brittany Anne died. And I’ve found that even in those times, we have to learn to trust God in the same way we ask little children to trust their parents in tough times.
And I dare not forget the most important part of Jesus being both God and fully man. The fact that he is both is the only hope for our eternal souls – for our greatest need. We’ve already seen that, when God created us, he eternally linked us with himself by making us in his image. Now, we see that, even when we walked away from God and entered into sin, God linked himself with us by becoming a man. Jesus, who was and is in very nature God (Phil. 2:5-11) made himself nothing, took on the very nature of a servant when he became human, and bore our sins on the cross. And… Hebrews 2:17-18:
For this reason Jesus had to be made like us, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Only this one who is fully God and fully man has lived the life we should have lived but have not – and then died the death we should have to die but now do not have to because he did it in our place. The Son of God became a man who that, through faith in him, we might become the children of God (CS Lewis). He calls you to believe in him. To entrust your sins – and your life to him. “God sent his son into the world to rescue you and me through him (John 3:17).
So God’s help may not come when we expect it or in the way we expect it but I tell you today: Sometimes, Jesus asks us the same question that he asked those disciples in Mark 4:40: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” He asks us those questions sometimes when we are in the midst of a crisis. He asks us when the stress we feel is so great we don’t think we can even move. He asks us when we are going through physical pain and cannot fathom why God is allowing it to happen. He asks us sometimes even when a loved one dies. “Why are you afraid? Don’t you have faith?” And he says to us the same thing he said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid, believe...” He calls us to trust him because God’s good news is revealed in history supremely through the Person of Jesus Christ.
To His glory alone,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor
Greg Waybright • Copyright 2011, Lake Avenue Church