STUDIES IN MARK

�The painter Lundwig Richter, tells in his memoirs of how he and three friends set out to paint the same landscape.� They each were committed to produce as accurately as possible what they saw.� Nevertheless, the result was four different pictures, as different as the four personalities of the artists.�

�

�� The same thing happened when four well‑known artists painted the portrait of the United Nations hostess Maria Lani.� Each of them knew her personally and saw her from a different perspective, and the result was four remarkably different pictures.�

�� This helps us understand why there are four Gospels in the New Testament.� One Gospel would give us the life of Jesus as seen from only one perspective, and that would mean a very inadequate portrait.� Jesus is too complex to be seen from only one perspective.� God inspired four men to write the life of Jesus, for each of them gives us unique insight into Jesus that you do not get in the others.

�� Mark gives us the perspective that is most popular in our modern world.� Wycliff Bible Translators have made Mark the most translated book in the world.� There is no other book in the world in� so many different languages.� It is the shortest of the Gospels, and, therefore, the fastest to translate and to read.� But that is not the only reason for its selection.� It is also the Gospel most appealing to the Gentile world.�

�� Matthew is written for Jews, and it is full of Old Testament quotes, and references to Jewish customs, all of which are of little concern to the Gentiles to whom Mark writes.� He writes for the Romans, and they did not care about genealogies and a persons pedigree.� They only cared about his deeds, not his decent.�� The result is, Mark is a Gospel of deeds.� Jesus is a man of action‑a man on the move. It is a go go go Gospel, and Jesus is involved in one event and miracle after another, with hardly a breath in between.� If Jesus ever relaxed, it is not noted by Mark.�

�� Mark does not tell us about birth stories and childhood.� He leaves that to Dr. Luke.� He is more anxious to get on with the story of the adult action of the Lord.�� But this does not mean Mark is not interested in details.� He gives us graphic details the other Gospels do not share.� If you want to know exact names, times, locations,� or the numbers and colors, you go to Mark for these details.� He is the detail man. �His portrait is of Messiah on the run, but he is no blur, but rather, a very concrete personality involved in very specific settings and lives.� Mark tells us more about the looks and gestures of Jesus than anyone.�

�� Mark is the only one who tells us that our Savior was a carpenter.� Mark tells us more about our Lord's emotions than the other Gospels.� He brings Jesus closer to us as a man of like feelings.� The other Gospels just tell us of Jesus calling little children to Him, but Mark tells us twice that when they came He took them up into His arms. Mark alone brings out a tenderness in Jesus that nobody else records.�

�� We could go on giving examples, but the point we want to make is, each Gospel writer sees Jesus from a perspective that the others do not see.� You cannot know all there is to know about Jesus by reading just one Gospel.� There are four of them for a reason, and each is vital to the total picture.� Mark is the Gospel that is the first Gospel recommended for reading around the world, and this morning we are going to start a study of Mark in our goal to know our Lord and Savior better.�

�� Mark begins his Gospel with the word, beginning.� The Greek has no article, and so it is not in the original, the beginning, but just beginning.� Beginning of the Gospel about Jesus.� Mark does not waste any time in getting the show on the road.� This is the greatest show on earth, and the greatest story ever told, and he does not give us page after page of background and introduction.� He lifts the curtain on this drama for act one just as the gun is fired for the race to begin.

�� Matthew is more like the educational channel with a long introduction of genealogies, exciting to those in the know, but boring to the majority of people who just want to see some action.� Mark is the Gospel for them,� for he is like one of those action‑packed films that starts off with a chase scene, or a few explosions, before they even list the characters.� Mark does not even say, "On your marks, get set":� He just says, "Go!"�

�� Now we could argue with Mark, and say the Gospel began long before John the Baptist came announcing the coming of Christ.� It actually began in the mind and heart of God before the world began.� This is, of course, the perspective of John's Gospel.� He starts, "In the beginning was the word."� He goes back to the eternal pre‑incarnate state of the Son with the Father.�

�� Or we could argue that the Gospel began with the birth of Jesus, and this would be Dr. Luke's perspective.� You could argue that it started with the promise to Abraham, or go back to the promise to Adam and Eve.� This is Matthew's perspective.� There are a lot of places you can begin the Gospel, but Mark says, here is where the rubber meets the road:� When Jesus actually began His public ministry, and began to demonstrate His deity in power and compassion for people.� That is where the good news really became a reality.� Before it was potential, but here it becomes actual.� All that went before was promise, but here begins the fulfillment.� Nobody else has to be wrong for Mark to be right.� Where the Gospel begins all depends on your perspective.�

�� Mark's perspective is that it is the action of Jesus that really counts, and, therefore, here is where we begin: Where Jesus steps out of the shadow of His obscure and commonplace life, and begins to play the public role he came into the world to play as the Messiah of Israel, and the Savior of the world.

�� Every time you give an account of some event in your life, you have to choose where to begin. You can start with what you had for breakfast, or where you went shopping, if these are relevant to the event.� Or you can start with the event itself.� Where you begin depends on your purpose, and on which details of the day are relevant to your purpose.� There was a time when Jesus was not a public figure doing miracles and drawing crowds by His teaching.� But then He began His public ministry as a man of action, and Mark shows this as the beginning of the Gospel.� This is where the light began to shine and produce new hope and dreams.

�� I have labored this issue because I believe it is a very important issue that Christians need to get into their thinking.� God has given us four perspectives on the life of His Son, and thus teaches us the validity of, and the value of different perspectives.� You can argue all you want about the importance of the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, or about the pre‑existent Christ of John, but you cannot escape the fact that God inspired a Gospel to begin with the adult life of Jesus and John the Baptist his forerunner.� All of them are valid and of great value.�

�� God is aware of the need to adapt the message to the needs of the hearers.� Thus, He had Matthew write with a Jewish perspective; Mark with a Roman perspective, and Luke with a Greek perspective.� What this means for us is that we need to be aware that we need to present Christ to those who do not know Him in a way that fits their point of view.� If you are dealing with an intellectual you will stress that Jesus is the Truth, and that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.� If you are dwelling with a person with all sorts of physical needs, you will present Christ as the Great Physician.� There are no limits to the ways you can present the Lord, for He has hundreds of names, and plays hundreds of roles depending upon the need.

�� One of the most important things we need to learn about our Lord is that He is adaptable.� Do not limit and stifle your growth in Jesus by locking Him into your culture, and into the framework of your own background and awareness.� Be open to the Jesus and multiple perspectives.� But this is not to be interpreted to mean that all perspectives about Jesus are correct.� There are all kinds of wrong perspectives on Jesus too.� History is full of them.� The New Testament has plenty of them.� People saw Jesus as a winebibber and a glutton.� People saw Jesus as a lawbreaker and a blasphemer.� Some even saw Him as one of the prophets returned.� This was a positive perspective, but it was still false.�

�� From the earliest centuries there have been fictional accounts of Jesus designed to make Him conform to the current values of the culture.� He was portrayed in many apocryphal Gospel as a sensationalist doing the very thing Satan tempted Him to do.�

He used His divine power to make play birds fly away, and to make boards shorter without cutting them, and other crowd‑pleasing miracles.� False perspectives on Jesus have been common.� The only way to discover what is false is to put it up against the four basic views of Jesus God has revealed in the four Gospels.� If any Christ is presented that is not consistent with these four portraits, then you know you are dealing with a false Christ.� There is no higher goal for the Christian to aim for then that of knowing Christ as He is revealed in the Gospels.�

�� We are beginning our journey to this end with Mark who begins with the word beginning, and then the word Gospel.� Mark is the only one of the four who calls his life of Christ a Gospel.� But it caught on, and now we call all four of the lives of Christ, Gospels.� It is because of Mark's use of the word here that we do.�

�� Mark's use of this word to cover the beginning of the life of Jesus, is itself an important truth.� The good news, or glad tidings about Jesus means more than his death and resurrection.� Without these the rest would not matter of course, and so they are the heart of the Gospel.� But a heart needs a body, and Mark is telling us the whole body of the life of Jesus is good news.� All that Jesus did and said is part of a total package of good news that we call the Gospel.� If the cross and resurrection was all that was necessary, there would not be much point in God inspiring four men to record the life of Christ.� His life, as well as His death, is a part of the Gospel.

�� Knowing about Jesus is a vital part of the Christians education, for the Gospels were given to us for this purpose.� We can only fully grasp the Gospel by knowing what Jesus did, and what He said.�� You cannot know that the Jesus you know is the Jesus of the Bible, unless you know this revelation about Him.� Here is the good news that gives us objective basis by which we judge the validity of all subjective experience.�

�� The word Gospel was not invented by Mark.� It was a word used by the Greeks to convey the joy� of victory.� If Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, a runner would race from town to town announcing the gospel‑that is the good news.� "Hey everyone, listen up!� We beat the Persians.� Alexander has won again!"� And then he would be off to spread the good news to the next town.

�

�� Mark is saying right off, "Listen up people!� Jesus the Son the God has won the victory, and here is how it all began!"� Mark is not writing a biography of Jesus.� This is a Gospel about Jesus.� That is, it is not an orderly account of the full life of Jesus, it is a proclamation of why His life is good news.� It is a Gospel.� Mark uses the word Gospel eight times.�� That is twice the total of the other three Gospel writers.� Matthew uses it four times, and Luke and John not at all.� Mark is the unique Gospel writer.� In contrast to so much of the news that we hear, Mark is a communicator of good news.�

�� Mark's good news is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.� Jesus was His personal name.� Christ is His official name.� It is the title of the Messiah.� The Christ is the anointed One of God.� Just as the official title of the Emperor was Caesar, so the official title of the Messiah was Christ.� It is the Gospel of the Son of God.� This is no mere man he writes about, though he stresses the humanity of Christ strongly.� The deity of Christ is established from the start.�

�� In verse two Mark writes it is written.� Mark links the Gospel of Jesus to the Old Testament immediately.� Dozens of times the New Testament refers to the Old Testament by saying, it is written.� Jesus refuted the Devil in his temptation by saying each time, "it is written, man shall not live by bread alone;" "it is written thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," "it is written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve."� Mark does the least quoting of the Old Testament of anyone, but he starts with this quote to establish right from the beginning that the Gospel about Jesus does not appear out of thin air, but is the fulfillment of God's Old Testament promises.� There would be no New Testament without an Old Testament foundation.�

�� This phrase, it is written, is used so often in the New Testament that it establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that true spirituality has to conform to objective revelation or be rejected.� It would be a monumental task just to study all that the New Testament has to say about the importance of the written word.� You have Greek words like grapho, graphomai, epigrapho, graptos, eggrapho, prographo, and gramma.� All these words refer to writings, and make it clear that God is a God of objective truth.�

�� No matter how anyone feels about Jesus, if their feelings cannot be supported by the objective written revelation of God, they have no authority.� The bottom line for all Christian convictions is, "it is written."� This may sound like legalism, but it is the only protection we have against the subtlety of Satan, and all of the cults who bombard the minds of men with clever deception.� Satan even used the power of the written word to tempt Jesus.� He said in Matthew 4:6, "It is written: He will command His angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."� Jesus responded "It is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test."�

�� Even the Devil and his angels quote the Bible, so just being written in the Bible is not enough.� We need to know how to apply the objective word to life.� This is where the guidance of the Holy Spirit comes in.� Here is the subjective side of the Christian experience.� The objective written word can be so misused, and it can lead to legalism, and many others abuses.� So the Christian needs the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit to know how to apply the written word in life's situations.�� To claim a promise, for example, that is not meant for you, or not meant for the situation you are in,� is to court disaster, and to be presumptuous.� Jesus was wise enough to see this, but not all Christians are, and they are lead by Scripture even to make foolish choices, because Satan seduces them to take it out of context.� It is not enough it is written.� It must be the right application of what is written, or Satan can even lead you astray with the Bible, as he tried with Jesus.�

�� In spite of the danger of abuse the written word is still the supreme authority for all our faith and practice, and this is were Mark begins his Gospel, "It is written."� Mark quotes the Old Testament promise that the Messiah would be preceded by a messenger who would prepare the way for Him.� Only the greatest of dignitaries are so honored.�

�� When the King was to take a journey to a town where the roads were not in the best condition, he would be preceded by one who would go and make sure the path was straight, and the ruts filled in, assuring a pleasant journey.� Such preparation was an honor to royalty.� We see it in our world yet today.� When the King of Sweden came to Minnesota, not only were the roads prepared, but some whole towns were painted and spruced up to look like new for the sake of the King, that he might have a pleasant atmosphere.� Many famous people have what they call advance men who go ahead to prepare the way for them.� The Pope has them, the President has them, and Billy Graham has them. �They make all kinds of arrangements so people are ready to receive the dignitary.� This is what John the Baptist was for Jesus.� He was the advance man who set the stage for Jesus to appear, and have people ready to receive His message.

�� John the Baptist is the only person in the New Testament who is the subject of Old Testament prophecy.� John was as vital to the fulfillment of the Old Testament hope as Jesus, for Jesus could not come, and His public ministry could not begin until His advance man had prepared the way.� Thus, the Gospel about Jesus begins with John the Baptist.� It has been 400 years since a prophet has spoken.� With John there is a new beginning, for God is about to speak his best Word in Jesus.� God does not just leap into history, He prepares the way.� God is a God of preparation.� He is never in such a hurry that He acts without a plan.� God has thought everything out ahead of time.� He is not impulsive.� He has a long range plan, and so the public ministry of His Son begins with the Preparer.�� In old English the man who paved the road was called the pavior.� John was the one who paved the way for Jesus, and so was the pavior of the Savior.�

�� Jesus was, and is the way.� John was the preparer of the way.� They had much in common, and yet they were in radical contrast.� John was like a surgeon, and with his knife out the cancer of corruption.� Then Jesus came as the compassionate nurse to cure and heal the wound.� They were partners, but each had a different role to play in God's plan.� They were both preachers.� They both drew large crowds.� They both died young by violent means of execution.� They were born close together and they died close together.� They were cousins.� But they were two totally different personalities.� John was an ascetic who lived in the wilderness, and was basically anti‑social.� Jesus on the other hand was frequently at weddings and banquets eating with publicans and sinners.� Their life‑styles were as far apart and as contrasted as a funeral and a wedding.�

�� God is not locked into any one kind of personality that He uses for His purposes.� Every kind can be useful, for God loves variety.� Do not fret that you are not somebody else, for who you are can be just what God needs to prepare someone to receive Christ.� Like John, we cannot bring in the kingdom, but we can prepare the way.� We may be different from our Lord in a great many ways, but we can be instruments in preparing others to be open to Christ.�

�� Mark's Gospel begins with the preparation of the way, and the Gospel in most lives begins here, for someone is used of God to sow the seed and set the stage for Christ in come into their lives.� Very few people receive Jesus as their Savior without first of all being prepared by the influence of someone else who already has.

We are all in the people preparation business, and we need to be aware of this.� We cannot save, and we cannot solve all of people's problems, but we can help prepare the way for them to turn to Christ, who can.� The poet wrote,

��

�� In youth, because I could not be a singer,

�� I did not even try to write a song;

�� I set no little trees along the roadside,

�� Because I knew their growth would take so long.

��

�� But now from wisdom that the years have brought me,

�� I know that it may be a blessed thing

�� To plant a tree for someone else to water,

�� Or make a song for someone else to sing.

�� Author unknown

�� Jesus does not expect us to be the way.�� He is the only way.� But we can be preparers of the way, and that is where the Gospel about Jesus most often begins.�� Let us pray that God will use us in such a way that someday someone will say, as they point to our lives and influence, "there is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

2.�� OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE�� MARK 1:1-8

� How wrong can the experts be?� Let's look at� history and see.� Daryl F. Zanuck, who was head of 20th Century Fox, back in 1946 said, "TV won't be able to hold on to any market after the first 6 months‑people will soon tire at staring at a plywood box every night."� Marshall Foch of France said in 1911, "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."� James Hoffa, president of the teamsters said in 1975, "I don't need bodyguards."� Hitler at the peak of his power said the third Reich will last one thousand years.� He was only off by 988 years.� General George Custer said there are only about 300 Indians down there by the Little Big Horn.� He was off by two thousand eight hundred.� Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic said, "This ship will never sink." He was close, for he only missed it by one, for it only sank once.�

�� We get a kick out of just how wrong experts can be in there judgments, for it makes us feel superior.� If we knew just how often they are wrong we would probably rid the world of the feelings of inferiority.� The poet writes,

The world is full of experts, but with every breaking story

The experts seem a whole lot like Professor Irwin Corey.

Because they are authorities, they stand out from the throng,

The only problem being that they are so often wrong.

It is almost impossible not to be wrong, for not only can nobody know that needs to be known, but it is possible to be wrong even when you are right.� It is possible to be subjectively right, and yet objectively wrong.�

�� This is the paradox we find in the words and spirit of John the Baptist.� He is famous for his sentence about his relationship to the Messiah where he expresses profound humility.� He says in Mark 1:7, "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down� and untie." John is saying, I am not worthy to be this mans slave, and do for him the task of the lowliest servant.�

�� Since John was the forerunner of the Messiah, he was the only man alive on earth who knew the Messiah was about to make His move.� He was the worlds authority on the Messiah.� Yet he made this statement which was truly how he felt, and thus, a right statement, but one which was nevertheless wrong according to the objective facts of the Biblical records.� Jesus came to John and said not only are you worthy to untie my sandals, I want you to be the one who baptizes me.� John did not want to do it, for he sincerely felt unworthy, but Jesus insisted, for Jesus considered him the most worthy man, not just of his day, but of all of history.� Jesus said John was the greatest man ever born of woman.�

�� So what we have here is the greatest man ever born, and the leading authority of his day on the Messiah, saying something that he sincerely felt, and thus, it was a virtue, but it was objectively false.� He was worthy to untie his Masters sandals, and a whole lot more than that.� He was the man Jesus chose to baptize Him.� Now this distinction between the subjective and the objective is no minor matter.� It is important for our understanding of what otherwise would be a direct and plain contradiction in the New Testament.� Last week we saw how the last two verses of the Old Testament prophesied that Elijah would come, and that was the hope of Israel.� We also saw how John the Baptist fulfilled that prophecy, and thus, the New Testament begins where the Old Testament left off.�

�� But we now need to see that John the Baptist did not know that he was Elijah. In John 1:21 we read o how the priests came to John and asked him who he was. The verse reads, "They asked him, then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said I am not." If you take John's word as your final authority you would conclude that he was not Elijah.� But if you take the words of Jesus as your final authority you would conclude that he was.� Listen to the discussion about this issue in Matt. 17:10‑13.� "The disciples asked Him, 'Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?'� Jesus replied, to be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things.� But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished.� In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.� Then the disciples understood that He was talking to them about John the Baptist."

�� Jesus said it even more clearly in Matt. 11:13‑14.� "For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come."� Here you have Jesus saying John was Elijah and John himself saying he was not.� Is that not a clear contradiction?� Of course, it is, but no more so than John saying I am not worthy to untie His sandals, and Jesus saying you are worthy even enough to baptize me.� Subjectively John felt worthless compared to Jesus, but objectively he was wrong.� Subjectively he did not feel he was the great prophet Elijah but objectively he was wrong for Jesus said he was the fulfillment of that great hope.�

�� We learn a valuable lesson from this reality of the conflict between subjective and objective truth.� The lesson is this:� The objective truth always has priority over the subjective.� John really felt unworthy, and he really felt he was not Elijah, but he was wrong.� We can all feel all sorts of things deeply and sincerely, but this does not mean we can't be wrong.� If the greatest man born of woman can be wrong, no one can boost that their subjective feelings and opinions must always be right.�

�� It is not that there is no truth to a false subjective feeling.� There always has to be some truth to it, for it represents a real feeling even if it does not conform to objective facts.� The well known poem reveals my point.� It is called The Blind Men And The Elephant.

�� It was six men of Indostan

�� To learning much inclined,

�� Who went to see the Elephant,

�� Though all of them were blind

�� That each by observation

�� Might satisfy his mind.

�� The First approached the Elephant,

�� And happening to fall

�� Again his broad and sturdy side,

�� At once began to bawl:

�� "God bless me!� but the Elephant

�� Is very like a wall!"

�� The Second, feeling of the tusk,

� ��Cried, "Ho! what have we hear

�� So very round and smooth and sharp?

�� To me 'tis mighty clear

�� This wonder of an Elephant

�� Is very like a spear!"

�� The Third approached the animal,

�� And happening to take

�� The squirming trunk within his hands,

�� Thus boldly up and spake:

�� "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

�� Is very like a snake!"

�� The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

�� And felt about the knee.

�� "What most this wondrous beast is like

�� Is mighty plain," quoth he;

�� "'Tis clear enough the Elephant

�� Is very like a tree!"

�� The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,

�� Said:� "E'en the blindest man

�� Can tell what this resembles most;

�� Deny the fact who can,

�� This marvel of an Elephant

�� Is very like a fan!"

�� The Sixth no sooner had begun

�� About the beast to grope,

�� Then, seizing on the swinging tail

�� That fell within his scope,

�� "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

�� Is very like a rope!"

�� And so these men of Indostan

�� Disputed loud and long,

�� Each in his own opinion

�� Exceeding stiff and strong

�� Though each was partly in the right,

�� And all were in the wrong!

�� They all had a subjective experience that was real, and thus, authentic to some degree, but none of them had an adequate grasp of all the facts to come to a conclusion we could call the truth.� That is why subjectivity is an inadequate foundation on which to build.� Truth to be solid has to be based on objective authority.� Thus, we take the clear teaching of Christ over the subjective feelings of John.� He was far greater than he ever dreamed he was.� The facts were greater than his feelings.� Subjective feelings are personal and internal, but objective facts are external, and can be varied by others.�

�� The good news is that the facts are often better than our feelings.� We can feel so unloved when in fact we are greatly loved.� We can feel so forsaken when in reality we are in the very hands of God.� Our feelings can be so negative about a lot of things in life when the facts are very positive.� The bottom line then, because of this reality, is that we cannot go by our feelings.� They can lead us into temptation and depression, and all sorts of negatives.� We need to get the facts and build on them for a solid foundation.�

�� Most all of the depressed saints of the Bible and history are depressed because they are living on their subjective feelings.� They are saying I am not worthy, I am not loved, I am not of value, when in reality none of this is true.� They need to get out of the sand of the subjective and over to the rock of objective.� There is a vast amount of objective truth God has given us, and this is the rock on which we are to build.�

�� But before we leave this subject we need to point out that subjectivity is not necessarily in conflict with objectivity.� John the Baptist was also thought to be the Messiah, and he said in John 1:20, "I am not the Christ."� That is how he felt, and his feelings were right with reality.� So we do not want to give the impression that the subjective cannot be true objectively.� The problem is, the only way you can know if that is the case is by some objective truth by which to test it.� That is why all feelings need to be tested by facts.� If you go by John's subjective feelings, he was no big deal.� If you go by the objective revelation of New Testament facts, he was the greatest man to ever live next to the Son of God Himself.�

�� All of this introduces us to a much more serious theological issue than the status of John.� In verses 7 and 8 we have the message John preached described very briefly.� He preached that one more powerful than he was coming, and he was coming with a different baptism.� John says in verse 8, "I baptize with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."� We see then that though the water baptism of John and that of Jesus were the same, there is another kind of baptism that Jesus was to perform that was all together different, and nobody could perform it but Jesus.� Anybody can baptize with water, but only one can baptize with the Holy Spirit, and that is the Messiah.� This text has led to all kinds of subjective interpretations that have influenced the lives of millions of people.�

�

�� The Quakers, for example, use this text as the basis for eliminating water baptism altogether.� They say the physical baptism in water was made obsolete by Jesus, and all that matters is being baptized in the Spirit.� They have a strong emphasis on the inner life of the spirit rather than a focus on external rights performed on the body. They are godly people who have had a marvelous impact on the history of America.�� Nobody can fault them for their spirituality.� We are not trying to put them down, but simply pointing out that according to the objective revelation they are wrong on this point.� They are in good company, for from John on good and godly people have gone by their subjective conviction.�

�� But we have an obligation to go by the objective revelation when we see it.� Jesus in His great commission said to go into all the world and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.� This is clear objective revelation that Jesus did not intend for the baptism of the Holy Spirit to replace and eliminate the practice of water baptism.� The Quakers chose to make the baptism of the Holy Spirit a personal subjective experience, and the result is, they departed from God's objective revelation.�

�� The Pentecostals and charismatics do the same thing.� They are equally good and Godly people, and are part of the family of God.� But they have chosen the subjective over the objective.� John was no less the greatest in spite of his subjective mistakes, and we do not want to imply that Pentecostals and charismatics are less Christian because of theirs.� They may very well, in many cases, be far superior to other Christians.� That is not the issue.� The issue is, is the baptism of the Holy Spirit a subjective experience, or is it an objective experience that was clearly fulfilled at a specific time?

�� Let's look at the facts.� The first thing we need to see is that John had been given an objective way by which to identify the Messiah who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.� He tells us about this in John 1:32‑33 where we read, "Then John gave this testimony:� I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on Him.�

I would not have known Him except the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, the man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is He who will baptize with the Holy Spirit."�

�� John knew then at the baptism of Jesus that He was the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.� It is only Jesus who can do this.� He never baptize anyone in water himself, for His unique ministry was to baptize with the Holy Spirit.� Now the strange thing is Jesus did not go out and baptize with the Holy Spirit.� He was the one, but He didn't do it, and we have no record that in all His ministry he ever baptized anyone with the Holy Spirit.� So what is the problem?� Jesus made it clear that the Holy Spirit could not come until He was taken out of the world, and so Jesus did not baptize with the Holy Spirit until He ascended to the Father.� This baptism then was a work of Jesus as the ascended Christ.� Just exactly when was it that He began this ministry that John said He was coming to perform?� We don't have to guess, for Jesus tells us clearly in Acts 1:4‑5.� Jesus says to His disciples, "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.� For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."�

�� Jesus then ascended and on the day of Pentecost the promise was fulfilled, and the church was baptized with the Holy Spirit.� This was no personal subjective experience.� It was an objective historical event for the body of Christ.� This was extended to cover the Gentiles later on.� When Peter confronted Cornelius the Gentile, the Holy Spirit came upon him and his followers.� Peter describes how it was a second Pentecost to convince him and other Jewish Christians that God had made the Gentiles equal to Jews in Christ.� In Acts 11:15‑17� Peter says, "As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came upon them as He had come upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.� So if God gave them the same gift as He gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?"

�� Peter was hung up on subjective feelings that Jews were superior to the Gentiles. All prejudice is subjective feeling and not objective fact.� God had to give Peter objective facts that matched what they experienced at Pentecost to convince him the Gentiles were made equal to the Jews.� The Apostle Paul sums up the significance of these objective facts in I Cor. 12:13, "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body‑whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink."� As soon as anyone receives Christ as their Savior, they are baptized into the body of Christ, and are one with the rest of God's children.� How do we get into the family of God?� By baptism of the Holy Spirit.� We repent and believe and Jesus baptizes us with the Spirit into His body.� This is objective fact, and not a subjective experience we are seek for after being saved.� It is done for us by Christ.� It is done for all Christians says Paul.� It is not something some get and others do not, for all are baptized into the body.

�� There are all kinds of subjective experiences with the Holy Spirit after one is saved.� John was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mothers womb, and the Spirit led in the life of Jesus, and Jesus gave the Spirit to His disciples to empower them.� We are commanded to be filled with the Spirit, and not to quench the Spirit, but cultivate the fruit of the Spirit.� All of these experiences are personal and subjective. They involve our personal choices, and in any group of Christians some may be filled with the Holy Spirit and others not.� We decide how much the Spirit will have control in our lives.� It is subjective and individual.� But the baptism of the Spirit is not a choice.� This is the objective work of Christ the only baptizer with the Spirit.

�� No where are we commanded to be baptized with the Spirit.� We are commanded, however, to be filled with the Spirit.� So you might ask, what is the difference?� Is it a matter of mere terminology.� No, it is a matter of objective verses subjective.�� Baptism with the Holy Spirit is the exclusive work of Christ.� It is something He does as the ascended Lord by which He incorporates all who believe into His body.� It is not a second work of grace, but the first.� The filling of the Spirit is a subjective experience that is open to all believers to be repeated over and over.� There is only one baptism, but there is no end to the number of fillings.�

�� The point of all this is, we do not strive to have some subjective experience called the baptism of the Spirit.� We are, if we believe in Christ as our Savior, already baptized into His body, and are, therefore, temples of the Holy Spirit.� It is our responsibility to keep the temple clean and alive with the fruit of the Spirit.� Another illustration of the contrast between objective and subjective is communion.� We come to the table seeking forgiveness.� That is a personal and subjective experience we are to seek.� However,� we do not seek an atonement for sin.� That is the objective work that Jesus finished on the cross.� He atoned for our sin once and for all.� He died for the sins of the whole world.� That is a once for all unrepeatable work of Christ.� It is finished and is now the objective rock on which we build.� But we have a lot to say about the application of His finished work in forgiveness.� If we confess our sin He is faithful and just and will forgive.� But if we do not confess we can claim no forgiveness.� This is an subjective experience that depends on our personal response to the objective work of Christ.� The goal� of the Christian is to bring the subjective into harmony with the objective and make them one.�

3.�� CONFLICT OF THE KINGS�� MARK 1:9-12

Art Linkletter tells of how when he was 10 years old he was offered a job of tempting people to buy ice cream cones.� The ice cream stand owner noticed the dramatic way in which he licked an ice cream cone, and so he offered him ten cents an afternoon if he would wonder through the nearby park licking cones.� He writes, "I used such a seductive curling action with my tongue that passers‑by couldn't resist and the stands business began to soar."� He was demonstrating the power of temptation.� That is what advertising is all about.� It is a lure to motivate you to buy something by creating in you a hunger for it.

�� Satan specializes in creating hungers for that which is out of God's will, and he is good at it.� He created in Adam and Eve a hunger for the forbidden fruit, and thereby, brought about the fall of man.� And now ever since the fall he has succeeded in making every person hunger for the forbidden.� All, that is, except one.� The great exception is the Lord Jesus.� He was the one exception who did not sin, but there are no exceptions to temptation.� Every man, including Jesus has to face the universal experience of temptation.�

�� If Satan could have succeeded in creating in him a hunger for the forbidden, he would have won his greatest victory, and would have defeated the plan of God for mans salvation.� The temptation of Jesus was not only his testing, but the testing of Satan, for his whole destiny rides on whether or not he can succeed.� Thus, again we see this seemingly minor incident in the life of our Lord as the hinge on which the door of destiny swings for Jesus, for Satan, and for all mankind.� What is going to transpire on this desolate mountain called Quarantania just West of ancient Jericho is going to alter all of history.� Either Jesus or Satan will experience what nearby Jericho experienced when the walls of the city came tumbling down.� The walls of one of their kingdoms will fall, and lead to their ultimate defeat.� Thus, we have hear the conflict of the kings of the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.

�� Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.� Now we see Jesus the new Joshua facing the formidable wall of the kingdom of darkness.� The only way he can invade that kingdom and set the captives free is by defeating its king.� In the temptation of Jesus, who has just been by His baptism anointed the Messiah and King, we see the conflict of the two greatest kings in history.� It is a duel that will determine which kingdom will ultimately rule this earth.� Jesus said in Mark 3:27, "In fact, no one can enter a strong mans house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man.� Then he can rob his house."� Jesus could not begin His public ministry of healing and casting out demons and setting people free from Satan's bondage until He first defeated Satan.� That is why His temptation comes before His ministry.�

�� Much ado is made about the heavy weight championship of the world boxing match.� Millions go into it, but the outcome makes no difference as far as the destiny of the world, but here in the wilderness is an isolated encounter that nobody on earth is even aware of, and yet on its outcome hangs the eternal destiny of all mankind.� This morning we want to take a ring‑side seat, and examine in detail this conflict of the kings.� The first thing we see is‑

I.� THE TIMING OF THE TEMPTATION.

�� Notice verse 12 begins with the words at once.� The Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in His baptism, and immediately without delay the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert to be tempted.�� This timing confirms all that we said about the importance of the baptism of Jesus.� It was this event that made Jesus the Messiah and the second Adam.� He was the representative man who would have to reverse the defeat of the first Adam for man to have a chance.� Satan has been champion for centuries, but now another challenger has come to try and take that title away.�

�� No doubt, Jesus faced temptation before this.�� This is hard to imagine living 30 years without some battles with Satan, but until His baptism and anointing with the Holy Spirit, Jesus was not the official representative of the kingdom of light.� As soon as He received these credentials He was ready for the official encounter.� The Holy Spirit was now His manager, and the first thing He did after the baptism was to drive Jesus to the scene of battle, where the duel of the ages could take place.

�� The Holy Spirit was saying that not since Adam I� have we had a contender to face Satan with any hope of victory.� Now Adam II was ready, and the Holy Spirit after all these centuries of waiting, wasted no more time before He deployed this new weapon of spiritual warfare.� Like our atomic weapons, this Adamic weapon was tested in the desolate desert.� The second thing we see is‑

II.� THE TARGET OF TEMPTATION.

�� Satan was being lured in his defeat in this temptation, but Jesus was the target. He was deliberately set up to be a tempting target for satanic attack.� He was driven into the God‑forsaken wasteland giving Satan the home court advantage.� The conflict would take place on his own turf.

�� On top of this, the Messiah would fast for 40 days and thereby weaken His resistance.� He was made more vulnerable to physical, mental, and spiritual hunger. Jesus was made such a tempting target for Satan, he could not resist the challenge even though he knew this was the Son of God.� If he lost, it would be his first failure in history, and would spell the beginning of his doom.� But, on the other hand, if he could succeed it would mean he would do what he had always longed to do:� Defeat God, and become superior to God.� He could win in this conflict the prize he lusted for:� undisputed authority over the earth and mankind.� It was Satan's dream, and here was the target right in front of him luring him into battle.

�� How could he lose with a man as filled with hunger as Jesus was?� He looked like a sitting duck to Satan, and so he went for the bait.� Jesus was the target of temptation, but He was also the bait that lured Satan into a conflict where he would meet his Waterloo, and begin to lose his grip on humanity.� Adam 1 was a snap to bring down, and he had paradise and all any man could ask for.� How can I fail with Adam 2, who is starving in a God‑forsaken desert?� Such must have been the thinking of Satan as he accepts the challenge for the heavy weight championship of the world to determine who will have the right to decide the destiny of all mankind.

�� As the target, Jesus had to play the hero's role, and let the bad guy shoot first.� I always admired Sheriff Dillon in Gunsmoke, but it always bothered me when he would let the bad guy get off the first shot.� The idea is, the good guy never starts the battle.� He is not the aggressor, but rather, the defender, and so acts in self‑defense.� This is the Christian view of warfare.� The Christian ought never to start a war, but if he is attacked he has the right of self‑defense, and should end the war as soon as possible by victory over the offender.� So Jesus plays the role of the hero, and does not attack but repels the arrows of the tempter and defends his stand of loyalty to the plan of God.�

�� As the target, he felt the power of Satan's darts.� In His humanity it would be appealing to satisfy His hunger for food, for fame, and for power, by listening to the tempter.� If Jesus did not feel any lure to Satan's offers, then there would be little to be impressed about in His victory.� If someone comes to me and says leap up to the moon and grabs some green cheese and I'll give you fifty bucks a pound for all you can get, you are not going to be impressed when I tell you I took my stand against stealing and refused the offer.� You know that offer could not move me in any way because it asked of me what I could not give.� I am not tempted to do the impossible, but only the possible.� Temptation is an appeal to do what you could do if you just chose to do it and not worry about whether it is right or wrong.�

�� It is the reality of what Jesus endured that� makes Him such a sympathetic intercessor for us.� Heb. 2:18 says, "Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted."� Remember, when you are tempted, the biggest target Satan ever had was our Lord, but he could not bring Him down.� He stood for God, but also for us.� Had He yielded we would be sunk.� But because He stood, we can also win the battle.� As the target, Jesus took the� shots, but it was the hunter that was most severely wounded.� Jesus had a wounded heel, but He crushed the head of the serpent.� The target triumphed over the tempter.� The trickster was out‑tricked.� The third thing we see is

III.� THE TEMPERING OF THE TEMPTATION.

�� Matt.. joins Mark in telling us about the comfort of the angels after His temptation.� But Mark only tells us about the detail that throughout it all Jesus had the companionship of wild animals.� What a delightful detail.� After all, the first Adam had the companionship of the animal kingdom.� Why should not the second Adam who was also their creator?� The Messiah was to be characterized by two things:� (1.)� The ministry of angels.� (2) The mastery of animals.� In the very text which Satan quoted to tempt Jesus we see these two things.�

�� Ps. 91:11‑13 says, "For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways:� They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will� not strike your foot against a stone.� You will tread upon the lion and cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent."� The great lion and serpent that Jesus is trampling here is Satan himself, but the text also refers to the Messiah's mastery over the animal kingdom.� We get a picture here of a Tarzan‑like hero who has the friendship of the animal kingdom even when the forces of evil threaten to overwhelm him.� Jesus has no human companionship, but faces Satan alone.� Yet he is not alone, for the wild beasts are there.�

�� Why are they there?� First of all, it is there natural habitat.� They live in the wilderness all the time.� Some say that is all these words mean.� They merely describe the wilderness of the setting.� They dismiss this reference of Mark to animals as of no significance.� But others say, it had meaning to Mark or he would not have added it.� They see it as a tempering of the temptation.� To temper means to moderate and regulate.� You tempter by adding something to the mixture to modify it.� If something is to sour you add sugar to temper it and bring it back to a balance taste acceptable to the palate.� The wild animals became a tempering factor in the temptation.�

�� What is of interest is that God would use the animal kingdom to help His Son bear the burden of temptation.� But this has always been an ideal.� The truly blessed man has always been one who has been loved by the animal kingdom.� Back in Job 5:23 Eliphaz describes the ideal man and says, "The wild animals will be at peace with you."�� The early Christians picked up on this image of Jesus, and in the Catacombs of Rome they represented Jesus as the Greek Orpheus, who attracted wild animals with the sound of his lyre.�

�� What we see is that the first Adam fell, and this led to a deterioration of the relationship of man and animals.� Now the second Adam comes to defeat mans greatest foe and reverse the effects of the fall, and in so doing restore this lost relationship of man and animals.� One of the first signs that Jesus was the victorious Messiah was the friendly relationship he had with the wild animals.� When His victory is complete, all the redeemed will live in fellowship with this kingdom which is now often fearful.� We read in Isa. 11:6, "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together and a little child will lead them."� Jesus would feel an enormous encouragement by the presence of these animals, and they would help Him keep His eye on the final goal, and not be side tracked by the alluring shortcuts offered by Satan.�

�� The first Adam let the animal kingdom down, and they lost paradise too because of his fall.� But the second Adam opened the door for the animal kingdom to again have a permanent paradise, and perpetual peace with mankind.� Little details that often seem insignificant can mean a lot, that is the case with this detail of Mark.�

�� Every major redemptive event in God's plan for man includes the animal kingdom.� The story of Noah's ark is the classic.� But there is also the exodus out of Egypt where animals were also delivered.� The saving of the people of Ninevah was also the saving of their animals, and Jonah ends with God expressing His compassion on their cattle.� God is the greatest animal lover in the universe, and animals will be a part of the new heaven and the new earth.� There destiny was also at stake in this conflict of the kings.�

�� Because Jesus won this conflict, part of Christian history has been great saints with the spirit of Christ, who lived at peace with the wild animals.� St. Francis of Assi, in the middle ages, and in more modern times, Sadu Sundar Singh of India.� He would often have his devotions in the middle of the night by the edge of the jungle.� Witnesses have been paralyzed with fear as a leopard or other wild beasts would appear to be ready to leap upon him.� But they would come near to him and he would caress their head and walked calmly back to the house.� This is not a recommended practice for Christians until the total victory of Christ, but some have this gift as Jesus did of living at peace with the wild animals.� All men will have this gift in the eternal kingdom because Jesus won this battle of the kings.� The fourth thing we want to see is‑

IV.� THE THEOLOGY OF THE TEMPTATION.

�� James 1:13 states it clearly, "God cannot be tempted by evil."� This means that Jesus as the Son of God was not tempted, for His deity was not subject to temptation. He could only be tempted because He was also man.� This means that as a man, like the first Adam, He was capable of temptation, and thus, capable of sin.� As deity He was not.� This was the only combination that could make the temptation both authentic and also victorious for Christ.� He had what the first Adam did not have:� A link with God so close that His humanity could not do what His deity would not approve.�

�� We do not know to what degree Jesus was feeling the lure to use His power to achieve self glory.� We do not know if He seriously gave it some thought to bow to Satan and rule the world that way.� But for it to be a real temptation He had to at least consider its pleasures in contrast to the pain of the cross which He knew was in His future.� Whatever the degree of the struggle, He came to a point of surrender to God's will in each temptation.� The key to victory over all temptation is the surrender of the will to the will of God.�� "Not my will but thine be done."� That is what Paul meant by dying to self.� When you seek first the kingdom of God you defeat the devil.��

�� The next thing we want to note here is that Satan never changes his strategy.� He has never had to before because it has always been effective.� He said to the hungry Messiah some such thoughts as these:� You are hungry and God has not provided for that need.� You have a right to meet that need any way you can.� Satan's basic temptation is to think of loyalty to God as only legitimate when He meets our every need.� If He does not come through, get your need met regardless of the means.� He let you down, so forsake Him.

�� This was the constant temptation of Job, and the world is full of Christians who have suffered loss, rejection, and sorrows of all kinds, and they are now mad at God and living in rebellion because they fell for this line that loyalty is to last only as long as you are content that it is paying off.� This is the kind of self‑centeredness that is destroying marriages also.� I will love you as long as� I feel you are meeting my every need.� Let me down and I'm done with you.�� People do it to God, to mates, and to all of their relationships.� Loyalty is so watered down in our world that people do not stay committed to anyone or anything that does not meet their needs.�

�� This is Satan's greatest weapon to cause men to fall or to keep them falling, but he finally met his match in a starving man whose prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," was not answered for over a month, but who yet could say to the option offered by Satan, "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."� In other words, "I will starve before I will forsake my commitment to God's word." That is loyalty par excellence, and by loyalty Jesus defeated Satan.� Most, if not all sin is yielding to the temptation to be disloyal to some person or some principle.�

�� The first Adam fell because he chose a self‑centered goal rather than to be loyal to God.� The second Adam did not fall because he gave up self‑centered goals and remained loyal to God.� The only good general is a loyal general.� The only good soldier is a loyal soldier.� The only good Messiah is a loyal Messiah.� That is why Jesus had to face this testing of temptation.� From God's point of view it was a test of loyalty.� When the heat was on would Jesus go for the easy way out, or be loyal to the plan that meant the hard way of the cross?� The first Adam took the easy road even though it plunged the human race into a state of fallenness.� The second Adam faced the same choice and took the high but harder road.� Because he did, he won this battle of the kings.� The fifth thing we see is‑

V. THE TEACHING OF THE TEMPTATION.

�� The bottom line for us to carry away from this event which Jesus won for God, for Himself, and for us, is that temptation is not sinful.� The tragedy is Satan often wins the victory in the lives of people by persuading them that their awful thoughts make them guilty already, and therefore, they are sunk and just as well choose the way of darkness.�

�� Do not be ignorant of Satan's devices.� You can be filled with thoughts of evil and not be guilty of sin.� You are not guilty until you choose to own these thoughts and will that they will become acts.� Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher,� tells of his experience out walking one day:� "All of the sudden it seemed as if the very flood gates of hell had been opened, my head became a perfect pandemonium, ten thousand evil spirits seemed to be holding carnival with my brain and I held my mouth lest I should give utterance to the words of blasphemy that they were pouring into my ears.� That temptation passed away, but, ere many days it was renewed, and when I was in prayer, or when I was reading the Bible, those blasphemous thoughts would pour in upon me..."�

�� Greatly troubled, young Spurgeon turned to his grandfather.� He told him he felt he could not be a child of God because of his awful thoughts.� "Nonsense, Charles," said the godly grandfather.� "Those thoughts are not your thoughts.� They are the devils brats.� Don't own them as yours.� Give them neither house room nor heart room!"� Spurgeon was greatly comforted by this counsel.� We all need to be aware of this.� The� most wicked and blasphemous thoughts are possible in the most godly minds.� But they are only temptations and not sins until you choose to make them your own, which nobody needs to do.�

�� If a Christian falls it is because they choose to fall.� They are like the young man who was told by his father not to swim in the canal.� When he came home he had wet hair and dad asked him where he had been.� When he said that he went swimming the canal, dad said, "I thought I told you not to."� The son said, "but I couldn't resist the temptation dad."� "Why did you take your swimming suit with you?"� The son responded, "So I'd be prepared in case I was tempted."� He violated the key law to victory over temptation by making provision to fall when it came.� Paul says in Rom. 13:14, "But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."� If you prepare to say yes, then yes will be your response for you have planned to fall.� We need to be prepared instead to say no.

�� You are starting, my boy, on life's journey

�� Along the grand highway of life.

�� You will meet with a thousand temptations

�� Each city with evil is rife.

�� This world is a stage of excitement

�� There's danger wherever you go,

�� But if you are tempted in weakness

�� Have courage, my boy, to say, "No."

�� Encourage alone lies your safety,

�� When you the long journey begin.

�� Your trust in a Heavenly Father

�� Will keep you unspotted from sin.

�� Temptations will go on increasing

�� As streams from a rivulet flow,

�� But if you'd be true to your manhood,

�� Have courage, my boy, to say, "No."

�� A seven year old boy was sitting on a fence looking at his neighbors apple tree.� The owner came out and called to him, "Johnny are you trying to steal one of my apples?"� "No," he shouted back, "I'm trying not to."� Just say no is easy to say, but it is never easy to do.� Temptation is real and hard to fight, but Jesus made it possible for us to win, and say, "Get thee behind me Satan, for you are no longer my master and king.� I love a greater king who has defeated you, and I'll choose what pleases Him, as He chose what pleased His father."

�� Many of you may remember the atomic submarine called The Thresher.� It could battle its way through the ice of the North Pole.� It was made of special steel, but it could not take the pressure of the depths of the sea.� It sank and was crushed like a paper model.� Yet all around it swam fish that had no thick armor.� They were made of just normal skin, flesh, and bones.� How could they survive those depths that crushed the solid steel of that huge submarine?� They had an enter atmosphere that off set the external pressure.

�� The Christian needs to put on the whole armor of God to with stand the attacks of Satan.� But even more important is the internal atmosphere which off sets the pressure of the world, the flesh, and the devil.� These forces are ever trying to force us into their mold, and our only hope of escape from their crushing presence is to be, as Paul says, "Transformed by the renewing of our minds." We have to have the Word of God in our hearts, as Jesus did.� We have to have right thinking about our loyalties and goals to off set the temptation to take Satan's route.� We need the inner presence of the Spirit to keep out the pressure that can crush us.� We need the same filling of the Spirit that our Lord needed to be victorious in this conflict of the kings.�

4.�� DESCENT OF THE DOVE�� MARK 1:9-13

What a surprise it would be to see a fish climbing a tree.� Yet such a sight is possible because of the climbing perch of India.� These three to eight inch fish have movable spines on their gills, and by thrusting with their tails and front fins they can scoot up a slanting tree by the water and catch insects.� Some have been seen as high as five feet up the trunk.�

�� There are a lot of surprising things in this world of infinite variety, and one of the most surprising is the Son of God coming to John the Baptist to be baptized.� To John this was like a fish out of water, or even worse, up a tree.� It just did not fit, and Matthew tells us he resisted the request.��

�� After all, his was a baptism of repentance where people were confessing their sins.� For the Lamb of God that taken away the sin of the world to come for a sinners baptism was out of line, he felt, and many Christians through the ages have felt the same.� It seems incompatible for the sinless Savior to be seeking this symbol of the sinners surrender to God.� From the earliest Christian writings to the latest life of Christ the question every author has to deal with is why would Jesus be baptized?�

�� In the early church this act of Jesus led to a debate over his sinlessness.� Jerome, back in the 300's, tells of the Gospel used by the Nazarenes in which this conversation is recorded.� "The mother of the Lord and his brethren said to Him, John the Baptist baptizes unto the remission of sins, let us go and be baptized by him.� But he said to them, in what have I sinned, that I should go and be baptized by him?� Unless, by chance, this very thing which I have said is the sin of ignorance."�� The hint here is that Jesus may have been guilty of the sin of ignorance, or of omission.� The apocryphal book called The Preaching Of Paul, has Jesus making confession of His sin at His baptism.�

�� Others suggest that Jesus was not yet aware of His sinlessness, and so was just doing what He felt was right for all Godly Jews to do.� The point is Jesus created a problem for a lot of people by His coming to John for baptism.� Our task this morning will be to eliminate the burden of this act and expound the blessings of it.� We will begin by seeing the baptism of Jesus as‑

I.� AN ACT OF IDENTIFICATION.

��

�� G. Campbell Morgan, The prince of expositors, says of this act of Jesus, "In that hour he repented.� He confessed sin.� But the repentance was not for Himself, the sin was not His own.� In that hour He identified Himself with the multitude who had been thronging out to baptism."� In other words, Jesus did not wait to take the place of the sinner on the cross, but He began His public ministry by taking the place of the sinner in baptism.� He started as one with the masses of repentant sinners.

�� This identification with the least, the lowly, and the last, confirms the conviction of many, who like Howard Marshall says, "The evangelical wing of Christianity has a strong temptation to concentrate its attention on the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, and to ignore His earthly life."� He says we tend to have a Christmas and Easter Christology.� We go from the manager to the cross, and the rest is just filler. But this is a denial of God's revelation.

�� What Jesus does here at the very start of His ministry is recorded by Matthew Mark and Luke, and is a vital part of our understanding of our Lord.� His baptism, of course,� was not His first act of identification with man.�� His birth was first, and then He was dedicated in the temple, and He lived a life of identification with the common man.� He labored as a carpenter; attended the synagogue every Sabbath; went to the temple to worship and sacrifice.� He paid his tax, and just lived a life for 30 years that was not enough different than anyone else's life, so that neither His family nor His community noticed anything highly unusual about Him.� He so identified with man that He was one with His time and culture.

�� Now, at His baptism, Jesus goes one step further in His identification.� This is a first sign that Jesus was going to identify with man as a sinner.� We know Jesus in His first 30 years did not run with a wild bunch and break laws or defile Himself with wine, women, and song.� He did not do anything that would be considered a sin.

He lived a life of righteousness, for only as a spotless lamb would He be an acceptable sacrifice for sinners.� But here in His choice to baptized with the baptism of repentance, Jesus is taking that first step that will make Him so one with sinners that He will become the supreme sinner as the only way by which He can become the supreme Savior.

�� Jesus was sinless, yet nobody ever had to pay the penalty for more sin than He did.�� He who knew no sin became sin for us.� On Him was laid the iniquity of us all. He died for the sins of the whole world.� He actually experienced the full penalty of sin which is separation from God.� The paradox is that the sinless Savior experienced more of the penalty of sin than do millions of sinners whom He saves.� You and I who trust Jesus as our Savior do not need to experience hell and separation from God.� We are, therefore, incomplete sinners.� We do not take the destiny of sinners all the way, but Jesus did .� He went all the way to hell to save us, and thus, the sinless one was the complete sinner.� He never once sinned or violated the will of God.� He had to be a perfect and spotless lamb to atone for our sin.� But the cost was to become sin, and take on Himself the wrath of God against all sin.�

�� This complete identification with the sinner began with His baptism.� He had a choice.� He could have said," I'll not get involved.� I am sin free and do not need to be baptized.� But God is calling His people to repent through John, and I can chose to identify with this movement of sinners back to God.� I'll make that choice," said Jesus, "and I'll be one of them."�

�� People watching Jesus being baptized would see Him as another sinner repenting and confessing His sins.� But He was confessing our sin and repenting for our sin.� It was a tremendous act of humility for Jesus to identify Himself with sinful men.� And God the Father said He was well pleased with His Son's choice, for He knew Jesus would get the job done He had set out to accomplish.� Wilbur Smith, one of the greatest Christian scholars of the 20th century said this is the most sound of all the theories as to why Jesus was baptized.�

�� Jesus had two choices.� He could stand with the self‑righteous who said we do not need to repent, and there by reject John's baptism, or He could stand with sinners who said we will repent and return to God.� He chose the second, and however many problem this creates in the minds of those who do not understand his choice, it was pleasing to God the Father, and that is all that mattered to Jesus.� God sent Him to identify with fallen man, and Jesus shows He came to obey by His baptism which was His first public act of identification with sinners. He never went back on His choice, but went all the way to the cross.� J.D. Jones wrote, "If we want to understand the full meaning of the baptism, we must see in it an anticipation of Calvary."� It was the same boundless love that sent Him to the cross that was motivating Him into the waters of baptism.�� The second thing we want to see is His baptism was‑

II.� AN ACT OF INAUGURATION.

�� I have always known this was the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, but I did not realize that it was His inauguration into the office of Messiah.� Christ means the anointed one.� When was He anointed to be the Christ‑the Messiah of Israel?� It was right here at His baptism.� The Holy Spirit came upon Him as a Dove, and the Father gave His words of approval, and from this point on Jesus was no longer a carpenter, but was the King‑the Anointed One.� As John was baptizing His humanity in water, God was baptizing His deity in the Holy Spirit.� This empowered Jesus to exercise His deity in history, which He never did before He was� baptized.�

�� The parallels with the Old Testament story Joshua are amazing.� Jesus and Joshua are the same name.� Jesus is the Greek word for the Hebrew name of Joshua.�� Is it just coincidence that Joshua began his leadership of Israel at the Jordan River? We read in Joshua 3:7, "And the Lord said to Joshua today I will begin to exult you in the eyes of all Israel."� This was right in the context of their preparing to cross over Jordan.� In 3:12 God said to him, "Now then chose twelve men from the tribes of Israel...."� Is it mere coincidence that Joshua and Jesus were each to chose twelve men of Israel to be leaders?

�� Then God says as soon as they enter the Jordan, the water will be divided and the people will cross over on dry ground.� But you say there is no parallel there, for the Jordan did not divide for Jesus.� That is true, but I want you to look closely at what Jesus saw when He came up out of the water of baptism.� Verse 10 says, "He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him as a Dove."� There was no need for the water to divide for Jesus was not leading His people over into a new earthly kingdom.� What Jesus saw was heaven divide, for He was to lead His people over to a heavenly kingdom.

�� The Greek word here is schizo, from which we get schizophrenia, the split personality.� Jesus saw the heavens split apart and rent asunder.� That is the same word all the Gospel writers use to describe the veil in the temple when it was rent in two.� Here, heaven is torn in two,� and for the first time man is exposed to the presence of the trinity.� What a paradoxical picture:� The heavens are literally ripped apart like a cloth violently torn in half, and then the Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a gentle Dove.� It is one of the most momentous moments in all of history.� Heaven and earth are linked, and all three persons of the triune God are on the stage of history for the first time.��

�� It always seemed a minor incident in the life of Jesus, but like everything in His life, the more you meditate on it and study it, the more significant it becomes.� Now, it seems impossible to exaggerate the importance of this event.� Though Luther did by saying Jesus was here a substitute for all men, and buried the sin of the world in Jordan.� This goes too far and makes the cross unnecessary.� Luther was just trying to give it a place of great importance.� It was that.� It was the inauguration of the King of Kings, the greatest leader the world has ever known.� He would not merely lead God's people over Jordan into the promise land, but as the new Joshua he would lead God's people from earth to heaven where He will reign forever and ever.

From this moment on Jesus was the anointed one, and began to demonstrate His power over the kingdom of darkness.

�

�� In the ancient world some peoples would select their king by letting a bird loose before the aspiring candidates, and the one on whom the bird landed was considered the choice of the gods.� We do not know that Jesus knew of this practice, but the decent of the Dove did mean that to Him.� He was the chosen one, and God confirmed it by a verbal message as well as by the symbol of that Dove.� The Dove of the Holy Spirit revealed just what kind of a king Jesus was to be.� Almost every king in history has had to be violent to defeat his foes and maintain his kingdom.� Jesus went right from His inauguration to face His fiercest foe, and even there he fought and won by the power of dove‑like gentleness.� He won by the sword of the word, and that would be the weapon by which He would conquer all the powers of darkness.

�� The Old Testament Joshua wiped out the enemies of righteousness by the sword of metal.� This new Joshua never used the sword of metal, but only the sword of the spirit.� He took his enemies captive, and made them part of his army.� No other king in history has been able to conquer so much territory with the power of gentleness.� The Dove descended on the Lamb of God, and this Dove‑filled Lamb became the world greatest conqueror.� He sent forth his army telling them to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and the church only wins when they follow these instructions of the Lamb.� The third thing we want to see is that His baptism was‑

III. AN ACT OF ILLUMINATION.

�� There is a lot of speculation about the silent years of Jesus from age 12 to 30.� Many wonder if Jesus fully understood that He was the Messiah.� We do not know for sure, but we do know that if there was any doubt, it was all eliminated at His baptism, for His eyes were opened and He saw and heard what no eyes have ever seen and no ears have ever heard.� He was given the full light of heaven on His path, and however dark it might get God assured Him He was pleased with His Son.�

�� This is the key to any man's success in life.� He has to know that He is loved by those who matter most.� Jesus had to take a lot of rejection and a lot of sorrow, but He could always look back at His baptism where He heard His heavenly Father's words of approval.� Every father owes this to his children:� This assurance that however rough life gets they have won who loves and cares for them.� God gave His Son this kind of illumination at His baptism.

�� Alexander White commenting on the Father's words from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son," said this:� "Think of it, my brethren.� Never once since the fall of Adam and Eve had the Maker of men been able to say these words till he said them to Jesus Christ that day at the Jordan.� Almighty God had often looked down from heaven to see if there were any that did good and sinned not.� But when his eyelids tried the children of men, it was always with the same result.� Not one.� Not Noah, not Abraham, not Jacob, not Joseph, not Moses, not David; no, not one single patriarch, or prophet, or psalmist, or saint, in all the house of Israel.� But here at last is a man after God's own heart.� Here at last is the second Adam, with whom God is well pleased."

�

�� Jesus would also be illumined by the decent of the Dove as to the nature of His kingdom.� We have already referred to this.� But consider further that the first image of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is in Genesis 1:2, where He is hovering over the waters, and God said let there be light, and with this illumination the Holy Spirit began creating of the universe.� Milton wrote of the Holy Spirit, "...Thou from the first wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove‑like sat'st brooding on the vast

abyss."�

�� At the baptism of Jesus we see the Holy Spirit again hovering over the waters, and again God gives this illumination, let there be light, and the Lord Jesus, the Light of the world is installed as Messiah.� The Holy Spirit descends again to begin a new creation.� Jesus received a clear message as to His mission at His baptism.� He was to be a gentle ruler, and one whose goal was to be to make all things new.� A new Genesis begins at His baptism‑a new beginning for a new creation.

�� Jesus was illumined and enlightened by this event like none other.� He had emptied Himself of equality with God, and we do not know all the limitations He endured in those silent years, but God knew He needed this experience.� From this point on Jesus begins to do miracles.� There is not a hint of a miracle before His baptism.� This illumination was also His inspiration, and His motivation to portray by action who He really was.�

�� John the Baptist in John 1 emphasizes that he saw the Holy Spirit come down and remain on Jesus, and that this was the sign God gave him that the one on whom this would happen was the Messiah.� The Holy Spirit came upon many in the past, but on no one but Jesus did he abide.� Godet remarks, "This luminous appearance, then, represents and inspiration which is neither partial as that of the faithful, nor intermittent as that of the prophets."� In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit came and went, but at the baptism of Jesus he came down to abide on earth in Jesus, and when Jesus ascended he sent the Holy Spirit to abide in His body the church.� The baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of a special relationship of the Holy Spirit and man.

�

�� At His birth God the Son came to dwell with man.

�� At His baptism God the Holy Spirit came to dwell with man.

�� At His betrothal God the Father came to dwell with man.

��

�� We read this in Rev. 21:2‑3, "I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, now the dwelling of god is with men, and He will live with them."� The goal of God is to dwell with men, and each person of the Godhead accomplished this goal at different times.� The baptism of Jesus was when the Holy Spirit entered history to dwell here.� He came first into to Jesus and later into His body the church.� The baptism of Jesus was his Pentecost, and like his body later, when He was filled with the Holy Spirit He began His public ministry in power.�

�� The Holy Spirit made Jesus His temple, and then Jesus shared the abiding spirit with His whole body.� One of His missions was to baptize with the Holy Spirit that all of His followers might also have the spirit abiding in them.� That which makes all Gods people one, in spite of all their many differences, is the abiding Holy Spirit.� Every Christian is a temple of the Spirit, and it all began at the baptism of Jesus and the decent of the Dove.� The fourth thing we see is the baptism of Jesus was‑

IV.� AN ACT OF ILLUSTRATION.

�� He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness.� It was fitting that He take this step of obedience and become and illustration of what all believers are to do.� Obey God in all of His ordinances because it pleases God more than anything when we have a spirit of obedience.

�� Jesus left His church two ordinances‑baptism and the Lord's Supper.� Objectively they both point to the finished work of Christ in His death and resurrection.� We could argue that both are really unnecessary because they add nothing to His finished work.� But Jesus wants us to keep these two ordinances as acts of obedience.�

5.�� CHANGING YOUR MIND�� MARK 1:14‑20

�A mother calling to her son shouted, "Johnny, tell your sister to get in the house out of the rain."� "I can't mom," came the reply.� "And just why can't you?"� demanded his mother.� "Because we are playing Noah's Ark mom, and she's one of the sinners."�

�� We like to make the distinction between the sinners on the outside of the ark and the saints on the inside, and it is a legitimate distinction.� But in so doing, we tend to cover up the reality that the saints inside are still sinners.� Sinners saved by grace, but nevertheless sinners.� Noah didn't take much time before he demonstrated that after the Ark landed.�

�� Failure to be aware of this reality led the Pharisees of Christ's day, and self‑righteous saints all through history, to feel that the message of repentance does not apply to them.� Repentance is only relevant to those sinners outside the ark.� It is a message� you can preach at the mission, but it has no place in the sanctuary of the saints.� Billy Graham said, "I have been shocked to find that the theme proclaimed so emphatically by the prophets and apostles is scarcely mentioned by contemporary preachers." I must confess that it is not a topic I would be preaching on this morning if I was not going through the book of Mark systematically.�

�� One of the major values of expounding scripture systematically is that it makes you look at subjects that you would otherwise ignore, and in so doing you make many new discoveries.� I have always thought of repentance as a rather negative subject, and not one that Christians would have any reason to get excited about.� That is due to the fact that I have never heard the subject truly expounded, and I suspect that is true for most of us.

�� We are all victims of our culture where the only time we ever hear the word repent is in a context of scolding lost sinners.� We have such a limited and distorted view of the word and its meaning that we have lost its Biblical content, and in so doing have lost a basic element in the good news of the Gospel.� My task will be to try to restore to this word its Biblical content so that we can appreciate it as a positive experience for sinners inside the ark.� In other words, see that repentance is not just for the lost anymore.

�� The lost only have to repent once to end their lostness, but the saved have to repent innumerable times.� Repentance rightly understood is more relevant for the Christian than for the non‑Christian.� To achieve our goal of understanding we will look at three aspects of repentance:� The message of repentance, the motive of repentance, and the meaning of repentance.� Let's begin first with‑

I.� THE MESSAGE OF REPENTANCE.

�� Mark tells us that the very first message that Jesus preached was that the kingdom of God was near and, therefore, people are to repent and believe the good news.� This was the same message that John the Baptist had been preaching.� But John was now in prison.� His voice was silenced, and so Jesus steps into the gap and goes on preaching the same message of repentance.� So we see that the New Testament begins with this primary message‑repent.�

�� As we move into the ministry of Jesus, we come to a point where He sends out His 12 chosen disciples to preach, and Mark 6:12 tells us that their message was to be that people should repent.� Then we go to the very end of His ministry, and we listen to the last message Jesus gave His disciples before ascending to heaven.� In Luke 24:46‑47 we read, "He told them, this is what is written:� The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations...."��

�� We see clearly that repentance is not merely an introductory message that Jesus used to get started.� It was the message He had all through His ministry, and the message He gave to His church to take into all the world.� Repentance is not a side road, but rather, it is the main highway, and the very essence of the Gospel.�

�� When we get into the book of Acts we see that, sure enough, this was the message the Apostles took to both the Jews and the Gentiles.� New Testament preaching was repentance preaching.� Peter in his most successful sermon ever at Pentecost concluded in Acts 2:38, "Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven."� Repentance and forgiveness of sins go hand in hand.� Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, but it is also the case that without repentance there is no forgiveness of sins.� No one can be either saved or sanctified without repentance.� There can never be any positive movement of the sinner in the right direction that does not start with repentance.� The first step toward God that a sinner makes is the step of repentance.

�� Three other places in Acts reveal Peter preaching repentance, and when Paul takes over as the dominant preacher of the book of Acts, the message does not change.� To the Greeks in Athens he said in Acts 17:30, "In the past God over looked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent."� In Acts 20:21 Paul said, "I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus."� There is more of Paul's preaching repentance as well, but to top it all off, the final proof that repentance is a key message of the New Testament is the preaching of the resurrected and ascended Christ.� We have His message to the seven churches in Rev. 2 and 3, and would you believe it, the key theme in his message to his own people is repentance?�

�� To the church of Ephesus he laments that they have forsaken their first love and in Rev. 2:5 he commands, "Remember the height from which you have fallen!� Repent and do the things you did at first.� If you do not repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place."� In four other churches he also calls for repentance.� The last is the church of Laodicea.� Rev. 3:20 is a verse we are all familiar with‑"Behold I stand at the door and knock.� If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in� and eat with him and he with me."� But I wonder how many have ever memorized the verse before this?� Verse 19 says, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.� So be earnest, and repent."�

�� The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive.� Repentance is a key message of the New Testament from start to finish.� It is the message most needed by lost sinners and by loving saints.� The idea that once you become a Christian you no longer need to repent is impossible to defend from Scripture.� The message of repentance is the most relevant message there is for everyone on earth.� So here we are again at a peak of importance.� Marks Gospel is fast and brief, but it is a Gospel of such quality that every paragraph deals with a subject of supreme importance.� You have John the Baptist, the greatest of men.� You have the baptism of Jesus the greatest event, for there Jesus became God's anointed.� You have the temptation of Jesus, the greatest of battles, for there Jesus won the right to set Satan's captives free.�

�� Now we have the first message Jesus preached, and again, it is the greatest, for it is the very essence of all that will ever be preached in His name.� Having concluded this, we need to move on and look secondly at‑

II.� THE MEANING OF REPENTANCE.

�� The Greek word simply means to change your mind.� If we can grasp this basic meaning it can help us restore the value of this word and the experience of it to our lives.� This experience has become a neglected subject in modern preaching, and not just by liberals but by the evangelicals as well.� The reason for this is the narrow meaning given to the word.� It brings images to our minds of some fanatic with a sign saying repent for the end is near.� Or it makes us think of people going through agonizing emotional upheaval.� We do not like this kind of emotional crisis in our culture.� So because of a very limited concept of repentance, we have pushed it into a closet and have buried this subject out of sight.�

�� It is not that this narrow view is not part of the truth, for it is.� Repentance can be an overwhelming emotional experience.� The problem is, that is only a part of the truth, and we have made it the whole.� Most of the repenting we need to do as Christians does not demand a great deal of emotion.� It is foolish if we think that the main goal of the New Testament preaching was to provoke emotions in people.� It is not, for the goal was always change.� Change is the key idea.� That is what Jesus is after.�

�� If I have a neighbor who peals out of his gravel driveway everyday and sends rocks flying into my yard, and I tell him the problem he is creating for me, I do not really care if he feels deep regret, or just shallow feelings of being sorry.� All I really care about is that he will change his behavior and stop this offensive conduct.� If it takes deep emotion to get him to change, then deep emotion is something I have to work at.� But the goal is� not his guilt feelings or the depths of his regret.� The goal is change of mind that leads to change of conduct.� That is what repentance is.� Repentance is not so much something you feel, but something you do.� You often do it because of what� you feel, but it is not true repentance until the doing is done.�

�� Deep feelings of remorse over ones sin is not in itself true repentance.� The world is filled with people who feel absolutely rotten about things they have done, and the consequences drive them to tears.� If emotion was the goal these people would be forgiven and redeemed.� But that is not the goal.� The goal is change and all the feelings in the world without change is not true repentance.� On the other hand, those who have little or no feeling, but who change, have true repentance.� We often twist this around and demand that people feel bad to show how sorry they are.� This is not the sign we should be looking for.� The sign of true repentance is, have you changed your mind, and therefore, your behavior.

�� When Paul describes his conversion to King Agrippa, he made this very significant statement in Acts 26:19‑20, "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.� First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God

and prove their repentance by their deeds."� Notice, he did not say prove their repentance by their tears, but by their deeds.� The proof of repentance is in change of conduct.� If there is no change, there has been no repentance.�

�� A cool calculated change of mind is� more truly repentance then is a bucket of tears that produces no change.� We need to stop measuring repentance with the wrong yardstick.� It is not how bad you feel at all, but how real is your change of mind.� If you really have changed your mind, your behavior will show it. Some poet put it‑

�� Repentance is to leave

�� The things we loved before,

�� And show that we in earnest grieve

�� By doing them no more.

The bottom line is change.� You cannot command people to feel bad about things, but you can command them to think right and act right, and that is what repentance is all about, and why we are commanded over and over again to repent.� It is a choice of the will.

�� If you are driving along and suspect you are on the wrong road because it does not seem right, and you begin to look for evidence with anxiety, that is a state much like the sinner or the saint goes through when they feel uneasy about the path they are walking.� When you discover a sign that proves that you are going the wrong way, you can do several things.� You can pull over and cry; you can pound your steering wheel, or slap your head and call yourself stupid.� There are endless possibilities of emotional reactions.� But in the end all that really matters is that you change your course.� You get off the wrong road and get on the right one, and that is what repentance means.� You might do it crying, or you might do it smiling, but whatever you do you have not repented until you've changed.� Next we see‑

III.� THE MOTIVE OF REPENTANCE.

�� We tend to think of repentance as a negative experience, because we think the motive for it is to escape the wrath of God.� This is, in fact, a common motive for it. Ninevah was facing total destruction, but she repented and God spared her.� But keep in mind, Jonah was not preaching good news to Ninevah.� He was preaching bad news.� It was a total negative message.� In 40 days Ninevah will be destroyed. That was his message.�� When the wrath of God is about to fall in judgment, repentance is a very negative experience.

�� But notice how different the preaching of Jesus was from Jonah's. �Verse 14 says he proclaimed the good news of God.� Verse 15 says the kingdom of God is near‑repent and believe the good news.� It is a completely positive message.� Not destruction is near, but rather the power and the rule of God is near, and so get ready to be a part of this great event.� Jesus is not preaching repent or you've had it, but repent for heaven is coming your way, and you won't want to miss it.� The motive to repent is positive here.� Do it to get in on God's best.�

�� Change your mind about the power of evil.� Believe it can be defeated, and that God's will can triumph.� Repent of your complacency and surrender to the kingdom of darkness, for the kingdom of light is at hand.� Jesus had just conquered Satan in the wilderness, and He is now invading Satan's territory to set the captives free, and His preaching is the good news that they no longer need to be in bondage to evil.� The greater than Moses is here to lead His people out of the bondage of the Egypt of evil.

�� So repent, cries Jesus.� Change your mind.� Do not live in fatalistic despair.� Do not let evil run your life.� The motive to repent is positive, and this is the perspective we have lost.� We are locked into the Jonah mode, and see repentance as a fire escape message completely.� In our culture we have been burnt out with the you are going to hell message.� Judgment is at hand, just does not move people, even if its true.�

�� If repentance is going to become relevant to us again, we need to focus on the positive motive that Jesus preached.� Paul preached it as well.� He wrote to the Romans in 2:4, and said, "Do you not know that the goodness of God is meant to lead you to repentance."� This is what Peter was getting at too when he said the reason God has not ended history is because He is long suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.� The positive motive is basic in New Testament theology.� Sometimes people need to be told they are heading for hell, and they need to be frightened into repentance.� But when they are hardened to this approach, or when they are Christians, they need to hear the good news:� Repent because God has His best waiting for those who change their minds, and begin to walk in the way that He wills.�

�� We can scold and demand, and yell change� your life style so as to give more time to Christian service, or you will be suffering loss of reward in the judgment.� This is a true message, but we don't like it, and stubbornly refuse to be threatened into change.� But we can also say, change your mind and don't give all of your time and energy to� world pursuits, for the kingdom of God is at hand.� The rule and reign of God is ready to set you free, and you can enter into the joy of the Lord, and no longer be a captive of the culture.� This is the message Jesus preached, and it is still the� most relevant message in the world.� The best motive for repentance is not the bad news of what will happen if you don't, but the good news of what will happen if you do. �

�� Look at the many parallel accounts of repentance, or the lack of it, in the Bible.� John the Baptist confronted Herod with his immorality, and he did not repent, but had John killed, and he was lost.� On the other hand, Nathan confronted his ruler David with his immorality and David repented.� David could have had Nathan killed to keep his mouth shut, but instead he repented.� Nathan's life was spared for God's service, and David's life was spared, and though he suffered tragic consequences the rest of his life, he was restored to God's service, and wrote many of the Psalms by which God is worshiped by His people all through history.� The difference in the two stories hinges on repentance.

�� Repentance enables God to bring good out of evil.� Without it, evil wins, and all lose but the devil.� Repentance is the only way to defeat the power of Satan.� Judas betrayed Jesus and he felt so bad he even killed himself, but he did not return to Jesus.� Peter denied his Lord and wept bitterly in repentance, but he came back and was forgiven and made a leader in the kingdom.� The difference is all in the change of mind.�

�� This pattern is everywhere:� The two kings, the two disciples, but there is also the two brothers.� The prodigal who repented and the elder brother who would not.� The two in the temple, the Pharisee and Publican.� The one repented and the other did not.� The two thieves on the cross‑the one repented and the other did not.� Heaven or hell are destinies determined by ones repentance or lack of it.�

�� What I am trying to communicate is that we need this basic experience in our lives as Christians.� If we ignore it because we have been conditioned to reject the negative, then let us focus on the equally valid positive motives, and restore it to our thinking and experience.� The only way we can mature in Christ is to be ever changing our minds.� Most kids do not like school.� I didn't, but I changed my mind.� I repented and stopped thinking it was awful, and because I did I began to enjoy learning.� Christians are forever saying I don't like to witness; I can't pray in public; I just can't read the Bible for long; I just can't stand up and share with others.� There are a lot of things Christians don't like, but they need to repent and change their minds.� They need to stop limiting their lives and remaining in bondage to their limitations.� The power of God can change every bondage and set us free if we will only change our mind and cease to surrender to our weaknesses.�

�� The average Christian, and the above average Christian never leads another person to trust Christ as their Savior.� American Christians are complacent about it, and since we are all in the same boat we comfort each other with our mutual neglect in evangelism.� We live in the midst of a people who are lost and facing judgment without a Savior, and only once in a while do we even dwell on it long enough to be reminded that these are people for whom Christ died.� Who can say that we as Christians do not need to repent?� We need to change our minds and start thinking of ways we can change this attitude and become the� tools God can use to change lives.

�� We cannot wait forever to witness.� Lost people don't have forever.� They may only have today.� We need to repent and take seriously the need to plan, to pray, and to act.� It is better to try and fail than to never try at all.� Jesus defeated Satan that we might have the power to also overcome him.� The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church said Jesus.� We can in the power of the Spirit invade every territory and set captives free.� We can, that is, if we repent and change our weak thinking to strong and victorious thinking.� We need to change, not because we will be condemned if we don't, but because others will be if we don't, and because they can be delivered if we do.� If you have not really tried to touch some life for Christ, will you, for heaven's sake, your own growths sake, repent and get busy on the business of changing your mind.�

6.�� KNOW THE FOE�� MARK 1:21‑28

�� A young Christian woman, after only 8 months of marriage came to a counselor complaining that she was as frigid as a ice burg.� She had promised herself as a teenager that she would be a virgin on her wedding day.� But then she fell madly in love, and after he gave her the ring, and the wedding day was set, she let down her guard, and the result was, she was not a virgin in her wedding gown.� This broken promise so plagued her that she blamed her husband for it, and developed a hostility toward him that led to depression and to her becoming frigid.�

�� This story could have very well ended in years of unhappiness and then divorce, for here was a situation where Satan had a foot in the door of her life.� Fortunately she got help, and was led to seek God's forgiveness for her broken promise.� Her depression lifted, and she was able to develop a warm and loving relationship to her husband.�

�� But had she not gone the way that Christ opened up by His atoning death, she could have become a demonized Christian, who would have ruined her marriage and become a bitter hostile person the rest of her life.� She would not have been lost, but she would have been a prisoner of war.� She would have been in demonic bondage as territory captured by the enemy, and thus, a breeding ground for the weeds of the wicked one, rather than for the fruit of the Spirit.�

�� Can a Christian become a weed patch rather than a garden of God?� This is the question we were answering last week.� The answer this week is the same.� It is yes, a Christian can be demonized.� How can this be?� It is really quite simple if you believe in the reality of the warfare between light and darkness, good and evil, Christ and Satan.� Satan operates on the principle‑take every inch the Christian leaves open for grabs.� If we are ignorant of the enemy and his strategy, we can leave ourselves wide open for him to invade our lives.� The superficial idea that Christians cannot lose in the battle of Satan is the cause of great harm.� It is the war we can't lose, for Christ has already won the war, but there are many battles, and Satan can win battles every day because Christians are blind to his schemes.�

�� Peter became a temporary opponent of the plan of God, and Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind me Satan."� At that point, on that specific issue, Peter was a tool of the devil.� Satan was in control of part of his life.� Peter won the war, but he lost battles, as all of us can do.�

�� Ignorance is our greatest danger, and that is why we need to learn all we can about demons to be better soldiers of the faith, and to avoid the extremes of finding demons everywhere, or believing that they are nowhere.�� So let's look at more evidence of the reality of the demonic.�

�� Dr. Karefa‑Smart, a distinguished physician, teacher, and diplomat, who held the post of Cabinet Minister in Sierra Leone, and was the Assistant Director of the World Health Organization, and visiting professor of International Health at Harvard, speaking to the western world said, "No African that I know doubts the reality of the devil.� Living as close to nature as we do, the devil does not have as many technological devices to mask his presence as he does among you."�

�� He recognizes the distinction between the demonic and disease, but he recognizes there is also a connection, for both are of the kingdom of evil.� He has a point, for Jesus dwelt with both side by side.� They were different, and yet in the same category as evil.� Dr. Smart writes, "The bacteria and viruses of disease may be called little devils; physicians recognize them as powerful foes.� The derangement of normal physiological functioning of the endocrine system, chemical imbalances which cause disease, are the scientific counterparts of the spirit of the devil working within the human body."�

�� In other words, all of the things that go wrong in the body, and all of those tiny foes of the body that make it sick are not part of the kingdom of God.� They are part of the kingdom of Satan.� Disease may not be demonic, but it is related, for it is an enemy to man.� This African scientific perspective is easier to combine with New Testament revelation than the western scientific perspective that says bacteria and viruses are just natural phenomenon.� They are not evil forces, but just forces of nature.� It is not that this is not true, it is just questionable that this is the whole truth.� Those closer to the demonic, like African doctors, may be seeing the connection of disease and the demonic in such a way that they are closer to the New Testament world view than we are as American Christians.

�� I have studied the virus enough to know that it is an amazingly clever creature.� Man can learn how to destroy it by developing the code of its shape so antibodies can lock onto them and destroy them, but they can recognize they are doomed if they don't do something, so they change their shape so the anti‑bodies cannot touch them.

These are smart little devils, and they drive the medical profession crazy with their defense system.� They have a superior defense system that brings the offensive army of medicine to a halt.� The question is do you think the vast army of the medical world that labors to defeat these clever foes of man is fighting the forces of God, or of the devil?�

�� I believe medicine is on God's side, and viruses are the enemy of God and man.� Disease, plague, and all manner of sickness may be used by God, for in His sovereignty He even uses evil, but these things are excluded from His eternal kingdom, and thus, they are a part of the evil kingdom that will be eliminated.� The bottom line in my diagnostic analysis of the demonized and diseased is that they are two distinct problems, but they are nevertheless twins.� They are often so much alike that you can't tell them apart, and Satan is the father of both.�

�� Many demonized persons copy the same symptoms as are exhibited by the mentally and physically ill.� This is their disguise, and it is very clever, for they are treated by mere natural means, and this is very ineffective, and so they are protected.� Natural illness is subject to natural means, but the supernatural can only be cured by supernatural means.� If you throw psychiatry and medicine at demons, they will laugh and maintain their control of a person.� They can only be defeated by a power greater than themselves, and there is no such natural power in man or medicine.�

�� Getting back to the African doctor, Dr. Smart:� He points out that the mass of psycho‑somatic illnesses in the world that imprison and keep people in bondage, are also the work of the devil.� The fear and ignorance and negative emotions that bind men are demonic.� God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.� So when we are bound by fear, where does it come from?� It is not from God.� Just as temptation does not come from God.� These things are satanic, but not necessarily demonic.� They are often natural, for Satan uses the natural events of stress and crisis to get a foot in the door of our lives.� The demonic may enter if we allow more than a foot in the door, and let stress overwhelm us to the point of extreme loss of control.� But even if the demonic does not enter in, the natural is enough to make life miserable and defeat us. So it is vitally important that Christians be aware of the forces of evil as being in partnership with all that leads to any form of sickness or abnormal behavior. Just because something is natural, does not mean it is not being used as a tool of evil. Our best hope to win any battle is to know the foe.�

�� If something is on the natural level then even secular counseling� can help deliver people. Many are healed by natural means. But if the demonic is involved you need to have the help of a spirit force greater than these evil forces. This is where exorcism comes in. It is a part of the battle for health in this world. The enemy may attack by land, ship, or plane, but whatever his strategy it is the same enemy. It is not flesh and blood we strive against, but spiritual forces. If you think all sickness if natural you will fight on only one front, and use natural resources. This is like using only depth charges because you know the enemy has submarines. But what do you do about his bombers? You need to be able to fight on all the levels the enemy has for attack. That is why the battle for health has to be fought on the physical, mental and spiritual levels to be effective against the weapons of Satan.

�� Doctors who believe in the reality of the demonic have developed a rule of thumb. If medicine which ordinarily works to relieve mental problems does not have any effect and prayer does, then there is strong evidence of a possible demonized patient. There are cases where strong injections do not have any effect, but where prayer brings calmness. Many who practice spiritual healing along with medicine are not fly by night quacks, but distinguished men of world fame. Dr. Paul Tournier,for example, the Swiss physician who authored many books read around the world. Dr. William S. Reed is another who wrote, "Many mental and physical illnesses result, in fact, from demonic attacks. Exorcism must therefore be given a place within present day psychiatry and medicine."

�� Dr. Lechler, for 35 years the medical superintendent of the largest mental hospital in Germany has seen all stages of being demonized. He is a medical authority who believes in the reality of the demonic, and of the need for exorcism. The point is, the Bible and many modern men of medicine agree that we need to see beyond the natural in the battle for health. We need to be aware of the reality of the demonic. We need to know the foe.

7.�� DEMONS DEFEATED�� MARK 1:21‑28

�Gender Dysphoria is the psychiatric term for what is commonly called transsexualism.� This is the obsession that one has been born as the wrong sex.� This is so deep‑seated that the only cure is thought to be sex change surgery.� In all the literature there is only one report of a cure by means of months of hard work using behavior modification.� But there is one report also of an instant cure with� no medicine, and no psychiatry.� D. Scott Rogo, author of over 25 books, tells of this amazing cure in his book The Infinite Boundary.�

�� The story began when John was born in 1952.� When he was four he started to imitate his mother by putting on makeup, and wearing his sisters clothes.� He became more and more feminine as he grew older, and walked and talked like a girl. He enjoyed only the feminine things of life.� Eventually he was diagnosed as a transsexual.� And unsuccessful suicide attempt brought him to Dr. David Barlow at the University of Tenn. Medical School.� He was given a complete psychiatric examination which showed, for all practical purposes, he was a woman trapped in a mans body.� He was advised to have sex‑change surgery, and it was scheduled.�

�� It was a long process to prepare for this, and so meanwhile John was living openly as a woman, even going by the name Judy.� By the summer of 1973 he was ready for surgery.� But to the shock of the doctors, Judy came back as John.� He was dressed in a three piece suit, and looked completely masculine.� He explained that he had gone to a Christian doctor who told him his problem was demonic.� He agreed to have the doctor pray with him, and the doctor spent two to three� hours praying that the evil spirits in him would leave.� This exorcism worked, and now for the first time in 20 years he felt like a man.� He was instantly cured, and all his feminine behavior vanished.� Dr. Barlow asked him to retake the battery of tests, and all of the results showed he was restored to a totally masculine identity.� The demons that had messed up his life had been cast out.�

�� We think demonism is not for today, because we have been brainwashed by our culture, but the fact is, the New Testament is more relevant than modern psychology in explaining why we live in a society so filled with perversions.�� Why are there so many messed up people? Why are there so many child abusers? Why are there so many obsessed with all sorts of abnormal behavior?� All this is a boon to talk show hosts, but it is a curse to millions who cannot enjoy a normal life.� The New Testament tells us that much abnormal human behavior is a result of demon possession, or the more modern term, demonization.� Men and women open themselves up to satanic influence, and he takes advantage of it, and sends his troops into their lives and takes control.�

�� After reading widely in theology, medicine, and psychology, I have no doubt that the very thing that we see in the New Testament ministry of Jesus are going on all over the world today.� But equal to the danger of not believing in the reality of demons is the danger of believing in them too much.� The fact is, they are real, but still more rare than some believers like to think.� It is hard to keep a balance on a subject like this.� It is just too easy to go to one extreme or the other.� We want to dismiss the whole bizarre subject as a matter of mental illness, or discover demons behind everything that is abnormal.� Both views are clearly out of touch with the revelation of the Bible, and the realism of history.�

�� The only way to approach a subject like this is to be a believing skeptic.� We must come to it believing there is something to it, but be skeptical about all evidence until it becomes overwhelming.� Catholic and Protestant authorities agree, you should consider every other possibility before you jump to the conclusion that anything is demonic.�

�� Most cases of reported demonism are proved to be something else.� There are even numerous cases of pseudo demonism where clever people rant and rave and foam at the mouth, and scream profanities because they have discovered it is a very effective method for getting attention, and getting their way.� History is filled with the follies of being a demon hunter, but equally foolish is the life lived in utter unawareness of these dark powers.� So let's begin our study of this sober subject by looking at‑

I.� THE REALITY OF DEMONS.

�� When Jesus was confronted by a man with a evil spirit in the synagogue, He treated the man, not as a mental case of one going berserk, but as one possessed. He said with authority, "Come out of him!"� And with a shriek the spirit came out shaking the man violently.� There can be no question that Jesus believed in the reality of demons.� The first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is that of casting out an evil spirit in verse 27.� In verse 34 he drove out many demons.� In verse 39 he drove out many more in Galilee.� The evidence is very strong just in this first chapter that one of the major ministries of Jesus was exorcism, the casting out of demons.�

�� Why was this so important?� Jesus tells us in Matt. 12:28, "But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."� One of the major evidences that the kingdom had come was the fact that people in bondage to demons were being set free.� The demonic kingdom could not stand before the kingdom of God, but had to retreat.� Because of this, those nations where the Gospel has gone and converted a large segment of the population, so that it can be called a Christian land, have far less demonization than do those who still live in lands of darkness where Satan has strong control.�

�� Because we have grown up in American, a land where the Gospel has been very powerful, we have come to question the very reality of demons.� Many feel that Jesus was just accommodating Himself to the popular belief in demons, and went along with the belief just to capture people's attention.� This is a very weak argument, for Jesus made a clear distinction between diseased people and demonized people.� He never talked with diseases.� These people were sick with natural causes, and Jesus did not carry on conversations with their bacteria or viruses.� But when He cast out demons, He often talked with them and cast them out as living things.� They often made terrible noises as He did it.� Bacteria and viruses do not have loud voices, nor do they control the voices of their victims.� The demons even talked back to Jesus, and if He was just going along with a popular false belief, He was encouraging superstition, which is totally inconsistent with His claim to be the truth.�� There is no escaping the evidence, demons were real, and Jesus fought them as real living enemies.�

�� There is much in the Bible that cannot be understood apart from the reality of demons.� It has always been one of the mysteries in my mind of how the Jews, who saw all of the marvelous miracles of God in the Old Testament, could yet go off to worship idols.� It seems inconceivable to me that any idol could have a greater lure than the God who made the heavens and the earth.� This power of idols over Israel all through the Old Testament can only be comprehended when we see that behind the idols were real gods, that is demons.� The Old Testament does make this clear if you search for it.� Demons and idols are linked as one.� Look at Deut. 32:17.� "They sacrificed to demons, which are not God‑god's they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear."� These demons were not God, but they were gods.�� The Old Testament is loaded with many gods of the nations round about Israel, and these were real gods, but they were demons.�

�� Ps. 106:36‑37 says, "They worship their idols, which became a snare to them.� They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons."� Paul confirms this in� I Cor. 10:20, "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons."� In the book of Rev. the idols and demons are linked again as it says in Rev. 9:20, "...they did not stop worshipping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood..."� There is no power in wood, stone, and precious metals, but if there is demonic power behind these things, then idols can actually have obsessive power in peoples lives.� Idols are not merely harmless superstition, but they can be connections to literal demonic power.�

�� It seems so irrelevant for John to say to Christians in I John 5:21, "Little children keep yourself from idols."� Idols are about as irrelevant as demons in our culture.� We dismiss them both as a obsolete ideas.� But the facts of life will not support this conclusion.� Any idol can become an obsession that opens the door to demonic influence in anyone's life.� We still fight those same battles God's people fought in the Old Testament and New Testament days.�� We have thought these were cultural ideas no longer fitting for the modern scientific mind, but this is not so.� Demons have not departed to the land of make believe.� They are just as real today as they were in the days of Jesus.�

�� But the question can still be, so what?� The Lock Ness Monster may be real also, and so too the Abominable Snow Man.� What difference does it make to us?� To answer that lets look at my second point‑

II.� THE RELEVANCE OF DEMONS.

�� Note that the first demonized person Jesus confronted was in the synagogue, a place of worship and study of the Word of God.� In verse 39 it states that Jesus was preaching in the synagogue and driving out demons.� The synagogue seemed to be the place where Jesus was most likely to practice exorcism.� This seems strange, for you would think such people would be in a different crowd.� We have an image of a demonized person that puts them all into the category of the Gaderene demoniac.� He was the madman who hung out in the deserted cemetery, and was a raving lunatic.�

�� Because of this limited view of the demonized, we find the subject very irrelevant. But Jesus made it clear that there are varying degrees of being demonized.� Some people only have a single demon; others have multiple demons, and some have legions.� Not only is there the number factor, but not all demons are equally powerful or wicked.� They are just like people.� Not all sinners are equally wicked and dangerous, and so it is with demons.

�� Jesus told of a man who had a demon cast out of him, but he did not take in anything positive to fill up the emptiness.� The result was said Jesus in Matt. 12:45, "Then it goes and takes with it seven others spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there."� Note, the original demon is not as wicked as the gang he takes with him.� They were more wicked, and the result is the last state of the man is worst than the first.

�� The point is, all demons are not alike.� They do not all make people go mad and do vile and violent things.� Some of them just cause people to be ill.� Others cause them to be obsessed with some behavior that is destructive.� All these people that Jesus saw in the synagogues were not raving lunatics.� They were Jews who likely came to the synagogue regularly, and were Godly people, but who were in bondage to Satan in some way.� They were just like Christian people today who love the Lord, and long to grow in grace and knowledge, but are in one way or another in bondage.�

�� They may be addicted to smoking, alcohol, sex, eating, gambling, or any number of obsessive type behaviors.� They may be normal in every other way, but in some aspect of their life they are slaves to that which is out of God's will for them.� Now you can begin to see that maybe the idea of being demonized may be relevant to us as Christians in the 20th century after all.� Can a Christian be demonized?� The evidence convinces most who study the subject that the answer is yes.�

�� Back in 1952 Merril F. Unger published his great book called Biblical Demonology.� In this classic treatment he was convinced Christians could� not be demonized.� But since then, he has been so inundated with evidence that he has written several books proving that Christians can be demonized.� I read his book, What Demons Can Do To Saints, and he has compiled Biblical and historical evidence that left no doubt in my mind that Christians can be demonized.�

�� Why else would Paul urge Christians to put on the whole armor of God, so that we may stand against the devil's schemes?� In the next verse, Eph. 6:12 he writes,� "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."� All of this is meaningless if the Christian is automatically protected from the demonic influence.� There is nothing automatic about it.� We can stand with the right preparation, and we can win, and send the devil fleeing when we resist.� But if we are complacent and convinced he does not even exist, we stand a good chance of being invaded, and losing control of some part of our life.�

�� In Luke 13, Jesus confronted a woman who had been crippled and bent over like a hunchback for 18 years.� She was in the synagogue listening to him teach.� Jesus healed her, and in so doing made the synagogue ruler angry.� Jesus called him a hypocrite, and said he treats his animals better, for he takes them to get water on the Sabbath, and then Jesus said in Luke 13:16, "Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"�

�� Jesus made this ruler of the synagogue feel ashamed, for this was a Godly woman. Yet, she was a victim for 18 years of a satanic bondage.� This crippled saint was not a raving lunatic, nor was she was kind of wicked fiend plotting how to murder little children.� She was just a child of God, who somehow had let Satan get his foot in the door of her life, and capture part of it.� This is the aspect of demonism that is relevant to every believer, because every believer has the potential of losing control of some territory called the self.� How else can we explain Godly Christian leaders suddenly doing acts of such folly that they lose all they have built up for the kingdom of God?� What possesses such people?� That is the question, and the New Testament answer is that they have let Satan possess some aspect of their being.� They are demonized, and controlled by dark forces that compel them to choice the way of evil.

�� Paul was not just scribbling to test his pen when he wrote in II Cor. 11:3, "But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be lead astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ."� This is as clear as you can get.� People with a sincere and pure devotion to Christ can be conned into being deceived and led astray.� There is none who stand who should ever conclude that they cannot fall.� This is the pride that goes before a fall.� Those who stand and do not fall are those who know they could, and so they take precautions.� The Christian least likely to fall is the Christian who knows his weaknesses, and who believes Satan is looking for ways to gain control in that area of weakness.

�� The Christian most likely to fall is the Christian who says, "I love Christ and have nothing to fear.� I can think positive and enjoy life by indulging all my appetites freely, and throw caution to the wind."� This is a rejection of the warfare mentality of the New Testament.� It makes the Christian shed his armor, and become indifferent to prevention.� The battle field is strewn with the bodies of believers who buy into this package of deception.�

�� Not only can Christian be drawn into sin and sickness by demonic influence, but Paul makes it clear they can also be drawn into heresy.� He writes in I Tim. 4:1, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons."�� Christians can be so deceived that they will follow all sorts of heretical leaders of cults.� I do not think these Christians lose their salvation because of this folly, but they become prisoners of war.� The enemy has them captive, and they are eliminated as soldiers of the cross.� They become tools of Satan to help keep the world in darkness.�

�� Again, let me remind you, these are very sincere religious people.� They may swear allegiance to the Bible, and their lives are dominated by spiritual things.� They are basically normal people, but they are nevertheless demonized.�� They are under the control of evil spirit, because they have opened the door of their lives to demon occupation.� The point of all this is not to kindle a spirit of fear, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and of love and of a sound mind.� The point is to raise our level of awareness so we can prevent being deceived.� This is why Paul was writing to the Corinthians about the need to be alert and on watch, for he says in II Cor. 2:11, "In order that Satan might not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes."� The implication is that Christians who are unaware can be outwitted and lose battles for control of their lives.

� ��Paul gets very specific in the area of anger.� Anger is a strong emotion, and anything that is a strong emotion is a threat to rational behavior.� Any person with strong emotions of any kind is a target for takeover by demonic forces.� Any Christian in a state of strong emotion can lose control and choose a course that is the wrong way.� Anger is just such a state.� Paul warns in Eph. 4:26‑27, "In your anger do not sin.� Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold."�

�� Paul is saying, all the devil needs is a foot in the door to put the Christian off balance and cause them to do stupid and sinful things in anger.� At no time in the Christian life does a Christian have to pray for the mind of Christ more than when in anger.� We need to talk to ourselves and ask, what are you doing?� Is your thinking clear?� Are� you being wise?� Are you moving in a direction that is pleasing to God?� We have to fight like crazy to keep the rational in control, or we can become a captured weapon that Satan can use to do damage to the kingdom of God.�

�� Christians have always been their own worst enemies, because they have allowed themselves to be outwitted by the devil.� There is nothing more humiliating then to be shot by your own gun, which the enemy has cleverly captured from you.� But this is the kind of defeat Christians endure all the time because they are not aware of the relevance of demons in every day life.� Merril Unger, after years of research came to this clear conclusion:� "Clinical evidence abounds that a Christian can be demon controlled as a carry‑over from free conversion days or can fall under Satan's power after conversion and become progressively demonized, even seriously.� If such a person blatantly lives in scandalous sin, subscribes to an embraces heresy, engages in occultism, or gives himself to rebellion and lawlessness against God Word and will, he may expect a demon invasion of his life."�

�� But let me again add a word of caution.� There are few fanatics more offensive and abusive to the truth than those who blame everything on the devil, and point to demons behind everything they don't like.� The greatest fanatics for belief in demons in the New Testament were the greatest enemies of Christ.� They were constantly trying to pin the label on him that he was demon possessed.� John records that four different times the Jews accused� Jesus of this:

John 7:20, "You are demon‑possessed," the crowd answered.�

John 8:48, "The Jews answered Him, aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon‑possessed?"�

John 8:52, "At this the Jews explained, now we know that you are demon‑possessed."

John 10:20, "Many of them said, he is demon‑possessed and raving mad.� Why listen to him?"

�� The truth seems demonic to those in bondage to error.� So let's not think that finding demons everywhere is good.� It can be the very depth of depravity to call good evil.� Every authority in the field of demonology warns against the danger of zeal without knowledge.� To start diagnosing every disease and every disturbance in life as demonic is to be duped by the devil.� But to be aware that every disease, disturbance, distress, and depression can be a crack in the door for the demonic is to be better prepared for prevention of loss to these evil forces.� Greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world, and with proper awareness, and dependence upon Christ we can be assured that all demons will be defeated.�

8.�� INTIMATE COMMUNICATION�� MARK 1:35‑39

� If we had as many answers to prayer as we have books on prayer the battle would be won.� Unfortunately it is easier to write a book on prayer than to pray effectively. It is easier to preach a sermon on prayer than to pray.� It is easier to give a lecture on prayer than to pray.� It is easier to do just about anything concerning prayer than to actually pray well and wisely.�

�� The reason this is so is because we have not� taken Christ as our guide to prayer, and have tried to follow men who claim to be experts, but who have made the matter of such complexity that it is too discouraging, and we lose our motivation.� If we went into a library and found a dozen volumes on how to order a hamburger, we would probably figure it is too complicated, and never brother to order one.� So it is with prayer.� There are books galore, and seminars, and special retreats, and so many people trying to teach us how to pray, that we automatically assume that it is in the same category with learning brain surgery and international law.� So we lose hope, and just accept the role of being poor at prayer.�

�� People who are good at saying prayers only confirm our despair.� We say, come Lord Jesus be our guest, let this daily food be blest.� They can give a lesson on Bible history, and give guidance to government leaders, and a challenge for world missions, all in a prayer of thanks for a hamburger. It makes the rest of us feel like we are not even really thankful for our hamburger, and also feeling like we just don't know how to pray.�

�� The vast majority of Christians would list as one of the weaknesses of their Christian life, their prayer life.� We do not spend enough time in prayer.� We don't pray for enough people.� We don't pray as fervently as we ought, or as persistently as we ought.� There is hardly any aspect of prayer that we do as adequately as we ought.� Christian guilt feelings about this make them easy targets of manipulation. They can be made to feel they need to go along with some prayer gimmicks to get back into God's favor.� Maybe it's an all night prayer meeting, or some kind of prayer chain, or large group prayer service, as if the length of your prayers or the quantity of them is the key to God's reluctant heart.�

�� All of this Jesus put into the category of paganism in Matt. 6, where He said the pagans think they will be heard because of their many words.� Jesus taught that God already knows what we need, and so a short and simple prayer is all that is necessary.� He never told His disciples to get a big crowd together, but said get alone in your own room and close the door.� He didn't give them a manuscript of hundreds of prayers when they asked Him to teach them to pray.� He gave them a single prayer of about 50 words as an example.�

�� My point is, the reason that prayer is so hard for Christians is because they have made it hard.� The Bible doesn't.� Jesus didn't.� Christians have so complicated the simplicity of the Bible with pagan ideas, they have put a satisfying life of prayer beyond the reach of the average Christian.� One Christian writer said she could visualize the millions of prayers hurtling toward God at mealtime, and so she decided to do her praying between meals when the prayer traffic was not so thick. She also got up early to get her prayer in� before the heavy breakfast crowd.� Of course, this is silly, but so is every aspect of prayer that implies God is not omniscient. Jesus said in Matt. 6:8, "Your father knows what you need before you ask Him."

�� If that is the case, then being eloquent is no big deal, for we do not have to persuade God.� It is not as if we have to be intellects, and be able to speak with great logic to get through to God.� Neither the quantity nor the quality of our prayers are the issue, for God already knows what we seek to communicate.� This puts all God's children on the same level.� So what if we can go on for a half hour with flowery words of oratory, and another can only say thank you Lord for today, give me guidance for tomorrow?�

�� The Pharisee in the temple was no doubt better at prayer than the publican.� If we took a vote among men after hearing them both pray, the Pharisee would win on both length and eloquence, but Jesus said the publican went away justified, not the Pharisee.� "God be merciful to me a sinner," was his prayer, and on the cross the thief said, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom."� And the father of the demonized boy prayed, "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."� When you look at the prayers that Jesus answered in his life, you can't help but be impressed with their brevity and simplicity.� They are little more than cries for help.

�� When the disciples were caught in the storm, and feared the ship was going down, they woke Jesus and their prayer was, "Lord, save us!� We are going to drown."� When Peter was going under his prayer was, "Lord, save me!"� All these prayers were answered.� Of course,� they were emergency situations where eloquence and length are not only irrelevant, but potentially deadly.� But what we want to see as we examine the prayer life of Jesus is that even the normal prayer life of the believer is to be simple and not complex.� Our text reveals three simple truths about prayer that can make effective praying possible for all of us.� First‑

I.� THE PRIORITY OF PRAYER.

�� Notice Mark 1:35 says Jesus got up to pray very early in the morning while it was still dark.� Prayer was a priority in His day.�� It was the first thing on His list.� Prayer was not reserved for some crisis, or great need out of the ordinary.� Almost everybody� prays when they come to their Gethsemane.� When there is a terrible time ahead, or one faces problems that are overwhelming, then prayer becomes a priority.� But for Jesus prayer was a priority when all was going well, and there was no great opposition, or huge obstacles to hurdle.�

�� This text comes early in His ministry when people were delighted, and even His future enemies were not yet sniping at Him.� Yet, Jesus made prayer a priority in His life‑style.� From this we need to see that prayer is not primary a tool for crisis. A hammer can be used to fight off an attacker, or to break through a wall to rescue someone from a fire.� But this is not its usual function.� It is usually used just to pound nails, to fix things, and to� hang pictures.� Prayer has its crisis value, but like all tools, prayer has its usual commonplace function as a tool of communication.� We need to make prayer habitual and not situational.�

�� Look at your relationships to people, and what you will see is that some of them are based on habitual communication, and some on situational communication.� I have people I relate to once a year because we communicate through Christmas cards.� There may be a crisis that leads to more communication during the year, but basically this is it‑crisis or Christmas.� Some of these people were at one time very close friends or relatives.� There was a lot of communication, but times change.� They moved, or we moved, and new relationships developed, and the old ones got pushed to the back burner. They no longer have a place of priority. �

�� The ones that have priority are those where there is habitual communication.� You talk to these people on a regular basis.� There does not have to be any crisis or occasion, you just open the lines of communication, and you relate to these people. Now the point is, the degree of intimacy you experience in any relationship is determined by the priority you give to communicating with them.� What happens in life is that we lose intimacy with those we love because we let communication slip from a place of priority.� Husbands and wives do this all the time.� It does not make them cease to love each other.� But it does mean they have lost their intimacy, and it can only be restored by renewed communication.

�� I had a friend many years ago who was a book fanatic just like me.� Every time we got together we could go on endlessly about books, authors, and ideas.� Talk, talk, talk.� We were the best of friends.� But he moved away, and then I moved, and we just lost touch with each other for many years.� I still have fond memories, and would consider him a friend, but he has no priority in my life at all, for lack of communication has ended all the intimacy we had.�

�� This happens with people, but it also happens with our relationship to God.� We drift away from God.� We do not necessarily love Him less or trust Him less, but we cease to put communication with Him on the front burner.� It is no longer a top priority, and the result is we lose intimacy with God.� There's no longer that closeness that we call fellowship.�

�� Every relationship of life faces this same struggle of keeping intimacy alive.� In every case the only way to do this is by means of communication.� That is why prayer was a priority in the life of Jesus, and why it has to be in the life of every Christian.� A growing relationship to God can only take place in a life where intimacy is developed.� And intimacy can only be developed by communication.� You cannot get close to people who will not talk to you, and God has the same problem.� If we do not spend time with God our relationship with Him will cool.�

�� We have had neighbors we only see out in their yards a few times a year as we go walking, but we get into a good conversation and share who we are, and what we are about, and when we go away from these talks, we feel we are closer to these relative strangers than we are to relatives that we never talk too.� Communication is the key to every degree of intimacy.� If God is going to be a priority relationship in our lives, we need to talk with Him.� Forget the idea that prayer is bringing to God a shopping list.� You can ask God for all you need in a few minutes, and you can intercede for all the needs you know in a few more minutes.

�� The reason we often get bored with prayer is because we have such a narrow view of it.�� Frank Laubach said, "If your prayers are boring to you, quite likely they are boring God too."� Get out of your rut where you just list your needs.� I can't imagine that Jesus got up before sunrise just to say, "God bless Peter and Andrew, and James and John, and John the Baptist," and on and on through all His disciples.� Jesus had a relationship to the Father.� It was His most intimate relationship, for their was no one else that could understand Him and His mission.� I imagine Jesus sharing with the Father, and telling of His problems, and seeking insights for solutions.� I think we often forget that Jesus had to live a human life.� He did not use miracle power to make all the bad things go away.� He had to endure the limitations of His flesh, and cope with crowds, criticism,� quarreling disciples, and a host of the same problems that plague us all.� Jesus needed someone to talk to, and to think through strategy with, in order to sense the direction to go.�

�� Thomas a Kempis says of prayer that it is, "Pondering a matter with reference to God."� To think, to plan, to question, and wrestle with issues in God's presence, is all part of prayer.� You are most intimate with those with whom you talk most.� If prayer is not a priority than we have put God in a category like those to whom we write just once in awhile.� He may be very important to us, and we acknowledge His love and influence, like we do good old uncle so and so, but we only communicate situationally and not habitually.� The result is loss of intimacy.

�� We need to see this truth.� You can love someone greatly, and yet lose intimacy with them.� I have relatives and old friends I love dearly, but I have no intimacy with them, because I have little to no communication with them.� This can happen with God as well.� God never moves away, but we do.� We let life change our priorities and let God be pushed to the side lines.� We do not change our theology, and we love Him as much as ever, but we lose intimacy.� This is a simple but vital issue in prayer. We need to make prayer a priority to maintain intimacy with God, as Jesus did.� Secondly, look at‑

II.� THE PRIVACY OF PRAYER.

�� Notice, Jesus left the house and went out to a solitary place to pray.� I am not aware of a single occasion when Jesus called for a public prayer meeting.� He condemned the Pharisees who prayed in public to be seen, and He told His disciples to pray in secret in their closet.� By both precept and practice, Jesus made it clear, prayer is primarily a private matter.�

�� Again, we go back to intimacy.� You can talk to someone you love in public, but you can never be as intimate as you can in private.� When you are alone you can develop a deeper intimacy.� This is even true with people you just meet.� I counsel every once in awhile with people who are strangers.� If we are in the presence of others, the conversation stays general, but when we come apart and are alone, we get to the real issues that are bothering them.� Privacy and intimacy go hand in hand.

�� So it is with our relationship to God.� It has to be private to be effective in developing intimacy.� Jesus could not pray in public, "Father help me to figure out how to cool off these sons of thunder, James and John, and help me to teach Peter not to be so quick to judge and take foolish actions before he thinks things through."� There were all kinds of issues that Jesus had to talk to the Father about in private. It is not that public prayer is not legitimate.� It is, but it is not intimate.� It is not that aspect of prayer that enables us to get closer to God.

�

�� Too often I think Christians worry about their ability to pray in public.� I don't think the Bible gives any support to this kind of anxiety about public prayer.� In 28 chapters of the book of Acts we do not have a single prayer of any apostle recorded. It is the public record of their deeds and not of their private devotions.� We know they were men of prayer, but we do not have great examples of their prayers.� Why not?� Because prayer is a private matter between them and God.� Like their master, they did not do a lot of praying in public, but developed a private prayer life where they talked with, and shared intimately with their heavenly Father.� We are told that they prayed, but not what they prayed.� So it is with our Lord, and for most of the prayers of His life.� They are private, and known only to God.�

�� Don't worry about public prayer, for it is a minor issue compared to the importance of private prayer.� This is where you develop intimacy with God.� It is in private sharing with God we can unload our burdens, and tell God of the struggles we have with temptation, resentment, hostility, envy, or any other evil that plagues us.� We can be one hundred per cent of who we really are, and still be loved in spite of it.� A friend is one who knows you, and still loves you.� God can be our greatest friend if we enter into the closet, and open ourselves to Him.� Total exposure to God leads to the ultimate in intimacy.� You can share with God things you can't share with anyone else.� In the privacy of prayer we reach the level of infinite intimacy where we are totally known and totally loved.� Thirdly, look at‑

III.� THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER.

�� Look closely at this text.� Peter and the others found Jesus, and told Him, "everyone is looking for you!"� The implication is, what are you doing off here praying in secret when the needs of the world are clamoring to be met?� People need the Lord, was there song to the Lord.� So come on they are saying, let's go meet the needs.� But Jesus replies in verse 38, "Let's go somewhere else‑to the nearby villages so I can preach there also.� That is why I have come." �

�� This response reveals a profound purpose that Jesus had in prayer.� There was no end to the needs to be met.� There was always more to do than anyone could do.� He needed to get away from the crowds, and the constant needs they had, for the purpose of sensing God's guidance.�

�� In a world where nobody can do everything, we need to get alone with God in prayer to sense which things to let go, and which things to go for.� Jesus needed this same guidance.� Without prayer you just keep responding to the needs that present themselves.� Jesus did not do that.� He knew when to move on to give new people a chance to respond to His preaching, and feel the power of His healing ministry.� The purpose of prayer was to stay in touch with God, and develop an intimacy that enabled Him to know the will of God for His life.� Prayer is private, but it has a great public impact, for it enables you to know where God wants� you to go to accomplish His purpose.� People in villages all over Galilee experienced a public impact because of the private prayer of Jesus.�

�� This clearly implies that Jesus did not just ask God for things.� He listened and thought though the point of His being in history, and what was the wisest strategy to follow to fulfill that purpose.� The purpose of prayer is to help us get the guidance of God that we need to fulfill His purpose.�

�� We often think prayer is to get God to do our will.� Do this for me, and after that do this and this and this.� The whole idea of power in prayer which is so prevalent revolves around the idea of getting your will accomplished by the power of God.� Prayer power can make you rich, popular, and healthy.� All things can be wrought by prayer, and we are urged to get our hands in the grab bag of things available to us if we only pray right.

�� It is not that there is no truth in this, it is just that it is so perverted that it seems like a primary purpose of prayer is to figure out how to make God your servant.� Whereas the prayer life of Jesus teaches us the purpose is to help us become more effective servants of God.� There is considerable difference in these two approaches.� In the one we follow the Savior, and in the other we follow the self.�

�� Jesus could have done anything and gone anywhere, and He would have touched people, but He did not come just to do His own thing.� He came to do the will of the Father, and the Father wanted Him to cover the villages of Galilee.� Jesus prayed in order to be sensitive to the leading of His Father.� He had to get away from the voices calling Him for help to hear the Father's voice.� The bottom line is, prayer is to help us know the will of God.� In a world of clamoring voices, how can we do what is right and best?� The only way we can even be close is to listen to God.� We need to make listening to Him a priority so that we can get our other priorities of life in order.

�� If Jesus would have gone by the pressure of the events of life as they unfolded, He would have followed Peter and the other disciples to the people who were looking for Him.� But Jesus had a more intimate awareness of God's will, and He thus, led Peter and the others to minister to people who were not looking for Him because they did not know He even existed.� Because of prayer Jesus heard, not the voices, but the Voice of God that gave Him directions as to the purpose He was to pursue.� Prayer helped Jesus stay on the track God laid out for Him, and not get sidetracked by pursuing the good at the expense of the best.�

�� Jesus could have done all sorts of good without prayer, and so can we.� We do not need God's guidance to do good.� We are moral agents in the world, and can chose to do good in many ways.� So the non‑praying Christian can still do much good in this world for the kingdom of God, and to meet human need.� Prayerlessness does not mean nothing gets done.� It means there is a loss of intimacy, and what does not get done is the best.� The good gets done, but not the best, because we are not in touch with God's will.�� We do not know His will intimately enough to choose it.� Jesus had an intimacy with the Father that enabled Him to do� God's perfect will.� He had that intimacy because He was a man of prayer.� That is the purpose of prayer, and that is why it is to be a priority, and that is why it is to be private, for it all comes down to intimacy.�

�� The person you talk to most, and the person you talk to most privately, and the person you talk to in order to know their will most completely, is the person with whom you have the greatest intimacy, and that person for Jesus was God.� To live the best Christian life that we can we need to be like Jesus in practicing prayer as intimate communication.�

9.�� TOOLS FOR HEALING�� MARK 1:40‑45

�One of the great wars of all time was a war where all men were on the same side. The enemy was the small pox virus.� It made all other foes seem puny in comparison. One of the greatest dangers for the Pilgrims and Puritans in coming to America, was this dreaded pox.� They died in large numbers from it, and they brought it to the Indians who had no immunity whatever, and tribes of 9,000 were reduced to a few hundred by epidemics.� Joel Shurkin in his book The Invisible Fire, traces the awful, but awesome story of this battle.�

�� In 1722, one of worse disasters in the history of Boston hit with a spread of small pox.� So many people died that the church bells never stopped ringing day or night.� All businesses and public meeting were banned.� People were caught in a bind.� If they were inoculated for the disease they could get it and die. If they refused it they could get it and die.� For decades this was the agonizing decision people had to make in the colonies.� Listen to this paragraph from the pen of Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography.� "In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small‑pox, taken in the common way.� I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.� This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen."

�� Few if any wars in history created more misery than this war with an invisible but powerful enemy.� But the marvelous news is, by world wide cooperation, man was able to defeat this foe, and eradicate it from the face of the earth.� The last case reported was in 1977.� Most of us don't even know what small‑pox is, because it is one of the major diseases that man has defeated.� This makes it all the more puzzling

that man has not yet been able to eliminate one of the oldest and most dreaded diseases‑leprosy.�

�� Leprosy is the only disease which is fully described in the Bible.� We know it was common in both the Old Testament and New Testament, but� most of us think of it as an ancient disease of no relevance to modern medicine.� I have to admit it was a shock to me when a few years back I read a book by the Christian doctor, Dr. Paul Brand, who operated on lepers in the United States.� I never dreamed there were leper colonies in the states, but there are, and there are hundreds of people with leprosy in our nation.� Most of the world's leprosy victims are in Asia and Africa, but they are also in America.�

�� The polite medical name for this disease is Hansen's disease.� It was named after the Scandinavian physician who in 1874 found the rod‑shaped bacteria that caused leprosy.� This marked the first time a micro‑organism was found to be the cause of a specific disease.� Obviously we cannot look at the vast history of this disease, but there are some facts we should have in our awareness to get the big picture of this second disease the Great Physician conquers in the Gospel of Mark.� At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 200 hundred known cases of leprosy in Israel.�

�� We need to see here that Jesus did not buy the age old prejudice that leprosy was a curse of God.� There are some Old Testament examples where God did judge people, like Mariam, by giving them leprosy.� But this has been blown out of all proportion, so that all lepers have been seen as under the curse of God.� This has led to all kinds of unbelievable prejudice and cruelty.� Jesus treated them just like

any other people with diseases.� Death is one of God's judgments too:� Are we conclude that all who die are cursed of God, and to be treated as such?�

�� The facts are, leprosy is a disease like all other diseases.� It has a known cause, which is bacteria.� Jesus did not discriminate against those with this disease.� He freely healed lepers when He met them.� We have no example of a disease that Jesus refused to heal.�� He did not pick and chose, or discriminate against anyone on the basis of their disease.� Jesus was a general practitioner, and He accepted every patient who came to Him.� He never refused a patient, nor did He ever refer one.� He handled this leprosy with the same love and swiftness as He did the fever of Peter's mother‑in‑law.� Christlike compassion has no disease discrimination is the point of all this.� Show me an exception in the healing ministry of Christ, and then I will be open to arguments of why some diseases should not be healed.�

�� Prejudice and discrimination has led to lepers suffering more from the depravity of man than from their disease.� The bacteria that causes leprosy does discriminate, however.� It can live in no other creature but man. All attempts to cultivate it in laboratory animals have failed. It also prefers men to women. We see this in the New Testament, where all the victims are men. We want to focus on this man in our text this morning, because even though the account of his healing is so brief, it gives us a glimpse at the three key tools that Jesus used throughout His healing ministry.� These three tools for healing are still powerful today, and they work for those who understand them. �All of us have these three tools, and so in a very real sense, all of us carry around a doctors bag with those instruments that can bring healing.� The first one is,

I.� THE WILL.

��

�� You will note that the main concern of this leper was not if Jesus could heal him, but whether He was willing to do so or not.� "If you are willing you can make me clean," he said to Jesus.� As far as he was concerned the whole thing hinge on Christ's will.� The implication being, not everybody is willing to help a leper.� Who knows what the history of this man had been?� How many had rejected him as a patient?� We do not know his past,� but it is obvious he had learned one thing clearly:� There is only hope where there is a will.� Where there is a will there is a way, but where there is no will, there is no way.

�� When Jesus said, "I am willing, be clean,"� He opened the floodgate for faith, and the man was cured instantly.� Willingness was the wonder drug of the Great Physician.� Jesus did not hesitate or speculate, or go off to meditate on this case.� He just responded with what this man most needed, and revealed it was His will to heal him.� Very little happens in the world of healing unless somebody is willing.� When the Crusaders brought leprosy back to Europe from the Holy Land, there were people who were willing to care for them.� So hospitals were built called Lazarettos, after Lazarus, the New Testament leper.� At one time there were 2 thousand Lazarettos in France, and 200 in England.� The point is, where there are people willing, there will be� help and healing.�

�� The reason anyone can be made whole forever, is because God is not willing that any should parish, but that all come to repentance.� Any and every person can be saved, simply because God is willing that it be so.� The will is the greatest healing instrument in the world.� Wherever there is a willingness there is the potential for healing.� Jesus was never unwilling to heal anyone, or any disease.� That is why Jesus was the only 100% successful healer in history.� I never realized it before I began to study healing, but this is the only area of Jesus's ministry where He never failed.

�� Jesus was a powerful and persuasive preacher, but He did not win over the Pharisees.� He was an excellent teacher, but not everyone who heard Him accepted His teaching.� There was nothing that Jesus did that was 100% successful, except His healing.� When Peter preached to Cornelius and his household, he summed up the life of his Lord in Acts 10:38 like this, "...He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil."� He did not convert everyone who came to Him.� The rich young ruler went away, and left Jesus in tears.� But nobody ever went away from Jesus saying, "He never healed me."� He was willing that all be healed,� and so there were none who failed to be healed.�

�� Jesus was willing that people be healed even though their sickness may have been caused by their own sin or folly.� We see this in the young man in chapter 2, who was a paralytic.� He was the equivalent of an aids patient in our day.� His sin put him where he was, but Jesus was willing that he be forgiven and healed.� Since we have no example of a case where Jesus was not willing to heal, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that He was always willing that healing take place.�

�� Modern doctors have confirmed that one of the keys to healing is the will.� Those who believe God is willing to heal them have a better chance of experiencing a miracle.� Those who do not believe that God is willing to heal can die, even when it is not medically necessary.� Dr. Bernie Siegal in his book, Love, Medicine & Miracles,

has many examples.� He specializes in cancer surgery, and has many examples of people who are fatalists about cancer.� When they hear that they have it, they lock in on the idea that death is inevitable, and God is not willing to deviate from the statistics.

�� Irving was a financial advisor, and when he was told he had six months to live with his liver cancer, he refused to think otherwise.� He said, "I've spent my whole life making predictions based on statistics.� Statistics tell me I am suppose to die. If I don't die, my whole life doesn't make sense."� He went home and died on time.

15 to 20% of his cancer patients do this, for they say there is no willingness in the universe that it be otherwise.� But Dr. Siegal started a therapy group called, Exceptional Cancer Patients.� He discovered there are another 15 to 20% of his patients with the same cancers who refused to believe there is no willingness in God to heal them.� In fact, they believe just the opposite.� They believe it is His will to heal no matter how bad they are, and how grim the statistics.� These people break all the rules, and like the leper in our text, they walk away clean from hopeless situations.�

�� Miracles take place when people are convinced someone is willing to heal them. These exceptional cancer patients refuse to be victims.� They are the doctors worse patients.� They will not follow the herd and do as they are told.� They question everything, and demand answers and explanations for everything, and if it doesn't make sense to them, they won't do it.� They are independent, but they are the ones who are most likely to get well.� Those who never question, and just go along with the routine, are ideal patients, but they are the ones most likely to die.�

�� There were a lot of lepers around, but only this man was on his knees before Jesus.� He was the exception, and he was healed.� The passive pass away, but the aggressive fight to stay.� This has now been established scientifically.� Aggressive bad patients tend to have more killer T cells in their blood.� These are white cells that seek and destroy cancer cells.� The docile good patients do not produce as many.

For all we know, this� man with the leprosy had fled from a leper colony resisting the rules, and defying the establishment.� We do not know all the details, but he was obviously an aggressive man who knew healing was possible if their was a willingness, and he was determined to find that willingness, or die trying.

�� A London research group found that 75% of cancer patients who react with a fighting spirit survive for 10 years.� Only 22 % survive that long who respond with a stoic spirit of acceptance and helplessness.� The bottom line is, all healing is partially

psychosomatic.� It begins in the mind, and from there it reaches into the body.� If this leper had not had it in his mind he could be healed, he never would have come to Jesus in the first place.� Would he have been healed had he stayed where he was praying for it?� Maybe, or maybe not.� All we know is he received a miracle because he came looking for one and begging for one.� He was an aggressive seeker for healing.� Dr. Franz Alexander, the father of psychosomatic medicine said, "The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life."

�� This leper got� a miraculous healing because he believed that if Jesus was willing, he could be healed.� This belief motivated him to come to Jesus.� His mind already had a picture of what could be.� And it made his body conform to its goals, and the result was he put himself in a place where he was ready to receive a miracle.� How many miracles never take place because, though Jesus is willing to give them, we are not willing to aggressively seek them.� We wait passively hoping for them, but we do not go aggressively seeking them.� The facts of both the Bible and modern medicine confirms that the will of both the patient and the healer play a major role in healing.�� The record shows, Jesus always has this tool in His doctors bag.� How we will to respond to His willingness, makes all the difference in the world.� The second tool we want to look at is,

II.� THE HANDS.

�� Verse 41 says, "Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man."� He touched this leper, and the leper, I am sure, would have loved to know the song, "He touched me, and now I am no longer the same."� The tool of touch was one that Jesus used all the time.� He established for all time the reality of healing in the hands.�

�� Healing is a hands on experience.� This contact between the healer and healed is like the contact between the appliance and the electricity.� Without the contact, there is no power.� With it, there is power.� The� power of Jesus to heal was not limited to His hands, but there is no doubt, as you look at the evidence, His hands were His key tools for communicating His willingness to heal.� Look at the record just in the Gospel of Mark.�

1:31. �Jesus took Peter's mother‑in‑law by the hand when he healed her fever.�

1:41.� He touched the leper to heal him.

5:23.� Jairus came pleading to Jesus, and said, "My little daughter is dying.� Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live."�

5:41.� When Jesus got there He took her by the hand and raised her up healed.�

6:5.�� Jesus in His home town could not heal many because of their lack of faith, but this text says, "He could not do any miracles there, except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them."�

7:32. People brought a deaf and dumb man and begged Jesus to place His hand on him.

8:23. Jesus took a blind man by the hand, and then laid hands on him several times to restore his sight.

9:27. Jesus lifted the boy who had an evil spirit cast out of him.� All thought he was dead, but Jesus touched him and lifted him to life.

16:18. Jesus said all who follow Him will use this same tool.� He says, "They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."� Thus, we have the whole history of the laying on of hands as a means of healing.

�� We have accounts of a St. Philip who healed cancer by the laying on of hands, back in the reformation period.� There is a whole history of English kings and queens who laid hands on the sick as a royal favor, and many of them were made well.� This may seem a little far fetched and superstitious, but the facts are clear:� The hands have played, and do play, a major role in all aspects of healing. �The chiropractor's key tool is his hands, and so it is with the surgeon.� The word surgery comes from the Greek word meaning, "Working by hand."� This is quite obvious, but what is not obvious is the importance of the hands even in the more technical science behind healing.�

�� Professor Dorothy Hodgkins, at the University of Oxford, was awarded The Nobel Prize in 1964, for her work on the molecules of penicillin and vitamin B12.� She became the first woman since Florence Nightingale to have the Order of Merit conferred upon her.� In an interview she said something that caught my eye.� She said in explaining how she was able to do what no one else had ever been able to do,� "I think with my hands."� She� was no Florence Nightingale out on the battle front ministering with healing hands.� She was in the laboratory, but she was saying even there, it was her sensitive hands that were feeling out the unseen realities of God's creation.� She was dealing with atoms and molecules, yet her hands were the key tools in her research.�

�� I do not pretend to understand it, and, in fact, I am somewhat skeptical, but there is a modern movement in developing what is called Therapeutic Touch.� That is the name of the book by Dr. Janet Macrae.� She has taught over 200 work shops on this touch therapy in nursing schools across the U.S.�� She writes, "Therapeutic Touch has been derived from the ancient practice of the laying on of hands."� The gist of it is this:� The chiropractor says the body is not aligned properly, and so, he uses his hands to get it back in line, and this leads to healing.� The therapeutic touch people say, there are also energy forces that surround the body, and they get out of balance.

Gravity is a force field around all bodies, and there are others as well.� By means of the hands these can be restored to balance, and this leads to healing of the body.� This unorthodox method is gaining ground in the world of orthodox medicine.�

�� I am not qualified to make a judgment on its value.� I am just using it as an illustration of how our contemporary world of health care people are exploring the use of the hands in healing.� There is just no escaping the evidence that Jesus linked the hands and� healing.� There are some obvious conclusions we can come to.� For one, the touch of the hand conveys a concrete message of willingness and love.� Jesus could have just said, "Be clean," and forget the reaching out to touch this leper.� He had to do that when the patient was far away.� But when the patient was within reach, Jesus touched them.� Jesus was saying something by His touch.� He was saying, "Your faith in me is confirmed.� I do care.� I will heal you."� His touch was therapeutic in that it would raise the level of faith of the person needing the healing, and give them assurance that Jesus was going to heal them.�

�� By using His hands to stimulate faith, Jesus was using natural means for healing, and, therefore, put His stamp of approval on man's development of therapies to bring about healing.� We will see more of this as we pursue the subject, but once you admit Jesus used His hands for some purpose in the healing process, you are forced to be open to the use of all means as possible ways God can work in healing.� If even Christ's miracles were in conjunction with therapeutic means, then any objection to medical treatment and therapy is contrary to the Spirit of Christ.� The third tool we want to look at briefly is,

III.� THE VOICE.

�� Jesus spoke to the leper, and said, "I am willing, be clean," and he was cured.� As soon as the voice of Jesus was recorded in the leper's brain, the leprosy was healed. Voice therapy is what we could call it.� It was the most common tool Jesus used.� He did not touch demon possessed people.� He used His voice only on them.� He would shout at them, "Come out,"� and the power of His voice made demons vacate the ones they possessed.�

�� Jesus had a healing voice.� It was one of His best therapies.� He said to the sickest of the seven churches in Revelation, the church of Laodicea, "I stand at the door and knock.� If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in� and eat with him and he with me."� Note, they do not hear His knock but His voice, for He uses a verbal knock.� It is His voice they will hear at the door.�� By means of His voice Jesus will heal their blindness and their hard hearts, and restore them to wholeness.� The greatest test of His voice therapy was when He cried out, "Lazarus come forth," and it worked.� He came out of the tomb healed and whole.�

�� The Reformers rejected many healing practices, but voice healing seemed so natural. When Martin Luther found his fond friend and fellow reformer, Melanchthon, in a dying state, not able to eat or drink, and semiconscious, he was greatly agitated, and went off to pray fervently for him. When he returned, he took his friend by the hand and said, "Be of good courage, Philip, you will not die: give no place to the spirit of sorrow and be not your own murderer, but trust in the Lord, who can stay and make alive again, can wound and bind up, can smite and heal again." His friend began to improve immediately and was restored to health. That was voice therapy. A therapy now established as a valid scientific method of healing.

�� We have all heard that people in comas have good hearing yet. But do you realize those who are anesthetized can too, and they can by the spoken word be made to do things that they can't do when they are conscious. We do not have time to share about the marvelous things that are being done with voice power, but let me share just one paragraph from the cancer surgeon, Dr. Bernie Siegal. He writes,

"In the operating room I'm constantly communicating with patients about what is happening, and I've found that this can make a difference between life and death. Talking reassuringly to patients who are having cardiac irregularities during surgery can reverse the irregularities or slow a rapid pulse. Recently I was operating on a very husky young man, built like a football player. His size led to some minor technical problems, and while solving them I looked up at the monitor and saw that his pulse was 130. I knew that he had been anxious about the operation, so I said to him, "Victor, I'm having some mechanical difficulties because you're a big guy, but there's no problem with the surgery. This part is just a little difficult to do. You're doing well, Don't be nervous. I'd like your pulse to be 83.' During the next few minutes, without any other medication, his pulse came right down to 83 and remained there. Many anesthesiologists who've heard of such episodes have begun speaking to their anesthetized patients, giving them calming messages. Fear filled messages can increase the incidence of cardiac arrest."

�� What I am trying to establish is that the tools of healing used by Jesus, the Great Physician, are tools that never have become obsolete. But more important, they are not tools and techniques that only trained professionals can use. We all have wills, hands, and voices, and with the capacity to also have Christ's compassion, any one of us can be a healer. In some ways we have all already used these tools for healing. My goal is to help you see what you have, and to realize that Jesus may use you to do much more if you become aware of the power of the tools you already possess, and become more deliberate and more aggressive in using them. As we close, let us pray that God will help us be channels of His love in this needy world, by using the tools of healing.

10.�� THE MEDICINE OF FORGIVENESS�� MARK 2:1‑12

�Language can be lethal.� Dr. Bernard Lown, professor of Cardiology at Harvard, tells of how he learned this, very dramatically.� He had a middle age woman as a patient, who had a narrowing of the tricuspid valve on her heart.� She had this problem for a decade, but one day a Dr. Levin was leading a group of visiting physicians through the clinic, and when he came to the particular patient he turned to the doctors and said, "This woman has TS."� As soon as they left the room, the woman began to hyperventilate, and her pulse accelerated to 150.� Her lungs began to take on fluid also, and Dr. Lown asked her what was going on.� She said, "Dr. Levin said I have TS, which means terminal situation."�

�� He was amused at her misinterpretation, and informed her that it meant tricuspid stenosis.� But she didn't buy it.� She got worse, and nothing they could do would reverse the congestion, and later that day she died of heart failure.� She was no worse that day than she had been in a decade, but she died because she heard a death sentence in a doctors use of two words.� It is a rather trivial reason to die, but since our bodies believe what the mind tells them, faith in a false idea can have deadly power.�

�� There is, however, a positive side to the power of the spoken word.� It can also lead to amazing healings.� Dr. Lown has marvelous examples of this also.� He had a heart patient who was at the end of his rope.� They had exhausted all their means to help him survive.� On his morning rounds of what should have been this mans last day, he commented to his staff around the mans bed that he had a wholesome, very loud third‑sound gallop.� This was a poor sign, for it meant the heart was under a great strain, and was failing.� But to the surprise of all, this man suddenly took a turn for the better.� He made such a marvelous recovery that he went home.

�� When he came back to the doctors office for a check‑up, Dr. Lown asked him why he thought he made such a recovery.� He said ,"Doctor, I not only know what got me better, but even the exact moment it happened.� I was sure the end was near, and that you and your staff had given up hope.� However, Thursday morning when you entered with your troops something happened that changed everything.� You listened to my heart....and announced to all those standing around my bed that I had a wholesome gallop....I figured I still had a lot of kick to my heart, and could not be dying.� My spirits were for the first time lifted, and I knew I would live and recover."�

�� Fortunate for him, he did not understand what the doctor meant, for it probably would have led to his death that day.� His misunderstanding saved his life, because it gave him renewed hope.� Words can kill or make alive, and all of us have this potent potential at all times.� The snake has his venom, and we have our vocabulary, and both are capable of giving or taking life.� The world is a sicker or healthier place everyday, just because of the things we say.�

�� This is the truth so relevant as look again at the Great Physician at work.� Jesus did not write out prescriptions, He spoke them.� His very words were the medicines that people needed to get well.� The wonder drug of words was his specialty, and no where do we see a more potent dosage than we see Him using on this young paralytic.� In verse 5 Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven."�

�� The Greek word for son here is teknon.� This is not the usual word for son in the New Testament.� This is a much rarer word, for it is an endearing word.� It is the word Paul used in calling Timothy his beloved son.� It is used only a few times in the Gospels, and Jesus uses it for this pathetic paralytic.� Not only does Jesus address him with this loving term, He unconditionally says to him, "Your sins are forgiven." If this is not spiritual penicillin to a sin sick soul, there is no such thing.� This was the verbal antic‑biotic that set the sick sinner free.� Just as Jesus spoke the word and the sea was calm, and just as He spoke the word and the demons fled, so here he spoke the words of comfort, love, and hope, and brought healing to a paralyzed body.� Jesus had a bed side manner that was excellent, for there are no better healers than those who make it clear to the patient that they are determined to heal.�

�� Hippocrates, over 25 hundred years ago said, "Some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician."� The words that came out of the mouth of Jesus could have been words of anger at being so rudely interrupted by this paralytic, but they were not.� They gave instant assurance that Jesus had compassion for him.

�� Jesus was determined that this man be made well, and so even though He knew it would anger the Pharisees, He said to him, "Your sins are forgiven."� These words that gave the paralytic back his health made the teachers of the law sick.� They were so disturbed by his audacity that they said, "He is blaspheming."� This was the beginning of the end for Jesus, for the charge of blasphemy is what led Him to be crucified.� Jesus really stuck His neck out for this sick sinner.�� But in so doing, He revealed to us for all time one of the most powerful wonder drugs of the universe‑the medicine of forgiveness.� Jesus did not invent this medicine, for it was clearly linked to healing even in the Old Testament.� Jesus just highlighted it, and made it clear that it is more available then we realize.� Let's look at the linking of forgiveness and healing.�

�� There is no way to separate the two, for any time you forgive another, you cause healing to take place.� Healing of relationships, and healing of guilt in the offender is common by� forgiveness.� If sin is a great cause of suffering, then forgiveness is a great cure of suffering, for whatever eliminates the effects of sin, heals.� To forgive is to heal, and thus, the two are inseparable.� Ps. 103:3 says, "He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases."� Is. 33:24 says, "No one living in Zion will say, I am ill and the sins of those who dwell there will be forgiven."�

�� Here we see that forgiveness is a panacea.� It leads to total health, and freedom from all disease.� To be totally forgiven is to be totally healed, and thus, totally healthy.� The greatest healer in the world would be one who could provide forgiveness for all sin.� This would be the ultimate, for this would guarantee that all disease could be eliminated.� All sickness ultimately has its origin in sin, and therefore, whatever can lead to all sin being forgiven, can lead to all sickness being healed.

�� Many ask, "Is healing in the atonement?"� If the atonement deals with forgiveness, then it by its very nature deals with healing.� You can't forgive and not heal, and so you can't have atonement and not have healing.� If Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins, then He died for the healing of our diseases.� Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil says I John 3:8.� Sickness and disease are the devil's works, and Jesus destroyed them in His life ministry, and also in His death.

�� If our sickness has any connection with sin, Jesus is ever ready to heal, for He is every ready to forgive.� If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and this leads to healing.� If, of course, the sickness is not due to sin, forgiveness cannot be a cure, for there is then no connection between it and the disease.� All sickness is a result of sin, but not necessarily the sin of the one sick.�

�� In the healing passage in James 5, there is a clear distinction between sickness that is sin related, and what is not.� But the connection is made very clear, and the idea of forgiveness is made crucial to healing.� James 5:15‑16 says, "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.� If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.� Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."�

�� Forgiveness, both on the divine and the human level, leads to healing.� Christians are often sick because they are not forgi