Mark: According to

Part 34

Mark 6:53-56

Why Do You Seek Him?

 

Why are you a follower of Christ? Seriously, why do you follow Christ!? I am curious, why does anyone follow Christ? Don’t be scared, don’t run off there is a reason I am asking the above question, but before we answer the question, let’s do a bit of house cleaning.

In our last story, we have Jesus telling his disciples to sail to Bethesda but verse 53 of Mark chapter six has them coming to land of Gennesaret and anchored there.

There are perhaps some translation problems with this text. However after careful prayer and study I have come to a different conclusion. The night Jesus had walked upon the water the disciples were caught in the storm and try as they might, they could not get where they wanted to go. The wind coming from the Northeast would have pushed them to the southwest which bringing them closer to Gennesaret than to Bethesda. So Jesus had them anchor in Gennesaret. “And when they came out of the boat, immediately the people recognized Him, ran through that whole surrounding region, and began to carry about on beds those who were sick to wherever they heard He was.”

There is only one more text left in this section and before the close of chapter six. Note in the first three verses, not a word is said by Jesus, not even his disciples spoke a word. Yet the people flocked to him from all over the countryside.

Instead of the accent of the story falling upon Jesus or his disciples it falls upon the people. You see, the physical blessings of Jesus are not an end in themselves, but a fork in the road, one branch of which leads to Jesus’ final saving purpose, the other to a false understanding of Jesus as simply a wonder worker.

In the zeal with which the people brought their sick to Jesus we recognize how deeply the untiring goodness of Jesus touched Israel. But we also see how distance Israel remained from Jesus, because it sought from him only physical healing and not the complete spiritual healing that He freely offered.

With the woman who had the flow of blood for 12 years touched the hem of Jesus’s garment and was healed not by the law but because the law pointed to Jesus (see Mark: According to, Post 27) Now these people that flocked to Jesus longed to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, because they thought the law made them whole. They failed to understand that the law points to Jesus who can heal us spiritually and physically because it is not of the keeping of the law that heals us, but because the law points to Jesus who is the great physician and healer.

The masses were so blinded by the law that they failed to see that through the great law giver came a gospel that was pure and fresh, free from the fermentation of sin. A gospel that set the people free, that released them from the yoke of bondage to the law of traditions, that had been a great burden to the people.

Wherever He entered, into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged Him that they might just touch the hem of His garment and as many as touched Him were made well.

Jesus did not withhold physical healing from all that came to Him longing to be healed, but he longed, longed with a heart that was breaking for these people to ask for spiritual healing and forgiveness.

He longed to enter the cities and countryside with the people begging of Him to become Spiritually clean.

Today, what is it we long for? Do we long for spiritual healing or are we content to just ask to be physically restored. How much more affective would our prayers be if we first ask for spiritual healing and then focus on others, helping them gain the spiritual healing that we have encountered. Then, our physical healing would not need to be asked for, for God would restore us physically, if not now, then when he returns in clouds of glory.

Why do I bring all this up again about healing and the law? Because it is a problem that hasn’t gone away because we continue to believe that we are saved by tradition and the law, we fail to first ask for spiritual healing because we expect the law to make us whole.

Yet the role of the law is to point out where I fail to live up to or meet the Character of God. For I am saved by grace through faith. When I understand the nature of that saving grace, then the natural response to God’s grace is faith that responds by doing the work that God has asked us to do. For as it says in James chapter 1, faith without works is dead, but we are saved by the grace that flows from the throne of God, which we accept through faith. This is why Jesus was so worried the disciples and Israel’s, faith or lack of faith. Their lack of faith caused them to substitute works for grace and works for spiritual healing.

Today, have we done the same? If so, accept the gift of God’s saving grace and ask Him for spiritual healing.