The Great Physician Is A PREACHER!

Listen here.

St. Mark 1:29-39

We continue to romp through the first chapter of Mark’s gospel.  Today we see that Peter’s mother-in-law is quite sick.  High fever and flu.  Maybe some vomiting as well.  She’s so sick she stays in bed.  The Lord Jesus, the Great Physician, makes a house call.  Goes to her bedside PDQ.  She is very precious to Him!  Takes her by the hand.  Raises her up.  As quick as you can say “Bob is your uncle,” the fever is gone!  And then she’s off to the kitchen putting the kettle on and pouring some tea.  Maybe it was coffee.  Put sandwiches, chips and pickles on the table.  Maybe even a piece of chocolate pie for dessert. 

Word leaks out pretty quick that Jesus is there and that He heals.  And so by the time the sun sets folks from all over town are gathered at the house!  “The whole city was gathered at the door.”  Peeking in the windows. Pounding on the front door.  Milling around the front yard.  Trampling down mother-in-law’s grass and flower beds.  Ransacking mother-in-law’s garden.  They’re absolutely everywhere!

And what a motley crew they are!  Demon possessed folks.  Can you imagine the bitter blasphemies, morbid curses, F-bombs and other ugly vulgarities spewing and spilling out of their mouths?  Let alone all the green bile and white foam projectile-ing out their gullits.  

The demons know who Jesus is.  But Jesus forbids them to speak.  The last thing Jesus wanted was a bunch of evil, Satanic demons to talk.   Jesus will be glorified as God’s Son when He’s hanging dead from the cross. And then who will Jesus allow to talk?  Yes that’s right. The Roman centurion who oversees His crucifixion.  “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mk 15:39)!

In the mob there were others with dreadful, nasty and appallingly contagious diseases. Coughing up a lung.  Hacking up juicy loogies. Wheezing, rattling, panting and sneezing.  All over the place and on everyone!  Still more with hideous maladies and all kinds of disorders and deadly malignancies.  The front yard of the house looks like an inner city ER.  No, I take that back.  Instead, it looks like hell on earth with all these diseased and demonized people.  And it all started when word leaked out of mother-in-law’s healing from Jesus the Great Physician.

The next morning, very early,  Jesus, “departed and went to a desolate place and there he prayed.”  Jesus was always doing that when life got to be so crazy busy.  We all could learn something from that. When our lives are fraying around the edges, take time to pray.   His praying, however, is interrupted.  Simon Peter and the boys search for Jesus, find Him, barge in on His praying and inform Him that:  “Everyone is looking for you! Come back to town please.”  Implying that there was no end to healing the diseased and demon possessed in Capernaum.  Implying that there was more to heal and more demons to cast out.    

You’d think Jesus would answer the call for help and head back to Capernaum.  Nope!  Listen to what He says.  It’s incredible.  “Let’s go to the NEXT towns, so that I may PREACH there also, because that’s why I came out.” Capernaum and the rest of all their sick and demonized are now in His rear view mirror!  He will leave them as is.  As they are.  Off and on to the “next towns!”  The Capernaum-ites will need to learn like St. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” (2 Cor 12:9).

Listen again to Jesus just in case you missed it or fell asleep:  “Let’s go to the next towns so that I may preach … because that’s why I came out.”  Get it?  Are you picking up what Jesus is throwing down?  He came to … P-R-E-A-C-H!  It’s Jesus’ M.O.  Immediately (to borrow Mark’s favorite adverb) He preaches after His baptism in the Jordan.  Remember that? Mark 1:14, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God.” Jesus is a preacher!  He preaches that the kingdom of God has come in Him. He is the kingdom-of-God-King who reigns for the salvation of sinners and that, of course, culminates in His Good Friday Dying and His Easter Morning Resurrection.

And that’s the point of the miracles in Jesus’ ministry.  The miracles, healings and exorcisms Jesus did in Capernaum and elsewhere prove that He is who He says He is and what He has come to do for the salvation of the world on the cross.  The miracles, healings and exorcisms were all sneak peeks of Good Friday’s salvational physical benefits:  the resurrection of the body in its perfect redemptive restoration!  Bottom line:  the miracles, healings and exorcisms are not the main events of Jesus’ ministry.  He came to preach the gospel, the good news, that His Good Friday dying counts for all sinners and all sin.  He wants you to believe that.  So Jesus preaches because, “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Jesus,” (Rom 10:17). 

And yet it’s preaching that we Christians are bored with and most Christians sadly choose to do without on a regular basis if not for an entire lifetime. Tell Christians, especially those of the LCMS variety, that the pastor will be preaching God’s Word. The eyes will roll and the list of endless excuses for not hearing the sermon will be offered ad nauseam.  But, if healings or other miracles are on the agenda, then the church will be packed to the rafters!  Christians are bored stiff with preaching. They avoid it like the plague!  Christians in America  covet healings, miracles and exorcisms.  However, I humbly remind you once again what Jesus says:  “Let’s go to the next towns so that I may preach … because that’s why I came out.” 

This should lead us all to repent PDQ.  Seriously.  The church’s and our personal priorities are upside down. Preaching?  No thanks.  More important things to do.  And then, when we have troubles in our life, we expect all the wrong things. We want immediate relief and healing from God. Happy pills. Quick fixes. “Jesus, make me healthy, wealthy, and happy yesterday.  And if you don’t, then I’m done with You and Your church.”  We demand instantaneous healing for our ailments, sicknesses, disorders and diseases. We want our demons and devils muzzled. And all Jesus wants to do is … P-R-E-A-C-H!

In the New Testament Jesus constantly preaches sermons.  Some short.  Some long.  Sermon after sermon.  He came to PREACH. He sent His apostles to preach. He sends ministers to His church to preach. He sends His church to preach.  Preach.  Preach.  Preach. 

It bears repeating as well to note once again that Jesus didn’t heal everyone in Capernaum. Why not?  Well, it’s simple.  It’s because it wasn’t necessary to heal everyone. Jesus didn’t come to heal everyone. He came to die for everyone!  He came to die for everyone!  He came to die for everyone!   

The ultimate way that Jesus deals with demons and diseases is to Good Friday-ly die and then to drop all our diseases and demons down into the black hole of His death. The way Jesus heals us is to do His Good Friday death and Easter morning resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins.  And the long haul benefits of Jesus’ forgiveness  is the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. 

Now, in the meantime, as we live in this world, we do get sick like Peter’s mother-in-law.  We suffer from various diseases, disorders and cancers.  We pray for healing.  Sometimes Jesus uses the doctors and medicines to grant that healing.  And those healings point dimly to the total healing that will come in the resurrection.  But sometimes not.  Sometimes He just leaves things as they are.  Like the people He left behind at Capernaum.  Sometimes, He lets you have sickness or a disease so that you’ll learn trust in Him all the more.  That you are nothing and that He is everything. Learning to be, “for the sake of Christ … content,” as St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, “with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, the I am strong.”           

However, on Resurrection Morning, Jesus will personally reach down to you, as He did with Simon’s mother-in-law and grant you permanent and everlasting healing with the resurrection of your body. He will take you by the hand and raise you up from the bed of your grave. And then, on that glorious morning, all those prayers for health and healing you ever uttered for yourself, and all the prayers others prayed for you in this life, will find their “yes” and “amen” in your bodily resurrection. Jesus hears all your sighs, groanings and prayers.

And He’s already done something about them. He died. He rose from the grave.  FOR YOU and for all.  That’s why He sent me to PREACH, PREACH, and PREACH here at Trinity, Sunday after Sunday.  It’s why Jesus put His divine and saving name on your body in holy baptism.  It’s why Jesus physically feeds your body with the bread that is His Body and the wine that is His Blood.  So that by believing in Jesus you have life, resurrection life, eternal life in His name.  Bodily resurrection.  A physical healing like none other.  Better than you could ever imagine! 

Happy believing.   

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.