Study the Word

The questions that are relational: "Lord, this is going on with this person. This is going on with this person. What should I do?" I find almost without exception, in my spirit, God will tell me what to do.

Don't be afraid to ask God those questions. Don't go into hiding. Don't go into your time of prayer and take those things that are the most pressing, burning issues in your life and not bring them up. Just ask Him those questions.

Guest (Male): When we have questions concerning important issues, God will answer them. But it's not uncommon for the answer to come in the form of a question. It can help to provide clarity, narrowing our focus on the issue at hand.

Jesus did this, as we'll learn on today's Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller of Calvary Chapel Lebanon. We're glad to have you with us. We continue in the Gospel of Mark today, and we'll pick things up in chapter three. We'll be reminded that though we may have questions for God, He sometimes has questions for us.

Pastor Thom Keller: Mark chapter three, verse one. It says Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus' enemies watched him closely. Would he heal this man's hand on the Sabbath?

This chapter starts in Galilee. It's interesting that Jesus made five recorded trips to Jerusalem, and there were three times that He retreated into the wilderness. All of the rest of His ministry took place in this area, in the area of Galilee. So far, every synagogue scene has been in Capernaum.

In chapter two, it ends with the disciples walking through the fields, breaking off the heads of wheat. The Pharisees say they shouldn't be doing that because it's against the law to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath. Ultimately, the one issue that infuriated the religious leaders more than any other was Jesus' refusal to obey their Sabbath laws. Again and again, there are seven recorded instances in the Gospels of them coming after Him because He broke their Sabbath law, their Sabbath tradition.

Chapter three starts out with the Pharisees watching Him like a hawk. Let's read this again. Jesus went into the synagogue and noticed a man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus' enemies watched Him closely. Would He heal the man's hand on the Sabbath? If He did, they planned to condemn Him.

Jesus said to the man, "Come and stand in front of everyone." Then He turned to His critics and asked, "Is it legal to do good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing harm? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?" But they wouldn't answer Him. He looked around at them angrily because He was deeply disturbed by their hard hearts. Then He said to the man, "Reach out your hand." The man reached out his hand, and it became normal again.

At once, and remember we talked about Mark being a book of immediacy—immediately, immediately, at once—the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod, or the Herodians, to discuss plans for killing Jesus. It's almost certain that this man was a plant. It's probable that these religious leaders wanted to cut to the chase. They'd taken time to be there in that synagogue that day, and they were going to see if Jesus was going to heal this man on a Sabbath. He was, in all probability, a plant.

The seats, the front rows of seats, were the seats of honor. That's where the religious leaders would have sat. They would have been in the front. That's not in churches today. That's kind of reversed. The seats of honor, the best seats, are always scrambled for in the back, and what's left, people come to the front. Although, in this church, that's different. We commend the young people; they're always up front, Bibles open.

Anyway, the seats of honor would have been in the front. So when Jesus brought this man, when this man came forward, Jesus would have stood him right here. He would have stood right there with the man. When He said, "Is it a day to heal? Is it a day to do good? Is it a day to harm?" He would have looked right at those men in the front rows, and He would have glared at them angrily. It says He glared at them angrily.

The Sanhedrin, the religious elite, were sent out to different synagogues if there were reports that there were people preaching heresy. It was their job to go to synagogues where those reports came and to determine whether there was a teacher who was seducing or misleading the congregation. That is, in all probability, why they were gathered there that day. They were there to put this man to the test, this young teacher. The plant is there. If he was a plant, He calls him forward in front of the men, and He says, "Is it a day to do good? Is it a day to do harm?"

Now, the Sabbath regulations were this: that you could put a bandage over an injury, but you couldn't put an ointment on it. You could stop an injury from bleeding; you could stop something from bleeding, but you couldn't heal it. You couldn't do anything to make it get better. That was the Sabbath law. Jesus went way beyond that in healing this man's withered hand.

It's interesting that Jesus did it in this way. Really, we learn a lot from Jesus by the words that He spoke, but we learn an awful lot just in how He did what He did. He brings a man forward. My guess is they were expecting this to be done in some side room where they'd have to catch Him. But instead, in front of everyone, He brings this man forward, and He asks them a question.

The person who asks the first question is on the offense. If he asks the right question, it puts the person that he's asking the question on the defense. If you structure the question right and if you're in the right, you can ask a question in such a way that your detractors can't respond. If Jesus would have healed the man, if Jesus just would have called the man forward and healed him, they would have asked the first question. They would have said, "Don't you know it's against the Sabbath law to heal this man?" Jesus would have been on the defensive. Not that He couldn't or wouldn't have answered that—He would have—but it was much more powerful for Him to ask the first question.

In the end, it silenced them. Luke says that they were filled with rage. They were left without a response because He so trapped them by asking that question that their answer would have revealed the hardness of their hearts in front of all the people. They couldn't answer, but it didn't make them believers. They were raging. They were mad.

It's the same today. When Jesus asks questions in the Bible, He was never looking for information. Dan's made this point on a number of occasions; it's a great point. When God asks you a question, He's never looking for information. He's not trying to find something out He doesn't know. Whenever you're in your prayer time and God asks you a question, He's trying to get you to see something without telling you directly.

How many of you ever had that happen where God asks you a question? It's kind of funny, isn't it? I mean, you're there in prayer, and God says, "What about this?" and you know you're trapped because the question is asked in such a perfect way. It's a loving question. It's not to trap you to hurt you; it's to put you in a place where He almost forces you to see what He wants you to see for your good.

It's like Jesus when He said, "Who do the people say that I am?" He said to His disciples, "Who do the people say that I am?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say a great prophet." Well, He knew what the people were saying. Then He said, "Well, who do you say that I am?" Well, He knew what their answer was going to be.

It's like in the Garden when Adam—God came to Adam and said, "Adam, where are you?" He said, "I'm hiding." He said, "Why are you hiding?" "Because I was naked and I was afraid you'd see me." He said, "Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit?" All questions. He could have made every one of those points with a statement, but He asks questions. Don't be afraid of God's questions. Welcome them.

Ask God questions. In your time of prayer, if you're in a relational issue, if there's something going on in your life, just ask Him questions and then listen. My experience in prayer has been this: that there are two kind of different kinds of questions that I'll ask God in prayer. One is a left or right, an A or B, an up or a down kind of question, yes or no. Those kinds of questions, I think a lot of times God just lets me go through life to kind of try to live each day in obedience and see how He guides as we go. I don't necessarily know that I get a whole lot of immediate answers to those kinds of questions.

But the questions that are relational—"Lord, this is going on with this person. This is going on with this person. What should I do?"—I find almost without exception in my spirit, God will tell me what to do. Because deep inside, I know what to do anyway. It's that part of God that's connected to you, that's connected to me, and He speaks in that time.

But don't be afraid to ask God those questions. Don't go into hiding. Don't go into your time of prayer and take those things that are the most pressing, burning issues in your life and not bring them up. Just ask Him as a question: "God, I've got this issue with this guy at work. I can't stand his guts. What should I do?" And He'll tell you. He really will. Now, if you say, "What horse should I bet on back at the track?" I wouldn't expect an answer.

Well, they couldn't answer Him. The reason they couldn't answer Him was because of the crowds. If it just would have been their small group, they would have answered Him. They would have tried to knock His feet out from under Him. But they knew that the way He phrased the question, the people would turn against them, so they didn't answer.

I had a friend who had gone to a seminary where the Bible was not really taught or believed. Somehow, he got through that seminary still believing. He took a church down in Virginia, and one day, one of his professors was traveling through Virginia and, on a planned stop, stopped to hear him preach. That Sunday morning, he was preaching about the virgin birth. He talked about how Jesus was born of a virgin.

After the service was over, as this professor went back to the end of the line and shook the hand of the preacher, who had been his student in seminary, he shook his hand and, with a snide smile and a silent tone—a quiet whisper—he said, "I'm so disappointed to find out you still believe in divine rape."

Now, here's my point: How to relate that to that? You think that professor would have stood up and said that on a Sunday morning in front of all those people? They would have run over him. They would have tarred and feathered him and thrown him out on the street. In their minds, there would have been something like that going on. But he could say it in private. He couldn't say it in public because they know the hearts of the people are not where their heart is because they've advanced beyond them. Same kind of a thing that was going on here.

And then it says in verse five, He looked at them angrily, with anger, it says, because of their hard hearts. In the Old Testament, the word "anger" is used 228 times. That makes sense, doesn't it? How many times God got angry in the Old Testament? You know how many times the word "anger" is used in the Gospels, all the four Gospels put together—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? The word "anger" is only found one time, right here.

That's the new picture we have of God: a God of mercy and grace in the New Testament. It's interesting why He got mad. Of the one time He got angry, that it says He was angry, the one time was in response to their hard hearts. One time in the Gospels, it's in response to the hardness of their heart. It's also interesting the word "heart" is in the Gospels 45 times; "mind" is in the Bible eight times. Heart 45 times, mind eight times. Not that God wants us to be mindless, but He wants us to use our heart, I think, over our mind.

I don't know about you, but how I find this to be, things work in my life with the heart and the mind. I will sense in my spirit to do something for somebody. It's a heart thing, it's a compassionate thing, it's an act of mercy I feel to do something. And many times, immediately, my mind will come running right after that with a reason not to do it.

How about you? "You know, you ought to go help that." I always use this as an example: you're at the shopping center—and Sue's going to laugh because I haven't been to a shopping center in 20 years. You're at a shopping center, and there's a woman with grocery bags. She's carrying grocery bags, and she's struggling. Your first thought is, "I ought to go help her." And then what happens? Your mind comes along and says, "Oh, she's going to think that you're trying to—she's going to scream and run, or she's going to think that you have some wrong intentions." All that kind of stuff starts coming right after it.

I think it's one of the reasons that the word "immediacy" is used in Mark so many times. We're to be people of immediacy. Act on it right away. Do it. It's what got Jesus in a lot of trouble. It probably will get us in trouble sometime, but heart issues are huge to God.

It was because of the hardness of their hearts. He says, "Reach out your hand." The man acted in faith, and God did the rest. Again, this goes into this issue of passive versus active faith. We're going to get into this eventually; we might as well get into it now. There are two different schools of thought on this subject of healing.

There are some people in the church that say it is God's desire to heal every person on the face of this earth physically now. No matter what your infirmity, no matter what the issue, He wants to heal everybody now. If you run that thing down the road far enough, where you end up is if you don't get healed, it's because you didn't have enough faith. How many have been through that or know someone that's been through that? It's a tragic place to be, and it actually causes people to walk away from the faith because then, when they get to that point, they implicate God and say, "God, you could have, but you didn't." Many times, they get angry at God.

So people will then look at this, and they'll say, "Well, what I don't understand is that Jesus healed everybody in the three years that He was doing ministry. Why has that changed? Why is it different today? Explain to me why He did it then and He won't do it now. What's the difference?"

When John 5:36 says this, he's talking about John the Baptist: Jesus said, "I have a greater witness than this. I refer to the miracles I do. These have been assigned to me by the Father, and they prove that the Father has sent me." They were specifically—these miracles that Jesus did were specifically assigned to Jesus for that three-year period to prove that He was the Son of God. He had to heal everybody. Had He not been able to—and He could—had He not been able to, they would have said, "Aha! You failed." He healed everybody. It was an unquestionable proof that He was the Son of God. It was for a specific time for a specific reason.

That is no longer in place today. Does God heal people today? Absolutely. Does He heal people miraculously? Absolutely. Do I believe God can take someone in a wheelchair and make them walk? Absolutely. Do I believe He's going to do it for every single person? No. Do I think God will heal them or better? Absolutely. Who's to say that God's best for that person in a wheelchair is to get out of that wheelchair? Who's to say that?

It may seem to us that there couldn't be anything better than their physical healing, but you don't know what God can accomplish through that person in the state they're in. What it really comes down to is we end up saying, "Look, God, I am the one that is able to determine what is best in every person's life, and it's healing." How foolhardy that we would take on the role of God and look at every situation and say, "I know what's best for that person. I know what's best for that person. I know what's best for that person—it's healing." It makes God seem very small, and in fact, we then take on the role of God.

Well, again, the religious leaders didn't like this, and Luke 6 says that they were filled with rage. Now, it says that the Herodians were there, the supporters of Herod. King Herod Antipas was a native ruler and was part Jewish. Because of that, there were some who were sympathetic to him, some Jews that were sympathetic to him and kind of aligned themselves with him politically for their own personal and financial gain.

The Pharisees hated the Herodians because they did this. The Pharisees wanted nothing to do with Roman rule. The Herodians were kind of in bed with the Romans. And so they were really enemies. The Herodians were Jews; the Pharisees were Jews. They hated each other. But with Jesus, they came together against Him. Hatred brings together strange bedfellows, and that was the case here. It says they immediately went to plot His death. The last verse there says they met with the supporters of Herod to discuss plans for killing Jesus.

Let's go on to verse seven. It says Jesus and His disciples went out to the lake, followed by a huge crowd from all over Galilee and Judea. This would be the lake, the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem, Idumea, from the east of the Jordan River, and even from as far away as Tyre and Sidon. The news about His miracles had spread far and wide, and vast numbers of people came to see Him for themselves. Idumea is in the south; Tyre and Sidon are up in the north on the coast. They came from the east side of the Jordan. They came from all around.

Jesus instructed His disciples to bring around a boat and to have it ready in case He was crowded off the beach. Don't you love that? Listen again. Jesus instructed His disciples to bring around a boat and to have it ready in case He was crowded off the beach. Don't you just love that? The Creator of all of space and time, of the universe, all the galaxies—the one who made everything that there is, spoke it all into existence by the issuance of a word—was afraid He'd get His feet wet and said, "Bring a boat around because the crowds might push me into the Sea of Galilee. Bring a boat around, so if I need it, I can get on it."

Why do you think He did that? You know, if Jesus was here, you know what He could do? He could walk right off this thing and keep walking to the back. Couldn't He? He did walk on water once, didn't He? Why didn't He here? You know, it's a really neat point that this makes: that Jesus never did anything in the supernatural if He could accomplish the same thing in the natural.

Did He need a boat? No way. Why? Because it could be accomplished in the natural. There's a lesson there in our own lives: don't expect God to work in a supernatural way in your life if He can accomplish the same in the natural. Oh, He will use the supernatural if that's what He has to use.

I remember when I first gave my life to Christ, I would go to bed at night—I'm kind of ashamed to say this—I'd go to bed at night praying that I would see an angel. I really wanted to see an angel. I thought, "Wouldn't that be cool?" Do you think I ever saw an angel? No. Well, maybe I did, but I didn't know it if I did. But if I had to see one, I'd see one. Do you believe that? If there's a reason that God would know that you'd have to see an angel, you'd see it. But apart from that, and that's really a lesson, especially for new believers: just don't expect God to be working in the supernatural if He can accomplish the same thing in the natural.

Well, let's go on to verse 11. It says, "And whenever those possessed by evil spirits caught sight of him, they would fall down in front of him, shrieking, 'You are the Son of God!'" But Jesus strictly warned them not to say who He was. If this is literal—and I believe it is—it means that it didn't happen one at a time. I mean, there were people around Him all the time. There were a lot of people that were demon-possessed. His primary ministry was healing and casting out demons. So there would have been this going on all the time: these people, these demons within these people, shrieking, "You are the Son of God!" And again, He commanded them not to speak. It says Jesus strictly warned them not to say who He was. And as we've said before, Jesus' work is not advanced by the testimony of demons.