Jesus’s Ministry in Galilee

Mark 4:23-25

a. Jesus’s teaching Ministry (1:23)

b. Jesus’s healing Ministry (1:23-25)

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BODY

a. Jesus’s teaching Ministry (1:23)

i. This section is the precursor to one of the most important sermons in all the Bible. It’s the Sermon on the mount. A lot of pastors and theologians have written books regarding the Sermon on the Mount. If we could just recap the purpose of the Sermon on the Mount, it is give not us in the first 12 verses. Jesus speaks of those who are blessed. Who are the blessed? In summary, the children of God.

ii. Who are the children of God? All those who have repented and received the kingdom of Heaven. If we were to summarize that, it is to have repented and believed on and accepted Jesus Christ as the Kingdom of God and believed upon Him.

iii. The focus of the Sermon on the Mount is to remind us, that we are bankrupt and the entry fee into the Kingdom of Heaven is found in Matthew 5:48. The last verse in Chapter 5, “Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

iv. When we read that, the purpose of that statement is to help us acknowledge our inability to obtain the admission ticket into Heaven upon our own works. That is what we should learn from that verse. Chapter 6 reminds us continuously that we are bankrupt (파산한) and remind us again in 6:33, therefore, if you recognize your bankruptcy, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things will be added unto you.

v. Jesus tells us swiftly how one can enter into Heaven. We must look to the person of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross. There is no amount of works we can do on this earth that can obtain our right to enter Heaven. Afterall, Matthew 5:48 tells us there is no entry that is acceptable outside of Jesus Christ.

vi. Well that’s the sermon on the Mount and we want to cover that because this section today is the forerunner to the Sermon on the Mount. Our section today highlights the teaching ministry of Jesus in verse 23 and the healing ministry of Jesus.

vii. What we want to recognize about Jesus’s ministry is not simply that He taught. He taught and we acknowledge this, but just as significantly, He met the needs of His people. This is such a beautiful picture of who the savior is. He was not a preaching machine. He was not simply a man who went out and taught. He was a man who preached the Gospel and met the needs of His people.

viii. The highlight of this point is found in verse 23. It says that Jesus was going through all Galilee, teaching proclaiming and healing every kind of disease. We see the three things that entailed Jesus’s ministry. I combined teaching and proclaiming last week and I wanted to go over that again. Teaching and preaching here is combined whereas last week I went over the difference. Last week I mentioned that teaching and preaching are different because although teaching and preaching are both in a sense a passing along of information, the thing that sets preaching apart is that the preacher is also held accountable to the teaching.

ix. Teachers don’t necessarily have to live by the very topic they teach, but a preacher is held responsible to the message they preach. The difference is, preaching is discipleship. It is teaching by showing oneself as an example and calling the other to follow in what they are doing.

x. So when we see that Jesus was teaching in the synagogues, we see that He is educating the people about the Scriptures. He is teaching the truths of the Old Testament and helping people come to an understanding of it. But when it says that He was proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, it means that Jesus was teaching not only with just His teaching, but with His very lifestyle the Gospel of the Kingdom.

xi. How do we understand this? Well, we see it in that statement “Jesus was going al throughout all Galilee.” This is a beautiful phrase. It tells us that Jesus was continuously traveling on foot to every synagogue and teaching and proclaiming the Gospel.

xii. The example of Jesus’s ministry here is that He was working hard, He was taking every opportunity to teach and teach people. But not only that, it says that He was going throughout. Jesus was the one who was going to the people. He wasn’t asking people to come to Him, but rather, He was the one who was going to them and preaching the Gospel.

xiii. Jesus was making the effort to go and reach the people and teach them. This should motivate us to go out and do something great for God. One of the greatest quotes that I have ever thought of and contemplated is by a Baptist Missionary William Carey. He said in a brief statement, “Expect great things, attempt great things for God.”

xiv. When we think about Jesus’s ministry, this was at the heart of His ministry. He expected great things and attempted great things for God. Jesus worked extremely hard because He knew the Father and He expected great things to happen.

xv. It’s ironic that we believe the Word of God and we believe that it is the most powerful, authoritative book in the world because it is the book of the Living God. And yet, we fail to teach and preach the Word of God to others. If we look at Jesus’s ministry, it should spark us to work hard for the Gospel ministry.

xvi. The problem in our churches today is that our families don’t know the Word of God as well as we should. We know just enough to be literate. But we haven’t actually tasted and witnessed the power of the Word. And for those that have, those of us who have experienced the faithfulness of God, there is nothing I’d accept to give up what I experienced.

xvii. Because we haven’t actually experienced the Word of God, how we see God working in our lives after we have tried to do submit ourselves to the Bible, we don’t have the confidence in the Word and we don’t in the words of William Carey, expecting great things because we haven’t received those great things and also, attempted great things for God because we have nothing to go off of.

xviii. But what we see from Jesus’s ministry here is His diligent work to expect and attempt great things for God. If Jesus worked this hard, how much harder are we supposed to work? Again, when we talk about working for God, we always want to go over why we work. We work because of the great work that Christ accomplished on our behalf. We work as a response to the completed work that Christ has won on our behalf.

b. Jesus’s healing Ministry (1:23-25)

i. Not only did Jesus teach and preach to all the people, He also in the words of verse 23, healed every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

ii. He did this for so many people, that in verse 24, the news about Him spread throughout all Syria. It’s not through all of Israel, but the surrounding nations as well. It says Syria because the Bible is emphasizing that people not just in the near vicinity of Christ heard and saw His miracles, but many people outside of His immediate proximity. By the Bible stating Syria, it’s emphasizing that people who were distant also heard about the great works that Jesus was doing.

iii. Not only did they hear about His works, but now, these people were bringing their friends and family who were ill to Him. It came to a point now, that Jesus no longer had to go, but I am sure that He went because we see Mark 1:38. What is the purpose of this verse? It is to tell us that Jesus’s focus in ministry was to go and gather the lost and meet the needs of the people.

iv. We see the significant difference here in John’s ministry and Jesus. Just as John had said, Jesus’s ministry is superior to John’s in that Jesus didn’t simply teach and call people to repentance. Jesus preached repentance and preached the Kingdom but also, showed that He was the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven had come to Earth with the Son of man who had come in the flesh.

v. So the fact that Jesus healed people and preached that the Kingdom of God was here was to show exactly what Heaven would be like. Revelation 21:4 gives us a glimpse of what Heaven would be like. Through the preaching and healing ministry of Jesus, people experienced for the first time what the Kingdom of Heaven was like. Jesus had brought the Kingdom of Heaven to earth by showing the greatness of the Kingdom through His preaching and healing ministry.

vi. Verse 25 was the result. Many crowds of people followed Him and went around with Him. This idea of many crowds following Jesus is significant because at this point, his disciples were also a part of the crowd. There is no differentiation between true followers in Christ and false followers of Christ. This leads perfectly into the Sermon on the Mount.

vii. This helps us to understand the Gospel ministry. We are called to minister to all groups and preach the Gospel and expect great things from God. We should not simply seek to minister who are like us, but seek to minister all sinners. This is not to say we are to condone their lifestyle, but to seek the lost and help them to hear the Gospel and love them with the Gospel.

viii. We must always remember preaching and teaching, but also healing people with the Gospel. The mandate isn’t simply to call them into repentance. It is to give them medication for their illness. We know that medication to be Christ. May we be faithful in the preaching and teaching of the Gospel of our Lord and may people see their sinfulness and find their healing in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. CONCLUSION