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By Pastor Glenn Pease
I never heard of Thomas Sydenham, even though he probably saved my life, and yours as well, if you have ever had a bad fever.
The highest fever that anyone has ever survived is 109.8.
Most people will die if they reach 109.4.
But many have died with far less because of bizarre methods of treatment.
In England in the 1600's, the standard method of treating a fever was the hot bed.
You piled blankets on the patient, and kept a roaring fire in the fire place, and if necessary you posted guards to make sure the patient could not escape this stifling inferno.
Dr. Sydenham made an interesting observation about this treatment.
It almost always was effective in killing the patient.
Even more interesting was his observation that poor people who could not afford a doctor, and thus, had to forego this special treatment, were more likely to recover from a fever.
One poor lad was stricken with small pox while traveling.
They took him to an inn where he was smothered with blankets.
When he went into a coma they thought he was dead.
They took him out of the hot bed and laid him on a table with just a sheet over him.
The boy recovered because of his fortunate escape from the hot bed.
Dr. Sydenham put his observations together, and finally persuaded the medical community that the way to fight fire was not with more fire, but with ice, air, quinine, and anything that would lower the fever.
When he died in 1689, he was immortalized as the father of clinical medicine.
There is no way to know how many millions of lives have been spared because of his observation on how to cure a fever.
In this message we want to focus on the most famous fever in all the Bible.
It is the fever of Peter's mother-in-law.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all record this event, and Dr. Luke gives us a doctors perspective, for he tells us it was no mere minor fever of 99 or 101.3, for he calls it a great fever.
The Greek word is megas.
It was a mega fever.
She was very seriously ill.
The New Testament has two words for fever: Puresso and puretos.
Puresso is used twice, both times of this particular fever.
Puretos is used six times, four of which refer to this fever, and so six of the eight uses of fever in the New Testament refer to this fever of Peter's mother-in-law this is the most famous fever in the Bible.
It is also the first physical illness that Jesus healed in the Gospel of Mark.
Earlier He had cast out demons in the synagogue, but this was the first disease that He cured.
Jesus began His healing ministry as a fever fighter, and he knocked it out with a single punch.
This is the only record we have of Jesus healing one of the family members of His Apostles.
We have no account of any of the Apostles ever needing His healing.
They were, no doubt, healthy men and we only have a record of three years of their being with Jesus.
It is possible they never had any major problems with illness.
There is no record of Mary, or any of Jesus's brothers and sisters being healed either.
Joseph died somewhere along the line before His public ministry began, and so Jesus did not do any healing before His anointing as the Messiah.
What we have here then, is not only the first of His healing miracles in Mark, but the only one of a family member of His greater family.
You may not want to make anything of that, but to me it speaks very clearly of the respect Jesus had for women.
Not only was a woman the first to receive His healing power, she was one of the least respected, and most often put down, women- a mother-in-law.
Someone said one of the hardest times in life to disguise your feelings is when you are putting your mother-in-law on the bus.
This mother-in-law likely lived with Peter and his wife because she was widowed.
Peter was the oldest of the Apostles and so this woman was likely quite elderly.
But the Great Physician is here making a house call that leads to her healing.
Here is a godly woman who just got sick on the spur of the moment.
It ought not to be a shock that good people get sick, for they always have.
Spurgeon said, "However good a man may be, he will not escape trial in the flesh.
You may have a house full of sanctity and full of sickness at the same time."
He adds, "Certain persons attribute all sickness to the devil, and impute special sin to those who are grievously afflicted.
This teaching is as false as it is cruel."
There is no hint here that she was in any way responsible for her illness, or that she needed forgiveness.
This was just a common problem all people have at some point in their life.
Dr. Luke tells us that Jesus stood over her and rebuked the fever.
This implies quite clearly that the fever was of the kingdom of evil.
It is a sign of infection to have a fever and it can be helpful in killing bacteria that cause us to be sick, but it is not good to have a fever, for that is a sign of something wrong.
Jesus rebuked it and got rid of it immediately.
Dr. Luke pictures most sickness as the work of Satan, and so even here he sees a fever as his dirty work.
When it left her she got up immediately and began to serve.
That is what health is for, to make us so we can use our bodies in service.
Health is not of much value if we do not use it for service.
We are saved to serve and healed to serve, or healed to help.
He touched her hand and the fever left her.
He touched her hand as He only can,
With the wondrous skill of the great Physician,
With the tender touch of the Son of Man.
And the fever pain in the throbbing temples
Died out with the flush on brow and cheek,
And the lips that had been so parched and burning
Trembled with thanks she could not speak.
And the eyes where the fever light had faded,
Looked up, by her grateful tears made dim,
And she rose and ministered in her household,
She rose and ministered unto Him.
Author unknown
She was as minor a character as you can find on the stage of the New Testament drama.
If she had not been so sick when Jesus came to Peter's house, she never would have been heard of.
We only know of her existence because of her fever.
It all seems so trivial to be the first healing miracle for Mark to select.
Why not start off with a spectacular like leprosy, and make it, not just a mother-in-law, but somebody big and important.
But all such thinking as this is based on an misunderstanding of the healing ministry of Jesus.
We want to examine this case of the most famous fever healing in order to get answers to two important questions about healing that effects how we feel today about healing.
The first is-
I. WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE FOR JESUS'S HEALING?
The ministry of Jesus can be summed up with these three words: Preaching, teaching and healing.
Out of 424 verses in the first ten chapters of Mark, 139 deal with healing.
That is, one third of Mark's revelation about the ministry of Jesus is about healing.
33% of the greatest life ever lived is about healing.
It was not a side line for Jesus.
It was a major aspect of His ministry.
Why?
What was the motive for His conquering so many diseases, and restoring people to health?
I am sure there are several legitimate answers to this question, but this first healing that Mark reveals also reveals what I see as the major motive for most of the healing of Jesus.
He healed people because He loved them, and hated to see them sick.
Now this may not sound like a very profound insight, but let me assure you that it is.
Many of the greatest Christians in history miss this.
It has an impact on almost everything we do if Jesus healed people simply because He loved people, and treated all people as having absolute value.
If Jesus only healed people as a means to some other end, then He was treating them with relative value.
They were useful tools to achieve a goal.
If Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law in order to draw a crowd, she was just a means to an end, and not an end in herself.
But as we look at this scene, it is clear that Jesus healed her for the simple reason that He saw her sick and desired to make her well.
He had compassion on people, and enjoyed giving them victory over sickness.
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