Christ's Ministry Focus

Have you ever had just an all around great day? Whether it was at work or at home - it was just a day that everything went perfectly. Maybe you woke up and your kids had already made themselves breakfast and were busying themselves cleaning the house. If you have had a day like that can you tell me what it was like. Or you went to work and a major project just came together on time and everything was perfect.

Jesus had just experienced such a day. He had attended synagogue with His disciples and was asked to be the guest rabbi and deliver the teaching. During His teaching a man with an unclean spirit had interrupted His teaching and He had delivered him and cast the spirit out. He’d left the Synagogue and went to Peter’s house where He healed his mother-in-law of a debilitating fever and then, after sunset, had proceeded to heal many from the surrounding town who came to Peter’s home to see Jesus. It was one of those days after which many of us would just want to rest or, more likely, to bask in the glory of the “beautiful” day that we’d just had recounting stories of it to our friends.

Mark 1:35–39 CSB

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place; and there he was praying. Simon and his companions searched for him, and when they found him they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let’s go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach there too. This is why I have come.” He went into all of Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Christ was at a point of crossroads and His disciples thought one direction would be best but His Heavenly Father told Him to go in another direction. We’re going to see three critical principles in this text that can help guide us in our ministry and personal directions. The first is Christ’s Communication, then the Disciple’s Distraction and finally Christ’s Colporteur. That last is actually a noun but I’m taking a bit of license with the language and making it an adjective just for this message. It means one who distributes religious tracts.

Christ’s Communication

It was early in the morning as Christ rose and left the home of Peter. He’d been up late into the night healing many who had come to the door of the home where He was staying. But now in the early morning hours He rises from His rest to seek time alone with His Heavenly Father. The time would have been between three and six in the morning and the fact that the text tells us it was very early tells us that it was closer to three than to six. We see several points in this short verse that bear critical lessons for our own prayer life. The first is that there is prayer must happen, the second is that we need to be purposeful or deliberate about it and the last point is the singular importance of private prayer. Now all of those might seem to intermingle, and in some ways they do so let me explain starting with the first point that prayer must happen.

Speaking on prayer John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim’s Progress said

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans Seek God in the Morning

He who runs from God in the morning will hardly find him at the close of the day; nor will he who begins with the world and the vanities thereof, in the first place, be very capable of walking with God all the day after. It is he who finds God in his closet that will carry the savor of him into his house, his shop, and his more open conversation.

Echoing this sentiment, the 19th century pastor E.M. Bounds once said

300 Quotations for Preachers Prayer in the Morning

The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.

Now, I am not a morning person - just ask my wife. That’s one reason I am happy to tell you that this text is descriptive not prescriptive. What I mean by that is that this text is not establishing the standard for prayer for all time - so if you are like me and are not a morning person then have no fear. You can still have an effective prayer life without rising early in the morning like Christ does here. We should note here though something that is in the statement I just quoted from Bounds - If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning. Some of us are more efficient at rolling out of bed and checking our Facebook, Twitter or email feeds than we are at taking the time to commune with our Heavenly Father even if it is only for a few moments to consecrate the day. I’m not saying you have to get up at three a.m. or spend four hours each morning in prayer - but we should seek Him first thing every morning when we awaken. But like I said before if you aren’t a morning person there is still hope for you to have an effective prayer life. There are other texts in Mark that tell us that Christ also spent time in the evenings praying. In fact the other two key texts where we see Christ praying in Mark both take place at the end of the day.

The first instance in found in Mark 6:45-46 just after Christ has fed the five thousand. He had just performed one of His greatest miracles producing enough food out of five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand men. The total number of people with women and children would likely have been closer to 20,000. And yet just as we see here in our text this morning He dismisses the crowds and then even His disciples to get alone.

Mark 6:45–46 CSB

Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After he said good-bye to them, he went away to the mountain to pray.

He went away up the mountain to pray and He prays until late in the night. The text says that He prays until the fourth watch of the night - also between 3 and 6 am - and then comes walking on the water toward His disciples.

The other instance that we see Christ laboring in prayer is in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest. This time again at night Mark tells us

Mark 14:35 CSB

He went a little farther, fell to the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

My point here is that Christ doesn’t seem to have a set time in which He prayed - whether it was morning or evening the important item is that He took the time to pray. And looking at the instances in which Mark tells us that Christ prayed can be instructive for us as well. The first two were following what could only be called successful days of ministry. The first was the healing of many sick and demon possessed individuals and the second was a feeding that was epic in proportions. Yet instead of basking in the moment. Instead of celebrating with His disciples, Christ rises early in the morning and steals out of a sleeping house to pray - which leads me to my next point, the deliberate prayer of Christ.

It doesn’t say that Christ simply rolled over or that He got up and went and sat in His favorite chair by the fire to pray. It says that He got up, went out and made His way to a desolate or deserted place. The word here for deserted is the same word used for the wilderness in Mark 1:3 and Mark 1:14. I mean Christ didn’t even get up and go down the street to the local Starbucks or park to pray. He completely left the town of Capernaum and went out into a deserted place to get completely alone and pray. This took some effort on His part. This cost Him something. These were no, to quote H.B. Charles, “text message” prayers that Jesus was going out to say.

Sometimes we are guilty of doing just that with our prayer lives. When we do pray it is often a text message prayer - or worse a tweet prayer that we try and fit in 140 characters or get straight to the point. Many times our prayer life doesn’t really cost us anything - whether it is sleep in the morning or maybe missing a favorite show at night - because we just fit it in whenever and where ever we are.

Don’t mistake me here though - those prayers can be important and we certainly should utter prayers in the moment but if that is the extent of our prayer lives then we are missing out on the true benefits of prayer. Notice here that Christ made it a priority to get alone and to have private prayer. If Christ, who was God incarnate, felt that it was critical to get away for private prayer why is it that we think we can get by in our spiritual lives without it?

There is a wonderful little book written by the Puritan Thomas Brooks entitled the Privy or Secret Key to Heaven and it is a treatise all about the importance of private prayer. If you want to add a category of reading to your discipline of reading books for spiritual growth I would highly recommend that you look into reading the Puritans - they are challenging and convicting and generally spot on. And the good thing is they’re all dead so you don’t have to worry about reading their books and then finding that they don’t lie up to what they encourage. In the case of Thomas Brooks, he wrote the Privy Key to Heaven, during the black plague in London during 1665. In the book he makes this statement

“The power of religion and godliness lives, thrives, or dies, as closet prayer lives, thrives, or dies. Godliness never rises to a higher pitch than when men keep closest to their closets.”

Another important point that we can learn from this text is that private prayer is meant to be just that - private. There is something to be said for praying publicly, much can be accomplished through the discipline of public prayer. It is one way that we as a congregation can all lift a united request to our Lord. Here we have no idea what Jesus was praying to His Father. There are times when our conversations with Him should remain private. There are times when our business with God is only for Him and us.

We do get some clues later in the text about what Christ may have been praying about. This was most likely a high level planning meeting between Father and Son regarding the continued steps of His ministry. If it were us we would probably need to pray for humility as we would tend in our human nature to boast about the great day fo ministry that we had just had or to take too much credit for what had taken place. But not Christ - He was the picture of humility and He would probably have spent time thanking His Father for what had happened the night before and then seeking His direction for the next steps.

And so we have a picture here of private prayer - that it needs to be deliberate, that it needs to be private and most important of all that if Christ felt the need to devote time to private prayer that we do ourselves an incredible disservice in our spiritual growth when we do not. In fact, oftentimes we are more like the disciples than Christ.

Disciple’s Distraction

The disciples experience that morning was much different from Jesus’s. The woke, not of their own accord to go and have a wonderful time of private devotion, but instead they were awakened by the raucous crowd beating on the door wanting more of what they had experienced the night before. This is not a pleasant way to be woken up. It’s much the same as we experienced on our first night in boot camp. Everything the day before had been so nice as we were welcomed into the camp and put to bed. And then at 5 am someone came through the barracks clanging together two trash can lids - or slamming a lid on the trash can itself - I’ve blocked the memory out to minimize the trauma to my psyche. When the disciples woke they would have been shocked and surprised to find that Jesus was no where to be found.

So the text tells us that they searched for Him. As we will see throughout the rest of Scripture Simon was in the lead. Whether Mark phrases it this way because Jesus was staying at Simon’s house or because his primary source of information as Simon - what we begin to see is Simon asserting himself into a leadership role amongst the disciples. So Simon and the boys form a posse and go out in search of Jesus. That’s what this little phrase that Simon and his companion searched for Him means.

Our translation doesn’t really carry the weight of this phrase very well. What this word καταδιωκω means is to pursue, to hunt for, to run down until caught. It is the same word used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, for the way the Laban pursued Jacob after finding that his household idols were missing

Genesis 31:16 CSB

In fact, all the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. So do whatever God has said to you.”

Or for the way that the Egyptian army pursued the Israelites as they fled through the Red Sea

Exodus 14:23 CSB

The Egyptians set out in pursuit—all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen—and went into the sea after them.

It is also the way that Saul pursued and hunted David throughout a similar wilderness to the south. The disciples search high and low throughout the town and the surrounding area for Jesus until they find Him. And when they do their frustration at having to look for Him is readily apparent.

Mark 1:37 CSB

and when they found him they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

Basically what they’re saying is “look Jesus what are you doing out here? Don’t you realize that the real ministry is back in the village? You are missing out on an opportunity here.” The disciples were essentially the first church growth consultants. They were there, they witnessed all of the healings in both the synagogue and both inside and outside of Simon’s home. They knew they had a good thing. Their thought was “we could just ride this wave and everything will be great.”

There is always a tension in ministry and as a church or even in our evangelistic efforts to give the crowd what they want, to let them dictate how we do church or what the content of our services are, or even how we present the Gospel because of the success that it seems to provide. There has even been a whole movement of church growth strategies formulated based on this model - the seeker sensitive model. Basically the idea is to go out into the community, poll them to find out what they want in a church and then provide it. One of the problems with that is that the one thing the unsaved community doesn’t want is the Gospel. They will happily take your coffee, your cool music and light shows, your smoke machines and drama teams, zip lines and even the pastor’s own personal musings about morality - the one thing they don’t want is Christ and the truth of the Gospel encompassed in the story of creation, fall, the affects of sin, the sacrifice necessary on the cross and the resulting free gift of salvation. Which we know isn’t truly free because it cost Christ so much - but it is offered to us freely irrespective of any worthiness that we provide.

And this is exactly the same situation that the disciples found themselves in in the first century. The crowd gathered outside of Simon’s home because of the healings and what Christ could do for them. The same thing happens following the feeding of the five thousand. In John 6, the apostle records Jesus words to the crowd for us

John 6:26 CSB

Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.

Someone really should have given Jesus some lessons on how to keep a crowd - because that really isn’t the way.

The crowd was looking for the benefits of Jesus without the cost of following His message and the disciples had bought into the idea as well. And so they ask Him Jesus what are You doing out here - You should be back in town giving the people what they want. Jesus they love you - they want to follow you. Just give them what they want - and we can have our own building, our own tv station. We’ll be famous and on easy street.

Oftentimes in the church we are guilty of choosing the good over the great. If Jesus had gone back to Capernaum and started His own healing ministry would it have been a bad thing. No - He would have been ministering to the people’s physical needs and that is always a good thing. It is something the church alone has done well for the last 20 centuries. The church has always been a place for the needy to go to find relief. The church began the first schools and started the first hospitals. They were thought to be cannibals in the first century because they were the first foster care agency - when a child was left out by his or her parent’s to be exposed to the elements and die it was the Christians who would pick them up out of the gutter and bring them into their homes to raise them. So there is certainly to be a component of our ministry that seeks the social good of people.

But that is not ever to be practiced at the expense of our true ministry of preaching the Gospel. We should never choose the good of social issues over the great, or at the compromise of, the Gospel message. That is what the disciples were encouraging Jesus to do and unfortunately it is what many in the modern evangelical church are encouraging us to do today. But Christ would not be distracted and neither should we. His answer to the disciples was instructive to them and it should be instructive to us as well today.

Can you just hear the audacity of Simon and his companions here? They have been disciples of Jesus for all of a couple weeks at this point and they think they can tell Him what to do and how He should be conducting His ministry. Who is the master and who are the disciples? It seems they have forgotten - and yet how like them we are. How often do we try to insert our own half-baked plans into the perfect design of God? How often do we look at Him and say Jesus what are you doing - everyone is looking for you. This is where we should be.

Christ’s Colporteur

Unperturbed by His disciples impudence Christ doesn’t even address their primary concern. They are concerned about the crowd back in Capernaum. He doesn’t equivocate or meet them half-way. In fact from the sense of the text it is likely that He didn’t even go back in to Capernaum but instead He stands up off the rock on which He has been sitting to pray and moves out in another direction. He answers their search with a divine command - Let’s move on. Much like the command that He initially calls them with - Follow Me - there is no option here either. Christ is moving on with His ministry calling and the disciples can either come along or be left behind.

Jesus knew what His priority was and it wasn’t to meet the social needs or expectations of the crowd. He was to be about the Father’s business. It was the message He delivered to His parents in Luke after they had accidentally left Him behind in Jerusalem

Luke 2:49 CSB

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked them. “Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?”

And it was His answer to the Pharisees when they questioned what He was doing

John 10:37–38 CSB

If I am not doing my Father’s works, don’t believe me. But if I am doing them and you don’t believe me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father.”

Christ’s primary work that had been given to Him by the Father was to preach the Word of God to the people. And yet it is odd that Mark doesn’t now give us a glowing demonstration of what Jesus preaching was like. He doesn’t choose to recount for us the Sermon on the Mount. In fact Jesus moves out of Capernaum and it will be another three chapters (until chapter 4) til we will get any semblance of a sermon from Christ.

Even in the story that Mark has recounted building up to this moment - in the synagogue and outside of Simon’s home we see Jesus actions and are not privy to the words that He spoke. Even in his desire to demonstrate Christ as the servant, as a man of action, Mark takes this moment to remind us that even through all of that Jesus primary focus was always preaching the Word. His primary focus was always the Gospel message. His primary message was always what we found in Mark 1:14-15

Mark 1:14–15 CSB

After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Repent and believe the good news. This was Jesus ministry philosophy. The healings and feedings and other miracles were merely window dressing. They were signs designed to demonstrate the authority of Christ in all the different realms - physical, spiritual, natural, creative - but they weren’t the primary message. In order for that message to get out - in the first century and today - men have to be willing to pick up this book and to proclaim what it contains.

Paul recognized Christ’s focus in 2 Timothy 4 as he charged his young protege

2 Timothy 4:1–2 CSB

I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.

and also in his letter to the church in Rome

Romans 10:14 CSB

How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher?

The preaching of the Word is the primary, central ministry of the church and everything else is built off of that.

In his great book Preachers and Preaching Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it this way

I would say without any hesitation that the most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.

In fact when he arrived at his first pastorate in Wales he determined that he would simply preach the Word. The drama team was suspended. He tore up their stages and nailed his pulpit in the center of the stage so that it couldn’t be moved. Musical evenings were cancelled. Gospel preaching was reestablished. And as Lloyd-Jones preached the Word the church began to grow. His preaching came to be characterized as logic on fire - it was just straightforward Biblical preaching.

That is what we need a return to today. And it is the model we desire to follow in the messages that you receive from this pulpit.

But what about the disciples - did they get it?

Conclusion

I would submit to you that there is evidence that the lesson they were treated to this day did in fact sink in. Turn with me to Acts 6 and lets look at an incident that happens in the formative days of the church. The church has grown and there is a question of meeting the social needs of the widows in Jerusalem. It seems some of the widows are being left out. But there is a statement made by the disciples that points to their having gotten the lesson that Christ provided for them on this hillside outside of Capernaum.

Acts 6:4 CSB

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

Do we have this focus? Do we spend time in prayer - both privately and corporately seeking God’s will, communing with Him or is it always needs based? Are we seeking to meet the felt needs and desires of the crowd or to go along with the popular ideals of ministry? I can proudly say that here we are not but there are many churches in our area that are. So the real question is will we be tempted the way the disciples were to compromise and to change our ministry to match what those churches are doing in the interest of numerical growth or will we continue to preach the unadulterated Word of God and trust God for the increase? There are many in our churches and denomination who are a mile wide and an inch deep. Are we seeking to do the good over the great?

“In our day, many churches are busy in ministry, but not so much in maturity. They place a heavy emphasis upon “going: but not so much on knowing. We must not forget that an immature church is not to remain immature.” ~ Josh Buice

Our fervent desire is to present you mature in Christ. That’s why you now see Colossians 1:28 all over our literature and even the pens in the back of the seats.

Colossians 1:28 CSB

We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

But we can only do that through the solid preaching of the Word of God. And one other thing - you have to actually be saved.

There are people here who need to come to the recognition that they are playing at Christianity. That they haven’t come to a real point of repentance for their sins because they have never recognized that they are a sinner. That their “mistakes” have placed them in a position of condemnation because they have violated God’s standard and that because of that their just result will be an eternity spent in Hell. Yet the same Christ who rose early one morning to go out to prayer, who told His disciples that they must move on to the other towns so that He might preach there also provided the greatest message of salvation by going to the cross and dying taking upon Himself the wrath of God that was reserved for all those who had violated His commands. In so doing He provided a pathway to salvation for all those who would believe. If you find yourself in this description this morning then repent and place your trust in Christ today. He is the only way that you can be redeemed and made right with God.

If you have done that but find yourself in a rut and unable to grow spiritually - examine your private prayer life. As Thomas Brooks said - you will never grow beyond the power of your private prayer life. Commit to spending time with God daily - whether that is in the morning or the evening seeking His will and His desires not simply carrying your needs to Him.

And then ask yourself when it comes to ministry and participation in the church are you doing what God has called you to or are you simply doing what is convenient and easy. It would have been convenient and easy for Christ to go back into Capernaum, hang up a shingle outside of Simon’s house saying “faith healer” and settle in to a very positive ministry - but that is not what He was called to do. The disciples even thought that was what Christ should do but He knew that He was being called into something more. Sometimes we settle for the ministry that is right in front of us or is convenient instead of pushing through to follow what the Lord’s desire is for our lives and this too leads to immaturity in our spiritual lives.

As you go about your week, as you start to spend more time in private prayer, seek ways to grow and to glorify God by following His will as revealed in Scripture and through your natural inclinations of desires.

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