Glimpses of Glory

Sneak Peaks

Movie trailers, taste tests at Sam’s Club, back of a book… all examples of things that entice us enough that we want to go and watch the movie, buy the whole bag, or dive deep into the book, or maybe give us what we need to just say no.

Last week I talked about how every one of us desires to live in a better/perfect world, free of pain, suffering, sickness, need, chaos, and conflict.

It is a shared desire of all human kind.

And it is a promised reality that God has revealed and the Jesus showed us a glimpse of.

Today I want to dive in a bit deeper on how Jesus has given us a glimpse of TWWAW in Mark 4-5.

Understanding Miracles

Before we dive into the text, I want to talk a second about miracles.

Probably everyone of us have prayed and asked for a miracle at least at some point in our lives.

For something to happen that just seems impossible, or at least highly improbable.

Something as insignificant as a sports team pulling out a last second victory or a parking spot open at the front of the lot.

Or maybe something much more significant and unbelievable, like the healing of a loved one, the breaking of an addiction, help in a dire financial situation, or the restoration of a broken relationship.

Most of us, deep down, believe in the possibility of miracles, but when you read the Gospels, or even modern stories of unexplainable events, there is a skepticism that pops up.

My first research paper in Seminary was on David Hume, a prominent philosopher in the 1600s who argued against the reasonableness of miracles.

Hume argued that a wise man measures his beliefs with evidence and probability. If you can’t explain it or if the probability is low then one should not believe in the thing.

For Hume, and many others throughout history and in our modern world, the idea of something outside of natural, scientific explanation is ignorant.

So regardless of how much we might say we believe God can do the miraculous, and even that He does work supernaturally, we can’t help but be affected by the voices of those in history and in our modern day.

But when we understand the world from the perspective of God, who created everything both seen and unseen, we are able to put what we see as supernatural in proper context.

Tim Keller says it well:

Jesus’s miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see Him say something like: ‘See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!’ Instead, He used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead.

Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that He has power but also wonderful foretastes of what He is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.”

–Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York: Dutton, 2008), 95-6.

The miracles we read about in the bible are not meant to be David Blaine style magic trick, but glimpses of the true nature, the redeemed nature of the world we live in.

They are previews of TWWAW.

Jesus’s miracles are GLIMPSES at a RESTORED CREATION.

Four Miracles

Reading through the first few chapters of Mark feels like someone hit the fast forward button on the life of Jesus.

Mark moves from one event in Jesus’s life to another very quickly.

From calling people to follow Him, teaching through parables, traveling from place to place, and healing those that come to him, the account of Jesus’s life moves fast.

When you get to the end of chapter 4, Mark records 4 accounts of Jesus doing the miraculous, but each account points to something bigger than just a really cool show of power.

They each are glimpses at TWWAW, let’s look at each:

1) Glimpse of a restored PHYSICAL WORLD.

Mark 4:35–41 ESV

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Jesus Calms the Storm

On a boat in a storm

Disciples are afraid, staring death in the face

Nature was out of their control and fear was the result

Jesus speaks and the wind and the waves listen.

2) Glimpse of a restored SPIRITUAL WORLD.

Mark 5:1–17 ESV

1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.

Jesus and the demon-possessed man

Storms and natural disasters are one thing, but this whole

Crazy madman comes running up to Jesus and His followers

No one was able to control this man (no one strong enough to subdue him).

In actuality, the man himself was not able to control himself.

Yet, the moment the demons see Jesus, they comes running up to him and kneels before Him.

They know Jesus, not the good teacher/healer Jesus, but the Son of God, the incarnate God-Man Jesus, and they bow down to Him.

Even this uncontrollable, evil, horrible mob of legion of demons had no choice but to listen and obey the commands of Jesus.

The unseen, spiritual world around us is under the authority of Jesus, giving us a glimpse of TWWAW.

Mark 5:25–34 ESV

25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

A woman comes to Jesus, desperate for healing from a condition that has plagued her for 12 years.

Doctors could not heal her and she was broke from trying to pay them.

She must get to Jesus. She just knew He would heal her.

And by just touching his robe, she is IMMEDIATELY healed.

Jesus’s words are important to hear “Daughter, your FAITH has made you well...”

Her faith had made her WHOLE, restored, no longer broken...

The thing that medicine could not fix was healed immediately through Jesus.

4) Glimpse of a world WITHOUT DEATH.

Mark 5:21–24 ESV

21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. 22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” 24 And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

Mark 5:35–43 ESV

35 While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. 38 They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. 41 Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. 43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

“Why trouble the TEACHER and further?”

Obviously they believed him to be more than a teacher, he could have healed her when she was sick, but now it is too late.

There weeping and wailing comes from the understanding that death is out of their control.

They could provide medical treatment, medicine, and such to a sick girl.

They could bind up wounds and try to fix broken bones.

But once death came, they were out of time, out of treatment...

But Jesus was much more than a good teacher, or even a healer, He was/is a redeemer, restorer, Savior, and King.

In 2 Aramaic words, the young girl IMMEDIATELY got up and began walking.

The greatest enemy of mankind, defeated in 2 simple words.

What an amazing glimpse at TWWAW.

Jesus had to die

It makes sense then why the disciples were so sad and distraught when Jesus died.

They had seen the Kingdom of God come to earth.

Glimpses at a world they had hoped for, prayed for, and longed for, and in the death of Jesus they thought their hope was lost.

But they were wrong.

The death of Jesus was the very thing that made restoration possible.

In dying, Jesus made it possible for true and full restoration.

We are going to dive deeper into this next week, but the brokenness of the world we live in bigger than each individual problem we see.

Jesus could have spent another 10 or 15 years healing and raising and calming storms, but more sickness would come, more deaths would happen, and more storms would blow through.

But the problems we face in life are only the symptoms of a the true problem.

Just like giving you cough syrup doesn’t heal your lung cancer, Jesus died in order to deal with the true problem, the sin-stained, sin-infected, sin-cursed world.

Jesus’s death was an “atoning sacrifice”.

The word “Atonement” is a combination of the words “at-one-ment” and means “to set as one”

It is the restoring of what has been broken apart.

2 Corinthians 5:19 CSB

19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

In Christ, God was restoring/reconciling the brokenness of our world that resulted from the sinful rebellion of man against God.

Without the death of Jesus, we have no hope for TWWAW.

Jesus’s DEATH make RESTORATION POSSIBLE.

You have heard the saying “Jesus died for you”

It is an accurate and powerful statement.

He died in your place, paying the penalty for the sins YOU committed.

He died in order than anyone who would trust in Him would be restored to a right relationship with God.

And He died to fix the brokenness of this world we live in so that anyone who trusts in Him might live with the Hope of seeing and experiencing TWWAW.

Is that you today?

Who was this Jesus?

Was He just some good teacher who we can learn some good things from?

Was He a religious leader who taught people how to act nicely and treat others well?

Or was He/is He God? And is He the one who has promised us a world that we all deeply desire and that He has shown us by coming as a man and giving us a glimpse of that world?

Take a moment to listen to the Spirit and respond as He may lead you today.

For all who call upon the name of Jesus will be saved.