Reflective Bible Study

As we continue our journey through Mark’s gospel, we come to a miracle that only Mark includes in his gospel. For one reason or another, Matthew, Luke, and John don’t include this miracle, but when we look a little closer at what happened, we discover some fascinating details within this event.

With that said, let’s dive into the passage and discover what we can learn. Our event and passage for this episode is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will be reading from the New International Version. Starting in verse 31, Mark tells us:

³¹ Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. ³² There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

³³ After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. ³⁴ He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). ³⁵ At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

³⁶ Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. ³⁷ People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Within this miracle and event, I find it fascinating that Jesus takes this man aside, and away from the crowd. On the surface, this detail and decision doesn’t seem that practical or very relevant. After all, who cared if Jesus healed the man with a crowd around or not. What mattered more than anything else is that Jesus could and did heal people like this man.

However, if we write Jesus’ actions off as being unnecessary, especially since the crowd does learn of this healing at the end of the passage, then we will likely miss some key details that lead us to the most likely reason in my mind for Jesus to take this man away from the crowd.

Actually, there are two reasons that I can think of for pulling the man away from the crowd.

The first reason is that nothing in this passage suggests that this man came on his own. Instead, the opposite is described. The passage opens very clearly saying that a group of people brought this man to Jesus. While this man likely had trouble communicating from his set of disabilities, the impression I see when reading this is that this group of people wanted to see Jesus perform a miracle even more than this man wanted to be healed.

Don’t misunderstand this idea. I believe this man did want to be healed, and he likely wanted to be healed really badly, but everything in how Mark describes this event when setting the stage for it focuses us on the detail that other people initiated this event rather than the disabled man himself. Because of this, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the group of people who brought this man to Jesus were more interested in seeing a miracle than on seeing this particular individual be healed.

When this group found Jesus, Jesus ultimately has a dilemma. Jesus sees the disabled man and He wants to help this man be restored. However, Jesus also knows that a simple healing miracle will satisfy selfish-desires on the part of the crowd, and this miracle could be held up as an example of Jesus seeking His own glory for this healing.

The path Jesus takes is a brilliant one. Instead of healing this man directly, with the crowd present, which would have been the simplest and easiest option, Jesus decides to help this man, but do it away from those who are selfishly wanting to see a miracle. This decision results in the man being healed and shown God’s love while those who brought the man to Jesus only get the satisfaction of knowing they helped the man receive Jesus’ help.

I believe this group of people wanted to glorify Jesus apart from glorifying God, and Jesus wanted to avoid this as much as He could. This may be one reason He repeatedly asked certain people to stay quiet after healing them. If Jesus knew that people would spread the word about what He had done, He didn’t want this to happen if God wasn’t going to receive the glory.

Instead, Jesus wanted God to receive the glory for this miracle, and even while He tried to help those present see and understand this was God working through Him, those in the crowd don’t seem to give God the credit that God is due for this miracle. Those in the group who brought this man to Jesus appear to be more focused on what Jesus, as a human individual, was accomplishing.

The other big reason I see in this passage for Jesus to pull the man aside and away from the crowd is to highlight the presence or lack of presence with regards to faith. When we look at this miracle, can we see faith displayed?

On the surface, I don’t see any faith clearly being displayed. However, just below the surface, there are plenty of examples of faith. First, we have the group of people bringing the man to Jesus. While they don’t appear to be interested in giving God the glory for this miracle, they easily have faith that Jesus can heal this person, otherwise they wouldn’t have brought this man to Jesus. Even with selfish-motives, those who brought this man to Jesus display faith that Jesus could heal this man’s deafness and muteness.

Another place faith is subtly displayed in this passage is with this man who was healed. While this passage doesn’t draw our attention onto his faith, there would have needed to be enough faith in this man’s life to at the very least not say no to the group’s offer to take him to Jesus. The implication in this passage is that this man had a tiny bit of faith, but not enough that prompted him to seek out Jesus earlier or on his own.

A third place faith is seen in this passage is with Jesus. Jesus did not hesitate when stepping in to heal this man. Jesus did not timidly comment to try to heal this man while also giving no guarantee that He would be successful. Instead, Jesus pulls the man aside with full confidence that with God’s help, this man would be made well – which tells us that Jesus had faith too.

This passage demonstrates faith on several levels. While the passage doesn’t say whether or not Jesus left both the crowd and His disciples to be alone with this man, or whether Jesus and His disciples together separated this man from those who brought him, we can assume that whichever way this was, the faith that was present in this event was not exclusive to the one being healed.

Part of me pictures Jesus and the man stepping away from the crowd and around the corner where they could be alone. Jesus perhaps shared the details of this event with one or two of His disciples following this event.

If this is what happened, it would mean that Jesus used His own faith to demonstrate God’s love for this man, and when we lean on Jesus’ faith, we see not just one disability being healed at once, but two. In one event, the man could both hear again and talk again easily.

In our own lives, when we lean on Jesus’ faith, we discover that we will have more than enough faith to experience and see miracles in our own lives, and we will also fully know that through Jesus, His faith, and His sacrifice on the cross, we have been saved for eternity! Our faith is limited; Jesus’ faith is limitless!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first and place Him first in your life. Also, be sure to always give God the glory and the credit He is due. In case you are uncertain, we give God the credit when we do well, and we take the blame onto ourselves when things go poorly. This is how we are called to be humble, and it helps remind us that we need God’s help and Jesus’ life to replace our own.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each day. God wants a personal relationship with you, and the only way your relationship with Him can be personal is if you are personally spending time with Him. Don’t fall into the temptation of letting your spirituality be dependent on anyone else. God loves you and I so much that Jesus came to repair what sin broke, and this repair allows us to approach God with our requests, our thanks, and our praises. God loves us so much that nothing would stop Him from repairing the gap that sin caused.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or be tempted into leaving where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last episode, we ran out of time before covering all I wanted to cover, so this episode will pick back up where the last one left off. We were looking at the miracle where Jesus heals the man who had a “legion” of demons in him, and who was living outside of society on the far side of a lake.

Let’s read the whole event and miracle first to give us context, then focus in on what we didn’t have time for in our previous episode. Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 8, and we will be reading from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 26, Luke tells us that:

²⁶ [Jesus and His disciples] sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. ²⁷ When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” ²⁹ For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.

³⁰ Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. ³¹ And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.

³² A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission. ³³ When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

³⁴ When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, ³⁵ and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. ³⁶ Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured. ³⁷ Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left.

³⁸ The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹ “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.

In our previous episode, we focused on how Jesus made this trip for one particular person. He arrived on shore in a place where only one person lived, and here at the end of the passage, the people from that region ask Jesus to leave, so Jesus leaves. On the surface, this trip might look like a failure, since only one person was healed – and Jesus doesn’t even let that person join the ranks of followers before being asked to leave. This was at least partially because Jesus allowed the demons to kill the pigs. However, Jesus simply allowed the demons to enter the pigs, Jesus didn’t tell the demons to run the pigs off the cliff.

We then might ask the question, why let the demons enter and kill the pigs. Jesus could have cast them out without letting them possess anything else. While I don’t know all of God’s reasons, one likely reason in my mind was to alert those in town to Jesus’ presence. A miracle like this would definitely turn heads, and it would cause those present to discover the crazy guy they feared was now sane and healed – and that Jesus was the source of that healing. A miracle like this could have prompted those in the area to have faith in Jesus’ God-given miraculous ability and bring all the sick and hurting people to get help. Instead, those who owned the pigs only saw Jesus as someone who was to be feared more than the formerly-demon-possessed man and they ask Jesus to leave.

This event appears to be a failure on many levels. Jesus was only able to heal one person before being asked to leave. Those in the region lost a herd of pigs. Those in the region also missed out on the opportunity of receiving more of God’s help through Jesus. And the man Jesus healed wasn’t allowed to follow Jesus.

However, while we might consider this entire event a failure, Jesus had something else in mind, and this other thing was not what those who were fearful expected. Jesus had just healed and commissioned one of His greatest evangelists. While Luke concludes this passage by saying that “the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him,” Mark’s gospel shares a little more detail.

In Mark, chapter 5, verse 20, Mark concludes this miracle and event by saying, “So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.” The name Decapolis means the Ten Cities, so while those in Gerasenes did not accept Jesus because of this miracle, the man was from a very populated area. In one of the next places the gospel writers mentions the Decapolis, we discover a unique miracle that takes place – which is the focus of one of our future episodes.

The miracle of the healed demoniac is an amazing miracle. While those who owned the pigs felt that their loss was greater than the healing of an outcast, in the big picture, the healing of this man represented so much more in the eyes of God.

In this miracle, and in all the disappointment that happened, we discover that in our own lives, things don’t always go as planned, and sometimes, we don’t get what we want or ask for. However, just because we experience failure, disappointment, or a “no” answer to prayer doesn’t mean that God dislikes us. All it means is that God’s plan is bigger than we realize, and that He is working in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine.

While the man experiences disappointment because Jesus didn’t let him join the group of disciples, we discover that this man became a much better evangelist sharing what Jesus had already done for him. In our own lives, when we receive disappointment, we can trust that God has something bigger in mind, and that when we look back on our lives, while some things might not make sense, and while we will have experienced plenty of disappointments, we will likely agree that God’s plan was better than ours.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Always seek God first and trust Him with the path He wants you to walk through life. If we experience disappointment because God has closed a door, trust that the time isn’t right, that there is a better door further down the path, or that we have something more we need to do, learn, or help with where we are at right now. Let’s trust God with our disappointments, and trust that His big picture plans are better than our limited perspective.

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow personally towards God. Let God teach you through the Bible and use the Bible as your filter for life. While other people can give you ideas to think about, always filter what you learn through what the Bible teaches to know whether it aligns with God’s truth.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Continuing our year in Mark’s gospel, we come to one of the most shocking events in Jesus’ life, and an event that likely stood out in the disciples’ minds for how Jesus appears to be mean in this case. While Jesus routinely has harsh words for religious leaders who should know better, this case is different. Jesus chooses to be mean to someone coming asking for His help.

Those of you who have listened for a while or who are familiar with Jesus’ life will likely know what event we are focusing in on in this passage, so let’s dive in and discover what we can learn, and what Jesus is trying to teach us in this event. Our passage and event are found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 24, Mark tells us that:

²⁴ Jesus went from there to a place near Tyre. He entered a house. He did not want anyone to know where he was. But he could not keep it a secret. ²⁵ Soon a woman heard about him. An evil spirit controlled her little daughter. The woman came to Jesus and fell at his feet. ²⁶ She was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

²⁷ “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

²⁹ Then he told her, “That was a good reply. You may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

³⁰ So she went home and found her child lying on the bed. And the demon was gone.

In this short event and miracle, Jesus first does something that is very uncharacteristic of Him. We might even call Jesus out for being not politically correct on multiple levels. Not only does Jesus subtly call this woman a dog, but He alludes to her entire race as being lower than that of the Jews.

As I have read the gospels, this event stands out as one of the meanest things Jesus ever does. This event oddly paints Jesus as being unChristlike, if that is even possible.

However, since Jesus is Christ, why might Jesus have insulted this gentile woman like He did? Since this is Jesus, He must have a reason for this cruelty. In at least one other gospel that includes this event, I believe it alluded to this woman following Jesus asking repeatedly for help while Jesus initially ignores her. So not only do we see Jesus ignore this request, but He also insults the requester when finally acknowledging her.

But why? Why does Jesus seem to single out this request and push back in what appears to be a mean way? Could we even call this love?

In this event, I see two big questions that challenge us to look deeper than the surface. Both of these questions would not be possible to ask if Jesus had responded in a more typical fashion. Like the gospel writers share in other parts of the gospel, Jesus was aware of the hearts and minds of those around Him and I believe He sensed He could use this event to teach His followers a couple of lessons.

The first lesson we can learn from this passage is one of the most challenging lessons we face in our lives. This lesson comes from the question: Does your faith persist if it meets resistance or hostility?

While it is never pleasant to think of Jesus being mean or hostile towards someone, we discover through this woman’s persistence that she wouldn’t leave Jesus alone until He had helped her. From what the gospel writers include, I can conclude that nothing Jesus would have done or said would have stopped this woman from persisting in her belief and her request for Jesus’ help. When our faith meets resistance or hostility, will we give up and abandon our faith, or will we continue persisting. We were never promised easy, simple lives, and one reason this might be the case is that an easy life produces only weak faith. Persistence and resistance together strengthen faith, and because of this, our faith can only be strengthened in less than easy environments.

Through Jesus’ resistance to this woman and her request, we see a faith that persists regardless of the obstacles present. This woman is an amazing example for us to model!

The second lesson we see in this passage is one that focuses more on Jesus. While the first lesson teaches us through the woman’s example, the second lesson teaches us through Jesus’ example. While we might look at this event and call Jesus out for being unloving, when we do this, we are met with the question: Is true love based on what you say, or is love based on what you do?

While it is easy to say that both what you say and what you do are important in the discussion of love, if you could only pick one, which would it be? If we look at what Jesus does in this passage and ignore what He says or doesn’t say, we simply see a miracle. Except that we don’t see a miracle directly, but we see Jesus promise the miracle and the woman accepting Jesus’ word.

This leads us to conclude that if we were to define love based on this event, love at its core is more about what we do and less about what we say. While Jesus didn’t walk around looking for people He could be openly mean to, in this event Jesus draws our attention onto the stereotype of the culture that looked down on others, and Jesus challenges us to help other people, even if culture tells us that we should be hostile or mean to them instead.

Jesus came as a Messiah for all humanity, not simply for a single race, religion, or sub-group of people. Jesus came to redeem sinners, and everyone in this world is defined this way regardless of whether you belief in God or whether you believe sin even exists.

As a follower of Jesus, we are called to display Jesus’ love. While this love should also include being kind with our words, it is much more important for us to be kind in our actions. Jesus was clearly kind with what He did in this event, and this was in spite of culture pushing Him to be cruel or mean.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally and purposefully seek God first in your life and choose to show His love to the world around you. Understand that love is more than simply words. Love includes our actions, our kindness, and our stepping out to help others who are from a different social group or social circle. Jesus helped people who were different from Him even if society told Him He should be exclusive, and Jesus challenged His followers to help others like He did.

Also, like the woman, we should be persistent in our faith and not let resistance or hostility change our faith, our hope, or our belief in Jesus.

Continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow and strengthen your faith and your relationship with Jesus, and don’t let anyone or anything get in between you and God. God wants a personal relationship with you. For a relationship to be truly personal, it cannot have anyone standing between you and God, or specifically you and Jesus. Intentionally focus on growing your personal relationship with God!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last episode, we focused on the trip Jesus takes across the lake and how a severe storm sweeps across the water scaring all the disciples while Jesus slept peacefully. I had not realized the connection between that event and the one we will be focusing in on in this episode, because when we look at how the gospel writers structure this event, the miracle we will be focusing in on in this episode happens when Jesus and the disciples reach land. It is as though Satan did not want Jesus to reach this shore and meet the man who lived there.

But remember, one big theme in all of Jesus’ miracles and ministry is that God is stronger than Satan, and nothing would stop Jesus from making this trip to someone who needed God’s help.

While this miracle is included in three of the four gospels, let’s read it from Luke’s gospel to discover what happened. This miracle is found in Luke, chapter 8, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 26, Luke tells us that:

²⁶ [Jesus and His disciples] sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. ²⁷ When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” ²⁹ For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.

³⁰ Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. ³¹ And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.

³² A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission. ³³ When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

Let’s pause reading here to focus in on what has just happened. When reading this event, it appears as though Jesus has made a special trip across the lake just to meet this demon possessed man, and from the description Luke gives us, there was no way this man would have gone to Jesus. The legion of demons living inside of him would not have allowed it.

However, I bet this man had friends or relatives who wished he would be made well, and in the absence of a family or friend’s prayer, this man had a Creator who loved him very much.

We discover in this passage that when this man was unable to come to Jesus, Jesus makes the special trip to visit him. When we are unable to come to God, God is more than willing to come to us. While we were actively sinning and rebelling against God, Christ came to this earth. This event displays on a small scale what God did through Jesus for all of humanity and we’ve barely scratched the surface of the miracle itself!

Another theme we’ve looked at previously in this year of miracles, is that we cannot trust what comes from a demon’s mouth. However, it is interesting that we don’t read Jesus telling this demon to be quiet. Perhaps this was because there was no crowd around and no one to misinterpret the demons’ message.

When Jesus met this demon, we discover more details regarding what all the demons might have collectively said if given the chance. This legion of demons acknowledges Jesus’ divinity, and then they make the claim that Jesus would send them into the torturous abyss when given the chance.

What is interesting in my mind is where the demons’ get the idea that Jesus would sentence them to torture if He wanted to. I don’t see any hint of Jesus sentencing any demon who He cast out of a person to a place of torture or to an abyss. This then strongly suggests that this is the devil’s lie in the words that are spoken. Satan likes to mix truth and lies, and when we look for the lie, we need look no further than here. While there is a judgment reserved for Satan and His angels, there is no hint anywhere in scriptures that this judgment happened the moment a person was freed from an evil spirit.

Judgment happened when Jesus faced the cross, and another phase of judgment happens when Jesus returns. Neither of these things had happened at the point we are looking at in this event, and that means that we now see a big piece of the devil’s lie.

Through this legion of demons, we learn of a place of eternal torment given to those who reject God. Does this sound like today’s cultural description of hell?

While Satan and his angels have every right to fear a place like this if it exists, if the only places we see scripture describe a place like this is through the mouths of demons, then the very existence of this type of hell could also be an elaborate lie Satan has used to turn God into a villain. God definitely describes a time of judgment in the Bible, but God’s description of this judgment is one that has an end. God doesn’t ever describe a continual judging or condemning of sinners throughout eternity.

(I will point out here that the Old Testament description of smoke continually rising that is oftentimes used in support of a place like these demons describe in this passage simply describes smoke. Smoke can exist after a flame has been extinguished, and a flame that has finished consuming its fuel will ultimately go out. In other words, Isaiah’s concluding remarks only give evidence that a fire has occurred, but not that there is one that is forever burning.)

However, we have hit a place in this episode where we have run out of time. While there are plenty of other things we could focus in on in this passage, instead of trying to rush it into the last little portion of this episode, let’s wait and focus on the last portion of this event in our next episode.

With that said, as we come to the end of this podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Intentionally seek God first and trust Him to keep you safe throughout eternity. When faced with ideas or theories that contradict God’s character or what we can clearly read in the Bible, choose to believe the Bible over what culture wants to push us to think and believe. Culture jumps between fads. The Bible stands as an unchanging anchor that represents God’s love, His character, and His interest in saving you and me for eternity.

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn, grow, and mature into the person God created you to be. Intentionally study to grow closer to God and take your questions to Him and His word. God is more than happy to meet you in the pages of your Bible.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, or chicken out of where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!