Reflective Bible Study

As we continue through the gospels looking at the miracles Jesus performed, we come to an event that marked the official call of some of the most famous disciples. However, one thing I find fascinating is how two of the three gospels that tell us about this event choose not to include the big miracle that leads up to this call. While it would be easy for us to jump in and focus on the only gospel that includes a clear miracle in this event, I thought it would be valuable to look at one of the other gospels, and see if there isn’t a hidden miracle within it that we don’t readily see.

However, for those of you who are worried that we will skip over the gospel with a miracle, have no fear. In our next episode, we will dig into this event from that gospel.

But for this episode, let’s spend a few minutes looking at Mark’s gospel, chapter 1, and let’s read this passage from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 16, Mark tells us that:

¹⁶ When Jesus was walking by Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the lake because they were fishermen. ¹⁷ Jesus said to them, “Come follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” ¹⁸ So Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets and followed him.

¹⁹ Going a little farther, Jesus saw two more brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. They were in a boat, mending their nets. ²⁰ Jesus immediately called them, and they left their father in the boat with the hired workers and followed Jesus.

In this passage right at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, we discover Jesus calling four men to follow Him. If we were simply reading Mark by itself, this would be an amazing miracle in itself, because this call would be before any miracles had taken place. However, from the other gospels, we learn that there had already been at least a few miracles before this point, and that some of these early followers likely had witnessed them.

However, the miracle I see in this passage is really two similar miracles, and these miracles are powerful when we look closely at them. The miracles are found in the following sets of verses:

The first set of verses is verses 17 and 18, where Mark tells us that, “Jesus said to them, ‘Come follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ So Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets and followed him.”

The second set is actually one verse, verse 20, where Mark tells us that, “Jesus immediately called them, and they left their father in the boat with the hired workers and followed Jesus.”

In these verses, we have two amazing, parallel miracles that mirror one another. The first miracle is Jesus choosing to call four fishermen to be His disciples, and the second miracle is that these four men drop everything to follow Jesus – even leaving their families behind.

The first miracle is amazing for us because it tells us that Jesus is interested in people who are probably overlooked by everyone else. In this call, Jesus invites some of the least qualified people to be among His disciples, and when we look at the four people included in this call, Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, they make up the inner circle of disciples in the case of Peter, James, and John. And before you think Andrew is left out, he is probably the most mentioned disciple outside of this inner circle.

Of all the disciples Jesus chose, Andrew likely has the best reputation of the bunch, because while James and John had a temper, and Peter always spoke too soon, Andrew is known for bringing people to Jesus. Almost every time we read about Andrew, he is introducing someone to Jesus.

This miracle is amazing because while these four men were the least qualified men from a religious perspective, they were perfectly qualified because they had willing, teachable hearts. God uses the willing and teachable heart to train and equip an individual for His purposes, and these closest disciples step up to lead the church in powerful ways after the Holy Spirit entered their lives.

The second miracle is just as amazing. This second miracle is that all four of these men dropped everything to follow Jesus. Prior to Jesus’ call, all four men were well on their way to being professional fishermen, and after Jesus had called them, He began teaching them to be fishers of men. The amazing part of the disciples accepting Jesus’ call is that there wasn’t much to distinguish Jesus from the other teachers of the day. While there were rumors that circulated about some miraculous things Jesus had done, according to Mark’s gospel, and Matthew’s, these professional fishermen leave a respected profession to follow Someone with no track record, and no clear plan forward.

However, Luke’s gospel includes more details about this event, and Luke’s gospel shares something that happened that definitely got these men to pay attention. Perhaps Luke’s additional details, which we will look at in the next episode, played a bigger part of these four men leaving everything to follow Jesus. It’s possible that the miracle of the disciples dropping everything to follow Jesus is simply a response to what Luke records Jesus having done for them.

Regardless of this detail, the first miracle, which is present in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is that Jesus was willing to trust His message with a bunch of not-so-religious fishermen. But Jesus saw something in these men, and in our next episode, we’ll uncover what Jesus saw when He meets these first disciples while teaching the crowds.

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

Always be sure to seek God first in your life and intentionally place your focus on following and obeying Him. Be grateful to God for everything He has done for you and for trusting His message with the right people in His eyes. Remember that God looks not at outward appearances; instead, He looks at our hearts.

Also, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow closer to God. It is through a personal relationship with God that we can learn and grow the most, and when we focus on growing closer to God, He is able to use us for His purposes in the world today. Don’t let anyone or anything get between you and your relationship with God. Filter everything you read, hear, and see through the lens of the Bible. It is through the Bible that God has shown us who He is and what He is like!

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!

While reading the gospel of John, one event happens to stand out in my mind not because of what is said in the Bible, but because of what is not said. One way this passage challenges me is through what is implied but not said. Our event only happens in the gospel of John, and if you are even remotely familiar with the Bible and Jesus’ life, you will likely have heard about this event.

Let’s read about what happened. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 4, and we will read it from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Starting in verse 1:

¹ After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five colonnades. ³ Within these lay a large number of the sick—blind, lame, and paralyzed [and then some manuscripts add a parenthetical note that says these people were] [—waiting for the moving of the water, ⁴ because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water. Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had].

⁵ One man was there who had been sick for 38 years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don’t have a man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk!” ⁹ Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.

Now that day was the Sabbath, ¹⁰ so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath! It’s illegal for you to pick up your mat.”

¹¹ He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

¹² “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. ¹³ But the man who was cured did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Let’s pause reading here, because I want to draw out what is not said but implied up to this point in our passage.

The scene is something like this: One Sabbath, Jesus walks by a pool of sick people, sees one particular paralyzed man, heals him, and then continues on leaving the rest of the sick people to wait for the angel to stir the water of the pool.

It seems amazing in my mind that Jesus would ignore all the other sick people here, and while the Bible doesn’t say how big the pool was or how many people could fit around it, I imagine that there was space for several dozen sick people as a low estimate.

John’s emphasis for including this event has to do with the religious leaders’ confrontation with Jesus over healing on the Sabbath, and this man ends up facing ridicule from the religious leaders over doing what Jesus had told him to do.

Was carrying his bed a sin in God’s eyes?

To the religious leaders, it was.

However, verses 14 and 15 finish off this passage in an interesting way by saying:

¹⁴ After this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

We’ll stop our passage at this point, because John shifts into a bigger dialog Jesus has with the religious leaders in the next portion of the chapter.

Was carrying the healed man’s bed a sin in Jesus’ eyes?

I don’t think it was, because I don’t believe Jesus would have told the man to sin. However, the last thing Jesus tells the man is perplexing in many ways because we don’t know the man’s history aside from his paralysis that began 38 years earlier and that he had no friends to help him get into the pool in time.

Jesus tells the man to not sin anymore, because something worse might happen to him. This implies that the man’s paralysis was caused by some sin in his past. A truth we can learn from this idea is that sin can cause pain, hurt, and in some cases injury.

We don’t know what this man’s sin was that resulted in his condition, but what Jesus tells him is even more challenging. Jesus tells this man to “not sin anymore” which sounds a lot like Jesus telling the man to never sin again, which seems impossible in my mind.

However, does the Bible teach that life cannot be lived without sin? If you know of a place it says this, definitely let me know, because I am not aware of one. The Bible does say that everyone has sinned and has fallen short of God’s glory, but that simply means that everyone has at least one sin they are guilty of at some point in their past, but not that sin is guaranteed or impossible to avoid. Aside from Jesus, everyone has sinned at some point in our lives, but a sin that is in our past is not a reason to keep sinning in our present, and it is not a crutch we should use to excuse future sin.

This is not the only time Jesus tells a person to not sin anymore, and while Jesus might be simply saying to the man to not make a habit of sinning moving forward, He subtly challenges us reading this event regarding any preconceived ideas that our future lives are destined to have sin in them. Our future choices are ours to make, and while there will probably be some challenging choices to make at some point, Jesus describes a future where it is possible for us to never choose to sin again.

Heaven will be filled with people who always obey God’s law and who will never sin, and unless you believe heaven will be a legalistic place because of all of this obedience, choosing to obey God in your own life today is simply preparing to live in heaven. As a side note, legalism in my mind is living without love, grace, and holding others to the high standards you’ve set for yourselves, regardless of whether they asked for accountability or not. This is similar to hypocrisy which is holding others to a high standard that you choose to not abide by yourself. If obedience is legalism, then one must also view heaven as being a very legalistic place, which kinda doesn’t make heaven sound like heaven – at least to me.

Moving back to the topic we started this episode by talking about, what of all the sick people that Jesus seemed to ignore in this passage?

I don’t believe for an instant that God ignored them or that He didn’t love them. Instead, I wonder if some were not ready to accept Jesus’ healing, and I wonder if others were healed at other points in time, in other ways, and/or by Jesus that Sabbath day that simply did not make it into John’s gospel. John tells us at the conclusion of his gospel that he did not include everything Jesus said or did because it would be too much to write and too much to read.

John includes this healing and this event for specific reasons, and one of those reasons is a challenge for each of us who call ourselves followers of Christ: Will we believe that we can live the future portion of our present lives without sin?

Jesus thinks we can, and when we lean on Jesus for help, guidance, and strength to do so while drawing close to Him, His love that shines through us empowers us to live a future without sin in preparation for living in a sinless heaven. And when we’re living obediently in heaven, our lives won’t even come close to anything that looks like legalism.

As we finish off another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Choose to believe that a sinless life is possible starting today. While this doesn’t mean you or I won’t slip up or make mistakes along the way, this does mean that we choose to focus on modeling and reflecting Jesus’ love to those in our lives, and when making choices, we always choose the way of obedience.

To help keep our focus on God and Jesus strong, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself because a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important foundation to have in a life that leaves sin in the past.

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, because the life God wants to lead us into is a life without the pain, hurt, and consequences of sin!

After Jesus had finished healing Peter’s mother-in-law, which we looked at in our last episode, Luke’s gospel finishes out this day of miracles by describing what happened after sunset. While Jesus was healing Peter’s mother-in-law and resting that afternoon, something was happening throughout the region because of what Jesus had done that morning. Looking back two episodes ago, Jesus had cast a demon out of a man at a synagogue that morning, and that passage ended by telling us that word spread about Jesus throughout the region. The results of this news spreading all afternoon prompts the miracles found in our passage for this episode.

Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 4, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 40, Luke tells us that:

⁴⁰ At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. ⁴¹ Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.

This two-verse passage includes plenty of things for us to pay attention to, and in some ways, this passage is a great summary and extension of the previous two miracles. The first of these two miracles was Jesus casting out a demon in the synagogue that morning, and the second was Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. In this passage, we see Jesus healing more people of all sorts of diseases and Jesus casting out many more demons.

It is interesting in my mind that the same thing that happened in the morning miracle, when Jesus casts out the demon happens again when Jesus is casting the demons out that night. The man who was freed that morning had a demon who declares Jesus to be God’s Son and the demons who are cast out that night make a similar claim. In all these cases, Jesus commanded the demons to be quiet, and as we saw in the event two episodes ago, any claim a demon makes cannot be trusted.

Satan and his evil angels are not required to lie, but they are more than willing to. Hearing Satan declare someone as God’s Son should be enough to get us to take notice, but it shouldn’t be a claim we trust without further investigation.

Also, it is interesting that this is the first recorded mention of Jesus’ miracle-working where more people than the gospels can include came to be healed. If the only miracles prior to this point were the handful we have already looked at then this evening of helping, healing, and casting out demons greatly increased Jesus’ miracle count.

But Jesus didn’t perform miracles to get people to take notice. Instead, Jesus performed miracles that helped people, that gave glory to God, and that advanced God’s kingdom. On the surface, hearing a claim, even it is an untrustworthy claim, that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah seems to help press this mentality forward. However, as we saw two episodes ago, not only did Satan want to get people to distrust Jesus because of the source of the claim, if that didn’t work, Satan wanted the opposite extreme to happen. The opposite extreme in this case was for the people to forcibly make Jesus into a king and into the messiah they hoped would deliver them from the Romans.

While Jesus came to reveal God’s love towards us as a sinful race of beings, and while Jesus came to give His life in place of ours, Jesus’ mission was much bigger than the first-century Jewish culture recognized. Jesus came for humankind and not just for one race of people.

Our passage marks the beginning of Jesus’ miracle working popularity, and at the heart of these verses, we see God’s love for a sinful race of beings. Nothing in these verses speak to Jesus wanting to build Himself up, and nothing in these verses suggest that Jesus desired fame or popularity. Jesus actively pushed against these things, and we can see this the clearest when He repeatedly silences the demons declaring Him as God’s Son.

In our own lives, we are called to follow Jesus, to believe in Jesus, and to model Jesus. While we won’t have demons declare us to be God’s children, we should intentionally move through each day with the goal of showing a Christ-like love to the world around us. Jesus wasn’t afraid to confront sin, but He also never condemned the sinner.

This passage doesn’t describe Jesus looking down on anyone who was sick or demon-possessed. In place of looking down, Jesus reached down and helped each person that night experience healing and freedom from the chains of their past.

In the same way, we are called to reach down rather than look down. We are called to help where we can and to encourage others that God loves them, that Jesus died for them, and that together we are looking forward to eternal life in a new heaven and new earth – specifically a new heaven and new earth that doesn’t include the stain of sin!

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

Always seek God first and place Him first in your life. Learn to trust, depend, and lean on Him for help facing this life, and keep the hope alive in your hearts that He is preparing a home for us in heaven with Him. Choose to model your lives after Jesus lived, and choose to reach down to help others.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, keep praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn firsthand what God is like through what He has preserved for us through history. The Bible is the record of God’s story in history, and He has kept it safe for thousands of years. If we can trust that God can keep us safe for eternity, we can trust that He is capable of keeping the Bible safe for a few thousand years. Use the Bible to filter what the world wants to claim as truth, and use the Bible as your final word!

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 abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

At the start of Jesus’ public ministry, the gospel of Mark describes Jesus doing something that is very counterintuitive for someone just starting a ministry. While this isn’t the first miracle Jesus performed, something He tells the person He healed following the healing doesn’t make much sense from our perspective, especially if we were advising Jesus launching a ministry in today’s world.

Let’s read what happened, and discover what Jesus did following this healing. Our passage is from the gospel of Mark, chapter 1, and we will be reading from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 40, Mark tells us that:

⁴⁰ A man with a skin disease came to Jesus. He fell to his knees and begged Jesus, “You can heal me if you will.”

⁴¹ Jesus felt sorry for the man, so he reached out his hand and touched him and said, “I will. Be healed!” ⁴² Immediately the disease left the man, and he was healed.

Let’s pause briefly here because a detail about this healing is worth paying attention to. We see a man coming to Jesus who had a skin disease, and chances are this disease was incurable. However, the man states his request in an interesting way. By saying “you can heal me if you will”, the man displays a faith in Jesus’ ability to perform the miracle, but he acknowledges that he might not be worthy of receiving such a life-changing gift.

I wonder if this man had a particularly sinful past, and the skin disease was something he believed was a punishment for the things he did wrong earlier in his life. If so, the way this request is phrased also hints at a request for forgiveness.

This event in itself is amazing to think about, because this was before Jesus had gotten the reputation of being a miracle-healer. Somehow, this man had learned about Jesus before Jesus was well known, and this man knew in his heart that Jesus could heal him. However, I wonder if this man questioned whether Jesus would want to heal him.

We see Jesus’ response first feeling sorry for the man, and then touching him, which was a big deal in that era. Touch is how skin diseases like this were spread, and getting a skin disease meant that a person was not touched in any meaningful way again.

Jesus’ response was as loving as His touch. Jesus tells the man, “I will. Be healed!” This is powerful because any doubt in this man’s mind about God’s love for him was erased in this moment. If the man’s past made him doubtful about whether God loved Him, Jesus’ actions and words emphasized God’s love and forgiveness towards this man.

The man did not doubt Jesus could heal him. This man had faith. This man also needed encouragement and a reassuring message of God’s love towards him.

But what comes next is fascinating. Immediately after the man is healed, verse 43 continues by telling us:

⁴³ Jesus told the man to go away at once, but he warned him strongly, ⁴⁴ “Don’t tell anyone about this. But go and show yourself to the priest. And offer the gift Moses commanded for people who are made well. This will show the people what I have done.” ⁴⁵ The man left there, but he began to tell everyone that Jesus had healed him, and so he spread the news about Jesus. As a result, Jesus could not enter a town if people saw him. He stayed in places where nobody lived, but people came to him from everywhere.

When reading about this miracle, we can understand the healed man’s enthusiasm about what Jesus did for him. He tells everyone he can about Jesus.

But Jesus’ request to keep quiet about this healing does not make sense, especially when framed in today’s attention-starved world. In the 21st century, new products and ideas have a huge uphill climb in order to be known. The methods for sharing products and ideas have become endless, and the barriers for bringing a product or idea into reality are almost none. However, this has resulted in a flood of ideas into the market, and overwhelming people living today into ignoring 99% or more of what they see. In our minds, it makes no sense that Jesus would want to silence one of His best brand ambassadors.

This would be like visiting a church, having a physical miracle take place, and those present telling you to keep quiet about what happened. This makes no sense for the person who is excited to have been healed, and it makes no sense if this church wants to grow, get donations, and/or have enough to pay their bills.

I’ve heard some people say that Jesus told this man to keep quiet as a way to inspire him to share more, as though Jesus was challenging this man’s rebellious side to do more than he would have normally done. However, this doesn’t make sense in my mind with how the passage concluded. This man’s excessive sharing made Jesus so popular that He could not enter a town if someone recognized Him, and He had to stay in secluded places away from the cities and towns.

Jesus loved people, and I wonder if He told this man to keep quiet because He wanted the freedom of anonymity to be able to go to more people who needed help and who were not physically able to come to Him. This makes sense on one level. Jesus knew word would eventually spread about Him whether He liked it or not, but He wanted to slow the spread so that He could help as many people where they were at in the cities, towns, and villages.

Jesus also told the man to go to the priest, present an offering, and get the official bill of clean health. I think this also has a hint towards why Jesus wanted the man to stay quiet. Jesus says that going and showing himself to the priest “will show the people what I have done”. Who are the people Jesus is referring to? When we think about this, the first people who would learn about this would be all the priests and religious leaders, and it would spread out from there.

I wonder if Jesus had intended this miracle to be a witness and a challenge for the religious leaders. While there were some religious leaders who were already against Jesus, such as those who lived in the Nazareth synagogue we discussed in a previous episode, I wonder if this miracle was Jesus subtly reaching out with a message to the religious leaders about God stepping into history and that He was the Messiah who was prophesied about.

Regardless of what the reasons were, or even if that was all the reasons, this man chose to disobey Jesus and tell everyone about what Jesus had done for him. This is worth paying attention to as well because when God has done something for us, it is natural for us to tell someone else about it. It is actually unnatural to try to keep it a secret.

So with that in mind, has God done something in your life recently? If so, did you tell others about it?

Jesus had His reasons for asking the man He healed to keep quiet about this healing, but that doesn’t mean that this is Jesus’ message for us today. One of His last messages to His followers was to tell everyone about Him, and that means that we are called and challenged to tell others about what Jesus has done for us. While not everyone is willing to listen, we are all called to share. When we share, we should not put other people down in order to lift Jesus up. We should instead simply lift Jesus up for what He has done for us, and invite those we are sharing with to celebrate with us.

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

Always be sure to seek God first and pay attention to the things He blesses us with. When God does something for us, let’s celebrate it and invite others into our celebration. Our joy is a powerful witness in a world where joy is fading.

Also, be sure to study the Bible for yourself and discover what God wants to tell you though the pages of His word. A pastor or podcaster can give you ideas, but discovering truth straight from the Bible has no comparison, and humbly studying the Bible helps each of us grow closer to God in a personal way.

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!