A Day In The Life Of The Lord Series

INTRODUCTION

During their drug-fueled psychedelic phase, the Beatles recorded an album entitled “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in 1967. One of the songs was entitled “A Day in the Life.” John Lennon wrote the first and last verses. Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics for the bridge as he recalled his teenage years in being late to school and daydreaming during class. He wrote: “Woke up, fell out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, And looking up I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat; Made the bus in seconds flat; Found my way upstairs and had a smoke, And somebody spoke and I went into a dream.” The song ended with an E-Major chord played on four pianos simultaneously—the chord was sustained for forty seconds by increasing the recording volume.

If someone followed you around for 24 hours, would it be something you could write about? In our passage today we’re going to follow Jesus for twenty-four hours. What He did and said in that day was so significant that they wrote a book about it. You could say the Bible is the all-time best-selling book of history. But millions of Bibles are given away. This past year the Gideons organization placed two Bibles every second in hospitals, hotels, schools or prisons. The Gideons don’t want you to steal the towels from the hotel room but they don’t mind if you take the Bible. They’ll just replace it. The Bible is the widely distributed book of all history. It is estimated that there are 6.1 billion copies of the Bible today.

They all tell the story of Jesus. Let’s look at our text and learn about a day in the life of the Lord.

Mark 1:21-35. “They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!’ ‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.’ News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.”

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

What is life all about? One of my favorite movie lines comes from Billy Crystal who starred in “City Slickers” in 1991. He plays a bored advertising executive who comes to speak at his son’s class about what he does for a living. Instead, he launches into his commentary of a dull life: “Kids, value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you’re a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, “What happened to my twenties?” Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You’ll call it a procedure, but it’s a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale; you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering “How come the kids don’t call?” By your eighties, you’ve had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call Mama. Any questions?”