Keep Your Focus
Pastor Jim May
A few weeks ago I preached on the healing of the leper in Mark chapter 1. If you will remember, Jesus told the leper in Mark 1:44, "… say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them."
Over in the 3rd chapter of the Book of Ecclesiates, the wisest man who ever lived made a statement. He said, “there is a time to speak and a time to keep silent”.
Somehow I get the feeling that when Jesus told that leper to say nothing to any man, that this was a time to keep silent.
Have you ever seen someone get a real blessing from the Lord? Have you, yourself, ever been really touched by God? Perhaps it was at the moment of your deliverance from the bondage of sin, when the Holy Spirit of God and Jesus Christ moved into your heart and made you a new creation in Christ. Perhaps you were miraculously healed, or maybe God answered a prayer by performing a miracle in your life. What did you do?
Most of us can’t keep silent about such things. We want to shout it from the housetop. We want the whole world to know what Jesus has done for us. It’s a natural reaction to receiving such great blessings.
I’ve seen people saved by the blood of Christ and immediately they begin to act as radical Christians. Now there is nothing wrong with being a radical Christian, but there is a problem when we want to become irrational and over zealous.
Over zealous Christians often cause more damage to the Kingdom of God than anyone else because, as one preacher said, “They have a ton of zeal and a quarter of an ounce of wisdom.” Radical thinking and over zealousness makes us too confrontational to all of the sin that we suddenly see around us. We want to take advantage of this newfound power of God in us to place condemnation on every sinner, and we consider it our duty to “straighten out” other Christians who we think are lukewarm and not on fire for God.
But our overzealous ways often drive the very ones that we are trying to witness to even further from God. When we should have been quiet and put our energy into learning the Word of God and listening to the voice of God, we let our excitement drive us and we will soon find ourselves alone because no one will want to be around us.
Is there anything wrong with witnessing for Christ – NO, of course not! Is there anything wrong with being excited about what God is doing for us – NO! But what we must remember is that other people haven’t felt what we felt and can’t understand what we are so excited about. To them, we just went off the deep end and got religion, as many have called it.
Sometimes its better to just rejoice in what God has done for you but keep it to yourself for a while until God opens the door for you to be a witness.
Jesus told that leper to be quiet, don’t go telling the whole world what happened, but go and fulfill all the requirements of the law first.
But did the leper listen? Did he follow God’s instructions? Oh, he went to the priest alright. He had to before he could be accepted back into society. But he didn’t keep quiet. In his excitement, he began to tell every body he met about his healing.
Mark 1:45, "But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter…”
In fact, he was such a loudmouth and so excited that his witnessing actually hindered the work that Jesus had planned to do.
Now sometimes its good to proclaim what Jesus has done, but other times its best to just keep it to yourself and listen to the voice of the Lord lest we hinder the plan of God in our lives.
Mark 1:45 also says that the leper talked so much, “… Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter."
Along with the miracles there comes a responsibility. We must stop for a moment, look into the Word of God and listen for the voice of the Lord. God can use our lives to be great witnesses for him if we will allow him to use us in his own fashion, but if we step out, taking matters into our own hands, and try to force things to happen, we’ll fall flat on our face and even hinder the work of the Lord in our lives and in the lives of others.
Just about every new born again Christian feels like they are called to preach, but not all of them have. All of them get fired up, excited and are full of zeal, especially if they have had a real change of heart and a real experience in God. But, how many times have I seen that zeal and that fire extinguished because they were quickly discouraged. They were ready to witness but they weren’t ready for the rejection. We have to take time to learn to be a witness that can be effective.
Some people go out there with a shotgun mentality when it comes to witnessing. They have no plan of approaching people. They just come out of the altar, run out of the church doors with their “spiritual guns blazing”. Don’t get in their path because they will sometimes condemn other Christians for being less excited. They get radical and join in the activist marches against everything. But that kind of zeal often leads to a downfall and many become disillusioned and backslide because they didn’t wait on God’s timing.
Too many preachers quit the ministry because they weren’t prepared for the opposition. Too many evangelists don’t preach anymore because they were so hard that people just quit listening to them.
Too many of God’s people overstepped their bounds and began to try to force the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, especially in our Pentecostal churches, and now no one has confidence in anything they say because they’ve spoken from the flesh too many times.
It’s not that they are bad people, or even that they have sinned, they’ve simply been overzealous and misunderstood how God works. Put that zeal to work in learning about Jesus and his Word and not into trying to make other people be what you think that they should be. It’s good and natural to be excited about what God had done for you, but channel that excitement and make sure that you are living in obedience to what God is telling you do.
Now, lets get back to the leper. What did his overzealousness do? It hindered the plan of Jesus to preach in the cities and enter into the synagogues and proclaim the Word of the Lord.
The leper got the whole population so excited that they thronged Jesus everywhere he went. Jesus couldn’t even get into the cities because of the crowd. They wanted to see the miracles. Their needs were real, but Jesus didn’t come just to heal their bodies. His main mission was to deliver them from sin. Though he felt compassion and had power to heal every one of them, he could not lose focus on proclaiming that he was the Son of God, come to be the Savior of the world.
Jesus spent a lot of time in the desert country outside of the towns, but even there he was thronged with crowds of people. His “paparazzi” was everywhere. No one like him had ever been seen in Israel and the news of his presence spread like a wildfire. No house was big enough, no meeting room could hold the crowd, so he had to stay in open ground to keep from being crushed by the crowds.
All it would take for our church to be packed way beyond capacity if for just one great miracle to occur that the whole community could see. People want the loaves and the fishes, but they don’t want to hear the voice of the Lord calling them to repentance and they certainly don’t want to live in obedience to the Word of the Lord.
Somehow, probably in late hours of the night, Jesus was finally able to slip into Capernaum and find a place to rest. But it was only a short time before the crowds came there too.
Mark 2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.
There it was again – the zeal, the excitement, the “paparazzi” looking for the miracles.
Mark 2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.
Immediately the crowd gathered and pressed against the house. The yards were filled, the streets were filled, for many yards in every direction, there was a sea of people, crying, waving their hands, shouting for Jesus to bless them and heal them, hoping for a miracle.
Jesus was moved with compassion and so he went to a window and stood there, overlooking the crowd and began to preach the Word to them. What did he preach? Well there’s only one Word that Jesus came to preach and that’s the gospel. He proclaimed that the Messiah had come. I can’t help but think that he proclaimed the same message again that he had given in the synagogue not long before, after all, it was his purpose for being here.
In Luke 4:18-19, we hear the first message that Jesus preached aften returning from the temptation in the wilderness. He walked back into Nazareth, right into the synagogue and this is what he had to say, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." This was his focus and it should be ours too. Jesus focused on why he came from Heaven. Let us focus on the call of God for our lives as well.
The crowds still didn’t truly hear his message. They were focused on the needs of the flesh, not the things of the Spirit.
Now something extraordinary happened. Mark 2:3-4, "And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay."
Fighting the crowds, pushing back the throng, from the back of the crowd came a man, held above the crowd on the shoulders of his friends. They couldn’t carry him in their arms. He was too frail. They carried the whole bed upon which he had laid for so long. They tried to get to the door, but couldn’t get there. They tried to just push under the window but they couldn’t get their either. Then they decided to go around and get to Jesus another way – through the roof of the house.
Lord, help us to get so hungry for Jesus that we won’t allow anything to stop us from reaching you. Don’t let our friends stop us, our jobs stop us, our responsibilities stop, our own desires stop us. Don’t let other people block our path.
If we have to leave mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, jobs, homes and anything else behind to get to you, help us to be where we need to be to get the blessings of God.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see such a revival in our community that people would be tearing the building down, trying to get through the roof and windows, just to get into the presence of the Lord! We need that kind of a desire for God that nothing will stand in our way!
I could say a lot about the dedication, commitment and love of those who carried that palsied man. We need some Christians who are willing to bear the burden of the lost, to carry them before the Lord in prayer and intercession. We need some men and women of faith who will make it their life’s work to bring the lost to Jesus. We need some people who are willing to lift off the roof, take the limits off what they are willing to do, just to see someone get to Christ. We need that kind of hunger, zeal and commitment in the church today.
They tore the roof off, lowered the sick man into the presence of Jesus and then waited and prayed for a miracle. It wasn’t long in coming.
Mark 2:5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
Now wait just a minute. This man was sick in body. He needed a miracle of healing. So why did Jesus say, “thy sins be forgiven thee”? Why not heal him first?
Again – remember that Jesus was focused on his mission. All of the sickness and death around him only served to remind him of his main purpose. His purpose was to bring the gospel to a lost and dying world. If he had healed every man on the face of the earth, it would not have relieved their real problem. Their real problem was not of physical needs but of a sin sick soul. Until the sin is dealt with first, there can be no full deliverance, only a temporary reprieve.
But this wasn’t what the crowd was looking for. They were focused on the flesh, while Jesus was focused on the eternal soul and the heart of man.
Jesus proved his claim to be the very Son of God, the Savior of the World. He forgave sins, something that only the power, mercy, love and grace of God alone could do.
He stirred up a hornets nest among the religious leaders. Blasphemy! Blasphemy! This man claims to be God! This cannot be real. It is of the devil!
Most of the religious world still says the same thing today. They won’t accept the truth of the gospel, they won’t allow Jesus to be Lord, they won’t confess that he is very God. Oh, they may say so in their liturgy, but in their lives they prove their unbelief. They are still focused on the flesh and not on the Spirit.
Mark 2:6-12, "But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion."
It’s no challenge for God to heal, and since Jesus had come to be the sacrifice for sin, it was no challenge for him to forgive sins either. In the mind of God the death of Jesus upon the cross, and his resurrection from the dead, were already accomplished. In just a few years the plan of God would be fulfilled in the earth, but it was already a finished plan in Heaven. The plan of salvation was working and no power on earth or in hell could stop it.
Jesus knew that sin must be dealt with first. Then healing could truly come. Not only that, but he focused on salvation of the soul and that was the lesson that he wanted everyone to hear that day.
The palsied man was healed for sure, but most importantly, he was given eternal life that day.
Let us keep our focus where it needs to be. Health for this body is important for sure, but the most important thing in life is to have that eternal life, the Lord Jesus Christ living inside of us. Keep your focus on things eternal.
The crowd saw and heard much more than they expected that day. They were among the very first to hear that Jesus was come to be the Savior of the World. They were among the first people on planet earth to hear the very Son of God speak into their hearts.
They saw and heard something that had never been seen or heard before. God, in flesh, standing before them, proclaiming eternal life into the heart of a man.
It’s no wonder that they said, “We never saw it on this fashion” , because it had never been on this fashion.
Jesus kept his focus on things eternal, let us do the same thing. Let’s learn to stop, listen and look into His Word. Then keep your focus on things eternal. AMEN
