Do what you need to do to get God’s attention!
Mark 6:53-56
Today we are going to be looking at about the smallest passage of scripture I believe I have ever preached from. It is just 80 words and it is only 4 verses in length but what great truth it contains!
The part of the chapter that usually gets preached is the preceding verses where Jesus is seen walking on water by the disciples and Peter asks Jesus permission to go out on the water and do the same and Jesus says “Come”. We all know that Peter took his eyes off Jesus for an instant and looked at the waves and began to sink. Jesus then reached down and rescued him from drowning. That part is preached often. However the part that we will be looking at is what happens after Jesus steps into the boat and they land on shore a while later. Walking on water is a marvelous miracle but we are going to see that there were far many more truly blessed miracles once they got ashore.
Jesus and his disciples had been on the northeastern side of the Sea of Galilea in the previous chapters. Over there Jesus had healed the man possessed by a legion of demons. Just prior to where we are here John the Baptist was ordered beheaded by Herod who made a very stupid promise during a lavish banquet. Salome who danced at his party asked for the head of John the Baptist to appease her mother Herodias whom John the Baptist had publicly rebuked Herod for marrying because she was his brother’s wife. When Herodias got the chance to get even she did. John’s disciples then came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. Jesus at the same time had sent out his 12 disciples into the countryside to tell everyone that the kingdom of God was at hand.
Many, many people responded to the disciple’s message. We also find in this same 6th chapter of Mark- Jesus feeding a crowd of 5000 people from 5 loaves and 2 fish late in the afternoon. Once taught and fed Jesus then dismissed the crowd and his disciples so he could go up into the mountainside to pray. He sent the disciples out to cross the Sea of Galilea where he met them walking on the water. So that is the history leading up to where we now are in Mark chapter 6.
Jesus and the disciples disembarked from the boat and entered a small region and town that was all called by the same name- Gennesaret. It was actually 3 things – a valley, plain and a town by the same name. It was an area just two miles wide and four miles long. It doesn’t seem too impressive in scripture- but it actually was. Gennesaret was one of the most beautiful spots in all of Israel. It was a lush, fertile and beautiful place and for its size it had a great number of residents. The rabbis of Isreal often referred to it as the “Garden of God” not to be confused with Garden of Eden which had been closed for thousands of years. It was a kind of paradise. It had mineral pools and sick people went there or were sent there for its medicinal water and care.
Now to the 1st point of how to get God’s attention. The second of our 4 verses says “As soon as they got out of the boat people recognized Jesus.” How does anyone get God’s attention? # 1st You must recognize Jesus.
Anyone who wants God’s attention must come to God through Christ Jesus and must recognize Jesus as the Son of God. It is impossible for anyone to get to God or gain his attention without going through Jesus. Jesus said “I am the way, truth and life-no one comes unto the father but through me. The two must be and do go hand in hand. I Timothy 2:5 states “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men-the man Jesus Christ who gave himself as a ransom for all men.
Anyone who seeks God must come to him only thru his Son. You cannot circumvent or go around Jesus.
The people of Gennesaret recognized Jesus as the Son of God and they accepted him as the Messiah. We always think that all of Israel rejected her Savior. While the majority did- a very large number didn’t reject Jesus . Remember when Jesus was on trial? Remember how the crowd and the mob out shouted those who pleaded for Jesus? There were those who cried out for Jesus but they were out shouted because the Pharisees had salted the crowd with hecklers. But you need to know that Jesus was a very popular, very well known and very visible person. Thousands upon thousands of Jewish citizenry had seen him in the countryside however the Bible says many of the city dwellers especially those in Jerusalem wondered who he was when he entered their city.
The people of Gennesaret bonded to and believed in Jesus immediately. They recognized him to be both the Messiah and the Son of God. #1 What must you do to get God’s attention? Recognize who Jesus is : that is the most important thing.
When do accept Jesus as your Savior it will bring about a reaction.
Point #2 Their reaction was they ran. Not from him but for him.
Running as I have preached at least 3 times now was considered what? Very socially impolite behavior from a Jewish person. A person running was both a rarity and an oddity.
Jesus is never spoken of as having run. But we know that the prodigal son’s father ran to greet him , Peter and John both ran towards the empty tomb, and the women at the empty tomb all ran back into the city. Running in the gospels is a word picture of uncontolled excitement and the abandonment of dignity to display love or carry good news The people of Gennesaret took off running the length and breadth of the 2x4 mile area with the saving news that Jesus the Messiah was amongst them.
And guess who they told 1st about Jesus? All the sick and invalid who had come to the area in hope of healing or rest or rehabilitation. You see Gennesaret was a kind of health sanitarium or hospice town.
Years ago the state of Arizona had many health sanitariums when tuberculosis was going around. Santariums for tuberculosis didn’t help much at all. Praise God Penicillin was discovered. People went to sanitariums to die in the early 1900’s from tuberculosis. There was little hope. The people who went to Gennesaret were the same hopeless and chronically ill and dying.
#3 Now not only did they tell the sick about Jesus- they literally picked them up and brought them to Jesus. What can we learn from this? That we need to be inviting unsaved relatives and friends to church. They can find Jesus because salvation is preached here. The reason we don’t get more unsaved people coming into this church is because I believe we basically don’t really care enough about them to invite them and repeatedly keep on inviting them. But the Genessarenes were not such as us: they were very very caring people. As the health care workers of their day they suddenly knew the true Healer was among them. As Jesus moved along the plain they picked up and carried people on mats to wherever they heard he was. It usually takes several people to carry one person so you can imagine the number of people that were feverishly working to get sick and dying people to Jesus.
#4 They had an ear open and they were listening for word of where he was. They had no phones. About the only thing they had was horns. This passage does not say they blew horns but it would have been very possible that they did. We get the expression getting on the horn from Biblical accounts in the O.T. not simply yelling into the old Bell telephones people did 60 years or more ago.
#5 What did the sick do? They begged Jesus to let them reach out and touch the hem of his garment. The woman of Luke chapter 8 with the issue of blood had been healed the same way. But she was not the only person in Israel to be healed by touching Jesus’s garment. We all remember her well and think of her often as the only one. That is simply not so. All and everyone who touched his garment in Gennesaret were healed.
Please remember here that touching the garment is not the miracle. There is nothing magical or miraculous about a piece of cloth. The vehicle of each miracle here was their personal faith in Jesus Christ. Whether it was the woman with the blood disease or all of these infirmed people in Gennesaret - they all believed both in Jesus and that he could heal them. They begged Jesus to come close enough to where they could reach out and touch him and do you know what he did? he moved out among them!
Do you know what keeps people from begging the Lord today? PRIDE! People don’t want to cry out, go forward, do anything publically, be annointed or prayed over. They want to just sit back and ask and then expect God do things for them . They do nothing and then wonder why they get nothing. But not these sick people in Genneseret they cried out and begged the Bible says. What I like best about this and all passages in the Bible where Jesus ministered is that do you realize that no one was ever refused?
The Bible makes it perfectly clear that as he walked along the road, entered smaller villages or the city of Gennesaret they were bought out and placed before him and they begged him to heal them and he did.
Gennesaret is a very wonderful picture of true health care workers. These sick people could not even move or crawl- they were that ill, so the believing people of Gennearet carried them to Jesus.
Sometimes I think we miss the fact of how much our hospital or healthcare workers are aware of the spiritual needs of the sick.
I remember of visiting several people who were dying in hospitals.
The nursing staff and others really do know generally and relatively about how long people have left and they also know from caring for them and talking with them and watching their family come and go what things are like spiritually for those patients. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to piece together the physical state of a person as well as a their spiritual state.
I remember leaving the room of a dying person one day and unbeknownst to me their nurse had been waiting outside of the door for the several minutes while I was in there . I had my back to the door and I never saw her standing there. When I left the room she actually startled me that she had been there all that time. But then she startled me even more by saying two words that made me aware that she had heard the whole conversation of that dying person who had on their deathbed named Christ as Savior. Her two words to me when I came out were a simple and heartfelt “thank you.”
That taught me that our healthcare workers and hospital people really do care just as much for their patients spiritually as they do physically. Just like the people of Gennesaret did for the patients they had.
I think this passage of scripture speaks volumes about the love of God for people. In eternity past God knew every sick person that would be in the area, he allowed them even to become ill, to be taken, hospitalized or cared for in Gennesaret- that they might come to know Jesus as both Messiah, Savior, Lord and Healer.
Oh yes walking on water was a marvelous - but is is nothing as blessed and stupendous as the healing miracles we find hidden in the four verses to follow. Why is is rarely preached? Because people are not looking for why these verses were strangely included. Most people focus on Peter drowning in the sea and miss the people dying in Gennesaret. But Jesus didn’t. He took the disciples there for a good reason. They didn’t cross the sea just to cross the sea. Jesus had just fed the multitudes-now he was going to heal the multitudes before the eyes of his disciples.
The disciples needed to see and you and I need to see how God loves and moves:
1. God moves when : People Recognize who Jesus really is.
2. God moves when: people react in faith and begin to run with the gospel.
3. God moves when: We pick people up and take people to Jesus.
4. God moves when: We are listening for the locations where Jesus is being preached.
5. God moves when: People overcome their pride and are willing to beg.
6. God moves when: healthcare workers do their whole jobs meeting the physical needs and spiritual needs of the sick and dying.
What are you doing Christian for someone who desperately needs Jesus? Take a lesson from the people of Gennesaret. Unlike Peter they did far more important things than just want to walk on water.
