JESUS WAS SPIRITUALLY CONNECTED
Sunday, February 17, 2002
TEXT: Mark 1: 21-29
We are starting a series today on celebrating Jesus and discovering what makes him so attractive. Just to show you hold old I am, as a boy I remember going to McDonald’s and seeing the sign that announced how many burgers they sold. The first number I remember was 6 million. What’s the first number you remember? It then went to 50 million and then 129 million and finally got to one billion. Now they say billions and billions served.
The same is true about the church. First there were twelve who came to Jesus Christ, then there were thousands, then there were millions, and there have since been billions and billions. What has attracted people over the millennia to this man, Jesus?
In 1992, the USA Weekend magazine did a story about the faces of Jesus and how people saw Jesus through the ages, trying to answer the question, “Who is this Jesus?” In the Middle Ages, Jesus was portrayed as a heavenly king who ruled with love in contrast to the earthly kings who ruled with tyranny. In the 1960’s, Jesus was portrayed as a long-haired drop-out who challenged the establishment, kind of a revolutionary. In South America, he was portrayed as a liberator. In the 1990’s, it says that Jesus takes on five different faces: There’s the moralist, the New Age guru, the social reformer, the black Jesus, and the enigmatic figure. Even the Catholic church got on this bandwagon in the past year and released a new portrait of him. It portrayed a Greek-looking man with wiry hair in dread locks. Two years ago NBC started a series called “God, the Devil and Bob.” It didn’t last very long because the face of God looked strangely like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Is that the face of God?
For centuries we have been trying to formulate an image of Jesus. The question is, who is the real Jesus? Who would know better than those who ate, drank and hung around him on a daily basis. Why not simply take a look at the text that they wrote and discover for ourselves who this Jesus was. As we take a look at their record, we notice at least one thing that is different about Jesus. When they encountered Jesus, the encounter produced a profound mystery. In algebra, X represents an unknown. In Jesus, there is an X, an unknown quality about him that you can’t put your finger on. One person writes this:
“Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me and his will confounds me. Between him and whoever else in the world there is no possible comparison. He is truly a being by himself. I search in vain in history to find someone similar to Jesus Christ or anything which can approach the gospel, neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature offer me anything with which I am able to compare it or explain it. Here everything is extraordinary.”
Indeed, when people encounter this Jesus, they encounter something very extraordinary. There is something unexplainable about him which is a profound, vital spiritual connection he has to God. We get a sense of that all through the gospels. There is one place in particular that I would like to look, Mark 1:21-39. We see the evidence for this unique, vital spiritual connection that Jesus has with God, and then we also see effective practices of the crowd and in Jesus’ life that, if we follow, we too can make that same type of spiritual connection with God.
Text
The first evidence that Jesus has this spiritual connection with God is in his words. In verse 22, people are amazed. They say, “He speaks with authority.” It’s as if Jesus had been part of their private conversations and knows exactly what they have done and where they have come from. It is as though Jesus is speaking right to them. Have you had that similar experience? That’s the power of God’s word to us.
In Mark 8, we see the same event. Four thousand people have come to a big seminar given by Jesus and they are so enamored of his words, that they choose not to eat for three days. What would keep an average Presbyterian from the food tablet for three whole days? It ain’t preaching!! But his words are powerful, the people couldn’t drag themselves away from him.
The priests at one time sent the guards to arrest Jesus, and as they heard him speak, they were so enamored of him that they didn’t have the heart to arrest him. When they returned, the priests asked where Jesus was, and the guards answered, “No one ever spoke the way this man does.”
On the road to Emmaeus, the gentlemen who met Jesus and heard him speak testified “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?”
There is something powerful about Jesus’ words. “The word of God is living and active. Nothing is hidden. Everything is uncovered and laid bare.” This is the power of God’s word that you see demonstrated in Jesus’ life. It is more than words, it is also works. We see two different evidences of Jesus’ powerful works. The first is in his healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. Would you ask God to heal your mother-in-law if she was sick? Peter loves his mother-in-law and asks for prayer for her. Being merciful, Jesus heals her and she gets up and cooks for them.
The crowd brings people to Jesus to be healed. What’s remarkable is the frequency with which God listens to the words of Jesus. It is so profound that when comparing the lack of effectiveness of their prayers with his, the disciples decided that they didn’t know how to pray and went to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” I ask the question of why Jesus was so effective in his prayers and I am not. I see the frequency with which God healed through Jesus and how infrequently he does that through my prayers or our prayers collectively. Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with me or with us.
I think there is a different reason why God doesn’t heal us frequently. He wants us to know without a shadow of a doubt who he is, and he provided historical witness so that when we peer down the annals of history wondering who God is, it will be crystal clear that when Jesus touched earth very briefly, all the elements of light came together, lives were healed, minds were transformed and people were changed. God did this to show us exactly who Jesus is.
Jesus is tremendously popular, but he is not corrupted by his popularity. People would break down the door to see him. What does Jesus do? Unlike preachers today, he doesn’t get a big head, he doesn’t put his face on billboards, he doesn’t buy TV time, he doesn’t take up an extra collection to make a little bit of money. What does he do? He withdraws. He does not seek public affection and attention. He does not seek personal gain. When he died on the cross, he had only one possession–a seamless garment. He died a very poor and penniless person.
When his friends wrote about Jesus, they described him as being sinless. Not even his enemies attempted to refute this charge. Could that be said of you? Would the ones who know you and live with you say of you that they found no sin in you? Could your enemies make that charge? They attempted to make him fail and stumble, but they could not.
Another evidence of this profound spiritual connection that Jesus had with God is the great sense of purpose that he demonstrated. Note that things are exploding around him because of his ministry, but he goes off to pray. Although Jesus is exhausted, he gets up early and he prays. Is that what you do after a long week’s work–get up very early the next morning and pray?
We believe in striking while the iron is hot and making hay while the sun shines, and the disciples believe the same thing. Jesus says it is time to move on. He did not respond to the urgent, the crisis or the emergency. Jesus had a profound sense of purpose. Even the writers noted that from age 12, Jesus had a profound sense of purpose in his life. What was your desire and goal when you turned 21? When Jesus had his bar mitzvah and became an adult for the first time, what was his grand desire? It was to do his Father’s will and they found him in church. That’s not normal–young people don’t do that. But you see this tremendous purpose in the gospel over and over. Jesus mentions his purpose which is to go to Jerusalem, be rejected, die and be raised again in three days.
Do you know your purpose in life? Jesus did from a very early age. As a teenager, did you know what God wanted out of your life? Do you know that now? Jesus did and fulfilled it. If that purpose was to suffer and die as an innocent person for the guilty, would you have done it?
There is a last point of evidence which I shudder to bring up because I know it makes people very skeptical. This is Jesus’ authority over the demonic. People are leery about this type of subject, and it’s not something Presbyterians talk about very much. They become very uncomfortable with the subject. However, in my studies I read about a detective in the Memphis police department who told an interesting story. He never believed in the demonic or dark spirit world until one day when a person was arrested and brought into the station. Before the person arrived in the room, a chill went through the air. People felt a dark presence in the room, and when he entered everyone felt as if they had encountered evil itself. There was a profound spiritual darkness that everyone sensed.
As a young person, I sensed this, too. My mother was involved with the occult for several years, and the effect is that it produces tremendous fear and the sense of a dark presence in your life. For years, I had a very difficult time shaking that tremendous fear and darkness. After my conversion, I learned that when you pray in the name of Jesus, that darkness leaves. When you talk with people who come out of the occult, they know the story well. It is only in the name of Jesus that this dark presence is overcome.
The remarkable thing is not that Jesus had this power over the demonic–it was his remarkable composure in the face of evil. When we talk about these things, we get fearful and a little spooky. When Jesus encounters evil, he is very composed. He talks very quietly to the demon: “Be quiet. Get out.” In Matthew 4, Jesus encounters Satan himself in the desert. He is not intimidated and is in control of the situation. When the demons speak about Jesus, they call him the Holy One of God.
We see this not only in Jesus life but in the lives of his followers in Acts 2. Peter preaches a simple sermon about Jesus, and it is said that people were cut to the heart. The words sank deep into their hearts and souls. In Acts 3:6, Peter and John encounter a lame man before going up to the temple. They said, “Silver and gold have I none. In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.” In Acts 19:13, we hear the story of the sons of Siva who attempted to mimic the disciples and cast out the demons from a man. The demon said this, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know. But who are you?” These young men did not operate under the authority of Jesus.
To this day, the Jewish scholars at the Hebrew Institute of Religion say this, “Jesus is the greatest of all Jewish rabbis.” They may not believe in his divinity, but they are clear about his character. Jesus’ mission statement in Matthew 28:20 has guided the church for the last 2,000 years.
Taking collectively Jesus’ words, his works, his character, his vision, and his authority over the spiritual world, this tells us that there is a spiritual quality which is unique about this Jesus. Billions of followers have discovered throughout time that if they put their faith in this Jesus, they too will discover this wonderful spiritual connection with God.
Karl Bart, the greatest theologian of the 20th century said, “At first, I was a very liberal pastor. I read the Bible as a book of morals and political philosophy. Then I began to really read it and deal with it. I discovered the voice of God speaking through the pages of the Bible, a god who encountered me through Jesus Christ. Like God encountered Moses and Saul, his words transformed me.”
The same thing has happened in my own life. I was a business major in college and I outscored every business major in college. I come from a line of entrepreneurs. The words of Jesus and the wonder of serving him far outweigh any career you can possibly pick.
If you do not know this Jesus, if you have not put your faith in Him, I invite you to consider him and to ask Him into your life. If you are skeptical, I challenge you with this: Simply do as Karl Bart did and for the next 40days read the Bible, pray, open your heart and let God convince you for himself.
We talk about the evidences of the spiritual connection in Jesus’ life. How can we have that for our own selves? There are some things the crowd did and some things that Jesus did. First, where did the crowd hear God’s word? It was in a place of worship. Where are Jesus’ words still heard today? In a place of worship. Where will you hear the words of Jesus? In a place of worship. Where do you need to be to get the words of Jesus so that you can have the same spiritual connection? In a place of worship.
The second thing the crowd did was to listen. They then received the words of Jesus, and I encourage you to receive his words because you can see the effect of them.
The last thing is from Jesus’ own life. From Mark 1:35, it says that after a long day, Jesus took some time, got away from the crowd, and prayed. In Jewish custom, when you pray you always read scripture. So to pray is to read scripture and to pray. It is through this practice that Jesus kept his spiritual connection with God. That’s how we will do so, as well. Whether you use the journals provided or not, take some time to read the scriptures and pray. If you do those two things, in the long run you too will find the same spiritual connection that Jesus did.
My grandfather moved to Florida and I hated it because it was so hard to see him. I liked going to Florida, however, because you could see orange groves for miles. There were millions of oranges on the trees and there were stands where you could stop and get fresh orange juice. It was the best orange juice ever. We stopped at a restaurant one time which was right in the middle of a grove and we ordered orange juice. The waitress said, “We’re sorry. We don’t have any orange juice.” We asked her what she was talking about. There were a million trees all around with oranges on them. She then explained that their machine was broken.
In the midst of oranges, they had become so dependent on a machine instead of tapping it for themselves. Sometimes we can become so dependent on the pastor or on the church that we fail to tap in to the luscious juice of God’s word for ourselves.
There’s a commercial where a little boy and girl are sitting on the steps drinking orange juice, and the more they suck on the straw and the juice comes up, the higher the sun rises in the sky. The same will happen in our lives. When we drink God’s word fully, the son of God will arise in our lives as well.
Let’s pray.
