Mark 5:21-43 Jesus heals … physically and emotionally
What we have here are 2 episodes of Jesus healing. One is a response to a desperate father where Jesus raises a dead daughter back to life. It reveals Jesus’ compassion toward children and religious people who realize they really need God. The other story is an intentionally unintentional healing. I’ll explain what that means.
Why is it that so many "believers" today have trouble believing that God heals? Didn't Jesus say (Mark 16:17-18) this is one sign of a believer?
Healing #1: Jairus’ daughter:
Since Jesus started teaching, who had given Jesus the most trouble? Who questioned his authority, his standing with God? Who condemned him for doing things that were generally thought to be sinful?
It wasn’t demons. Jesus shuts their mouth and casts them out.
It wasn’t the crowds that followed him. He heals them and they love him for it.
Jesus is continually plagued by the super-religious folks. They constantly criticize him for his words and actions. This was because they lived so intently after the Old Testament laws that they were wooden literalists. They didn’t understand the heart of the scriptures; they only understood the letter of the law. These were Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests.
And in this story, who is it that runs to Jesus, has fallen at Jesus’ feet, and is begging him to come and just touch his daughter so that she could be healed? A ruler of the synagogue. Is this irony? No. I don’t believe scripture points in the existence of luck or happenstance. God wants religious people to be saved too, and I think that’s why he worked through Jairus’ daughter’s sickness. It was his tipping point.
Think about it. When something horrible happens to someone you really love, you are willing to go outside your comforts and do what is proven … what you know will work to help them. You’ll do things you wouldn’t normally do or even agree with, out of your love for that person. And this is how Jesus gets Jairus. Jairus knew Jesus could heal. Most likely he didn’t agree with Jesus’ teachings or his fame with the people. He might not have liked Jesus or his doctrine, but he knew he had power to heal. And his little girl was close to death. He could overlook somethings for the love of his life.
All along, God loved Jairus and his obedience to the law, but what God really wanted was to win Jairus’ heart over to Jesus. And he used the person that happened to be the dearest to him, his daughter.
Healing #2: The intentionally unintentional healing:
Jesus wants people to be whole. We can see that in his ministry, his teachings, in his life. So we can conclude that healing is part of his intentional ministry on earth. Again … healing sick people is one part of what Jesus did and does. Again … Jesus heals. That means he still does it. I’ve seen it with my own eyeballs, that Jesus answers prayers and heals cancer, AIDS, headaches, broken bones, etc. Got it? Jesus heals.
The woman in this story is weak, tired, aching, and suffering. She has had “her aunt Floe over” for about 12 years. I’ve seen my sisters, Mom and wife go through this on a monthly basis and it was unbearable, just on my behalf. I can’t imagine how she dealt with this for 12 years.
Doctors couldn’t help her, and she’d spend a lot of money on this sickness. Because of the OT law, she was considered unclean and had to stay outside of the city with the other women on their period. Except she wasn’t just on a few day visit. She had been suffering through the physical, emotional and spiritual agony of this for over a decade.
So what was unintentional in this story?
When this woman was healed, Jesus wasn’t responding to her request for healing. He wasn’t responding to her friends asking him to come to her house and heal or to her family letting her down through a roof. And it even surprised Jesus because the instant she touched him, she zapped power out of him. She zapped the healing from him. He recognized it, and wanted to let her and the crowd know that faith brings the healing.
She had it in her mind that he didn’t have to even acknowledge her, but that he was the source of the healing. This healing was an example that you could get what you needed from Jesus, by simply believing and acting on it.
The greatest thing about her healing was that she could be part of society again. For the first time in 12 years she wasn’t looked down upon as being “unclean”. It may have been an Old Testament law that declared her unclean, but because of her interaction with Jesus, she was now clean. So it was more than a physical healing; it was emotional as well. She was human again. She was a citizen again, and could live a normal life. She could rejoin her family and live.
THINK:
- Of all the people pressing for Jesus’ attention, these 2 get through to him. Why?
- When is the last time you fell at Jesus’ feet and begged for help?
- After the woman was healed, why was it important to Jesus that she be identified?
- Why is healing generally not believed in among many Christians today? What can you do about it?
Mark 5:1-20 When Jesus is asked to leave.
This is a story about Jesus, a legion of demons, a broken man who becomes whole, a lot of bacon gone bad, and some very selfish people. Let’s go through this by verses:
Verses 1-9: Setting the erie scene: Demon-possessed-guy has remnants of broken chains around his wrists, is living away from town out in the graveyard, and is in the buff (the Luke 8:26-39 version records him being naked). He runs around constantly screaming and cutting himself. This is one messed up man.
This is not a picture of all demon possessed people. There are other demoniacs in the New testament that do not run around the graveyard screaming, or cut themselves, or are naked (excluding the funny story of the 7 sons of Sceva, Acts 19:13-17). The thing this guy has in common with other spirit-possessed people is this:
- He has unnatural or supernatural strength (he breaks chains)
"Crazy Bill" is a great poem by Tim Melton. It was inspired from this man filled with a legion of demons. The link for it is below; click it for the audio version.
- He has supernatural knowledge; he knows who Jesus is without anyone telling him. At this point, only a handful know Jesus is the Messiah, God-incarnate.
Why is this? Because he is getting his strength and his knowledge from something beyond himself … from a legion of demons within him. That’s why people without God in them are scared of demon-possessed people. They are more powerful, and full of evil.
What about God-possessed people, those filled with the Holy Spirit? Can we have knowledge that couldn’t be naturally known? What about supernatural strength? The logical side of you and me says no. But from my own personal experiences and from the promises in scripture, I say yes. The Spirit in us is a source of strength and wisdom and knowledge … and most importantly in this scenario: authority over demons.
Verses 10-13: The demons beg for a deal with Jesus. They know they will have to leave their naked host, and they have to be in someone … so they beg to be cast into the pigs. And as soon as they are in the pigs, they have the pigs kill themselves. Then, the demons are free again to inhabit someone else.
Maybe they inhabited the townspeople. Maybe they got as far from Jesus as possible. We don’t know. But we do know that they did not want to be out of their region. The Luke 8:31 version says they begged Jesus not to cast them into the Abyss, or the bottomless pit mentioned in Revelation 20.
Verses 14-17: The bad guys in the story. The townspeople all wanted to see what Jesus had done, but once they saw the demoniac in clothes and in his right mind, they realized that Jesus was more powerful than the whole legion of demons. He scared them. Like many people I know. They want to feel safe from Hell and evil, but do not want to approach God’s searing holiness. Because a searing holiness means looking inward and dealing with our wretched unholiness.
Strangely, Matthew 8:28-34 records this story as being 2 possessed men, not 1. Why the difference? There are 2 options:
- This could have been a completely separate instance where Jesus delivered 2 guys one time and 1 guy another time, and both times was run out by the townspeople.
- It is the same story, but the lesson of the story wasn’t that Jesus could deliver demon possessed people. Maybe the main idea is the wicked response of the townspeople. They were more concerned with their income and property than they were about people being made whole, or about Truth. Luke 8:37 says they asked Jesus to leave because they were afraid of him, which ultimately means they were unwilling to prepare themselves to meet God.
Verses 18-20: The convert has a mission. He was denied by Jesus to follow him at that point, but was given a greater duty that only he could do. Think about it. Who better to tell people about the miracle working power and love of Jesus than those who have been set free by him. Who better to reach that area of people than “the naked guy at the graveyard who screams and cuts himself”?
Jesus told the ex-demoniac to go tell his family what God had done for him, and knowing who Jesus really was … he told the Decapolis (10 cities) what Jesus the Messiah had done for him.
THINK:
- When this guy cuts himself, is it similar to the reason that people today cut? Is all cutting a sign of demon possession or oppression? What is it a sign of?
- In the interplay between Jesus and the demons in verses 9-13, what did you learn about demons? About Jesus?
- Are you like the ex-demoniac wanting to leave everything and follow the one who delivered you, or are you like the townspeople wanting Jesus to leave you alone because he costs you too much?
- Have you ever told your family, friends or strangers how much Jesus has done for you? Why or why not?
Also, check out the poem, Crazy Bill, by Tim Melton.
