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Have you heard the phrase any publicity is good publicity? Join Reverend Wei E as he kicks off a new sermon series on Mark's Gospel, examining a day in the life of Jesus, and revealing why he sought to minimize his popularity and hide his healings and exorcisms.

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The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verses 29 to 34. And together we say, Glory to Christ our Savior. Mark chapter 1 verse 29. And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. This is the gospel of Christ. Praise to Christ our Lord.

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Church, we are beginning a new sermon series, and uh in this time round we'll be studying the gospel of Mark. And uh so I thought to just give you some kind of background information about Mark. Uh, it is the first gospel to be written of the four gospels, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the first that was written, and it is the shortest of the four gospels. Uh, not only is it the shortest, I think it's the it's the pace is the fastest as well, right? Especially in the first half of the gospel. Um, I'm not sure you have watched movies like uh Mad Max Fury Road, I think Mad Max Fury Road, or like Uncut Gems, right? I remember these two shows as the ones that really they just throw you into action immediately, right? No, some some movies they have long introductions, they have words on the screen, you're watching a movie, but you've got to read what's going on, give you to give you the background story and all. Right? There are movies that kind of throw you into the action immediately, and it doesn't read land and just pulls you into the story through the actions. You just kind of have to learn the story as you go along, as you see what the characters are doing. Right, and the gospel of Mark feels like that to me. Right? It is a gospel in constant motion, at least up until uh Mark chapter 9. Right? It is always moving. Um, there's a particular Greek word that is often translated as immediately. And um Mark, in his shortest gospel alone, uses 41 times. Right um, and and if you include all the other words that that will mean immediate, Mark still accounts for nearly half the number of times this word is used compared to the rest of the New Testament. Right? And Mark uses it over and over again. In in the first chapter alone, he uses it 11 times, right? And so he'll immediately, Jesus did this, immediately they went over to the other side. Um, not just that, he likes to start his sentence with N. And then this happened, and then that happened, right? So immediately this happened, and then that happened, and then that happened, and then immediately this happened, and so on and so forth. Right? It just keeps rolling and rolling. Um, and that's the the nature of the gospel of Mark, right? There's a sense of urgency, a sense of motion, a sense of uh we're moving along quickly, we're keeping a brisk pace so that we can uh get to the main focus of his gospel. Right? He moves us along to the cross and to the passion of Christ. And just to be clear, all the things that Mark records for us are important, they are not useless information that he's just trying to get over and done with. Yeah, but he tries to be brief and succinct. Because Mark is most concerned about the core message of the gospel: that Jesus is the Messiah, he is the one who is the who is full of wonder working power, and at the same time the suffering servant who has come to die on the cross for our sake, so that we may enter the kingdom of heaven. Uh, and it's often said that the key verse in the whole of the of Mark's gospel is found in uh chapter 10, verse 45 that for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And so, as we go through this series of uh study in in the gospel of Mark, uh let's keep this particular verse in mind. For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. We'll now move on to chapter one, and we just kind of let me allow you to uh allow me to give you a kind of a broad overview as well. In verse 1, we read the purpose of writing this gospel, right? Mark is very clear, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Right? This will be about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And in the next few verses, very quickly, he covers uh Isaiah's prophecy, John the Baptist, he covers Jesus' baptism and then his temptation and wilderness, and all in about 11 or 12 verses, right? Um, and then he comes to uh verses 14 and 15, which I want to highlight to all of us because I think this is uh in essence the summary of Jesus' ministry, right? It is his program, it is what he has come here to do. Right? We read that now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Right? This is the program of his ministry. Everything will be focused on preaching about the kingdom of God and calling on people to repent and to believe his gospel, and so you will frame all that Jesus says and does, and it should frame the way we understand what Jesus uh is doing in the gospel. And with that, we want to just kind of have a look at a day in the life of Jesus, right? How does this uh program, how does this um this main purpose of Jesus play out in a particular day in the life of Jesus as recorded in Mark chapter 1? And we're gonna start with verse 21, uh, even though it's not in our reading for today. Uh it in fact starts there, and it's gonna quickly go through with us, right? Uh and we begin on a Sabbath day, and I think that's a Saturday morning. Um it is holy day of rest, and in the morning, people you know people just cease to work. I think even the night before they will have ceased working, right? But on the Saturday morning, they will go to the synagogue, they will study Torah, and they will pray, right? And Jesus on the Sabbath day goes to the synagogue to teach. Uh, we'll read that uh when he taught, people were astonished, right? Who is this man who is teaching with so much authority? More than the religious experts, the theologians and scholars back then, right? Um, and right after we read about this, right? Uh immediately there's a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit, and Jesus cast out the unclean spirit from this man. Um I think what is interesting in this in this portion is that the unclean spirit knew who Jesus was. Right? He calls Jesus the Holy One of God. And what is even more interesting is that Jesus asked him to shut up. He silenced the unclean spirit. Right? The spirit that knew exactly who Jesus was, and Jesus silenced him. And it will be something that is repeated over and over again, and we'll see that again shortly. Um but as we come back to this moment, right, Jesus drives the unclean spirit out of the man, right? Uh it became a sign of Jesus' authority. Right? The people around him now can see that he is the real deal. And so, verse 48, we uh verse 28, we read that at once his fame spread everywhere, right? Everyone got to know about this Jesus, right? This Jesus is now trending, he's rising in popularity. Uh, you scroll through your social feed and he will just keep popping up in your in your feed, right? You can't you can't really uh you know not notice him at all. And it is on this high note that we come to our passage this morning. Um, following his authoritative teaching and then uh commanding unclean spirits, he is now invited into the house of Simon Peter, right, together with some of the other disciples. Um and so now we'll go to verse 29 and have a look at uh what went on when he went to you know the Simon Peter's house. Right, immediately he left the synagogue and entered the the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Alright, verse 30, we read that Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told her about uh told him, told Jesus about her. We find that you know Peter's mother mother-in-law is sick, uh, and sick enough that she has to be bedridden, sick enough that the disciples wanted to bring Jesus in to do something about it, especially after seeing his authority and power earlier in the in the day, right? They wanted, you know, it was an implicit request. Jesus, you know, my my mother-in-law is ill, right? Uh maybe you can do something about it. Um and Jesus, of course, agrees to it, but he doesn't do anything showy. There was no fanfare, there was no loud prayers, there's no incantation or anything of that sort. Right? Uh verse 31, we say that he came and he simply took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve. And now we are beginning to see that this Jesus, who has the authority to drive out unclean spirits, also has the power to heal. Right? Yet another sign of his authority. Um, I mean, in response to this healing, the woman's the mother-in-law started serving immediately, right? And it fit this fits a kind of a pattern for all the healing accounts, right? When we go through the healing accounts, you will see that there's a particular setting of the of the account, right? There's a condition of the illness or the disease, uh, or maybe unclean spirits, right? Uh, and then there's the healing, right? Jesus heals the person, and then there's evidence of recovery. Right? And it may be that this was the evidence of her recovery that she got up and immediately started serving, right? But perhaps there's something a little bit deeper here, a bit more here, right? Which is that Peter's mother-in-law, right, and she could have gone about and do something else, right? You got out of bed, you're all healed. Maybe, you know, it's since it's the Sabbath anyway, right? Maybe you just want to chill in one corner and just be happy that they're healed and all. Right? But she started immediately serving, and I think she modeled the right response to Jesus' healing, which was to serve. Um, and by now, the day is getting late, right? It should have been the end of the day, right? This is late afternoon, close to evening time, close to the end of their day, uh, actually. Right? Um but we'll read that Jesus' day was far from over, right? Because he's about to get really busy very soon, right? If you are one of the disciples, you might think, wow, now it's time to punk already, right? It's time to knock off from work. And then suddenly your boss asks you to come into the office, suddenly you're given more work. I want this by my table on my table by tomorrow morning, and then even though you're supposed to knock off, you suddenly have uh more work to do now, right? And it feels that way for Jesus because we read from um 32 that that evening at sundown, when everyone starts to uh go back to rest, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. The whole city was gathered at the door. The whole city. Everyone was gathered at the door of a small house, right? And Jesus continued his ministry. You know, these were good religious Jews, right? They waited until sundown to come to Jesus because it was still Sabbath, right? And by right, it is not lawful to heal or to do any other kind of work uh during Sabbath. So they waited until sundown, uh, which I think is 6 p.m., right, uh in our time, to come to Jesus. I wonder if Jesus thought that if only they knew I am the Lord of the Sabbath, then they can come earlier, they can also rest earlier, right? Um but but I think Jesus wouldn't have thought it that way, right? He understood and he had compassion and he carried out his ministry to these people who were coming. And imagine the kind of crowd that would have been waiting outside Peter's house, right? Um I think I would have kind of flinched, I would have kind of retreated to a room and tried tried my best to delay going out and all, right? But Jesus went out and he started ministering to all of them. Right, and that that evening, everyone who came to Jesus with every kind of physical or spiritual ailment, they received healing. Uh interestingly, at the end of the day, right, and this should have been the highlight of the of the of the day already. You cannot cannot go further than that, right? Um, and that is it seems all good. On the surface, it seems like everything was wonderful, right? Jesus healed the the unclean, the man with the unclean spirit, he healed Peter's mother-in-law, he healed so many other people, and you know that should be that should be it. That should we should call it a day, right? Um and yet we find that this uh line that Jesus says to the demons that he cast out in verse um 34 at the end. I just want to read it out for us that he would not permit the demons to speak. Again, because they knew him. This is the second time in this opening chapter alone, right? This is the second time that Jesus asked demons to be silent because they knew exactly who Jesus was. And so imagine following Jesus throughout the whole day, everything went well, and yet, uh, even though on the surface his ministry seems like a huge success, right? There is some undercurrent or there's some form of tension, right? Something is not quite right. Um just a few verses down, we will read that Jesus would heal a leper, and he will say something very similar to the leper. And we'll just quickly uh uh read verses 44 and 45, right? Um after healing a leper, Jesus tells him this see that you say nothing to anyone, right? But go show yourself to the priest, uh, offer your cleansing and so on, right? Go and get proof that you are clean, but don't tell anyone about me healing you. This happens actually throughout the first half of Mark's gospel. Right? Jesus will tell three different groups of people, like he will tell those whom he has healed not to say anything, he'll tell the demons not to say anything, he will even tell his disciples not to say anything, especially in Mark 8 when when when they say you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, which is correct, right? Which is the true identity of Jesus. And he will tell them, keep it to yourself. All right, what is going on? It is very strange for someone who has such a public ministry to want people to keep quiet about what he is doing, isn't it? And there's something more going on, and this is uh a motive that has been called the messianic secret, right? Jesus is deliberately hiding his identity as the Messiah, which is very strange. You know, he was gaining popularity, an entire city just came out to see him. Um and and he hasn't even been doing this for long, right? He has just really started out in his ministry and already and he has captured the attention of an entire city, right? Now will be a good time to lean in and to garner even more attention, right? Now will be the time to build up your base here in Capanum so that this can be the home base for you to expand your ministry to the other cities, right? Um any rabbi in his time, and I think any pastor in our time will want that kind of growth and that kind of uh fame, isn't it? So why is Jesus hiding it? Um there are a few related reasons. Um the first is a practical reason. Uh he if if so many people keep crowding him all the time, then he will have no place to go, right? Uh kind of implied in verse 45 of chapter 1, actually, uh where he says that you know that so many people were crowding him that he couldn't really go anywhere. He was forced to go only to the desolated places, right? He was forced to only go to the wilderness, and even then, everyone was coming to him in the wilderness. Right? So practically he could wouldn't be able to move freely. Uh of course Jesus has said time and again that it is not his time yet. Right? The time has not yet come. Um, understanding that if word about him being Christ spreads around, the Roman government will do something about it. Right? They will capture him and then they will put him to death very quickly. And the time for him, the time for crucifixion has not yet come. Um but even more importantly, and and theologically speaking, right, he wanted to avoid misunderstanding. Right? And he wanted to avoid two kinds of misunderstandings. One is the misunderstanding of what the Messiah is supposed to do. Right? The Jews all had a hope. The Messiah, uh, well, different people had different uh permutations of what the Messiah will be. Some say that you will be a priest, some say it will be a warrior or a king, a revolutionary, some say it will be a mix of all this, right? Someone will come in in holiness and power to to overthrow the Roman uh government. And that is not what Christ came here to do, right? And so he tells them to keep quiet. And the second kind of misunderstanding, uh which is more relevant to us this morning, is that he did not want to be treated merely as a wonder maker, merely as a faith healer. Because again, that is not what Jesus primarily came to do. So publicizing his miracles risked distorting his real mission. So it is very telling that um you know after we read until verse 34, right? Verse 35 is the next day. Uh we read that early in the morning, before the sun came out, Jesus went to some quiet place to pray, right? And then you see the disciples looking high and low for him, and then finally finding him, and almost like rebuking him, saying, Where are you where were you? Everyone is looking for you. What are you doing here? Right? Um, and Jesus tells them this, you know. Um almost anticlimatically, even right, the disciples knew something exciting is going on, right? Teacher, you have to be around, you have to stay here, and we have to continue this momentum, right? He says then, he says to them, let us go to the next towns, right? That I may preach there also, for this is why I came out, right? That I may preach there also, for this is why I came out.

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Right?

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Jesus is most concerned with the preaching of the gospel, right? And we're reminded again then of Jesus' program, right? To to proclaim the kingdom of God and calling on all to repent and believe. Right? Not to call on people to come and receive physical healing. And so he came primarily to heal us spiritually, right? And that in repentance and faith we may be freed from the bondage of sin. And healing, uh, exorcism and all was a sign of his authority and his identity. It was not meant to be the focus or the end goal of his ministry. And so, as we reflect on this passage, you know, as we reflect on all that went on in uh chapter one of the Gospel of Mark, we start with the way Jesus thought about his miraculous works of healing. And I mean, today we go through bouts of illnesses, diseases, physical impairments, even, right? Or we have families that uh have been struck by sickness, right? Uh at some point, I'm sure all of us have prayed this prayer or asked God, God, please heal me. And I think most of us would have asked a further question God, why do you not heal me? Why did you not heal my mother? Why did you not heal my brother? Right, how how do we square this off with with today's text where Jesus is just kind of like freely healing anyone and everyone who come who will come to him? And yeah, I thought to to kind of just set like the baseline uh Understanding, um, which is that does miracle, which is this question, right? Does miraculous healing happen today? And I think certainly it does. You know, um during my ordination retreat, I had the privilege of meeting uh two pastors from Nepal. Um so I was asking about them about their faith journey, how they came to Christ and all. And they both had a very similar experience, right? It's either they or their family members who experienced some kind of miraculous healing. Uh, one of them, his brother, was clinically dead, right? And as they prayed, he came back to life. You know, and and um the amazing thing is that if you ask the Nepoli Christians, nine out of ten will say that they came to Christ because God miraculously healed them or healed someone in their family. And so, of course, we believe that God can heal and still does heal today. But the further question is does God miraculously heal everyone? And in a way, I think the answer is an obvious no. Right? And I think some of us know this more intimately than others, right? That God doesn't always heal. Is it a lack of faith? Is it because of sin? Is it because the person did not come and ask Jesus? It could be either of these reasons, and yet there are times when none of these reasons were the issue, right? That it was not because of a lack of faith, it was not because of a sin, it was not because uh the person did not ask Jesus, right? And yet God seemed to have stayed his hand from healing a loved one or healing us. And it is hard to comprehend why God would heal some and not others, and I think it challenges us and challenges our faith deeply. Um and I just want to say you know, such challenges are meant to not just you know stress our faith, so to speak, but to help it to grow and help it to deepen and mature. And to this passage help us understand actually what Jesus was really trying to do, not so much about physically healing everyone he met. His main goal and main purpose was to preach the gospel. Right, and so it helps us understand all our suffering and sicknesses and ailments, right? That he did not come primarily to heal physical needs, but to call us to repentance so that he may deal with the most important thing of all, to deal with our sin and to bring us close to God. And in that sense, actually, the answer that God gives to our prayer for healing is always a yes, right? Whether we receive it now or in the future when we meet Christ, right, we will receive the healing in full. All healing that happens here is temporary and imperfect. But Jesus' promise is that the healing will be made perfect, we will be made whole when we see Christ again. When we enter into an age where there will be no more disease, no more decay, and no more death. And that is made certain in the resurrection of Jesus, who himself suffered and died. It's because of the gospel, right? Because of the proclamation of the kingdom of God, that now we can have assurance that sickness, diseases, bodily death are no longer considered a defeat. And so Paul in Romans 8 can say that we are more than conquerors, right? Um in the Greek it actually means hyper-conquerors, right? We conquer exceedingly, regardless of our suffering and death. Because we are not without God. If we did not have God on our side, then really this life is all that we have. And if it's diminished in any way at all, then all we have is defeat. But that is not who we are. We are sons and daughters of God who raised Jesus from the grave, and now we lay hold of the promise of eternal life that cannot be diminished. And this is the gospel that Jesus came to give to all of us, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And that is the final word for us for all who have heard and responded to the gospel of Christ, or who have repented and put our faith in Jesus. And so faith in God goes beyond trusting God when times are good, which is which is needful, right? We have faith in God and we trust God when times are good. Uh, faith in God goes, I think, beyond even trusting God enough to say, no, God, can you heal me? We need to have faith when we approach God to heal us, yes. But a deeper and more mature faith says that God is good even when we suffer, that God is good even when we are not healed, and that is the kind of faith that Jesus caused us to grow into. So that's the first thing, right? That we learn about the way Jesus saw healing and trying to, at least even in chapter 1 already, implicitly telling us, you know, actually the healing is not really the point. The point is the gospel. And uh, which leads us to the second, my second point, right? Um, proclaiming this gospel of God was really the primary focus of Jesus, and it was the driving force behind all that he did, right? This was the will of the Father, and he gave his life wholly to that purpose. Um, you know, this fast-paced uh thing that goes on in Mark really gives us this sense that Jesus is always on the move and he is very driven. And I want to ask this question for us today. What drives us? Right? All that we are aiming for, all that we're working towards, what drives us? Many of us know what it is like to be driven, right? Um the default pace of life in Singapore is fast. There's no slow, right? It's just fast, faster, and even faster, right? Um we we live in a society where like we just kind of keep moving, keep going, right? Um young people are feeling it, especially, right? While studying, they're stacking their internships so that they can become more competitive, so that they'll stand out among their peers. Um different side hustles, so they have different uh revenue streams, and uh every is that everyone is just like constantly doing something and on the move, and like Singaporeans are very driven. I want us to pause for a while and ask what is behind all of this? Right? What is the main impetus driving us to do any of these things? Um there's a card game called Singaporean Dream. I'm not sure if you if you know that, um, but it's a very fun game. Um yeah, in and indeed, I mean, some of us when we play, I think we'll feel seen or will feel very triggered, like, oh yeah, this is actually talking about me, exactly, right? Singapore Dream is about the the game is I think essentially about collecting all these different achievements, different setters until you reach uh the the the most um I think net worth. I think I think the game is you win by having the most net worth, right? That is the Singaporean dream. Um and it's amazing, right? And um can you imagine Jesus chasing the rabbinical dream, right? I think his day will look very different, right? Most certainly wouldn't have asked people to keep quiet. You ask everybody tell more, tell more. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your mothers, and your father, right? Uh ask everyone to come to me, right? I think that would be what Jesus would have done if he was chasing some sort of rabbinical dream. Um, but he was driven by one thing alone: proclaiming the truth of the kingdom of God. And he was focused on it. He was calling people to repent and believe, and that is the only thing that he would do, right? And we have to think about it. As a son of God, he gave up so much more than we will ever have to. The God who came down from heaven to become man and to live amongst us, and later to give his life as a ransom for many, so that all who believe in his gospel may be saved. And to become a follower of Jesus then is to be driven by the same gospel, to be driven and to likewise be caught up in the purpose of the Father and to do his will. Right? If we know that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, then following Jesus means becoming a servant as well. Much like Peter's mother-in-law, right, when she was healed and lifted up, she began serving immediately. And so when we have been lifted up in a new life in Christ, we are called to serve God and to serve others, um, not least because God Himself came to serve. And so it is not that we cannot have dreams, it is not that we cannot have hustles, it's not that we cannot have uh businesses or high-paying careers or whatever, right? Um but all of us have to settle this one question in our hearts. What is driving us to do any of this? Is life about chasing the Singaporean dream, or is it to serve a higher purpose in our lives? And if we have chosen to put our faith in Jesus, will we also dare to let his way drive our way of life? And so I just want to conclude with this that the gospel of the kingdom of God is really at the center of Jesus' ministry. It is the purpose for everything he did and everything he went through. We heard his gospel, repent and believe. And for us who have repented our sins and believed in his gospel, the promise of wholeness and everlasting life is already ours. Let us hold firm to it as we continue to face sickness and suffering. We'll face all these things in a broken world. But we cling on to our hope until Christ comes to renew everything. And the same as we have repented and believed in Christ, likewise, let us also be driven by that same gospel to live our lives in accordance uh with Christ, who came as a servant to all, so that through our lives we may proclaim the same good news that God uh God made about his kingdom.