This is a devotional with my thoughts added to verses from the Bible. I highly encourage you to dig into the word with your own thoughts. The Daily Devotion series is one way to do this. However, I know that sometimes we want to read other people’s ideas about Bible passages, so I am starting the Everyday series. I hope and pray that these posts will draw you nearer to Jesus.
DAY 4–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 1:14-20 Follow Me!
Now after John had been arrested, Jesus went to Galilee and proclaimed the gospel about the kingdom of God. He said, “The time is now! The kingdom of God is near! Repent, and keep believing the gospel!” While Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were throwing a net into the sea because they were fishermen. Jesus told them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishermen of people!” So immediately they left their nets and followed him. Going on a little farther he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat repairing their nets. He immediately called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
God’s timing is always impeccable but not always clear to the ones experiencing it. In this case, John the Baptist needed to leave the stage so that Jesus could be the focus. Even though John himself had testified that Jesus was the Messiah and John had humbly pointed to Jesus, if John had stayed on the stage, Satan would have used the situation to confuse people and keep them from believing in the Messiah. John’s arrest stopped people from focusing on him and brought their focus onto Jesus.
The imprisonment and death of John the Baptist might seem to indicate that God is cruel, except for three things. First of all, the arrest was made by a man under Satan’s control, and thus it did not come from God but from Satan. Second, John had showed and stated his unconditional willingness to serve God, so John was not a victim. Third, death is not the end that most humans consider it to be. God thinks of death differently. John had served God well and was now needed in prison to witness to Herod’s court and to demonstrate that even in persecution, Jesus’ followers would still be loyal to the Father. John the Baptist’s eventual death was not permanent. He will open his eyes to life at the resurrection and forever be with his Lord. John the Baptist led the way to Jesus in both life and death. From this perspective, James would not be the first martyr for Jesus, John the Baptist would. Just as John the Baptist had made straight the path that led people to Jesus in life, he was also the first to provide the best example of how to handle persecution and death.
Jesus’ message was that the time had come. It was not in the future. It was now! He told the people that the kingdom of God was near, so they needed to repent and keep believing. That is still the message for us today. Jesus’ second coming is near, so what do we need to do? First, repent, which is not simply having negative feelings about our sins, but instead, it is turning away from sin. Jesus’ second message to us is to not give up our faith in Him. We are to keep believing in His message, keep believing in Him.
The gospel of Mark starts with a straightforward declaration that his book is about Jesus. Then he introduces the ministry of John the Baptist in order to lead into Jesus’ baptism and temptation. Next, Mark quickly sweeps over Jesus’ beginning ministry so that he can introduce a topic important to Mark’s source of information (Peter). This was Peter’s call to become a disciple of Jesus. Here is another indication that the gospel of Mark is based on the stories that he heard from his spiritual father Peter. Peter would inform his listeners in his testimonies that he and his brother Andrew were throwing a net into the sea. Why? Because they were fishermen, of course. Peter’s thinking is always direct and related to the events that he is experiencing rather than the details and thoughts behind the experience. Jesus was walking beside the sea coming toward them. When He came to them, He gave them their invitation to be his disciples. He called for them to follow Him. Both men had been with Him before as interested observers, but they knew that this time, Jesus was acting as a rabbi calling for apprentices. They both immediately went with Him without stopping to put their equipment away. They both knew that when a prophet called, the apprentices were to go with Him immediately (1 Kings 19:19-21). Simon and Andrew both believed that Jesus was more than a prophet, so it was even more imperative to follow immediately without question.
After calling the two brothers, Jesus continued to walk farther along the shore with Simon and Andrew in tow. James and John were in a boat on the lake near the shore sitting down and repairing their nets. Their father Zebedee and some hired men were on the boat also. When James and John looked up and saw Jesus with their fishing partners behind Him, did they immediately know what was happening even before Jesus opened His mouth? Did their hearts leap for joy because they were about to be chosen to follow the Messiah as His servants and students?
Peter does not tell us what Jesus said to James and John when He called them to become His disciples. Maybe for Peter, his own calling was all-important, but the details of others’ callings were irrelevant to him. Maybe, he had been so caught up in joy that he barely heard Jesus’ words to his partners. John does not mention this calling in his gospel. Instead, he focuses on his first meeting with Jesus before this day, but for Peter, the significant event was not the first time he discovered Jesus, but rather the first moment when he knew that he, Peter, was special to Jesus. For Peter, the life changing event was his calling; this was when Peter left his old life behind and became someone else.
James and John followed Peter and Andrew’s example and immediately followed Jesus. This may not have been as much of a shock to their father as it seems here. James and John had probably been bubbling over with their discovery of the Messiah ever since John the Baptist had first pointed Him out. Salome, their mother, would later become one of Jesus’ patrons. Thus, the whole family believed in Him. Therefore, when the rabbi, the Messiah himself, came to Zebedee’s boat to call not one, but two of his sons, Zebedee may have been swelling with pride and grinning from ear-to-ear. We can imagine John quickly looking back at his father and exchanging big smiles as they quickly nodded goodbye to one another. Then John and James would have quickly hopped off the boat and followed Jesus down the beach away from their past life. Did they laugh and punch the shoulders of their partners Simon and Andrew as they joined them?
What did Jesus think as He called these four rough, uneducated fishermen? Was He simply checking off a mental list of activities He had to do? “Four disciples called . . . check. What’s next on the list?” Did He smile at their enthusiasm? Was He sad as He looked at them and saw their futures of persecution and pain? Or did He feel satisfaction because He knew that these four would serve Him well and be His friends for eternity? Did He think, “Oh boy, I’ve got a lot of work to do to get them ready,” or did He see beautiful diamonds in the rough when He looked at these four fishermen? Based on other examples in the Bible, it is safe to assume that Jesus was regarding these new disciples in a positive light. For example, God called David a man after His own heart even though He knew all the really stupid and sinful actions that David would later do (1 Samuel 13:14). In another example of God’s positive outlook, God was pleased with Solomon’s request for wisdom even though He knew that Solomon would later bring apostasy into the kingdom (2 Chronicles 1:11).
God’s love is different from human love. When humans love someone, we see the good and bad and sometimes the bad keeps us from celebrating the good. For example, if we know that someone is going to die, we cannot be happy and enjoy the present, but God, while knowing our future failings, celebrates our present triumphs with us. How does He do this? It is a mystery, and we can only pray that He will give us the kind of love that draws out the best in others and enjoys the time we have with them no matter how short.
DAY 5–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 1:21-28 A Man with an Unclean Spirit
Suddenly there was a man in their synagogue who had an unclean spirit. He screamed, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet, and come out of him!” At this, the unclean spirit shook the man, cried out with a loud voice, and came out of him. All the people were so stunned that they kept saying to each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He tells even the unclean spirits what to do, and they obey him!” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
On a seemingly normal day, in a seemingly normal situation, in a place of worship that one would expect to be off-limits to Satan, a demon-possessed man showed up and disturbed the service. The Bible does not tell us if the possessed man normally attended synagogue, was brought there by family hoping for a cure, or showed up on his own to torment people. As his cries rang out among the worshippers, the demon would have been hoping to cause as much trouble for Jesus as possible, but it may also have been the case that the demon was overwhelmingly surprised to find Jesus, the Lord of lords, there in that obscure little synagogue and simply could not hold his peace. His motivations for shouting would depend on whether the demon-possessed man attended the synagogue regularly, or if he had come on that specific day solely to create problems for Jesus.
The demon emphasized several points in his diatribe. First, he called out the name Jesus of Nazareth emphasizing that Jesus came from a place where nothing good originated. Satan’s messengers always try to stir up the worst in people; in this case, the demon was attempting to create doubt that Jesus was the Messiah because of the people’s stereotype of Nazareth. This identification of Jesus as a Nazarene was also reminding the listeners that they knew where Jesus came from. In other verses in the gospels, it is emphasized that a common belief of the Jews of that time was that the Messiah would appear out of nowhere. No one would know where He would come from.
Then the demon-possessed man yelled out a question about destruction. One possibility for demanding whether Jesus had come to destroy them was that the demon was hoping that the people of Capernaum would think that it was asking if Jesus would bring destruction down upon the whole synagogue including the bystanders. The logic for this idea is that the demon uses the plural here yet there is no indication that there was more than one demon in the man. However, a more likely reason is that the demon was identifying with all the fallen angels. The demons know that there will come a day when they must face judgment for their sins, yet they continue to oppose God. Unfortunately, we humans do the same.
It may seem strange that the demon was truthfully identifying Jesus as the Messiah, but Jesus had frequently admonished people not to reveal His healings because it was not yet time. By identifying Jesus as the Holy One of God, the demon may have been hoping to bring persecution on Jesus early before time. We must remember that evil never promotes good, so if something pure seems to be coming from evil, we need to look beyond the delicious bait for the hook that will be used to drag us down into sin and death. Only by remaining within the guidance of the Bible can we remain safe.
Jesus gave two commands. One was to be quiet. The second was for the demon to release the man from its control. The man shook and cried out in a loud voice as the demon left. Were these physical manifestations because the demon was fighting against Jesus or because it was trying to kill the man as it left to bring condemnation on Jesus for the man’s death? The Bible does not tell us. In fact, there is much the Bible does not tell us about demons. This is an example that we should follow. Rather than homing in on demons and Satan, we need to center our attention on Jesus. Too many people have become fascinated with fallen angels. They search for details about the legions who serve evil and are not satisfied with the limited information in the Bible, so they turn to extrabiblical sources, never considering that the devil is a liar and will twist any information outside of God’s word to suit his own ends. We are only safe in this kind of investigation by staying within the information provided by the Bible, but most importantly, we should limit our fascination with the occult and focus on our Lord rather than our enemy.
This synagogue was in home territory for Jesus and his disciples. It was not in some far-off part of the Roman Empire. Frequently, Christians expect that miracles and supernatural occurrences will only happen in a strange exotic mission field in a foreign land, but God does not only work in faraway places. We should expect miraculous interventions in our own hometowns, among our families, and at work. Miracles happen everywhere because God’s Spirit is present everywhere. Too often, we overlook the evidence of God’s presence because we simply do not expect to see Him in our mundane worlds. In fact, we may even unthinkingly exclude God from our lives outside of church. However, our Master is not out-of-place in any location. Look for Him and the evidence of His presence wherever you are. You are His, and He is with you always in every situation.
If the demon was trying to cause trouble, it failed. Instead, the casting out of the demon added authority to Jesus. Thus, both Jesus’ ability to teach the spiritual lessons of the scriptures and His ability to exorcise demons with a simple command added to Jesus’ reputation in Galilee. The evil intentions of the demon resulted in more success for Jesus. The same can be true for us also. God has promised that He will turn evil around for good in His servants’ lives (Romans 8:28). The attacks of the enemy can be transformed into triumph if we will trust God and follow His guidance. Paul says that we are to thank God when we experience trouble because it will result in good (Romans 5:3). James says to count troubles as joy (James 1:2-3). Remember, Jesus could handle a demon, and He can handle the troubles you face also. Trust Him.
DAY 6–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 1:29-31 A Beloved Mother-in-law
After they left the synagogue, they went directly to the house of Simon and Andrew, along with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was lying in bed, sick with a fever, so they promptly told Jesus about her. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up. The fever left her, and she began serving them.
Some sources believe that archaeologists have found and excavated Peter’s house in Capernaum. If this is truly the home of Peter and Andrew, it was near to the synagogue, so the group would not have had far to walk from the location where Jesus had cast out the demon to Peter’s house. There was quite a large group gathering inside the home, including Peter’s brother Andrew, James, John and Jesus. Counting Peter’s wife and mother-in-law, there were at least seven people gathered in the house that day. The gospels tell us that James and John were fishing partners with Andrew and Peter, so it is quite likely that they had been to this house often in the past. The gospels also indicate that this was Jesus’ home base while in Capernaum.
A house’s claim to fame is often that someone famous slept there. Plaques are hung on walls to indicate that Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt had stayed overnight, and visitors flock to see such places. How much more honored is the house where the Son of God laid His head and ate meals, yet God does not honor such places. Instead, He values people. During the Middle Ages, it was quite common to make a pilgrimage to some “holy” place in order to receive a special blessing from God. How sad that these pilgrims did not understand that God’s blessings were available wherever they happened to be at the moment. As much as it would be wonderful to visit the site of Peter’s house and to imagine Jesus sleeping and eating there, it has no holiness or blessing to bestow upon us. We must always remember that our life with God is not about places or material objects. Only our relationship with God matters, and He has promised to be with us wherever we are.
Peter’s mother-in-law lived with Peter and his wife in their home. It was not common for a widowed mother-in-law to live with her son-in-law. Usually, she would have lived with her own sons unless she did not have any. Had Peter’s mother-in-law only bore daughters? Or had her sons died? Or was she living with Peter simply because he was better to her than her own sons? Maybe, she had come to stay temporarily to help her daughter out with the influx of people when Jesus came to visit. Then she had fallen sick with a fever. Without fanfare, Jesus simply took her by the hand and helped her up. Suddenly, she had no fever and was well enough to rise up and serve the guests.
At the end of John’s gospel, he says that Jesus performed so many amazing actions that the world could not contain the books if it were all written down (John 21:25). Maybe, little miracles like the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law were common and simply not recorded among the many large miracles that Jesus performed. That would make sense because these little miracles could easily be explained away. For example, in this case someone could say that the mother-in-law was faking it, and when Jesus helped her up, she could not pretend to be sick anymore. Or they could claim that the healing was a coincidence. In addition, Jesus’ motives in healing someone like this could have been viewed cynically. People might say that Jesus only healed her because He wanted someone to serve Him. Thus, the lesser miracles that could be criticized and taken out of context would not have been included in the gospels. However, Mark is writing stories that were part of Peter’s sermons, and Peter would have included this little miracle because it was part of his own personal testimony of being with Jesus.
The stories in this section of Matthew reveal that Jesus had little downtime. On this particular morning, Jesus had gone to synagogue where He cast out a demon. After synagogue, He walked to Peter’s house where He healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. Later that evening when the sun went down, crowds of people converged on Peter’s house for even more miracles and signs. It is no wonder that Jesus had to rise up early before everyone else the next morning in order to squeeze in a little time alone in prayer with His Father. This day was not an anomaly. Jesus packed as much activity for His Father in one twenty-four-hour period as He possibly could. He knew that He had only a short time to minister to humans physically, and He had to get in as much intervention as possible. Jesus knew that timing was crucial, so He stayed among people constantly ministering and teaching them in the daylight and used the nighttime hours alone with His Father away from the crowds and duties.
Following Jesus’ example, we need to use our time well. We should minister to others as much as possible, but we also need time alone. We can use our free time when we are away from people to know God better. This time is precious and needs to be used wisely rather than squandered in extra sleep and pointless games or movies. Wake up early in the morning in order to have time with God before the business of the day begins. Find time in the evening to relax in prayer with God. Entertainment is meaningless and wasteful if it does not enhance our relationship with God, so if it is interfering with our ability to study God’s word or spend time with Him in prayer, we need to choose God over watching another pointless movie or playing an endless video game. The busier we are, the more we need to preciously guard our relationship with Jesus. Instead of feeling that we have squandered our days in empty activities, we will find life much more satisfying if we use our precious moments of freedom to be filled with God.
DAY 7–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 1:32-39 More Healings at Peter’s House
When evening came, after the sun had set, people started bringing to him everyone who was sick or possessed by demons. In fact, the whole city gathered at the door. He healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons. However, he wouldn’t allow the demons to speak because they knew who he was.
This was on a Saturday evening. Jesus and His disciples had started their morning by attending the local synagogue. Jesus had amazed the people with his authority and message. In the midst of His teaching, He was interrupted by a demon-possessed man. Jesus silenced and cast out the demon with a simple command awing all the worshippers. Then Jesus and company walked the short distance to Peter’s house. When the group reached their destination, Jesus was informed of the illness of Peter’s mother-in-law. Taking hold of her hand, Jesus healed her and helped her to rise. She immediately began to energetically serve her many guests. Jesus, Peter, Andrew, James, John, Peter’s wife, and his mother-in-law would have enjoyed a quiet afternoon of relaxing companionship until about 6:00 or so when the sun set. At that point, their private time was interrupted as what seemed like the whole city began gathering outside of Peter’s house.
Some people had been present at the synagogue and were drawn to Peter’s home to learn more from this great teacher who could cast out demons with a simple word. After leaving the synagogue that morning, they would have spread the word to friends and family about Jesus’ astounding teaching and actions. However, it is possible that someone had also spread the news of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. Added to the news of the events of the day, Jesus’ fame from previous incidents outside of Capernaum might have already preceded Him into the city. Regardless of how word reached the residents, it had a predictable effect. As soon as Sabbath was over, the flow of people began. They came to Peter’s house with their sick and their demon-possessed, and Jesus healed them and drove out the demons. Like the demon in the morning, these demons tried to cause trouble, but Jesus wouldn’t let them speak of His identity. It was too early to be labeled as the Messiah, and the announcement of the arrival of the Holy One of Israel should not come from demons.
Peter felt that the whole city had shown up at his doorstep. The multitude who gathered at Peter’s door is not surprising because when Jesus is present, He draws people to Himself. We all have an empty space inside of our hearts that will only be filled with Jesus, so although many people came for physical healing and to be freed from demonic possession, they were looking for spiritual healing also. The crowds of Capernaum were drawn there in order to find the one Being who could complete them and make them whole.
This story is repeated today on a worldwide scale. When Jesus is present, people are drawn to Him. As Christians, it is our duty to present our Savior to a society longing for a cure to their many ailments. We may still be in the process of being cleansed and healed ourselves, but even in this broken state, we can point the way to Jesus. If we make sure that Jesus is present with us wherever we go, others can be drawn to Him also. People today are no less broken than they were on that evening in Capernaum when residents of the city crowded around the home of a local fisherman. However, the defeated and sick people of the world will not be able to find Jesus for healing unless someone tells them where to look. That is our job and our privilege.