Today’s passage: Mark 1:21-45
Helpful thoughts:
- Jesus’ teaching and healing (Both physical and spiritual) are presented in this passage.
- The people were amazed by both. It seems however they were more interested in healing.
- Jesus was more interested in teaching, but with pity He also healed.
- He spoke with authority over all things.
- When scribes spoke, they had to reference others who had gone before. When Jesus spoke, His words were the words of God!
- Jesus is Lord over all. Even sickness and the demons must obey Him.
- When anyone touched the unclean (e.g. leprosy) they also became “unclean.” Not so with Jesus. When Jesus touches the unclean, they are made clean!
Questions to consider:
- Why are people prone to desire physical healing over spiritual nourishment and salvation? Have people changed since the 1st century? How is this greater desire for the physical/temporal even evidenced in the church at times?
- At the same time, why is it right to also pray for the physical and temporal? Who is Lord of all?
- In what way can we eternally sympathize with the man who became physically “clean?” When Jesus took our sin upon Himself, what did we become? (1 John 1:9)