Year 2 Day 49

Year 2 Day 49

Pray (ACts)

Read - Mark 1:35-39

Message - Alan Burke

We can all get to the stage where we just want some peace and quiet from the world, we’ve been busy, the phone hasn’t stopped, we’ve been running after the kids, sorting out the house or the garden, trying to do too many things at once and getting no where near what we would want to achieve, achieved. Or maybe that’s just me. It would have been late in the evening before the crowds had dissipated, well into the night, it had been a busy day, he had taught, cast out evil spirits, healed the sick and now we are told very early in the morning Jesus goes off to pray, he needs solitude.

Then the disciples all in a tizzy come out to him and they in effect say “Jesus what are you at, there are more important things to be doing that what your doing, lets return”. These disciples saw the crowds coming, the momentum building and likely their preconceived ideas of the coming of the Kingdom of God was making them think “this is it, let’s ride this wave”. Look though to the response of Jesus, verse 38, as Jesus makes it clear he wasn’t interested in the fleeting adulation of the crowd and tells them “let’s go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come”

Were not told of any further discussion, no doubt they would have been gobsmacked, what on earth. But Jesus came to preach to all of Israel, to preach of how the kingdom of God is near, to preach “repent and believe the good news” (14). His mission was not to heal the sick or preform signs and wonders, they were secondary to the message he preached and what he came to do. In his moving on from there he takes another step closer to his ultimate purpose to die on the cross to save sinners. Jesus was both the messenger and the message, there is no good news without him. 

More often than not were like those disciples who ran to Jesus eager to do something than spending time looking to our heavenly Father in prayer, we are more keen to ‘do’ than to ‘pray’, but we need to be dependant on God, our need for his help, I need to remember this in all I do and so do we all. We are also the importance of the proclaimed word, the preached word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom 10:17). Jesus priority was declaring the kingdom of God the importance of repentance and faith, as soon as this isn’t our priority then we have erred grievously, this is our primary task as the church. To preach the good news, the gospel should not be secondary, the stuff we do doesn’t matter unless the priority is what we proclaim. 

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC
Q58 What is required in the fourth commandment?
The fourth commandment requireth the keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his Word; expressly one whole day in seven, to be a holy Sabbath to himself. (Deut. 5:12–14)