Mark 4

Chapter 4. The Master Workman in Relation to Sickness and Healing(Part 2)There remain for consideration four other miracles of healing by the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, which will be found to enlarge yet more the scope of the Master’s teaching with respect to the gospel of healing still committed to our hands. The Living and Life-Giving Touch (Mark 5:25-34) The graphic story of the woman who pressed through the crowd until she touched the hem of His garment and instantly drew from Him life for her immediate and perfect healing, has one preeminent message for us as Christian workers and subjects of the Lord’s healing power and blessing, namely, the necessity on our part of that living faith which will give to us personal contact with the living Christ. The Lord had already hinted in His striking message to the leper that a distinct responsibility rested upon the sufferer in receiving the healing which He was willing to give. There it was expressed as an act of will through which the leper was commanded to meet the Lord’s will and take what was so freely given. Here it is represented under the figure of a touch. There is no human sense more delicate and distinct in its manifold offices than the sense of touch. The grasp of a responsive hand means more than words could possibly express. The kiss of affection between still more intimate friends has always been the expression of the deepest love. The hand of the worshiper upon the head of his sacrifice identified him with his offering. The hand of the healer upon the sufferer was always the token of the Master’s imparted life and blessing. Our word “contagion” simply expresses the power of contact in communicating malign influences and physical disease. In the material world and mechanical realm the meeting of two currents through the contact of the communicating wires completes the electric circuit and illuminates the darkness and turns on the power. In persons deprived of their ordinary senses, as the blind and deaf, the sense of touch becomes intensely acute. In our spiritual nature there are senses that correspond to all our physical powers, and there is a touch of faith and even of feeling which opens the channels of communication between God and our responsive being. Faith is much more than an intellectual assent to certain truths. It is also a recognizing of the divine presence and a contact with the personal life of the Lord Jesus. The apostle, speaking to the Athenians, refers to humanity even in its native blindness as seeking the Lord if they “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). And the Apostle John, speaking of fellowship with the Lord Jesus, the Living One, uses this realistic language, “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Even in the Old Testament experience of believers we find such saints as David distinctly recognizing the supernatural presence of Jehovah and using such language as this, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me” (Psalms 63:8). There is probably in every human heart to some extent an instinctive reaching out after God. But when the Holy Spirit quickens into spiritual life and vivifies all the senses of our higher nature, then Christ becomes to us indeed, “a living, bright reality.” This woman had already that spiritual instinct that felt its way to Jesus. Something in the depths of her being told her that He had the help she needed, and that if she could but touch Him, her faith and need could draw it out and claim it for her healing. This was not a matter wholly dependent on the will of the Lord and the exercise of His voluntary help. The moment she touched Him, He was conscious instantly that virtue, or as the Greek express it, “dynamite,” had gone out from Him. The Lord was so full of redundant life that He was ready to communicate it through every open channel. Like the sun in yonder heavens that does not need to put forth a special effort to reach a dark alley and a lonely chamber, but necessarily enters wherever there is an open window, so the Lord Jesus was always giving, and the moment hungry and believing hearts came within His influence they drew from His fullness all they had capacity to take. He is still the same, “on the giving hand,” as a happy, stereotyped phrase so often expresses it, You do not need at mercy’s gate, To knock, and weep, and watch, and wait, For mercy’s gate is open free, And Christ has waited long for thee. But there must be capacity to take. There must be a power to touch. In the science of wireless telegraphy the instruments at the receiving end must be turned up to the same pitch as those at the other end. Our faith must be in tune with God, and when it is, there is no limit to the blessing we may claim. Therefore God is always saying to us, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalms 81:10). “Whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Revelation 22:17). “He who doubts… that man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:6-7). This is true salvation, the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and the communication of every blessing. But it is especially true in connection with divine healing. It is not enough to believe that Christ is able to heal you, nor even that He is willing to heal you, nor even that He is going to heal you. You must go farther, or rather you must come nearer. You must recognize the Healer Himself as present; and you must reach out through all the darkness and the pain and the conflict of doubt and fear until you touch Him and are conscious that somewhere in that viewless space there is a living presence, there is a loving heart, there is a mighty force that is pouring itself into every vessel of your need and continuing to pour itself as long as the contact is maintained. For it is not enough to touch Him once and then detach yourself and attempt to live an independent and self-constituted life. The secret of permanent healing and strength is to continue to live in dependence upon Him, physically as well as spiritually. It was a great physical truth that the apostle expressed when he said, “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). It was the same truth the Master more profoundly expressed when He said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me” (John 6:56). “Remain in me, and I will remain in you…. apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). I remember in one of my former congregations a little woman of the most ordinary type whom I had often visited, but had never been able to touch a single string of sympathy, response or life in her cold, dead nature. At one time, however, I found on calling that she was absent and she remained away for many months. On her return I called again and was surprised to find that the woman was transformed. Her face was radiant with animation and almost beautiful in its new expression of sympathy and intensity. I asked her what had happened, and she told me of the terrible trial through which she had gone in which health, life, home and everything were at stake, but nothing was left her but God. Then for the first time she learned to pray, and in her own simple, graphic way, she said, “At last I prayed and prayed and prayed until I actually touched Him.” There was no mistaking the expression of her countenance as she used the words. The contact was still there and the power was still on. And then she told how the wondrous deliverance had come, and all her circumstances had changed, and all her trials had gone. But greatest of all was the change in herself, for God was now more real to her than either joy or sorrow or earthly friend or foe. Oh, beloved, that is the trouble with you. You have not touched Him. There are many other minor lights and shades in this beautiful picture, most of which we must pass by. It has been observed by thoughtful expositors that what this woman touched was the hem of His garment. The border of the Rabbi’s robe was called the phylactery. It was a fringe chiefly made up of quotations from the Word of God. It would seem as if God was intimating to us that the way to touch Him first at least is through His Word. You cannot see His face; you cannot feel the physical contact of your outstretched hands, but you can claim His promise and know that the Promisor is true and near, and it shall be your joy to know But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has yet its Olivet, And love its Galilee. The healing of His seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life’s throng and press, And we are whole again. It should be added (and it is a point of no little importance), that this woman’s healing was but a prelude to a greater blessing. The Lord would not let her off with a mere outward touch, but insisted on bringing her into the inner chamber of His love and blessing. And when with trembling lips and prostrate form she fell at His feet and told her story, almost asking forgiveness for her boldness, He met her with the reassuring words and double blessing, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering” (Mark 5:34). A few chapters before it was, “Son,” now it is “Daughter.” Contact with Christ lifts us into the family of God. The touch of a king can make a royal knight, but the touch of Jesus makes us the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. How often divine healing becomes, as in the case of this woman, the steppingstone to greater blessing. How many of us have found in it the introduction to a closer fellowship with God, and the key to all the chambers of faith, and prayer, and power, and heavenly blessing. The Deaf Mute of Decapolis Mark 7:23-27This miracle is peculiar to Mark, and the record of it is in keeping with the graphic pictorial style of the writer. We will also find in this example some special additional lessons. The first is suggested by the statement that when they brought this sufferer to the Master and besought Him to put His hand upon him, He did not do so immediately, but “took him aside, away from the crowd” (Mark 7:33). Christ never performed miracles as spectacles for the gaping crowd, nor does He do it yet. The men that want to parade divine healing as a spectacular attraction belong to another world than that of the lowly Nazarene. He knew full well that the eyes of the multitude could only distract this man and hinder his faith. And still, before He can do much for us, He has to take us aside from the multitude. You must get alone with the Lord. There is so much danger of leaning on other people and looking to other people. Some of them have been healed and you are trying to get the experience that way. Some of them have not been healed, and the devil is using their failure to discourage your faith. We are too anxious to get our blessings in congregations and assemblies and meetings. The Lord’s best work is done when you and He meet face to face and alone. The next thing He did was to endeavor to reach this man’s spirit through his senses. He put His fingers into his ears, where his physical infirmity was chiefly seated, and then He took a little of His own saliva and touched the tongue of the deaf mute. He was speaking to him in signs, and so He still uses a few outward signs as steppingstones to our faith. Anointing with oil in the name of the Lord is not a means in a medical sense; it is simply an outward sign to suggest through the senses more vividly the spiritual reality which it signifies. The same is true of the Lord’s supper and baptism. It is a symbol, and the Lord addresses us through every vehicle which can convey to us His thought and His touch. Then He added another sign of singular beauty and impressiveness. Looking up to heaven He sighed. This flashlight picture is worthy to stand beside the immortal words of John, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). It speaks more than volumes could express, and no one yet perhaps has sounded the full depths of that heavenward “sigh.” Was it an involuntary expression of His own intense sadness, with this spectacle of human infirmity and the great world of sufferers who seemed to stand behind him in the circle of the Master’s vision; or was it an object lesson to the helpless and undeveloped soul before Him, intended to teach him how he could reach out even in his helplessness to the help that was waiting for him above? On another occasion the Lord breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). It would seem that the Lord was showing them how to receive the Holy Spirit by a deep inbreathing of God. So here He seemed to say to this speechless, impotent being, “You cannot pray in words; you have no voice to speak; but you have eyes, and you can look up to heaven, and you have lungs and lips, and you can breathe out your inarticulate cry, and that is prayer.” And doubtless the man responded and lifted up his eyes and reached out as well as he was able to with the wordless cry of his necessity. How finely one of our classic hymns has expressed this beautiful conception: Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear, The upward glancing of an eye, When none but God is near. The impression of this miracle on the community was intense. The Lord modestly tried to keep it quiet, but “the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. People were overwhelmed with amazement. ‘He has done everything well,’ they said. ‘He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak’” (Mark 7:36-37). Oh, Christian workers, can you say that your work is well done? Can you accept the Master’s “Well done” in all its fullness until you too have sighed like Him for human sorrow and helped, like Him, to dry its tears and heal its sickness? The Blind Man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26) This miracle is also peculiar to Mark, and its beautiful message is worth the whole gospel. The first lesson is a more emphatic repetition of the teaching of our last subject. “He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village” (Mark 8:23). There we noticed that He took the deaf mute aside from the multitude, but here we see something more deliberate and prolonged. He not only withdrew from the crowd, but from the town. It was not a momentary retirement, but it was a long continued walk; and surely it suggests that as they walked they talked. What would we not give to know the details of that conversation! The Lord saw that this man was wholly unprepared for the blessing he was seeking. There was something preliminary to his healing—spiritual preparation. The Lord was teaching us through him that the sick and suffering nature has to be put to school with God and to be led into those deeper experiences which will fit them to know and touch the Lord and afterwards abide in Him. Wise workers will always be patient, careful and thorough in the instruction of those that are seeking for help. It is so natural for human beings to want to be relieved, and then to forget the lesson of their trial when the pressure is removed, that God insists on letting them learn their lesson well. If we are wise workers, we will do likewise and always be patient, careful and thorough in the instruction of those that are seeking for help. Then we must not fail to notice that the Lord Himself led the man out of the town. He did not hand him over to Simon Peter or some other Christian worker. He took the case in hand Himself. He went into the inquiry meeting. Still He is willing to take infinite pains and patience with us. No man can bring healing to you. No man can prepare you for divine healing but the Lord. Until you have been alone with Jesus, you cannot know Him well enough even to touch Him for the experience of healing. This is why He has compelled you to let many things go and to go aside yourself where He can reach your ear and speak to your heart. It is an old story: “I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14). Once more we have another significant lesson in connection with the successive stages in the healing of this sufferer. After the Lord had touched him the first time, He asked him if he saw aught. “He looked up and said, ‘I see people; they look like trees walking around’” (Mark 8:24). Now the division of this miracle into two sections has a peculiar significance. We remember that the critics of the Lord’s miracles have sometimes said that a mere miracle of physical healing would not enable a blind man to see immediately, at least to see straight; for, as they correctly say, even after the perfect restoration of the organs of sight the man would still be like a child utterly inexperienced in the use of his eyes and unable to see things in their right relations and proportions. It is well known that to a child the moon appears as close as the adjoining chair. It reaches out its little hands to touch it, and only by long experience does it learn to know the difference between the near and the distant. It is said by science that the organs of vision alone reproduce the image of the object seen wrong side up as an ordinary telescope does, and then a mental operation is needed to correct this impression and give us properly adjusted sight. Now in this case the Lord divided His miracle into two sections. The first part appears to have been the physical correction of his distorted sight, the second, the correction of the mental impression. After the first touch he saw things, but they appeared to be confused and wrong side up—“men as trees walking.” After the second touch the operation was complete, and he looked up and “saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). Was this intended to show to a doubting world that the Lord understood their thoughts afar off and that His miracles took into consideration all conditions both mental, spiritual and physical? For us, however, the chief lesson is that the Lord’s healings are not now in every case immediate and complete any more than during His earthly ministry, but they are often gradual and in successive stages. He has much to teach us, and He cannot teach it all at once. The words here employed in the beautiful original suggest that the second time this man looked up he looked with a steadier eye and unwavering vision. The first time he was looking at men, and men sometimes do look very strange to us when we are trying to trust the Lord. The second time the Lord made him look up first, and then he could see every man clearly. The blessings of the Lord are not supplied on the principle of our modern quick lunch counters. The best things come to us slowly, and as we are fully prepared to receive them. Let us be willing to wait upon the Lord and follow Him step by step as He leads us by the hand and prepares us for the unfolding of all the stages of blessing which He has “prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).