Humanity's Hope for Healing

Transcript

Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. It is good to be with you this morning. I was thinking this morning, it’s been so long since I’ve been able to open up God’s Word with you, and so I’m really, really excited to be here with you this morning to open up God’s Word. I’ve been waiting for this day. And so, if you would please turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 6, and we’ll begin at verse 53. Mark chapter 6, verse 53. When they had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret, and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized Him and went about

the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard He was. And whenever He came, wherever He came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe of His garment. And as many as touched it were made well. Well, it’s been a long time since we’ve been in Mark’s Gospel. In fact, the last time we were in Mark’s Gospel was probably the last week of May. And so, that’s about four months. Now, a lot has happened in four months with our world, with our city, and even in our church. In fact, we’ve gone through two sermon series since the last time we were in Mark. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably struggling a bit to remember where we left off in Mark’s Gospel and the specific events that brought us to where we are in our passage

this morning. Well, the beautiful and providential thing about our passage this morning is that its intended purpose in Mark’s narrative is to serve as an overview of everything that has happened up to this point in Mark’s Gospel. So really, in these four short verses, what you get is somewhat of a highlight reel, a redemption reel of what has been happening throughout the first six chapters of Mark’s Gospel. And so, this is a perfect place for us to pick back up where we left off. Now, the reason why Mark gives us this summary statement that’s sandwiched in the middle of this book is because we’re coming close to this transition in Mark’s Gospel, where we’re moving away from what we might call the boat narratives, where Jesus has been bouncing around in this boat in all these regions of Jewish religious people doing ministry. We’re now coming to this portion of Scripture where Jesus begins to spread his ministry

The Reality of Brokenness

among irreligious Gentiles. And so, this here is somewhat of a bridge between these two transitions. But just because this is a summary doesn’t mean that this isn’t significant for us this morning. In fact, this passage, we’ll find, is very relevant to us this morning. And so, by the grace of God and by the aid of his Spirit, what I want to do is focus our attention on the central theme of these four verses. And that theme is humanity’s hope for healing. And as we move through these four verses, there’s four things that I want to pull your focus on. And that is the reality of brokenness, the reputation of Jesus, the response of the crowd, and the readiness to heal. And they’re kind of all mixed up in these four passages, but I’m going to do my best to kind of pull them apart. And so, let’s begin at verse 53 with the reality of brokenness.

When they had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. Now, just to set some context, the last time we were in Mark’s gospel, Jesus had just finished preaching and feeding a crowd of 5,000 people. Immediately after that, he sent his disciples in a boat across to the other side of the shore while Jesus stayed behind to find some rest, a quiet place to pray and to rejuvenate as he began to think about engaging in ministry again. Well, as his disciples were making their way across the shore, a storm hit, a windstorm. And the disciples got stuck in the middle of the sea.

They were rowing and rowing and they could not get to the other side of the shore. Well, of course, Jesus from the mountaintop sees them in their despair, sees them in their misery, and Jesus begins to step out on the waters. And as he’s walking on the waters, his disciples see what they think is a ghost and they begin to freak out. They think it’s a ghost. Well, Jesus meets them in their fear and in their distress and says, take heart. It’s I. It is I. Don’t be afraid. Jesus gets in the boat and immediately the wind subsides. And this is where our passage picks up this morning as Jesus takes his disciples safely to the shore. And right as they anchor their boat to the shore and their feet touch the ground, the people immediately recognize Jesus. The people recognize this miracle worker, their hope for healing.

Jesus’s Reputation Precedes Him

Now the reason why they recognize Jesus is because Gennesaret, this village, is on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee and it’s nested on the outskirts of Capernaum. And if you remember, that’s where Jesus has been spending most of his time doing this miraculous work. And so Jesus’s reputation of a healer had preceded his arrival into the town of Gennesaret. The people heard these amazing stories, these miraculous stories about his ability to heal. Jesus had been trending in the region. And so when Jesus finally steps on the scene, hope begins to flood their hearts. And really what lies underneath all of this excitement is hope. It’s hope. The reality is that Gennesaret and the surrounding towns were full of broken people. People so badly broken and in desperate need of help. Now you have to remember, this is first century culture. Modern medicine or sophisticated surgical procedures had not yet existed in this culture.

So there was not much hope for broken and needy people. People who needed to be healed. And so Jesus was, for many of these people, an act of desperation. The only hope to fix what is broken about them. And so the people began to run to him. People bring their broken relatives and friends on their sickbeds to Jesus, full of hope and expectation. This is what desperate, needy, and helpless people do. They run to the only source of possibility. They run to their lifeline. And you see this neediness, this desperation, this running towards hope. This isn’t unique to first century culture. The need for and hope for healing is just as relevant in our modern world. We all know this. Imagine sitting in a cold and sterile hospital room, awaiting the results that you know is likely going to be bad. You’ve known for some time that something hasn’t felt right with your body.

And as the doctor quietly enters the room, you can tell immediately from the countenance on his face that the results are far worse than you expected. And as the doctor closes the door behind him, he slowly and soberly tells you that it’s a rare blood disease. And at this point, I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing more that we can do. There’s no medicine that can help for this particular blood disease. There’s no treatment. Imagine how you would feel in that moment. Hopeless. Deep hopelessness. A sobering sense of finality. But then imagine that your friend, your friend tells you about this specialist. One who deals exclusively with your seemingly incurable blood disease. Who has a solid reputation in the medical field, whose cure rate is 100%. Now how would you respond? What would you do? You would run towards this lifeline with confident expectation and with hope-filled expediency.

And that’s precisely what these people did. They ran to Jesus because they had physical needs that desperately needed to be met. And Jesus, the specialist, was the only one who could meet their needs. And this is precisely what we would do. We would run to the only hope for healing. Now of course we would do this with our physical needs if our bodies were broken. But we wouldn’t necessarily do this with the other aspects about us that are broken. You see, the truth is there are other parts of us that are broken that need fixing. Brokenness isn’t limited to the body. There’s emotional brokenness. There’s relational brokenness. And most importantly, there’s spiritual brokenness. And brokenness isn’t limited to a select few people. A small pocket of unfortunate people. Listen, all people are broken in some way. Our entire world is broken. And it’s broken because of sin.

In fact, it’s the direct result or consequence of sin. At its core, that’s what it is. See God’s original design for creation and humanity was perfect and complete. We see that in Genesis 1, right out of the gate, in the beginning God created. And throughout this creation song that God sings, the constant chorus of this song is it is good. And that word good means beautiful, efficient, usable, which is the opposite of broken. So in Genesis 1, God creates this good world and he entrusts his good world to his creatures and by Genesis 3, his creatures have already begun to break this good world. Adam and Eve, the first humans through disobedience, deception, and blame began to break it. And the degree of brokenness only increased. By the time Adam and Eve have children, humanity graduates from disobedience and deception to envy and murder. That’s just with their children.

By the time you get to chapter 6, humanity is so immersed in sin, God’s world is so broken, God decides I gotta start over. Scripture says the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was so great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was so evil continually, (that’s a lot), that the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth. That’s how broken the world became. And so God decided to flood the earth and start over. But the waters of the flood did not wash away the brokenness of our world. And so sin continued and it spread and now it has permeated every aspect of creation. And the brokenness of our world is even more prevalent today. The effects of sin are so obvious. We see it everywhere. In fact, you’ve likely seen the effects of brokenness this morning as you traveled to

this church building. Drug addiction, homelessness, strip clubs, boarded up buildings, broken windows, hate-filled graffiti, and that’s just right outside our sanctuary doors. The realities of our broken world are so evident and so bad that creation itself is groaning, longing for things to be made right. And this is true of humanity. As sinful as humanity is, humanity is longing for things to be made right. I mean, just look at our world right now. Humanity is looking everywhere to fix the brokenness of our world. They see plainly that things are not right, that things are not how it should be. They see injustice. They see hate. They see bigotry. They see ugliness. They see lovelessness. They see the total and disregard for human dignity and value. And so they seek healing and restoration through politics, policy, and protest. But it does not work. Many people believe that the problems with our broken society here in America is intrinsic

to the building of the American society. That America at its core is so fundamentally evil and bad that if we just destroy it and start over, that things will be better off. That things won’t be as broken anymore. But that won’t work. Because breaking things to fix things will never work, ultimately because all of those attempts to make things better are tainted by sin. The problem with broken humanity is that humanity itself is broken and can’t fix itself. Humanity needs someone who is not broken to put back together what we broke in the first place. And so humanity is needy and longing for healing. But the truth is, the only hope for healing is found in Jesus Christ. Because Jesus, though He was fully human, though He is fully human, He is at the same time fully God. He is without sin. He is not broken by sin, so He alone can heal broken people.

See, only a perfect God can break things to fix things. And that’s exactly what He did. His body was broken to fix what humanity broke through sin. This is precisely what He came to do, to break Himself for broken humanity. Through His life and His ministry, through His death and resurrection, through His reign and rule, He is progressively making all things new, fixing what is broken in the here and now until the day when He returns to completely fix this broken world. This is a very real hope. This is the world’s only hope. And we get a glimpse of this renovation process through Mark’s gospel, as His recreation kingdom invades earth to renovate the broken parts of it. Mark’s gospel is flooded with all types of needy people, hope-filled people, who approach Jesus for healing. And this is again what we see in our passage this morning.

Crowds and crowds of people approach Jesus because He is their only hope for healing. And why is it that the crowd is so confident to bring their broken people to Jesus before they even ask Jesus if Jesus will heal? That’s because of the reputation of Jesus. Jesus was known by His compassion, His approachability, His love and His care, and most importantly, His willingness to heal. Crowds and crowds of people in desperate need came to Jesus. They threw themselves at the feet of Jesus because of His compassion and willingness. The people understood that He was capable of healing. They understood that He could do it, but what made people run to Him was His willingness to do it. Jesus was not only able to meet their needs, but He wanted to meet their needs. He loved to meet their needs. And this is a testament of the God that we serve.

This is a picture of the character and kindness of the God that we worship, the God who loves to heal. And if we, who are the people of God, are to imitate the love, care, and compassion of God, I wonder, does our reputation precede us? Does the world know us by our love, compassion, and approachability? Are we a light in this city? Brothers and sisters, you need to know that the pastors of this church care deeply. We are concerned about the reputation of this church in our city because we care about the broken people of this city. And so we make a conscious effort to maintain a Christian witness in this community. We desire, as best as we can, to maintain a good reputation so that more and more broken people in this neighborhood and in this city might come to this church in hopeful pursuit

of the God who saves, of the God who brings spiritual healing. Now, let me be clear. This doesn’t mean that we won’t ever offend people. We will eventually offend people because the exclusive gospel, when it’s preached in a pagan and pluralistic world and in a pluralistic city, will offend people. Ultimately, the gospel is offensive. But we just want to make sure that it’s the gospel that offends people, not our preferences, our personal freedoms, or even our constitutional liberties. So we as a church, as a collective body, care about our reputation. But what about our personal reputations? I wonder if we are living our personal lives in such a way where we exhibit the love, compassion, and approachability of Jesus. In other words, are we living as individuals in this city with salt and light? Is our Christian witness an attractive witness to a broken and watching world?

Or do we look no different from the world? Are we living and speaking and interacting with each other with love, compassion, and approachability? Are we engaging each other with the hope of the gospel? The scripture tells us that the world will know us by our love. Are we loving each other in such a way that the world is attracted to it? Are we marked by a reputation of hope, the only hope for broken people in this world? Or are we acting like the rest of the world, looking for hope in broken people and in broken systems? Does our reputation precede us? Do we look and act like Jesus? Listen, the crowds of people heard the good report about the love, compassion, and willingness of Jesus, and so they bring their people, their broken people, to Jesus. See, this is what the reputation of Jesus provoked in people.

The Response of Faith

It provoked a response, the response of the crowd. This is what you see. The crowd dragged their broken friends and relatives on their sickbeds to Jesus. They literally ran around the entire region, grabbing the people that they knew who were sick and needy, and brought them to Jesus. You have to remember, in first century culture, they brought people whose bodies were broken to the only one who could fix their problems. See, this is a no-brainer for the crowds. They they see Jesus, he heals, let’s go. It’s really that simple. Their friends and relatives had physical needs that only Jesus could meet, so in an act of desperation, they dragged them on their sickbeds to Jesus. Now we’ve seen this kind of scenario before in Mark’s gospel, with the paralytic man and his four friends. These men were so desperate for their paralytic friend to be healed that they literally rip

open the roof, and they drop their friend down through the roof in a makeshift harness at the feet of Jesus. And at the center of that story, what you see is faithful love from friends, putting their love into action, and the faithful love of Jesus, who not only heals this paralytic man, but forgives his sins. What a beautiful picture of friendship, who bring their needy friend to a faithful God who heals the body and the soul. And I wonder this morning, are you that kind of friend? Are you the kind of friend who brings spiritually broken people, the broken people in your life, to the only one who can heal them spiritually? This is what loving your friends looks like, practically and faithfully. If you truly love them, you will be concerned about their souls. Do you ever bring up Jesus to your unbelieving friends?

Or is awkwardness the impediment to their spiritual healing? If your friends’ bodies were physically broken, what would you do? You would take them to the hospital in a heartbeat. But why is it that we rarely invite our spiritually broken friends to church? You see, the church is the hospital for the broken souls of people. And listen, I’m asking that question of myself. I think we oftentimes don’t talk about Jesus or don’t invite our unbelieving friends to church because deep down inside, we struggle to believe that Jesus is really powerful enough. Or we struggle with the reality that Jesus is willing to heal them spiritually. But this text this morning shows us that he is powerful enough and he is willing to restore. If we would only help our unbelieving friends understand their need. If we would only help them understand they are broken and that Jesus is the only way

Ready and Willing to Heal

to fix them, Jesus is willing and mighty to save. And that’s what we see here in verse 56, with the readiness to heal. Mark 6, verse 55, and wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well. Wherever Jesus went, broken people were present. The people are brought to Jesus because Jesus is able to heal, because he is powerful to heal. The crowd is thoroughly convinced, given Jesus’ track record, that they say to Jesus, just let us touch your garment and we’ll be healed. We believe you can do it. Healing for you is effortless. We’ve seen it over and over again. In fact, you don’t have to do anything. If you’re willing, you can just stand there, we’ll touch your garment, and be restored.

That’s how confident they are. And here you see what is so profound about the God that we serve. He is powerful enough to do it. And he is willing enough to do it. And he actually does it. He actually does it. All the people who touched his garments are made well. Needy people come to Jesus, the only one who could meet their needs. And he healed all that came to him. Listen, Jesus knows why the people came to him. He knows their only interest in him was for physical healing. Their motivation for coming to him was to get from him healing for their broken bodies. But notice Jesus doesn’t push them away because of their motives. He knows their hearts. He understands that they’ve come to him for temporal and superficial reasons. But he heals anyway. And why does he do this? Because of his pity and compassion for broken people, regardless of their motives.

Even though people come to him to take from him, he still meets their needs. You see, the crowd’s biggest problem was not that they asked Jesus to heal their broken bodies. It’s that they asked him to only heal their broken bodies. They asked for far too little from Jesus. See, these people were standing in the presence of God. Who can heal broken bodies, but who forgives sins and gives eternal life? But these people were preoccupied with physical healing only. And what a sad situation. Their request was so temporal. I mean, what good is it to heal the physical body, but not be healed spiritually? Every single one of these people who received healing from Jesus eventually died. Their physical healing was temporary, but they ultimately died. And death is eternal. Which means then that their greatest need for healing is a spiritual need. And so you wonder, why did Jesus heal their physical bodies in the first place?

Our Greatest Need

Why did Jesus miraculously meet their physical needs? Because the miracles were meant to point them to something so much more meaningful. Every miracle of physical healing is a metaphor of God’s restoring and redemptive work. Meeting the physical needs of people is meant to point them to the only one who could meet their greatest need, the forgiveness of your sin and salvation for your soul. Jesus is powerful enough to save you. He is powerful enough to save you. He is willing to save you. You just need to come to him with your neediness. The song we sang this morning says, come ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. That’s exactly what this passage is about. Have you experienced this hope? Have you experienced this hope? If you have, then it’s owing all to the grace of God.

The fact that you’ve experienced this hope is his compassion and love towards you. If you’ve come to him in your neediness, then he has made you spiritually whole through his broken body. Your greatest need has been met, which means then, no matter what happens in this life, emotional brokenness, relational brokenness, and even physical brokenness, whatever happens, you’ve been made spiritually well. He has healed your soul. You are spiritually secure. And so nothing can separate you from the love of God. This is the hope that we have because of the gospel. And if you are here this morning, or you are listening to this sermon, and you have no hope, and you are trusting in broken people and broken systems to make you right with God, it won’t work. Only Jesus can save you. And here is the beauty, as we’ve seen in our text this morning.

He’s approachable. He’s willing. He’s able to do it. And if you come to him, if you come to him in your neediness, he will save you. He will save you. As we close this morning, I wanted to read something to you from a book of poetry written by Paul Tripp. He’s written this poem about hope, and I think it’s perfectly relevant to our text this morning. The only hope. The only help. The only rescue. The only healing. The only solace. The only balm. The only redemption. The only restoration for a broken, dysfunctional, sin-scarred, evil-infected, morally fallen, dark and dangerous world isn’t found in information, socialization, education, political solution, psychological insight, or personal reformation. But in a willing birth, righteousness, humiliation, suffering, sacrifice, and resurrection of a God-man-redeemer, no idea can liberate. No power can save. No institution can redeem, restore, resuscitate, or recreate what sin has destroyed.

So a son had to come, son of God, son of man. The creator came to recreate. The savior came to be the sacrifice. The blessed one came to suffer, and in suffering, to bless the world with hope, help, rescue, healing, solace, balm, redemption, and restoration. The cost of it all was his life. It was his birth mission, his resurrection victory. History marched toward his coming. There was no other way. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we are thankful for this summary passage, because what’s contained in this summary passage is so powerful and so hopeful for our broken world. You are the only hope for our broken world. In this passage, we see our greatest hope, that you are coming again to make all things new, to recreate this broken world, to fix your broken people. And you’ve begun that process, even now, through your son, whose body was broken on our behalf.

And because of that, Father, we worship you. Thank you for rescuing us. Thank you for healing us. Thank you for the hope we have. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.