I want to speak this morning on Mark chapter 3, verses 7 to 12, with the sermon title, The Great Things Jesus Did. The Great Things Jesus Did. I'll read those few verses once again. Mark 3, 7. But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea. And a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and from beyond Jordan, and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude. When they had heard what great things he did, came unto him. And he spake to his disciples that a small ship should wait on him, because of the multitude, lest they should throng him. For he had healed many insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues. And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. and he straightly charged them that they should not make him known. Well, the central themes of these verses today are the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ over disease and over evil spirits, and also the identity of Jesus, who Jesus is. These are two of the great themes of Mark generally, but they're especially prominent here in these few verses where we read of the fact that even the demons acknowledge the divine status of Jesus and call him the Son of God. Even the demons recognize Christ's authority and his true identity. And the same can be said of the massive crowds that we read of. The crowds that thronged to Christ. They believed that he had the power to heal them. But you know the other very serious lesson that we must glean from these few verses is that simply acknowledging the authority of Christ, simply acknowledging the identity of Christ is not enough. Because we know these crowds over time drifted away. They became indifferent and in time they became even hostile to the Lord Jesus Christ. Coming to Christ simply for physical healing or for some other kind of need is not enough in the end. Being attracted to Christ even, being attracted to Christian things, is not enough. What these verses teach us is that what is required is an authentic relationship with Jesus. And that requires faith and obedience. That really is the main and central message of my sermon today. We need to be more than just attracted to Jesus. We have to be his servant. He has to be our king. Let me remind you of where we are in our series. Last time we considered the great controversy over the Sabbath and that came to a head with the healing of the man with the withered hand and this appalled of course the Pharisees and we left things at verse 6 where we saw this astonishing alliance between the religious rulers and the Herodians. and they plotted to destroy, to kill the Lord Jesus Christ. But you know, those of us who have read the gospels and the epistles know that the Lord Jesus Christ had an appointed hour, didn't he? There was an appointed time for him to die. The Lord Jesus knew that he had come into this world to die upon the cross for the sins of the world, but it was at the appointed hour, when the right time came. So when Jesus became aware of the plot of the Pharisees and the Herodians to murder him, to destroy him, we read here in our text that he withdrew to the Sea of Galilee. these verses, 7 to 12, begin a new phase of Christ's ministry, which commentators often call the later Galilean ministry. What we've been studying so far is the early Galilean ministry. But this is the beginning of the later Galilean ministry, which is recorded by Mark in chapters 3, verse 7, to chapter 6 and verse 13. And Mark begins his record of this second phase of Christ's ministry by summarising the activity of Jesus and emphasising his enormous popularity resulting from his healings and from his exorcisms. And we read of this in verse 7 of the second part of verse 7, and a great multitude From Galilee followed him, and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and from beyond Jordan. And they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him. And in verse 8, Jesus even told his disciples to have a boat ready for him in case the crowds began to crush him. So in other words, at this point of his ministry, the Lord Jesus is drawing ever bigger, ever larger crowds. We've already read in our previous studies of how he became famous in Capernaum and then in all of Galilee. But now his fame has reached almost the entire area of what used to be the full kingdom of Israel. People from over a hundred miles away in Idumea, which is Edom, were part of the crowds. And they thronged to Christ from all these areas for healing from disease and for deliverance from demon possession. Can you imagine? I suppose there may be people today who are sort of Hollywood stars that might be able to imagine it. But can you imagine being so famous that vast crowds of people show up wanting to get close to you and touch you wherever you went? Well, that's what it was like for Jesus at this point in his ministry. But the question I want to ask was, what was the draw? What was the attraction? Was it true religion? Was it true piety? Well the attraction is explained in verse 10. For Jesus had healed many in so much that they pressed upon him for to touch him as many as had plagues. And so we see two things there, don't we? We see the power of the Messiah over sickness, But we also see, I think, the crowd's misunderstanding of what Jesus demonstrated through his miracles. You see, what motivated these vast crowds, which some commentators estimate to be in the tens of thousands of people? What's motivating them? It's excitement and enthusiasm for the healing power of Jesus. Now, I don't blame them. If you're ill, you'll do anything, won't you, to get well. I'm not blaming them. But I'm saying it's not enough. They're pressing forward to Jesus. They're travelling miles to get to him. And they're putting Jesus even potentially in physical danger, so much so that he has to have a kind of safety measure in place, a boat to withdraw to in case they crush him. Jesus had healed many. And like the Queen of Sheba, the people had heard the fame, as it were, of Solomon. They'd heard the fame of Jesus, and they traveled from far to see him. In Matthew's Gospel, chapter 4 and verse 23, we read that Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of disease among the people. And these healings included the deliverance from demons and evil spirits. Mark records in chapter one in verse 39, and Jesus preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee and cast out devils. And in our text today, in verse 11, it reads, and unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him and cried, saying, thou art the Son of God. Amazing miracles, great things he hath taught us, great things he hath done, we say. But what is the divine purpose in the healing ministry of the Lord Jesus? Well, the true purpose, the true reason for all of Christ's miracles, and this many in the crowd never understood, was to reveal the fact that Jesus is the only true King and that his kingdom has come. that was what these miracles were meant to convey. This ministry of healing and driving out demons displays or highlights the purpose of the Kingdom of God. And what is the purpose of the Kingdom of God? Well, it's to accomplish ultimately, the Bible teaches, the restoration of all things. I said at the beginning of this series that in the fullest sense, the definition of the Kingdom of God is the eternal, the new heavens and the new earth. That's the Kingdom of God. But Jesus Christ has come into the world and inaugurated it, started it. And the purpose of the Kingdom of God is to accomplish the restoration of all things. And the final form of this consummation will be the new heavens and the new earth, the Kingdom of God. And these extraordinary deeds of healing anticipate this consummation. Peter says this in Acts 3, 20 and 21. And he shall send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. You see, Jesus is reigning gloriously in heaven, interceding for us, waiting for the restitution of all things. You see, in other words, Jesus has come to do far more than heal individual diseases. Jesus came into the world to reverse the curse of sickness and death that came upon mankind as the result of Adam's original sin. Sickness leading to death was the curse that was placed upon man. Genesis 3.19, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Jesus displays through his supernatural power or he displays his supernatural power to reverse the original curse of sickness and death through his coming and through his miracles. And more than that, through his life of obedience and his death upon the cross to definitively remove sickness and death by dealing with the problem of sin. Most people and this was true of the vast crowds, I'm sure. Most people do not realize that of all their problems, the one with the gravest consequences is their problem of sin. You see, sin isn't just what we do, it's who we are by nature. We have a sinful nature. And everyone has inherited a sinful nature because the entire human race is descended from one man. A man who rebelled against God and we have all inherited his sinful nature. That's the plain teaching of scripture. That man's name was Adam. And the Apostle Paul summarizes this concept by simply saying that outside of Christ, all are in Adam. And everybody who's a Christian is in Christ. So in other words, mankind is classified under two heads. You're either in Adam or you're in Christ. And sin is in our DNA. It's natural to us. We don't have to go to college to learn it, do we? I didn't anyway. It came quite naturally to me. It's the air that we breathe. It's the water that we swim in. I expect all of us have been told by our parents that we resemble some ancestor in the family. My mum always tells me that I look like her dad, who I never met. But in terms of sin, in terms of our soul, we all bear the same family likeness. We all bear the likeness of Adam. He is the father of us all in that sense. The crowds in the main missed the purpose of these miraculous healings, which was to demonstrate that Jesus had come to deal with the root cause of sickness and death. He hadn't come to be a celebrity. He hadn't come to be Jesus Christ's superstar. He had come to be the suffering servant of Isaiah. He had come to take the consequences of his people's sins into himself in life and death. And he suffers for the sins of others, not for his own, because Jesus had no sin of his own. He was wounded, Isaiah says, for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. And therefore Jesus Christ is the answer to your biggest problem this morning, which is the problem of sin. Christ is the answer to your inherited sinful nature, which unless it's dealt with, will drag you ultimately into a lost eternity in hell. But you know, sickness and death are only one aspect of the original curse in the Garden of Eden. Because of Satan's role in the fall of mankind, God cursed Satan and his seed, his his descendants. It says, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. And this hatred, this enmity between God and the devil, between the seed of Satan and the seed of the woman, has continued unbroken all through the ages and all through the generations. And it came to a climax in the ministry of Jesus Christ. What was Christ teaching and displaying through delivering people from demons? He wasn't just putting on a show. He was displaying the fact that he had power to deliver fallen men and women from the control and the bondage of Satan. And in fact, it was even more than that. By his banishment of the demons, Jesus anticipates His final death blow to Satan's head, even as Satan bruises his heel at the crucifixion at the cross. I wonder if you realize that unless you are a Christian, unless you're saved, Satan has power over you. Bible teaches in 1 John 5.19 that ever since the fall of mankind, the whole world lieth in wickedness. Satan has a powerful hold upon the hearts and the minds of unbelievers. Paul describes Satan in Ephesians 2 verse 2 as the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Now I don't fully understand those words, but it doesn't sound good, does it? That there's this power, this cosmic power which has control over the lives of unbelievers. And Satan led, you see, Satan led mankind in rebellion against God. And he tenaciously holds on or tries to hold on to the power that he has over the lives of men and women. How does he do this? How does he control people? Well, he does this through many ways. He does it through false teaching in the church. He does it through false teachers. He does it through deception in the world. Satan's the greatest liar of all. If you want to know how to lie, then read about Satan in the Bible. Jesus said in John 8, 44, he's talking to the Jews, ye are of your father the devil and the lust of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it. He controls people through deception. He controls people through false teaching. He controls people through temptation, through tapping into their lusts and their weaknesses in their personalities and in their bodies. He uses the tactics of fear to hold people down. Hebrews 2.14 speaks of how Satan uses the fear of death to keep people subject to bondage all through their lifetimes. There's a whole host of ways Satan controls you unless you're in Jesus Christ. You may not always be aware of it, but you're in bondage. Unless you're delivered from the power of Satan, you are his slave. You're under his control. The Gospel message is that Jesus, the Son of God, has conquered the conqueror. He has crushed Satan's head. He faced down, didn't he, the old serpent in the wilderness. Jesus faced an onslaught of temptation by the evil one, but he never succumbed, he never sinned, did he? 40 days and 40 nights. His whole life, from the manger to the cross, he obeyed the perfect law of God completely. And he destroyed the kingdom of darkness through whole-souled obedience to his Father. and fully and finally at the cross, Jesus spoiled principalities and powers. He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." Colossians 2.15. Put simply, Jesus disarmed Satan and he bound Satan, the one who binds people, the one who puts chains around people. Jesus bound and Jesus chained and he spoiled his goods. See, that's the power of Jesus Christ. And this is what he was trying to illustrate through the exorcisms and the healings. The healings and the exorcisms were never meant to be an end in themselves. Jesus had come to announce and display the arrival of the kingdom of God through his miracles and through his preaching. The king had come. His mighty acts of healing confirmed his person as the appointed, anointed Messiah. And yet these vast crowds turned out, didn't they, to be very fickle. The crowds who clamored to him for healing became in the end hostile to his ministry. The crowds recognized Jesus as a great healer, as a great teacher, but very few recognized Him as their Lord and their Savior. Few recognized Him as their one and only King. And even when they used the language of King, they often misunderstood what that meant. We think of when Jesus fed the 5,000. The people were thrilled. It says in John 6 that they almost forcibly tried to make him king. Their motives, of course, were carnal. Now, of course, Jesus never criticized his disciples for seeking spiritual rewards and desiring more blessing. But he did criticise those who followed him purely for carnal reasons, to fulfil the desires of their flesh. He criticised those who wanted the blessings of Christ without being willing to pay the cost of following him. And I wonder today if we're honest Have we examined our motivation for following Christ, for being here even this morning? Feel free to contact us at Sovereign Grace Church in Tiverton. Email us at grace2seekers at gmail.com. That's grace2seekers at gmail.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website at www.sovereigngracereformedchurch.co.uk.