GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 5:15-16
15 The news about him spread more and more, and many crowds gathered to listen and be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.
Mark’s account of this incident paints a more detailed picture. Mark includes the command not to tell anyone (Luke 5:14), but he also says that the man went ahead and told people anyway: “He went out and began to talk freely” (Mark 1:45). Evidently, Jesus wanted the cured man to go and see the priests in Jerusalem before word about the healing got them in some other way. Mark also adds that the result of this man’s report and others was that “Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in the deserted places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere” (Mark 1:45).
Sometimes, during the earlier period of his ministry, Jesus asked people not to tell anyone. We refer to this as the Messianic Secret. This may have been partly because Jesus wasn’t seeking public acclaim. He wasn’t trying to attract attention to himself or start a political or social movement. When some of the Pharisees and others asked Jesus to perform a miracle for them, he rebuked them, and told them that the only sign they would get was the sign of Jonah: “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). He didn’t perform miracles like a magician performing tricks. The signs offered proof, and healing, and placed God’s stamp of approval on his teaching.
Another reason for the Messianic Secret may lie in Jesus’ understanding and special, divine knowledge of human nature. His purpose in coming was to atone for the sins of mankind on the cross. He stated this, including the crucifixion, several times during his ministry. He said to Nicodemus, “The Son of Man must be lifted up” (John 3:14). And he said to the Pharisees, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be” (John 8:28). And when Philip and Andrew brought the Greeks to see Jesus, he said to the whole crowd, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). But he wanted to teach his disciples first. He also wanted to accomplish the atonement on the day of Passover, when the blood of the lamb covered over the sins of the people. He came to fulfill the whole Law of Moses, and do it, he needed for his death to take place at the right time, and in the right place. So perhaps some of his requests not to tell anyone were like a hand turning down the heat of a stove so that the pot would not boil over too quickly.
Yet crowds formed. People followed Jesus around. The word spread, and people followed Jesus wherever he went—wherever he tried to go. But whenever he could, Jesus would slip away, probably at night, to pray in quiet seclusion. Jesus was not awed by the crowds or carried away by public opinion or even by public adoration. What he wanted was for people to adore his Father in heaven. His regular attention was to prayer, as ours should be, too. Luther said, “Prayer is made vigorous by petitioning, urgent by supplication, pleasing and acceptable by thanksgiving” (Sermon on Philippians 4:4-7). We should be praying daily, not just before meals, but before we sleep, when we rise, when we begin a meeting, a trip, and certainly before any of us preaches or teaches anything. Let us do everything to God’s glory and not to our own. Let us remember to build up the faith of the people around us, never to pull them down or to lead them astray. And let us ask God to give us courage and the opportunity to speak the truth in love, and to respect his word above everything else. We are the ones to face the crowds today—may God give us the strength and the wisdom to do it.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota