GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
MARK 5:18
18 As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to stay with him.
Mark tells a story the way you might, just to your spouse or between friends. He uses present tense verbs for something that happened, as he was writing, decades ago. “So Jesus is getting into the boat,” Mark writes, “and that demon-man begs him to stay with him!” Such a simple scene, with such simple details. Even the boat is depicted with the most ordinary of words, just a “boat,” which we will admit is usually the case in the New Testament. No triremes or battleships are here. No schooners or sloops. Just a thing that floats and that might step a sail.
The demon-possession is even left behind. This man has a new description: “the man who had been demon-possessed,” but he is possessed no longer, nor will he be again. For now he has something new inside him. He has faith in Christ. He is in possession of the Holy Spirit, who has already purified the temple of the man’s flesh and spirit to take up his throne there.
And the man begs Jesus with the kind of request anyone might make, anyone who had been healed in this way by the almighty power of the Son of God. Luke tells us that he had spoken this way before while still possessed, saying: “I beg you, don’t torment me!” (Luke 8:28). Now his begging is as a healed man, a man who wanted to follow Jesus as a disciple; perhaps even as an apostle. And he wanted it with his whole heart.
What a marvelous thing it is to want to serve Jesus, to offer one’s life in that way. However, no one can enter into the public ministry of the church on his own initiative. A man can’t just say, “I want to be a pastor,” and he will be, or will become, a pastor. The only valid way to enter into any form of ministry is a call from Christ through the church. The Lord warned Jeremiah: “I did not send these prophets, yet they ran with their message. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied” (Jeremiah 23:21).
How serious and absolute is this doctrine (for it is indeed a doctrine of Scripture)? It even applied to Jesus Christ himself. “No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek’” (Hebrews 5:4-6). So the confession of our church is: “About ecclesiastical (church) order, [our churches all teach] that no one should publicly teach in the church or administer the sacraments unless he is regularly called” (Augsburg Confession, XIV). We put this in more ordinary words with our students: “The worker does not seek the call. The call seeks the worker.”
Now, this does not mean that any Christian doesn’t have the right or duty to share the gospel privately when they have an opportunity. The pastor has the ministry of the keys publicly, in the name of the congregation. There are many examples in the Scriptures of people explaining Christ and the gospel privately, such as when Aquila and his wife Priscilla took Apollos aside to their home to explain to him “the way of God more adequately” (Acts 18:26).
But what would Jesus’ response be to the man, filled with the Holy Spirit, no longer troubled by a legion of demons, so eager to serve? The answer the Lord gave, which was “no,” teaches us two lessons, and we will take those up next. But be encouraged that it is the benefit and the blessing of the Lord’s “no” that teaches us so much!
Let us never put our desires above God’s holy will. Let us always begin with “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” To that, he will never say no. His answer is forever Yes in Christ. It is from there that we learn to serve him.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Mark 5:18 Let me follow you