You. And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good see you tonight after a good supper. Those of you online, we had Southern Fried chicken today on our dinners around the world. Starting that next week is Vacation Bible school. And because of all the chaos that comes with Vacation Bible School, we will not have our Wednesday night supper Bible study and then we'll come back in two weeks. I think we're having German food two weeks from tonight, which gives those of you online time to get here, especially if you have any German recipes. So we are glad to have Abby crossing with us starting tonight, going until July 15, I think, right? And she is from Trinidad, Colorado, and she's helping us in Vacation Bible School, working with Madison and Allison and Trent and all of those. And we got a good group preregistered for Vacation Bible School. Preregistration means almost nothing, but it's always a decent sign anyway. We don't know who's going to come, who's not going to come when that day comes, but still time to get kids registered if you know any neighborhood kids in that and glad everybody's here and with it. Now, why don't we have a word of prayer and get started in Mark, chapter one tonight, verses 35 through 45. Heavenly Father, thanks for the good fellowship here. Thanks for friends and family from afar who gather to join us and from near that gather here in this place to join us, and we're blessed by it. And thanks for the word of God. And the Bible study will get out of it tonight and pray that not only does it give us some insight, but gives us some encouragement as we go away from here, knowing the word of God better, we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. So if you're back with us, you know now that we have started a study of the Gospel of Mark. But Dan, the good news is you've only missed the first 34 verses. That took seven weeks, I think. No, this is number seven tonight, isn't it? Yes, that took six weeks. You're exactly right for those 35 verses. But tonight we're going to go at the breakneck speed of ten verses and we're going to finish Mark, chapter one. So let's see. My math isn't good enough for that, but seven times 16 james? Natalie? Yes, say that again. They're debating on how many sessions that is going to be. 114. Is that right, James? You're the engineer. Seven and 16, 112. Always trust the engineer over the dentist when it comes to numbers. They'll always try to get a couple extra. Didn't Natalie had the right answer, didn't you? Anyway, that's about how many sessions we'll have in the Gospel of Mark if we keep on this track. And we will see. But it's been a fun journey. I have enjoyed it already. And we'll come in tonight, too. Let me get to the right place here. We'll come in tonight to Mark again. Chapter one, verses 35 through 45. And what we had last week in the Gospel of Mark was that Jesus was in Capernium. This has been a couple of weeks ago now. Jesus was in Capernium. He healed the man with a withered hand. No, he cast a demon out of the man in the synagogue and then he went to Simon Peter's house. And at Simon Peter's house he healed the mother in law and she got up and served them. Her healing was immediate. And then we concluded there the word went out. In fact it said twice in the previous 34 verses, says twice how quickly the word spread of who Jesus was. Remember, he was from Nazareth, which is not that far. I suspect if you're driving it, it probably takes maybe 45 minutes to drive from Nazareth to Copernium. And so obviously a little bit more than that if you're afoot. But it's not a huge distance. They are used to traveling down to Jerusalem three or four times a year and was a traveling society and a very closely connected society. And no doubt people from Nazareth would often make their way to the Sea of Galilee for various reasons of the benefit that the sea provides. And so yet with that, Jesus was not from Copernium. In fact we talked about how the demon possessed man. Basically said, if my interpretation was correct, basically said to Jesus, you don't belong here, go back where you belong, leave Capernium alone. You go back to Nazareth. We're good for you to be back at Nazareth. And that was a way of saying go play in the highway because he was going to get they wanted to kill him at Nazareth. And of course the demon knew they wanted to kill him in Nazareth. So go back to Nazareth, leave us alone here. But Jesus of course did not. And word had already spread who was there. Now? I don't think at all. The word was, hey, there's this guy, you're not going to believe what he can do. It's amazing. You should come hear him, you should come see him. I think the word was Messiah has come to our town. They knew exactly who he was, the Son of God. And there's a number of bits of evidence we see that already in the first 34 verses of the Gospel of Mark. But don't take this as a really good traveling sideshow. Hey, you should see Jesus, man. He's cool and he's cool and powerful too. So I think the word is, hey Jesus, the Messiah is here. So there we pick up in verses 35 through 39. Anyway, we have what I have called the Galilean expansion. As it says in the morning, that is, the morning after he healed the mother in law. Let me back up a little bit and remind you that it was the Sabbath, day after dark. You remember from last week in verse 34 after dark, they brought all the sick and demon possessed to him. He casts out the demons, he heals the sick that are there, in addition to Peter's mother in law, who had already been healed. And then in the morning, rising a great wild before day. So I suspect then he didn't get much sleep that night rising a great wild before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. And if you are an evangelical pastor, here is where you're supposed to guilt you into getting up early while it is still dark, going to a solitary place and pray. This is what you're supposed to do, people, because Jesus did it. Right? Okay, well, that's what I used to preach. Here's what Jesus did. WWJD. Jesus would get up very early while it was before the sun came up. He'd go to a solitary place, and there he would prayed. And if it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. There's a couple of problems with that. One is that I say this often, but I'll say it again. You do not make a doctrine out of an historical account just because you read that somebody did something. Even if it's Jesus, that is not doctrine. That is what he did. Jesus also healed mother in laws and stayed up late healing people, coming to the door, and on and on we could go. This just happens to describe Jesus's activity. And Jesus's activity is not necessarily something for us to point out. I would say this is descriptive rather than prescriptive. So we're getting the picture of what Jesus did and how he carried it out. If we are to get up early and rise before dawn and go out to a solitary place and pray, we ought to find that in a place that actually teaches doctrine. And if there's a place that you can go to that says, thou shalt arise early before it's still day, go to a solitary place and there pray. Do it. Hint you can't. But obviously there may be some of you, there may be others who have a practice of getting up early before the sun comes up and going to a solitary place and praying. And it might be a very rich and meaningful experience for you, in which case I would say continue to do it's. A very rich and meaningful experience to you. And yet the danger there for those of you who may do that is that you might think that everybody else may do that. I was having a hard time getting Bobby to come to breakfast at 08:00, but I just confessed for you, Bobby there. You're retired. You don't have to. So what we don't want to do is do like I just did to Bobby and put a subtle guilt trip on why aren't you like us godly people who are here for breakfast? Incidentally, when I was a young man. Our church, the First Baptist Church of Monday, Texas, had men's breakfast every Tuesday in Monday at 06:00 P.m and 06:00 A.m.. Excuse me? 06:00 A.m.? Yeah, it was 06:00 A.m. Breakfast, and I was about 27 years old, and a 27 year old does not want to come to breakfast at 06:00 A.m.. That was not high on my list. I was not really all that interested, but I was the pastor, and I, in those days, felt like you should do pastoral things when you're the pastor, you should put on a tie and show up at the office on time and all that kind of stuff. And so I always went, but I never enjoyed it, not once. But now that I'm an older man, we have breakfast at 08:00 A.m.. I'm an older man. It was a bunch of farmers there. By 08:00, they were stopping to take a break. But anyway, so the point is that we can be guilted because someone else does it, because Jesus did it, and we don't have to carry that guilt if it's not a doctrinal teaching. And so we look at this, and it's descriptive here, and to get a doctrine out of this, which, again, I suspect that a lot of you have been guilted before into thinking, I ought to get up earlier and I ought to be out in a solitary place and ought to be praying there by passages like this. But to do it, you have to read a lot of stuff into that text. I doubt it, but maybe Jesus had heartburn and he couldn't sleep that night or something. And so, hey, I just will get up. I can't sleep anyway. Maybe I had too much caffeine. I don't know. I doubt it. I suspect from other places that this kind of was his habit and that many people could even find it beneficial. But typically, if you read a commentary on this, it's going to talk about the humanity of Jesus, oh, the humility of Jesus, oh, the holiness of Jesus. Because preachers write it, and it would all start in ages, right? And that's putting a lot more in than Matthew desires. I think Matthew just wants to tell us it was early and he got up and he went to a solitary place and prayed. Only preachers would make this long of a discussion about that, right? I'm just going the opposite of the way most preachers would do. So there's the description that he does get up, go to a solitary place. By the way, the word solitary right here, we've talked about it before. It's haramas. Haramas is sometimes translated wilderness. Sometimes it's translated solitary place. Sometimes it's translated desert, even when it doesn't necessarily mean desert, as in dry desert. And it is the word from which we get heramas. We get the word hermit. A hermit is someone who's out in a solitary place. Heramas is the word there. So he went out to a solitary place, and there he prayed and put 36 and 37 together. Simon and they were with him, followed after him. And when they had found him, they said to him, all men seek for thee. Simon and them who are with him. If we go from, I think it's verse 32 or 33, it also mentions Simon and his brother Andrew and James and his brother John, those four. But there were a lot of others there. I'm suspecting we're talking about these four who are right here, and they followed after him. I'd like to know, but we don't really know how much time he was out there. When did they show up? I don't know. But they followed after him nonetheless. And when they had found him now I'm going to stop right there. That tells me that getting up early to a solitary place to pray was not necessarily Jewish ritual or Jewish custom. That was kind of considered sacred space because Andrew excuse me, Simon and those who are with him don't mind going to interrupt. Maybe they're saying, hey, it's sacred space, but this is so much more important. But it looks to me like Jesus is just an early riser. He goes out there, he's praying, but they don't mind interrupting. The Jewish custom was much more scheduled prayers. There were certain times of prayer during the day, and you gave those prayers at certain times in a prescribed way. But nonetheless, they come out and they followed him and they said, I want to talk King James, just a minute. They said, all men seek for thee, which of course meant no women were interested because women are not Godly. I got a few looks from the ladies. A couple of things about translations I want to bring out. Obviously, you and I, because we're from Western civilization, even I started to say we're of the older generation, but even the younger ones here have a Western civilization mindset. And you can say all men. And no, it's just talking about everybody, everyone. And certainly a decade ago, two decades ago, nobody would have thought anything about it. It means everybody. Now, people do think about that a little bit more. But a couple of things that I want to note. If you look in a modern translation, I suspect new King James, though I didn't look at it. But if you look in a modern translation, it's going to say everyone, everyone is looking for you. Everyone, everybody, something like that. And you might look at that and say, yes, King James is out of date, needs to be updated, shouldn't say all men. There's a couple of things about this. One is that you notice the word men is italicized, which, as you know, means that it was inserted by the translators. That means literally, the Greek says all seek for thee. True. That's exactly what the Greek says, all seek for thee. Now the adjective all is in the masculine adjectives. Do what you're right. They modify nouns, describe nouns. So technically, you got to have all something seek for thee because it's describing all of those. Now, you could probably say all seek for thee. And it's just implied. All people, all men, all squids, whatever is in the context there, all seek for thee. But King James typically will put something in where something is implied, but they'll let you know, hey, we stuck this in. Now, the adjective all is in the masculine. So to make it all men, that would kind of make sense. All men seek for thee. Let me tell you why I think this awkward is better than the modern awkward that says everyone. Everyone is not an adjective. Everyone is a pronoun. Pronoun stands in for a noun, right? Everyone is a pronoun. So I think you would agree with me. Everyone seeks you. All men seek you. It says the same thing. But if I'm the translator and I decide I can swap pronouns for adjectives when I want to, then that makes me the author, right? So the King James, I think better than likely better than any translated work ever. Certainly better than any any biblical translation did better at consistently trying to stick with I need to find the same part of speech to carry this out. Not just the word that means that, but also the same part of speech, because they were assuming that you, as a good Bible student, would want to be persnickety, as we say right there. You would want to be persnickety in the way you study, and you would want to know this is an adjective versus a pronoun. And there are many places and the new King James is guilty of this as well as all the modern translations. There are many places in which the modern versions change the part of speech or the form of speech, like verb forms and whatnot, just change it to another. And again, most of the time, probably does no theological damage at all, and you still get the point. I just think that if you're looking for a Bible, you ought to look for one that is of the greatest degree of precision. Did you ever pull the wrong tooth? He's pleading the Fifth, ladies and gentlemen. I've never had the wrong tooth pulled, but if I was going to a dentist, I would want to know if he has a record of pulling the wrong teeth. These are things that you say, I want to be persnickety at this one. This one matters to me. And I think the word of God ought to matter to us as well. So nonetheless, this is why it takes 112 sessions to get through, because I chase little rabbits like this that are so important. But here they come. Hey, you're out in a solitary place. All men seek for thee. Wouldn't you agree? There's a little bit of implied message there. All men seek for thee. This is not just an information session that they're bringing. Hey, just want to know, let you know they're all seeking for you. There's that implication. Therefore you need not to be here in this solitary place praying. You need to come back. It's kind of interesting that in our evangelical you ought to pray like Jesus prays. They don't always bring up that his disciples said, don't do this anymore, get back. I think anyway, it's implied. It's kind of dangerous to read what's implied. But nonetheless, it looks to me like they're saying, time to come on back. But as you know, Jesus had a different idea. He said unto them, let us go to the next where are we? There we go. He said unto them, let us go to the next towns that I may preach there also, for therefore came I, okay, let's go. And it is kind of if you didn't know all the story, and most of you probably did, but if you didn't know all the story, it's a little bit of surprise. Got a big crowd. They're all lining up at the door. Jesus gets a little bit of sleep, gets up early in the morning to pray. They come out, say, hey, everybody's lined up for you. And Jesus says, Good, let's go somewhere else. Not exactly what you would expect if you were just writing the story on your own. And so he say, let's go to the next towns. It is in the plural, the surrounding towns there in Galilee. Let's move on. And he says that I may preach there also. Preach the word caruso. I want to bring that up because it's going to come up again tonight. The word caruso is normally translated preach, but in the English language, preach almost always is only used in a church setting. That's where you go hear someone preach. The only other time is when your mother quit meddling or quit. What is it now? You got to preaching. I'mixing up my metaphors, aren't I? Meddling and preaching or whatever. Quit preaching and gone to meddling. I knew there was a meddling in that preaching there somewhere. But every now and then you could say to your neighbor, quit preaching. To me, that's about the only time that preach is used in a non church setting. Even I would say in a I should turn off my phone during the session, don't you think? Even I would say during a now I lost my train of thought. Even outside of the Christian world, preach is almost something that is almost exclusively Christian. I don't hear rabbis talking about, I got to prepare my sermon for preaching this Sabbath. It's a Christian word. Okay? All that to say the Greek word caruso is not really that Christian. It means to proclaim, to talk, to say something, to get the word out. And so here I came that I may preach. It's kind of a strong word. It's a word like harold. H-E-R-A-L-D. Hart, the herald angel sing to announce so go that I'm a herald. There also proclaim it, preach it, for therefore came I forth. This is why I came. That tells us that Jesus might be one who gets up early in the morning to pray, but that's not why he came. He might be one that casts out demons, but that's not why he came. He might be one that heals the sick, but that's not why he came. He came to preach to other towns. Now you would have to say, preach what? I think by this point maybe we would go back to the book of Isaiah. The Messiah is anointed to proclaim liberty to the captives. And the rest of that verse that you know, and so I won't recite it, but that proclamation of him being Messiah, basically, I think he's saying here I came to proclaim to Nazareth, and to Capernium, and to Beth SATA and to Migdal and all these other cities around Galilee. I came to proclaim that I am the Messiah. That's why I came. And so I want to go and proclaim that. And so he does just that. In verse 39, he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee and cast out devils. Now he preached in their synagogues. That tells us a couple of things. It tells us, I think, how Jewish he was. It's no surprise, right? But it's easy to forget because every picture we saw of Him looks like an unkept Frenchman. But he's Jewish, right? When he preached. He preached in synagogues. This is where he goes to do his preaching. I think this also tells us the fact that he preached in the synagogue tells me again, I'm reading a bit between the lines, but I don't think this is unfounded. Tells me that he had rabbinical support. The rabbis are in charge of the synagogue. The rabbis could certainly say, nah, we don't want a guest preacher today, we're not interested in having you. No, thank you. And so the rabbis, I would say, look pretty supportive of Him. Remember, the rabbis are not priests. The rabbis are the common folk, but well educated in the Torah. The Levites are the priests, the Libidical family are the priests. And we'll run across priests later. And it was the priestly clan that we see later that was kind of always against Him. The scribes and the chief priests and the leaders of the people and the Pharisees, they're going to be against Him, but not the rabbis. The rabbis down at the local synagogue, I think they are adopting or accepting Jesus's message. Yes, we think we have the Messiah here, and so if he can come and be in our synagogue, we'll let Him. Now again, obviously I'm reading more than it actually says, but he's certainly coming into the synagogues in some way and he's preaching throughout all of Galilee. That's the northern end of Israel already we've had mentioned a couple of times, as I already mentioned, the fame of Jesus is huge. Everybody knows Jesus by now, and now it's just spreading. He goes everywhere throughout all the towns to the synagogues and cast out devils. That's the one thing that Mark mentions. Matthew, I believe in this same account, Matthew mentions that he healed the sick and cast out devils. Mark chooses just to say he cast out devils. I think we could arm wrestle on whether or not this is the right answer or not, but I think that casting out the demons is the number one sign that you are the Messiah, that you have absolute control over spiritual forces as they manifest themselves in the world. You can control them. So a good physician perhaps can heal, not quite like Jesus is healing, but a good physician perhaps could heal. A good trickster or magician or even sorcerer could call for some sort of spectacular miracle, so to speak. But to be able to control the demonic is really to me, the number one manifestation that, yeah, you really are the Son of God, you are who you say you are. A couple of things about this one I already mentioned, but tonight I put it on your outline about the word devils, that the word demons had not yet really come into the English language. There was a couple of times it was used in English, but it was basically about the more of the 18 hundreds that we began to use the Latin term dimon, which came from the Greek dimon. So the Latins stole it from the Greeks, the English stole it from the Latins eventually and it became that. But 1611, very few instances of the word demon being used. It did exist, but it was very seldom used and almost never used in the sense of the manifestation of an evil spirit as we would use it here today. So devils was the word that you used at that point. So he comes, he displays, he proclaimed caruso there in the synagogues. So he preached, I would say he preached this Messianic message to the Jews, and to prove it he cast out devils. And then in verse 41, we shift just a little bit and the Messianic message is going to just continue to spread. He's out there in Galilee. It doesn't tell us exactly where he was, but there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him and saying unto him, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Let's talk leprosy for just a moment. Everybody knows what leprosy is, right? So maybe you do, maybe you don't. We all know what leprosy is because we've heard it repeated by a parrot a whole bunch of times what leprosy is. First of all, lepers, what do they have to do before they come up to anybody? Had to go to a priest to be pronounced clean. Yes, we're going to get to that in a moment. Even prior to that, if a leper comes into the room in the Old Testament, he's supposed to say, yeah, unclean, unclean. And the lepers really are not even supposed to come into the community. Now that does come from the Old Testament, does come from the Mosaic Law, but both the Hebrew word for leper and the New Testament word for leper are much more broad words than what we consider leprosy. Any kind of a skin ailment, or sometimes these are nerve ailments that display themselves in the skin. Like what's the one that comes from the chickenpox, the skin thing? Shingles. That's what I'm trying to say. Shingles is kind of a nerve thing but it displays itself well. Shingles would be considered leprosy under that word. Leper or leprosy was a very broad word that even can include mold on a cloth or on the wall is a form of leprosy. So any kind of fungus, any kind of mold, any kind of rash, all of that's leprosy. Not all of them had to live in the leper community out there and pronounce themselves unclean. As a matter of fact, in the New Testament, I'll say never, though I might put a footnote here, you never see the kind of leprosy where they are shouting unclean and nobody comes near them. Here it looks like this guy just came to him beseeching him, kneeling down him. Well, he's bound to have a lot of people around him. And here this guy just kind of walks up. I think we should rethink and probably put out of our mind the strictest form of leprosy in which was a very contagious form and you could not go up. You did have to live out according to Old Testament law. We actually don't know how much they were carrying that out in the New Testament because we just never see it there again. The closest we'll get is when we see ten lepers and it says they cry out from a distance. So that's possibly that Old Testament form of leprosy. But here I don't know exactly what this guy has got, if he's got the worst form or not. Today almost all that would fit under the, under the umbrella of leprosy is kind of easily curable. It's bacterial and you take an antibiotic or whatever and it goes away and it's not really a big problem. But obviously back then it was a big problem. And if you Google it you'll find out that today leprosy is called Hanson's disease and actually Hanson's disease would be leprosy. But I think it would be wrong to say leprosy is Hanson's disease. I would say Hanson's disease is leprosy, but there's a lot more to leprosy. So I say all of that to say just because somebody said it before don't necessarily believe it. Leprosy was skin issues. Here comes this. Guy. He is Leprous, and he comes beseeching and kneeling down again. I'll read into it a little bit. Looks like he understands, he knows who this guy is, that Jesus is not just a great physician. Jesus is one you would kneel down to, like the king or like the priest or like God kneels down to him saying, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. It's interesting that he uses the word clean. He doesn't say that you can make me well or that you can make me whole. Those are words that would be used of losing a physical ailment here. He says that you would make me clean. Clean is the word that is purified. You would make me purified. Leprosy was one of a small number of physical ailments in the Old Testament in which, if you got it, as Leslie mentioned, you do have to go to the priest. And the priest will go through a series of issues and eventually pronounce you clean. So he says a whole lot right here when he says that you can make me clean. He wouldn't have said that to a doctor. He would have said, you can make me whole. You can make me well. You can make me healthy. But he said, you can make me clean. I looked up the word every time you see this particular word, catharizo, by the way, we get catheter from it just in case you care. And we also get the name Catherine, in case you care. Pure. And so make me clean is something you would only say to the priest. So here's a guy who is recognizing Jesus has a priestly role. They know Jesus is not of the tribe of Levi. So it's very unusual to go to someone of the tribe of Judah and say, you can make me clean. Those are just not words that a good Jew would speak. And he's going in the synagogues in the Jewish territory. This is a very good Jewish country here. So he's saying the wrong thing, or he's recognizing that Jesus as Messiah is both prophet, priest and king. And so he comes to him, in this case as priest. And I think this helps tell us. And there was or helps build the case anyway, to say there was a priestly expectation of the Messiah. Psalm, I believe it's 110, talks about the Messiah being a priest after the order of Melchizedek. And of course, the book of Hebrews talks about that as well. So here this guy recognizes who he is. Now, I don't think this guy had a mysterious revelation that God let him know, hey, he's the Messiah. I think this is what Jesus is announcing, hey, I'm Messiah. And the guy says, well, if you're Messiah, you're prophet, you're king, but you're also priest. So as Messiah, you can make me clean. And Jesus, he comes and makes this, I would say, messianic testimony. And Jesus moved with compassion you see that often in Jesus life. Put forth his hand and touched him. I do suspect that that was a little bit of communication there, that I'm not scared of your disease. Put forth his hand and touched Him and say it unto Him, I will if you want to. You can make me clean. I will be thou clean. I think that the amazing thing here is that Jesus takes on that messianic role. So this is one more time of Mark recording for us. Jesus proving himself to be the Messiah. What does Messiah do? He casts out demons. Did that a whole bunch of times. What does Messiah do? He heals the sick. Did that a bunch of times. But what does Messiah do? He has a priestly role. I can make you clean. You think I can be thou clean? And he pronounces him clean here. So this has a lot more messianic flavor in it than I think normally we get. Normally we read this story and just say, oh yeah, healed the leper. That's nice. Healed the leper. But he did more than that. He pronounced the leper clean. But story is not over yet. As soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed for him and he was cleansed. Now, if all it wanted to say was he was healed, it could have left out that part I highlighted in blue, right? It could have simply said immediately the leprosy departed from him, period. But Mark adds, and he was cleansed. And in addition to the leprosy departing from him, he was cleansed. That is to say, this man was purified. Jesus did according to Mark here, jesus did that which only a priest could do. Jesus carried out his priestly function. He was cleansed. And this happened, of course, immediately. We've talked about that once or twice already, that this was with one exception, this was always the way it worked in Jesus's ministry, that when he did it, he did it immediately. I am well, you know, I'm a skeptic, but I am always very skeptical. Some might say, oh, ye of little faith, but I'm very skeptical. When you gather together someone's had a tragedy or someone has an illness and they're really praying for a miracle, which I don't have a problem with doing at all, that's what I would do in my case. But then maybe you have a little circle of prayer, passionate prayer over the person and somebody always, it seems to me, wants to, after the prayer, say, a miracle has happened tonight. I just feel it. I just feel it. I just know that later on we're going to find out that the miracle happened tonight. I hate to be the one, and I would never open my mouth except here with you all when we're not in that situation to say, you know, in the Bible, miracles were lickety split. They just took place right there. If she or he stood up out of the bed and got up and started making coffee or something. Then I'd say, okay, a miracle happened there, but biblical miracles really are that dramatic. And so I like to reserve the biblically miraculous for that kind of stuff. That seems to be more biblical to me. But anyway, immediately the leprosy departed from him. He was cleansed, and two more verses I want to take care of here quickly. He straightly charged him and forthwith sent him away. Straightly charged, by the way, it's a word that's only used a couple of times in the scripture, and it is a word that is filled with emotion. So he's going to be very clear verbally here in a moment. But I think also he was very clear emotionally. You kind of know when someone's serious about what they said, right? This says, Jesus was not only serious with his words, he was serious with his demeanor. There was no way to get around. Yeah, I understand what he says. So he straightly charged him and forthwith sent him away and saith unto him, see, thou say nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded for a testimony unto them. There's his instruction. Now, why does Jesus do this? If Jesus, as I proposed, if Jesus had already cleansed him, then why go to the priest to have cleansing? He was cleansed, he didn't need that cleansing. But Jesus very definitely says, go show yourself to the priest, offer for the cleansing of those things Moses commanded. Those things Moses commanded, by the way, are in Leviticus chapter 14. You can read them. It really was, I don't know, I'll say a tedious work of a tedious work and a lot of ritual to it, carrying out this at least eight day process that goes through, and a number of sacrifices, a number of visits to the priest before you are declared to be clean. And Jesus says, Go through with it. I think one, it shows us that Jesus had not and did not free the Jewish people from the law. Jesus was not coming to say, I am announcing to you that through me, you don't have to obey the law anymore. Even if I can cleanse you, if I can speak like Jesus here for just a moment, even if I can cleanse you, I want you to know you're still under the law. And being under the law, you carry out the law. This is what you do. And so he wants him to go to the priest, offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded you go do, leviticus 14, that's what we do, and that's what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to do it, it says, for a testimony unto them. Now, there's two ways to take this, and I don't know which way to take it. I lean towards for a testimony to them is that everything in Leviticus, chapter 14, the things that Moses commanded really were for a testimony. There wasn't anything medicinal about it. It was a testimony to the priest and to others that hey, look, I'm clean, I bring my sacrifice, all of the things that it was a testimony. So my inclination is to read this as let me paraphrase a little bit, offer for thy ceremonial cleansing the things Moses commanded. That was the testimony part is hey, there's some ceremony you need to go through and carry that out. And the other way you could take it is and I probably would have done this in the past, you could take it and say, you go show those priests that we don't need them anymore. You go show those priests that there's a new priest in town. Maybe that was just a little too much. My own attitude that was coming through, I'm not sure, but ah, now that I look at it more dispensationally and rightly divided, I don't think Jesus was sort of throwing the priest under the bus and sending a nanny, nanny boo boo kind of testimony to them. I think that the testimony the witness was going through that particular process. You go do the things that you have to do to get this witness. You go go to the notary notary public, you got to get the stamp and the signature on this is what you need to do. And so he commands him to do that. And it's very clear, see, thou say nothing to any man, you go do it and zip it up. Obviously, we kind of want to say, why be quiet about this? This is a big thing. If your job is to go out and proclaim, why not let other people help you to do it? And we get the answer in verse 45, our last verse for tonight. But he, the now cleansed man, went out and began to publish it much and to blaze abroad the matter, uhoh, he disobeyed, didn't he began to publish it much. By the way, the word publish is caruso. We could have translated it preach, but we didn't put preach because he's not a preacher. So non preachers publish that is, spread the word. He began to herald it and to blaze abroad the matter blaze abroad is dia famitzo. Did I get that right? I don't have the outline in front of me. Dia famitzo, any of the dia words. Typically, if it's a dia prefix, I translate that in my mind as thoroughly. Whatever it is, do it thoroughly famito. We get the word fame from it thoroughly made famous. Made him famous. Blaze abroad is hey, he got the word out, he published it much and he blazed abroad thoroughly, made him famous. Which all sounds well and good except for the logistics of the whole matter. And that's where we come in to the end. It got so published and blazed abroad in so much that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places, and they came to him from every quarter. That desert is the same word we have had earlier, haramas, the solitary place, as it was pronounced earlier. There's not a lot of desert in Galilee. It's greener in Galilee, so solitary places where there's not a lot of people. So Jesus is wanting to go into all the towns and proclaim it. As I read this now, the logistics are just too hard to do it. He has a hard time now just going out and proclaiming in every city. And now, I think probably mostly for logistics reasons, he just has to stay and the people come to him. There's not a place in this city that wouldn't be destroyed by the time the crowd left, just so many people being there that he's unable to go. This tells me that by the end of chapter one, which really is very quickly in Jesus's ministry, galilee, for all practical purposes, had recognized Jesus as Messiah and believed that he was Messiah. I think if we catch anything from Mark, chapter one, if we get anything from Mark, chapter one, it is that our narrative that Jesus was rejected from the get go is the wrong narrative. He was accepted from the get go. They accepted him as messiah. They recognized him as Messiah right from the beginning, and now they're all coming to him from every quarter. And this is going to continue on through chapter three at least, which we will cover next time. Yes, sir, that's a good question. When Leper went to the priest, was it obvious to the priest that he was already healed? I would say if you go by Leviticus 14, they're not supposed to go to the priest until it's obvious that you are healed. What I don't know is how did the priest know that you had this? Do they keep a record of Lepers and look on the list and say, yes, Dan, we know you had Leprosy. Now, let's see. So I think, yes, it was obvious that whatever the skin ailment was must have cleared instantly as well, which in and of itself is a bit dramatic because we know even after those viruses leave the body or bacteria or whatever kind of rash you got, it takes a while, correct? Yes. In the Old Testament, indeed, he did not go to the priest to get healed. He went to the priest to show that he was healed and then go through some ritual that displayed that to the community, basically. So this guy, it appears he has leprosy because it says immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed at the same time. I found in reading Leviticus 13 and 14, there's two chapters, two gruesome chapters on leprosy, if you'd like to study more on it. Leviticus 13 and 14, there's not a healing aspect in those there is only a ceremonial cleansing aspect? No, probably not. I don't think that the priest, unless he knew about it from other sources, was not saying, this guy has a miraculous healing. He just knows what he's supposed to do in terms of cleansing. Now, he may have seen the guy a week ago and know that it was miraculous in that way, but it would have been from outside information that we don't have here. If he knew there was a miracle there and very likely might not have Levites. There were libidical towns that the Levites lived in. Very likely scenario that they weren't even there. They didn't know about it. They probably had their ear to the ground, but that's about it. Thanks. Anyone else? We shall pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the cleansing power and the healing power and especially the saving power that we have experienced in our faith, and we're grateful. Thank you for the word of God and the intrigue that comes from digging into it and studying it just a bit more as we make our journey through the Gospel of Mark. We pray that the entire thing would be most enlightening to us. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you all. See you Sunday. Yeah. So if he wasn't supposed to go tell anyone, no one knew but the leper, I would suspect there's a crowd around that does know about it. But the only way I get that is even up to this point, he's already having a hard time not getting a crowd pressing on him everywhere he goes. So I would assume that others saw this, but even if well, somebody had to see it to write it down to know what was happening. So even if it was just a small crew of them and it was only for the purposes of recording it in scripture, that we would know. But I suspect if anyone's left out of the story, it's the priest, that he's the only one that doesn't know at that point, that word has spread quickly. Or it may be that the rare case that maybe he was just all by himself, but he went out and told everybody, so that's how they knew. Yes, exactly. It big mouth.