Mark 3:1-12
3:1 Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. 9 Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. 10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell others about him.
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The two sections of today’s passage confront us with two very different pictures of evil. It’s a rather ironic contrast since in both cases, evil is trying to thwart Jesus’ mission, but with two entirely different views of Jesus’ identity.
The obvious evil is that of the demons whom Jesus had cast out. They knew exactly who He was. Apparently, the demonic beings themselves have no filter to keep them from seeing Jesus in truth. Their only tactic at that point is to shout aloud his identity in the hopes it would disrupt His mission. And so Jesus shuts down the only beings who at this point truly know His identity. He would not let them stop His mission.
On the other hand, all his problems with the Pharisees stem from their failure to see His identity in truth. If they had seen Jesus as the demons did, in his true identity, they would have honored Him, not plotted against Him. But since they saw Him as a blasphemer, they believed that it was their religious duty to oppose Him, and seek to bring to bear on Him the due penalty of His apparent blasphemy, which is death.
They too were seeking to disrupt Jesus’ mission. They too were doing evil, but they certainly didn’t see it that way. But which of these two evils, the demons or the Pharisees, did more damage to Jesus’ mission?
This brings up several important points about evil. We can engage in evil activities and not see them as evil. We can engage in activity that we think is serving God but actually hinders His mission, and is therefore serving evil more than God.
When we pray “deliver us from evil,” we can easily think of the spiritual evil directed at us, the church and the world by Satan and his minions. But there is another evil that we need deliverance from, that can potentially do great damage to God’s mission: The evil within us. The evil lurking within the hearts of well-intentioned but misguided Christians. The evil that works to distract the church from God’s mission from within.
And so I pray, “Deliver us from evil,” mindful that I need God to deliver me and the church from the evil within me and inside us.
Lord Jesus, deliver us from evil. We pray for your deliverance not just from the overt work of the demonic, but also from the evil with Your own people, and from within me. Hinder, thwart and overcome that evil so that it does not stand in the way of Your Mission and Your Kingdom.
What is the Word leading you to pray about today?
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