This past Monday during the time I spent praying and studying God’s word, I read Mark 4:35-5:43. I’ve been using the Gospel Transformation ESV Study Bible, and by reading the notes it has written for Mark 4:35-5:43, I learned about the fact that the miracles that took place during this passage of scripture represent Jesus’s divine power over nature, the spiritual world, and human disease. The notes also mentioned that Jesus did not come to be “merely a political messiah along the lines of a Davidic king.”

One of the major implications I gleaned from my devotional time was this: much in the same way that I should not love a woman (or a friend or really anyone) for an imagined and idealized version of what they could be to make me happy, I shouldn’t “love” Jesus for the things that I want him to do for me. Oftentimes when I “love” people for who I want them to be, I’m not actually showing love towards them at all. I’ve created an idol of them in my head—an idealized and idolized version of them—and that’s what I actually love. That’s what I see in them, and that is how I interact with them. The thing that happens with this idol is that it never lives up to the expectations that I place upon it—the expectations of the one triune God Almighty—or if it does, it can only do it temporarily. Eventually, it will let me down; eventually my expectations will exceed its capacity to fulfill them. When this happens, my adoration turns into hatred, anger, and frustration, and I seek to have the idol removed or destroyed. I abandon it in search of another thing that can bring me what I’m ultimately looking for.

This is the root of all idolatry, and it is the reason why Judas conspired against Jesus to have him crucified. We may be tempted to think that we are better than Judas, that we never would’ve conspired against Jesus to betray him. But any time that we love the things of God, the things that he could do for us, or the things that we would like him to do for us more than we love God himself, we are guilty of breaking the first and second commandment. We take part in our own conspiracy against Jesus; we have him crucified in our own lives all over again.

My prayer for those of us pursuing God is that we would repent from our idolatrous ways and that God would allow us to recognize when we are idolizing a false messiah in our own hearts. Likewise, my prayer for nonbelievers is that they would come to recognize that their idols will never live up to their expectations and that their idols will never save them. I pray they would recognize the one true Messiah for who He is on His terms. I pray that we would all seek to live our lives according to God’s will, seeking to constantly worship God for who He is and to daily submit ourselves unto Him.

Jesus Calms a Storm

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶ And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷ And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸ But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹ And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Jesus Heals a Man with a Demon

5 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.^{[a] 2} And when Jesus^[b] had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. ³ He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, ⁴ for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. ⁵ Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. ⁶ And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. ⁷ And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” ⁸ For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” ⁹ And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” ¹⁰ And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. ¹¹ Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, ¹² and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” ¹³ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

¹⁴ The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. ¹⁵ And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed^[c] man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. ¹⁶ And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. ¹⁷ And they began to beg Jesus^[d] to depart from their region. ¹⁸ As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. ¹⁹ And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” ²⁰ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Jesus Heals a Woman and Jairus’s Daughter

²¹ And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. ²² Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet ²³ and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” ²⁴ And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. ²⁵ And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, ²⁶ and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. ²⁷ She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. ²⁸ For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” ²⁹ And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰ And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” ³¹ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” ³² And he looked around to see who had done it. ³³ But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. ³⁴ And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

³⁵ While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” ³⁶ But overhearing^[e] what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷ And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. ³⁸ They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus^[f] saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹ And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰ And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. ⁴¹ Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” ⁴² And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. ⁴³ And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. – Mark 4:35-5:43 ESV