When Jesus healed the paralytic man, as detailed in Mark 2:1-12, He proved that, as God, Himself, Jesus has authority over BOTH physical AND spiritual life and death.
He also was able to read the minds of the teachers of the law, which means that He has authority and power over the body, mind, and soul.
The significance of this miracle shouldn’t be lost. Yet there is something else that this miracle teaches – the dangers of the crowds. It was the crowd that forced these sincere seekers of Jesus to literally tear a hole in the ceiling to get their friend to the feet of Jesus.
Everywhere we see Jesus in the Gospels, we see a crowd. So much so that Jesus actually retreated from the crowds and wanted to move on. Why? Because of the crowds.
And this seems counterintuitive. After all, we would consider a large crowd a good thing, especially when it comes to people who are interested in Jesus. Certainly, in popular evangelical Christianity, this seems to be the thing.
Pastors who aspire to doing great ministry dream of being involved in ministries that draw in the crowds. In fact, there is great pressure on all pastors to grow their churches. We are seeing pastors burn out and assume they are not successful or cut out for ministry because their churches aren’t running hundreds or even thousands of people per week. Because they’re not drawing crowds.
Yet, as we seek to draw the crowds and to be part of the crowds, Jesus was always seeking to get away from the crowds. Why? Because the crowd often gets in the way of His purposes. He said in Mark 1:38:
“Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come.”
The crowds were flocking around Him because they heard that He healed people. That He performed miracles. That He did amazing things. That’s understandable. Most of us are looking for a miracle. Many of us are looking for and hoping for healing. But Jesus came to meet eternal rather than temporary needs.
That isn’t because He doesn’t care about our present, earthly needs. He does. He demonstrated that in the way that He had compassion on people and healed them – even when they often failed to see His larger purpose. However, He didn’t want our fixation and anxiety over the worries of this life to blind us to the big picture. Unfortunately, crowds often hinder our ability to see that big picture. We’ll unravel these in the next set of posts.