Jesus Ministers to Many (Mark 3:7-12)

The challenges of a fruitful ministry. 

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, form Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. (3:7-8)

As I showed the love of the Father, people were attracted. When you live and preach the Gospel of the kingdom of God, when the Father approves your words with His works, many are healed and transformed. This makes even more people thirsty for the good things that the Father has in store for those who come to him. This is what I experienced. 

Does it mean that everyone understood my purpose in coming on earth? No. Does it mean that the people in the crowd had good intentions? No. They just wanted to receive blessings, and I could not blame them. When people are not thirsty, it is difficult to give them to drink. In the same way, if you try to teach people who don’t see how this will bring healing or blessings in their lives, you will have just few people that want to listen. But as soon as they see the good that they can receive through you, they will be attracted to you like to a magnet, they will be thirsty for what they can receive from you. 

As your learn to carry the message of the kingdom, the Gospel, the good news that the kingdom of God has come near, people will be attracted. When the kingdom of God comes near, when you carry in you the kingdom, when you let the Holy Spirit dwell in your body and manifest the kingdom of the Father, then people will see and be drawn to you. 

And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. (3:9-10)

As you learn to let the Spirit of the Father flow through you and heal people, many will want to come close to you. They will want to get blessings from you. Some could even consider you as an object to touch, with the faith and hope that by just touching you they will be healed or blessed. Through this faith, some could indeed be healed, and this will encourage even more to try to touch you. 

In my ministry, it came to such a point that I was barely able to move. In order to give the teaching associated with these healings, I had to find a way to create a distance, so that people could not always come to touch me from everywhere. The method I used here was to go on a little boat, to create a distance, so that for a time people could not touch me and would have to listen to me. They were thirsty, they wanted what I had in me, they were ready to listen to the teachings on the kingdom of God that I wanted to give them. 

And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” And he strictly ordered them not to make him known. (3:11-12)

Not only did people press me from every side, making it very difficult to teach or even to move peacefully, but the unclean spirits were trying to spoil my ministry by crying a truth in a wrong way. Demons know how to mix truth with lies, so that people will be deceived. In my case I knew that it was important first to show the kingdom, through healings and deliverances, and then to teach about the kingdom, the way to the Father. Demons wanted for people to hear first that I was the Son of God, without seeing me act. In this way, all the wrong ideas that people had about who the Messiah should be created even more hindrances to my ministry. Even more than the confusion about who was the Messiah, shouting that I was the Son of God would create the impression of blasphemy. I was the Son of God, but for people to understand this, I needed to teach them and show them the signs of the Father that confirmed this amazing truth. I was and really am the Son of God. 

It was tiring to shut the mouth of these unclean spirits, yet I had to do it. These unwise proclamations would nevertheless contribute to multiply the number of people who wanted  to have me come as an earthly king who crushes the Romans. It would also contribute to increase the anger and the desire to destroy me from the Jewish authorities. They saw me as blasphemous. And I was not supporting the many rules they added to what God said, this way they had developed to have people obey them instead of God. 

These challenges made it even more important for me to prepare a small group of persons to be my close disciples, to hear and share my teachings, to help protect me from the pushing crowds and to minister to them.