Lesson 5: “Miracles Around the Lake”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson misses the significance of Jesus’ calming the storm and walking on the Sea of Galilee.
- Jesus’ casting out Legion from the Gadarene demoniac was not a glimpse of the great controversy.
- Jesus’s healing gentiles and unclean people was not an example for how to proselytize “outsiders”.
This week’s lesson is the fifth in the Sabbath School quarterly entitled simply, Mark. The lesson this week is called “Miracles Around the Lake”, and read in context, these accounts from Jesus’s ministry in Galilee are profound revelations of His identity as God. The events in this lesson are drawn from Mark 4:35 through Mark 6:52.
Saturday’s lesson says that “these incredible displays of power” are “drawing the disciples closer to an understanding that He is the Son of God,” but within an Adventist, great controversy framework, the reader would not understand “Son of God” to be the same as the almighty, sovereign God Christians know from Scripture. The Adventist Son of God was fallible. He could have sinned. He overcame temptation by praying and trusting His Father, showing us sinners how we, too, can avoid sin as He did. The Adventist Son of God had no advantage we mortals do not have because He gave up much of His “God power” when He humbled Himself to become a man with Mary’s genetic propensities to sin in His gene pool.
In other words, the Adventist understanding of Jesus’s being the Son of God is not the biblical understanding of who He is. Rather, the Adventist Jesus is a fallible human described by Ellen White who could have failed in His mission. The Adventist Jesus is primarily an example, the man who succeeded in “vindicating” the law by keeping it perfectly and being the great example for each of us, showing how to live obedient lives and thereby revealing that Satan is a liar—that the law can be kept.
But this is not the biblical Jesus, and the accounts in the gospel of Mark are revealing a sovereign Lord Jesus who came to reverse nature by His power and to atone for our sin by His sufficient sacrifice. He came to be our Substitute and to save us.
Who Is this Man Whom the Wind and Waves Obey?
Sunday’s lesson briefly deals with Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. First, here is the account as recorded in Mark 4:35–41:
And on that day, when evening came, He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.”
And leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling up.
And Jesus Himself was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion; and they got Him up and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
And He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still.” And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.
And He said to them, “Why are you [so] cowardly? Do you still have no faith?”
And they became very afraid and were saying to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”—Mark 4:35-41 LSB
The lesson compares this account to Psalm 104:1–9 where the psalmist recounts God’s creative power that founded the earth and established the boundaries of the seas. Then the author compares the account to other patterns of “theophanies” in the Old Testament in which God appeared but without the revelation from God about His purpose in appearing. The lesson says that Mark’s account “pushes the reader to fill in the answer…He is the Son of God, the Lord Himself.”
This account is NOT a theophany, and it cannot be compared to the Old Testament appearances of the angel of the Lord. This is Immanuel, God in flesh, personally present with His disciples. Furthermore, when the storm breaks out and Jesus calms it, He is showing that He is the One who created the seas. He is the One who, on the third day of creation recorded in Genesis 1:10, formed the dry land and the seas and showed His ownership and authority over them by naming them. He alone has command over the waters and the dry land. They are His—and on the lake that evening, Jesus showed the disciples who He was: He was God.
He was the One who created the waters and the dry lands and the only One who could control them or exercise authority over them. His meaning was clear. Only God could control nature—and His disciples knew that fact. Jesus was showing them who He was.
When Richard and I visited Israel in 2008 on a tour with Gary and Elizabeth Inrig, we went out in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, and while we floated in the morning mist, Gary shared some insights from this story:
Storms are an inevitable part of life.
Storms come even when Jesus is in the boat. The disciples were in that boat in obedience to Jesus’ command—not disobedience—yet the storm still came.
Storms come to expose our lack of faith and trust. The disciples were expert fishermen and sailors. That storm revealed the place where their expertise could not manage. The storm was out of their control, and they were afraid.
Jesus said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” I don’t sense my true lack of faith until the storm comes.
The storms don’t just expose us, they reveal the Lord. Suddenly the disciples understood Jesus in a new way. “Who is this man, that even the winds and the waves obey him?”
Storms enlarge our vision of Jesus. Jesus had told the disciples to go to the other side of the lake. They actually got where Jesus told them to go—they just didn’t get there the way they expected to get there!
What About the Demoniac?
Monday’s lesson is about the demoniac in the mostly-gentile region of Gadara, or the Garasenes. We know the story: a man crazed and self-destructive because of demon possession lived among the tombs. He terrorized the people of the local town, and he would gash and bloody himself with stones. He had become so violent with supernatural strength that he could not be contained even by chains.
Mark tells us in chapter 5 that when Jesus and His disciples reached the shore near him, the demoniac ran to him and bowed down before Jesus, begging Him not to torment him.
The demon apparently sensed that Jesus was going to punish him and feared that the Lord would send him to eternal torment. The description of the man’s cruel suffering emphasizes the foundational goal of demonic possession: to torment and to destroy the image of God in humanity. Evil ultimately desires to destroy humanity—the only creation of God made in His image as recorded in Genesis 1.
The lesson, though, opens with this question:
What can we learn about the great controversy from this amazing account and, again, about the power of Jesus?
Then, the day’s lesson ends with this:
This story has two overriding characteristics. First, it is filled with items of uncleanness or ceremonial defilement according to Old Testament law. Tombs and the dead were unclean (Num. 19:11, 16). Bleeding made one unclean (Leviticus 15). Pigs were unclean (Lev. 11:7).
But, second, overarching this litany of defilement is the back-and- forth battle between good and evil forces. Jesus drives out the demons (two points for Jesus), the demons kill the pigs (two points for Satan). The townspeople ask Jesus to leave (two points for Satan), but Jesus sends back the healed man as His witness (three points for Jesus). In some ways this man was the unlikeliest missionary, but he definitely had an amazing story to tell.
This story is NOT about Jesus and Satan battling it out for control over the poor demoniac! In fact, the paragraphs above are mocking the real story of what Jesus did! Incredibly, the author gives equal value to Jesus’s act of driving out demons and to the demons’ destruction of the pigs! True to the Adventist health message, the author portrays the destruction of swine as something positive accomplished by Satan!
In the first place, the pigs and the suffering man are not comparable in worth. Jesus’ driving out the demons was an act of salvation; allowing them to go into the pigs was not a statement of the pigs’ uncleanness; it was a clear declaration that an animal’s life was in no way comparable to that of a man.
Jesus wasn’t making any statement of a pig’s ritual status; He was simply granting the demons’ request not to be sent “out of the country”—the demons wanted a physical way to stay present upon the earth, and the pigs were handy. Jesus knew that the demons would destroy the pigs—demons kill. He allowed them to kill their hosts and rendered them unable to move about on the earth with a physical body.
This act said absolutely nothing whatsoever about the pigs’ uncleanness. It was entirely about saving the man and declaring to Satan that the promised Messiah had come—Satan’s power over mankind (which God had allowed him to have since Adam and Eve fell) was about to be broken.
This isn’t a story giving a glimpse into the great controversy between Jesus and Satan. Quite the opposite; this account demonstrates that the sovereign Lord Jesus had come, and even before His death atoning for human sin, He was God over the devil. He had the authority to rebuke and banish Satan and to rescue humans from his death grip!
Jesus: Not Example but Fulfillment of the Law
Finally, the Teachers Comments reveal the underlying message this week’s lesson is intended to convey. On page 68 we read this:
Mark 1:21 narrates that Jesus and His disciples “went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach” (NASB). The first miracle of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Mark takes place in the synagogue: “Just then there was a man [with an unclean spirit] in their synagogue” (Mark 1:23, NASB). Then, in Mark 5:22, Jesus ministers to “one of the synagogue officials” (NASB).
Sometimes we face disagreements with certain leaders or other members of our church community. To what extent do we permit these disagreements to affect our convictions or our relationships with our community? How does Jesus’ example give us insight about how to proceed in such situations?
Jesus went outside of His own community of faith to reach people from Gentile communities. What are we doing to reach people beyond our walls for God’s kingdom? Consider, in your answer, Mark 6:34: “[Jesus] saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things” (NASB).
Jesus’s miracles of healing Jews who were unclean, raising dead people, and casting demons out of unclean gentiles were not examples of how to deal with difficult people or “outsiders”.
In this week’s studies we read of Jesus healing the Jewish woman who had been ritually unclean because of chronic bleeding for twelve years. Her condition meant that she could not marry nor live with ritually clean people. She had to live cut off from Jewish communal life because anyone who touched her would be unclean.
Further, Jesus’ raising the synagogue leader’s daughter from the dead meant that Jesus had to go into the presence of the dead body and touch the dead girl as he took her hand and told her to “Get up!” Even more, His entering the region of the Gadarenes and being in the presence of the demoniac was unclean. Jews were not to have personal interactions with gentiles with or without demons, and Jesus placed himself in that man’s personal space, healed him and saved him and commissioned him to tell his fellow gentiles how He had rescued him from darkness and death!
Jesus was not demonstrating how to deal with people with whom we disagree or with whom we have nothing in common. These miracles were not EXAMPLES to us for how to behave—and they certainly are not examples for people who have embraced an unbiblical religion and who do not know the true gospel!
On the contrary, in performing these miracles, Jesus was declaring to Jews and to gentiles alike that God had come to them! To the Jews He demonstrated that the laws of ritual impurity had no power over Him. He could touch the woman with chronic bleeding and not be made unclean. He could touch the dead girl and not have to perform ritual cleansing because He Was God—and He was fulfilling the purpose of those ritual laws of uncleanness. He Himself was showing that those laws had always pointed to Him.
Before He ever came incarnated as a man, the Lord Jesus created the law, and He gave it to Israel to help them understand that they were looking for a Savior. He also gave it to reveal Himself when He finally came.
The law was made to identify the Messiah when He came. If any other human being broke the law, he or she committed sin. When the Lord Jesus came, however, His systematic and deliberate “breaking” of the ritual laws of holy days, feasts, and uncleanness was not sin. When He touched unclean people, dead people, and made impure people well on the Sabbath, He was revealing who He was.
The law was made FOR JESUS. It was like a puzzle piece that fit with the Lord Jesus when He came. Only He could break the law without sin because only He could reveal the true meaning which the laws foreshadowed. The law was made to reveal that God had come in the flesh, and He was bringing reconciliation and truth to God’s lost and suffering people.
When He came He would bring the power of God to mankind, and He would bring cleansing and life to the people cut off from fellowship by the effects of sin. He could touch the woman with the issue of blood because He made her whole. He healed her uncleanness. He could touch the dead girl because He gave her life. He Himself IS life and wholeness.
He had complete authority over the demons. He could make them leave, and He could save and restore the demon-possessed because He Is God!
He could technically break all those laws of ritual purity and uncleanness and never be made unclean because He was OVER those laws. He had authority OVER Satan. He had the sole sovereign authority to restore and heal everyone He touched, and the effects of sin could not render Him impure.
Jesus wasn’t just revealing that He was the perfectly obedient Son of God who gave up His God-power to come and show us how to be good. He wasn’t here as our example for how we can be saved.
He was here to BE our Substitute, to BE our Savior! He came as our sovereign, omnipresent Lord in whom all the fulness of deity dwelt bodily, in whom all things hold together—even while He was in the womb and in the tomb!
This lesson diminishes Jesus and His ministry. It subtly emphasizes the Adventist perception of Jesus as subtly guilt-producing—the perfectly obedient man who shows us that we have to up our game because if He could obey, so can we.
But Jesus did not come to vindicate the law and prove that we can keep it. Rather, He came to FULFILL the law—to fill it up with the meaning all its shadows foretold. He Himself is the substance to which every law pointed. He came demonstrating that He Is God—and He died to pay the full price for human sin. He suffered the wrath of God for all human sin, and He died our death and was buried.
But on the third day He rose from death because His blood had been sufficient to pay for ALL human sin! The curse of death was broken because Jesus had paid the full price!
Now, when we bring our sin to Him and admit that we need a Savior, He removes all our sin from us and gives us His own resurrection life. Because Jesus came and died, His personal righteousness—the righteousness of God—is credited to us when we believe and trust Him.
If you haven’t trusted Him, please do. I challenge you to read the gospel of Mark, in context, asking the Lord to reveal to you what He wants you to know—and see the real Lord Jesus as He lived and ministered among men and women like us.
Trust Him with your sin, and you will know the miracle of being cleansed and delivered from your sin. You will receive His resurrection life, and He will indwell you with His Spirit. Like the woman with the bleeding, like the demoniac, and like Jairus’s daughter, you will know what it means to be made alive and reconciled to God. Believe today—and you will never be the same.
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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