The Lord Jesus is the embodiment of the Triune God. As the embodiment of the Triune God, His life was fully according to and for God’s New Testament economy. This One sowed Himself as the seed of life into His disciples. This seed is the Lord as the embodiment of the Triune God.
As the Lord Jesus was ministering and living a life according to God’s New Testament economy, He collected the “soil” into which He would sow Himself as a seed. This soil was the Lord’s followers. The first one to be gathered by the Lord Jesus was Peter. We may say that the Lord Jesus put Peter into His “pocket” and carried this “soil” with Him wherever He went.
As we read the Gospel of Mark, we need to see that the Lord Jesus was living a life of sowing the Triune God into His believers as the soil. In chapter one He began to collect the soil. Peter, the first one to be called by the Lord Jesus, is our representative. He took the lead in things both good and bad. He took the lead to recognize that Jesus is the Christ and also to deny the Lord. Peter even took the lead to be crucified. In a foregoing message we pointed out that, in a sense, Peter was crucified even before the Lord Jesus was. Furthermore, after the Lord’s resurrection, the angel specifically mentioned Peter’s name (16:7). This indicates that Peter was known by the angels. He certainly was our representative.
The Gospel of Mark not only portrays the Lord as the One sowing the Triune God into His believers as the soil, but this Gospel also depicts the condition of this soil. The cases recorded in this Gospel indicate that the soil was not in a healthy condition. In Mark we have twelve cases involving thirteen people. (One case involves two people, a woman and a young girl.) Four of these twelve cases are cases of people possessed by demons. This indicates that the soil gathered by the Lord Jesus was possessed, occupied, by demons.
Were you not occupied by some kind of “demon” before you were saved? Many today are possessed by the demon of drugs or the demon of gambling. As we consider today’s situation in the world, we see that all the unsaved people are occupied by demons. Therefore, when the Lord Jesus comes to select a person and gather that one to be His soil, the first thing He does is cast out the demon from that person. From our experience we know that when we were called by the Lord, He cast out our demons.
The twelve cases recorded in the Gospel of Mark may be regarded as depicting the condition of an individual. In other words, these cases are a composite picture of a single person. In the eyes of the Lord Jesus, everyone who becomes His soil is the one portrayed by these twelve cases. Hence, the case of Peter’s mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever, indicates that, spiritually speaking, we all have a fever. Because our spiritual temperature is not normal, it is easy for us to be angry. Was this not your condition before you were saved? We all were once sick with a high fever. Furthermore, we were lepers, those unclean, contaminated, in relation to both God and man. We also were paralyzed and withered, unable to walk before God or work for Him.
Although this was our condition before we were saved, the Lord Jesus has healed us in a general way. The person portrayed by these cases has been healed and is no longer abnormal in temperature and is no longer unclean, paralyzed, and withered.
According to the sequence of the Gospel of Mark, after the cases that portray general healing, we have three cases that depict the healing of specific organs, namely, the hearing organ, the speaking organ, and the seeing organ. Before chapter eight, the soil was collected, and the disciples were healed in a general way. However, spiritually speaking, they still could not see, hear, or speak. Therefore, the Lord began to practice the healing of specific organs, the organs of sight, hearing, and speech.