Mark 1:35-39

Jesus Stresses the Wide Scope of What He Has Come To Do (1:35-39).

The work in which He was engaged would be exhausting as He ministered to the crowds, especially spiritually, and so He was aware of the need to go aside and pray. So He rose very early and went to a lonely place, a desert place, away from the town. And there He prayed. He was well aware that His success was dependent on His relationship with His Father, and the confidence that was maintained by it. But the crowds came back to the house in the morning looking for Him and, the disciples therefore, almost certainly because they were pressed by the crowds, clearly felt that they must bring Jesus to them. They probably thought that He would be glad to hear of their enthusiasm, and felt that the opportunity must not be missed.

But He felt differently. He knew the hearts of such crowds. Thus His reply probably startled them. He had not, He explained, come as a healer, He had come to proclaim the Kingship of God. He must therefore move on, for this is why He was sent. In other words He had come to call men under the Kingly Rule of God, calling them to personal response to God and to live lives of positive obedience to Him in accordance with His new teaching, that is, to live lives of love, compassion and mercy as a light in a dark world (Matthew 5:16).